Healthy & Delicious Pumpkin Oatmeal

Celebrate the fall bounty by dressing up your morning bowl of oats with some pumpkin and tasty spices! This pumpkin oatmeal recipe is easy, filling, and 100 percent belly-warming!

Pumpkin is pretty much the quintessential fall vegetable, isn’t it? We’re carving those suckers for Jack-o-lanterns, baking them up into pies, and even cooking them into our soups. Not only do pumpkins just plain taste like fall, but pumpkin and other winter squash are extremely healthy.

Health Benefits of Pumpkin

Pumpkin – like most winter squash – is low in calories, high in fiber, and rich in beta carotene. Pumpkin also contains a lesser-known carotenoid which might help prevent lung cancer.

The carotenoids in pumpkins protect your health in all sorts of ways, like:

• preventing certain types of cancer
• preventing premature aging
• preventing cardiovascular disease

Related Reading: 10 Tasty Superfood Recipes

Getting enough dietary fiber also may help stave off cardiovascular disease, so pumpkin packs a double punch for heart health! Pumpkin is also rich in vitamin C and magnesium, which is great for your bones. In fact, your body needs these vitamins to better absorb calcium, so combining pumpkin with calcium-rich oats makes for a powerful bone-boosting breakfast.

Pumpkin’s anti-inflammatory properties benefit your joints, and it’s also been shown to stimulate kidney function. The L-tryptophan in pumpkin flesh even helps fight depression!

Those pumpkin seeds are little healthy dynamos, too. You can add a handful of roasted pumpkin seeds to the oatmeal recipe on the next page for even more healthy pumpkin power!

Ready to start your day with a little pumpkin boost? Get the pumpkin oatmeal recipe on the next page!

Image Credit: Pumpkin photo via Thinkstock

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Cozy Fall Cooking: Try These Pumpkin Recipes

It wouldn’t be fall without pumpkins—and those orange globes are for way more than just decoration. Try some creative pumpkin recipes this season, and you’ll become addicted to the rich, fabulous flavors.

Homemade Pumpkin Pie

Make from-scratch pumpkin pie with your own pumpkin purée—it’s easier than you think! Make it even better by creating a super-flaky crust with these tips for the perfect pie crust.

Pumpkin Butter

Have you tried homemade apple butter? YUM. Take that flavor and amp it up a bit by whipping up a batch of pumpkin butter. Start out with one of the best pumpkin varieties for cooking, and you can’t go wrong. With your pumpkin butter, you can make Pumpkin Butter Cake, Pumpkin Milkshakes, and Pumpkin Bread (recipes all included in the above link).

Flavor-Packed Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Don’t toss those pumpkin seeds when you’re carving or cooking your pumpkins! Instead, spice up and roast your seeds for a simple snack. This link will take you to recipes for sweet, spicy and zingy pumpkin seeds.

Happy fall!

Related Care2 articles:

• Fall Recipe Ideas
• Growing and Cooking with Sweet Potatoes
• Gluten-Free Pie Crust

Photo from Fotolia

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10 Health Benefits of Pumpkin Seeds

If you throw away the seeds when you carve your next pumpkin you might want to reconsider, particularly after trying freshly roasted seeds.  But they don’t just taste great, these seeds support superb health too.

Here’s how:

1.  They’re high in the sleep-enhancing amino acid tryptophan that converts to serotonin in your body and helps ensure a good night’s sleep;

2.  They’re also high in the heart-healing mineral magnesium, which is also Nature’s natural relaxant;

3.  They’re high levels of easily-digestible protein helps stabilize blood sugar when eaten as a snack throughout the day.  Stable blood sugar means weight loss if you’re trying to lose.

4.  High in Omega 3s, pumpkin seed oil has been shown in studies to reduce the incidence of benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH)—a condition in which the prostate gland becomes enlarged.

5.  Pumpkin seeds are also high in the prostate-protecting mineral zinc, making these seeds the ultimate snack for men’s health.

Keep reading to learn how to maximize the health benefits of roasted pumpkin seeds…

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Autumn Presents…Her Majesty PUMPKIN (part 2)

Culinary options for consumption of pumpkin are hundreds – from creamy soup to crème caramel

Roasted is more useful than boiled, because boiling a large part of its ingredients goes into the water. It is better to combine with honey than sugar because honey has nearly 400 nutrients, including some antibiotics.

