Let The Sun Shine

The quick answer:  Aside from a healthy diet and exercise, the next best thing you can do is to get enough sunshine to maintain a healthy serum vitamin D level.  It’s good for your mood and can help prevent a long list of diseases.

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About Vitamin D

It’s essential to eat vitamin-rich food because the body can’t produce them, with one exception:  With a little sunshine, the body can make it’s own vitamin D.  Unfortunately, the weathermen and dermatologists have scared us out of getting enough sunshine.  Ever had your vitamin D level tested?

Sufficient D is essential to good health; vitamin D receptors are found in cells all through your body.  The growing list of conditions where vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor includes seasonal affective disorder (SAD), osteoporosis, muscle and joint pain including back pain, certain cancers (breast, ovarian, colorectal, and prostate), obesity and diabetes, stroke or heart attack, G.I. diseases like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or Crohn’s disease, and immunological diseases such as MS and Parkinson’s disease.  It’s a long list. 

Vitamin D deficiency increases as you move away from the equator.  In the Sunbelt you can get adequate D year around, though it takes longer in winter.  But if you live above the 40^th latitude parallel, roughly a line through Portland, OR, Salt Lake City, and New York City, you can ski all winter in your bathing suit and not get enough D.

There’s an annual cycle to your vitamin D level.  For most, our D level peaks in the last sunny days of summer, then hits rock bottom as winter turns to spring.  This is the point when you feel the blues, lack energy, or suffer muscle aches.  Because spring just started, your D is likely at its annual low-point (unless you’ve just back from sunbathing on a beach in Costa Rica). 

IOM Report

Americans love to take pills.  Maybe it’s because we’re in a rush and taking a pill is a quick fix, but we eat a lot of pills, including vitamin pills.  We get into vitamin fads—remember the vitamin C and E eras?   Usually these end badly; the hoped-for benefit proves elusive, or side effects present.  Because of the growing interest in vitamin D, the Institute of Medicine, perhaps the world’s most prestigious scientific body, was asked to study the vitamin D issue lest we run off on another pill fad.

The IOM report, issued in late 2010, disappointed many because of its cautiousness.  Basically, if you set the minimum level for serum vitamin D at 20 nanograms/mL, most people are OK.  But if you set the level at 30, as some labs do, then up to 80% are deficient.  Some doctors argue that 40-50 is a good range but the IOM couldn’t find sufficient evidence to support a target higher than 20-30.  (The IOM report also looked at calcium supplements and found little support, with the exception of girls in their teens.)

The N. Y. Times ran an article on the IOM report, repeating the message that vitamin D and calcium pills may not be indicated for most.  The article unleashed a torrent of reader comments, many from thoughtful people in the Northeast, the region with the least sunshine for vitamin D.  Readers expressed real anger that there wasn’t better guidance on the optimum vitamin D level, or on the best methods to maintain vitamin D in the winter.  This is a common problem in nutrition—after the billions spent on research, we have these basic questions without a clear answer.

The Vitamin D Solution

The best book I’ve seen on vitamin D is The Vitamin D Solution, written by Dr. Michael Holick, PhD, MD.  Holick suggests a 3-step solution of 1) testing, to know where you are, 2) sensible sunshine, and 3) safe supplementation when sunshine isn’t available. 

The book makes two remarkable statements about vitamin D and cancer:

First, on the benefit of getting sensible sunshine: “vitamin D could be the single most effective medicine in preventing cancer, perhaps even outpacing the benefits of . . . a healthy diet”.  We hear all the time that we should avoid avoid sunshine to prevent skin cancer, which brings us to the second point.

Second, the book quotes Dr. Edward Giovannucci on the benefits of sunshine for vitamin D versus the risk of skin cancer:  sufficient “vitamin D might help prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer”.    I like those odds: 30 better outcomes at the risk of one bad outcome.

I recently saw my dermatologist.  She’s a charming woman who cares about her patients.  We talked about the trade-off between getting enough vitamin D the natural way—by sunshine—versus the risk of skin cancer.  The good doctor pointed out that in southern California, you could get sufficient vitamin D with 15 minutes of sunshine on most days.  Of course you have to show a little skin, so I do my workouts outdoors around noontime, wearing shorts and shirts without sleeves (except when it’s cold).  When no one’s around I take off my shirt, but I try to avoid the “pinkness” that’s the first stage of a sunburn. 

I’ve got a physical check-up scheduled that includes a test for vitamin D.  I’ll let you know how it comes out.  I’ll be happy if I have a serum level of 30 ng/mL, the upper range recommended by the IOM.  A number of people have told me their vitamin D levels—I’m forward about asking—and I’ve yet to meet anyone with a value of at least 30.  Per the IOM, this is a big problem, which brings us to this week's Healthy Change:

Please note the term "a little" sunshine, sun that burns or turns the skin pink may be harmful and should be avoided.  (If you live in the northern latitudes, don’t tolerate the sun, or are concerned about your vitamin D, consult your doctor.)

Please comment:  Want to share your experience with vitamin D, or how you tested?  Do you live in the northern latitudes?  If so, what do you do in winter to maintain vitamin D.

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.

A Pattern for Salad

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is a literature professor, a successful writer, and a farmer.  But overarching all, he’s a man of ideas.  More than a farmer, Berry is the thought leader behind the local, sustainable farming movement.  He wrote a famous 1981 essay titled, “Solving for Pattern” that introduced a new approach to problem solving.

In his essay, Berry observed how solutions to problems often bring unforeseen consequences that are worse and more intractable than the original problem.  If you live in the South, you know about kudzu, an imported grass that became a terrible weed.  There are many examples in modern corporate farming, but we also find such disaters in nutrition.

