Healthy Fats?

The quick answer:  Plain and simple, most of what you’ve heard about fat in your diet is wrong.  Enjoy the traditional fats in moderation.

_______________________________________________________________________

Politics  and Food

We’ve nothing to say about the current presidential race—we’re keeping our focus on the food reformation.  Well, one thing.  Because this blog is about “wisdom,” won’t you all take a thoughtful view of what’s best for our country and vote wisely? 

But we do have something to say about the role of politicians in our current food mess.  Maybe it’s because women are more about nurturing and politicians are nearly all men, but on nutrition the pols do have a way of getting things backwards.  Take the subject of fats for example, as recounted in Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food.

If the consequences of this tale weren’t so dire, it would make a hilarious story.  Back in 1968 the esteemed Senator George McGovern convened a select committee that addressed the role of diet in chronic disease.  After ten years the committee got to a reasonable conclusion:  We should eat less animal products (and, thusly, more plants).  There are other factors that affect chronic disease—such as lack of exercise, smoking, and our high sugar diet—but this was a pretty good start.

Well, the dairymen and cattlemen saw this is as bad for business and brought all their guns to bear on Senator McGovern and his committee.  You’ll recall that McGovern was from a state with a lot of ranches.  A compromise resulted:  Rather than recommend less red meat and dairy, the committee meekly suggested that Americans “choose meats, poultry, and fish that will reduce saturated fat intake.”

It was bad enough to replace “eat less” with the verb “choose,” which kind of sounded like a recommendation.  But there was a worse mistake:  The committee decided that the villain was saturated fats, which had been safely eaten for centuries.  Even worse, traditional fats like butter were condemned and new factory-made fats—mainly trans fat-laden hydrogenated vegetable oils found in Crisco, margarine, and salad oils—were recommended. 

Though the outcome was a bonanza for Food Inc, it was a disaster for the average American.  And for McGovern also—in the next election the meat and dairy industry threw their support behind his opponent and drove him from office.  It was a display of power and vengeance not missed by other politicians. 

Healthy Fat Basics

Four of our 52 Healthy Changes are dedicated to eating healthy fats and avoiding unhealthy fats.  HEre is a summary of the frist three:

1. Our 2^nd Healthy Change addressed the danger of trans fats, particularly from deep fried foods:  “Never buy deep fat fried foods.”  We also noted the role of a remarkable woman, Dr. Mary Enig, in exposing the danger of trans fats.
2. In Healthy Change #15 we talked about the vital role of omega-3 fats in our diet and recommended consciously adding them to every meal, either in the short-chain form (dark greens, etc.) or the long-chain form (fish, eggs, etc.).  Your brain is 60% fat and 25% is long chain omega-3 fats.  Healthy fats protect against many ills, including dementia.
3. Omega-6 fats are necessary but we eat them to excess.  Because they compete with omega-3 fats, it’s important to have a balance in order to benefit from omega-3 intake.  Two ways to reduce omega-6 fats are to avoid deep fat fried foods, and to avoid starchy foods fried in man-made fats, like chips.  Americans eat a lot of chips so Healthy Change #28 said, “Limit chips to national holidays, or for scooping healthy dips and salsas.”

Cutting Calories

Our fourth and final Healthy Change on fats encourages the consumption of traditional fats (olive oil, butter, etc) in moderation.  As you know a gram of fat, regardless of the type, contains 9 calories.  By contrast, a gram of carbohydrate or protein has just 4 calories.  Because the modern American diet (MAD) has an excess of calories and fat is calorie dense, we’re often told to avoid fats.  We think it better to restrict the worst source of calories—excessive sugar intake—and enjoy healthy fats in moderation.

In Healthy Change #9, we asked families to work together to reduce their intake of meat:  “Agree on a ‘sparing’ meat intake goal as a family and write it down.  Let your goal guide your menus.”  Although we defend the consumption of saturated fat, we agree that Americans eat too much, particularly with their meat.  We need to be moderate.  There’s a natural and beneficial outcome:  If you’re sparing with the meat in your menu, you’ll also reduce your intake of saturated fats to a healthier level and cut calories.

Healthy Change #41:

“Eat traditional fats (olive oil, butter, coconut oil, etc.) in moderation.”  It's naturally simple—eat the fats your ancestors ate.

Toxic Buttery Flavor

Because we support the use of traditional fats like butter, it’s important that we distinguish between real butter and foods described as “buttery.”  Buttery is a taste claim attached to many factory foods, like the new spreads that have replaced margarine, microwave popcorn products, some candies, and many baked goods.  You won’t see the chemical behind that buttery taste on the ingredient list; it’s usually hidden under the chemical stew of “artificial flavors.” 

The chemical commonly used to give the buttery taste contains diacetyl.  Diacetyl is toxic to humans and has been linked in the laboratory to Alzheimer’s disease.  If you watched this week’s Dr. Oz (see it here), he spoke about the possible danger of diacetyl and recommended it be avoided until more is known.  Sounds like a good application of the “century rule” to me.  (Century Rule:  Avoid foods that haven’t been around for at least a century.  This rule basically rules out most factory foods, especially those containing “artificial flavors.”)

Please comment:  Is there a fat or oil you see as particularly bad?  What are your favorite healthy fats?  What oils do you most use in cooking.

