YoNaturals Vending Food Tips

Good nutrition is an essential component of both a healthy body and mind. This is especially important for children as they make their way through school. Breakfasts of sweet rolls and other pastries are not the way to begin the day and will surely have them fatigued before lunchtime. If you begin the day by providing your child a healthy breakfast, he will be more alert and have greater concentration throughout the morning. Although children don’t need all the sweet treats, if you want to occasionally allow them pastries for breakfast, do not do it on a day they have to go to school.

How nutritious are pancakes, waffles and French toast? The nutritional value depends on what you use to make them. If you use whole wheat flour, bread and pancake mix with syrup that has reduced calorie content, you have created a reasonably healthy breakfast for yourself or your children. The key to good nutrition is learning how to substitute unhealthy foods for healthier ones. It’s difficult to achieve a diet that is 100% healthy, but if you take some of those unhealthy foods and replace them with healthier choices, it will certainly make a big difference. They may have trouble with the transition but once they are used to eating healthier foods, you will find that they don’t want to return to their old eating habits. That doesn’t mean they will never eat unhealthy foods because we know that is unrealistic, but if we can reduce the amount of unhealthy foods both children and adults consume, we will be able to improve the health of the entire populace.

Reducing sugar content and replacing simple carbohydrates with complex carbohydrates are healthy alternatives for the entire family. Children learn by example, so if you want your children to become healthy adults, you want to begin teaching them at an early age to eat healthy natural and organic foods. Some of the schools are beginning to take action by providing vending products from vendors such as Healthy Student Vending that includes natural fruit juices instead of soft drinks in addition to other healthy snacks. The process will be a long one and may not transition for decades, but if we begin now we will eventually see a country full of healthier children that grow into healthier adults.

If you find yourself constantly buying your snacks and meals from the vending machines at your workplace, then it may be time to reevaluate your eating habits. Take a look at where your snacks and meals have been coming from during the past week. Did you bring them from home? Pick them up at a local restaurant or grocery store? Or did you purchase them from a vending machine while on the job? If a good portion of your food has been coming from that last option, then it is definitely time to think about the impact that your choices is having on your diet.

First, consider why it is that you are buying food and drinks from the vending machines. Is it convenience? Do you forget to bring them from home? Or do you often just find yourself unprepared to deal with an unexpected hunger pang or bout of sluggishness? Vending machines certainly can provide a solution to this problem. After all, they never close. They are always faithfully standing there in the same spot, waiting for someone to drop some spare change into their belly in exchange for a snack or soda. There is, however, oftentimes a trade off for the convenience that they provide in that most of the traditional machines provide only snack foods that are loaded down with calories, fats, and other things that can quickly derail your diet.

Additionally, if you are like many people, then the main reason that you choose snack foods from vending machines is because you are pressed for time and it is the most convenient option. This is problematic too though. When a person eats mindlessly, while staring at a computer screen and checking their email for example, they are much more likely to consume more calories than their body needs. In fact, the human body is faithful in sending signals to your brain to tell you when your stomach is full and you should stop eating. The fact of the matter is that people oftentimes ignore or overlook these signals because they are too distracted from the process of eating.

Although it does seem more convenient to just choose snacks from your company’s vending machines, think about the impact that these small choices will have over your lifetime. Make healthful changes in your snacking ways by eating healthy snacks, whether you bring them from your home or if you buy them from a vending machine company that specializes in health foods, like YoNaturals vending business. In fact, choosing YoNaturals lets you have both the convenience of snacking on the go and choosing foods that will do your body good. It’s the best of both worlds.  

The choices you make for your children as they are growing up will have a positive or negative influence on how they function as adults. We know as parents we pave the road for our children in many different ways, but many of don’t realize that the eating patterns we set for our children will also follow them along life’s path. Poor eating habits that you instill into your children are not going to disappear once they reach adulthood nor are they suddenly going to realize the importance of eating healthy meals and snacks. Sometimes it takes a traumatic event such as a heart attack or stroke before the reality of poor eating habits manifests itself in their minds.

Certainly childhood obesity is a growing problem, and though we want to place emphasis on children, we cannot ignore the fact that childhood obesity paves the road to adult obesity. Very few obese adults were normal weight children—the exception being those who are obese because of health conditions such as thyroid problems. In most cases, obese adults began as obese children, and this is the part that we want to address. If we can work to eliminate or reduce obesity in children, we will also be able to reduce or eliminate obesity in the adult population as well.

