French Kids Eat Everything

 A Thought Worth Sharing

A deepening reverence for the Creation of our world is an unexpected benefit of Word of Wisdom Living.  Have you experienced this?  Sandwiched between the creations of the earth and the first parents, Adam and Eve, the book of Genesis describes the creation of our food supply. 

After each Creation stage there is the benediction, “and God saw that it was good.”  So a reverence for the Creation leads us to deeper respect for our food supply—as it was first created—and vice versa.  This deep thought leads us to the French, who love vegetables, and a book of interest.

Rules of the French Food Culture

In the last post we noted the new book, French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon.  For adults as well as children, there are profound differences between the food cultures of France and America.  France is an old nation with petrified traditions; we’re a new nation where innovation is celebrated and anything goes.  Which can be a problem. 

We eat—snack, actually—wherever we are, walking, standing, or in the car.  This horrifies the French who, with few exceptions, dine at tables and disdain snacks.   We’re in a hurry so eat fast; we invented fast food.  The French may indulge in fast food on occasion, but they relish the two hours spent dining each day.  We see the act of eating as simply ‘fueling up.”  The French don’t eat-and-run, they dine, and for them it’s a love story—one of life’s pleasures.  We can learn from the French—and vice versa. 

Perhaps our French readers will comment on this.  Better yet, says the beautiful wife, we should take a trip to France and see for ourselves.  I knew that was coming.  In the meantime, Word of Wisdom Living advocates a food culture based on the best of both cultures.  Here are the ten rules (with my comments):

1.  Parents:  You are in charge of food education!  A century ago Food Inc displaced moms as the judge of what to eat.  Fortunately, the French thought otherwise—they kept mom in charge.
2.  Avoid emotional eating.  No food rewards, bribes, etc. 
3.  Parents plan and schedule meals and menus.  This “planning” is the subject of two Healthy Changes.
4.  Eat family meals together.  A future Healthy Change—the family dinner.
5.  Eat your veggies; think variety.  This is a big issue; several Healthy Changes address the veggies.
6. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to taste it.  A great rule which brings to mind a conversation seen on Facebook:  Determined dad to son: “You will sit at the table until your dinner is finished.  If you don’t finish it tonight, you can just sleep there and eat it for breakfast.  And, it won’t be nearly as good cold.”  Equally determined son:  “It looks like I’m going to die right here in this chair, Dad.”
7. No snacking!!  It’s OK to feel hungry between meals.  A French proverb says hunger is the best seasoning.  It’s true—food tastes great when we’re hungry but what vegetable could please children who've snacked on sweets all day.
8. Slow food is happy food, as in—eat slow!  I think she meant “slowly,” but you get the idea.  Last night we measured our dining time (30 minutes for dinner; the French average an hour).  The beautiful wife remembered the frustration of the busy years when the house was full of kids and she would cook for an hour to make dinner and it would disappear in 15 minutes.  Wish I could do that one over. 
9. Eat mostly real food.  Treats are for special occasions.  Amen. 
10. Remember: Eating is joyful—relax!  Joyful dining—a great idea for a future post.

I didn’t share these rules so you wouldn’t have to buy the book but so you would consider the book for your library.  Go to Amazon.com to read part of the book online and see if you like it.  (I'll admit the author's a little whiny.)

Odds and Ends

Biggest Loser:  The beautiful wife loves The Biggest Loser; she’s inspired by how a healthy body transforms the lives of the contestants.  We're all like that.  One focus of the program is the nonstop amount of exercise.  So there was a crazy moment on the last episode when they promoted a prize—a new car—by noting all the ways the car could do work we normally do, like opening and closing doors, etc.  Wrong idea.  I recommend my standard-shift, 1988 Ford Bronco as a healthy car.  Lots of character too.

Exercise: Which leads to a recent study about Alzheimer’s disease and the benefits of exercise.  Basically, the group who exercised least in the study had a 200% higher risk of AD.  Exercise could be anything that takes effort, including cooking and washing dishes but I like outdoor exercise also. 

Cindy's Prize:  Two weeks ago we offered a prize—Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food—for the person with the best Healthy Change scorecard.  You’ll recall that we had finished the first quarter so you could earn up to five points for complying with each of the 13 Healthy Changes.  The possible score was 65 points and the winner, Cindy Baldwin, had 59 points.  Cindy also writes the blog Being Cindy.  Check her blog; she’s an impressive woman.  Ms. Baldwin, if you’ll email us your address, we'll send the prize.  (Email:  Skip (at) wordofwisdomliving (dot) com.)

Smiling all day:  Finally, if you want exercise inspiration and have a little nostalgia for Rita Hayworth, check this collage of movie dance scenes, set to the Bee Gees’ Staying Alive.  You'll be dancing through the house.

Your Choice: Chaos or Order

The quick answer:  A menu-based shopping list will save time, money, stress, and maybe even your family’s health.

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I’ve been reading two totally different books—one about French food culture, the other a scientific study of synchronous systems.  In a flash of intuition, I realized they were discussing the same thing—how to organize our lives.  Here’s a brief summary of the books:

French Kids Eat Everything: How our family moved to France, cured picky eating, banned snacking, and discovered 10 simple rules for raising happy, healthy eaters.  You get the picture—an American mom, married to a French guy, was feeding her young children the modern American diet and using food, unsuccessfully, to win the kid’s cooperation.  The kids were in full rebellion; the more she catered to them, the worse they acted, and ate.  Their diet was terrible.

The family moves to her husband’s hometown in rural France and run headlong into a bastion of traditional food culture.  The relatives are shocked by the children’s diet, as well as their behavior at the dinner table.  The mom, resentful at first and overly protective of her children, puzzles her way through the French approach to eating, trying to figure out the rules.  She arrives at ten rules, which we’ll discuss in the next post.  The French are wiser about food, but the American wife is clever in a profitable way—she writes a likely bestseller about her experience. 

Sync: The emerging science of spontaneous order, the other book, investigates examples in Nature of order emerging from chaos by looking into cyclic behavior:  fireflies that began to blink in unison; heart muscles that contract at precisely the right instant, year after year; even the aquarium school of fish that turn in unison without an apparent leader. 