Love Chocolate?

The quick answer:  You women (and the occasional men) who read this blog are exceptional—you get nutrition and you care enough to make changes.  For all you do, you deserve a treat—like chocolate. 

_______________________________________________________________________

 The Joy of Eating

Though I’m both a descendent and a respecter of the Puritans who founded our country . . . we’re not puritanical when it comes to food.  It’s good to enjoy food, especially in the company of family and friends.  That’s our position but we’re talking about real food, not the packaged food-like substances made in factories.

Which brings us to the subject of chocolate.  In an interesting survey, Americans associated chocolate cake with guilty pleasure, while the French linked it with celebration.  No Puritans in France it seems, but on the subject of food we can learn from the French. 

Chocolate isn’t yet proven to be a health food—we should make that clear.  On any given day, an apple, orange, or banana is probably a better idea than a chocolate treat.  But life is to be enjoyed and I want to think there’s room for both—like melted chocolate drizzled over fruit.

There are both healthy and unhealthy ways to enjoy chocolate.  Basically, dark chocolate is healthier than milk chocolate, or white chocolate.  With dark chocolate (60-90% cocoa) you get more of the natural good stuff in chocolate and less additives like sugar. 

I just checked the shelf where the beautiful wife keeps her treats.  Sure enough, there was a bag of Ghiradelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips.  Whether you spell it cacao, like the British, or cocoa, it’s her favorite treat.  I like it too, with almonds or walnuts.

Chocolate Benefits

1. Magnesium:  Chocolate is rich in magnesium.  Americans are widely deficient of this mineral (see this post), so essential to bone health and many human enzymes.  The Nurses Health Study found that women with the highest level of serum magnesium had 77% less risk of fatal heart attacks than women with the lowest level.  Chocolate is good for your bones, as well as your heart.
2. Antioxidants:  Critical to fighting the free radicals that cause premature aging, antioxidants are plentiful in chocolate, as well as broccoli, blueberries, red grapes, strawberries, and apples.  For more on antioxidants, go here.
3. Vascular health:  A recent Harvard study of 2575 people found that cocoa consumption reduced blood pressure (by about 5 systolic points on average), improved blood vessel health, and lowered cholesterol, among other benefits.  Chocolate consumption also helped diabetes.

The Century Rule

You may be wondering, isn’t chocolate a highly processed food?  Actually, it is.  But we turn to the Century Rule, which says that processed foods should be used for at least a century before being considered safe.  Cocoa has been consumed for millennia and is linked to many health benefits.  So, like spices, also rich in antioxidants, it’s a traditional processed food with a beneficial history.  But remember chocolate is a concentrated source of calories so it’s best enjoyed with fruit and nuts.

Please comment:  Share your favorite ways to enjoy chocolate, especially those that are healthiest.

The Peace Within

The quick answer:  Worried sick?  Better take control of your stress.
__________________________________________________________________

A Cabin in the Woods

Way back in the ‘30s, my grandfather had the brilliant idea to build a cabin in the woods.  I loved its rough-sawn exterior and knotty pine interior.  To get to it you left the highway, crossed over a wooden bridge, and took a narrow dirt road through the forest.  The cabin had a large shady porch perfect for sitting and reading.  For 75 years that cabin—shown above—was a gathering place for our family.  Though our means were modest, our little cabin in the woods made us children rich as any king. 

My fondest childhood memories revolve around that cabin.  I remember climbing upstairs to bed, a little frightened to be alone, and going to sleep while the flame from a kerosene lamp flickered on the walls.  I awoke in the morning to the sound and smell of wood crackling downstairs in the fireplace.  The morning sun, shining through the trees, replaced the darkness of the night.  I had survived the night to enjoy another heavenly day at the cabin.

Life can be stressful, even for kids, but at our cabin I never felt anything but peace. 

Dr Dean Ornish

A current N. Y. Times article, “Dieting for Health, Not Weight” by Dr. Dean Ornish—famous for advocating prevention of heart disease through lifestyle improvement—supports the position of Word of Wisdom Living:

“In 35 years of medical research . . . we have seen that patients who ate mostly plant-based meal . . . engaged in moderate exercise and stress-management techniques . . . . [enjoyed]improved blood flow and significantly less inflammation which matters because chronic inflammation is an underlying cause of heart disease and many forms of cancer. We found that this program may also slow, stop or reverse the progression of early stage prostate cancer, as well as reverse the progression of Type 2 diabetes.”

That’s a lot but Dr. Ornish found additional health benefits for his plant-based, low-meat program, including:

1. In just three months of healthful living, the expression of over 500 genes that protect against disease was activated,
2. Telomerase length (indicative of gene health and longevity) improved,
3. Weight loss (loss of 24 pounds in a year and 12 lbs of net weight loss maintained after five years.

Dr. Ornish’s program, as noted above is based on a whole foods diet, exercise, and management of stress.  This post is about stress.

Stress

There may be shortages of some things in life, but there’s always enough stress to go around.  But stress, though a bit is necessary to get us moving in the morning, is toxic in excess.  Most of our Healthy Changes are about eating right, four support exercise, but just one addresses stress.  So, for your own good, please take some time to ponder this Healthy Change.

