What Do You Think?

Let's try an experiment... I say, "It's important to your health to buy organic food." 

You say....

Was it, "But it's so expensive?"

If you did, you're not alone. Practically everyone I talk to says this.  I've been wondering why.


If you think about it, it's not necessarily that much more money. I buy organic, free range eggs from a friend for $3.00 a dozen. Even if I didn't buy from her, I could buy similar eggs from my local food coop for $3.25 a dozen. Eggs from my local supermarket are $1.19 a dozen, which you could see as 1/3 of the price or you could see it as a 33 cent difference for the cost of a two egg omlette. The former makes it seem like a big deal, the latter not so much so.


Perhaps it's unfair of me to pick eggs this week when 1/2 billion supermarket eggs have been recalled. (I'm sorry, I suppose that was a low blow.)


Let's talk meat. I'm sure the meat I buy is way, way more expensive than what you're buying if you're not buying organic, grass-fed, free-range beef ($9.99 a pound for mine). I admit it, this would significantly raise my grocery bill if I cooked beef very often. But I don't. I use it the way it was used in generations past and the way it's used in most of the world: as an occasional meal or as a condiment. I don't base a meal around meat anymore. It's just clearly a major culprit in our health-care woes. The beans and whole grains I use instead are much less expensive (even buying organic) so cutting down on meat both allows me to eat more healthfully and have money in my budget to buy higher priced (organic) beans.


I'm not here to lecture, however. I'd like to start a dialog.  I'd love to know why you think buying organic, local, or small-batch food isn't worth the price. 

My best guess is that food seems to be gone once it's eaten. It seems to have no lasting value. Buy a couch and you sit on it in your living room every night. Take a vacation to Morocco and you have photos and memories forever. Eat breakfast and you've forgotten what you had by lunchtime. We don't really about how the food we eat builds our body and becomes our cells so it's easy to lose sight of the fact that good quality food really does keep us healthier. Or, maybe we all just don't know this or believe it.


What do you think? Am I on to something here? What's your theory? I'd love to know!

Brownies for the Brave

Many of us think our taste preferences are set - that we like what we like, dislike what we dislike and have no control over it. However, this is only so if you make it so. If you are determined to keep your tastes static, they will be. But, if you keep an open mind, you'll find your taste preferences will change depending on what you eat.

Processed food has altered our tastes. Many foods have both salt and sugar in them. The reason for this is pretty devious. If you eat foods containing one flavor at a time (i.e., sweet, salty, bitter, pungent, etc.) you'll eat a certain amount and then feel sated (satisfied). However, combine tastes and this process gets overridden and you'll keep eating and eating and eating. Food processors know this and have added salt and sugar (the major flavors that Americans eat) to all sorts of food.

Don't believe me? Then go into your kitchen - right now - and start checking labels. Sugar in soup? Yup! Salt in breakfast cereal? Uh-huh. Keep going. You'll find both in just about everything.

Not only that - let's take a step back to what you already know - that processed food has more sodium and sugar than unprocessed foods have. What? You didn't know? Oh, sorry, I assumed you did. They do, and more than they used to. Did you know that McDonald's and Kellogg's both process food for sale in England with much less sodium than the food they sell in the U.S.? (The reason, if you're wondering, is there are laws in England limiting how much sodium can be in processed food - no such laws exist yet in the U.S.)

All this sodium and sugar gets your taste buds used to foods made with a lot of sodium and sugar. So foods with less or none added at all taste bland - at first. But if you cut down or cut out the amount of sodium and sugar you use, you'll get used to it. And then, something truly interesting happens: you start to taste the flavor of the foods themselves. And they start to taste good!

I stopped adding table salt to my cooking years ago. We've all gotten to the point where food made with added salt tastes....salty. Not good salty, just salty.

Harry, my much-written-about-in-this-blog son, was a huge, and I mean huge sugar-junkie for years. This spring he finally agreed to let me rework his diet. I took out all added sugar. I even took dried fruit out of his diet. An interesting thing happened: he started eating fruit, willingly. Yesterday, a few months after his diet change, on our way to his first day of college, as I was doing my nervous mother routine of telling him everything I thought he needed to know to survive the next ten months without me (as if there are no cell phones in this strange new world he moved to), I begged him to take a piece of fruit out of the dining hall with him after each meal (this is allowed and encouraged by the school so the students have a healthy snack option between meals). "I plan on it, Mom, " Harry told me. "I love fruit." "What?" I said, almost crashing the car in shock. "Yes," he said, "I love the taste of fruit." Removing the added sugar from his diet achieved what I'd long given up on - that Harry would ever actually enjoy eating a piece of fruit. Without the added sugars, Harry can now taste and enjoy the natural sweetness of fruit.

Why take added sugar out of your diet? Not only because it can lead to weight gain but also because it fills you up with empty calories -- so instead of eating nutritious food, you're eating....nothing that's going to keep you healthy and energized. Also, sugar consumption speeds the aging process of your cells and organs. You don't have to give up all added sugars to reap benefits and taste more subtle flavors; just cutting down will help.

So, if you're ready for a challenge, I offer this recipe by my at-home personal healthy chef in residence: my dear, delightful, darling, and uber-talented daughter, Kit Collins. To be quite honest, my first reaction was, "Huh, where's the sweetness?" But, then I found myself being drawn back for another bite, and another, and another. They're really chocolaty, and chocolate without all the sugar is an antioxidant-rich treat. I know Harry would have loved these. He's missing out - that's what he gets for leaving for college!

