My Father's Garden

 

The quick answer:  Want to understand the mystery of (your) life?  Plant and tend a garden.

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My Father’s Garden

My father grew a beautiful vegetable garden in the deep lot behind our home.  He had always done this; he had a garden in his 90^th year, before he left.  There were fruit trees on one side, a shaded area for berry vines, a trellis to grow sweet peas for my Mother, wire cages for tomato plants, and raised beds for vegetables like carrots, onions, squash, and cantaloupes.  In the spring he would plant corn, one section each week to extend the time of ripening.   He loved fresh corn-on-the-cob but it had to be fresh; he wouldn’t pick the corn until Mother had the water boiling.  Do you know how at the end of summer, the tomato plants are full of almost ripe tomatoes that aren’t going to fully ripen?  With those we would make a family favorite, Aunt Kate’s Chili Sauce.  I’ll share the recipe with you one day.

Unlike myself, my Father had a beautiful voice.  One song was a love ballad of his time—I love You Truly—that he would sing to Mother when they were getting ready to go out.  When I wrote our family memoir I titled it, I Love You Truly: The Lessons of Our Lives.  Those lessons covered the gamut of our joys and sorrows.  Our family paid a high price for some of those lessons so I thought it important they be saved for our descents in a book. 

When I wrote the memoir I asked Father the “why question.”  Here’s his thoughtful response:  Why do I garden?  Why do you breathe?  I find peace from life’s cares in my garden.  A person needs a place for deep thinking, the kind of on-your-knees, hands-in-the-dirt pondering where life’s lessons are best learned.  I think about my children and the decisions they’ve made, about the people I’ve known, places I’ve been, the dances I took Nina (our Mother) to.  But mostly I think about my life, teaching myself from the pulpit of my memory.  My garden really isn’t work, for while I toil the birds fly about singing, the wind makes comforting sounds as it blows through the trees, and the sun warms my back.  Later, when the plants sprout in their rows it’s very satisfying.

Over the years the ten children grew up and left home.  It became a ritual when we returned to greet whoever was in the house and then go to the backyard and admire the garden.  Often Father would be there, ready to hear the news of your life.  Once I wrote a silly story for children, about a visiting grandchild who wakes up in the night and hears noises coming from Father’s garden.  The child ventures out to the garden and discovers that on moon-lit nights the various vegetables leave their beds to form a marching band, led by the gnarled old apricot tree that looks surprisingly like Father.  I’ll share one verse of the song that vegetable marching band played; you’ll know the melody so sing along:

Seventy-six cornstalks led the big parade,

With a hundred-and-ten cantaloupes close at hand,

They were followed by rows and rows of the finest vegetables,

The cream of Father’s marching band.

Well, I said it was a silly children’s story but it does touch on the magic every garden offers.  The grandchildren loved Father’s garden and delighted in vegetables eaten directly from the vine.  It’s an American tragedy that children grow up hating vegetables, but I could see these kids loved the vegetables they picked and ate.  Gardens, of course are about more than the harvest, though they do yield the healthiest food you can eat.  And they’re good exercise.  But even more, they teach reverence for food in the way it was originally created.  Which brings us to this week’s Healthy Change:

Comment:  Please comment on your gardening experience.  Whether you do it for truly local and organic food, to save money, or just for the joy of gardening, a garden is one of the best uses of your time.

Animals Need Vegetables Too

The quick answer:  A vitamin you haven’t heard much about, K-2, is essential to bone health.  (Yes, this is linked to animals eating vegetables.)

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First an Apology

Yes, I'm sorry to say this post is a little long, but the subject is complex: bone health.  There's much still unknown about building bones, hence we get conflicting advice.  Here's my take on the subject in three steps:

1. Vegetables are vital to humans, but also to the animals that feed us, in the form of green grass.
2. The four essentials for bone health include the little-discussed vitamin K-2.  A connection between osteoporosis and atherosclerosis (calcification) is also noted.
3. Over the last 50 years we inadvertently reduced the K-2 in animal products by moving animals away from green grasses as a major feed.  Eating food from pastured animals, rich in vitamin K-2, is critical to bone health.

Vegetable Overview

It’s not hard to eat the recommended 3-4 daily servings of fruit—fruit is sweet and delicious.  However, for most Americans, eating 4-5 daily portions of vegetables is a challenge.  The evidence supports this:  If you exclude French fries and ketchup, the average American averages just one daily vegetable serving.  Our distain for vegetalbes gives those French food snobs one more reason to look down on us

For this reason, of our 52 Healthy Changes, eight are dedicated to the food group kids love least—vegetables:

#6   Set a family shopping goal for pounds vegetables.

#12 Eat green salads most days.

#19 Eat orange vegetables and fruits.

#25  Choose products of animals fed on vegetables (pasture grass).

#32 Add stock-based vegetable soups to your weekly menu.

#38 Eat cruciferous vegetables most days.

#45 Eat a serving of legumes most days.

#51 Add tubers to your menu.

Curiously, this post is about the vegetables eaten by the animals that supply us with food.  As it turns out, your health is linked to their health, and that includes vitamin K-2.

Vegetables for Animals

The early colonists in America brought an important farming tradition—the common pasture.  Families could leave their sheep, cows, and goats in the common pasture and a single herdsman would ensure the animal’s safety.  At least one of these still exists, though as a park—the Boston Common. 

Following WWII pastured animals, accustomed to eating green grass much of the year, became victims of a well-intentioned but misguided efficiency drive.  The new idea was the CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation).  Cattle spent six months in a feedlot eating grains, industrial wastes, and the bare minimum of hay, before going to market.  The last thing you’ll see in a feedlot is green grass.  Milk cows were taken from the pasture and tied to stanchions; energy used walking around now went into making milk.  Chickens were confined to henhouse cages.  Hogs were similarly caged and fed. 