We discussed stress in a post last year.  We talked about Hans Selye (1907-1982) the doctor best known for linking chronic stress with disease.  We discussed the role chronic stress plays in premature aging (the meanest cut), cancer, and heart disease. The list goes on.

There’s a ratchet quality to stress—after a stress episode, we often don’t return to the relaxed state.  Rather there is a residue that remains so that in the next bout—and there’ll always be another episode—we’re driven to higher and higher levels of stress.  When caught in these chronic stress cycles, we take it as the new “normal.”  Like fish in water, we can be quite unaware of a toxic stress level.  This is very common when the economy is bad, like right now.

Finding Peace

The key is not to run faster but to step out of the stress cycle.   Here are seven ways from the prior post:

1. Family: The supporting love of family can be a great comfort.  Who hasn’t come home from work, carrying all the troubles of the day on their shoulders, and found instant relief by getting down and wrestling with the kids?
2. Best friends:  A study of English children found being with their best friend gave the best relief from stress.  Cortisol, the stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands, was most effectively relieved for children by best friends.  Who’s your best friend?
3. Music: The beautiful wife just saw a bumper sticker for the classical music station:  “Less stress, more Strauss.”
4. Exercise:  Strengthening the body helps it to relax and stimulates a similar process for the mind.
5. Worship:  Don’t you find, in the rhythm of church ritual, clarification of what’s really important?  Whatever your faith, the God who orders the universe knows your name and proffers His peace. 
6. Meditation:  Thinking more deeply about whatever troubles you can lead to new insights, and better paths to follow. 
7. Laugh:  Remember Ferris Bueller?  Life goes by pretty fast; if you don’t stop and have a little fun, you just might miss out

Please Comment:  Too much  stress for comfort?  Share your best stress reduction experiences.   Been worried sick?  It happens.  How do you get well?  Stress is one ailment where you can be your own best doctor.

Cruciferous Vegetables

The quick answer:  Cruciferous vegetables—learn to love them, they’re nutritional champs you should eat most days of the week.

_______________________________________________________________________

The Cruciferous Family

These vegetables are named for their four-lobed flower, which has the shape of a cross, thus cruciferous.  They’re sometimes called the mustard family because they include the mustard greens.  Examples are arugula, bok choy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and radishes.

The cruciferous veggies are nutritional rock stars—dollar for dollar, it’s hard to find a better value. Researchers are giving them a lot of attention, and finding these benefits (for more, read here):

Vitamins:  These plants, especially the leaves, are a concentrated source for B complex vitamins, vitamin K, plus the antioxidant vitamins A and C.

Antioxidants:  The cruciferous family is rich in antioxidants including vitamins A and C (noted above), minerals like manganese, and phytonutrients such as lutein, retinol, and beta-carotene.

Fiber:  If you grade foods as calorie dense (sweetened factory foods) or nutrient dense (natural whole foods) the cruciferous vegetables are the champs.  For example a 100-calorie serving (about 5% of the daily calories) provides 25-40% of fiber need. 

Fighting Cancer

Evidence is still being gathered through studies but cruciferous vegetables may offer anti-cancer protection.  They are known to protect cell DNA, inactivate carcinogens, provide anti-inflammatory aid, and mitigate tumor growth and migration. 

Vegetable Value

A lot of silliness passes for truth in the media.  For example, you often hear laments that poor people can’t afford to eat well.  That may be true in some third-world country, but poor has a different meaning in America.  So we strongly disagree that the poor can’t eat healthy.  In fact, Word of Wisdom Living claims it’s actually cheaper to eat healthy if you’re willing to do three things:

1. Write a weekly menu.
2. Shop from a grocery list,
3. Cook your own food (or be on good terms with a cook).

We made the argument for healthier is cheaper in the post, “Does It Really Cost More To Eat Right?”  Vegetables and whole grains are the all-stars from the healthy but affordable diet.     

How much food do you eat in a year?  Most people, depending on metabolism and energy needs, eat 1200-1500 pounds of food a year.  Most vegetables cost less than $1.00/lb in season.  You can buy most grains for around a buck also.  Bottom line, it’s pretty cheap to eat healthy if you build your diet on veggies and whole grains.

Loving Vegetables

Last year, in the post titled “Hate Vegetables?”, we talked about America’s vegetable aversion.  The central challenge in eating healthier is to eat the recommended 5 daily servings of vegetables. 

This Healthy Change—one of eight on vegetables—addresses the cruciferous family:

Please comment:  Share your favoritre way of enjoying cruciferous vegetables.  Some like them with a cheese sauce—it's the healthiest use of cheese I can think of.

Skip's Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Food Processes

Don’t get me wrong, food processing isn’t all bad.  Your great-grandmother probably used some of the 32 food processing methods recognized by the FDA.  She likely dried apples for use in winter, preserved berries for jam, fermented cabbage into sauerkraut, or milk into yogurt, or pickled beets from the garden.  These traditional processes extend the shelf life of crops to last through the winter.

Other processes make food healthier.  Sprouting grains can make trace minerals more available by reducing phytic acid, and increase vitamins A and C.  Cooking tomatoes releases the lycopene, a potent antioxidant.  Fresh tomatoes are great, but be sure to enjoy pasta with tomato sauce too.