Brownies for the Brave

Minimally sweet, these cakey brownies have a dense toothsomeness and delicious dark-chocolate flavor. 

10 pitted dates

Dash of water

1 1/2 c spelt flour

1 c unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 Tbs ground flax seeds

1 egg

1/2 c coconut oil, more for the pan

1 c applesauce

3/4 c rice milk

In a food processor, whirl dates with water until they reach a malleable, paste-y consistency. Combine flour, cocoa powder, and flax seeds in a medium bowl. Mix in egg, coconut oil, applesauce, rice milk, and date paste. Dough should be thick; mix with hands if needed. Place in 8"x8" glass baking pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let sit until cool to the touch; they won't crumble if you cut them before they're completely cooled. That's because they're delectably dense!  If you're not going to eat these up in a day (and I advice you don't!), store them in the fridge.

Colors!

A fun and easy way to eat healthfully is to choose foods by color and eat a rainbow everyday. Each color in plant food corresponds to different phytonutrients (the nutrients in plants). Phytonutrients are micronutrients (we need them in small amounts) that pack a big punch: we need them to maintain health and avoid disease. Most Americans are overnourished in macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fats) while being undernourished in micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients). That's why we look like we're getting enough nutrition yet the incidence of chronic, preventable disease is going up.

Here's what some of what the different colors contain:
Red: Lycopene - an antioxidant that is being shown to be protective against certain cancers.
Orange: Beta-carotene - this converts in the body to Vitamin A which as we all know is important for eye health.
Yellow: Carotenoids and Lutein - good for the eyes and also helps prevent certain cancers.
Green: Lutein and Zeaxanthin - antioxidants which are important to eyes, bones, and teeth; also protect against cancers.
Blue and Purple: Anthocyanins and Phenolics - these flavonoids are good for the brain, memory, and cardiovascular health.
White: Allicin and Selenium: good for the heart and are anti-cancer agents. And, just to be clear here, we're not talking white bread, pasta, or sugar. We're talking cauliflower, garlic, mushrooms, and potatoes (also bananas and brown pears, but that'll just confuse things).


Do you need to know all of the above information? Nah, I just thought the post needed some details. Actually, it's more complicated than what I wrote - many plant foods contain many phytonutrients and since the field of nutrition is a relatively new science, with phytonutrients having been discovered quite recently, there are surely many that haven't even been isolated yet - which is a very good reason for eating whole foods - since we still don't know all the nutrients in food, it's hubris to think that when we extract out parts we know we're not leaving a crucial part behind - or a part that works synergistically with the rest! 

All you really need to remember is to try to eat a wide variety of colors every day. A great way to find them is to shop at your local farmer's market. 

So, what's for dinner tonight? Here it's the purple potatoes (shown above), roasted in a light olive oil drizzle with carrots, sweet onion, garlic, and kale (thrown on in the last few minutes). I have a pot of black-eyed peas boiling to mix in as well. So, the colors on our plates tonight will be purple, orange, green, and white. I'll slice the tomatoes shown above as well, so add red and yellow and we get to eat a rainbow!

Beets

My daughter Kit had a hankering for beets which worked out well since they're in season. If you hate beets (as I thought I did), perhaps you've never tried them fresh. I grew up on canned beets and, as far I was concerned, they had no redeeming quality. Fresh beets, and I mean really fresh beets, are a whole other story. Buy them from a farmstand or farmer's market and cook them the same day, if at all possible.

The three best things about beets are:
1. The color: when else do you get to play with ruby red if you're not an artist?
2. You can cook the tops and bottoms. When my kids were little, we were fond of a picture book called Tops & Bottoms (Caldecott Honor Book) by Janet Stevens. In it, a crafty rabbit tricks his bear partner out of the best part of their harvest - taking the tops of leafy vegetables and the bottoms of root vegetables. With beets, no matter what trickster you run into, you'll still have a meal: you can eat the beet root (the beets) and the greens as well. Simple recipes for both are further down the post.
3. By the time I'm finished cooking, both my kitchen counter and my hands look like I've just committed a murder. Even so, clean-up's not nearly as scary as it looks like it'll be the first time you cook them.


As with any other deeply colored vegetable, beets are loaded with nutrients.

And, now, for the fun part - How To!

Boiled Beets:
I usually buy two bunches of beets because they're good cold so two bunches means we have enough for a few days (why go through the process if I'm only going to have one meal's worth?).  Cut off the greens about a 1/2 inch from the beet root and put aside. Keep the "tail" of the root attached. Wash the beets and put in a large pot of water (the water should cover the beets). Boil, covered, for 30 minutes or more until you can pierce them with a fork (I often boil them for an hour). Once cooked, put the beets in cold water to cool them off. When cool enough to handle, cut off the remaining stalk and "tail". The skin will slide off in your hands. Slice beets. That's it! You can get fancier if you like, but then you're on your own. I enjoy my veggies with their natural taste so I tend to leave them alone. However, for a change of pace, here's a recipe for:

Spicy Beet Greens:
Double or triple rinse the greens from your beets. Boil them in water for 2 minutes. Submerge them in cold water to stop the cooking process and then strain and squeeze out the liquid from them. Slice two garlic cloves and add them to 3 or 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan (or, if you're lazy like me, the pot you boiled the greens in). Also throw in 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes. Heat the garlic, pepper and oil for a minute, then sautee the greens in them for 3 minutes and you're done. If you have a lemon lying around, you can squeeze some lemon juice on them, too. Again, serve hot or cold.

Beet tops and bottoms. Add a whole grain and you've got dinner!

Salud!