Cooking Gadgets
Summer Seasonables: Cooking With Fresh Green Beans (No Casseroles Allowed)
Growing up, I adored Green Bean Casserole, which I then thought was my mom’s special recipe, but actually came from the back of a can of Campbell’s soup (and involved cream of mushroom soup, french-fried onions and canned beans, oh my). These days, I’m much more enamored with fresh green beans—and ’tis the season for them. But while fresh green beans are pretty ubiquitous at farmer’s markets right now, I’ve heard from several people that they’re not sure what to do with them. That’s a pity, because fresh green beans are delicious, easy to cook, versatile, low-calorie (1 cup of plain, boiled green beans has just 30-45 calories) and good for you. So let’s take a look at green beans’ nutritional profile and just what to do with them (beyond casseroles):
Nutrition Info: One cup of boiled green beans provides 25% of your recommended daily dose of Vitamin K; 20% of Vitamin C; between 15- and 20% of Vitamin A, dietary fiber, potassium and folate; 10% of calcium and Vitamins B1 (thiamin) and B2 (riboflavin); and between 5- and 10% of protein, B3 (niacin) and Omega-3 fatty acids. That’s quite a nutritional punch—and that’s not all. We may not think of green beans as high in carotenoids like beta-carotene, but they are. A study published in the Journal of Nutrition and Food Science found that of four non-leafy vegetables (three kinds of beans + snow peas), green-beans rated the highest.
Eco-Profile: Sixty percent of all commercially available green beans are produced in the United States (especially in Illinois, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Wisconsin). Peak season is summertime.
Storage: Store unwashed fresh beans pods in a bag in the refrigerator crisper; whole beans stored this way should keep for about seven days.
Cooking: If you’re into summer grilling, you can simply coat beans with a little salt and oil and toss them directly on the grill (mmmm, blackened green beans…). Here’s my quick- and easy way of cooking fresh green beans indoors:
Blanched Green Beans with Garlic & Onions
- Start by cutting off the vine-ends of each bean.
- Boil water with salt. Wash beans and add to water once it is boiling.
- Let cook for 3-5 minutes.
- Drain beans and immediately dump them into a bowl of ice water to stop them from cooking (this will keep the beans crisp and not mushy, and also help preserve certain phytonutrients). Drain beans.
- Sautee chopped garlic and onion in olive oil. When garlic and onion begin to brown, add green beans.
- Cook green beans with onions and garlic until they’re warm again. Add crushed red pepper and ground black pepper (and maybe more salt).
- Serve topped with grated parmesan cheese.
A few more suggestions:
Green Bean Salad with Cilantro and Soy-Glazed Almonds
Green Beans with Orange and Rosemary Gremolata
Healthy Green Bean Casserole [Okay, okay, I promised no casseroles, but this update on the Campbell's soup classic uses fresh beans, onions, mushrooms and herbs for a way better-for-you comfort-food dish.]
Sigh. I’m going to have buy a few pounds of green beans at the local farm market tomorrow, because I want to try all these recipes …
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Post from: Blisstree
Future Diet Foods Will Let You Eat Massive Portions, But Is That A Good Thing?
Filed under the category of This Is Why They Hate Us: The new trend in diet foods, according to the Associated Press, is to make things so ultra-low-cal that dieters can eat a huge portion without worry. Well, worry about breaking their diet, that is: Many low-cal foods achieve their status by loading up on artifical sweetners and other questionable ingredients.
“What we’re seeing here is a strategy that says Americans like to stuff their faces,” food industry analyst Phil Lempert told AP. “And these mean we don’t have to sacrifice.”
I’m not a big fan of the concept of ‘sacrifice,’ but the whole point of dieting is (or should be, anyway) to lose weight in a sustainable manner—and that requires learning things like portion control, and a bit about nutrition. And if I’m wrong about the point, at least I’m certain what the point is not: To consume as much as possible of whatever nutrient-empty foods you want because, through marvels of human engineering, they’ve been somehow shaved of all their natural calories.
