iCreate Café Draws People To Pottstown With Healthy, Plant-Based Meals

Pottstown, PA – “Vegiterranean” might not be an official word in the dictionary but it’s the word iCreate Café owner Ashraf Khalil uses to describe his dishes that are a combination of vegetarian and Mediterranean food.

The café at 130 King St. may seem like just another building from the outside but once customers walk in, they are greeted with a variety of colors, comfortable couches and plenty of seating. The small café does a lot with a little including also being a computer training center. But in recent years, it’s been the vegetarian fare that keeps people coming back.

Khalil, or Ash as most customers know him, said Mediterranean fare uses a lot of legumes such as chickpeas, fava beans and lentils. As a native of Syria, he grew up on dishes that included more plant-based foods than meat. He said there were very little animal sources in meals, partly because it’s very expensive to buy overseas.

“That’s one of the reasons we love hummus. We grew up eating it back in Syria, not knowing it has all this protein but because it’s cheap and affordable,” he said during a recent cooking demonstration at the café.

Read more:

http://www.pottsmerc.com/lifestyle/20150323/icreate-cafxe9-draws-people-to-pottstown-with-healthy-plant-based-meals

Healthy Eats Stir Pottstown’s Food Scene At iCreate Cafe

New logo

Until a few years ago, Ash Khalil ate meat.

Learning the health benefits of a nutrient-rich diet made of mostly plant-based foods inspired him to open the iCreate Cafe in Pottstown in 2012.

Those who visit the cafe often describe it to others as a mix of vegan, vegetarian and in some cases gluten-free menu musts, with strong Middle Eastern and Mediterranean influences in many of the dishes.

Khalil is an eight-year survivor of kidney cancer and said not once did his doctors ever talk to him about the foods he ate and how they might have impacted his health situation.

See more at: http://readingeagle.com/money/article/healthy-eats-stir-pottstowns-food-scene-at-icreate-cafe#sthash.yi5Oznyg.dpuf

Mediterranean Diet Can Cut Heart Disease, Study Finds

About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study has found.

The findings, published on The New England Journal of Medicine’s Web site on Monday, were based on the first major clinical trial to measure the diet’s effect on heart risks. The magnitude of the diet’s benefits startled experts. The study ended early, after almost five years, because the results were so clear it was considered unethical to continue.

The diet helped those following it even though they did not lose weight and most of them were already taking statins, or blood pressure or diabetes drugs to lower their heart disease risk.

“Really impressive,” said Rachel Johnson, a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association. “And the really important thing — the coolest thing — is that they used very meaningful endpoints. They did not look at risk factors like cholesterol of hypertension or weight. They looked at heart attacks and strokes and death. At the end of the day, that is what really matters.”

Read more:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/health/mediterranean-diet-can-cut-heart-disease-study-finds.html?hp&_r=0