That's Fit

Substantial enough to substitute for meat in a meal, eggplant is chock-full of phytonutrients as well as being rich in many vitamins and minerals. Other than in pasta dishes, I haven't cooked much with eggplant in the past. I don't know why... I think it's wonderfully tasty. Baby eggplants are in season right now, so it's the perfect time to try out some new recipes.

Shape Magazine shares a few ideas for trying out this tasty and nutritious food. I love their idea for sauteeing diced baby eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes in olive oil and then baking in the eggplant skin. I think I'll substitute the tomatoes for summer squash. (I'm not a tomato fan... which is too bad because they're so rich in lycopene.) How about you? Do you have any favorite eggplant recipes to share?

Salsa is such a wonderfully healthy condiment on its own, and makes a wonderful addition to grilled chicken and fish, brown rice and quinoa. Steer clear of the traditional corn chips, if you can, though!

Do you sometimes get tired of the same old tomato salsa? I've found three unique salsa recipes to put a little spunk back into your salsa meals.

The first celebrates a favorite food of mine: the avocado. Epicurious' Asian Avocado Salsa lends a different twist to traditional salsa, with ingredients like soy sauce, sesame seeds and oil, jicama, and watercress. With a powerhouse main ingredient like avocado, this one is sinless.

Have fitness questions? Fitz has your answer. Our ThatsFit.com fitness expert -- and now your own virtual personal trainer -- will help you get fit, increase your overall health and do it in a fun way. Drop your questions here in the Comments section below and we'll choose one per week to publish on That's Fit! Learn more about Fitz here.

Q. Hi Fitz. My husband and I totally disagree on the topic of pizza. He's says it's "unhealthy garbage," and I say it's not so bad. What do you think? Stacia

A. I think it can be both ... depending on how you make it. Let's just start with the main ingredients: flour, marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese. Flour if it's white, is not perfect, but not the worst thing in the world either. Marinara sauce which is tomato based is pretty great; full of lycopenes. Cheese is high in fat which is bad, but also high in calcium which is great. So! Our dilemma is choosing the right ingredients which will make pizza more good than bad.

Curious to know how celebrities squeeze fitness into their daily lives? Want to know the secrets of the stars? Bi-weekly, our That's Fit fitness expert Fitz sits down with the celebs we want to know more about, and digs out their great and not-so-great methods to staying healthy.

Mmmmmm. Just the mention of Chef Jens Dahlmanns's name puts my mind in ecstasy. His is the name of the man who created what I'd choose as my 'last meal.' He's the premier Chef of Disney's signature restaurant The California Grill, who also oversees a staff of award-winning chefs atop Disney's Contemporary Resort. Chef Jens was classically trained in European kitchens and worked for Le Cirque 2000 in New York City and Cafe 'L Europe in Palm Beach, Florida, before joining Disney in April 2004.

We first spoke on the phone a week before I was to dine at his spectacular grill. From a fitness trainer standpoint, he gave all of the 'right answers.' Not that he was contrived, but his stance on cooking is what I would wish to hear. If you've read my features before, you'll know that I preach the importance of lean fresh foods. Read on to see how dead-on Chef Jens is to that style of eating. From a regular gal's point of view, it was just really exciting and fun to hear Chef Jens talk about food. He described white asparagus the same way most men would describe a beautiful woman. I could imagine what each item tasted like as he described them.

My experience at The California Grill was almost indescribable. Chef Jens and his staff were pampering to say the least. He greeted me with a sample of the white asparagus he gushed about, and I knew I was in for something special. The combinations of flavors and textures were to die for! I relished every bite and cleaned each and every plate that landed in front of me (highly unusual for me). The man knows how to make fresh food taste divine. The advice he gave in this interview is exactly what I, as your online Fitzness Trainer, want you to follow. Chef Jens just knows far better than I, how to make all of the healthy stuff taste heavenly.

Fitz: How much does "healthy" influence the foods you create for your menus?

Chef Jens: Healthy actually has a lot to do with our menu. First of all, Disney has set an initiative for enhancing our menus in a healthy way, so across all of the Disney parks and restaurants you'll find better choices. On my part, I'm always driven by what's fresh in the market. We create meals based on the season. At the California Grill, our menu changes according to what foods are in season. Fresh food equals leaner and "cleaner" food. I never use processed ingredients.

Surely, you know by now that tomatoes are a no-go. Well, some of them, anyway. I admit I was in the dark at first and didn't know of the whole tomato salmonella outbreak until I tried to order a salad at a restaurant and was told there was not a single tomato in the establishment. Bummer for me -- I rely on juicy items like tomatoes to take the place of dressing on my salads. Forgetting about the trouble with tomatoes, I tried to order them again today on my kid's chicken burrito. Nope. No tomatoes. No salsa. Nothing of the sort.

So, what's up with the trusty tomato lately? According to this washingtonpost.com post, here's the deal: On June 8, the FDA issued a broad warning, telling consumers not to eat raw Roma, red plum, or red round tomatoes. Don't eat products containing these types of raw red tomatoes either, unless the tomatoes are from California, Georgia, Hawaii, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Belgium, Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Israel, Netherlands, and Puerto Rico. Also safe: Cherry, grape, and tomatoes sold with the vine still attached.