The product makes sense though, I suppose, if you look at it like Amit Pandhi, CEO of 150-cal-per-pint Arctic Zero ice cream : “We feel like a serving is an entire pint.”
At least Pandhi’s ice cream isn’t loaded with aspartame; Arctic Zero gets its sweetness mostly from organic monk fruit, a type of Asian gourd, and is made with all-natural ingredients.
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Can Dieting Mess With Your Fertility?
All right, so this article in Ireland’s Belfast Telegraph is dreadful, but the question it poses—can crash dieting prevent you from conceiving, even years later?—caught my eye. British model and reality TV star Chantelle Houghton, 27, says she can’t conceive naturally because of damage caused by years of ‘crash-dieting’ and bulimia.
The Telegraph article is oh-so-subtly titled ‘How Crash Diets Can Kill your Chances of Being a Mother,’ and makes it clear that Houghton wasn’t just your everyday ‘crash dieter.’ It mentions her ‘decade-old battle with bulimia,’ and quotes Houghton saying she was ‘obsessed’ with dieting from the minute she woke up until the minute she went to bed. (Correct me if that doesn’t sound like more than just a ‘diet’ to you.)
It’s been long established that eating disorders can wreak havoc on a woman’s ability to conceive. In one 1990 study of 66 infertility clinic patients, 7.6% had been anorexic or bulimic; if other eating disorders were thrown it, that figure shot to 16.7%.
According to the Telegraph, though, “it’s not just anorexics and bulimics who could be playing Russian roulette with their reproductive systems—even a last-ditch bikini diet can result in irregular periods impacting on fertility.” As examples, they cite Kim Kardashian‘s trouble conceiving, and offer a few tepid quotes from a nutritionist (who, bless her heart, says what’s probably the most sensible thing in the article: “For someone like Chantelle, she needs to address her issues with food before even contemplating pregnancy).
Even if the Telegraph is overstating its case a smidge (sometimes I think UK tabloid press is even better than ours), your diet *can* affect your chances of getting pregnant. It’s not as simple as lose weight, lose eggs or anything like that. But underweight (and overweight) women do have a harder time conceiving than women in healthy weight ranges. The authors of the book The Fertility Diet note:
Women who have a body mass index of 20 to 24 [between 117 and 140 pounds for someone 5 feet, 4 inches tall] have the best chance of getting pregnant.
And obese women can ‘jump start ovulation by losing a modest amount, about 5 to 10 percent,’ they say.
There’s been research showing links between the specific foods you eat and regularity of ovulation (“trans fats from doughnuts, margarine and other processed foods seemed to have a particularly detrimental effect on fertility”). And a 2004 study published in the Journal of the American Dietary Association found that ‘yo-yo dieting’ can significantly affect women’s immune systems; depressed immune systems are linked to infertility.
Seems, as always, your best bet is to eat healthily and not engage in the endless diet and don’t, diet and don’t cycle—whether you’re trying to conceive right now or just thinking about doing so in the future.
Photo: Entertainment TV
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Contest: How Would You Make Our Food System More Awesome?
What would you do to make our food system more awesome? That’s a question that the Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences wants to know. And they’ll even pay for your awesome ideas.
Starting next month, the micro-grant foundation will be awarding $1,000 grants to “further food awesomeness in the universe.” They are encouraging anyone–whether you have a background in food or not–to submit applications with their ideas on how they could improve how we eat in this country. It could be urban farming, food trucks, recipe collects, pop-up cafes, school lunches, etc.. The more inventive the better, they say.
While you’re thinking about your own ideas, let us share the best one we’ve heard in a long time.
The other day the New York Times ran a proposal for subsidizing fresh foods. The idea is simple: tax more for unhealthy foods like soda, french fries, doughnuts and processed foods, then use this additional tax money to lower prices on healthy foods like fresh fruits and veggies. Not only would this theoretically reduce consumption of unhealthy foods, but it would make more nutritious ones more affordable and available.