There was even an example of spontaneous order of interest to the beautiful wife, I thought.  My mistake.  "Have you heard," I asked, "how scientists have found that in coed dorms, as the school year progresses, the women began to have their monthly period about the same time?"  This was a poor topic choice—the beautiful wife never discussed such a personal topic with her dorm mates and didn’t think the scientists should either.

Winning Family Support

Do you ever have that mental flash of light, when you suddenly see clarity in something you’ve pondered for a while?  Trying to explain these two books to my wife, I suddenly saw the books had something in common with each other, but also with her.  Sync, the book, explores how Nature brings order out of chaos.  French Kids Eat Everything reveals how a society teaches the next generation their traditional food culture.  Isn’t that another example of order replacing chaos?  Isn’t that what mothers do on their best days?

I remembered how when rearing our six children, the beautiful wife had a way of winning their cooperation and support.  Harmony was her best dish; we were of one mind, especially at the dinner table.  The kids liked what she cooked and she mostly cooked what they liked.  Picky eating is often a subtle expression of child rebellion.  Somehow the beautiful wife organized order from chaos and harmony from rebellion.  Women are good at this. 

How does a family create harmony, unity, and a common purpose?  I think it happens at the dinner table but begins in the planning that precedes the meal.  It's planning that brinds order to our lives, and reduces the chaos.  Planning is a creative process—a tiny version of that first Creation.  Here are three essential tools:

1. A weekly menu, one created in a participatory process.
2. Recipes for familiar healthy foods (like our 52 Breakthrough Recipes).
3. A shopping list (the subject of this post) to keep the pantry stocked with only the good stuff. 

Shopping Lists

Here's a link to a shopping list if you go to several stores (like Costco, a grocery store, and a farmers market or health foods store).  Or if you prefer a list that includes space for menu writing, visit our daughter's blog inchmark.  In a post the grocery list, she shared her approach to meal planning and provided a link to her editable list.  You may be using an iPhone app for a list but if you don’t have a list you like, you’re welcome to try one of these.   

A menu-based shopping list brings big benefits:

#1:  A shopping list is a plan—an antidote to wandering the store aisles wondering what to eat, susceptible to the worst offerings of Food Inc.

#2:  A shopping list saves money—healthy food really is cheaper than the modern American diet, if you take a thoughtful approach to planning. 

#3:  A shopping list saves time—it’s your best way to minimize grocery store runs and streamline meal preparation.   

#4:  A shopping list reduces stress—how many times have you been in that last-minute squeeze to come up with an idea for dinner? 

#5:  A shopping list lets you teach—your family can’t learn by helping if the plan is all in your head. 

Please comment:  How do you organize grocery shopping?  Got an app for your iPhone?  Use a printed list you keep in the pantry during the week?  What works best for you?  Please share. 

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Menu for Week #15

Good Fats

Word of Wisdom Living covers 13 topics, revisiting and adding to these topics each quarter of the year.  The first discussion of fats was Healthy Change #2:  Never eat deep fat fried foods.  That’s a tough change for some—no French fries, no donuts, no corndogs, and none of those fast food chicken or fish fillets.

This week we’ve discussed the importance of balancing omega-3 and omega-6 fats and Healthy Change #15 advised including some omega-3 in every meal.  Next quarter Healthy Change #28 will address the fried refined starch found in the chip aisle of your supermarket.  Then in the last quarter Healthy Change #41 will recommend eating traditional fats (olive oil, butter, etc.).

Last year a post addressed the health of your brain.  Want to give yourself the best chance of avoiding age-related dementia?  Eat the long-chain omega-3 fat known by the acronym DHA.  DHA is 25% of the fat in your brain and essential to avoiding depression.  

The irony of the omega-3 fats is they’re everywhere present—they’re the most abundant fats on the planet—yet America, the richest nation in the world, eats the least.  Imagine, a famine in the midst of plenty.  Basically, omega-3 fats are incompatible with processed foods because they have a short shelf life once refined.  So if you want to take care of your brain, eat real food. 

Healthiest Cooking Oils

Most of what you’ve heard (outside of this blog) about fats is wrong.  You need to eat saturated fats, in moderation, because they perform essential roles in your body.  The refined oils and margarines—once touted as being “heart healthy” because they contained polyunsaturated oils—are actually bad for your heart.  Foods that carry “low-fat” or “reduced-fat” claims aren’t necessarily good for you. 

Basically, the traditional fats your great-grandmother ate are good for you; the modern factory fats are not.  It’s confusing so here’s a guide to the cooking oils you see in the store:

Week #15 Menu

We start our menu writing by searching the refrigerator and pantry for food that might go bad.  This week we had leftover scalloped potatoes, ham, butternut squash, bell peppers, sweet potatoes, asparagus, and radishes.  In the freezer we had the remains of a Costco rotisserie chicken, some Copper River wild salmon (1.3 lb.) and a 9”x 9” pan of Beth’s Vegetarian Enchiladas from two weeks ago. 

Monday 

• Chicken with Asparagus and Roasted Red Peppers (The beautiful wife cooked this dish for the first time, see the recipe here.)
• Brown rice, long grain
• Salad

Tuesday

• Leftovers from Monday (we really liked it)

Wednesday  (We had guests so finished off the Easter leftovers.)

• Skip’s Scalloped Potatoes
• Ham with pineapple
• Salad
• Dessert: strawberry shortcake

Thursday (The girls were planning a wedding so needed an easy meal)

• Beth’s Vegetarian Enchiladas (from the freezer)
• Salad

Sunday  (A little fancy but a totally healthy meal; we had guests.)

• Poached Copper River Salmon (It's in season, and on sale locally.)
• Roast butternut squash
• Skip’s Homemade Applesauce
• Spinach salad
• Dessert:  Skip’s Omega-3 Carrot Cake

In the next post we'll build on the Healthy Change to write weekly menus and talk about Shopping Lists. 

Omega-3 Carrot Cake

The Fats of Life

One step in America’s return to healthful living is to see dietary fat as good.  Natural fats were so excoriated in the last half-century that any processed food with a “low-fat” claim was considered healthful.  This is crazy, but a society learns slowly, and changes food behavior even more slowly; it can take a generation for each step.  There is one shining light exception:  the readers of Word of Wisdom Living.  If you actively apply the 52 Healthy Changes according to your needs; you can change in a year.  In food culture, that’s like turning on a dime.