In every case, the natural vegetable of the animals, pasture grass, was replaced with the cheapest feed available—commodity grains and industrial waste. The CAFO was cost effective but inhumane and bad for the animals’ health.  Because mankind eats the meat, eggs, and dairy products of these animals, healthy animal products were replaced by less healthy versions. 

Remember the Creation account in Genesis, how man was given dominion—a responsibility of stewardship—over the beasts?  There’s a hook in that relationship—we control their diet but our health depends on their health. 

What Your Doctor Didn’t Have Time to Tell You About Bone Health

In a recent post we took a fresh look at the factors for strong bones.  Your bone health began with what your mom ate during your fetal period.  Now it depends on what you eat—whole foods are the source of needed minerals (calcium, and a balance between magnesium and phosphorous).  Exercise matters.  Strong muscles go with strong bones—use them or lose them.  Vitamins matter too, especially D and K-2.  In a prior post we discussed vitamin D.  Today’s post is about K-2.

Vitamin K is a little like the essential omega-3 fats.  The short-chain omega-3 fats are found in green plants, whether grass or algae.  The animals that eat those greens produce essential long-chain omega-3 fats.  So cold-water fish and eggs from free-range chickens, for example, are good sources.  Our body makes the long-chain omega-3 fats but not enough; we need to get the rest from fish or animal products.

Vitamin K works the same.  We get the K-1 form essential to blood clotting from green plants.  Vitamin K-2 (menaquinone) is created in mammals that eat those green plants, during digestion, by bacteria acting upon the K-1.  In the last 50 years, when we were moving animals from pastures to CAFOS, we unknowingly removed vitamin K-2 from our diet.  The human body can make K-2 from K-1 via bacteria in our gut, but (like the long-chain omega-3) it’s not enough.  Good bone health requires sufficient K-2 in our diet and that’s another reason to eat pastured meat and dairy products, sparingly.

To summarize, for good bone health do these things:

1. Eat vegetables, fruits, and grains rather than processed foods for proper mineral balance.
2. Make strong bones by building muscles through exercise (for more go here).
3. Get a little noonday sun on your skin to make vitamin D (read more here.)
4. Eat animal products from pastured animals rich in vitamin K-2.  The less you eat, the more important the K-2 level is.

Osteoporosis and Calcification

Everyone knows about osteoporosis but few know about calcification.  Calcification is the other side of the osteoporosis coin.  If you don’t have the vitamins and minerals needed to move calcium into your bones, your body may deposit excess calcium in your soft tissue.  This is called calcification—though little discussed it’s a big problem.  Calcium, for example, is deposited in the plaque that coats your main arteries so plays a role in heart disease.  Plaque consistently contains about 20% calcium; calcification makes your arteries rigid and inflexible. 

Vitamin K-2

The next big thing in healthy foods, I think, will be foods rich in vitamin K-2 from pastured animals.  We have insufficient information about the K-2 levels of different foods; it’s not even listed in the nutrition panel on packaged foods.  The Japanese food natto is rich in K-2, but smelly and inedible to most.  Liver is a good source for K-2, especially if from grass fed mammals.  Eggs from free-range chickens are another source.  Mutton and lamb is not currently CAFO fed, to my knowledge, so should contain K-2. 

Bottom line:  try to include pastured animal products in your diet.  If you have a concern about calcification or osteoporosis, talk to your doctor about your vitamin K-2 level.  Some doctors may be unaware, but they're usually caring enough to do some research.

Please comment:  Share your experience with bone health, or with osteoporosis/calcification.  What works for you?  Have you a source for vitamin K-2?

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.

Sweet Potato Casserole Recipe

Old recipe books can reveal how our dietary went awry in the 20^th century.  Take the New Delineator Recipes, printed in 1930, for example.  The book includes 24 dinner menus, typically a meat dish served with potatoes and two vegetables.  In 10 of the 24 recipes a salad replaces one of the vegetables.  Twenty of the menus include potatoes; two include sweet potatoes.  One big change from the ‘30s to now is that we eat more salads and a lot less of meat and potatoes.  The potatoes we eat now are more often sweet potatoes, rich in carotene and less glycemic.

Most sweet potato casserole recipes are a sugar disaster.  A healthier sweet potato casserole recipe seemed a simple goal.  I’d simply use the natural sweetness of fruit to reduce the sugar, and substitute pecans for the usual marshmallow topping.  That was two weeks and a dozen batches ago—it wasn’t that easy.  It turns out that when you reduce the sweetness, the flavor become more important.  The beautiful wife confesses to a sweet tooth, so finding a flavor that worked with less sugar required a few experiments.

Traditional flavors for sweet potatoes, according to The Flavor Bible, include pecans, cinnamon, butter, nutmeg, and maple.  Apples and pineapple, as well as raisins, dates, and cranberries—each a natural way to sweeten—are also noted.  Many recipes include orange juice, but for us the orange juice seemed to turn bitter during cooking and the low sugar content made this noticeable. 

So here’s our best effort—it’s the lowest sugar casserole we’ve seen but the natural fruit and flavors give it a great taste.  Most recipes include eggs; this one doesn't.  It goes well with some leftover ham, chicken, or salmon, plus a green salad.

Skip’s Sweet Potato Casserole  (Serves 5-6)

Ingredients:

3-4 medium-large sweet potatoes (about 2½ lb.)