Here’s an example:  The rise of heart disease in the ‘50s and ‘60s was linked to fatty plaque that blocked coronary arteries.  This led to the false idea that saturated fat caused heart disease.  It was logical in a way, but it was wrong.  In fact, heart disease is multifactorial—meaning there are many causes—and dietary saturated fat is not a major risk factor.  Truth be known, our consumption of the main sources, butter and lard, had been declining while heart disease was increasing. 

Anyway, heart disease was blamed on saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, a form of fat, and it was recommended we eat margarine, which had polyunsaturated fats.  We now know this made the problem worse in two ways:  First, margarine was hydrogenated and contained trans fats later shown to be a significant cause of heart disease.  Second, the reduced-fat movement caused Food Inc. to add more sugar to processed foods to improve taste and sugar is also a significant cause of diabetes and heart disease.  So a serious problem was worsened by the proposed solution which demonstrates how in dealing with complex problems, the most obvious solutions are often wrong.

Solving for Pattern

Wendell Berry’s essay, “Solving for Pattern,” introduced new criteria for finding solutions to complex problems.  Both farming and nutrition are examples of complex problems.  Berry sought solutions, if I can condense his criteria, with these characteristics:

1. Solutions must be widely applicable, meaning they can be applied to related problems.
2. Solutions share a common technology that anyone can apply.
3. Solutions should be robust, working effectively in varied environments.
4. Solutions harmonize with Nature and are sustainable over time.
5. Solutions enhance the underlying economies.
6. Solutions blend with traditional practices; they take advantage of the lessons of history.

The Pattern of Healthy Changes

Clever readers have likely noted that our Healthy Changes nicely comply with Berry’s solving for pattern criteria.  The Healthy Changes have broad application, can be done by the weakest person, are robust, harmonize with Nature and tradition, and are affordable by all.   Two examples: 

• The Healthy Change rule of “more natural fiber than added sugar” was first applied to packaged breakfast cereals, but it also works with bread, crackers, and other grain products.  It’s a universal rule for processed foods that leads to the correct idea that it’s best to do your own cooking.
• Eating more homemade soup is another Healthy Change and there’s a simple pattern for making soup.  Think of soup as five components: 1) the main plant (legumes, potatoes, etc.); 2) liquid (usually homemade stock); 3) mirepoix (carrots, celery, and onion, the aromatic vegetables); 4) a little meat (for texture and flavor); and 5) seasoning (traditionally bay leaf, thyme, parsley, salt, pepper, and perhaps garlic).  With this recipe pattern you can make soup from whatever’s on hand.

The Gout Pattern

Sometimes it’s better to learn from the experience of others.  Take gout, for example—an unbearably painful joint condition that afflicts 6 million in the US.  Gout is usually the logical consequence of a food pattern heavy in meats and alcoholic beverages.  Frank Bruni, past N. Y. Times restaurant critic and serious eater, recently wrote about his gout experience in an article titled “Red Meat Blues.”  The pain of gout compelled Bruni to give up his favorite man foods: meat and booze.

In Bruni’s new dietary pattern he eats whole grains and nuts, even vegetables and fruits.  When he does eat meat, he keeps it under a pound in a week—as in sparingly.  There’s a benefit: he sleeps better, feels healthier, and he’s keeping the gout at bay.   In the end of the article he shares an important thought:

There are times, crazily, when I’m almost happy about the gout . . . .  It provided a dietary shove where the gentle pushes of a vague desire for self-improvement hadn’t sufficed. I always sort-of meant to kind-of get around to paring down the meat in my meals, and I always sort-of meant to kind-of get around to decreasing my drinking. But it wouldn’t happen.  I lacked the proper motivation.  Illness and the threat of extreme pain have provided it. . . . . My pivot hasn’t been as joyless as I’d feared.  Old hankerings fade; new pleasures dawn.

The Salad Pattern Recipe

For Bruni, and all those who secretly want to eat better, here’s the answer:  salad.  Rather than a recipe for one salad, we offer a pattern for making salads that can be as varied as what’s in your refrigerator.  Salads can be like a kaleidoscope; varying the mix of ingredients gives a different taste every night.  Actually, now that I think about it, women are like salad—the same dish but each day interestingly different, and unpredictable, though always enticing.  This salad pattern has six parts:

1. Greens—more varied these days, and darker.  To spinach add romaine, kale, or buy the packaged blends to get variety.  The best value is old-fashioned spinach in a bunch that you wash yourself (but do a thorough job).
2. Protein—nuts, seafood, chicken, bacon, ham, or grains, it’s all good.
3. Cheese—there’s such a variety today; a good subject for a future post.  We usually stock cheddar (Tillamook), feta, goat, and gorgonzola or Jarlsberg.
4. Fruit—so many choices, including pomegranate seeds, grapefruit sections, pears, pineapple, apples, or Mandarin oranges.  Meat sometimes competes with fruit; you don’t always need both.
5. Vegetables—they add color, texture, and interest to the salad.  The beautiful wife enjoys peapods, broccoli, carrots, radish, bell peppers, and, always, green onions.
6. Dressing—best with a healthy fat, like olive oil.  For a long time I ate my salad without dressing to save calories; then I learned it makes the fat-soluble nutrients more bioavailable.  Now I enjoy it, in moderation.

Please comment:  To get five daily vegetable serving you need to eat salads.  Please share your favorite salad combinations or dressings.

Top photo: Guy Mendes

The Joy of Salads

The quick answer:  To meet the national goal of 4-5 daily vegetable servings, eat a green salad most days. 

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Food Math

I grew up in a large family where money, of necessity, was carefully managed.  Our folks were hardworking and prudent.  We drove older cars and took local vacations. Mom and Dad kept the wolf from the door.  Our clothes weren’t the latest style but we felt secure.  If we wanted any of those special things that revolve in and out of fashion, we had to earn them ourselves.  So out of my growing up I offer this bit of wisdom:  If money is tight in your home, be grateful.  Your poverty just might force you to buy unprocessed food and cook it yourself. 

