Fruit in Season

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

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Small town Gothic

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 Healthiest Fruits

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

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

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

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

Four-a-day

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Vitamin A

The quick answer:  At a basic level nutrition reform is quite simple:  Eat less sugar, lots less, and eat more vegetables, lots more.  It's that simple.  And be sure to eat something orange.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

A Brief History of the Vitamin Business

This year marks a historic moment in nutrition:  The term “vitamin” was coined exactly 100 years ago.  The discovery of the 13 known vitamins between 1910 and 1941 was the most exciting nutrition event of the time.   A longer look at our romance with vitamins reveals the difficulty our society has with nutrition:

1. Thoughtful physicians make a connection between disease and dietary deficiency.  The first instance was beriberi.   The advent of polished white rice led to beriberi (caused by B-1 or thiamine deficiency) among the upper class in Asia.  Before this British had linked scurvy to the poor diet of their sailors.
2. Scientists then discovers the exact dietary deficiencies:  Vitamin C for scurvy, B-1 for beriberi, vitamin D for rickets, vitamin A for poor vision, and vitamin B-3 for pellagra (a disease that ravaged the poor people of the South).  Later certain birth defects are linked to insufficient folic acid (the preform of vitamin B-3).
3. Laboratory researchers, in the hope of better treating these diseases, develop synthetic forms of the vitamins naturally found in whole foods.  This reflects a blind faith that man can reinvent Nature.
4. Businessmen package the synthetic versions of natural vitamins in pill form that doctors can prescribe for the treatment of disease.
5. To grow their business, these pills are offered to the general population without prescription or doctor guidance in the false belief they’ll promote good health. 

Bottom line:  In the Industrial Revolution we were good at making money from scientific discoveries such as vitamins, but we were slow to learn an important lesson—if you desire to be healthy, the best source is still Mother Nature.

Carotenoids and Vitamin A

The retina of your eyes requires vitamin A (or retinal) to function.  The body makes vitamin A from the many carotenoids in a healthy diet.  Of the carotenoids, beta-carotene—the orange pigment in carrots—plays a key role but others may also be important.   The role of carotenoids in eye health was discussed in this post.

There are hundred of different carotenoids in a healthy diet and though we don’t understand all they do, we know they act as antioxidants.  We discussed the critical role of antioxidants in the posts titled Staying Alive and Aging with Grace. 

Vitamin A enhances the immune system and aids reproductive health as well.  It’s also preventative of infections, including the respiratory and diarrheal infections common to children.  Worldwide, vitamin A deficiency takes a terrible toll in child mortality and blindness.  Carotenoids are protective of heart disease and certain cancers.

Such deficiency is uncommon in the U.S. but there is chronic insufficiency.  Because we eat so few vegetables, carotenoids constitute one of the major dietary insufficiencies for Americans.  One goal of this blog is to remedy carotenoid insufficiency by eating more vegetables.  We earlier addressed this with the post, In Defense of Veggies.  

The Simple Truth

At a basic level nutrition reform is quite simple:  Eat less sugar, lots less, and eat more vegetables, lots more.  It's that simple.

Vegetables perform many functions but they're our primary source of carotenoids.  Authorities recommend 4-5 daily servings.  Americans, if you don’t count French fries, average about 1 serving daily.  This is such a big problem it’s the subject of 8 of our 52 Healthy Changes.   You’ll notice much less attention to fruit—also important but so much easier to include in the diet.  When you plan your vegetables, think about colors.

Eating red:  Lycopene, an important carotenoid, gives tomatoes and other red fruits and vegetables their color.  There is evidence that lycopene is protective of certain cancers, including prostate cancer.  Cooked tomatoes are our richest source of lycopene and last week’s recipe Real Spaghetti Sauce gave a recipe. Our menu goal is one serving of tomato sauce per week.

Eating green:  Last year in the post titled Seeing Green, we introduced green carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin and discussed their role in reducing the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration.   We also looked at their importance in the post The Joy Of Salads and suggested a green salad most days.

Eating orange:  This week we look at how to include the orange carotenoids in your diet.  Foods rich in the orange carotenoids:

• Carrots
• Sweet potatoes
• Any yellow or orange quash
• Oranges (the beautiful wife puts OJ on her breakfast compote)
• Apricots
• Mangoes
• Papaya

A good way to do this is to eat an orange fruit and vegetable each day.  Keep this rule in mind when writing your weekly menu and shopping list.  If healthy food isn't in the house, it can't be eaten.

 Please comment:  What is your favorite orange vegetable.  Have a recipe you want to 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.

Healthy Winter Desserts

The quick answer:  In winter, when you crave an after-dinner sweet, make fruit the first ingredient.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Next Year

We’re most grateful for all that has been accomplished in 2011.  In the next post we’ll discuss our  plans for 2012.  We started our conversation a year ago with three basic premises. 

