Mixing it up!

An anti cancer snack.

Dropped a note yesterday with more thoughts on how the food we eat is now being more widely being considered medicine that could really help. In that, I noted how nuts, seeds and berries often feature on the lists of foods with good anti-cancer properties.

I want more of this stuff in my life, but I also would like it to be easy. I wrote previously about one of my favourite winter season snacks, sausage rolls - tweaking the filling to get more of the good things I want. They’re so good and since they’re bringing me health wins now too they might just be a permanent fixture.

The seasons are changing though and that started me thinking about an outdoor summer classic which is already high in nuts and berries - trail mix! I started looking into which kinds of nuts, berries and seeds I might want to optimise for, then I went a step further: Maybe I could bake these into little bite-size bars.

I eventually came up with the following mix which gets toasted in a warm oven to bring the flavours out. The nuts and seeds are anti cancer, the oats are more mildly so but good filler and excellent for heart & digestive health too. Plenty of reports indicate that no-one eats enough fibre, so it seemed a good opportunity.

• Ground flaxseed: 30 grams

• Chopped walnuts: 30 grams

• Chopped brazils: 30 tbsp

• Chopped pecans: 30 tbsp

• Oat flakes: 80 grams

While that’s toasting, chopped up 35g dried cranberries and 50g dark chocolate (or use chips!), while gently warming 60g dark honey. Maple syrup would probably work just as well. Obviously the sugar isn’t great, but it’s natural rather than refined and if I’m making this much effort, I need some treats too. Often as not, if I’m grabbing one of these it’ll be an active day with the muscles are burning it off. Bind the whole lot, press into a tray, oven bake (180c) for 10-15mins. Leave on a rack to cool and slice.

That’s me set for anti cancer snack bites when I’m out and about this summer!

Further reading since, further enhancements would be Chia seeds, Pumpkin seeds, dried Blueberries and Almonds.

As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to start my reading with searches on Perplexity and then look at the source material in each case to satisfy myself that there’s some real science at work here.