Archive for the ‘Diets-the truth about eating healthy’ Category

Scallops and Shrimp - Know your shellfish

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Scallops have firm, ivory-colored meat that can be divine if not overcooked. The flavor is sweet, nutty and delicate. They are readily available in seafood markets, but they must be absolutely fresh to be good. Everything between the two shells is edible, although in North America people opt for the single large adductor muscle only.

scallops

Unlike clam shells, the two halves of a scallop shell don’t completely close. They dehydrate quickly after harvesting and die if the fishermen don’t keep them in optimum environment. Because they are so perishable, processors often clean scallops on board the fishing vessel and keep them on ice. They are not as easily available for harvesting as shrimp.

The fishermen must catch enough to make it worthwhile to bring them into port, so those unfortunate ones they caught early may be shivering quite a while on ice before they haul the last ones in.

Storing scallops in fresh water improves the all-important appearance for marketability. Unfortunately for the consumer, this also increases weight and dilutes flavor.

Individually quick-frozen scallops retain their freshness, flavor and moisture well, and you often get a better buy and quality than fresh ones when you cannot validate just how fresh is fresh.

Distributors usually soak scallops destined to sell as fresh in a chemical (sodium tripolyphosphate) to retain moisture and improve appearance. They may look great but be wary-the chemical alters the flavor and you might think of wandering over to the frozen counter instead.

Stores commonly sell two major species of scallops, the small and more delicately flavored bay scallops and the larger, more abundant and nearly as good sea scallops, which are much cheaper. Tiny calico scallops from Florida are very uncommon. They resemble bay scallops but supposedly don’t have as good a flavor.

The scallops at the market are pure meat, you only lose the liquid it releases on cooking. Count on 4 to 5 ounces (110 to 140 g) per person.

Shrimp is without doubt our most popular shellfish and among the most popular of all seafood. With its firm meat (when not overcooked) and delicate, distinctive but not overpowering flavor, even diners who never choose seafood from a menu may order shrimp (provided there’s some juicy red meat on the plate next to the shrimp).

shrimp-appetizer

A dozen different species of commercially important shrimp grow in various parts of the world. With modern air transportation, we have access to all of them. Flavor has nothing to do with size, but restaurants prefer the large shrimp, because they are easier and faster to shell and look very showy on the plate.

Diners are also willing to pay extra for colossal and jumbo sizes. Sizes vary tremendously. Really tiny shrimp weigh less than one-tenth of an ounce (3 g) each (the weight of a clove of garlic), while the giant species weigh in at about half a pound (225 g), too much for one serving.

A significant amount of imported shrimp is now coming from Asian shrimp farms, where they harvest and immediately flash freeze them, then ship by air all over the world. Shrimp are so perishable that they must freeze them immediately after they leave the water. If the shrimp you brought home from the store turns out not very good, blame it on the handling somewhere between the water and your plate. (Or blame the cook.)

It is the underpaid retail store worker that knows the least about handling and storing to preserve flavor. Your best bet is to buy shrimp frozen, if you can find it packaged in the right quantity, and defrost it yourself. (See suggestions on storing later in this chapter.)

Retailers generally buy shrimp in four-pound boxes, that are only occasionally displayed, but you can request a full frozen box. Asian markets always have them in the freezer case. The fresh-looking shrimp on display at the fish counter are not fresh-the clerk defrosted them just a few hours before you arrived. Usually the only way you can buy fresh, never-frozen shrimp is from fishing boats just pulling in.

Don’t ever buy pre-cooked shrimp. Cooking shrimp is almost as easy as cooking potatoes, and you can do a far better job than the supermarket’s underpaid cook in the back.

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A healthy varied diet

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Apart from breastmilk, no single food contains all the essential nutrients the body needs to be healthy and function efficiently. The nutritional value of a person’s diet depends on the overall balance of foods that is eaten over a period of time, as well as on the needs of the individual. A healthy diet is likely to include a large number or variety of foods, from each of the food groups, as this allows us to get all the nutrients that we need.

We need energy to live and this is provided by the carbohydrate, protein and fat in our diets. But the balance between these nutrients must be right for us to remain healthy. Getting the right amounts of vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre and water is also important for health.

girl-running

So what becomes as important as the type of foods we eat, is the amount and frequency that we include different foods in our diet. All foods can be part of a healthy diet, so you don’t have to give up the foods that are a real treat, as the key message is that it is the overall balance of foods that is important for health.