If we begin teaching children to eat healthy nutritious meals and snacks, they will continue making those healthy choices as they enter adulthood. The foundation is laid in childhood and though they may not always avoid unhealthy foods and snacks, they will understand the importance of minimizing the consumption of unhealthy foods. The problem lies in the fact that many parents let their children have too many unhealthy foods and don’t encourage them to eat healthy snacks. In fact, adults are the worst offenders because even if they have healthy snacks for the children but eat unhealthy snacks themselves, they are still laying the foundation for an obese adult.

Begin teaching your children about healthy snacking when they are children and encourage their schools to purchase healthy vending products. School Healthy Vending and Healthy Student Vending are two companies that YoNaturals supports in their quest to promote healthy snacks for our children. Though the schools cannot control what the children eat at home any more than parents can control what their children eat in school, the combined efforts will teach the children the importance of making good choices in what they eat. With proper conditioning you can raise a child who will choose a piece of fresh fruit instead of a cookie.
Author: Brenda Coxe

We would like to take a break from our regularly scheduled healthy vending programing and bring your attention to your overall spiritual wellbeing, which is just as important as nutrition in many ways.

          Today, our world is so bright, flashing and noisy - a plethora of unwanted, unsolicited and intrusive messages and images our flooding our neurons causing extreme over stimulation of the brain cells.  We can’t handle this.  We’re not supposed to handle this.  This is not natural.  It is not conducive to the way in which our brains are organized.  As extremely complex and miraculous machines, they are adaptable but not to a level such as we have forced it.  The receptor neurons cannot regulate nor change in order to handle and compartmentalize this chaotic disaster we call modern life.

          This being said, the alarming millions of Americans depending on psychotropics such as, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety’s, mood stabilizers, prescription narcotics, legal drugs such as alcohol, caffeine and nicotine and the entire range of illegal drugs, give us a glaringly obvious clue that there is a problem.

          For every problem, there is a solution.  Meditation is a step into a new world, one where today’s world disappears.  When we learn the relaxation, deepening and protection techniques with faithful practice and willingness, we may be freed from this overload.  We may be freed from dependence on substances that we use simply to function.  With an open mind and a true desire for relief, anything is achievable.

           Meditation tends to scare many people.  Why is this?  I think it is because they erroneously believe that meditation is a practice that must be done in some yoga position during which one achieves pure nothingness.  How in the world, especially this world can we possibly empty our minds or live up to an expectation that seems so remote an attainment that we balk at beginning?

           We don’t need to balk once we learn that there are many methods of meditation and you can find one that works for you.  They all produce health benefits.  If you are new at meditation or have tried it and believe it can’t work for you, then don’t despair.  Only the smallest amount of time and patience is needed to achieve results that will change your life and even the world around you.

           Relax.  Find a quiet place and a few minutes, before going to bed, or upon wakening are sometimes the only time we can find.  You can lie down, sit up, that’s not important, as long as you’re comfortable.  You can also grab a few minutes in the car before or after work.  Doing it in the car, after a long day at work, before you drive home is nice because then you return to home life rested and relaxed instead of stressed and feeling crazy which will only be expressed towards your family or friends.

Every day find those few minutes and say to yourself that you are relaxing, and releasing tension with every breath you take, breathe deep and affirm to yourself that with every breath, you are becoming more and more relaxed and all the tension is flowing out of your body.  You will feel different.  You will feel better. 

Clarity of mind and calmness are uncovered through this natural method of releasing your body’s own ability to relieve itself of stress.  The attainment of the goals you desire will also evolve into your life as joy, success, contentment and bounties indescribable. 

Jessica Vachal wrote this article for Yo Naturals vending.

Money always plays a very strong role in how people live their lives. When they have money, they tend to do very little for their neighbors and fellow humans. After all, why would the wealthy need to make moves that would save their neighbors stress or environmental toxins? These wealthy individuals are able to drive their gas-guzzling cars and buy conventionally grown foods with little care of how their actions are affecting the rest of the world. They do not care that they are polluting the air with their oversized vehicles and polluting the ground with the pesticides put onto the conventionally grown foods they choose to purchase and consume.

