January is the time for New Year’s resolutions, and on top of almost everyone’s list is to lose weight. To lose weight and keep it off, you need a plan, and yogurt should be a part of that plan. The yogurt we’re talking about here is plain, lowfat yogurt. Yogurt comes in a huge number of varieties, including sweetened with lots of fruit, artificially sweetened with some fruit, thick and creamy Greek style, nonfat, full fat, and endless numbers of flavors. But for simplicity, we’re going to stick with the basics.

An 8-oz. serving of yogurt has 154 calories, so it’s not calorie-free, but that serving is packed with nutrition. It provides you with 13 grams of protein, over a quarter of your needs for a day, which makes it a very filling food that stays with you. You also get nearly half your recommended calcium—great for women—and about a third each of your recommended riboflavin and phosphorous. Each cup provides over 20% of your vitamin B12 and about 15% each of potassium and zinc.

You might find plain yogurt a bit bland, but that’s part of what makes it so versatile. You can mix it with any fruit for a tasty snack or whirr it in a blender with bananas and other fruits (think berries) for great smoothies. Yogurt is great layered into a glass with dry cereal and fruit. You can use it in dips that are far more nutritious than those with a sour cream base and substitute it for mayo in salad dressings or in chicken or tuna salads.

A unique benefit of yogurt is that it is made and even supplemented with beneficial probiotic bacteria during the manufacturing process. These bacteria enrich and support similar bacteria found naturally in our digestive systems, and eating yogurt regularly can help calm digestion and ease diarrhea, bloating, and other digestive upsets. Yogurt is particularly helpful for people taking antibiotics, which often reduce or kill the natural bacteria in the digestive system, creating digestive havoc.

While lactose intolerance might be a concern for some, many lactose-intolerant people can eat yogurt without problems. Yogurt contains lower amounts of lactose than milk does because the lactose in the milk is converted to lactic acid by the bacterial cultures during processing.

Late fall is the time stores fill bins to overflowing with piles of mixed nuts: walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts (filberts), almonds, and brazil nuts. It’s the right time to stock up on these crunchy treats for holiday snacking. A handful of nuts, about a quarter cup, satisfies the desire for a munchy snack and provides a nutrition bonus you won’t find in any bag of salty chips. Their high protein content (about 10% of your daily needs in that quarter cup) fills you up more quickly than a handful of most any other snack, and by cracking your own shells, you eat fewer and avoid the landmine of salt in chips or jarred nuts. If you don’t want to shell your own nuts, purchase them in the baking aisle of your store, not the snack aisle, to avoid the salt and other additives. We’ll give you a quick rundown on the nutrition in the varieties.

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Flaxseed, specifically, ground flaxseed, is a healthy addition to anyone’s diet. It’s a superfood because it’s a non-animal source of valuable Omega 3s, which help lower LDL cholesterol. A single tablespoon contains over 1500 mg. of Omega 3s! You can sprinkle ground flaxseed (whole flaxseed passes through the body virtually untouched, without releasing nutrients) on breakfast cereal or add it to muffins, cakes, or breads you bake yourself.

Ground flaxseed is an excellent source of dietary fiber, with 2 grams of fiber in just a tablespoon. It’s a very good source of thiamine and manganese, as well as a good source of magnesium, phosphorus, and copper.

You could probably sprinkle ground flaxseed on most anything, from fresh fruit to yogurt to even vegetables, and you can add it to smoothies. The downside of flaxseed is the calorie count. Because it is such a rich source of Omega 3 oils, it has 150 calories in a quarter cup, about what you might add to a baked goods recipe. That’s 37 calories per tablespoon of ground flaxseed. If you sprinkle a tablespoon on your cereal every morning, that’s an extra 1000 calories a month. That was nearly enough to scare me off.

But we still had most of a bag of ground flaxseed left, and I certainly wasn’t going to throw it away. I spent some time thinking about what I could add it to where it wouldn’t make the calorie count skyrocket. I finally hit upon the answer: add it to our soft margarine! I know that sounds strange, but for us, it’s the answer. I use about two or three tablespoons of flaxseed in a small, 8-oz. tub of soft margarine, although you could add more or less to suit your taste.

Margarine is already a fat, so the calories are the same (or less). And you add the benefit of extra fiber to the food. Most of our margarine is used for toast. We can barely see the flaxseed when we butter our toast, and on the rare occasion that we butter vegetables, such as a baked sweet potato, the flaxseed is not objectionable. It adds a little color and texture to the veggies. If you’re looking for a way to add the superfood flaxseed to your diet painlessly, consider adding it to your margarine.