Omega-3 fats are mainly found in green plants; omega-6 fats are found in the seeds.  When people lived on the food at hand, they got lots of omega-3 in the spring and summer and more omega-6 in the fall and winter.  In fact, foods rich in omega-3, like greens, have a short shelf life.  Most omega-6 seeds can last for years if properly stored.  Because processed foods need a long shelf-life, omega-3 fats were removed from the American diet.

The 1000-Mile Cornfield

I had a wonderful adventure a few years ago with our first son.  He and his wife had finished law school and were moving to Washington, D.C.  They loaded their possessions into a big truck with a trailer attached for their car, and the son and I made the cross-country drive.  The length of the truck with trailer made turning around hard so we tried to avoid dead ends.  Once, in a small town in Tennessee, just about bedtime, we got stuck in a narrowing street.  The people may have thought that we were moving into their neighborhood because everyone came out to help.  Dads were making suggestions, excited kids were running around our big noisy truck, and dogs were barking.  The solution required waking up a lady to move her car out of the way.  I learned something about extraordinary kindness of people on that trip.  We also learned what’s between Colorado and, say, Tennessee:  corn.  We drove through a thousand miles of non-stop corn. 

Now I can see the 1000 miles of corn as a metaphor for the rise of omega-6 and decline of omega-3 in the American diet.  Corn products are high in omega-6; the leaves, which are made into animal feed, contain omega-3.  Here are some consequences, from animal studies:

• Scientists at Wake Forest found that eating more omega-6 fat increases the build up of plaque in coronary arteries, while omega-3 reduces plaque accumulation.
• Researchers at the Bassett Research Institute found it easy to grow cancer tumors when animals were fed an omega-6 diet (from corn oil) but almost impossible with omega-3 rich fish oil. 
• In Australia studies show that omega-3 speeds up the metabolic rate, the speed at which we burn calories, while omega-6 slows it down.  Want to be more active and burn off that extra fat?  Eat more greens and less of the processed seeds. 

Heart Disease

Susan Allport wrote a great book with a descriptive title:  The Queen of Fats:  Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them.  If you want to understand the essential fats better, get this book.  The key discoveries about omega-3 fats are so recent many of the scientists are still alive, including Dr. Ralph Holman, now in his 90s. 

Allport tells about a man in Dr. Holman’s lab who was dying of heart disease.  The man had a prior coronary artery replacement surgery but his arteries were now so clogged with plaque that another was needed.  Unfortunately he wasn’t healthy enough to attempt the surgery.  Holman suggested a diet high in omega-3 fats, in addition to the customary medical care and begin to bring by his homemade flaxseed cakes.  The patient made a remarkable recovery and lived another 20 years. 

Now this was just one person and you can’t draw too big a conclusion from an anecdotal experience.  But if I were suffering from heart disease, I’d discuss my omega-6/-3 status with a qualified doctor and give serious attention to his, or her, recommendations.  Ms. Allport offers recipes that include more omega-3 here.  And Dr. Holman inspired me that we should have a healthy cake on our recipe list.

Dr. Holman's Flaxseed Cake

I looked over Dr. Holman’s Flaxseed Cake recipe with the idea to improve it.  This brought to mind a recent article in Cooks Illustrated on carrot cake.  I considered ingredients rich in omega-3 fats: eggs, fresh walnuts, flaxseed, Canola oil, and butter which though mostly saturated fat, has a healthful ratio of omega-6/-3.  I also reviewed online recipes.  Most carrot cake recipes call for pecans but we choose walnuts for their omega-3 content.  We used the best available oil—Spectrum’s expeller pressed, Organic High Heat Canola Oil; it’s a bit more costly but less than EVOO, so seemed a good omega-3 value.  Organic means non-GMO. 

Some carrot cake recipes include crushed pineapple and others add raisins.  In our tests these ingredients improved the flavor and reduced the need for sugar.  We used 1½ cups of sugar instead of the typical 2 cups; we also reduced the amount of frosting by half.  Our first batches had a nasty aftertaste that we traced to stale nutmeg and cloves.  Suggestion:  Check your spices for bitter aftertaste before using.  Because our spices weren’t that old (a year or so) I’m starting to think grinding nutmeg and cloves fresh is the way to go.  We’re probably like most people; it takes several years to use even a small container of these spices. 

Skip’s Omega-3 Carrot Cake

Cake Ingredients:

  1 cup whole-wheat flour, fresh ground (we have a hand grinder, good exercise)

  1 cup flaxseed meal, fresh ground (we use a Cuisineart spice and nut grinder, a bargain at $40)

  1½ cup sugar, either browns or turbinado

  1½ tsp cinnamon (or 2 tsp if you don’t have fresh ground cloves and nutmeg)

  ¼ tsp nutmeg, ground

  ¼ tsp cloves, ground

  2 tsp baking soda

  1 tsp baking powder

  ½ tsp salt

  1 cup cold-pressed organic canola oil

  3 or 4 eggs (we prefer omega enhanced eggs)

  1 tsp vanilla

  3 cup carrots, grated (about 4 carrots)

  8 oz crushed pineapple (with natural juice)

  1 cup raisins

  1 ½ cup walnuts, chopped (more is OK with me)

Frosting Ingredients (this is half the normal recipe)

  4 oz cream cheese, softened

  ¼ cup butter, softened

  ½ tsp vanilla

  2 cups powdered sugar, sifted (unsifted made small lumps)

Directions:

Mix dry and wet ingredients and combine.  Pour into 9” x 13” prepared pan.  Bake at 350 F about 30        minutes, until done. When cooled, apply frosting. Pretty simple.  This cake is so moist and tasty you can even eat it without frosting. 

Please comment:  How to you add omega-3 fats to your diet.  Have a favorite healthy dessert?  Please share it. 

Omega-3 Essential Fats

 

The quick answer:  Essential omega-3 fats are vital to your health and sources include fresh walnuts, eggs, flaxseed, seafood (especially cold water fish), and leafy green vegetables.

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Nutrition Made Simple

Nutrition can be overwhelmingly complex, but here’s some simple guidance on the three macronutrients (carbs, fat, and protein): 

• Don’t bother with low-fat or high-protein diets. 
• Don’t stress over the percent of fats, carbs and protein in your food. 
• Don’t even fuss over the amount of calories you eat. 

