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September 29, 2005
Kissin Cousins
Our thanks go out to Leif Gustafsson of Saint-Bruno QC, Canada who wrote to call us to task about being vague and unclear about the actual origins of celeriac or celery root, one of our favorite low carb vegetables. On several of our Low Carb CookwoRx tv episodes we mention that celery root is pretty much what its name implies: the root of celery from which the more familiar stalks spring. And to a point that's true. But the stalks that spring from the large knobby celery root we use in cooking are tough, gnarly ones, not the juicy tender ones we chop up for soup, fill with cream cheese, or use to stir a Bloody Mary. These two species are cousins, but we didn't make that clear in the show and we should have. Mr. Gustafsson even provided us with an informative link about celeriac which we happily pass along to you.
Posted by mdeades at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2005
Geezer Pleaser
Attention All Boomers (and Geezers) in the audience: If laughter really is the best medicine, I can heartily recommend a recent essay by Jaime O'Neill that was clipped from (dare I say it?) the AARP bulletin and sent to us by a dear friend from Santa Fe. Here's your daily serving of laughter; enjoy.
Posted by mdeades at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2005
It's A Wash
Our grandson, who is 5 years old, recently suffered his first episode of seriously high fever a few days ago, having caught a bug of some sort at school. It's an unfortunate truth that when the kids go back to school, they share more than tales of what they did on their summer break--they also share their germs. An article by AP medical writer, Lauren Neergaard, points up a part of the reason for this annual increase in back-to-school illnesses--handwashing, or rather, the lack of enough of it. Ms. Neergaard's article centers on the results of a study conducted recently by the American Society of Microbiology that showed, among other things, that after using the restroom, women are better handwashers than men. It seems that in the washroom, we are not alone; the study's research team apparently spied on people in the Men's Room (or Women's Room, as the case may be) and counted the numbers of people who washed up after their visit. The score: women 90%, men 75%. Sorry guys. The thrust of her commentary about the study seemed to imply that it's simply because men are dirtier than women or as one paper's headline put it, "men are pigs". While I'm not here to debate the truth or lack thereof in that statement, I do think that there might be a couple of other confounding explanations for the disparity besides relative reverence for hygeine.
In the first place, guys don't have to do as much touching of germ laden surfaces to use the facilities at least half the time. But beyond that, women, because they are more likely to be involved throughout the day in cooking and cleaning find themselves washing their hands repeatedly. I know that this holds true at our house--I find myself washing my hands dozens and dozens of times a day, simply because in the process of cooking or cleaning I get stuff on them that I need to get off. Mike doesn't involve himself as much in activities that gunk up his hands. As a result, I now seem less likely to get colds and sore throats than he (although even frequent hand washing and excellent nutrition with immune enhancing foods won't always be 100% effective prevention.)
Back when we were in general medical practice, we almost never got colds, despite treating one sick patient after another. In a busy flu season, we sometimes saw 80 or 90 patients in a single 12 hour clinic day; that necessitated washing our hands as many as 100 times a day. Not so great for your poor dried out hands, maybe, but a fantastic way to prevent picking up a bug.
Since we left a daily clinical practice several years ago and began to devote all our time to writing and research (and now to our PBS tv show as well) that heavy hand-washing schedule no longer applies and we have become mildly more susceptible to picking up colds. (We also have three grandchildren who love to share, which contributes to the exposure.)
Ms. Neergaard's article provides a wealth of good tips about limiting the spread of these easily-shared illnesses, with frequent handwashing heading the list. What she doesn't address--at least in this piece--is the benefit of feeding your immune system properly to make you less likely to succumb to these invaders when they come calling. On that score, we'd recommend having a daily serving or two of good quality whey protein. We enjoy ours mixed into plain yogurt (sometimes with a few fresh berries or nuts stirred in) or made into a shake. For the very best immune boost, we like the non-denatured whey product called ImmunoPro, available on the net from the company Well Wisdom. At present, the company doesn't take credit cards and this makes ordering a little cumbersome. We're working with them to be able to make their products available through our website,when it gets back up and running; that will enable credit card orders and make things easier.
In the meantime, to best prevent the spread of back-to-school bugs, don't forget to wash your hands before you eat your whey!
Posted by mdeades at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2005
Masters of the Obvious
An article from NY Times columnist Nicholas Bakalar caught my eye recently. Its title, "Brain scan find spot linking stress, asthma" intrigued me, so I read on. The title seemed to imply validation of the long held folk lore that linked an asthma sufferer's becoming upset or stressed with the onset of an asthmatic attack. For instance, as Mr. Bakalar states:
Previous research has shown that college students with asthma have a greater airway inflammation when they are exposed to an allergen during exam week than when the exposure occurs at a less stressful time.
Okay, that makes sense.
