Healthy Bread Alternatives | Mona Vand

This video is all about bread alternatives. So I've got a whole range of things here, everything from greens to potatoes to an actual wrap. So watch the whole video through and I'll share exactly where you should swap these in. Hey guys, it's Mona. I hope you are doing super well and staying healthy. I hope your quarantine is going okay. I wanted to make this video today on bread alternatives because a lot of you have been reaching out asking how to not overeat during quarantine or how to stop over snacking or just keep it a little bit healthier. I think it's really understandable that it's difficult to not snack when you're working in the kitchen or 10 feet from the kitchen and there's things accessible to you all the time. And when produce isn't always accessible, obviously we reach for the dry food. So I wanted to give you a different range of options here for bread. But I first want to just quickly get into bread in general because I'm not, I don't think bread is the enemy. I like it. Oftentimes I eat it. I just think that the most traditional bread that most people are eating or many people are eating is where it can get really, really unhealthy. So let's get into that a little bit and kind of explain. So if you look at a traditional white bread, oftentimes even if it says whole wheat or if it says a hundred percent whole grain, look on the back and check the ingredients. The few things I want you to look for, these are the common ingredients that can make it really unhealthy. So the first thing is bleached flour. So when they bleach the bread, first of all, they're using chemicals to actually bleach it. Like this is a bleaching process. It's not just a word that's like, you know, mean something else and says bleach. I know sometimes like we might not even think it could literally mean that, but it does. So not only are they using chemicals to bleach the bread, which can be toxic for you, but they're also completely stripping it of nutrients. I've always found that, um, eating more nutrient dense, you, it allows you to eat like maybe larger portions or like, you know, you can still eat the things you want to and not have to deprive yourself. So the bleached flour is one thing I really want you to look out for. So another thing that's often found in these like traditional breads or overly processed breads is high fructose corn syrup. So you've probably heard of this. I feel like there was tons of commercials back in the day about high fructose corn syrup. It's oftentimes added to keep the bread moist longer. So this is one issue with processed food in general. They will add things to them so that you can have a longer shelf life, which isn't natural. Like if you buy fresh bread from a bakery or like, let's say you go to the farmer's market and you buy a loaf of bread, it's only going to last you about four or five days because that's what natural food should do. So this high fructose corn syrup is adding, it can keep it moist longer, but when you're adding syrup, not only can it be worse for your cholesterol, it can also reduce insulin sensitivity, which basically means it's putting you at risk for diabetes type two. So that's another thing you want to make sure to try to avoid. Oftentimes there's other kinds of oils in there too. Oftentimes like soybean oil, which can oftentimes not be like non-GMO. There's hydrogenated oil. So just oils in general that are added. I prefer to not have that added in my bread. One thing I want to talk about too is gluten. A lot of you ask me if I eat gluten-free. So I eat a pretty much all gluten-free diet except for when it comes to bread. So I'm okay with like whole grain sprouted wheat or other sprouted grains that contain gluten because they're a very natural, unprocessed, like a great source of it. And in that case, I'm okay. And you know, it's actually pretty hard to find a vegan sprouted, like organic bread. Sometimes you can't like, which one are you, which one are you going to sacrifice for the other? So in that case, I will eat gluten if it's in like any kind of sprouted grain. I avoid gluten in pasta because there's a million alternatives. There's chickpea pasta, you know, there's brown rice pasta, whatever there is. Crackers, there's a million alternatives. So I never find a need to have it in my diet besides sometimes in bread. Whole grains and sprouted grains are so much better for you. They're better. They help you digest them more when they're sprouted. They're great for your cholesterol, for your blood pressure. So I'm okay with eating it in that case. One of my favorite brands of bread is Ezekiel. They have a ton of different kinds. Oftentimes they do contain gluten, but I'm okay with it in that case. So I just wanted to quickly, not too quickly, but I really wanted to go over bread there because I don't want to send out the message that like you should avoid bread completely. I think that you see how you react to it and you go from there, but all in all, try to avoid processed foods. That's the biggest message in all of my videos. So if you can find something that's sprouted organic and just whole grain, go for it. But if you see all those other things that I listed, I would try to avoid it. So now let's get into some bread alternatives. And of course, this also depends on your diet, what your goals are. Some people are trying to gain weight. Some people eat bread, but just, you know, eat too much of it and want a substitute for later in the day. So let this fit into your lifestyle however you please, but these are just options I'd love to lay out. So the first one is collard green wraps, which I recently just shared on my TikTok