But do eat your carbs, fats, and proteins in their natural form, as minimally processed as practical.  Eat whole foods and Mother Nature will deliver the best proportion of macronutrients, as well as fiber and micronutrients.   And this brings us to this week’s topic: fats. Though much berated they're essential to good health.

Big Fat Mistakes

Remember the biblical metaphor about “the blind leading the blind”?  Or the adage by Albert Einstein, ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  So is a lot.”  It all sums up 20^th century nutrition.  Science was so popular a century ago that traditional beliefs never had a chance.  For example, traditional cooking was reinvented as “scientific cookery” and laboratory discoveries often reappeared as new food inventions. 

The invention of hydrogenation—where hydrogen gas was bubbled through heated and pressurized vegetable oils in the presence of a metallic catalyst—enabled the invention of a new family of fat products made with cheaper vegetable oils.  Here are a few examples:

• Crisco replaced lard (and wouldn’t spoil),
• Margarine competed with butter (and also lasted longer),
• Bottled salad dressings pushed out traditional oil and vinegar,
• Peanut butter (the hydrogenated oil didn’t separate and kept longer) became the most popular sandwich ingredient,
• French fries (cooked in oils so stable they could last for weeks in heated deep fat fryers) became the #1 way to eat vegetables,
• Packaged foods (made tasty with hydrogenated oils and sugar and long-lasting on the shelf) replaced whole foods you had to cook.

Hydrogenation could alter the properties of vegetable oils but they gave industrialized food something much more important—a long shelf life free of rancidity.  The only problem was that rancidity came mainly from omega-3 fats (when exposed to oxygen) and though you could alter these fats through hydrogenation that didn’t change an essential fact—they’re vital to our health.  The removal of omega-3 fats from our diet by the industrialization of food was a 20th century nutrition disaster!

Omega-3 vs. Omega-6

You know the phrase “alpha and omega,” Greek for first and last?  Fat molecules have a chain of carbon atoms arranged in a chain like the vertebrae of your spine.  Across the living species there’s variety in the number of vertebrae in the spine and fats are the same way.  Fats are grouped as short, medium, or long chain.  Because of this variety, scientists identify the carbons in a fat chain by counting from the tail, or omega end. (The alpha end changes with chain length so isn't a good reference point.)

Carbons in the fat chain typically have two adjoining hydrogen atoms; think of them as ribs attached to vertabrae.  When all the carbons have a pair of hydrogen atoms the fat is saturated.  If one carbon is missing hydrogen, the fat is monounsaturated.  If hydrogen is missing at several sites the fat is polyunsaturated.  The properties and functions of fats change with chain length, and saturation, but also with the location of unsaturation.   Bottom line: The body needs all these fats in the balance found in Nature.

Omega-3 fats are first unsaturated at the 3^rd carbon molecule and have properties of quickness and flexibility.  For example, they oxidize quickly when exposed to oxygen.  In the body, omega-3 fats are useful where data travels quickly: in the eyes, brain, and nervous system.  They also enable the flipping tail that drives semen in their mad gallant chase to the egg.  If infertility is a concern—omega-3 fats are critical to conception.

Think you’re getting dementia?  Make darned sure you get adequate omega-3 fats.  The brain is 60% fat but ¼ is omega-3 fat. 

Omega-6 fats are first unsaturated at the 6^th carbon and are characterized as solid, slow and strong.   They form the walls of cells, act as cell messengers, and enable slower reactions.  You need both omega-6 and omega-3 fats, roughly in a ratio of 2:1.  These two essential fat families compete for the same enzymes so it’s critical to have balance in your diet.  The traditional ratio of 2:1 was slowly altered through the 20^th century to roughly 20:1 to improve shelf life and other properties.  This was started in ignorance, but continues now that we know better.  There’s also a seasonal pattern:  omega-3 fats proliferate in the green of spring but omega-6 dominates in the fat when life slows down for winter.

Healthy Changes

The 1^st Healthy Change of the New Year got right after our sugar intake, limiting sugary drinks to one per week.  The 2^nd Healthy Change addressed the trans fat problem of toxic hydrogenated oils:  “Never buy deep fat fried foods.”  This follows the Institute of Medicine guidance that the safe intake of trans fats is zero!

Now we’re back to learning how to eat healthy fats with the goal of correcting the omega-6/-3 ratio.  There are two steps to this:  1) Reduce omega-6 (mostly found in refined vegetable oils common to processed foods), and 2) Increase omega-3 by eating green foods and certain animal products, shown in the picture above. 

Basically, if you eat foods close to the form as created, and minimize industrialized foods, you should be okay.  Animal sources of omega-3 provide the long-chain variety.  The body can form these from the short-chain omega-3 found in green plants but the capacity is limited, so animal sources are also needed. 

Our goal is to include omega-3 fats in every meal.  For our Breakfast Compote, we include ground flaxseed.  Last week’s dinner menu included wild salmon plus a lunch of tuna sandwich another day.  That met our goal of two servings of fish rich in omega-3 each week.  If I don’t get two servings, I take a fish oil supplement of omega-3; not the same as eating fish but better than nothing, I think.  Most of our dinners include a green salad.

Please comment on your experience with omega-3 and omega-6 fats.  People need both, but we have to get back to a balance.  In our home we minimize refined oils in favor of traditional fats like butter and olive oil. 

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Menu for Week #14

Before we talk about heart disease and the weekly menu, please take another look at the prior post, which belatedly has the pictures added.  Our lovely and talented daughters help with the blog, one as designer and the other as photographer.  They do this as a service, fitting it in while delivering babies, caring for family, exercising and tending to professional work and church duties.  They wear a lot of hats and I'm terribley proud of them.  Moms can appeciate how all this is sometimes overwhelming.  We work to get out three post each week: a) the Healthy Change, b) recipe, and c) the weekly menu.  But we do it around busy schedules, so thanks for your patience if our posts are delayed a day or two.

Worst Plague in History

What’s the worst plague in history?  Maybe you’re thinking the bubonic plague or Spanish flu but those horrors don’t even compare.  The worst plague in history is still running—it’s today’s epidemic of heart disease.  Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the #1 cause of premature death, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. 

