The blueberry muffin: an eternal favorite, bursting with moist flavor, sabotaging diets everywhere. Your love of blueberry muffins doesn't have to translate to bigger hips; you can have your muffin and your slim figure.

The trick is this: adding more nutritious ingredients while cutting out the excess bad fats and calories. In a past post, Jessica has rehabbed blueberry muffins into a pretty decent healthy breakfast treat. Let's take it several steps further.

Add more nutrition
Blueberries are one of the top antioxidants, but you can add more goodies to your muffins to make them even more nutritious:

• sunflower seeds, which also add a nice crunch, about 1/4 cup
  
• lemon peel and/or juice, zest and juice of one lemon
  
• whole oats, about 1/2 cup
• chunks of other fruits, like apple, pear or other berries
• nuts of your choice, 1/2 cup
• ground flax seeds, about 1/4 cup

Each week, we'll be offering original recipes and unique ways to use those Super Foods that pack nutritional power. After all, you are what you eat -- make it count!

Today we take a bit of a detour from highlighting healthy foods to remind you why eating sugar is not such a fabulous idea.

My family and I went to a fair today, a seasonal activity not to be missed here in New England. However, evil lurks at every corner at these fairs. Sprinkled in amidst the animal shows, cattle barn and spinning demonstration (and I mean yarn, not the exercise craze) are food booths. Lots and lots of food booths.

So by the time we left the fair, we had partaken in myriads of junk food, from the sugary-sweet Kettle Corn to soft-serve ice cream. Dinner out left my toddler sucking down Jello for dessert at a local buffet, so his day was completely shot.

Mind you, we are not people who ever eat refined sugar, and I really mean never. How did our systems react, you ask?

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