and Instagram. And I'm completely obsessed with these right now. I don't know why I wasn't doing this forever, but you literally just have to fill up a pot with like an inch of water. And once it starts simmering, like AKA boiling a little bit, you put these in, let them sit for 30 seconds on each side and then take them out. That's it. This is huge because if you try collard greens raw, they're very bitter. I mean, if you like them, go to town. I'm proud of you. I can't do it. I even tried to get like Swiss chard and collard greens in a juice and I can't do it. It's way too bitter. But when you steam these for a second, it completely softens them up, takes away that bitterness. And then you can literally just use them as a wrap. You can literally fill these with whatever you want. In fact, like if you made like a veggie stir fry, oftentimes we'll do like salad. You could do beans. You could put a little bit of rice in here, whatever you want that you normally put into a sandwich. I find hummus goes really nicely in here. And I just kind of like layer it in. Hummus is also a great base or something with this consistency to like let things stick. Even on like on a regular sandwich, when I'm adding a lot of veggies or things, I find it's best to add something like this. Avocado works really well. You could use like a beaten cream cheese, anything you want. I don't have all the veggies that I would normally add here, but I'll throw like pickles in here, like some fresh dill, anything you want. And then I like to roll from the side that the filling is on and roll it up. I didn't fill this one with too much, so it doesn't look overflowing, but that's literally it. It's so good. And lightly steaming your greens really helps you digest them more. So if you feel like you get a little bloated from vegetables or they bother your stomach, this is a great trick. And like eating a dark leafy green like this, like it's so good for you. And oftentimes I know it's hard for people to get into a diet if you're not juicing, especially if you're not going out. This is the most amazing trick to add in. So I highly recommend this one. It's incredibly simple. It looks complicated. So even if you have guests over and you want to make like a little lunch, it's actually really simple to do. And it makes you look like a really good cook. So let's move on to the next one. So the next thing I want to talk about is a sweet potato. I actually don't know how I just discovered this. My friend, shout out Alyssa Lynch. She was telling me how Whole Foods sells these like sweet potato toast things. And I was like, well, maybe I should just make it on my own. So it seems super easy to make. And it's really, really simple. This is kind of a weird shape sweet potato, but again, we're not being picky on groceries right now because we're lucky to get any kind of produce that we can. So we're still going to make it work. But traditionally, if you have like a bigger size, it will look a little bit more like toast, but I'm just going to slice off the ends and then kind of make them into a little toast. You can put this in an oven, in a toaster oven at about 350 for maybe 15 minutes. It's really also all preference on how you want, like how crispy you want it, how soft you want it. I prefer most things like crunchy and crispy. So I really find when I make sweet potato fries, I cut them very, very thin because then you don't have to use oil and they almost like slightly burn and then it makes them crispy. Whereas if they're thick, they almost have like a sweeter, mushier taste. Does that make sense? And I don't love the sweetness and sweet potatoes, but I like that they're better for you than regular potatoes for the most part. Okay. Obviously that last knife wasn't working. Tip here, don't use a knife with little ridges on the end. This one worked a lot better. So I got a few slices here. I'm just going to throw this in the toaster oven. I'm going to put it like on toast bagel. Like you can put whatever setting you want, but usually I put these in the oven at 350, like I said, for about 15 minutes. I honestly think that sometimes in the morning you just want something to put cream cheese on or to put all the butter on. It's not that you're like craving bread. It's more that you're craving the topping. It's almost like for me, when I go to like a Mexican restaurant, all I want is pico de gallo and guacamole, but I don't really care about the chips. So I'll try to get like veggies or whatever I can to dip into it. That's kind of the concept here. You know, I thought a sweet potato might feel a little bit weird in the morning, but it actually really works. And it's just a better carb for you. Like I like, not all carbs are created equal. This is unprocessed. It's a lower glycemic index and like having a slice of bread, lower risk of type two diabetes. So it's just a better food to try to get in the habit of eating. So while that's toasting, I'm going to go on to our next one, which is siate wraps. These are a bit expensive. So I will say like, this is a little more like pricier. You're going to find an option. But what I do like about this is that they always have some kind of flour alternatives. So whether it's like this one has almond flour, they have some with cassava flour. They've got one made from like coconut. I think they even have a cashew one. I have like a chia seed one. So we've got a bunch of different options. Everything we're talking about here is basically grain-free. So this kind of hits the category of like vegan, grain-free, paleo. So you know, anyone that's eating in your house feel like everyone's got their own diets these days. One thing I would recommend