Driving home from the grocery store I asked this question:  What do I pay, on average, for a pound of food?  So I weighted the groceries and calculated the cost.  We paid $2.22 per pound.  My horseback estimate of our average cost is $2.50/lb.  In a minute I’ll estimate the annual cost to feed a family of six.

At Word of Wisdom Living we’re cost conscious.  We really believe that it’s cheaper to buy natural food and prepare it yourself, than to buy the modern American diet (MAD) of processed foods.  It takes more time to cook meals from scratch, but that’s how you put the love into your meals.  This extra work requires that all the family participate.  A meal shouldn’t be about mom slaving alone in the kitchen; rather it can be a daily lesson in family teamwork. 

I did a little math for a family of six (two adults, two teens, two children, in total the equivalent of 4.8 adults):

1. The family eats 95 pounds of food a week—all prepared my mom and her team.
2. The family spends $1016 a month for that food.  (This assumes food at $2.50/lb.)
3. The annual cost is $12,191, but you can spend a lot more if you’re not organized. 
4. The key to provident living is to eat more natural foods in season that cost around 1 $/lb. and less meat, dairy, and processed foods that cost 3-8 $/lb. 
5. Two exceptions to #4:  First, enjoy nuts—though they cost more, eat a daily serving.  Second, take the beautiful wife out to dinner now and then. 

A word about natural foods in season:  Last summer I analyzed the produce section of a Smart & Final store.  Of about 100 different produce items, all but two could be purchased for under 1 $/lb.  (Avocados, for example, cost more.)  I was so impressed with this food value that I vowed to mention Smart & Final in a post.  I just did, but not to exclude Sprouts or Whole Foods, TJ’s, produce stores like Growers Direct, or the ubiquitous farmers’ markets. 

The Vegetable Challenge

Of your 15 or so daily servings of food, try to make 4-5 of them vegetables.  That’s the guidance of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and is congruent with the canonized scripture on diet called the Word of Wisdom.  After a year of observation we’ve learned this:  it’s hard to eat 4-5 daily vegetable servings.    If you exclude French fries and the ketchup they’re dipped in, the average American eats about 1 daily vegetable serving.  Just one!

Here’s the key to reaching 4-5 daily vegetable servings:  Eat a green salad most days.

Green Salad

Growing up, dinner usually included a salad.  We are a variety: Waldorf salad (apples, celery, walnuts); potato salad (a lot of work); carrot and raisin salad (really healthy except for the mayo); macaroni salad with canned shrimp (my favorite); and a relic of that time—Jello salad, usually with a can of fruit cocktail. 

The beautiful wife grew up eating green salads so that became our standard.  Over time the salads were improved by replacing pale iceberg lettuce with dark greens, like spinach, romaine, arugula and broccoli.  That’s the new wisdom for greens:  the darker the better.   Greens cost more in the winter but year around a salad of dark greens is the best nutrition value you can find.  Last night for dinner we enjoyed a super nutrition bargain: the last of the Black Bean Soup with a spinach salad.  Simple, cheap, healthy, and green.

For more on the benefit of greens, check the YouTube lecture by University of Iowa professor Dr. Terry Wahls.  Wahls successfully reversed her MS by turning to a diet of plant foods with lots of greens.  It’s called Minding Your Mitochondria.

Traditional Salad Dressing

Enjoy your salad with a dressing made from healthy oil.  In our view, olive oil is healthy oil but refined soybean oil, commonly used in commercial dressings, isn’t.  In olden times, vinaigrette salad dressing made of olive oil and vinegar (in a 3:1 ratio), plus salt and pepper with any other seasoning, was kept on most tables.  Substituting lemon juice for part of the vinegar improves the taste for some.  If the tartness of vinegar bothers, add a little honey.  Because oil and vinegar don’t mix, the dressing is shaken to create a temporary emulsion when serving. 

There was real food wisdom in the vinaigrette tradition.  Researchers have discovered that some plant nutrients, like carotenoids, are fat-soluble.  These nutrients are more bioavailable if served with a little fat.  So be sure to include a dressing made from healthy oil with your salad.  For a Basic Vinaigrette Recipe, go here. 

Please comment. We talked about cabbage salad in the post, The Joy of Coleslaw, and shared a recipe.  In the next post we’ll share a pattern recipe useful for a variety of salad combinations.  Please share your favorite green salad recipe, or healthy salad dressing.

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

Black Bean Soup Recipe

When I was a young man I lived for two-and-a-half years in Central America.  Actually, I was still a boy when I left but the challenges there forced one into manhood, ready or not.  With my companions, I lived in a dozen different places between Guatemala and Costa Rica.  In each place there was a cook who prepared our meals, usually in primitive conditions.   I could tell some stories about those kitchens.

We thought the food something to be endured, not appreciating the culinary traditions of the different regions.  Now I look back upon the food with a sense of marvel for as humble as they were, they ate more wisely than the relatively rich people of the U.S.  Much of their food was natural and local:  corn tortillas, frijoles, and rice with an abundance of local fruit.  The fruit was to die for, especially the pineapples.  And the cooks knew an amazing number of ways to cook bananas. 

We ate a lot of black beans.  Many days we had beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  The black bean has a sentimental place in my heart for in those long ago days when this young boy was trying to become a man, it was my primary source of protein, fiber, minerals, antioxidants, and a bunch of other phytonutrients.  There is no better nutrition bargain than a pound of dried beans.

So the traditional black bean soup really must be included in our short list of breakthrough recipes.  I wanted a recipe that was authentic, one you could prepare without opening any cans.  Using natural food is cheaper than buying processed foods.  Take the black beans:  You can buy a pound from the bulk bin for under $2.00 and it will make six cups fully cooked.  If time is short, use  4 cans (15 oz.) of black beans (totaling six cups of beans when drained) for about $6.00.  Same thing for the chicken stock and Jalapeno pepper—you get a healthier, tastier, cheaper result if you cook it yourself.