Make vs Buy

In the prior post we discussed the proper limits on food processing and opened the door to doing more home processing.  Commenting, reader Laura noted that she makes her own cheese and Graham crackers.  Jessica observed it’s a balancing act, what to make at home; she prefers to buy both pasta and spaghetti sauce.  (Though we did post a recipe for Real Spaghetti Sauce.)

There’s an interesting book, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, by Jennifer Reese that reviews the various make vs. buy decisions.  Reese, newly out of a job, decided to cut costs by doing more of her food processing.  She found it cheaper to buy butter, but better to make your own bread.  Reese tried a lot of home-made items but I’d like to add one: oatmeal cookies—the subject of this post.  You can't buy cookies with this kind of love and taste in the store.

Skip’s Oatmeal Cookies

I started with the recipe on the Quaker Oats box and made these changes:

• Butter:  We like a crisper cookie, so I reduced flour ¼ cup and increased butter ¼ cup.  This helped but I learned to also press the dough flat with a fork for an even thinner, crisper cookie.
• Sugar:  The recipe called for 1-¼ C of sugar (3/4 C brown sugar plus ½ C white sugar).  We reduced this to 1 C turbinado sugar (less processed; slightly more vitamins and minerals), though we use regular brown sugar if turbinado isn’t available.
• Flour:  I used fresh-ground wheat flour instead of store-bought flour.  This made a crumbly cookie, especially in humid weather.  After some experimenting, I solved this by combining whole-wheat flour and white flour.  Another solution, if you want 100% whole-wheat flour, is to add 1 tbsp of wheat gluten.
• Seasoning:  We replaced the cinnamon and raisins with walnuts (source of omega-3) and dark chocolate chips (60% cacao; rich in antioxidants).  The beautiful wife says some prefer the semi-sweet chips, but darker means more of the healthy cacao.  There’s nothing wrong with cinnamon and raisins—just a taste preference.

Skip’s Oatmeal Cookie Recipe  (Guess I made enough changes to put my name on the recipe.)

Ingredients:

• 1 C butter (2 sticks, or 16 oz.)
• 1 C turbinado or brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• ¾ C fresh whole-wheat flour
• ½ C all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 3 C oats
• 1 C chopped walnuts
• 2/3 C small dark chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Cream butter and brown sugar together.  (Some experts claim that colder butter results in less crumbly cookies, but I didn’t see a difference in my testing.)
2. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
3. Add flour, baking soda, and salt.  Blend well.
4. Add oats, walnuts, and chips.  Stir together.
5. Drop on cookie pan (rounded tablespoon size nuggets) and flatten with a fork (as though you were making peanut butter cookies).  We don’t coat the pan but we have a cheap aluminum pan that gets a little sticky and I’m cautious of aluminum cookware so we drop the dough on parchment paper with this pan. 
6. Bake about 12 minutes at 350 F.  Makes about 4 dozen.  We put some in zip-lock sandwich bags to freeze (so I won’t eat them all at once).

Limit Processed Foods

The quick answer:  Food Inc will continue to invent highly processed food-like substances as long as we’re willing to buy them.  Invest your money in real food, as minimally processed and close to Nature as practical.

_______________________________________________________________________

Looking Back

In the food jungle, it’s on the buyer to beware of harmful food.  Emptor caveat, as they say.  The perpetrators of junk food wear a dignified title: Food scientist.  I’m acquainted with a food scientist.  He earned a PhD in the subject and spent his career as a college professor and consultant.  He’s one of the most dignified and honorable people you might ever meet.  So they’re not all necessarily bad guys.

Yet food scientists brought us the processed junk foods and fast foods of the 20^th century.  You can’t blame this on any single person, it happened in small steps. But it’s said that future historians will look back on 20^th century food in the same way we see the 19^th century Irish Potato Famine, where a million people died of starvation while the world looked away   I fear more have died of the modern American diet (MAD) though we do die with full stomachs.  Small comfort.

Today wise people are turning away from the MAD and food scientists are on the defensive.  They see themselves as feeding the world through the innovation of new foods and food processes.  But others say their processes create today’s toxic food.  Are they apologetic?  Not that I can see—they defend their work and hope to invent even more processes and food-like inventions.  They’ll only change their ways when we stop buying.

20^th Century Food Processing Binge

We need a minimal amount of food processing.  Milk must be turned to yogurt or cheese; cream to butter.  It’s good, I think, that the seasons of crops have been extended through packaging and better storage.   Processing, done within limits, can extend the shelf life of foods to get us through winter, or famine.  

But there were no limits to the industrialization of our food supply—processing changed the very nature of food.  Waste cottonseed was solvent-refined and hydrogenated to make Crisco, margarine, and then vegetable oil.  Later soybeans were genetically modified to provide a cheaper oil supply.  Nobody worried about trans fats, or the effects of refining and bleaching oil.

Animal-sourced gelatin and cheap sugar were combined to create a famous brand—Jell-O.  The roller mill made white, long-lasting flour that weevils wouldn’t eat by removing nutrients—think Wonder Bread. 