Salmon is the richest source of omega-3 fatty acids. Any salmon is good for you, but wild salmon is 15% richer in omega-3s, the nutrients you eat salmon for, and it doesn’t carry the dangers that can be spread by careless or unscrupulous salmon farming. Studies have shown that omega-3 fatty acids help protect heart health, which is why the American Heart Association recommends eating fatty fish like salmon twice each week. Omega-3s help reduce blood clotting, improve cholesterol counts, help prevent heart attacks, improve insulin sensitivity, and help build muscle due to their anti-inflammatory properties.

Wild salmon has 5% to 15% higher nutritional content overall than farmed salmon. Although salmon is high in cholesterol, a serving of 100 grams (about 3½ ounces) has half your daily recommended protein, is a good source of selenium, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, and phosphorus, and is very low in saturated fat. Some people want to avoid salmon because of its fat content, but the body needs fat to function, and salmon contains the best kind, polyunsaturated fat. The 3½ ounce serving has a healthy 182 calories packed with nutrition.

Contemporary chefs have created delicious recipes to keep salmon meals interesting. Salmon can be baked or broiled, as well as lightly sautéed. You can adorn it with any number of intriguing sauces and chutneys, such as mango jalapeno chutney, orange-macadamia sauce, green grape and chive salsa, diced tomatoes and cilantro, or classic lemon-dill butter. Salmon salad now doesn’t often mean chopped into a mayo and boiled egg paste, but rather means a warm or chilled fillet topping an array of mixed greens and ripe fruits. Menu favorites include salmon salads with strawberries, blueberries, mandarin oranges, dried cranberries, or black grapes.

Salmon comes in several varieties: Coho, Chinook, Atlantic, chum, and sockeye, as well as fresh, frozen, or canned. Fresh, wild-caught is best, but varieties are seasonal and you should buy what’s freshest. Frozen is fine, and canned is useful for making salmon patties. You can buy premade frozen salmon patties from wild salmon to use as a delicious substitute for beef hamburgers. They are excellent served on a thin bun with lettuce and crunchy pickles.

If you think sweet potatoes belong on the table only at Thanksgiving, and then covered with brown sugar and mini marshmallows, wake up! That scene belongs to your grandmother. Today, sweet potatoes are available all year round, and the best way to enjoy them is baked in the skin. A medium-to-small sweet potato will be about one cup. If that’s too much for you, cut it in half after baking and you can enjoy the other half as a nutritious snack the next day.

Sweet potatoes simply overflow with Vitamin A: a cup of sweet potato has over 700% of the Vitamin A you need in a day! That’s definitely super in my book! It also contains two thirds of your Vitamin C, nearly a third of your Vitamin B6, half your manganese, and a quarter of your potassium. A cup contains 180 calories, so it’s not a low-calorie food, but the nearly 7 grams of fiber in it help offset the calories.

Sweet potatoes have no cholesterol or saturated fat and are low in sodium. As a bonus, they contain substantial amounts of protein, calcium, iron, copper, magnesium, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin, as well as pantothenic acid. The goodness just keeps on coming with this delicious, easy-to-fix tuber.

Another great way to enjoy sweet potatoes is mashed, like white potatoes, except far more nutritious. Add a dash of nutmeg for a surprising flavor lift. They are delicious roasted with other vegetables. Cut into chunks, toss into a baking dish with chunked apples, onions, and carrots, drizzle with olive oil, and bake at 400 for 45 minutes—yum! Sweet potato pie has begun to hit the mainstream in top restaurants, and although that adds considerable heft to the calorie count, the nutrition remains in the base ingredient.

Other deep orange foods with similar nutrients include pumpkin, butternut squash, and carrots. Sweet potatoes you choose should be firm and heavy. Lighter weights indicate they may have been stored for a long time in low humidity. This will likely produce less flavor and may reduce nutrients, as well.

If you’re lucky, you pick tomatoes out of your garden in August. Tomatoes are just about the hottest and most popular vegetable out there, surpassed in consumption each year only by potatoes. Tomatoes are high in dietary fiber and low in sodium, with no saturated fat or cholesterol. A medium whole tomato, or about 2/3 cup diced, is only 22 calories and provides 25% of your recommended vitamin C and 20% of your recommended vitamin A. They are also a good source of vitamin K, vitamin E, vitamin B6, thiamin, niacin, folate, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, potassium, and manganese. Tomatoes are one of the best nutritional packages around and are commonly available to nearly everyone.

Think of all the different ways you eat tomatoes today. Start with sliced on your plate at a picnic on a hot summer day. Move to piled on a sandwich, then to wedges nestled around a salad, and then to hollowed out and stuffed full of tuna or crab salad. Tomatoes cubed into spicy chili. Tomatoes diced up tiny into tacos.