with these, they're a little bit tough unless you heat them up. So I would put this like on a stovetop, maybe in the toaster oven, just kind of heat it up a little bit. Then when you wrap it, it won't crack as well either. It kind of makes it a little bit more pliable. But you can literally, I mean, they're so yummy. They're so yummy, obviously, because they're pretty expensive. But you can wrap anything you want in these. One of my favorite things to do is cucumber, fresh mint, avocado, and a little nutritional yeast. And I'll wrap it up and I'll have this like as a little snack midday. And it's amazing. So that's one more option. And the last option I want to talk about is rice cakes. So these obviously aren't grain-free, but that really wasn't the point of this video. It was more just kind of traditional bread alternatives. The one thing I like about these is that they don't have all the added kind of junk I talked about before, like the bleached flour and like the oils and, you know, the high fructose corn syrup. This is literally just, this one is brown rice and sea salt. You can get some that are made from white rice. So they're obviously not the exact same as like eating a soft slice of bread. But I actually find these really satisfying with like a little bit of almond butter on top, a banana, especially because almond butter is such a good, heavier, denser food. Sometimes when I do like almond butter on bread, I just get really full after. And I feel like a little bit bloated, whereas this, it just feels lighter. So I kind of always like to pair like one heavy food with lighter food. So that's what I found makes me feel the best after I eat something to digest it. My favorite almond butter brand is Artesana. I actually like Artesana and Maranatha because they both come raw, but I like that Artesana is also organic. I'm going to sprinkle this on. Another really great snack on top of here is like avocado, anything heavy. So like I said, I like to pair like dense and light together. It kind of optimizes nutrition that way. When you pair too many dense foods together, it's kind of difficult on your stomach. And a little tip here, if you want to pack these as like a sandwich for work or even like as a snack when quarantine is over and they're like super messy, you just have to make a sandwich. Whether or not you want one or two, like put a lot together, put it in a little bag and there's no spillage here. Okay, I'm going to clean up this mess and come back in one minute and we're going to get the potatoes out of the toaster oven and make our toast. Okay, so here's how they look out of the oven. Again, if you get a bigger potato, this actually looks like a long slice of toast. So it's a little more satisfying in that way, but we're working with what we have here in quarantine. So I wanted to show one way to do it with this like vegan cream cheese. This one is by Miyoko's. This is a cashew based cream cheese. I also really like kite hill cream cheese. That's more of an almond base. So it feels a little bit lighter. Cashew is a little bit heavier, but it's really delicious. This one here, I also love Monty's cream cheese. It's like a place in New York, but I believe she ships and she makes like, she makes her own like homemade cashew cream cheese and it's so delicious because she'll do like a scallion one or like an everything bagel one. So I'm going to do a few of these with cream cheese and then a couple with almond butter. This is also like, you can do a little toast bite. So if you kind of want a little variation, I have also like taken a little bit of a banana and sliced it on the almond butter too, because I love that combo together. I've also done just like vegan butter or like coconut oil. So I literally treat this exactly like toast and with whatever topping I'm kind of like vibing in the morning, it satisfies it. And this is a great one. Like if you're staying with family, maybe they don't have the kind of bread you want, or you can't find it at the grocery store. You can always find like a yam or sweet potato. This is something that almost every grocery store will have versus like an alternative bread. You know, Ezekiel bread is actually like not as, I have had a hard time finding it during this quarantine, but that is really good. Yum. And it's so perfect. It's like soft, but so warm. So definitely try this. I won't eat the whole thing, but it's going to stop me from finishing this video. So let's close out the video first. That was my, you know, all my favorite bread alternatives. Again, if you can find a whole grain sprouted unprocessed bread, amazing. Of course, in moderation, like any other food, but I love it. Ezekiel's one of my favorite brands. They make English muffins. Food for Life has some good products. I can try to think of a few other brands below. If you want to order your bread, it's a little more expensive, but Vegan Mario has a great brand and he makes his own like vegan sourdoughs and everything completely unprocessed. So also when all else fails, if you can find a farmer's market and support someone local when all this is over, and it's also a great idea, what I'll do is buy it fresh and then eat like three slices, eat a couple slices for three days and then freeze the rest and just have it whenever I want because that way it won't go bad. But let me know if you like these tips and if you want some more food alternative videos like this. And also please let me know during quarantine or, you know, this time what I can do to bring you value and how I can help you. I would love to make some more videos that will help you. So let me know, please like, comment, subscribe, and I'll see you next time.