The Oreo cookie was a clever combination of refined sugar, refined flour, refined oil, and preservatives, plus a smidgen of cocoa.  Yes, I know it’s the 100^th anniversary of the Oreo but please remember that our love for Oreos is also a measure of a food culture gone awry.  Whats more, no Oreo compares with Skip's Chocolate Oatmeal cookies (pictured above, recipe to follow).

In fact, many 20^th century factory foods were just combinations of sugar, modified food starch (processed wheat, corn or soy flour), refined vegetable oils, and salt, plus emulsifiers, preservatives, coloring agents, and artificial flavoring.  The ingredients were cheap and deficient of nutrients; we foolishly accepted Food Inc's siren song that the value was in the brand, not the nutrients.

Man’s willingness to redesign Nature’s bounty got so out of hand that Gerald Wendt, science director of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, made the block-headed claim that in the future modern food “will abandon all pretense of imitating nature.” 

A further indictment of Food Inc is found in the book The Real Food Revival:  “Industrially processed foods—convenience foods such as snacks, fast food, and heat-and-serve items that are processed by the vat full at a centralized factory—are the garbage dump of the food industry.”  (Italics added.)

Limits of Food Processing

Some processing is needed.  But the closer we can eat food to the form in which it was first created, the healthier we’ll be.  That’s a statement worth repeating:  The closer we can eat food to the form in which it was first created, the healthier we’ll be.

Or better said, the healthiness of food is related to how much processing is done by you, in your kitchen.  If you process—cook—it yourself, you’ll always know what’s been done to your food.  It’s the one place where we should be in control.

If you think long and hard about the proper limits of food processing, you might come up with rules like these three: 

1. The Creation Rule:  Show reverence for the Creation by eating foods as close as practical to their natural form.  I’ve commented on this before, but there’s wisdom in the guidance found in the first chapter of Genesis.  In between the Creation of earth and man, the creation of our food supply is elucidated.  Eating natural foods shows reverence for the Creation.  This is not easy; humans hate boredom and love novelty.  Food Inc preys on this vulnerability by regularly introducing new shiny objects.  The key is a mature appreciation for natural food and a distain for Food Inc’s food-like counterfeits.
2. The Century Rule:  Wait three generations before eating man-made foods created from new processes.  Thanks to the FDA/USDA, new foods rarely bring acute toxicity.  But many are chronically unhealthy—harmful over the long term.  The Century Rule would have protected you from eating hydrogenated food products.  The first, Crisco, was introduced in 1911 and by 2011 just about everyone knew about the danger of trans fats, though many still ignore the problem. A new example is the butter-like spreads sold as margarine replacements.  They aren’t hydrogenated, but they are made with a newly introduced process called interesterification.  Is it healthy and wholesome over the long term?  Maybe, but no one knows for sure.  In our home, we’ll stick to butter.  We likewise avoid the puffed breakfast cereals and chips.
3. The Fiber Rule:  Cereal foods must contain more natural fiber than added sugar.  Fiber is a part of all plant products and processing generally removes it to make processed foods sweeter and whiter.  This rule requires whole grains be used and strictly limits added sugar.  It can be applied to breakfast cereals, breads, most snack foods, and bakery products.  In fact, this rule eliminates almost everything in the typical supermarket bakery or bread and breakfast aisle.

Food Inc will continue to offer new food-like substances, using cleverly deceptive advertising campaigns that ignore or obscure the truth.  It's how they make their money.  Protect yourself from such shiny objects by applying this Healthy Change:

Please comment:  Suggest foods you feel are appropriately processed, and healthy.  Tell us about processes you have learned to do for yourself. Got a better rule for defining minimal processing?  Please share it.

Live vs Dead Flour

The quick answer:  Freshly ground flour is live, and should be refrigerated or frozen, if not immediately used.  It’s healthier, but has a limited shelf life.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

John and Leah Widtsoe

In 1937 John and Leah Widtsoe coauthored a nutrition guide titled, The Word of Wisdom, A Modern Interpretation.  We are at the 75^th anniversary of this remarkable and prescient book—the best book ever written on the Word of Wisdom, in my view. 

The Widtsoes were remarkably well qualified.  He had earned a chemistry PhD in Germany, the birthplace of nutrition science; had been a chemistry professor and president of two colleges; and served in the highest council of the Mormon Church as an apostle.  Leah was a formidable woman, a granddaughter of Brigham Young, a university graduate when this was uncommon for women, and had traveled east to study domestic science at the Pratt Institute. 

Though much has been learned since the Widtsoe’s time, their guidance was right on target: eat less sugar, more whole grains, less meat, and more vegetables.  An oft-repeated warning against refined grains was included in their book:  “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead.”  

The book caused quite a stir and became a force for better nutrition.  Unfortunately, World War II soon consumed the public’s attention and in the following post-war prosperity, sound nutrition was forgotten.  I think the loss of focus on nutrition was almost a greater tragedy than the war itself.  Only in recent years has public focus returned to healthy food.

In Praise of Whole Grains

A prior post, In Praise of Whole Grains, proposed this Healthy Change: “Enjoy a variety of whole grains.  The post summarized all we have said about enjoying whole grains, including the highly popular post, Waking Up In The Bread Aisle, where we evaluated all the bread in a typical supermarket bread aisle by the rule, “Bread must contain more grams of fiber than sugar.” 