CHD is a fascinating example of how hard it is for a nation to solve a complex problem.  CHD was thrust into our national consciousness in 1955 when President Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack.  In the 56 years since we’ve not only failed to stop the disease, we haven’t even agreed on the cause. 

We spent the last generation wrongly blaming saturated fat and dietary cholesterol.  We were urged to eat margarine instead of butter because the hydrogenated polyunsaturated fats in margarine were supposed to be heart-healthy.  We avoided saturated fats, which mankind had safely eaten for millennia, invented low-fat versions of just about every processed food, and spent billions on statin drugs to lower serum cholesterol.  By chasing the wrong villian, we actually made things worse.

The chief architect of the misguided war against saturated fat, Dr. Ancel Keys, once had a moment of clarity.  There was a known disturbing fact:  Saturated fat intake was actually dropping as heart disease was increasing.  It was also known that our intake of polyunsaturated vegetable oils had been increasing just ahead of heart disease, so Dr. Keys wondered, “Could these hydrogenated vegetable oils be the cause of heart disease?”  Dr. Keys was partly right, but the idea was brushed aside—it threatened an established industry.

The Inflammatory Lifestyle

Here's a much cited article worth another look: “Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease.”  Dr. Dwight Lundell, a cardiologist who has performed over 5000 open-heart surgeries, argues that the real cause of heart disease is the inflammatory life style.  Inflammation is the acute response of our immune system to foreign threats.  But when our life style is threatening our health, the immune system is forced into unrelenting overdrive and inflammation becomes chronic. 

Here are a few of the lifestyle habits that cause inflammation:

• A diet high in omega-6 fats (those found in the hydrogenated, polyunsaturated vegetable oils that were supposed to be heart-healthy) and low in omega-3 fats (removed from our diet by processes like hydrogenation).
• The use of tobacco, especially cigarette smoking.
• Processed and fast foods rich in sugar, refined grains, and refined vegetable oils. 
• Excessive, protracted stress where you never seem to find the escape hatch.
• TV—advocates a bunch of bad values plus contributes to sedentary life rather than physical activity.
• Too little sleep.  We're so confused we think burning the midnight oil is a virtue.

CHD isn’t caused by one thing, rather by risk factors endemic to the 20^th century lifestyle.  Dr. Lundell’s advice on diet will sound familiar to you regular readers:

“What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the [modern] American diet.”

The Cure for Heart Disease

We talked about inflammation in the post, “The Chemical Fire Within,” that discussed the risks of the modern lifestyle and suggested a cure—the anti-inflammatory lifestyle. 

We also linked chronic inflammation to the condition of metabolic syndrome in this post, “Last Person Standing.”  a risk factor for chronic disease and reviewed the early warning signs of metabolic syndrome. 

Menu for Week #14

Monday

• Rotisserie chicken (Costco)
• Roasted potatoes
• Asparagus

Tuesday

• Green salad with Craisins, avocado, strawberries, gorgonzola cheese and sliced almonds.
• Leftover chicken

Wednesday

• Skip’s Peanut Coleslaw (A leftover night as the beautiful wife was gone to a meeting.)

Thursday

• Poached Copper River Salmon (This healthy wild salmon is in markets now; we found it for $7/lb.)
• Wild rice
• Pineapple (Yes, a fruit for a vegetable, but I had just finished carving a pineapple for our Easter dinner.)

Easter Sunday (Skip cooked a couple of his favorites)

• Ham with pineapple
• Skip’s Scalloped Potatoes
• Skip’s Homemade Applesauce, (In Martha Stewart Living with a pix of our lunch on the lawn)
• Deviled eggs
• Salad
• Rolls
• Strawberry shortcake, for dessert

Hope you all had a memorable Easter Sunday.

Healthy Change Scorecard, Vitamin D Survey; Egg Recipes

Grade Your Progress

Last week we finished the 1^st quarter of 2012 with a review of the 13 themes that we rotate through each quarter.  You've likely adopted some of the Healthy Changes for eating smarter, looking better, and living longer.  But change doesn't come easy so how are you doing?

We inserted a scorecard in the post To Live More Fully, as an afterthought so some may have missed it.  You can print a PDF copy by clicking on “report card” in the post.  Or just click here. Please grade yourself and report your grade as a comment below.  You can score up to 65 points for the quarter (13 Healthy Changes, 5 points maximum each).

There’s a prize:  We’ll give a copy of Mike Pollan’s In Defense of Food, to the comment with the highest score.  If you get behind this, we’ll repeat the scorecard and prize each quarter, and give a grand prize (to be announced) at the end of the year.  (Maximum score for a year is 260 points.)

Vitamin D Level Report

Last week we asked you to comment if you had even been tested for vitamin D (a really good idea), and what the result was.  From people I've spoken with, I think less than one person in five, on average, has been tested. You readers, however, are not average.  Here's what you said:

• Of the 25 who responded, 9 had never been tested and 16 had. 
• Of the 16 tested, the average initial serum vitamin D level for those not taking any vitamin D was 17.7 ng/mL That's a scary low number.
• What’s a good target?  There are various definitions for vitamin D deficiency, but all agree that a number below 20 is too low.  Most tests set 30 as the minimum healthy range; 50 is the target for some doctors.  You can take your pick, but I’m thinking that 30 is a good winter minimum for me, and 50 a good summer target. 

There are three ways to get vitamin D:  1) diet, 2) sunshine, and 3) pills.  It makes sense to eat a healthy diet, and get a sensible amount of sunshine.  If you live in the northern latitudes your doctor will likely recommend pill supplements in the winter.  Of source a two week stay on a sunny beach is a nice alternative, but a tanning booth could work too.

One reader maintained a healthy level of 41 with normal sunshine.  Another achieved 69 with 10 minutes noon sunshine per day.  The local dermatologist thought 15 minutes of midday sunshine with skin exposed, most days of the week, a good program. 

The champ for managing vitamin D lived near the Canadian border, was age 77, and maintained a level of 50 ng/mL with 4500 IU by pill in the summer, and 6500 in the winter. 

This is just a horseback estimate and everyone’s different, but looking over the data for the people who responded, it seems you can add about 10 ng/mL to your serum vitamin D level for each daily 1000 IU you take. (What other blog gives you such a useful rule-of-thumb?)