Way back in the olden days, when we were GPs in Arkansas, we were taught about the "full bucket theory" of allergy, which stated that one's ability to withstand allergic exposure can be thought of as an empty bucket with a finite capacity. Each allergen or offending agent adds contents to the bucket, such that when enough of these possibly even mild allergic insults combine, the bucket becomes full and spills over in symptoms. Which explains the increase in asthmatic episodes during finals pretty well. During times of stress, stress hormones, such as cortisol, are elevated, and these in turn elevate blood sugar, and set in motion a whole cascade of inflammatory pathways, that begin to fill the bucket, so to speak.
In the asthma study reported on by Mr. Bakalar, the researchers exposed six volunteers with mild allergic asthma to one substance that caused muscle constriction and one that caused inflammation (to mimic the two phases of asthma after exposure to an allergen: airway muscle constriction that causes the feeling of chest tightness and the release of cytokines that cause inflammation. ) They then scanned the subjects' brains while having them read words shown on the screen. Some words--for example, curtains--were emotionally neutral, others--lonesome--were designed to provoke negative emotions, and still others--wheeze, suffocate--were emotionally charged relative to asthmatic fears.
Lo and behold, they learned that in asthmatics exposed to asthma provoking substances and asked to read words like suffocate and wheeze
the areas of the brain that govern emotion light up like a Christmas tree on the brain scans, but don't when they read emotionally neutral or even negative words.
Duh!
What it seems to me is that a lot of research dollars were spent to "prove" what should have been obvious.
Imagine the scenario: you're asthmatic, some guy gives you something that will make you wheeze in a lab test, then has you read words that exemplify your greatest fears--wheeze, cough, suffocate! And your brain's emotion centers respond by becoming emotional.
What will they think of next?
Perhaps they could have spent those dollars better to elucidate the connection between asthma, allergy, and the intake of inflammatory cereal grains?
Posted by mdeades at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2005
Birds of a Feather
A recent article in the New York Times caught my eye with its color photo of a beautifully browned capon. For those readers who may not know, a capon is a gelded rooster, a castrated bird, a feathery eunuch--in Arnold-speak, a girlie man of the chicken world. All the effort that would have gone into rooster manliness goes, instead, into the building of a big, broad tender breast, naturally, without added hormones or antibiotics or whatever other things commercial chicken and turkey producers do to get extra white meat on their birds.
The NYT photo instantly transported me to a charming agritourismo in southern Italy where we once stayed with friends and where I had the pleasure of enjoying my first capon. An agriturismo, as its name implies, is an Italian B&B farmstead, where guests lodge, dine, and view a working farm in the beauty of the rural countryside. On many agriturismos, some or even most of the food served comes from the bounty of the farm. In this particular case, the farm produced a large flock of chickens, with the ladies kept for egg laying and the surplus gentlemen destined for a life of capon-hood and ultimately the table. On our tour, we wandered among the strutting capons, snapped photos of a newly born litter of piglets, hand-fed a small herd of goats, picked apples from their orchard, and watched the pressing of their olive crop into rich, green oil, which we tasted fresh from the press.
That night, when we came down to dinner, a number of plump capons were turning on the spit over the glowing coals of the ancient brick grill oven in the dining room. The chef basted them every so often with melted lard that he dribbled onto them from a conical iron ladle. With each basting, the flames would lick up and sizzle the roasting birds. Lo, these years later, the image makes my mouth water, so much so, that I decided we should forego turkey for Thanksgiving this year and have capon instead. It won't be exactly the same as the Italian experience--we don't have an open brick rotisserie in our kitchen or the larding ladle, for instance, but we do have an outdoor grill that will suffice. Now all we need is a capon and some good organic lard.
My search for an online capon source took a while, but I finally was able to uncover a reputable purveyor, D'Artagnan,where an 8 to 10 pound bird can be had via FedEx or UPS. Compared to turkey or regular chicken, a capon, at about $6 a pound plus shipping, is a little pricey, but for a special occasion, as far as I'm concerned, darned well worth it.
Posted by mdeades at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2005
Strange Fruit
The title of a recent article by Sarah Gordon in the Santa Barbara Newspress caught my eye the other day: Survival of the Strangest. The thrust of the piece involved the rapid growth of niche farming in California for unusual crops, such as mangos, passion fruit, litchis, pineapple guavas, zapotes, cherimoyas or custard apples, and dozens of types of heirloom tomatoes with exotic names, such as Cherokee Purple, Mr. Stripey, and Big Rainbow. In the face of huge and growing competition from large operations in Mexico, South America and China for avocados, strawberries, and broccoli, the more mundane staple crops of the Central Coast, niche farmers are carving out successful enterprises by surviving on the strange and exotic, which in most cases are more difficult to grow, harvest, and transport and thus are not of interest to the big boys. Finding this niche is great for the small independent farmers and great for all of us who now have ready access their out-of-the-ordinary bounty at farmers' markets throughout the country.
Both in Santa Fe and in Santa Barbara, we make our weekly pilgrimage to the Saturday Farmers' Market for fruits, veggies, flowers, and more. While the produce sections of grocery stores have certainly improved in recent years, nothing can hold a candle to the cornucopia of peppers, apples, plums, peaches, tomatoes, squashes, herbs, and grapes that crowd the stalls on Saturday mornings. By the time we make it from one end to the other, Mike can hardly carry the basket. That's our division of labor--he carries the basket and I cut the deals.