A few, perhaps 3% of the population, are allergic to wheat or intolerant of gluten.  Fortunately there are a variety of grains available. 

Live vs Dead Flour

In the past you could buy refined, bleached, and yes, enriched, flour at the local grocery and store it for years.  Why does it store for so long without spoiling?  Because it’s dead as an Egyptian mummy.  Think, dead flour.

Freshly ground live flour, on the other hand, is much healthier but has a limited shelf life.  When the grinder crushes the wheat kernel, vitamins, omega-3 fats, and other phytonutrients are exposed to the air and begin to oxidize.  The kernel is a remarkable time capsule, capable of preserving the contents for years.  But we must relearn how to care for wheat once grinding has compromised the kernel.  The most noticeable change is a slightly bitter taste and a faint odor of rancidity.

This is an important point.  In our home, when we make bread, we grind wheat kernels into flour and immediately mix the bread.  We preserve the leftover flour in our freezer in a dated container.

The whole-wheat flour you buy in the grocery store, unfortunately, is 4-6 months old when you buy it.  I think this is a better product than the white, refined, enriched white flour, but it’s not ideal, due to the months of exposure. 

In a prior post I reviewed my conversation with two principal suppliers of whole-grain flour—King Arthur and Bob’s Red Mill.  I think these companies provide a valuable service so I’m loath to criticize.  But in an ideal world, it’s best to use freshly ground flour, or flour we have stored in a freezer after grinding. 

The best answer, I think, is to copy the idea of coffee grinders available in many supermarkets.  If we can have fresh-ground coffee, why can’t we have fresh-ground wheat flour?  It makes more sense for the local grocery or health food store to provide a grinder for customer use than for all of us to buy grinders for our homes.

 

Please share how you preserve your whole grain flours.  Also, what is your preferred method of grinding?

Skip's Poached Salmon

Swiss Days

As you know the beautiful wife is half-Swiss, so we can’t miss that great celebration in tiny Midway, Utah, known as Swiss Days.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it—a small town of perhaps 3000 people stands up on its tiptoes and puts on a two-day celebration that attracts 100,000.  In addition to a vast display of crafts for sale, there is music (lots of yodeling), food (traditional foods like Swiss tacos, which look a lot like Navajo tacos), and a parade with kids, horses, ballet or martial arts students, old tractors and farm trucks, the high school marching band plus cheerleaders, and a few barking dogs. 

So many come that the fields outside of town are harvested of alfalfa and turned into parking lots; buses provide transportation into town.  Mothers come from distant parts with daughters and granddaughters, and they get an early start on Holiday shopping.  For many, walking through rows of booths is an end-of-summer tradition.

 

Our congregation here is responsible for the pie and ice cream booth.  You get a souvenir cap if you volunteer and we have a stack from years past.  The last three years of studying nutrition, plus 20 months of writing this blog, have caused a sea change in our food tastes.  In the beginning I would enjoy several kinds of pie.  Now, after cutting and serving a thousand or more servings, we didn’t feel like eating any.

That’s what the food revolution does—it slowly changes your tastes from the sugary, salty, processed stuff of the modern American diet to food that is more natural, healthful, and minimally processed.  Thinking of the pie we skipped, the beautiful wife pouted, “One more food I used to love that I don’t want anymore.”  It’s not the first time she’s said this but the BW is really cute when she pouts. Which, of course, brings us to this week’s recipe.

 

Skip’s Poached Salmon Recipe

Salmon is a rich source of the long-chain omega-3 fats.  There are lots of ways to prepare it but here's one that adds to the flavor, retains moisture, and makes a nice presentation.  We served it with Swiss chard (we're big on anything Swiss this weekend) and cantaloupe.

Ingredients:

2 T butter

1 scallion or green onion, sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

½ tsp dill

½ C stock (chicken)

½ C water

½ lemon, quartered

Parsley, chopped

Sauce

¼ C Skip’s Homemade Mayo (or store-bought)

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 squeeze lemon juice

½ tsp dill

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. In a frying pan that can be covered, or a Dutch kettle, sauté scallion lightly in butter, adding garlic and dill near the end. 
2. Maintaining heat, add stock and water to sauté, bring to a boil.  Add salmon fillet, skin side down.  Salmon should be just covered with liquid.  Cover pan and poach salmon 6-10 minutes (depending on thickness) until flaky.
3. While salmon is cooking combine sauce ingredients and season to taste. 
4. Garnish salmon with sauce, chopped parsley, juice from lemon, and serve.

Long Chain Omega-3 Fats

The quick answer:  Omega-3 fats are essential to health.  Green plants provide the short chain type; the animals that eat green plants provide the long chain form.  You need both.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Fat Healthy Changes

The majority of scientists and nutritionists have been at war with traditional fats for the past generation.  Sensing an opportunity, Food Inc. has parachuted into that war—you can now buy non-fat, low-fat or reduced fat, versions of all kinds of foods.  You can even buy non-fat half-and-half.  Imagine that.

One can usually pick out the recipes that originated during the anti-fat era because they piously specify factory-modified (low-fat, or non-fat) rather than natural full fat products.  Unfortunately, while we were processing traditional fats out of the national dietary, the diseases this was supposed to help continued to increase—I’m talking about overweight, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. 