1. The modern American diet (MAD) is the primary cause of chronic disease (heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, etc.).
2. Prevention of chronic disease by dietary reform is better than treatment.
3. Dietary reform is too big a jump to do all at once, but could be substantially accomplished in a year of 52 weekly steps, called Healthy Changes.  

The three premises rested upon three hypotheses:

1. Because the science of nutrition is impossibly complex and changes with time, we could balance science with two timeless oracles: food tradition and scripture.  This brings to mind the stability of the three-legged stool.
2. Using these sources, an ordinary person given sufficient time could better define a healthy diet than any congress of conflicting and conflicted experts. 
3. Because everyone is different, this diet could be improved though conversation with other concerned people.  Whoever reads this blog and comments, adds to that conversation.

The focus of this blog is prevention.  Only qualified doctors can diagnose illness and prescribe treatment; nothing in this blog should be considered medical advice.

The Sugar Addiction

Americans eat too much sugar, over 100 pounds each year.  So six of the 52 Healthy Changes combined to reduce our sugar intake to below the AHA target of 6 teaspoons daily for women (about 20 lbs./year) and 9 for men.  

Healthy Change #1 targeted the problem of excess sugar intake, by going after sugary drinks:  If you consume sodas or other sugary drinks, limit yourself to one (12 oz.) serving per week. 

Healthy Change #3 talked about breakfast cereals, but actually provided a rule for all processed foods:  Cereal products must be made of whole grains, and have more grams of natural fiber than grams of sugar.

Healthy Change #8 went after the bag of candy in your home:  Buy candy a piece at a time; never bring a box or bag of candy into the home.

Healthy Change #9 applied the “more sugar than fiber” rule to the bakery aisle:  Your daily bread must be whole grain, with more grams of fiber than added sugars.

Healthy Change #31 put the dagger into the diet drinks, which many mistakenly think are healthier than the sugar drinks:  If you consume diet drinks, limit yourself to one (12 oz.) serving per week.

Healthy Change #51 proposed that traditional spices and herbs replace sugar as our most popular flavoring agent.  This is the hallmark of a competent cook—to not rely on sugar to make food taste good.

The Easiest Thing

Did you notice this year how we haven’t had a single post on one of the healthiest food groups—fruit?  There’s a reason.  Fruits are so easy to eat they don’t need an eating rule.  They’re Nature’s candy—fruit is fun to eat so it usually is eaten before it spoils.  Not so with vegetables—if you don’t include them in your menu writing, they’ll go bad sitting in your refrigerator.

People enjoy candy during the Holidays.  Because we expected a lot of company, the beautiful wife bought a box of See’s candy (technically, a violation of Healthy Change #8).  Christmas passed without opening the box.  Later, overwhelmed by the noise of little grandchildren, I proposed a silence contest, with a treat for all who could be still.  Silence by the promise of See’s worked.  Had a few pieces myself.

Dessert

We crave something sweet after dinner, a little dessert.  Have you noticed this craving more in winter?  I have.  In times past, summer’s fruit was put away for winter use.  Berries were preserved as jam.  Tree fruits were bottled, or dried.  Dried fruits could be used in compotes.  Traditional fruit preservation has declined because fresh fruits are available year around.  This presents an opportunity to reinvent, or at least redisocover fruit-based desserts:

Here are ten winter fruits desserts that can be made with little sugar:

1. Apple with cheddar cheese—no cooking required.  See this Washington Post article for cheese ideas.
2. Apple Crisp with granola topping—there are lots of recipes.  I could eat this every week; it’s great with vanilla ice cream, or just cream.
3. Pear Crisp.  I’m not a big Ina Garten fan, but she does have a recipe that combines pears and apples.
4. Chocolate dipped fruits—winter strawberries need a little help and what’s better than chocolate?  Here’s Martha’s recipe.
5. Tropical fruit—if you have a ripe pineapple, combine it with banana and/or coconut.
6. Baked Apple—here's a recipe for this traditional winter treat.
7. Poached Pears (photo shown above)—delicious with a small scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, or lemon sorbet (recipe here).
8. Banana Nut Bread—good for desserts or snacks.  When bananas get brown spots, simply slip then into the freezer until needed.  Recipes abound but I do a health-up by replacing half the white flour with whole wheat flour, cutting sugar by 1/3 and replacing with brown sugar, substituting butter for less healthy oils, and adding applesauce to reduce the butter.  I also double the walnuts.
9. Orange slices with warmed raspberries—this recipe is another way to enjoy winter navels.
10. Dried Fruit Compotes—this recipe can be made from a variety of fruits by simply adding honey and a little vanilla.

Please comment.  Share your favorite healthy fruit desserts and treats.

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.