The food groups

We can think of all foods as belonging to one of five different food groups:

We will look at these food groups in more detail on the following pages, but let’s first think about the proportions of these food groups in our diet.

Our diets should be based on bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods and rich in fruit and vegetables. A variety of foods from these two groups should make up two-thirds of the food we eat. Most of the remaining third of the diet should be made up of milk and dairy foods, meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein, with limited amounts of foods and drinks high in fat and/or sugar.pasta-alla-caruso

It might be helpful for you to think of your diet as a big plate, with sections representing the different food groups. This is the healthy eating model that we use in the UK to describe a healthy varied diet and it is called the eatwell plate.

You should aim to achieve this balance every day, although it is not necessary to achieve it at every meal.

This guide is appropriate for most people over the age of two years, including: vegetarians; people of all ethnic origins; people who are a healthy weight for their height as well as those who are overweight; and pregnant women. People under medical supervision or with special dietary requirements may want to check with their doctor if this general description of healthy eating applies to them.

Children under the age of two years have high energy needs compared to their size and capacity for food so some of the foods (especially those low in fat or high in fibre) included on the eatwell plate are not suitable for them. But between the ages of two and five years, children can make a gradual transition towards the type of diet depicted in the eatwell plate.

For most healthy people, eating a healthy varied diet will provide all the vitamins and minerals the body needs. There are certain times in our lives when we may benefit from taking supplements, e.g. when you are thinking about having a baby or when you get older and you need to take a vitamin D supplement. But you should remember that supplements cannot replace a healthy diet.

Here are two easy examples to help you see that by making very simple changes to your diet, you can easily achieve the right proportions of different food groups within a meal.

Pizza:

Pizza can contain ingredients from the four main food groups:pizza-alla-napoletana

  • A dough base – from the  bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods group
  • Tomato puree and other vegetables such as mushrooms, sweetcorn and peppers – from the fruit and vegetable group
  • A moderate amount of cheese, or low fat cheese - from the milk and dairy foods group
  • A moderate amount of ham or tuna - from the meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein group.

Bacon sandwich:

A bacon sandwich can contain ingredients from three main food groups:

  • Two slices of thick cut wholemeal bread – from the  bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods group
  • Lean, grilled bacon – from the meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein group
  • The sandwich can be filled with plenty of lettuce and tomato and served with a glass of pure fruit juice or a piece of fruit – from the fruit and vegetable group
  • If served with a glass of low fat milk, all four groups would be met.

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From whole food to refined food Part III

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

In 1930, with the discovery of vitamins, scientists have understood what had happened and so the miller men began adding B vitamins to refined grain. So the obvious deficiencies have been corrected. More recently, scientists have recognized that many of our diets contain not enough folic acid, so in 1996 the public health authorities have imposed those from the milling industry to add folic acid to flour. But it will take a long time until the science will understand that this strategy of addition for the “wonder bread”, so as it was called by a nutritionist, will not resolve all issues generated from the refining of grain. Diseases caused by deficiencies are easier to follow and to be treated (the successful medicine in their treatment is an important element for the nutrition prestige) rather than chronic diseases and found that the refinement of carbohydrate is involved in the appearance of some chronic diseases- like diabetes, heart disease and certain types of cancers.

grains

The refined grain story is a parable about the reductionist science boundaries which are applied to something so complex as food. For several years, nutritionists know that a food rich in whole grains reduces the risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer. (The statement remains valid even beyond the indication that people who eat more whole grains probably have a healthier lifestyle and other point of view) Different nutritionists have attributed the benefits of whole grains to different nutrients: fiber of bran, folic acid and other vitamin B from the germ, antioxidants and various minerals. In 2003, “American Journal of Clinical Nutrition” published a non-reductionist study which demonstrates that benefits of whole grains can not be attributed to a single nutrient. The usual reductionist analysis of isolated nutriments could not explain the health improvement of whole grains consumers.