3 apples, green or whatever

8 oz. crushed pineapple, canned or fresh

¼ C butter (1/2 cube), softened

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp maple extract

Dash of fresh nutmeg

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¼ C butter (1/2 cube), softened

¼ C sugar, turbinado or dark brown

1 to 1½ C pecans, roughly chopped

Directions:

1. Fill a pot ½ full of hot water (enough to cover sweet potatoes and apples) and bring to a boil.  While water is heating wash, peel, and quarter the sweet potatoes and apples.   Put the sweet potatoes into the boiling water first and add the apples 10-12 minutes later.  Total cooking time is around 20 minutes; the apples and sweet potatoes should be soft enough to mash, but not mushy.
2. While the pot is boiling, prepare the sauce and the topping.  For the sauce, combine melted butter with the seasonings.  For the topping, cream the butter and sugar, then stir in the pecans.   This is a good time to turn on the oven, 350 F.   (Note: I prefer turbinado, a form of raw sugar, to the store-bought brown sugar because the latter is often just white sugar with a little molasses sprayed on, but either is acceptable.  Maple syrup likely works but it’s a little pricey.)
3. When the sweet potatoes and apples are ready, drain and mash with a potato masher, adding the pineapple.  (Note:  We tried this with both canned crushed pineapple, and with a pineapple we had sliced and saved in the fridge.  Pineapple is a good source of natural sweetness, especially if fully ripe, or brown.  If it’s a little green, you can bring out the sweetness by cooking it a few minutes in a frying pan until slightly browned.)
4. Stir in the sauce.  Pour mixture into a 2 qt. casserole.  Sprinkle with pecan topping.  Bake about 20 minutes until pecans are browned. 

Time:  With a little experience, allow 30 minutes to prepare this dish, excluding the oven time.  You can prepare the salad and supervise the table setting while it bakes.

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.

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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.

The Joy of Coleslaw

Pringles and the Industrialization of Food

My first job out of college was with Procter & Gamble, a soap company that also sold factory foods like Crisco shortening and salad oil.  Desperate for new products, P&G had resorted to growth by acquisition (Duncan Hines cake mixes, Folgers coffee, Jiff PB, etc.).  The smart guys at the top, however, knew the most profitable growth came from creating new products.  They saw an opportunity in potato chips, which at that time was a regional business with many players.

So P&G food scientists invented a potato chip with a long shelf life that could be shipped cross-country from a central factory.  No woman who knew her way around a kitchen would ever think of the product that resulted—Pringles.  But a food engineer with his brain bound by industrial thinking would.  Pringles used a cheap ingredient (potatoes), factory-processed into a mash, then formed and cooked with hydrogenated oil (a P&G expertise). 

The result was a patented and trade marked, densely packed, salty treat that would keep a long time.  I think the uniform shape of Pringles appealed to the corporate mentality—regular potato chips, in their random shapes and sizes, defied their controlling instinct.  By 20^th century standards, Pringles was the perfect food invention.  Customer health, to my knowledge, was never a consideration. 

P&G expected that national advertising and marketing muscle would let them dominate the regional potato chip business, even though Pringles didn’t taste any better.  It didn’t happen that way.  Instead, Frito-Lay bought or drove out the other chip companies and today dominates the supermarket chip aisle.  P&G’s Pringle brand is a distant #2 and now they’re going to exit the business by selling out to Kellogg’s.  I think P&G is the more forward thinking company here—starch fried into salty snack food belongs in the last century.  Funny how Kellogg’s can’t see that. 

A Better Idea

Smart 21^st century home cooks will take the path less travelled—reinventing the food of our pre-Industrial Revolution ancestors.  Forget about potato chips, Pringles, or fast food French fries and check our delicious Oven-Roasted Fries (recipe here).

In Praise of Cabbage

You get a big health bang for your buck with cabbage.  Cabbage is full of bone-building vitamin K.  Cabbage contains cancer-fighting antioxidants (including vitamins A and C) and glucosinolates.  It’s also rich in anti-inflammatory compounds.   (Similar benefits are found in the other cruciferous vegetables, including Brussels sprouts, Bok Choy, and broccoli.)  To learn more about the benefits of cabbage read here.

Family Food Traditions

The beautiful wife’s father was an unusually good man who grew up on a family farm in one of Utah’s mountain valleys.  Before his passing, he reminisced about the hard time farmers had between the World Wars.  “There was no money in the house,” he recalled, “but we were happy and had plenty to eat.”  In the fall they packed the root cellar with the food that would carry them through the winter—apples, onions, potatoes, oats, wheat, and plenty of cabbage.  “We stored the cabbage on a bed of sand and it lasted most of the winter.  When it started to turn bad, Mom made it into delicious sauerkraut.” 

From my own childhood I have a memory of cabbage.  Before our nation got addicted to credit, people lived on the money in their pocket.  One night we were eating a cabbage salad for dinner and Mom remarked, “At the store I only had a nickel in my wallet, just enough to buy a cabbage.”  It’s been a few years since you could buy cabbage for a nickel, but my memory is still clear on the value of this cruciferous vegetable.     

The cruciferous family is so healthy you should include it in your menu most days of the week—so coleslaw is this week’s recipe.  Because healthy snacking is the topic of the week, note that coleslaw makes a good snack, and can be added to fish tacos for a tasty meal too.  I wanted a recipe that didn’t start with a cup of mayonnaise.  I also wanted one without sugar, but because most recipes require vinegar, a little sugar is needed to offset the bitterness. 

