I am always looking for ways to boost the nutritional value of my food. I have been hearing about the benefits of nutritional yeast for a while, yet had never taken the leap to try it. I finally bought some the other day from iherb.com and have found a new love. I love the way this can help boost the protein in my meals! With all the training I have been doing for my marathon, I can use all the help I can get. Based on my weight, I should be consuming at least 47 grams of protein per day. I don’t eat a lot of meat or soy, so the nutritional yeast is a nice way to boost my protein up. I have stirred into my marinara sauce and sprinkled on roasted veggies. 2 TBSPS have 60 calories, 4 grams of fiber & 9 grams of protein. You can read about the rest of the stats here.

Nutritional yeast contains 18 amino acids and 15 minerals. It is rich in B-complex vitamins and is an excellent source of folic acid. Nutritional yeast is grown on cane sugar or molasses. Once it is harvested, it is washed & dried & sold in the form of flakes or powder.

How to use nutritional yeast:

• Topping for veggies
• Topping for popcorn
• Mixed into sauces
• Mixed with vinegar & oil for salad dressing
• Add to soup
• Use for cheesy flavor in pasta or on pizza
• Sprinkle on eggs

I have to let you in on a secret. Can you keep a secret? Tonight while making dinner for Jon & Hannah, I decided to add nutritional yeast to the marinara sauce for their pasta. We normally use Prego Three Cheese, but ended up buying the Tomato, Basil & Garlic because the store didn’t have any Three Cheese. Anyway, I figured that I could add the nutritional yeast to the sauce & it would mimic the parmesan cheese that I would tell the kids I added. I know, probably not the right way to go about it, but you know what? They liked it! LOL! Jon knew something was up and asked repeatedly. I told him I added parmesan cheese since we couldn’t find the Three Cheese sauce the other day. He said it was good, but he just wanted to know. I probably should fess up, huh? The thing is he is at that age where he lets appearance take precedence over taste and Hannah follows along like a little puppy dog. Both kids cleaned their plates and had a very nutritious meal – pasta with altered marinara, steamed broccoli, salad & strawberries.

Here are a few recipes using nutritional yeast. I now that I am late jumping on this bandwagon but seriously, this is one of the best kept secrets! I wish I would have jumped on the nutritional yeast bandwagon a long time ago!