The epidemiologists David R. Jacobs and Lyn M. Steffen from the University of Minnesota has reread previous research and discovered ample evidence of the fact that a rich in whole grains diet reduces mortality which has different causes. Surprising was the fact that, after adjusting the levels of fibers, vitamin E, folic acid, fitic acid, iron, zinc, magnesium and manganese in food (all the benefits that we know about are found in whole grains) it has been discovered an additional benefit of consumption of whole grains, which couldn’t be attributed to any single nutrient nor their totality. So, subjects receiving the same amount of the listed nutrients, but from other sources were not as healthy as those who ate whole grains, “the analysis suggests that another element from the whole grains protects against death”. The authors concluded, somehow vague, but suggestive that “the various grains and their component act synergistically” and they have suggested to their colleagues to take into account the concept of “food synergy”. So here is an argument for a revolutionary idée in relation to the nutritional standards: it could happen that a whole product is much more than the amount of nutrients that it is made.

family-picnic

It is no need to tell you that the proposal was not enthusiastically received by the food industry and this thing is probably not happening anytime soon. Even while I write, Coca-Cola launches drinks full of vitamins, there is the concept of “wonder bread” for industrial food products in their ultimate state (wonder drink?). Since ever there have been invested large amounts of money for processed food and not in whole food marketing and probably the industry investment in a reductionist approach to nutrition is just one. The problem is that there is something in us that love carbs, and that something is the human brain. Human brain keens on to carbs that are reduced to their essence power, which is pure glucose. Once the industry discovered a way to transform the seeds of cereals in the chemical equivalent of sugar, there was no going back.

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From whole food to refined food Part II

Friday, March 19th, 2010

From this point of view, the refinement of whole food means not only an invention of new ways to make products more resistant and more portable, but also to focus their energy and in a way to accelerate them. The major leap in terms of acceleration was made around 1870, when in Europe were introduced the rolls (iron, steel or porcelain) used for grinding grain. Perhaps more than any other technology, this, which in 1880 replaced the millstones throughout Europe and America, marked the beginning of our food industrialization -reducing it to its chemical essence and accelerating its uptake. Refined flour is the first product of fast food.

field-with-crops

Before the millstone revolution, wheat was grounded between two stone wheels and white flour could not be a perfect white because the millstones were removing the bran from the wheat grain (and therefore most of the fiber), but could not remove the germ or embryo that contains essential oils rich in nutrients. The stone mills were only crushing and releasing germ oil. The effect was the gray-yellow shade of the obtained flour (the yellow color is given by carotene) also the shelf-life was shorter because, in contact with air, oil, and rust quickly, that means it grows rancid. People saw and smelled these things and were not satisfied. But what their senses were not perceived was that in the seeds were the most valuable flour nutrients, including most of the proteins, folic acid and other B vitamins, carotenes and other antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids which quickly grown rancid.

The insert of rollers which could remove the germ by grinding only the endosperm (the starch and protein package from the seeds) has resolved the issue of conservation and color. Now, almost everyone could afford to buy immaculate white flour, which could now be preserved for several months. There was no need for each city to have its own mill, because from that point flour could be transported for long distances. (In addition, it can be ground throughout the year by large companies in big cities: heavy stone mills based on hydraulic power depended on watercourses; the new shafts could be maneuvered whenever and wherever steam engines) And so, one of the basis food product from the Western diets has escaped the space and time limitations, it was sold by appearance and not on the criterion of nutritional value. From this perspective, white flour was one of the first modern industrial food products.China Product Safety

The problem was that beautiful white powder was null or almost null in terms of nutrition. The same was now in the case of corn flour and white rice, whose refining (i.e. removal of the most nutritious parts) was introduced around the same period. In all regions where there were introduced on a large scale, the new refining technologies appeared in a short time, devastating epidemics of beriberi and pellagra. Both diseases are caused by vitamin B deficiencies which were contained in seed. But probably because ot the sudden disappearance of other micro-nutrients from bread, and also the omega-3 fatty acids, affect health, especially that of poor townspeople in Europe, for whom bread was a fundamental food product.

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The industrialization of food: what do we know?

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

What would happen if we begin to consider food is less a thing and more a relationship? In nature, things have always been like this: eating meant in fact interacting whit species in the systems that we call food chains or tropic networks, which include everything up to the soils. Species co-evolved with the other species that eat them and very often, among them develops a relationship of interdependence: I’ll feed you, if you spread my genes.