Skip’s Peanut Coleslaw

Ingredients:

½ cabbage (makes 4-5 cups when shredded)

2 carrots, coarsely grated

½ bell pepper, finely sliced

½ onion, chopped

2 stalks celery, finely cut on diagonal

¾ cup roasted and salted Virginia peanuts (or whatever’s handy)

Sauce Ingredients:

¾ cup yogurt (or sour cream, or half-and-half, but use more corn starch)

2 T cornstarch (to thicken)

1 T Red wine vinegar

2 T sugar (we used agave nectar)

1 T lemon juice

2 T horseradish sauce (adjust for the concentration of horseradish used)

½ tsp celery seed (okay to substitute caraway seed, or fennel seed)

½ tsp ground mustard (or 1 T Dijon prepared mustard)

Generous pinch of red pepper flakes

Salt and pepper to taste (remember the peanuts may be salty)

Directions:

1. Prepare vegetables.  Beyond cabbage, most any vegetable works in coleslaw.  Including red cabbage adds to the color.  If pressed for time, you can also buy coleslaw vegetables already prepared.
2. Make sauce by combining wet ingredients and spices.
3. Toss vegetables in sauce and refrigerate several hours before serving.
4. Before serving, add peanuts.  (The peanuts get mushy if left in the coleslaw.)
5. This recipe takes a little time but can be made in advance and used in several meals.  Feeds 8.

Please comment:  Cruciferous vegetables offer a great combination of healthfulness and value.  We try to include them on our menu most days of the week.  Share your favorite ways to enjoy cabbage. 

Secrets of Stir-fry

Learning to Cook

There’s a phrase among doctors that goes, “See one, do one, teach one.”  It means that some things can be learned simply by observation, and that having done one you’re qualified to teach the procedure.  Doctors sometimes laugh when they hear this, likely because they’ve learned by sad experience that everything not’s that simple.  Like cooking.

Because I’m fascinated by the Asian use of meat—as a condiment rather than the main course—I wanted to include a stir-fry recipe in our evolving cookbook.  Stir-fry can also use less edible portions of plants, like the stalk.  Stir-fry is also a good way to use the produce loitering in your fridge.

Did I mention I’ve never cooked stir-fry?  I didn’t even like it.  But any recipe that is plant based, sparing of meat, quick to cook, and affordable, deserves a second look.  I started by Googling the term, “secrets of stir-fry.”  After that I compared stir-fry recipes.  Bottom line:  Stir-fry is bite-sized pieces of vegetables with a little meat, cooked quickly in a hot pan.  Period.  Oh, and eat it while it’s hot, before it gets soggy.

Secrets of Stir-fry

After a day of research and a half-day of cooking, here’s what I learned:

1. There are four steps:  a) prepare ingredients, b) cook meat and remove, c) cook vegetables, and d) add sauce and meat to vegetables and finish cooking.  Actually, if you like stir-fry over whole grain rice, you better start the rice first.
2. Need a wok?  No. A frying pan is actually easier to keep at the hot stir-fry temperatures.  The main advantage I see in the wok is the high sides keep your stovetop cleaner when the splattering starts.
3. Which meat?  Chicken is most used with stir-fry, but you can use anything for protein, including peanuts and cashews.  Actually, the nuts save the meat-cooking step.  The chicken is often marinated while the vegetables are being prepared; they say it keeps the meat from getting tough during frying.
4. Best oil?  Among the healthy oils (like peanut oil, coconut oil, olive oil, or organic canola oil) they all work.  I stir-fried four batches of chicken using the oils above and asked the beautiful (and discriminating) wife which she preferred.  They tasted all the same.  Don’t use butter—the pan’s too hot.
5. Which vegetables?  Whatever.  About everything works, including the aromatics (celery, carrot, onion) the cruciferous family (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, or cabbage), asparagus, bell peppers (any color), bok choy, or snap beans.  There’s a stir-fry secret here: cheap, less-desired plant stalks are made edible.  You can also add bean sprouts, water chestnuts or bamboo shoots.  One recipe even uses watermelon rind.  Limit yourself to four or so; cut vegetables into bite-size pieces but slice carrots thinly as they take longer to cook.  Put onions and hard veggies in to cook first, and add leafy vegetables like bok choy last.
6. How to season?  Most recipes start with a little soy sauce (though any Asian sauce will work) and may include ginger and/or garlic, plus something hot (red peppers, chile powder, or cayenne).  Green onions are also used.  You can make great stir-fry with these plus salt and black pepper.  Some recipes include cumin, coriander, and curry or just turmeric. 

Skip’s Chicken Pineapple Stir-fry

It takes a lot of nerve to put your name on a recipe that billions of people have cooked in thousands of ways—but I did.  Makes me smile.  This recipe is for four people:

Ingredients:

½ C chicken stock

2 T soy sauce

1 T red wine vinegar (or whatever you have)

1 T agave nectar (or some form of sugar)

1 T cornstarch (to thicken)

2  Boneless chicken breasts (about 1 lb.)

Peanut oil (or any healthy oil)

1 C white onion

1 C celery

½ C carrots, sliced thin

½ C bell pepper

½ C green onions

1-2 C pineapple (optional)

1 tsp garlic, grated

1 tsp fresh ginger, grated

½ tsp red pepper flakes (or any hot spice)

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions: 

1. Prepare the sauce by combining chicken stock, soy sauce, vinegar, agave nectar, and cornstarch.  Set aside.
2. Cut chicken breast into equal size cubes or strips, and marinate if desired.  A marinate can be made using soy sauce, vinegar, agave nectar and cornstarch in the quantities above, plus ¼ cup cooking oil.  Note: If chicken is not to be marinated, prepare the vegetables first.
3. Prepare the vegetables and pineapple by chopping into ½” to ¾” pieces, and slicing carrots.  Other vegetables can be substituted as needed.  When washing vegetables, dry them before cutting to reduce spattering when cooking. 
4. Heat a pan until a drop of water sizzles, then add 2 T cooking oil.  Caution:  Be sure water is gone before adding oil as it will cause spattering of hot oil. Continue heating until cooking oil shimmers.  Add meat and cook until browned on each side.  Remove meat but leave liquid in pan.
5. Add more cooking oil and heat until shimmering.  Add vegetables in sequence, beginning with onions and other hard vegetables and finishing with softer vegetables (which need less cooking).  Do not add pineapple.
6. While vegetables are cooking, add minced ginger and garlic, and red pepper flakes.  If these are used in powdered form, simply add to the sauce in step #1, but use a little less.
7. Add in order: the sauce from step #1, pineapple, and meat.  Stir to coat.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Cook until done al dente, you don’t want it mushy.  Remove and serve over rice, say the dinner prayer, and enjoy.