Eye Health

The quick answer:  To protect your vision, eat less sugar and more colorful fruits and vegetables.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

A side benefit of this blog is the emails we receive from interesting people, like Alena Skarina, the Siberia-born illustrator.  Alena admired our blog and generously offered to contribute some original art.  As our photographer was on maternity leave, I suggested the subject of this post, eye health.  This touched a chord as Alena and her family had traveled from Siberia to Moscow in 1989—the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union—because her father needed vision-saving cataract surgery.  When she was 13, Alena immigrated to Canada and at 17 was accepted by a prestigious illustration agency.    Incidentally, Alena reports that Russians consider the rosehip a rich source of vitamin C, an antioxidant.  As a child she was given rosehip syrup to boost her immune system during colds; her mother still grows rosehip bushes in her Canadian garden.

Seeing the World

Our eyes are incredible instruments, processing torrents of data from morning ‘til night, day after unending day.  Everything we see passes through the lens, which continually changes shape to focus near and far. 

The lens transmits the world to the retina on the back of our eye, especially the macula, which provides our sharpest vision.  Though physically tiny the lens and macula handle an immense amount of data, and both are subject to disease from oxidative stress and inflammation.  The two common diseases of the eye in the U.S. are age-related:

• Cataracts in the lens—lens replacement is now the #1 surgery.
• Macular degeneration (AMD)—the #1 cause of irreversible blindness in older people.

Though the mechanism of these diseases is unknown, they have similar risk factors—if you get one you’re likely to get the other.  They also share preventative factors.  For lifelong vision, it’s best to reduce risk, the enhance what prevents.

Risk factors, in addition to age, include smoking, excessive alcohol, high blood pressure, diabetes, overweight and obesity, UV exposure, etc.  (Please note that age-related hearing loss shares some of these risk factors.)  Regarding UV exposure, sunglasses and wide-brimmed hats can protect if you're in the sun too much.  Though excess UV is a risk, we have previously suggested you consider getting a little mid-day sun as you exercise because of the importance of vitamin D.  The sun has been shining on man for millennia so though lacking hard proof, I suspect that the UV danger is less about sunshine and more about a diet lacking in protective nutrients, especially antioxidants. 

To date, the Healthy Changes have addressed the risk factors of smoking, alcohol, high blood pressure, overweight/obesity, and diabetes, as well as the benefits of regular exercise. Protective antioxidants merit further attention.

Antioxidants

In the post Aging With Grace we discussed how the oxidation of glucose provides energy for our cells but throws off free radicals.  Free radicals are molecules that lack an electron and which wreak havoc within the cell until one is supplied.  Antioxidants—mainly found in plant foods—heal the free radicals and protect cells, especially those in our eye. 

Carotenes—over 600 types have been discovered so far—are an important class of antioxidants.  They are fat-soluble molecules found in fruits and vegetables that provide the colorful and protective pigments in plants.  Foods rich in carotenes, by color:

• Orange/yellow: sweet potatoes, carrots, cantaloupe, pumpkin, winter squash, oranges, mangos, apricots;
• Dark green: spinach, parsley, broccoli, and various greens,
• Red: tomatoes (including tomato juice), bell peppers, radishes, and watermelon.

Eye Studies

There is a tragic lack of awareness of how to prevent cataracts and macular degeneration.  Several long-term eye disease studies started around the world in the ‘90s when the rise of cataracts and AMD became obvious.  These studies tend to be academic exercises, as the initial interest is to study the progression of the disease, rather than prevent disease in the first place.   They have however documented the risk factors noted above and made cautious recommendations about diet.  Several articles stand out:

A 1995 article by J.M. Seddon et al, found those consuming the most dietary carotenoids had 43% reduced risk of AMD, and two carotene antioxidants—leutein and zeaxanthin, found in spinach and other dark greens—were especially helpful.

A 2006 review of mostly animal studies, titled “Oxidation, antioxidants and cataract formation: a literature review”, concluded that “dietary antioxidants are central in retarding cataractogenesis.”

A 2007 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found a higher risk of AMD in high glycemic index foods, meaning a diet high in sugars and refined grains.  As a high glycemic diet is typically includes processed foods at the expense of whole foods, eating fruits and vegetables offers better protection.

Finally, the 2010 study “Carotenoids in Age-Related Eye Disease Study (CAREDS), part of the Women’s Health Initiative, found a 37% reduced risk of cataracts for those reporting a higher proportion of carontoids in their diet. 

Healthy Change

For protective antioxidants, we should replace sugary processed foods with colorful fruits and vegetables.  Dark greens were included in the Healthy Change to eat green salads daily.  The red fruits and vegetables will be covered in a future post, today we focus on the color orange (I know, it sounds like Sesame Street):

Please comment.  We have just 16 posts (and Healthy Changes) left in the year.  Do you have a subject you want discussed?  Please make a request.  (Yes, milk is on the list.)  We have the rest of the year planned, but would insert any topic with popular demand. 

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.