Recipe of the Week

Because the Healthy Change is to eat eggs, I looked for a recipe with eggs.   I’d been reading Tamar Adlar’s primer on cooking, An Everlasting Meal.  Adlar talks about real basics, like boiling water.  She’s a big fan of homemade mayonnaise (hereafter, simply mayo).

By coincidence, I had recently spent an hour in a supermarket studying the labels on all the mayo products.  This is a scary exercise.  I had two main concerns:  First, the mayos mostly use refined oils—mainly soybean but more lately canola—and I’ve just not seen anything that speaks for the healthiness of refined oils; they’re suspect to me.  Second, all the mayo is in flexible plastic containers now and because mayo is full of fat, I worry about the extraction of chemicals from the plastic into the fat.  Until there’s longterm information available, I’m uncomfortable with any fat-based product sold in such containers.

So I’ve been trying recipes for homemade mayo.  The ingredients are pretty simple:  oil, egg yolk, lemon juice (or vinegar), mustard, and salt.  Maybe a little pepper, white pepper if you don’t want black specks.  Most recipes use olive oil, but I didn't like the taste when I tried it.  I got the best result using a 50:50 mix of extra light olive oil and cold-pressed sesame seed oil.

Not everyone will choose to make their own mayo.  There's an interesting book, Make Bread, Buy Butter, by Jennifer Reese that discusses the issue of what to make yourself vs. what to buy. What did she say about homemade mayo?  If you have the energy, make your own mayo; if you're feeling tired, buy it.  Whatever you choose, try it once to see how you like this healthier version.  I read in Nourishing Traditions that adding whey will extend the life from 1 to 4 weeks, but I haven't found whey in any store yet.

Sticking my neck out, I used some of my mayo to make an egg sandwich for the beautiful wife.  She said it "was to die for."  Made me smile.  So we’re going to be eating more egg sandwiches.  Today, the Saturday before Easter Sunday, our family gathered for the traditional neighborhood Easter egg hunt.  Here are the recipes for our luncheon afterwards, Egg Salad Sandwich, made with Skip’s Homemade Mayo: 

Skip’s Homemade Mayo

Ingredients:

  1 large egg

  1 yolk of large egg

  ½ t salt

  2 tsp Dijon mustard

  2 T fresh lemon juice

  ½ cup extra light olive oil

  ½ cup cold-pressed sesame seed oil

Directions:

1. Measure all ingredients except the oil into a bowl and mix well, about 30 seconds. 
2. While continuously whisking or mixing, add the oil slowly, drop by drop.  All recipes agree on the importance of slowly adding the oil to start.  When about 1/3 of the oil has been added the rest can be added faster, in a steady stream, but not dumped in.
3. Adjust seasonings to taste.  Place mayo in a labeled, dated container and refrigerate.

Notes: 

• Homemade mayo is different from store mayo:  First, it has healthy oils.  Second, it isn’t white but a buttery color, more like the mustard and egg yolk.  Third, it won’t be as thick, though it will thicken after refrigeration. 
• Because of the risk of salmonella, use clean, refrigerated eggs, free of cracks. 
• Most recipes use the yolk of one egg but Sally Fallon, in Nourishing Traditions, suggests one whole egg plus the yolk of a 2^nd egg.  I think eggs are healthy so follow Fallon’s precedent.
• When I made mayo with all EVOO, it had too strong an olive oil taste for me.  Using extra light olive oil helped, and using ½ sesame seed oil was better.  Sunflower oil or almost any other healthy oil could be substituted if you don’t have sesame seed oil.
• The lemon provides flavor as well as acid.  Some recipes use vinegar, or a combination of lemon juice and vinegar.  So if you don’t have a lemon handy, try your favorite vinegar.
• I made this recipe two ways: hand whisking as some purists suggest (tiring, but good exercise), and mixing with an electric beater, on slow.  I didn’t see a difference.  A food processor should be fine also.
• Refrigerate the mayo when done.  Recipes suggest a shelf life 3-7 days so don’t make more than you’ll use in that time.  Sally Fallon, in Nourishing Traditions, extends the life of her mayo to 3-4 weeks by adding whey. If I can find some whey I'll try it and report back.
• Note the simplicity of the ratios:  1 yolk, 1 cup oil, ½ of a lemon, juiced.  The mustard and salt are for flavor so add to your taste.  Some add white pepper (black works, but it shows). 

Egg Salad Sandwich

Ingredients:

  2 eggs, hard-boiled, chopped

  1 stalk celery, washed and chopped

  1 green onion, washed and chopped

  2 T Skip’s Homemade Mayo

  2 T pickle relish (optional)

  Salt and pepper, to taste

  Whole wheat bread (homemade would be nice)

  Lettuce leaves, preferably dark green

Directions:  No one needs directions to assemble this tasty and healthy sandwich.  I hard-boil the eggs for 12 minutes.  The recipe makes 2 sandwiches, so you won’t have to eat alone. 

Please comment:  Use the scorecard noted above to grade your 1^st quarter progress at living the Word of Wisdom Living Healthy Changes.  Share your results with any benefits you've gained as a comment below. 

Eggs and Fertility

The quick answer:  In case you didn’t get the email, it’s once again healthy to eat eggs, in moderation.

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Nutrition Myths

Most of what you hear about nutrition is wrong.  Consider these myths: 

• Shouldn’t we count calories?  No, it's not necessary, Mother Nature has got your back.  If you eat the right food (and exercise), you’ll fill up on fiber before you overload on calories. 
• Should we take vitamin pills?  No, unless prescribed by an informed doctor. Get your vitamins the natural way, in whole foods.
• Is it bad to eat fat?  No, again.  The fat phobia of the last 50 years was a big mistake. Your body needs all the traditional fats (but it's best to avoid the modern fats).
• Carbs make you fat, right?  Not so much; whole carbs eaten in a healthy diet won’t make you fat.  But refined carbs, like the sugar and white flour we love so much, might.
• Eggs are bad for us, right?  No, it's a traditional food, but a nice segue for this week’s subject. 