That is how the wealthy are portrayed, and of course that is how some wealthy think and act. Yet there are plenty of other wealthy Americans who understand that they are part of the world as a whole, who are conscientious of the way they live their lives, who eat organically because they can afford to, and who help to educate the rest of the world on how numbers equate power, and if we all banded together to fight for organic foods or cleaner-burning cars, the industries would respond accordingly. However, those strapped for cash could hardly be bothered to listen, generally-speaking, as they were more concerned with putting food on the table than with the impact they were having on the masses.

However, now that America is undergoing such economic struggles and almost all monetary circles of our society are struggling to save some pennies here or there, people are becoming more aware the impact an individual has on the whole. People are suddenly become much more cognizant of buying their food locally, of looking not only for organic foods but also for food which was grown in their city or their own, that which was grown close to home, literally. The reasons that people are looking to buy foods locally are so that the additional prices and taxes due to the costs taken on in trucking the produce into your particular city or town will be mitigated and the savings transferred onto you, the consumer.

The power of money is a strong one, people always need or want more of it, and when they have it, it hardly seems like enough. Yet when money is tight, the ways to be frugal seem to crop up with much more frequency and the ways to live your life in a more green fashion very often follows suite. Buying your food organically and locally are one ways to keep costs down – in comparison – while upgrading the quality of the life you lead. Buy organic and buy local, like Yo Naturals – your body, and your wallet, will feel better, and the rest of the world will become better for your actions as well.

This post was contributed by Laura Rayburn for YoNaturals Organic and Natural Vending Business based in San Diego, California.

Perhaps your mother always told you that starting your day off with a good breakfast is the key to a great day. And she was right. The value of a nutritious morning meal can not be understated. Some research even points to a link between skipped breakfasts and elevated cholesterol levels and a lesser sensitivity to insulin. This is in addition to the general impact on one’s daily caloric intake since people who skip breakfast also tend to eat more calories throughout the day.

What foods should be included in a nutritious breakfast then? Whole grain cereals are a great place to start, especially if lowering your cholesterol is a primary concern. In fact, whole grain cereals stand out as a good breakfast food no matter what your health concern is. The other good news is that it’s also quick to prepare for those of us who find ourselves in a rush to get out the door in the morning.

Dr. Hamid R. Farshchi, a researcher at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, has delved deeper into this question of breakfast eating to figure out what kind of impact a skipped breakfast meal can have on an individual, and he began by first assembling a study group of 10 young and normal-weight women. One group was instructed to eat bran flakes with low-fat milk for breakfast, whereas the second group was asked to skip breakfast and eat the bran flakes around noon instead. Both groups were allowed two meals, two snacks, and one cookie during the rest of the day.

At the end of this short study, Dr. Farshchi’s team gave the women milkshakes in order to measure their metabolic responses. After taking blood samples and comparing those samples to samples taken earlier, the researchers noted that the women who had been skipping breakfast for the past two weeks had higher levels of cholesterol and a poorer response to insulin after ingesting the milkshake.

The women in the breakfast-free group also reported generally higher calorie intakes during the study, and although they showed no sign of a change in body weight, this may be attributable to the length of the study. Dr. Farschi noted that a longer study would need to be undertaken to determine the relationship between skipping breakfast and gaining weight.

One of the most interesting things about this study was that the timing of the meals seemed to have a large impact on the women’s metabolic rate and her cholesterol levels, as both groups ate the same things, just at different times of day. With this knowledge in hand, it becomes evident even to non-scientific types that eating a good breakfast is an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. So eat up, to your health. Cheers from YoNaturals!

There are many ideas available to parents to make their child’s lunch box healthier. Instead of parents giving their child money to buy food at the cafeteria it is more sensible for parents to fill the child’s lunch box with delicious and nutritious foods. YoNaturals would like to offer some healthy lunch box tips for you and your family.

To provide the most nutrition, parents should be certain to include foods from at least three or four food groups. And in a typical week, they should give them a variety of foods. Some of the nutritious foods than can be included are low-fat yogurt, whole-grain crackers, hummus, sandwiches made with whole-grain bread, lean meats, crisp lettuce, light mayonnaise and they can be topped off with other vegetables such as sliced tomatoes or alfalfa sprouts.