Following an evolutionary process of mutual adaptation, the apple or the pumpkin turns into a nutritious and delicious food product for certain animals. Over time and through processes of trial and failure, the plant becomes tastier (and often more visible) to answer the needs and desires of the animal, and so that the animal can develop various digestive tools (eg, enzymes) needed to exploit the plant as good as possible.

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Thus, at first, the cow milk was not a nutritious product for people: in fact, it even harms them that until the people who lived around cows developed in adulthood the ability to digest milk. The gene responsible for producing lactase, the enzyme that make the digestion of milk possible, was disabled by humans shortly after medical ablation, but now five thousand years, people have suffered from a mutation where the gene which remains active throughout life, the mutation that quickly spread through a population of pastors in north-central Europe. Why? Because people which suffered this mutation have access to a new extreme nutritious food source and therefore they could multiply more easily than those who had not undergone the mutation that we are talking about. This adaptation was good for those who consume milk but also for cows that have multiplied and expanded their habitat (and have improved their health status) all because of this new symbiotic relationships.

woman-with-milk-glass

Among other things, health status is determined by the type of relationships within a food chain extreme varied relation in the human case which is an omnivorous. So, when a link from the food chain health is affected, this can be passed on to all other living creatures that make up that food chain. If the soil is sick or suffering from certain deficiencies so will be the gras growing on it and the cows grazing grass and the people who drink their milk. This is what Weston Price and Sir Howard was thinking when they were trying to establish a connection between these apparent distant spheres: soil and human health. We can not separate our own health from the entire health chain.

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Weston A. Price in the research of healthy food

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

One of the most active voices of the prewar period was Weston A. Price, a dentist of Canadian origin who leaned on one of those questions of common sense, which today can not even ask us. Now, like heart disease, chronic dental problems are a part of our lives.

But if you think about it, it is strange that everyone needs a dentist and that so many people need braces, channel interference, the wisdom tooth extraction and other routine procedures necessary to maintain modern oral hygiene. The need of many remedial interventions for just one body part that is involved in the feeding activity, activity that is essential for our survival, reflects a defect in our design, a kind of omission of the natural selection? It is unlikely.

people-smiling

But what did Price found out? First, he found out that populations that eat traditionally have no need for a dentist.(Well, almost: the teeth of the “strong highlanders” in Switzerland, which have never seen a toothbrush, were covered with a greenish-filing but Price found that, below this layer, the teeth were well formed and had no cavity). Whenever he discovered a primitive population that hasn’t yet contact with “alimentary substitutes of modern trade” - as refined flour, sugar, vegetable oil, canned or preserved food trough chemical ways- revealed very few or none signs of modern degeneration - like chronic diseases, dental caries and dental arches with malformations. These problems were caused either by a certain element of Western diet either a certain deficiency.

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Wherever Price went, he took pictures of the teeth of the populations that he met and took samples from their food and sends these to Cleveland for analysis so that he could determine the content of macro-nutrients and vitamins. He found out that the indigenous diets were much richer in vitamins A and D than the modern U.S. - in average about ten times higher. This was due in a large part to the fact that, as is it was noted in 1930, that by processing food, it loses nutrients, especially vitamins. Trade food are thought to be stored and transported over long distances and the only way that they can become more resilient and less vulnerable to pests is to remove some of the containing nutrients. In general, the calories are much easier to transport- in form of refined cereals or sugar-only nutrients that can alter or attract bacteria, insects and rodents, all extremely interested in these nutrients. (Even more than us, apparently.)

Price concluded that the modern civilization did sacrifice mostly the quality of the food in favor of the quantity and the length of the shelf-life.

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What is known, but is not told Part II

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Some of these researchers planned to observe the Western diseases among isolated populations, in particular, as Albert Schweitzer wrote, among “indigenous people that are increasingly adopting the lifestyle of the white people”. Some have noted that Western diseases appeared shortly after these individuals began to eat Western food, especially refined flour and sugar and other “commercial food“. They also observed a Western disease was always followed by another, often in the same order: obesity was followed by type 2 diabetes, which was followed by hypertension and heart attack, followed by heart diseases.