Please comment:  Share your best stir-fry recipe or tip.  Stir-fry is another good way to add vegetables to your diet.

In Defense of Veggies

The quick answer:  The key to good health is to learn to like the food group Americans most hate—veggies.

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A Rose By Any Other Name . . .

That famous line by Shakespeare ends “would smell as sweet.”  Maybe so.  But the English word for the edible plants so necessary to good health—vegetables—has a problem.  Americans don’t exactly have a love affair with vegetables.  The nutritionist David Ludwig commented on our conflicted feelings: “In my experience, hating vegetables is essentially an American trait.  I never saw anything close to it during my travels through Asia, Europe, and South America.” 

If we do eat veggies, we prefer them processed into unhealthiness.  Take French fries, our most popular vegetable.  Cooked in trans fat-laden, toxically oxidized vegetable oils, fries account for an astonishing 46% of our vegetable intake.  The onion ring is another perfectly healthy vegetable gone wrong.  To further improve their edibility, fries and onion rings are doused with sugary ketchup and salt.

In Defense of Veggies

One of the most remarkable surprises in nutrition studies in the last few years was the discovery of the remarkable dietary qualities possessed by the edible leaves of plants.  Among vegetable foods, only the leaf is rich in calcium, and is also rich in vitamins A, B and C, as well as fiber.

Recent news?  No, this is from a 1925 book, Food, Nutrition and Health!  So three generations have passed and little has changed—except more discoveries about the merits of vegetables, like their rich supply of the antioxidants that slow down aging.  Vegetables are the opposite of today’s highly processed foods—veggies are rich in nutrients, sparse in calories, and healthy. 

Vegetables come in colors and three colors are of special value.  They also come in botanical families; two are extra healthy—cruciferous and allium:

• Dark leafy greens (spinach, kale, broccoli, etc.) contain vitamins A, C, K, and folate.  Greens also contain minerals like magnesium, potassium, calcium, and iron, as well as lutein and fiber. 
• Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and kale) are potent cancer fighters, some studies suggest.
• Orange vegetables (sweet potato, carrots, banana squash, pumpkin, etc.) are rich in carotenoids. 
• Red vegetables (beets, red cabbage, red pepper, and tomato—borrowed from the fruit family) contain beneficial lycopenes, and anthrocyanins.
• Allium (garlic, onions, leeks, chives and shallots) family by tradition is prized for healthiness.  Alliums are high in flavonoids, polyphenolic compounds that stimulate the production of potent antioxidants.  Alliums help produce the “natural killer” cells that fight infection and cancer too.

You Do The Math

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans—our official healthy diet guide—recommends we eat five vegetable servings daily.  For food groups without powerful lobbies—vegetables are the best example—I trust the Dietary Guideline of five servings.   (For food groups with well-funded lobbies, like dairy, or edible oils, I take the guidance with a grain of salt.)  A serving is the amount that will fit in the palm of your hand—about 2-4 ounces, depending on hand size and food density.  Doing the math, five veggie servings a day with allowance for waste is:

• Two adults—about 15 lbs. per week.
• Mom, dad, and three grammar school kids—20-25 lbs.
• Family of six, ranging from toddler to high school—30-40 lbs.

Getting five daily servings is the core challenge of healthy eating.  It works best for us if we get a serving or two at lunch, another in our afternoon snack (usually raw), plus two or three at dinner (salad plus a side vegetable). 

Looking Better

There’s an additional benefit to eating yellow, orange and red vegetables.  Scientists in Great Britain found a salutary improvement on skin color among people who ate the orange and red vegetables.  They had better skin color, looked healthier, and were judged even more attractive than those whose skin color came from suntan induced melanin.  Drop those French fries and grab a sweet potato, or some carrots, to get that healthy glow.

Healthy Change

One reminder:  You can’t eat veggies if they’re not in the house so healthy eating starts with the weekly menu and shopping list.

Please comment on your favorite vegetable ideas, or share your veggie recipes.  The key test of mom’s leadership is enticing children to enjoy vegetables.  How do you do it?

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.

The Freezer Aisle

The quick answer:  The invention of quick-freezing technology is one of the best food innovations.  Enjoy near-fresh vegetables year around.

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Preventing Breast Cancer

With December’s joyous arrival, come lists of notable 2011 events.  Looking over those who left us, I lingered over Steve Jobs (made billions creatively transforming industries but lived in an ordinary Palo Alto home); Dick Winters (the remarkable WWII officer made famous by the book, Band of Brothers); Nancy Wake (a WWII English agent both beautiful and fearless, who fought with the French Resistance); and Bernadine Healy (MD, cardiologist, head of NIH, AHA, and the Red Cross, and a fierce advocate for the study of women’s diseases). 

Dr. Healy, as head of the NIH, initiated the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), the observational study of 93K women, which did more than any project to reduce breast cancer.  In 2002 the study linked hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with a higher risk of breast cancer.  Within a year 60% of HRT women stopped filling their prescriptions, resulting in a remarkable 15% permanent decline in breast cancer incidence. 

The WHI also found that the standard treatment for osteoporosis (calcium and vitamin D pills), though it slightly increased bone density, did not reduce the risk of hip fracture, and raised the risk of kidney stones.  See this post for more on bone health.  These two WHI findings were remarkable for refuting advice regularly given by doctors.

Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956)

As long as we’re remembering people who’ve passed, we should give a nod to Clarence Birdseye, the inventor most responsible for the frozen food aisle.  In 1912 Birdseye went to Labrador where the indigenous Inuit traditionally preserved fish by freezing them at sub-zero temperature.  (Fast-freezing creates smaller ice particles and less cell damage.)  When fast-frozen fish was thawed, Birdseye observed, it tasted as good as fresh, and much better than the frozen fish he ate at home.  Birdseye was the driving force behind improved freezing technology, and founder of the company known today as Birds Eye.  His initial 1930 product line included frozen fish, meats, spinach, peas, fruits, and berries. 

Here’s what fascinates me about Birdseye:  Most of the inventions in food had bad outcomes—roller mills for flour removed the nutrition of the germ and bran; hydrogenation of vegetable oils to make margarine, etc. created toxic trans fats.  But Birdseye invention—fast freezing—preserved food’s natural nutrients.  Even better, he was inspired by a traditional practice of the Inuit—an example of reinventing food olden ways. 

The Freezer Aisle

I visited the local grocery store to observe the evolution of Birdseye’s invention.  Perhaps it’s the chill, but I had never taken a close look at the frozen food section.  It’s big—over 200 feet of freezers line both sides of one aisle and one side of another—with thousands of food choices.  The biggest section, almost 40 feet long, was ice cream.  Frozen dinners and entrees had 30 feet, and pizza got 20 feet.   The items of most interest to me, vegetables, got 12 feet, and fruit, mostly berries, got 3 feet. 

The store posts the price of food in cents/ounce so I did a walking tour of prices.  Surprisingly, the foods fell in a tight range.  Turkey was cheapest, at 10 cents/oz; ice cream next, 12-20 cents.  Dinners ranged from 26-40 cents, with the low-calorie varieties most expensive.  (An odd trend, charging more for fewer calories.) 

Cost of vegetables:  In the vegetable section the store brand (which we rarely buy) had half the space.  The private brands, Birds Eye, Green Giant, and Green Giant’s C&W brand, shared the rest.  The store brand was cheapest, 16-19 cents/oz.  The type of vegetable doesn’t matter—corn kernels, peas, string beans, chopped spinach, and broccoli all cost about the same.  I hadn’t noticed that before.  Mixed vegetables cost a little more, but I think the variety of taste is lost.

Green Giant veggies are most expensive, running 30 cents with the steamer package.  Though it’s convenient, I’m not a fan of cooking vegetables in their package—seems like a good way to leach chemicals out of the plastic. 

The type we buy most often, Green Giant’s C&W brand of petite corn, peas, and string beans was in the middle at 22 cents/oz.  (Don’t forget that’s $3.52/lb.—frozen foods are a premium product.)

We prefer fresh but do buy frozen when fresh isn’t available.  You can buy carrots year around so I was curious about the cost of carrots in the various forms.  In the produce section fresh carrots (without tops) are about 4 cents/oz ($.59/lb.).  Canned (sliced and cooked) they cost 9 cents.  Frozen they range from 15-30 cents, depending on the brand.  Bottom line:  Canned doubles the cost of fresh, and frozen doubles the cost of canned.  If food is available fresh, that’s the best value though there’s more preparation.

Bottom line:  I’m a fan of Clarence Birdseye, and traditional preservation by flash freezing.  We prefer produce fresh in the season, but extending availability through freezing may just help offset some of the problems with modern food.  As to the more processed foods along the freezer aisle—they’re good in an emergency, but I wouldn’t make them a habit.  One exception: ice cream, especially Rocky Road.

Please comment:  Perhaps the toughest challenge of diet reform is to get the recommended five daily servings of veggies.  (Cutting back on sugar is tough also.)  Share your favorite ways of adding vegetables—including frozen—to your menu.

Farmers' Markets

The quick answer:  In the food reformation, three trends travel together—healthful eating, artisan cooking, and farmers’ markets.  Support your local farmers’ market.

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Examining a US map of where farmers’ markets are most active, I have that déjà vu feeling—like, “This is the first time I’ve seen this map but it feels like I’ve seen it before.”  Then I remember the longevity map we discussed in this post.  There’s an association:  Where longevity is improving the most—mainly the costal regions in the West and New England—you find people buying more local food, especially through farmer’s markets.  Vice versa for where longevity is doing the worst—in the Deep South, and central states—there are fewer farmers’ markets.

Writing this blog has dominated our life for the past year.  The beautiful wife has been a good sport but I wondered if we couldn’t combine it with getting out and having some fun.  The beautiful wife was likely thinking of cooking classes in Provence, France, but I was curious about the local fast food restaurants.  Did they offer anything that was healthful and tasteful?  You saw the fast food taste tour report here.  She brightened up when I proposed we next tour the café style restaurants like Chipotle, Panera, Rubio’s, and Café Rio.  A post is upcoming.

My fancy sister in San Francisco puts on a Christmas ornament-shopping trip before Thanksgiving.  It’s a tradition.  This year I wondered if we couldn’t combine the trip with some Bay Area food tourism.  So on Friday, while the girls shopped, I tried the Milky Whey.  More precisely, I explored the Sonoma Marin Cheese Trail (read about it here).

The Milky Whey

It was raining as I left San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge but it stopped when I arrived at the tiny town of Nicasio.  I was so sorry I hadn't brought my camera because the Victorian steepled church (built 1867), one-room schoolhouse, and volunteer fire department’s ancient carriage house, were too picturesque for words.  The Nicasio Valley Cheese Company is a farmstead creamery, meaning they own the cows.  (Artisan cheese makers only know the cows.)  They make cheese using organic milk from their herd of 400 cows.  I tasted the cheese and bought some Nicasio Reserve as a gift for my sister, as we were spending the night at her Pacific Heights home. 