The crazy thing is that while we were reducing traditional fats on one hand, we ate increasing amounts of the most toxic of fats—anything deep fat fried.  The deep fat fryer—loaded with trans fats and highly oxidized refined vegetable oils—was used to cook more and more of the fast foods and take-out foods we buy.  It’s a rare restaurant that doesn’t have a deep fat fryer hidden back in the kitchen.  Think anything French-fried, most crispy chicken, donuts—these are, in my view, among the most toxic foods offered for purchase.

So we’re contrarians on the subject of fats.  We say enjoy traditional fats but avoid factory-refined fats.  Healthy Change #2 forbids the consumption of anything deep fat fried.  But we also note that when you limit yourself to a sparing amount of meat—Healthy Change #9—you will automatically eat less fat. 

Essential Fats

Certain fats—omega-3 and omega-6, as they are known—are essential.  As noted in a prior post, for good health you must include them in your diet.  Generally, we eat too little omega-3 and too much omega-6.  The crazy thing is that omega-3 fats are the most plentiful on the planet—they’re found in everything green, whether on land or in the sea.  The refined vegetable oils are a big source of omega-6.  So if you eat more green stuff and minimize refined oils, you’re moving in the right direction.

A Fat Primer

Here’s a quick primer on fats.  When a fat chain stands alone it’s called a fatty acid.  The structure of a fatty acid is like your spine.  Think of your vertebras as a chain of carbon atoms.  The bony processes at both ends of your spine are like the head (alpha end) and tail (omega end) of a fatty acid. Now most of your vertebrae have two ribs attached, so replace the ribs with hydrogen atoms and you have a complete fatty acid, comprised of carbon, hydrogen, plus the alpha and omega ends.   It’s that simple.

Two major characteristics of fats:

1. The length of the fatty acid—the number of carbon atoms—matters.  So-called short chain fats have six or less; the very long chain fats have 22 or more.  Short chains are a good energy source; long chain fats provide more complicated functions.
2. Degree of saturation—if a carbon is missing the hydrogen atoms it’s considered unsaturated.  If every carbon has both hydrogen atoms, then it’s a saturated fat.  The more unsaturated a fat is, the more active.  So fats that are highly active, like in your brain or eyes, are highly unsaturated.  Omega-3 fats are unsaturated at the 3^rd carbon from the tail, or omega end.

The degree of saturation affects the point at which fats become solid.  Butter is mostly saturated and is solid at room temperature.  Olive oil is mostly monounsaturated so is liquid at room temperature but mostly solid in the refrigerator. 

The polyunsaturated omega-3 fats are hard to freeze, which is what keeps cold-water fish like salmon from being stiff as a board in Arctic waters.  All of these fats are important to our health.  A simple rule is to eat a moderate amount of natural fats and minimize man-made or highly processed fats.

Long Chain Omega-3 Fats

Omega-3 fats are highly unsaturated and essential to your health; they come in short and long chain forms.  Basically, we get the short chain omega-3 fats from green plants.  As noted above, we get the long chain omega-3 fats from animals that eat those green plants, whether on land or sea. 

The two long chain omega-3 fats of most interest to humans are EPA and DHA.  The inititals come from the Greek for the number of carbons in the fat, 20 and 22 respectively.  (The short chain omega-3 fats typically have 18 carbons.)  These longer and more unsaturated fats have incredible flexibility and reactivity which is why they're so good at data processing in your eyes, nervous system, and brain.  It's also why they turn rancid so fast if not refrigerated.  You get the bad with the good.  To give foods longer shelf lifes, omega-3 fats essential to health were ignorantly removed from most processed foods.  Maybe that's enough info for now.

Important:  Pastured animals are rich in omega-3 fats but feedlot or caged animals fed dried grains are deficient.  Your health depends on the health of the animals you eat—if possible, it’s best to eat pastured meats and wild game.  So it's a good thing if your hunter husband comes home with a moose.

As noted above, Healthy Change #15 advised eating omega-3 fats with every meal.  The picture above shows typical sources.  Your body can convert long chain omega-3 to the essential long chain form, but has a limited capacity.  So for good health, you need to regularly include long-chain sources in your diet.

Your brain is 60% fat—so being called a fathead is OK—but 25% of that fat is long chain omega-3.  So you can see that if your diet is deficient in omega-3 fats, especially long chain omega-3 fats, your risk of dementia and such brain deficiencies is much higher.

Per the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans, we try to eat two servings of long chain omega-3 fats each week.  We eat lots of greens and nuts and include flaxseed in our breakfast compote, but these only provide the short chain form.  For the long chain, we try to eat two servings of fish, perhaps salmon at dinner and tuna at lunch.  Shrimp salad is another favorite.  If you’re married to a trout fisherman, think of him as an omega-3 source.  We also buy high omega-3 eggs (flaxseed or algae is typically added to their diet but free-range is best). 

Here’s a simple rule:  The more green plant life in the diet and the colder the habitat of the animal or fish, the higher the omega-3 content. 

Please comment:  How do you include the long chain omega-3 fats in your diet?  Have a recipe to share?  Later we’ll post the recipe for Skip’s Poached Salmon.

