Review: The Food You Eat Can Reduce Stress!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 12, 2012
We all juggle a lot of balls:  work deadlines, school deadlines and home responsibilities.  Individually they can all create stress.  But when you combine the stress we find at work, school and home it can be overwhelming.  Even throwing in stress-relief activities like working out can be stressful.  I saw this book and liked the idea of reducing stress through the food I eat.  The idea is to eat certain healthy foods to keep your body healthy and at the same time eat foods that directly help with stress relief.In this book Grace Lawrence shares which fruits, vegetables, carbohydrates, meat, fish, nuts & seeds, milk , herbs & spices and sweets have been shown to reduce stress.  For example spinach has a lot of magnesium which can reduce stress headaches and give you energy.  This can help you through a stressful day.  Avocados contain magnesium which lowers blood pressure.  Bananas contain both magnesium and B6 which helps to fight stress.  Turkey contains l-tryptophan which releases serotonin, a chemical that makes us feel good.  My favorite is eating some dark chocolate which has antioxidants and l-tryptophan.  The book is filled with information like this.One nice option is to create smoothies with good fruits or veggies and get the health benefits right away and without cooking. There are some smoothie recipes that look really good like Peppermint, Strawberry and Banana.  But what I really like is that the author provides recipes that I can make right away.  It's also helpful to see how she combines the individual stress-reducing foods into larger meals.There are recipes for teas, snacks, salads, main courses and side dishes.  It's enough to get you started in learning how to combine different stress-reduction meals.  I'm very happy I bought this books and I plan to stop at the grocery store after work today to get some fruit for smoothies.  That's how I'm going to start tackling the nutrition side of stress reduction.