It is also a good idea for parents to involve their child in the making of their lunches as well. This will make it more likely that the child will eat what they put in their lunch box. Parents should be there to guide them through the process and make certain that whole grains, proteins and produce are included in the lunches. But worst case scenario, if you forget to pack your children a healthy snack, make sure there’s a YoNaturals vending machine nearby, lest they fall prey to the junk food vendors.

The following are some healthy ideas to include in a child’s lunch box:

• Breads and crackers that are whole-grain 

• Natural peanut butter

• Tuna fish packed in water

• Sliced raw vegetables such as tomatoes, carrots and celery

• Fresh fruits such as berries, apples, peaches and bananas

• Fresh 100% juices such as apple, orange or grape

• Water 

• Herbal teas with a bit of honey

Most kids enjoy foods that are not so healthy and it is best to try to get them to try healthier versions of their old favorites such as:

• Natural potato chips or tortilla chips that are baked

• Trail mixes

• Raisins or dates

• small boxes of unsweetened cereals that are whole-grain 

• Nuts such as almonds, pecans, pine nuts or soy nuts

• Sunflower or pumpkin seeds  

There are ways to add variety too, peanut butter on a bagel makes a great lunch as well as chicken salad and whole grain crackers or sliced turkey pita bread sandwiches.

It is recommend that all dairy products should be low-fat including milk, yogurt and cheeses. Proteins should be lean as well such as turkey, roast beef, chicken and lean ham are great choices.

In short an ideal healthy lunch is a sandwich on whole wheat that contains lean meats such as tuna fish or turkey, a fruit, a vegetable and milk or 100% juice.

There are other ways to spice tuna or chicken salad by adding shredded carrots or chopped celery. Chopped grapes with diced chicken and light mayonnaise is also a tasty and healthy lunch idea. The standby favorite peanut butter sandwich can be sliced up with sliced apples or banana.

These are a just a few delicious and nutritious lunch ideas. The following are a few healthy snack ideas for the lunch box:

• Hummus and raw vegetables

• Cottage cheese and raw vegetables

• Pretzels with peanut butter

• Celery with peanut butter

• Low-fat muffins

• Energy bars

Healthy lunches should contain a variety of foods. Breads can include bagels, wraps, rolls or pita bread and all should be multi grain or whole wheat.

Meals should be easy to eat such as fruits and vegetables being cut into pieces for example apple’s cut into wedges, watermelon cut into cubes, kiwi slices oranges peeled and cut into quarters or celery or carrots cut into strips.

There are many other possibilities; parents must be creative to keep children interested in eating healthy lunches. We hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of YoNaturals Healthy Lunch Box Tips!
Author: Lisa Arnold

Author: Syd Hs

What is Organic Food?

You might be coming across this term quite frequently these days, isn’t it? In grocery stores you might come across labels that claim their food is natural, organic and a number of other things. But what exactly does natural organic food mean? Aren’t all foods natural?

In most cases it can be just a marketing ploy to make you buy that product. What you probably want is natural organic food. Natural organic foods are those that are grown according to particular standards.

For crops it means those grown without using fertilizers and chemical pesticides or human wastes. There are two major benefits of organic nourishment :

1. You are helping in reducing environmental pollution.

2. You can avoid consuming chemicals from these foods.

So you see organic eatables are really the healthy choice foods for you. This organic stuff is legally regulated. At present, the United States, Japan and many other countries require organic food companies to get certification before they can market their products.

Usually organic foods are more expensive than inorganic ones. So if you are tight on budget but still want to eat healthy, then a good idea would be to skip organic fruits and vegetables which you can peel, for example oranges and banana.

Instead opt for organic fruits and vegetables which you would eat without peeling, like apples, tomato etc. Also remember to rinse off the food nicely at home no matter what you buy, whether organic or not.

The Benefits of Eating Fruits and Vegetables:

A healthy diet plan would be incomplete without incorporating in it the use of fresh fruits and vegetables.

There are many so benefits of eating fruits and vegetables. They contain so many nutrients which are missing in the popular mineral and vitamin supplements. They contain fiber, anti-oxidants for preventing chronic diseases, help in strengthening the weak immune system of our bodies, give us high energy, improve digestion etc. The benefits are too numerous to list here.