As for those who say this would be unfair to their sugar- and calorie-laden diets, Mark Bittman says too bad:
We could sell those staples cheap — let’s say for 50 cents a pound — and almost everywhere: drugstores, street corners, convenience stores, bodegas, supermarkets, liquor stores, even schools, libraries and other community centers.
This program would, of course, upset the processed food industry. Oh well. It would also bug those who might resent paying more for soda and chips and argue that their right to eat whatever they wanted was being breached. But public health is the role of the government, and our diet is right up there with any other public responsibility you can name, from water treatment to mass transit.
We think that’s an awesome idea. Which brings us to a way to take it one step further.
How about offering media discounts to advertisers of healthy products and increasing rates for those marketing unhealthy products? Think about the last time you saw an ad for a banana. See what we mean? If Americans are bombarded with over 2,000 advertising messages a day (most of which we speculate are for things we don’t really need), imagine what would happen if, instead of that McDonald’s commercial, your family saw one for fresh seasonal greens that are available right at your local street corner. Or, in lieu of that Coke, Oreo or Captain Crunch spot, you watched one about how to create a delicious and easy summer fruit salad. Think of how farmers all over the country would benefit, how the health of so many would improve, and how the health care system would prosper.
You have to admit, it’s an intriguing idea.
What would you do to make our food system awesome?
Photo: Thinkstock
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Post from: Blisstree
How To Get Enough Fat-Burning, Health-Boosting Protein (Even If You’re Vegan)
If you think you’re just one of those people who doesn’t need protein, think again: Protein is essential for immunity, maintaining healthy body composition, blood sugar balance, tissue healing and repair, muscle growth and for the production of hormones, chemical messengers and digestive enzymes in the body. Without protein, your body can’t properly make collagen to heal the skin; serotonin, dopamine and melatonin to boost mood and improve sleep, growth hormone for repair of body tissues and to slow down aging, digestive enzymes to prevent bloating and indigestion and antibodies to prevent infection.
In my practice, I often see vegetarians or vegans with signs of insufficient protein because they haven’t made a conscious effort to properly combine proteins or simply have not consumed enough protein to meet their daily requirements. Signs of insufficient protein include poor wound healing, dry skin, hair loss, gas and bloating, poor digestion, frequent colds and flus, prolonged soreness after exercise, mood swings, insomnia and depression.
Protein powders can provide an excellent source of protein in our diets. If you’re a conscious eater attempting to achieve glycemic (blood sugar) balance by consuming healthy carbs, proteins and fats at each meal, you’re probably also aware that finding lean sources of protein can sometimes be challenging. This is especially true if you’re vegan, vegetarian or pesco-vegetarian (consume fish, eggs and dairy).
But it’s not only those with special diets who need to be aware of their protein intake. Before you eat your next all-pasta meal or breakfast of coffee and scones, brush up on the best protein sources and proper food combining with this quick primer:
How Much Protein Should You Eat?
Without getting too technical and avoiding the need to weigh or measure your foods, use these simple guidelines:
- Include a serving of protein the size of your palm with each meal, three times a day.
- Include a serving of half of your palm size with each snack, twice a day.
- If reading labels, the typical male should have 35 grams to 40 grams per meal and 15 grams to 20 grams per snack. Women should consume 25 grams to 30 grams per meal and 15 grams per snack.
Sample of Protein Sources:
(in grams) 5 oz steak, cooked 35 5 oz roasted chicken 43 5 oz tuna 43 1 egg 6 1 cup milk 8 2 tbsp peanut butter 9 2 slices of cheese (low-fat is best) 14 2 slices of whole-wheat bread 5 1 cup cooked broccoli 5 1 cup beans (legumes) 15
*Individuals with kidney disease should consult their physician for proper protein requirements.
Protein Powder Options
Since you require protein with every meal and snack, finding readily available sources can be challenging. Protein powders are a useful option. You can choose whey, soy, bean or rice protein powder options. The benefits of these alternatives are outlined on the next page.