Skip’s  Black Bean Soup

Ingredients:

1 lb. black beans, rinsed and drained

1 qt. homemade chicken stock

2 C water (if beans aren’t soaked overnight)

1 bay leaf

1 carrot, finely sliced

2 T olive oil

1 Jalapeno pepper, seeds removed and diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

½ bell pepper

½ onion, chopped

2 ribs celery, chopped

½ tsp cumin

½ tsp ground oregano

½ tsp chili powder

½ tsp black pepper

1 tsp salt (or to taste, depending on salt in stock)

1 T vinegar (optional)

1 lime (optional)

Directions:

1. Black beans may be soaked overnight in 6 cups water and then drained, or alternately, begin with dry beans.  If beans weren’t soaked overnight, combine chicken stock, water, black beans, and bay leaf in a saucepan, bring to a boil, then simmer ½ hour. 
2. While beans are simmering, wash and prepare vegetables.  Saute jalapeno pepper in olive oil several minutes; add garlic and cook one minute more. 
3. When step #1 is done, add carrots to simmering pot.  After 30 minutes add sautéed jalapeno pepper and garlic, bell pepper, onion, and celery to pot.  Add seasonings and stir well. 
4. Simmer 1 to 1½ hours more until beans are tender but not mushy.  Stir several times each hour.  (If you want natural rice with the soup, this is a good time to cook the rice.)
5. Remove about half of soup from pot and puree with a blender, and then return to pot. 
6. Adjust seasoning as needed.  Add water if needed for desired consistency.  Black bean soup may be served over rice and garnished with your choice of lime juice, sour cream, avocado, tortilla chips, chopped onions, grated cheese, parsley or cilantro.   Black bean soup is pretty basic; the garnishments make it interesting.  Enjoy.  Serves 6.  Time: about 3 hours.

Please comment:  This recipe can be adapted to a slow cooker, or simplified by using canned black beans, canned chilies, and store-bought chicken broth if you’re running short on time.  Please share your recipe, or favorite uses of black bean soup.

The Love in Your Food

The quick answer:  At the end of the day, if you want to be healthy, you have to cook (or be on good terms with a cook).  Cookin' is how the love gets into food.

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Little House on the Prairie

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), she of the Little House books about the homesteading era of her childhood, made a visit to her daughter in San Francisco in 1915.  Her daughter, I surmise, had a home with running water, a gas stove, and maybe even an electric toaster.  Laura is moved to exclaim: “Aladdin with his wonderful lamp had no more power than the modern woman in her kitchen . . .”

Yet this is the 20^th century irony, seen clearly now in history’s rearview mirror:  The more convenient kitchens became, the less they were used.  Once you start down the laborsaving pathway, there’s no logical stopping point.  The Industrial Revolution provided better kitchens, but it also provided an alternative to cooking—factory food.  Whether the factory was a flourmill in Minnesota, or a fast food restaurant down the street, we slowly lost control of how food was made.  Have you noticed how factory foods are more often addictive than healthy?  It makes a good business. 

Now in the 21^st century we have a new goal:  Use modern means to reinvent traditional home cooking.  It’s a new menu now, more about soups (including stews and chili dishes) salads, vegetables, and whole-grain breads.  It’s about fruits as our main sweet, and a little meat for flavor. 

A Food Hero

In the last post we introduced Barbara Reed, PhD, once Chief Probation Officer for Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.  Drawing on her own experience with ill-health, Dr. Reed theorized that criminal behavior came from bad thinking and wondered if poor nutrition wasn’t more the cause of crime, than any inherent evil in young people.  She started a program of testing young people entering probation, using tests that looked for hypoglycemia and lead exposure (both causes of bad decisions), but also assessed dietary habits.  Based on their findings, young delinquents were counseled on diet, exercise, and given needed treatment.

This was an unusual approach.  Concerns about crime in society have made harsher punishment a popular remedy but this hasn’t reduced recidivism.  The United States, the land of the free, has the highest percent of jailed people in the world.  Dr. Reed’s probationers were likely familiar with handcuffs but no one had taken them by the hand before and tried to understand the cause of their behavior.  The exceptional results of her innovative program made her famous.  While 2/3 of young criminals are typically back in jail within three years, only 11% of Dr. Reed’s kids got in trouble again. 

So I consider Dr. Barbara Reed Stitt—she later married nutrition author Paul Stitt—a nutrition hero.  And I love that her solution to crime was found in a kitchen, rather than a jail cell.

Staying Alive

In a prior post I told how my Mom—some years ago—remarked that her friends had all stopped cooking.  They had worked hard in the kitchen all their lives and as their husbands retired from work, they retired from their kitchens.  Now they ate out, or got some take out; they would warm food in the microwave but they didn’t cook.  It didn’t take too long to see the result.  Her friends and their husbands are all gone now, excepting one who has dementia.  Mom, in her 90s, is still chugging along, managing her home, driving her car, organizing old pictures into scrapbooks, and exercising when she can.  She’s cooking for one now, but she’s still cooking.

Saving Money           

It’s often claimed that it’s cheaper to buy factory food than to cook your own.  Don’t believe it.  You’ll always save by buying whole foods and cooking them yourself.  Fast food doesn’t save money—it just saves learning how to cook.  I’m not even sure that fast food saves time, once you consider the time spent driving to and fro and waiting in line.  And we haven’t counted the medical costs yet.

The Family Circle

Love is what glues a family together.  And when families get together, it’s most often around the dinner table.  While you’re sharing food, you share your lives.  This is where the daily happenings are observed and celebrated.  This is where traditions are born and preserved.  And it’s where day by day we polish the bonds that bring us together.