Think about tomato products. Tomato sauce poured over meatloaf. Tomatoes chopped up with onions and cilantro into salsa for a burrito. Tomatoes simmered with oregano, basil, and garlic into rich goodness to top spaghetti. Ketchup, of course. Tomatoes drowning with molasses and chili peppers in your favorite barbeque sauce. Tomato juice, tomato paste, sun-dried tomatoes, canned crushed tomatoes, Italian-style, Mexican-style, stewed. Is your mouth watering yet?

Heirloom tomatoes have names like Brandywine, Marvel Stripe, and Green Zebra. Heirlooms have become increasingly popular in the last few years and they turn up in organic bistros as well as pricey fine-dining establishments. Individuals cannot supply the growing demand for these tasty reminders of days past, and organic farms, much smaller than the giant commercial operations and often family-operated, are beginning to offer a more reliable supply to restaurateurs and grocers.

The escalating demand for heirlooms is based mostly on flavor, although increasing awareness of pesticides, pollution, and Big Farming have swayed some converts. Consumers have grown tired of the “green baseballs” found on produce shelves these days and long for the flavor of real tomatoes, the kind their parents picked out of the family garden a generation ago. Heirloom varieties offer both flavor and a “greener” footprint.

Whether out of a can or from an organic garden, tomatoes hold a place–indeed, many places–in today’s menus and lifestyles. Lest we forget, the tomato is the basis of that lovely invention, the Bloody Mary.

If you were lucky enough to grow up in a region where blueberries grew wild, you probably came home with purple teeth more than once. Polyphenols called anthocyanins are responsible for giving blueberries their namesake color, and they are the major contributors to blueberries’ antioxidant richness. Antioxidants help neutralize free radicals, which are unstable molecules linked to a number of conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and short-term memory loss associated with aging. According to the USDA database listing the antioxidant activity of foods, blueberries are the highest per serving of any food. That’s pretty good credentials for a superfood.

At just 84 calories per delicious cup, blueberries offer you 4 grams of fiber, making them a good source of that dietary need to help control hunger and maintain regularity. That cup of purple gems contains a quarter of your recommended daily Vitamin C, a quarter of your manganese, and a third of your Vitamin K. Blueberries contain virtually no saturated fat, cholesterol, or sodium, making them a wonderful snack or dessert.

Consumers can buy blueberries year round, with frozen berries always in stores and fresh berries widely available for many more months than previously, due to increased production south of our borders. Recipe ideas abound. Everybody loves blueberry pie, although that’s not the most nutritious way to get your dose of antioxidants. Blueberry muffins are healthier for you if you make your own from scratch than if you use a mix. My favorite way to eat blueberries is plopped on my cereal in the morning. Yum!

You can mix blueberries into yogurt for a taste sensation, and for extra goodness, freeze the berries first. It’s just like eating blueberry ice cream! An unconventional way to add blueberries to your diet is in a salad. Prepare your favorite mixed greens—lettuces, spinach, others—add diced green pepper, chopped celery, diced red apple, and a big handful of blueberries. It’s a salad your family will ask for again and again.

Oatmeal makes the superfood list primarily because of its soluble fiber. It has a high satiety factor, which means it helps keep you full longer. Eat a bowl of steaming oatmeal with a touch of brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon for breakfast and you probably won’t need that mid-morning snack. Half a cup of dry oatmeal (about 1 cup cooked) contains about 150 calories. While not rich in vitamins, it will provide about 20% of your daily fiber and 10% of your protein for the day, as well as about 10% each of thiamine, iron, zinc, and copper. This morning wake-me-up contains about 15% each of recommended magnesium, phosphorus, and selenium, and a whopping 75% of your manganese.

Ads like to say that one bowl of oat cereal a day can lower cholesterol, but the subjects in the study ate more than one bowl a day and they likely cut back on high-cholesterol foods by doing that. Oatmeal itself has no cholesterol and negligible sodium and saturated fat. Other whole grains have similar benefits, but oatmeal is tops, and it is an excellent grain choice for diabetics. Oatmeal has a lower glycemic load, meaning it has less impact on blood sugar levels than some other grains. Oatmeal also has an excellent amino acid profile.

You can add oatmeal to your diet in ways other than a bowlful each morning. Some options are more fun, albeit less healthy. Oatmeal raisin cookies are among the least evil of cookies (try reducing the sugar in the recipe by half), and fruit crisp can have a top and bottom crust made of oatmeal. Many multigrain breads and rolls have oats as a primary ingredient. Also consider having oatmeal as a snack at work. Although not quite as nutritious as steel cut or old-fashioned rolled oats cooked at home, the quick-to-fix packets remain a much better option than a bag of chips or a donut.