For an updated list of safe tomato sources and other important and ever-changing information, keep checking back here. And until tomatoes are clearly in the clear, please eat safely.

When things get hectic and crazed around my house, my old stand-by dinner is invariably whole-wheat spaghetti and marinara sauce with added veggies. It's quick, easy, always a hit with my son, and passable nutrition-wise. It turns out my "old faithful" dinner also has benefits for the skin.

Researchers have determined that antioxidants in tomatoes help protect the skin against UV rays. Lycopene, one of the antioxidants found in tomatoes, has previously been linked to a reduction in prostate cancer risk. The skin benefits are just the icing on the cake... or the sauce on the spaghetti. Participants in the study ate up to 55 grams of tomato paste daily. In addition to the UV protection, lycopene may also be linked with anti-aging properties.

Lycopene is found in many other red fruits and vegetables including watermelon, guava, and pink grapefruit.

In our house, we tend to keep food in our fridge for longer than most people. It's part laziness, part iron stomachs and part frugality, but whatever the cause, I'm often left scratching my head wondering if I should use a certain ingredient in my next meal. But I recently came across this handy timeline for storing common fruits and veggies:

• Carrot (peeled): 51 days
  
• Tomato: 36 days
  
• Garlic: 30 days
• Broccoli: 27 days
• Strawberry: 22 days
  
• Asparagus: 22 days
• Spinach: 19 days
• Grapes (black and green): 14 days
• Peppers (red and green): 14 days
• Cucumber: 8 days
• Lettuce: 8 days

Surprising, yes? I thought the times on many of these were much shorter. This is good news though, particularly for those month-old carrots in the back of my fridge.

Hola! I just made some of my favorite party dip tonight for a get together tomorrow and thought I should share it with you. I make my Fat Free Mexican O-Layered Dip often and it's always a crowd pleaser. It only requires a few simple ingredients and is quick and easy to just throw together. Add some lean meat to it and you can enjoy it as a meal.

Have a looksy here at the recipe, give it a try and let me know what you think! I love great food, and have had great success substituting the fattening parts for equally tasty not so fattening parts. Adios!

If you're adding lycopene to your diet through supplements or more tomato eating, a new study hopes you aren't doing it to decrease your chances of prostate cancer.

Male prostate cancer is no laughing matter, and according to the study, carotenoids like lycopene and tocopherols (which are forms of vitamin E) are not the tools that will help you prevent the chances of developing prostate cancer.

This study did involve quite a few variables, as the blood levels of 10 micronutrients were studied on almost 2,000 males from eight countries in Europe. The study was to determine if any of those micronutrients had an effect on prostate cancer development, or, more specifically, prostate malignancies.

So I imagine you've heard why antioxidants are such a big deal? The molecule, which is found in fruits and veggies, is thought to help prevent cancer -- and lower your risk of heart disease and slow down aging -- by stopping free radicals from damaging healthy cells. To find out a bit more about the process ,as well as some foods highest in antioxidants, take a look at Martha Edwards' Daily Fit Tip post on adding items that contain the molecule into your diet.

If you've already begun to eat these healthy fruits and vegetables but are looking for new ways to prepare them, try out one of the three salad recipes listed here. The Power Packed Pomegranate Salad contains spinach and seeds of the tropical fruit, both of which have loads of antioxidants, while the blueberries in Blueberry Chicken Salad and the black beans in the Black Bean and tomato salad pack a healthy antioxidant punch.

Have you got any antioxidant-loaded recipe favorites to share?

Recently, the FDA concluded that tomatoes, which are rich in the antioxidant lycopene, don't appear to prevent cancer after all, at least in their opinion. Some studies had linked lycopene to a reduced risk of prostate, colon, and breast cancers, but after a review of 107 studies, the agency says that it can't find enough evidence to definitively say that lycopene prevents disease.

The American Cancer Society barely blinked at the news, saying that they stay away from recommending any one food for the prevention of disease. Instead, they recommend people eat a diet rich in fresh produce and encourage people to eat a variety of richly colored vegetables. Not only is a diet rich in fruits and vegetables linked to a lower risk of cancer, it can also help to prevent weight gain which is tied to a higher risk of several diseases.

No one is giving up on the good old tomato. Health experts say that lycopene may indeed have a role in preventing cancer, and that future studies may provide more definitive evidence. In addition to lycopene, tomatoes are a great source of vitamins C, A, and B6, as well as niacin, folate, and potassium.

Most of the time a purple-colored tomato should give off some warning signs. After all, red is the preferable shade of this particular culinary vegetable. However, researchers at Oregon State University have been tweaking a different variety of tomato that isn't unlike a blueberry!

This dark-skinned purple version comes from six years of mad science, but is actually traceable from a wild type out of South America. So what's in the new color anyway? Well it's not all aesthetics, believe it or not. The new tone brings with it a phytochemical that fights the risk of cancer and heart disease.

Don't go out looking just yet: it could be another two years before we actually see them. How the public will react to a radically different color of a popular salad ingredient has yet to be seen. Would you be receptive to a purple tomato? It would be interesting to see other varieties of vegetables or fruit undergo a paint job as well!