Think back to your childhood.  How many memorable moments happened around the family dinner table?  The family I grew up in swelled to ten children but we never gave up the smallish dinner table with built-in benches on two sides.  Dinnertime was the best part of the day.  That’s when the daily cares were set aside and the family was safely together again. 

The love within the family, I believe, begins with the love cooked into the daily meals.  Cooking is a form of caring.  Mom, or dad, busy in the kitchen, is a sign not only of something for dinner—it's assurance you’re a family. 

Cooking 101

This year the weekly posts include a menu and a recipe.  We’ll share 52 recipes that have this goal:  Rediscover the traditional diet of our ancestors using the best of the modern improvements.  For this reason we call them gateway recipes because they introduce us to the new dietary of Word of Wisdom living. 

Please comment:  Share what works best for you in home cooking.  What are your best new ideas for cooking?  How do you get your family to help with dinner?

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

No Sourdough Delinquents

Bread Rising

A new conversation—that was the title of our first post over a year ago.  And it happened—the ongoing dialog with our readers makes Word of Wisdom Living work.  This week’s Healthy Change on baking bread led to a comment about the merits of sourdough baking.  Curious, I did a little investigation.  Here’s what I learned:

If you want to make bread like your 3^rd great-grandmother, you should use natural fermentation, or sourdough.  Fast-acting yeasts are a 20^th century product, first introduced by Fleishmann to simplify bread preparation in 1876.   For millennia before that, bread was baked using sourdough, or natural leavening.  In fact sourdough is still used for rye bread as fast-rising package yeasts don’t work.

Modern packaged yeast is composed of fungi that ferment carbohydrate molecules into carbon dioxide bubbles.   The common baking yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, in case you wondered.  

Sourdough starter is a slower-acting leavening with a unique, tangy taste—it's the symbiotic marriage of yeast with Lactobacillus cultures.  The “sour” taste comes from the lactic acid byproduct, which does other good things. 

Advantages of sourdough for wheat bread:

1. Better blood sugar and insulin control:  sourdough bread has a lower glycemic index, about 68 compared to yeast bread at 100.  Lower blood sugar means lower blood insulin, which reduces fat storage and reduces the risk of hypoglycemia (more below).
2. Better protein metabolism:  The slower rising time of sourdough helps break down proteins for easier digestion.  Some who are gluten sensitive are said to tolerate sourdough wheat breads.  Similar, though anecdotal, claims are made for people with wheat allergies.
3. Available phosphorous:  Sourdough helps activate phytase the enzyme that breaks down phytic acid.  Phytic acid is the storage form of phosphorous in plants.  We need phosphorous for good bones and other body functions.  So the phosphorous in sourdough breads is more bioavailable to your body.
4. Better shelf life:  Sourdough breads store longer by inhibiting the growth of molds.

You can make your own sourdough starter, as discussed here.  The wheat or whole grain flour you buy contains natural yeasts.  The secret is to let them grow.  I started some this morning by simply mixing ¼ cup of filtered water with ½ cup of freshly ground whole-wheat flour.  When it starts to bubble in a day or so I’ll begin feeding it until we have our own sourdough starter.  Then we’ll make a loaf of sourdough bread and report back.  Stay tuned.

This Week’s Menu

We hosted the family dinner (our favorite meal) on Sunday, so that starts our menu.  We skipped dinner on Monday.  In the refrigerator we had asparagus and strawberries from the farmers’ market.  I wanted to make arroz con pollo Wednesday but we had old friends over so needed something a little more special.  “She’s an excellent cook,” the beautiful wife warned me as it was my duty to cook (I had made the invitation).  So I stayed with the favorite dish of last week.—Skip’s Stir-fry.  I wanted to experiment with a black bean soup this week but ran out of time.

Sunday

• Chuck roast
• Mashed potatoes and gravy
• Spinach salad
• Dessert: Banana cream pudding

Tuesday

• Roast chicken legs (from a Costco BBQ’d chicken to be used later)
• Leftover mashed potatoes and gravy
• Asparagus, steamed

Wednesday

• Skip’s Chicken Pineapple Stir-fry (recipe here) 
• Green salad (see picture and recipe next week)
• Homemade bread (this week’s subject)
• Dessert: Fresh strawberries on vanilla ice cream

Thursday (leftovers from Wednesday)

Next week

Bread making, this week’s subject, segues to next week’s topic: home cooking.  The trend of the last century was to move cooking from the home to the factory.  This was a labor-saver for the housewife and created business for Food Inc but had a disastrous impact on the nation’s health due to the rise of chronic disease.  The challenge of this century is to reinvent home cooking. 

I found a really interesting book this week, titled Food, Teens, & Behavior.  Dr. Barbara Reed, the author, was a chief probation officer in Ohio, working with teens convicted of crimes.  She became famously successful at reforming kids by turning them on to healthy food.  Teen crime is often an impulsive, impatient, crazy bad decision.  And bad decisions, Dr. Reed believed, were caused by poor brain function, which in turn was caused by conditions like hypoglycemia.  There's a 3-hour syndrome, where kids might commit a crime three hours after eating a sugar rich meal, when the blood sugar roller coaster hits a new low. 

So, how do you protect kids from crime?  Home cooking.  See you next week.

Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

Love reading old cookbooks?  A cookbook is a snapshot of the nutrition beliefs of its time.  Gathered together they document the 20^th century drift that produced the modern American diet (MAD).  Anyone, it seems, can write a cookbook—even an imaginary person like Betty Crocker, the #1 best seller.  It helps if the cookbook is funny—Irma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking is the #3 all time best seller.  It also helps if the cookbook offers the promise of skinny—In The Kitchen with Rosie, a guide to low-calorie cuisine by Oprah’s cook, was the best selling book of 1995.