Eggs

Easter seemed the right time to talk about eggs.  The experts have been back and forth on eggs—they were good, then bad, and now maybe okay to eat.  Unfortunately, not everyone got the email so a shadow lingers over the consumption of eggs.  Bottom line:  Eggs are healthy to eat, in moderation.  (Diabetics should consult their doctor.)  Here are some egg benefits:

Vitamins:  Eggs are a good source of fat-soluble vitamins (K, A, D, and E) plus B complex vitamins, including B-12 and choline (see below).  We discussed sources of vitamin D last week but eggs are one of the few foods with natural D, about 20 IU per egg.

Choline:  Eggs are rich in choline (113 mg per yolk, about 1/4^th of the daily requirement).  Choline is an essential vitamin B complex nutrient and over 95% of Americans are said to be deficient.  Choline reduces inflammation, is required for the DNA process of methylation, builds cell membranes, and enables muscle activity, and brain function.  Pregnant women have the highest need for choline during development of the fetal nervous system.  Have you been pregnant and craved eggs?  Could be your body putting in an order for some choline.

Carotenoids:  Eggs are the best source of two carotenoids essential to vision—lutein and zeaxanthin.  If you’re at risk for cataracts or macular degeneration, it’s essential you get these carotenoids and eggs are one good source.  (Spinach is another source.)

Fat:  Eggs offer a balanced source of fat; a large egg contains 4.8 gm, mostly in the yolk, composed of: 1.8 gm monounsaturated, 1.4 gm saturated, and 1 gm polyunsaturated fat (with a healthy ratio of omega-6 and omega-3).  Free-range chickens produce eggs with the highest level of omega-3; special diets including linseed and kelp can help but more study is needed.   We eat the enhanced omega-3 eggs but would prefer to buy eggs that were genuinely free-range.

Protein:  Eggs are a perfect protein source (about 12 grams, contained in the "white").  "Perfect" means they contain all the essential amino acids in the right ratio.  

Fertility

It’s logical to combine the topic of eggs with fertility, or the other side of the coin, infertility.  The chronic diseases (heart disease, cancer, stroke, etc.) caused by the modern American diet (MAD) take decades to appear so by the time such diseases make their deadly appearance our habits are well established and difficult to change.  What if we had some early warning signs of poor diet?  Well, we do—for children it’s dental cavities.  For teenagers the MAD food plan is a risk factor for acne. 

For young families, the next sign of poor health can be heart breaking—infertility.  About 1/3 of fertility problems are due to the female; another 1/3 to the male; and the last 1/3 appears to have a mutual cause, both contribute.  The recent rise of infertility, and the emergence of fertility clinics, is an ominous sign.  There are various causes of infertility, some structural like blocked fallopian tubes, but lifestyle, particularly diet, plays an important role in ovulation and semen health.

If someone you know struggles with fertility issues, check this post for 10 things you can do before resorting to the fertility clinic.

Please comment:  There isn’t a fixed number for eggs in moderation, but some sources suggest six per week.  Please share your experience with the topics of this post, eggs and fertility.  Do you have a source for healthy eggs (from healthy chickens)?  Did you crave eggs when pregnant?

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

To Live More Fully

13 Topics

Before we get to this week’s menu, we should pause for a moment to review the 1^st quarter, just finished.  The Healthy Changes thus far follow a pattern of 13 topics that repeat each quarter.  Each time we address a topic we add to what was said before as we build a new food culture based on the best of tradition, scripture, and science.  The most applicable scripture is known as the Word of Wisdom.  Our goal is a food reformation; the 52 Healthy Changes are a cure for the dietary errors of the 20^th century that gave us the modern American diet (MAD) and a host of modern chronic diseases. 

Here are the topics of the 1^st quarter (with the 1^st quarter’s Healthy Change in brackets):

1. Reduce sugar intake (one 12 oz. soda per week).
2. Eat only healthy fats (avoid deep fat fried foods).
3. Live purposefully (write a weekly menu).
4. Rediscover traditional meals (don’t skip breakfast).
5. Live a muscular lifestyle (get 30 minutes of sweaty exercise most days).
6. Eat vegetables (buy enough vegetables for 5 daily servings).
7. Eat more fruits and nuts (eat antioxidant rich foods, like berries).
8. Choose healthy snacks (prepare a daily snack plate, or bag).
9. Restrict meat consumption (eat twice as much plant protein as animal protein).
10. Eat whole grains (eat bread with more fiber than sugar).
11. Cook (it’s best to cook your own food, or be on good terms with a cook).
12. More ways to eat vegetables (eat a green salad, or smoothie, daily).
13. Special topics (get a little midday sunshine most days).

We've put together a report card, listing each Healthy Change for the first quarter and asking you to judge how well you are living each one (with a score of 1 to 5). Perhaps we'll have a prize for the reader with the best score?

The Good Word

I’ve been thinking about the scriptures this past weekend.  Scripture is one of the oracles, along with tradition and science, that guide Word of Wisdom Living.  The Bible opens in Genesis with a poetic retelling of the Creation story. Between the creation of earth and man, we read about the creation of our food supply—of the sun that shines upon the earth and makes the seeds to grow and yield fruit; then the creation of living creatures, those of the sea, the winged fowl, and finally the animals that walk the land. 

In these Creation steps, Genesis records the repeating benediction, “And God saw that it was good.”  There are clues here, I believe, to how we should eat.  I perceive a blessing of the food supply; I imagine God giving us a meaningful stare, a nudge towards the food He created and meant us to eat.

If we stand back enough to take a fresh look at the MAD diet, we see that the industrialization of food made a good business for Food Inc. but a dietary very different from what God created.  Such a contrast: God's work on the one hand and man's factory food on the other.  As we work our way through the 52 Healthy Changes—week by week, rediscovering the traditional food of the Bible—don’t you feel a growing reverence for food as originally designed?  I think learning how to cook should begin with reading about the Creation of the ingredients—and a reverence for food in the natural form.

This Week’s Menu

The Bible teaches the purpose of life, which leads me to this thought:  We don’t cook and eat well because we fear death—though I’m in no rush to experience it.  Rather we eat well because we love life and wish to experience its full potential.  To that end, here’s what we ate this week:

Monday (originally on Sunday when we had guests, but we used it for leftovers on Monday)

• Skip’s Potato Soup
• Fruit and Spinach Salad
• Sourdough bread
• Ice cream with strawberries

Tuesday

• Classic Shrimp Salad (recipe of the week)
• Asparagus (yes, a lot of green, but the asparagus was peaking)
• Ice cream with strawberries (lest the berries go bad)

Wednesday

• Stuffed bell peppers (using hamburger from the freezer and leftover rice)
• Skip’s Peanut Coleslaw (we substituted pineapple and cashews for the peanuts)

Thursday

• Beth’s Vegetarian Enchiladas (3 batches; one for a friend, and froze one)
• House salad

Please comment:  If you didn't share your vitamin D test history in the last post, go there and add your experience.  Due to an Internet outage we ran late this week so this post will just be up one day.  This month is National Infertility Awareness Week, which will influence our next post.