Fruit in Season

The quick answer:  The average American eats one serving of fruit daily.  The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends four servings.  Get the picture?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Small town Gothic

We drove to Utah yesterday, to visit little Midway in time for Swiss Days.  I’ll follow with a post on Swiss Days—it fascinates me.  The Beautiful Wife, as you’ll recall, is half-Swiss.

Along the way I left the freeway for a small country road.  The BW, dozing, was instantly awake.  “Where are we going?” she queried.  “An adventure,” I responded.  We visited a tiny farm town—Levan—that had hardly changed in a century.  We drove by fields with the local crops, alfalfa and cattle.  There were quaint homes built a century or more ago, and some that were new.  Lovely old barns, many filled with hay, decorated the town. 

We didn’t know a soul in Levan, but these are friendly people and soon we were seated in a kitchen, visiting with a spry couple in their 90s.  Their home—clean, neat, and simple—was an old brick farmhouse, though it had been remodeled several times.  A little ways off was an old barn; nearby a much-used pick-up truck, and tractor.  The husband had been picking apples from an ancient tree in the yard.  Jars of canned applesauce sat on the counter. 

These good people had reared their family farming and raising cattle.  They had the lean, fit appearance of people who had worked hard for many years.  “We raised cattle on our farm,” the man said, “but we’re older and the land is leased out now.”  They still kept chickens for I saw eggs and egg cartons in a niche of the kitchen.  I wondered if I had found a source for free-range eggs.  “Oh,” she noted, “we just raise enough for ourselves and some to give away.”  I remembered the farmer’s custom of giving away something from their bounty.

As we visited the wife would step away from time to time to stir a pot on the stove.  “Blueberries,” she informed us, “just enough for three cups of jam.”  I had noticed a chest freezer nearby.  “Well,” the husband reminisced, “we always fattened up a cow to butcher in the fall for our own use.  We didn't know what it was to buy meat in a store.”

When our business was done they sent us off with a gracious farewell, but for a long time after I pondered the visit.  What would it be like, I wondered, to live so close to the land?  To be in one town, one house, one job, your whole life? To have tradition be so much a part of your existence?  There was something wholesome and reassuring about the couple we visited.  And the apples, applesauce, blueberries, and jam cooking on the stove are the perfect segue to this week’s subject: fruit.

10 Healthiest Fruits

Want to know which are the 10 healthiest fruits?  Forget about it.  We see those lists, but given the giant amount we don’t know about nutrition, it’s foolish to try and rank fruits by this or that benefit.  They’re all healthy and variety is important.  I suspect there's a reason for every fruit that exists on our planet.

The tradition of eating an apple a day has actually been confirmed.  Recent research has added an orange, and a banana to the daily list.  And the small colored berries are intensely full of antioxidants and other phytonutrients. 

In fact, the Word of Wisdom simply recommends we eat “fruit in the season.”  Now the Industrial Revolution brought a lot of bad stuff, but it also brought us longer seasons for fruit and other foods.  You can buy apples, bananas, berries, and some type of orange, about every month of the year.  Count it a tender mercy.

As I drove away from Levan, I thought about the bottles of canned applesauce in the kitchen.  My parent’s generation canned fruit.  My generation bought it canned, but we also were able to buy it fresh more months of the year.  The current generation can buy affordable fresh fruit year around.  Because sugar inhibits bacterial growth, canned fruit was traditionally sweetened.  So, in our home, with the exception of freezer jam, we simply eat seasonal fresh fruit and don't try to preserve it, though I miss the comfort against famine that a cellar of bottled fruit offers.  One compensation is to store dried fruits like dates, plums (okay, prunes), raisins, and mangos—this is an ancient practice and dried fruits store well.

Four-a-day

The USDA guidance is a good place to start:  four daily servings of fruit (shown in the pix above).  How are we doing?  Americans, on average, eat just one daily fruit serving.  Ouch.

That’s the same as vegetables, where the goal is 5 daily servings, so you see the challenge.  But fruit is fun to eat, so once you get the idea four servings won’t be hard.  Vegetables, on the other hand, are more of a challenge.  That’s why we dedicate eight posts to eating vegetables and just this one to fruit. 

Last week I was enjoying the most delicious cantaloupe; it tasted so good.  And we’re currently in the best season for watermelons, peaches and apricots.  The key to eating fruit is to buy it—to have it in the house.  If your servings run 3-4 ounces, a week’s worth for two adults, allowing for a little waste, would be about 15 pounds.  You can adjust this for your family size.  Whatever your goal, just be sure to buy it weekly and if it isn’t getting eaten and it’s going to waste, have a family council on the subject.  Children love fruit for a snack.

That’s all I have to say about fruit:  Eat a variety of fruits in season, about four servings daily.  If you buy it, you’re likely to eat it.  It's easy in the summer, but takes a little effort in the winter.

Oh, one other thing.  Remember that dessert of orange-flavored Jello and Cool Whip treat your mom used to make?  That doesn’t count as a fruit.  But as you learn to appreciate fruit, you’ll find it makes a delicious dessert that’s healthful, inexpensive, and easy to prepare.  What could be better?

 

Please comment:  How do you get your family to eat fruit instead of sugary snack foods?  What are your favorite fruit desserts?  Share a recipe.