Pumpkin soup is delicious and full of useful ingredients

One of the best options for the consuming pumpkin is in the form of juice. Pumpkin keeps you away from insomnia and nervous conditions. It is proved that improves eyesight. It may be sweetened with honey, can be combined with citrus fruit, but clean enough high nutritional value and effectiveness against many diseases specialist is clear.
It is important to keep the pumpkin properly. If you keep in the refrigerator must be peeled, sliced and wrapped in foil. Otherwise, it oxidizes and vitamins are lost. It is not subject to freezing, because its beneficial ingredients degrade. Whole room temperature can last weeks, and in the cool and dark places – and a few months.

Bosses Actually Suffer Less From Stress
The seeds are rich in protein, 50 g substitute 100 g meat.
The seeds of the pumpkin are no less useful than the fruit itself. They are rich in protein, so vegetarians can substitute meat with them. ’50 Seeds are equivalent to 100 grams of lean meat.
They are high in selenium – a trace element powerful antioxidant that is used in hypofunction of the thyroid gland.
They contain omega-3 fatty acids, which are vital form of (unsaturated) acids that remove cholesterol. They maintain their membrane, which makes them more stable and generally enhances the immune system. Pumpkin seeds can be used to boost immunity and prevention of influenza and other bacterial and viral infections. This effect can be achieved through the adoption of pumpkin seed oil obtained by cold pressing.

It Is Never Too Late To Get In Shape
Pumpkin seeds are a prophylactic against prostatitis, prostate adenoma. They stimulate and potency.
Nutrients in pumpkin seeds nourish and stimulate brain functions. Pumpkin is recommended for intensive mental activity during training.
They are one of the best remedies against intestinal parasites. Do not contain toxic and have no side effects.

Autumn Presents…Her Majesty PUMPKIN (part 1)

Source : dailyhealtharticles[dot]com

Autumn Presents…Her Majesty PUMPKIN (part 1)

Pumpkin is one of the most useful boundaries between fruit and vegetable creations of nature

The combination of fiber, minerals and vitamins that contain pumpkin is impressive. It has fiber, which is representative of insoluble fiber and pectin, which is soluble. Fiber lowers cholesterol, including bad one, reduces triglycerides. Pectin controls blood sugar.

See Which Fruits and Vegetables Are Best for Your Heart!

Pumpkin contains a unique combination of vitamins and minerals

Mineral complex in pumpkin is unique – calcium, which keeps osteoporosis, sufficient iron ensures good blood formation, magnesium, improving cardiac tone and normalize blood. Phosphorus in the form supports the bones and joints, ideal for stress and keep nervous system overload.
Rich in copper, zinc and cobalt does stimulate blood formation. These are minerals with strong antioxidant effects that enhance the immune system. Cobalt provides immunity against the harmful effects of the environment – radiation, temperature anomalies.

Remedies for intestinal worms
Pumpkin contains a unique combination of vitamins and minerals
Pumpkin protects from stress and worthy rival potatoes in potassium. It stimulates the heart muscle and is a strong diuretic. No sense of people with high blood pressure to take drugs with diuretic, if you eat enough pumpkin. Just for potassium pumpkin helps prevent edema in hypertension, heart disease, hepatitis, cirrhosis and other liver problems. It is one of the best fruits in the treatment of kidney and prostate diseases – adenoma or hypertrophy.
Pumpkin is balm for the gastrointestinal tract – acts as a fine dressing for mucosal inflammation. Prevents constipation and also reduces the risk of tumors of the gut. Betakaroten that is actually pro-vitamin A is one of the most valuable ingredients of this fruit. It improves the texture of your skin and slows aging. It is a visual stimulus and reduces the risk of special night blindness.

See Which Foods Are Suitable for EVERY Diet!
Vitamins B1, B2, PP, which is also rich pumpkin, are potent regulators of all metabolic processes in the body, strengthens the nervous system. Pum[kin contains vitamin C, which perfectly offset the lack of fruits and sunny vegetables in autumn and winter.
Baked pumpkin is more useful than boiled, because while boiling of the most nutritious ingredients go into its water.
Pumpkin can be used for weight reduction. Carbohydrates in 100 grams are to only 6-7%. Proteins are the 1%. It is suitable for one day diet a week and for an ambitious three-day diet, after which it should be made smooth power.

Source : dailyhealtharticles[dot]com