More Vitamin D

Vitamin D Survey

We’re asking all readers to answer two questions in the comment section below:

1)   Have you ever been tested for vitamin D, yes or no.

2)   If so, can you share the test result (in ng/mL, the usual form).

Thank you very much; we’ll share the result in the next post.

Health and Quilting

The beautiful wife wishes my Word of Wisdom Living posts were shorter, perhaps 600 words.  I try, but the last post on vitamin D, a critical health topic, ran 1220 words.  And I didn’t even cover all the important points, like how to optimize vitamin D from sunshine.  So here are a few more words about the vitamin that’s more like a hormone, and is sometimes called the immunity steroid.  For more on the benefits of vitamin D, see this article by Dr. Jack Kruse, a neurosurgeon.

Before we get too passionate about vitamin D, please remember one thing:  WOWL seeks a balanced view of nutrition and health; we try to stay above the fads that come and go.  It helps to think of your health as a quilt comprising 52 patches, which we address with our weekly Healthy Changes.  Most people act on perhaps a half-dozen or so health topic, dominated by those most recently in the news.   A PhD nutritionist might be aware of a thousand, or so, an impossibility for the average person.  We attempt to increase your vision and practice to cover 52—a boost that just might save the life of someone you care for.

The Seasonal Cycle

Vitamin D and omega-3 fats work together in the body.  (We'll talk about omega-3 fats in two weeks.)  Both are essential to brain function, for example.  So it shouldn’t surprise they have harmony in Nature.  The green plants of spring and early summer deliver the most omega-3 fats, just as the sun restores our vitamin D by shining brighter and longer. 

The pattern of spring is reversed in the fall.  The fall harvest—more brown than green—is low in omega-3 and high in omega-6, which seems to prepare us for winter.  Vitamin D levels decline also—as the sun drops low in the sky and the days grow shorter, we produce less D.  There's likely a good reason for these seasonal variations but until more is known, it seems wise to keep vitamin D within the optimum range.

Best Sources of Vitamin D

Studies suggest Americans have too little vitamin D and this is getting worse.  Two big reasons are 1) we've been taught (by weathermen, the clowns of TV) that sunshine is bad, and 2) the modern American diet (MAD) may be making things worse.  For example, the MAD is low in omega-3 fats and excessive in omega-6.  There's evidence this combination inhibits the body's ability to produce vitamin D, even if you get enough sunshine.  If you get plenty of sun but have low serum vitamin D, take a look at your diet.

There are other reasons for low vitamin D production:  If you're older things just slow down (but you do have more time to sit in the sun).  If you're overweight or obese your vitamin D supply can be trapped in permanent fat tissue and unavailable. (Fat cells are the winter storage depot for vitamin D.)  A darker complexion is rich in melatonin, which protects the body from the sun, but slows down vitamin D production.  And there are always the genetic differences. 

What is the best way to increase your vitamin D?  Dr. John A. McDougall, an advocate of disease prevention through diet and lifestyle, gives his opinion in this article.  Basically, he favors 1) regular sensible sun, if possible, 2) the safe use of tanning booths in winter, and 3), as the last resort, vitamin D pills.  There are also dietary sources of vitamin D that shouldn't be overlooked.

Dietary Vitamin D

As you move away from the equator, people get less vitamin D producing sunshine.  But the consumption of meat increases and animal (as well as human) fat is a storehouse for vitamin D.  So you get some D from animal fat (as well as the organ meats).  Then there’s your internal supply:  If the fat you add in the fall actually disappears in the winter, you’re releasing some vitamin D. 

Cold-water fish are another source of vitamin D, in addition to omega-3 fats.  Wild salmon have a lot of D, 600-1000 IU per serving; farmed salmon contain about 1/4^th as much.  Herring, sardines, tuna and shrimp also contain vitamin D, as well as omega-3 fats. If you’re eating fancy, oysters and caviar are a good D source.  Remember the tradition about eating fish in the months with an ‘r’?  Isn’t it nice that these are the months with the least sunshine? 

The sun-starved folks in New England traditionally ate a lot of cod.  Cod liver oil is uniquely rich in both omega-3 and vitamin D.  (Cod liver oil has 1300 IU of D in just 1 tbsp.)  Nature does provide.

Eggs contain vitamin D also, about 20-37 IU.  Some breakfast cereals have been fortified with vitamin D (40-140 IU per serving): milk contains 100 IU of D, added by irradiation.  Though these are synthetic forms of D, you can get 300 IU or so with a hearty breakfast.  Mushrooms contain D and this is increased if you place them in the sun for a few hours.

This Week’s Recipe

In the 52 Breakthrough Recipes we plan to post this year, we’ve included five salads.  THe Healthy Change implied a recipe with vitamin D so the beautiful wife suggested a Classic Seafood Salad recipe, which we included in this week’s menu.  Here’s our recipe:

Classic Seafood Salad

Ingredients (feeds 4):

• 8-12 oz. of cooked shrimp
• 4 cups dark greens, washed
• 4 green onions, chopped
• 4 eggs, hard-boiled and quartered
• 2 medium tomatoes, cut into sections
• 1 avocado, sliced

Directions:

1)   This is too easy but always a treat; it can be the only dish if accompanied with bread.  We ate it this week with cheese quesadilla.  Simply arrange the ingredients on a salad plate, artfully.  You can add about any produce you have on hand.  This salad works with almost any seafood; canned tuna is easy on the budget, but we also buy crab when the price is right.

2)   Serve the dressing at the table.  The beautiful wife makes a 1000 Island dressing by combining our homemade chili sauce with ketchup and mayonnaise. 

Please Comment:  Per the request at the top of the page, please tell if you’ve been tested for vitamin D (yes or no), and share the test result, if you don’t mind.