Next was an artisan cheese maker, the Cowgirl Creamery at Point Reyes Station (a little bigger than Nicasio, but no less charming).  I joined a class on cheese making, unaware that it was a private course arranged by a family from San Jose.  They kindly let me join in tasting the different cheeses.  I learned a lot (don’t wrap cheese tightly in plastic film, don’t eat cheese with black mold, etc.), tasted the local cheeses, and decided to buy a kit to make my own cheese (available from homecheesemaking.com).  Here I bought the acclaimed Point Reyes Blue Cheese.  

There are 27 cheese creameries that can be visited; I regretted there was only time to see two but made a vow to return in the spring.  Next stop: San Francisco’s farmers’ market, strategically placed around the old Ferry Building between the Embarcadero and the skyscrapers of the financial district. 

Ferry Building Farmers’ Market

The best of the San Francisco waterfront, for me, runs from the Golden Gate Bridge at the old Presidio, around Fisherman’s Wharf, along the piers of the Embarcadero, to the old Ferry Building, hard by the Bay Bridge.  On Saturday there’s a farmers’ market, which we visited with my fancy sister.  The morning was beautiful in the way that only people who love San Francisco can appreciate.  A warm sun was shining through patches of fog carried by a cool breeze; packs of runners jogged along the Embarcadero, sharing the right-of-way with strolling sea gulls; and ships of all kinds made their way around Alcatraz Island. 

The farmers’ market, arranged around the Ferry Building, is the place to go on Saturday morning.  You not only get fresh, organic (the Bay Area, especially Marin County, is ground zero for the Organic Movement) produce, you get to visit with the people who raised it, and taste free samples.  A walk through the market is an education on what’s in season.

What's in season?  Root vegetables.  Not just the ordinary stuff, we're in San Francisco afterall, these are heirloom root vegetables.

It's the season for pomegranates, and persimmons (in the background).  I bought some fresh pomegranate juice ($10 per quart). 

The beautiful wife fell in love with these fresh beets and cooked them up when we got home.  I find beets hard to eat, but I liked her recipe (roasted, with Greek yogurt, jalapeno pepper, ginger, coriander, cumin, garlic, mustard and cilantro added).

You can see the end-of-season color rotation of bell peppers in this picture, as they pass from green to yellow, then orange and finally red.

We bought a bag of Valencia oranges for making juice.  You can enjoy the perfect taste of fresh OJ and save about 1/3 of the cost if you do your own juicing.  It's also good exercise for the wrist muscles.  We don't often see Valencias in the local markets, they mostly carry navel oranges, which are best for eating.

Want to destress?  Spend a few moments in the morning sun here by the bay, tell your sad story to sea gulls perched on the rail, eat tasty artisan cooking, and listen to the local music.  (Yes, I put something in his collection case.)

Present at the Creation

At the end, I stood quietly, sniffing the air, composing a deep thought.  Something critical to the Food Reformation is going on here, around this crazy place known as Bagdad by the Bay.  To the south is the paradigm-busting, creative chaos of Silicon Valley.  To the north are the organic dairy pastures of Marin County.  To the east, the croplands of the great San Joaquin Valley.  Nearby by is Berkeley, home of Alice Waters' Chez Panisse restaurant, famous for the creative use of local organic produce known as California Cuisine. There's nothing like this area in the world.

Pomegranate juice at $10 a quart isn't the answer to the terrible crisis of the modern American diet (MAD).  But standing in this farmers' market, looking around at these passionate orthoexics (a word I just invented), I felt close to the creation of the answer.  The last century belonged to Food Inc. but this is a new century, and this region is becoming ground zero for America's food reformation.  A torch has been lit.  We must carry it forward.  To the barricades!  And when you shop, vote with your dollars.  Food Inc. must either listen and change, or go the way of the dinosaurs.

Please comment on whatever your thoughts and feelings are about the food reformation.

P.S. for Guys:  Your Best Chance to Impress Your Beautiful Wife

Plan a minimoon (a short trip with your dearly beloved) to the Bay Area.  Stay in charming Victorian bed-and-breakfast inns, tour the cheese creameries of picturesque Marin and Sonoma County (catch the Friday cheese course at Cowgirls Creamery), take the sunset walk over the Golden Gate Bridge, holding hands all the way over and back, and on Saturday morning take her for a stroll along the Embarcadero, enjoy a grazing breakfast at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market, and buy some beets to take home to the kids.  Maybe I should organize a group trip.

Why Hair Matters

The quick answer:  There’s a link between acne, male pattern baldness, heart disease, and hormone-related cancers.  The solution:  a whole foods diet, sparing of animal products.

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The Milk-Acne Theory

Acne has been linked to an inflammatory diet high in sugar and milk products and low in whole foods—the modern diet.  (Other causes of inflammation include food allergies, and protracted stress.)  The suspected role of milk and dairy products in acne was mentioned in the last post, but merits further attention. 

In the ‘60s Dr. Jerome K. Fisher, a Pasadena, CA, dermatologist, studied 1000 acne patients and found a link to milk intake, when compared to teens studied in NYC.  The Pasadena kids consumed more milk and had more acne.  Fisher’s work was presented at a 1966 ADA meeting, covered here by Time Magazine.

The Time Magazine article noted that hormones like testosterone were a trigger for acne, and suggested (from Fisher’s work) that progesterone from cow’s milk played a similar role.  In the 1920s, hard times for dairy farmers led to the practice of milking cows further into the pregnancy of the next calf, exposing consumers to higher levels of bovine hormones like progesterone.  Progesterone breaks down into androgens that trigger the acne cycle in upper body pores.  Dr. Fisher also studied the role of dietary sugar and stress in acne, noting surges of acne after school finals, and a decline by the end of a carefree summer.  (The first time I read this excellent Time article it was free; the second time it required a subscription.)

