Amanda Cerny likes mushrooms and coconut milk.  She includes them as key ingredients as she creates a vegan cream of mushroom soup.

The mushrooms are healthy and are a strong anti-cancer ingredient.  However, Amanda’s soup contains coconut milk, which has been shown to have artery clogging characteristics.  This recipe is a good candidate for a makeover — where the coconut milk is replaced with almond or soy milk.  We’ll have to try it.

Michael Greger MD, one of our Medical Experts, reports on the health benefits or problems with coconut oil, milk, and flakes.  In this post, Is Coconut Milk Good For You?,  he reports that coconut milk has been found to be as artery clogging as a McDonald’s Big Mac.  It looks like another non dairy milk such as soy milk or almond milk would be a better choice for this recipe.

Dr. Greger also has several posts reporting on the anti-oxidant value and cancer prevention and anti-inflammatory characteristics of different mushrooms.  He reports the ordinary button mushroom ranks very high for health benefits.   He suggests it should be included as a regular ingredient in our diets.  Here is a series of Dr. Greger’s blog posts, reporting on several studies into the health benefits of different mushrooms:

• Breast Cancer Prevention:  Which Mushroom is Best?
• Breast Cancer versus Mushrooms
• Making our Arteries Less Sticky
• Boosting Immunity While Reducing Inflammation
• The Best Mushroom
• Toxins in Raw Mushrooms
• Vegetables Versus Breast Cancer

It looks like a simple makeover of replacing coconut milk with soy milk or almond milk would make this soup recipe both delicious and very healthy.

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Did you know that Amanda was Playboy’s Playmate of the month in October 2011?  You can learn more about her and her activities on her website, AmandaCerny.com.