It’s more complicated for the “healthy” cookbooks because there’s so much confusion over what to eat.  The bestseller in this category is The New American Heart Association Cookbook.  Unfortunately the AHA falsely believed that dietary saturated fat and cholesterol was the main cause of heart disease.  We wasted a generation on that false premise and you still find people who should know better steering us away from saturated fats.  We discussed heart disease last hear here and here and we’ll return to the subject later in 2012. 

Healthy Cookbooks

There are some prolific writers of healthier cookbooks.  Alice Waters launched the local food movement, publishing cookbooks from her Berkeley Chez Panisse restaurant for 40 years.  Mark Bittmin wrote the “Minimalist” column in the N. Y. Times for 13 years and penned a series of best selling cookbooks, starting with Leafy Greens in 1995. 

We asked our own readers about their favorite healthy cookbooks.  Nearly 30 titles were suggested (see comments) but two tied for first place:

• Natural Everyday by Heidi Swanson
• America’s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook, now in a 3^rd edition.  (The Apple Crisp was highly recommended.) 

This Week’s Recipe

This week’s Healthy Change requires a recipe for whole wheat bread.  A good source of health information can be found at the Whole Grains Council.  They document these health benefits for whole grains:

• Stroke risk reduced 30-36%
• Risk of type 2 diabetes reduced 21-30%
• Heart Disease risk reduced 25-28%
• Better weight management

Whole Wheat Bread

We developed a recipe last year but I actually preferred the recipe by reader NanO, which I slightly revised:

Ingredients (Makes 4 loaves)

4-1/2 cups warm filtered water

1 T yeast

½ cup vital wheat gluten

1 each 500 mg vitamin C pill, crushed (helps gluten develop)

4 cups freshly ground hard red whole-wheat flour

2 cups whole white wheat (or enriched flour)

½ cup healthy oil (Canola, etc.)

½ cup honey (or agave nectar)

1 T salt, rounded

4-6 cups freshly ground whole-wheat flour

Directions

1. Combine first 6 ingredients (up to, but not including oil) well and let sit for 10 minutes.
2. Add oil, honey, salt and 4 cups of whole wheat four. 
3. Knead in mixer 6-8 minutes, slowly adding last 2 cups of flour as needed for flour to pull away from bowl and form a ball that is not too stiff.  Let sit for 10 minutes. 
4. Form into 4 equal loaves and place in oiled bread pan.  Let rise until height doubles.  Bake at 350 degrees 35-40 minutes.

Note:  I like to grind the wheat on a hand grinder—it’s a good workout.  We don’t stock vitamin C pills so I add the juice of one orange—it seems to work.  The beautiful wife prefers that white flour or enriched flour be included for a lighter loaf so I includes 2 cups in the recipe; if you prefer a “wheatier” bread, use all whole hard red whole wheat flour.  The trick when adding the final flour is to get the dough stiff enough to not be sticky, but not too stiff.  Just takes a little experience.  I warm the oven slightly, then turn it off, and let the bread rise in a warm oven.  I do remove the bread while the oven is heated to 350.

Sourdough comment:  Reader Lindsey noted the merits of sourdough bread.  Sources cite benefits such as greater phytate reduction, lower glycemic index, and improved gluten digestion.  Should we include a recipe for sourdough whole wheat bread in our 52 breakthrough recipes?  Please share your sourdough experience.

The Bread of Life

The quick answer:  Your bread should be like your breakfast cereal, whole grain with more natural fiber than added sugar.

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Connecting

Peering into the distant past in search of ancestors can be fascinating.  The TV program Who Do You Think You Are?, follows celebrities as they discover their origins.  Reba McEntire, the country music singer, followed an ancestor from the 1700s that came to America as an indentured servant.  He came at the tender age of ten but survived to prosper in the New World.  Reba traced his steps back to England to learn his story.  Walking in the footprints of our ancestors helps us to understand who we are. 

Want to connect with your ancient ancestors by doing something they did?  Make bread.  There’s something primeval about making bread, especially if you hand knead.  The traditional ingredients—flour, water, yeast, salt, honey, and oil or butter—have scarcely changed in mankind’s history.  One pillar of the food reformation is the rediscovery of traditional whole grain breads.

Americans eat their weight in flour each year, roughly speaking.  Most of this flour is eaten as bread but only 10% of flour, on average, is eaten whole; 90% is refined.  Whole flour is rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, and other needed nutrients.  So this post is about the importance of whole grain bread.

Standard Bread

How did flour, and bread, lose these needed nutrients?  They were lost in man’s restless and relentless search for the next new thing.  In the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair flour from a new invention, the roller mill, was introduced.  The roller mill efficiently separated the bran and germ from wheat, leaving flour that was white and sweet, but lacking in nutrition.  Pastries made of this refined flour became a new taste sensation and healthier flours were soon pushed to the sidelines.  Brown bread was out; white was in.

With each generation, as human health declined, reform movements called for a return to whole grain flours.  Governments are indifferent to the health of the people except at wartime.  Wars can’t be won without strong bodies.  In England, before World War I, the Bread Reform League restored whole grain breads with a law defining standard bread.  It’s said you can still buy standard bread in the UK.

In the U.S., at the start of World War II, the poor health of army recruits was a concern.  Congress quickly approved enriched flour, in which synthetic forms of a few of the missing ingredients were returned as additives.  For better or worse, we still use this so-called enriched flour, though further adjustments have been made.

Waking Up In The Bread Aisle:

Last year the beautiful wife and I spent a Friday night in the bread aisle of a typical grocery store, searching out the healthy breads.  It was our most widely commented food post.  We applied two criteria to the breads:

1. The flour must be whole grain.
2. The grams of natural fiber must exceed the grams of sugar.

The first rule was more for information because natural fiber can only exceed added sugar, if whole grains are used.  Of the 70 breads available that night, just five met the rule.  Three were from Oroweat; Milton’s and Food For Life each had one. 