In the ‘70s other studies linked bovine hormones increasingly found in milk butterfat with follicle DHT testosterone associated with acne, and baldness.  Unfortunately, further study was not funded so the issue of milking pregnant cows and the health impact on consumers was ignored.

Today, three highly regarded doctors—Dr. Danby, a dermatologist and Dartmouth Med School professor, Dr. C. A. Adebamowo (who earned a 2^nd doctorate at Harvard studying the link between dairy and acne), and Dr. W.C. Willett, the respected head of Harvard School of Public Health—maintain a website that addresses the milk-acne theory.  For the scientifically minded, a copy of Dr. Fisher’s original paper is posted.  To see an insightful animation on follicle maturation and acne development, go here.

Testosterone 101

The topic of our last post, acne, leads to this week’s topic, premature baldness.  Both occur in the pores that grow hair, and both are driven by the hormone testosterone.  Some testosterone facts:

• It’s the male hormone, but women have it too, about 1/10 as much.  Women have less but—no surprise here—are more sensitive to its action.
• It’s the primary anabolic hormone, linked to muscle, bone, and hair growth.
• It’s also androgenic, driving male sexual development and aiding female maturation.
• It’s mainly produced in the testes (or ovaries), but also in the adrenal glands.
• Interestingly, falling in love reduces the male level and increases the female level, with the nice result that male/female behavior becomes more alike.  (The proof is when you go to a sad movie and both cry at the same time—very scary for the guy.)
• Fatherhood also reduces testosterone level, increasing the paternal caring instinct.
• There is a seasonal cycle too, with higher levels in the fall, when the nights grow longer.
• There’s a nice story here: the testosterone explosion of puberty drives men to fall crazily in love; being in love and having children reduces testosterone while increasing the caring instinct; during the adult years testosterone levels slowly decline as the family grows, with the result that aggression and risky behavior are replaced by benevolent affection and wisdom.  The final product—a grandfather.

In the hair follicles, enzymes convert about 5% of testosterone to a more potent form, dihydroxytestosterone, or DHT, which brings us to the subject of baldness.

For Men

Anyone else noticed how many virile young guys are going bald?  It’s driving a new hairstyle: no hair—as in the shaved head reminiscent of Mr. Clean.  What’s driving this, and does it have to do with diet?  Is male pattern baldness another chronic disease?  Here are some facts:

• Male pattern baldness runs in families—there’s a genetic influence.
• A high level of testosterone is linked to hair loss.  A 1942 study of men who had their testes removed (the main source of testosterone) found that even in bald families, the men kept their hair.  (One small job benefit for those eunuchs.)
• How is hair lost?  In the hair follicle, testosterone is converted to the potent hormone DHT that in excess can kill the follicle.  (While DHT is linked to baldness on the head, it’s perversely tied to unwanted hair growth elsewhere.)
• An excess of DHT testosterone in the hair follicles causes first acne, then hair loss, later BPH (enlarged prostate), prostate cancer, and even heart disease. 
• Testosterone is tricky—guys need a little to be romantic, but too much leaves them like Samson after Delilah, hairless.

Diet and DHT Testosterone

Can diet play a role in healthy DHT testosterone levels?  This is another topic where the science doesn’t get funded, but there are some clues to the hormone imbalance behind acne, baldness, and possibly heart disease and the hormone-related cancers. Hair loss, meaning male pattern baldness beginning with the crown, is an important indicator of health.  Hair does matter.

Studies show that DHT testosterone can be managed through healthy exercise, stress management, and a whole foods diet.  Studies suggest these dietary improvements:

• Reduce animal products like meat, milk, and dairy.  Organic milk, though its twice the price, has fewer bovine hormones.
• Eat more cold-water fish, the source of omega-3 essential fats, and less omega-6, found in vegetable oils and margarine.
• Enjoy fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts.  They’re rich in vitamins, minerals like zinc, fiber, and antioxidants.
• Eat whole grains; minimize refined carbs, sugar.

Night Shade Plants

On the subject of antioxidants, cooks should be aware of the nightshade plants, a large group that includes potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant (shown above).  They’re nutritious, rich in antioxidants, so fit the list above, but they do contain alkaloids that may be inflammatory to some.  This isn’t well documented, but reactions may include eczema, rashes, and joint discomfort similar to arthritis.  If you have these problems, consult your doctor.  Otherwise, include these plants in your diet:

Potatoes:  After wheat, corn, and rice, potatoes feed the world.  “How the Potato Changed the World, in the November Smithsonian, recounts how planting potatoes from the New World stabilized the food supply of Europe in the 1700s, ending the cycle of famines, and enabling the rise of the West.  It’s true that potatoes have a high glycemic index, but there’s still a place for them in a healthy diet.  Store them in the dark and remove any green spots or sprouts.

Tomatoes:  Rich in the antioxidant lycopene, tomatoes are good for your heart as well as the bones.  Loaded with phytonutrients, they regulate fats in the blood stream (are claimed to be as helpful as the statin drugs), and protect against blood clots.  Diced tomatoes add moisture and flavor to a baked potato.  Cooking tomatoes, as in sauces, improves the bioavailability of lycopene antioxidants.

Peppers:  With tomatoes, bell peppers are among the richest sources of vitamin A, the carotenoid antioxidants, and other phytonutrients.  Laboratory studies have suggested they’re protective of certain cancers.  Enjoy them at any stage of ripeness—green, yellow, or red.

Eggplant:  After reading about eggplant, we resolved to add them to our menu.  They’re rich in phenolic antioxidants.

Please comment, and share your experience with acne, or baldness.  Does any reader have difficulty with nightshade plants?  Also, we’re looking for a tasty eggplant recipe.

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.