In the years preceding the Second World War, the medical world held heated discussions about Western diseases and about the conclusions that these lead us regarding to our more and more industrialized lifestyle. The pioneers of this vision claimed that indigenous populations were poorly adapted to certain innovations of modern food, but haven’t reached any consensus on the factors responsible for this state. Burkitt, for example, believed that the guilt is the absence of fiber in the American diet, while McCarrison, a British military doctor, focused his attention on refined carbohydrates while other researchers blamed the consumption of meat and saturated fat, or in case of Price, the appearance of processed food and industrial crops, whit a deficiency in vitamins and minerals.western-lifestyle-002

But not everyone was agreeing with the conceptions that according them, the chronic illnesses were a consequence of Western lifestyles and the industrialization of  food harm our health. One of the objections to this theory was genetic: different races are exposed to different diseases, white people were predisposed to heart attack, and black people were predisposed to diseases like leprosy. Yet, as Burkitt and the other researchers have pointed out, blacks living in America suffered from the same chronic diseases as white Americans. Apparently, moved to America, immigrants belonging to nations with low rates of chronic diseases contracted the diseases.

Another objection brought to the idea of Western diseases, objection that persist even today, was a demographic one. Chronic diseases are so many in the West because of the fact that they occur at relatively late age and, because of the fact that at the beginning of the twentieth century they have become treatable infectious diseases, consequently, we live long enough to suffer from chronic diseases. From this perspective, chronic diseases are the inevitable price of longevity. But if it’s true that life expectancy has increased considerably in the twentieth century (in the U.S. reaching 49 to 77 years), this is due mainly to the fact that more people survive infancy and childhood, in 1900 the life expectancy of a person aged 65 years was only six years less than that of the contemporary age of 65 years. The age reports and the rate of chronic diseases like cancer or diabetes type 2 are higher today than in 1900. This means that, at the present, the chances that a person age 69 or 70 years to suffer from cancer or diabetes type 2 are greater than a century ago. (The situation may be similar also for a heart disease. But it is difficult to pronounce ourselves with certainty, because of the vague statistics from 1900).

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What is known, but is not told Part I

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Eventually, even the largest, most ambitious and most cited study on nutrition and health like Nurses’ Health Study, Women’s Health Initiative and almost all the other, leave the main features of Western food unaffected: many food products and processed meats, many added sugars and fats, except fruit, vegetables and whole grains. According to the nutritionist paradigm and the limits of reductionist science, most researchers are playing with various nutrients individually analyzed, but the subjects with whom they are working are ordinary Americans which are behaving like any ordinary American:          tries to eat smaller amounts of X nutrient and greater quantities of the Y nutrient according to the latest points of view from the nutrition field. But the global nourishment pattern is regarded as a “but” more or less invariable. Therefore probably it should not surprise us the fact that the results of these researches are so modest, equivocal and confuse.

But what about the obvious truth which nobody wants to talk about and what is the food model called Western diet? In the middle of all the nutritional confusion which is getting bigger and bigger, maybe it would be useful to take one step back and fix our eyes on this model, to review all that we know about the Western nutrition and its effects on health. We know that populations that eat like us, Westerners, register much higher rates of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity than those whit a traditionally diet. We also know that those who come to the Occident and behave and adopt our behavior food are quickly affected by these diseases and very often these diseases occur in an extremely virulent form, as happens in case of aboriginal and other indigenous peoples.

girl-on-a-diet-eating

The story so-called Western diseases and their links with Western diet starts in the first decades of the twentieth century. At that time, some brave doctors, Europeans and Americans, working with various indigenous populations around the world have started to notice the virtual absence of chronic disease among these individuals, diseases that in fact had become current in the West. Albert Schweitzer in Africa and Denis P. Burkitt, Robert McCarrison in India, Samuel Hutton among Eskimos of Labrador, anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka among Native Americans and dentist Weston A Price in the middle of 12 different groups from all around the world (among the Peruvian Indians, aborigines from Australia and highlander from Switzerland) are drawn, all similar reports.

Researchers have developed lists, most published in medical journals, whit diseases which haven’t  been discovered on  indigenous populations that have been treated or studied: very few cases or no cases of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, hypertension or heart attack: no case of appendicitis , diverticulitis, deformed dental arches or tooth decay, no case of varicose veins, ulcers or hemorrhoids.

Suddenly, the researchers began to look all these conditions in a new light, just as it is shown by the name of “Western diseases” proposed for the affections by the British doctor Denis Burkitt, who worked in Africa during the Second World War. The formula suggested that these different diseases were somehow related and that probably had a common cause.

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