Cheater 5 ingredients or less: super food [32]

Is it any surprise that I have yet another blog post about food? Somewhere in the last couple of weeks I missed a 5 ingredients or less post, so you're getting it randomly on a Saturday. Going vegan, being an herbivore, consuming a plant-based diet (however you want to say it) brings up many comments and questions from the non-herbie/vegan/plant-based peanut gallery. Do we get enough protein? How much iron and fiber do we get? What about vitamin B12? And how do you get omega-3 fatty acids without fish? I won't go into lecture mode but I will take some time to present to you one of my absolute favorite super foods: walnuts (hence why it's a "cheater" 5 ingredients post). 

This ready-made snack food is up there on the list of best foods for me, along with blueberries, sweet potatoes, kale, pancakes (only my dad's), and pie (homemade, hands down, is of course the best). That might be why I have a 2+ lb. bag in my pantry that I've been munching on since the beginning of the semester (it was 3 lbs when I bought it). But even better than how they taste is how healthy they are. It turns out that walnuts also qualify as a super food, having quite a laundry list of healthful benefits. If you want to see all the facts in chart form, go here, but just to give you an idea of the basics, walnuts contain protein, calcium, iron, vitamin B6, magnesium, potassium, fiber, and omega-3 and -6 fatty acids. And you thought you could only get omega-3 fatty acids from fish. Surprise! It turns out that there are three different types of omega-3 fatty acids. The first two, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are the ones found in fatty fish, but the third type, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), is found in some vegetable oils, some green vegetables including kale and brussels sprouts, and in walnuts. There is some debate about how beneficial each of these types is, with the fishy omega-3s potentially being more beneficial, but our bodies are cool enough to partially convert ALA to EPA and DHA, so either way, plant-based omega-3s are good enough for me. If you don't believe me, see what the Harvard smarties have to say: here.