But in order to realize the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, you need to follow certain tips like:

1. Wash the vegetables and fruits nicely.

2. Eat raw, uncooked fresh fruits and vegetables as much as you can.

3. Eat organic ones as much as you can.

4. Eat as much uncooked salad as you can with each meal.

No Hormone Meat:

Another tricky label you might find in the grocery stores is ‘no hormones’. This is usually for milk and meat products. You have to remember that all animals produce hormones, so all meat products do have hormones.

What the label actually means is that no growth hormones were artificially given to the animals, which is sometimes done to increase milk productivity. So it might again be a healthy food choice.

Author:  Anne Harvester

Bulk herbs are good to have on hand for both culinary and apothecary purposes and bulk organic herbs are far superior to any other kind. Buying herbs wholesale however means that you won’t necessarily have to pay a premium for bulk organic herbs.

Why Organic?

It has become very apparent to people (if not their political leaders and corporate agricultural conglomerates) that the way food is raised and distributed today - with the use of artificial, petroleum-based fertilizers, shipping long distances, and the use of genetically-modified seeds - is not only bad for people’s health, it is bad from an socio-economic standpoint and bad for the planet. As a result, consumers are increasingly turning to locally and sustainably raised alternatives such as organic spices. These dried herbs are not only better for you, they are better for the world.

While organic spices and other organic food have traditionally been more expensive on the shelves, prices on many organic items have been coming down as supplies have increased. In addition, while bulk organic herbs may still have a higher shelf price than their non-organic counterparts, many of the “hidden costs” that are not paid directly, but rather in the form of illnesses, environmental problems and economic exploitation are absent. For these reasons, it’s actually less expensive in the long term to support producers of organic spices and dried herbs. As more consumers reject big corporate agriculture and turn to bulk organic herbs and other organic products, whole bulk spice costs should come down over time - and you may enjoy additional discounts when you purchase such herbs wholesale.

What is Available?

Nearly any kind of spice or herb available through standard corporate markets can also be obtained as bulk organic herbs. Wholesale bulk spice is derived from one of several plant-based sources:

1. Seeds: these include sesame, anise, nutmeg and poppyseed, among others.

2. Leaves: these are perhaps the most common of dried herbs. Most popular in cooking are members of the mint family, such as oregano, basil, and rosemary.

3. Roots: these may be in the form of dried herbs that are then powdered, such as licorice; more often however, retailers that sell bulk organic herbs usually carry these in the form of pastes, such as horseradish.

4. Bark: Cinnamon is among the most popular bulk herbs that fall into this category.

5. Fruits and bulbs: like roots, these bulk herbs are usually prepared as a paste, although some, such as garlic, can also be available in a dried powdered form.

Author: Heather Dominick

Originally, all foods were “organic” – grown and prepared without pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, irradiation to prevent spoilage, and microwave cooking.

Our food these days, whether of vegetable or animal origin, is not only deficient in nutrients but also full of pollutants and farm chemicals. The modern denaturing of foods through massive refining and chemical treatment deeply affects their Energy qualities, making them devoid of the exact boost that we should be getting from our food.

Not only are they not giving us that KICK that we need, but many Energyfoods could actually be making us sick. As pesticides get lodged and increase in our tissues, the immune system becomes weakened, allowing other carcinogens and pathogens to affect our health. Yuck!

Top five reasons to shop and eat organic foods

1. Fresh organic produce contains on average 50% more vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other micronutrients than intensively farmed produce.

2. If you eat dairy or meat products, eating organic has never been more essential to safeguard your health. Intensively reared dairy cows and farm animals are fed dangerous antibiotics, growth hormones, anti-parasite drugs and many other medicines on a daily basis, whether they have an illness or not. These drugs are passed directly onto the consumers of their dairy or meat, which contribute to meat-related diseases like coronaries and high blood pressure.

3. Organic produce simply tastes better. Fruit and vegetables are much more full of flavor. Experiment with an organic carrot and a conventionally grown carrot. Which is sweeter?

4. Organic food is not really more expensive than intensively farmed foods, as we pay for conventional foods through our taxes. We spend billions of dollars every year cleaning up the mess that agrochemicals make in our natural water supply.