In a recent post, The Good Breakfast, we applied the more-fiber-than-sugar rule to breakfast cereals.  The rule is a good guide for all cereal products regularly eaten.

In this post, we shared a reader’s time-tested recipe for whole wheat bread.

Please comment.  What is your family’s favorite bread?  Do you have a great recipe to share?  Any bread making tips to share?

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

Antiquated Cookbooks

I stumbled upon a 1930 cookbook, the New Delineator Recipes.  I love these old cookbooks.  When I find one I’m like Howard Carter when he found Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt.   Actually, Carter was exploring the tomb when this book was written.  Cookbooks from the last century fascinate—hidden within are forensic footprints of a national diet gone wrong. It's a crime scene.

The Delineator was a woman’s magazine, founded in 1873, owned by the publisher Butterick, a name still known for sewing patterns.  What were stylish people eating in 1930?  The answer was in New Delineator Recipes, which also included menus.  Here’s what I found:

Canned foods:  Convenience was a big selling point in the industrialization of food.  Ordinary folks couldn’t afford servants to cook so opening a can of factory-prepared food gave at least the feeling of servancy.   A photograph in the cookbook showed the variety of vegetables you could eat in a month—30—a great idea except all were canned.

Flavors:  What spices were used in recipes three generations ago?  It was pretty basic.  Mainly salt and pepper, with occasional paprika, or cayenne.  Add two sauces: Worcestershire and Tabasco.  Cinnamon or vanilla in desserts.  What’s changed in 82 years is the variety of flavors used today.

Dessert:  Maybe it’s because the book came out at the end of the roaring ‘20s, after a boom economy, but the book is big on dessert.  Ten special recipes by the cook Ann Batchelder, for example, included eight desserts; the other two were canned fish entrees.  Pudding were common but there was one healthy dessert from a new import: bananas flavored with lemon juice.

Menus:  Here’s the pattern of the dinner menus—meat, with potatoes, a vegetable, often canned, and, most days, a salad.  Meat was in the center of the plate—usually beef.  Animal products figured even bigger in the diet if you counted eggs and milk (guidance at that time was a quart each day).  And this leads us back to this week’s subject:  a meat sparing diet.

This Week’s Menu

Our menus lag by a week; we eat them first, then publish.  We had family over for the Academy Awards so there were leftovers for Monday, including a bowl of coleslaw.  It’s good to have a salad that will keep a few days.  The cooking adventure this week was beef stew—another way to eat vegetables seasoned with a little meat.

Monday

• Baked salmon.
• Brown rice with sauce.
• Bok Choy, steamed.

Tuesday

• Sweet potato, baked, with butter and brown sugar.
• Coleslaw with peanuts (recipe here).
• Peas (frozen).

Wednesday

• Beef stew (recipe here).
• Cornbread.
• Fresh pears (dessert).

Thursday  (a leftover meal)

• Beef stew
• Spinach salad
• Rice pudding (for dessert, made with the last of the brown rice)

A New Cookbook  

Old cookbooks show the evolution of food processing.  Here are four stages in the industrialization of food reflected in my 1930 cookbook:

1. In the late 1800s grains, once eaten with bran and germ intact were refined: rice was polished, roller mills produced fine white flour, and the corn degermer was invented.  Nutrients critical to health were lost but the grains were sweeter, whiter, and didn’t spoil. 
2. In the early 1900s hydrogenation was introduced resulting in Crisco shortening, margarine, and refined salad oil.  The market for olive oil, butter, and lard declined.  Gelatin was also introduced (think of Jello, a little gelatin, a lot of sugar, plus artificial flavor).
3. After WWI canned foods, a necessity for soldiers on the move but now a labor saving convenience, became part of the public diet.  Canned fruit served in Jello made a fancy if unhealthy dessert.
4. The war made the world a little smaller:  Pineapples were imported from Hawaii, bananas from Central America, and with the application of refrigeration to ships, meat was imported from Argentina. 

These changes continued throughout the 20^th century.  We see change as good, usually.  The late Steve Jobs was a change genius in the caliber of Thomas Edison or Henry Ford.  The beautiful wife loves her iPod; I use a Mac computer.  But the changes brought by the industrialization of food were generally a bad idea that must be reversed in the 21^st century.  It’s time to rewrite our cookbooks. 

Please comment:  What is your favorite healthy cookbook.  Comment and we’ll make a list of the top ten. 

Skip's Beef Stew Recipe

Not Getting It

I start worrying that someone isn’t getting the nutrition message when they mutter some form of, “Well, moderation in all things, that’s what I always say.”  Ugggh.  It’s enough to make you scream.  Often, they believe this mindless phrase is found in the Bible.  It isn’t. 

Some attribute the phrase to Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean, but Aristotle was saying you should seek the happy space between excess and deficiency.  Actually, that’s our goal in Word of Wisdom Living.  We seek a thoughtful balance, for example, between life-shortening junk food and blowing your life worrying about food. 

To help you maximixe your life, Word of Wisdom Living, on each week’s subject, provides the quick answer to a healthy diet, along with one of 52 Healthy Changes to help you do it.  We also offer menus and recipes for your consideration, recognizing that everyone has different needs. 

Back to moderation in all things:  Think of the three categories—best, good, and worst.  We seek the “best” on things critical to our health.  For things that matter less, “good” is good enough.  And we shun the destructive effect of “worst.”  Consider the example of fats:

1. Best:  Be sure to get adequate omega-3 fats from plant and animal sources.  No moderation here—this is essential to the health of brain and body.
2. Good:  Butter, olive oil, and coconut oil are examples of healthy fats.  Enjoy them—in moderation.
3. Worst:  Avoid deep fat fried foods.  Period. No moderation.

