Making good, healthy desserts doesn’t have to steal away an afternoon of baking (or 12 hours waiting on a dehydrator). One of my favorite desserts – beautiful, fresh fruit energy tarts – take just 10 minutes start-to-finish. Thanks to using simple healthy substitutions and time-saving tricks, these tarts emanate big flavor, well-rounded nutrition, and are healthy enough to be consumed at any time of the day. We healthy dessert people are pretty sneaky, no?

Here are my secrets to making a fast and healthy fresh fruit energy tart:

1. Leave the oven off: With just a few exceptions, the less whole foods are cooked, the more vitamins, enzymes and phytonutrients they contain. Additionally, tarts are usually served at room temperature anyway, so rather than heat a recipe up just to cool it down again, simply keep it at room temperature and make it perfect to begin with.
2. Make a base of energy: Instead of using a nutritional black hole (aka a conventional pie crust), use whole food energy bars as the base of the tart. Just pick your favorite bar and treat it as a firm dough, pressing it into a tart mold to take the desired shape. Shazaam – crust finished. I especially like Vega’s Vibrancy Bars as well as Larabars because they taste delicious, are made entirely from nutritionally dense foods, and have a perfect moistness that makes them ideal for pressing into a crust form. Using energy bars not only packs in a ton of nutrition, it’s also like the world’s greatest time saver. (NOTE – not every type of bar in the world works for this application – use bars with a softer texture like the ones I’ve mentioned).
3. Use the inherent sweetness of fruit: Nature has a sweet tooth too – it’s called fruit. Dressed up with a just little bit of spice, and combined with other fruits or a smidgen of natural sweetener like yacon syrup, fruit fleshes out these desserts dramatically. Using fresh fruit bulks up the size, lowers the caloric impact, boosts nutrition, and adds that sweet goodness without all the sugar or fat. Great fruits for tartlets include apples, pears, peaches, mangoes, bananas and figs.

Of course, these guidelines are really only flirting with your creativity in making the super tart combo of your wildest dreams. Not dreaming yet? Here’s my basic tried and true recipe for Apple-Pear Energy Tartlets.

“Will Americans put on ‘recession pounds’? asks a recent article online. Suggesting that because of the rising cost of food and declining rate of the economy, the article projects more people will turn to fast food and junk food as a cheaper choice to fill the gut. And, in turn, the gut will grow.

Coining the phrase of a “Diet for a New Depression,” is Adam Drewnoski, director of the Nutrition Sciences Program at the University of Washington in Seattle.  His research shows that in economical hard times (uh, that would be now), more people consume “empty calories or foods high in sugar, saturated fats and refined grains, which are cheaper,” at the same time avoiding the “relatively expensive items” like fruit, vegetables and whole grains. He recommends rather than turning to big macs and cheezits, we should instead look at using the same foods Americans used to cope during the Great Depression in the 1930’s.

But to write off fruits and vegetables as if they are a “luxury” items is out-and-out untrue – unless you count keeping healthy and fit a luxury.  Truth be told, some produce may be out of budget, but certainly not all. Shopping at Whole Foods the other day, for example, I found bagged organic crisp fuji apples on sale — $2.99 for 3 pounds. That’s a buck a pound for awesome apples (I bought 3 bags).  Later, I found a farmer’s market selling organic baby spinach at 3 pounds for $7. And I can get dried black beans for less than a dollar a pound as well which can make more hearty black bean soup than I know what to do with.  The physical well-being that this food will afford me? Priceless, of course.

With just a hint of shopper’s savvyness, it’s not difficult to maintain or even begin a lifestyle of healthy living even during nickel and dime time. Keeping an eye out for sale items, buying what’s in season, and taking advantage of the bulk bins is a great way to save some dough . . . and avoid becoming a recession doughboy.

For the original article, read it in full here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090109/us_nm/us_financial_obesity