I know another “lose weight and gain muscle” article... You’re probably not even reading this right now, so I can write anything green elephants wearings hats and you wouldn’t even know. This may not be news to you but sometimes tips can be refreshingly meaningful and motivating. Make no mistake, we love people of all sizes but for the sake of long term health staying fit is important!

In our modern society, there is an ever-present anxiety and desire to both lose weight and have the perfect body. Now, while in the past the only method to achieve this was to undergo through long sessions of exercising or by following strict diets, nowadays nutritional supplements (in the form of protein powders and such) has emerged as a new way to lose weight and get in shape with far less effort and more efficiently.

And while these types of supplements have been around for a while and have been widely adopted first by body builders and now by the general public, it is only recently that people have started questioning the both the ingredients that these conventional supplements contain, as well as if they really are as healthy as everyone thinks they are.

And the answers to these questions are quite surprising.

On one hand, most of these conventional supplements carry a series of ingredients that have been proven to be extremely harmful, and which include several chemicals, additives, “natural” flavors, colorants and other toxins that are used in order to keep the product fresh and appealing to customers. On the other, and to make things worse, besides being pushed to customers avidly, these supplements do little to actually let people know about the harms of ingesting them in excess, as well as of the dangers of some of their components.

Thankfully though, a new type of supplements is starting to gain traction among consumers, since they offer not just all the positive results that the conventional ones do, but do so in a far healthier way. These new types of supplements are known as Organic, Raw and Vegan supplements.

Their importance of course, resides in their own names, since each of these products is made from raw ingredients. What this means is that their main (and most of the time their only) component is a food source that has not been cooked or heated. The reason why this fact is so important for people’s health, is because raw or living foods (think about fresh vegetables) contain all of their original nutrients and beneficial enzymes, which makes them far easier to absorb than cooked foods or foods that have been treated in some other ways. Besides these, raw foods have several other benefits, like better digestion, rapid energy increase and non-existent risk of heart disease. In the same way, organic foods are raw food that have been grown in an entirely natural way, without the use of any pesticides or other similarly harmful chemicals.

Considering all this, it only makes sense that organic, raw and vegan supplements are seeing the success they are. Especially since, by adopting the use of ingredients that are of natural origin, they provide people with a source of energy and nutrients that is leagues ahead of what conventional supplements have to offer health-wise.

For all of these reasons, anyone who is considering taking supplements or protein powders should definitely think about getting the most natural and unaltered ones in the market. This way, consumers will be sure that they are ingesting not only the purest and most chemical-free supplements our there, but also the ones that will keep them healthy in the long term as well.

The Benefits of Whole Grain Brown Rice Protein

With the huge number of protein powders and energy supplements available in the market today, it has become harder than ever to tell the good ones from the chemical-laden, artificially flavored, synthetic saw dust. Ingredients are KEY! There is nothigng else more important than the food you put into your body. This is especially true when it comes to concentrated supplements.

Widely believed to sport substantial nutritional qualities, sprouting foods are gaining more recognition and adoption among many people for the many health benefits that they provide when compared to other types of foods. Particularly, sprouting foods are known for their high water content when compared to dried seeds. It is precisely this high water content what allows sprouting foods to be rich in protein, vitamins and minerals, while at the same time showing little to no content of calories and carbohydrates.

Put shortly, sprouts are germinated seeds that are meant to be eaten either raw or cooked and are perfect for use in either salads and any other types of foods.

In order to achieve this state, seeds undergo a process that takes a few days and in which they are soaked in order to increase their water content. After the seeds have been soaked and the water has been absorbed, they are removed, drained and rinsed in intervals, until they generate sprouts. The process needs to take place at room temperature and in a sprouting vessel and demands a moderate level of attention in order to avoid the spoiling of the sprouts, which can happen if they dry out, left in standing water or if they are not properly rinsed, as well as if they don’t have enough air flow. While this process might seem too troublesome or cumbersome for some people, the nutritional gains and benefits of sprouting foods are certainly tremendous. In fact, in many cases some foods can see gains in some of their nutritional values that rank in the hundreds of times. Here are some of the best examples.

• Positive energy content variation - calories decrease by 15%
• Total carbohydrate decrease by 15%
• Protein increase by 30%
• Calcium Increase by 34%
• Increase of potassium by 80%
• Iron Increase 40%
• Phosphorous content Increase by 56%
• Increase of Vitamin A by as much as 285%
• Vitamin B1 content increase by 208%
• Vitamin B2 content increase by 515%
• Vitamin B3 Increase by 256%

Out of all of this, definitely the most important one is the increase in protein, since protein is by far the most important indicator of the nutritional value of any food. But what is even more important is something that these numbers fail to show, which is the quality of the protein being served in sprouting foods. This type of protein not only completely avoids all the additives and other artificial components that processed proteins have, but also, being of natural origin entirely, it can be absorbed by the body in a much easier way, which in turn makes it far more effective.