Meat Sparingly

The Healthy Change this week says: “Agree on a 'sparing' meat intake goal as a family and write it down.  Let your goal guide your menus.”  In the opening Quick Answer, we reminded that at the end of the day, our care of animals would say everything about the humanity of our society.  I believe this.  And we eat animals in our home, but sparingly and with thanksgiving.

We all turn our heads towards a pasture of grazing cows, don't we?  The beautiful wife especially enjoys seeing the newborn calves with their mothers in the spring.  But it’s sad to see an aged animal left in the field to fall victim to predators and disease.  In our best world there are no CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations, like feedlots).  The cattle graze contentedly at pasture, reproduce, and, humanely, become meat for mankind to enjoy, sparingly, without waste.  This can best happen on the scale of the family farm, or ranch.  We don’t need monopolistic food corporations to do this right. 

Rediscovering Stew

Stew is a traditional dish; mankind has enjoyed it for millennia.  People today don’t eat stew as much as in olden times.  As a child I looked forward to my Mom’s stew.  Stew is roughly ¼ meat, ¼ potatoes, ¼ aromatic vegetables (carrots, celery, onions), and ¼ liquid (broth or stock).  Stew isn’t strongly flavored; most of the taste comes from the meat, and the vegetables. 

The flavors in stew can be as simple as salt, pepper, and a bay leaf or two.  Most recipes include garlic, and perhaps thyme and sage.  Add a little chopped parsley before serving, if you like.  Older recipes include Worcestershire sauce.  My Mom didn’t add tomatoes in any form, so I don’t either.  I also avoid those '60s and '70s recipes where the flavor base is a package of onion soup mix. 

The editors of Cook’s Illustrated gave their test kitchen’s take on stew in their big book titled The Best Recipe.  This is what I gleaned from their study of stew:

• Liquid:  Chicken stock gives a better taste than beef stock per Cook’s Illustrated.  This is good as chicken stock is more practical to make.  You can use store-bought, but it’s a pale version of homemade.
• Flavors:  If you use garlic in your stew (did I mention the beautiful wife’s mother had the surname of “Garlick,” or that she loves the smell of Gilroy, the garlic capital ?) Cook’s Illustrated says the flavor is better if you sauté it first.  Some recipes, especially for slow cookers, just toss the garlic in the pot.
• Meat:  The tougher meats are fine for stew—beef, lamb, or pork all work.  I was curious to use lamb, mainly because, to my knowledge, it’s the only animal that still comes to market straight from pasture.  But the market had beef chuck roasts for $3/lb, so how could I resist?  If you use lamb or pork, the shoulder cuts offer the best value.  Cook’s Illustrated avoids the pre-cut stew meats, as the sizes are often irregular and come from a variety of cuts. They also suggest browning the meat, but I don’t.
• Vegetables:  In addition to the specified vegetables, stew is another dish good for cleaning out the vegetable inventory.  One source said parsnips were an overlooked vegetable; I put some in for an experiment—parsnips might be one of those acquired tastes.
• Time:  Add ingredients according to their cooking time, rather than all at once.  Per Cook’s Illustrated beef takes 2-½ hrs stewing time, while lamb and pork take just 2 hours.  Of the vegetables carrots (and parsnips) take the most time, about 1 hour; potatoes (depending on the variety) take ½ hour; peas, if used, should be added just before serving.  Working moms might prepare stew on the weekend, or use a slow cooker. 

Skip’s Beef Stew Recipe

I know, it takes a lot of chutzpah to put your name on a recipe that’s been cooked for millennia.  But I do, if only because I make my version as healthy as practical.

Ingredients:

2 lb. beef or lamb, trimmed and cut into 1” cubes     

3 cups chicken stock (of beef, if homemade)

1 tsp salt (assumes stock/broth is not sodium free, otherwise 2 tsp)

1 tsp pepper

2 bay leaves

1 T Worcestershire sauce (optional)

1 tsp thyme

½ tsp sage                 

3 large boiling (see below) potatoes, diced 

4 carrots, sliced

2 medium onions (white or yellow), chopped

3 ribs celery, chopped

2+4 T olive oil or butter

4 cloves garlic (or more, if you like), minced

4 T flour

1 cup water or stock (enough to cover vegetables)           

1 cup frozen peas (optional)

Finely chopped parsley (optional)

Directions:

1. Place meat, stock, salt, pepper, bay leaves and thyme in a 4 qt. kettle, bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer one hour (add a half hour for beef).  After trimming the meat, I actually had 1 lb.-10 oz. and it was plenty.  (Note: My recipe doesn’t call for browning the meat.) 
2. While the meat is simmering, clean and cut potatoes, carrots, and celery into bite-size pieces; chop onions into smaller pieces.  Add carrots to the pot after 1-½ hr (1 hr. if using lamb or pork).  (Note:  Boiling potatoes are the waxy type, like the red or thin-skinned straw-colored varieties.  You can use Russets, just remember they cook faster.)
3. In a frying pan, while meat and carrots are simmering, sauté chopped garlic in olive oil about 1 minute and add to pot at any time.
4. In the same frying pan, make a roux by stirring flour into 3 T hot olive oil or butter; cook 3-5 minutes until a nutty aroma develops.  Blend water or stock into roux and transfer to stew pot, at any time.   (I added a little Kitchen boquet to improve the color.)
5. Add potatoes, onions, and celery for last 30 minutes of cooking time.  (Excess cooking makes them mushy.)  Add liquid to cover vegetables.  (My vegetables were larger so I added almost three cups.)
6. Before serving, check seasonings (some like their stew a little saltier), and stir in optional peas.  Sprinkle with parsley.  Serves eight to ten.

Please comment:  Yes, I know, we always ask for comments.  But the thousands of comments you have made are a big part of the success of this blog.  So please comment on your family’s experience cooking stew. 

What other recipes would you like to see?  Our focus is on basic recipes that enable the breakthrough to healthy eating.  We only get 52 in a year, so we have to make them count.