If you love to roam your local farmers' market, when you run into say an heirloom dwarf white eggplant or a lipstick pepper do you pass it by and opt instead for the nice head of cauliflower you know what to do with? If so, fear no longer. All that stands between you and vegetable mastery is a little instruction. And there's no one that we know of who can do it better than our good friend and vegetarian cookbook author, Deborah Madison, formerly of The Greens restaurant in San Francisco. If you're stumped for how to cook (fill-in-name-of-any-vegetable-found-at-farmers'-market here) her beautiful cookbook Local Flavors
Posted by mdeades at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2005
Sweeten the Pot?
Since the premier of our new PBS cooking series Low Carb CookwoRx, we've gotten a ton of mail about the use of Splenda in recipes. The queries range from the venomous (How can you recommend a deadly toxin in your cooking?) to the merely inquisitive (Is Splenda safe?) With so much interest in the use of Splenda, I thought I'd share a portion of a recent answer to one of our viewers who inquired about the safety issue.
The short answer is that as of this writing, Splenda (sucralose) seems to us to be safe to use in reasonable quantities. The long answer follows.
As early humans, sweetness in our food came from seasonally available fruits and occasionally available wild honey. We didn't have access to large amounts of sweet foods in nature and our physiologic design simply doesn't tolerate them well. Ideally, we would content ourselves with the natural sweetness in foods, but the sugar genie escaped from the bottle a long time ago and there seems to be no way to get him back in. From a metabolic standpoint, using an artificial sweetener that doesn't raise blood sugar and insulin and doesn't contribute a lot of extra calories seems a more sensible and healthier option than using one that does. In a perfect world, the best thing for our health would be to shake the sweet habit altogether--not simply by replacing a metabolically active sweetener with a more inert one, but by truly eliminating added sweeteners from our diets. A noble aspiration, to be sure, but until then, used in moderation (as all things should be), Splenda seems an acceptable compromise.
There are doubtlessly people who do not tolerate sucralose or who have experienced an adverse reaction to it; biological individuality makes it possible for a particular person to react adversely to or be intolerant of almost any substance, from sesame seeds to aspirin. But just as we wouldn't expect to ban aspirin because some small percentage of people are seriously allergic to it, if in most people it provides a benefit, so we wouldn't necessarily want to indict sucralose because some people don't tolerate it. Unlike aspartame, which we do feel has a significant enough amount of serious scientific data to indict it as a health hazard to most all of us and which we specifically caution against, thusfar, we have not been impressed with the adverse health claims levelled against sucralose.
According to their official website, the FDA claims that it reviewed 110 studies on humans and animals searching for problems with sucralose, such as toxicities, carcinogenesis, etc. and that they found none. Despite anectdotal reports on such websites as Dr. Mercola's, which to our perusal did not contain any links to the specific articles upon which the good doctor bases his assertions, we have not yet been able to uncover a scientifically valid reason to question its inherent safety after a pretty extensive review of the current serious medical and scientific literature. That's not to say that it doesn't have its cadre of detractors, with the most vocal group being backed by the sugar lobby, who, it can be fairly said, have much to gain by undermining sales of Splenda. For instance, in countering the Splenda ad, which says Splenda tastes like sugar because it's made from sugar, the detractors reply that feeding Splenda to your kids is like feeding them a daily dose of chlorine--or as Dr. Mercola puts it, DDT. That logic, while it makes an alarming sound bite, is quite a stretch. It's true that Splenda (sucralose) is made from sugar--it's a sugar molecule in which a couple of chemical groups have been replaced with chloride ions, making it sort of a chloride salt of sucrose. While that may sound ominous, remember that the very same chloride ion makes up one-half of every molecule of table salt, which to our knowledge has not been classified as toxic--in reasonable quantities. At least, we recall no negative ads claiming that feeding your children table salt is like feeding them a daily dose of chlorine.
We have chosen to use Splenda in many of our recipes, because it is widely available, easy to measure and use as a sugar substitute, heat-stable for baking, well-tolerated by most people, and has a pretty clean taste, without an unpleasant aftertaste. Obviously, those people who don't tolerate it, who have allergic reactions to it, or who for whatever reason don't want to use it should not do so. As far as non-nutritive sweeteners go, we also have used stevia, xylitol, erythritol, and others in our recipes, but Splenda is the easiest one for most people to find. There are several good books on Xylitol
We have no affiliation with Splenda or its makers and no ax to grind in coming down for it or opposing it other than what we feel is valid based on the science currently available. We reserve the right to change our stance on the subject (as we did with aspartame some years ago) if and when the scientific evidence warrants it. If you know of any serious medical research that would cast doubt on its safety, we urge you to forward us that citation and we will investigate. I'm not talking here about anecdotal reports, although those are certainly valid for the individual in question, but hard clinical scientific studies. We will honestly look at them and comment upon them and if their weight demands it, change our position, and let everybody know.
Posted by mdeades at 01:13 PM | Comments (4)