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Don’t Be A Samantha: Making Menopause Sexy With Supplements That Work
In Sex and the City 2, Samantha does her best to get through menopause without losing her sex appeal. “I am leading the way through the menopause maze with my vitamins, my melatonin sleep patches, my biodentical estrogen cream, progesterone cream, a touch of testosterone,” she tells her friends. “I’ve tricked my body into thinking it’s younger.” But the truth is, in most cases, menopause isn’t sexy: The most common side effects include mood swings, hot flashes, heart palpitations, night sweats, insomnia, aching joints, headaches, weight gain and skin changes. Not quite as hilarious as SATC made it out to be.
And while we applaud her proactive approach, most of Samantha’s solutions either pose serious health risks or don’t work:
- Hormone replacement therapy increases risk of breast cancer, heart disease and stroke, making it risky or completely off-limits for many women.
- Anti-depressants may lessen symptoms for some women, but the side effects are serious here, too (and forget about restoring your libido).
- While many menopause supplements promise to restore hormonal balance without the risks, most of them just don’t work: The herbal remedy black cohosh is no more effective than placebos; soy and wild yam both contain plant-derived estrogens that the body converts into hormones, but like black cohosh, clinical trials have found that they’re no more effective than placebos against menopause symptoms.
- At best, other herbal supplements (like red clover and St. John’s Wart) are marginally effective against menopause symptoms; at worst, they pose their own health risks (dong quai has been used in Chinese medicine, but contains known carcinogens).
Many women turn to natural supplements like Femestra, the only natural menopause supplement that’s clinically proven to alleviate hot flashes, night sweats, loss of sex drive, and other common menopause symptoms (they’ll even give your money back if it doesn’t work). It contains rice bran extract, a natural supplement that’s proven to keep hormone levels steady without the dangerous side effects of prescription solutions.
So while Hollywood might make a bevvy of herbs and hormones seem like the sexy way to handle menopause, the truth is something as simple as Femestra might be the way to go.
This post was sponsored by Femestra.
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Post from: Blisstree
Afternoon Links: Stop Cooking—Eat Raw Food
• Are you using toxic cosmetics? (You Beauty)
• Keeping abreast of implants and liposuction (Truth In Aging)
• Stop cooking — and eat raw food (Third Age)
• How to get rid of work baggage from your home life (Shelter Pop)
• Have you ever had a bangover? (Vitamin G)
• 8 ways to ruin a relationship (Your Tango)
• Dating dilema: 5 ways to combat summer sweat (The Frisky)
• 10 best workout songs for summer (That’s Fit)
• Eat your way around the world… without leaving your home (Organic Authority)
• Escape to yoga island: Your guide to Lululemon’s free yoga fest (Well + Good)
• Build a better workout (Fit Sugar)
Post from: Blisstree
Meatless Monday: 11 Vegetarian Avocado Recipes For Healthy (And Tasty) Fats
If you’re skipping meat all or most of the time, you probably don’t need to worry about your intake of bad cholesterols and fats, but as Blisstree columnist Dr. Natasha Turner reminds us, getting healthy fats is just as important for weight loss and health. And it’s a lot more fun that constantly worrying about what not to eat. Avocados are not only a great way to get monounsaturated fats, but they’re also rich in glutathione (a potent antioxidant), vitamin E and potassium. Plus, studies have shown that eating them regularly can lower LDL cholesterol and raise HDL cholesterol in adults.
So to help you get your daily dose, we found some creative ways to eat avocados for Meatless Monday. From the obvious (salads) to the inventive (chilled soups, tarts, and toasts), we found some pretty amazing ways to get these green, healthy fat pods into your diet:
current_scroll = 1; gallery_size = 11;Post from: Blisstree
Michelle Obama Fights ‘Food Deserts’…With Walmart
You might expect an initiative to increase access to fresh food in poor communities to be welcome. But Michelle Obama‘s new plan to bring more supermarkets to so-called ‘food deserts’ (areas where the only grocery options are junk-food meccas like convenience stores) is raising controversy. It’s not what she’s doing that’s raising issues, but who she’s doing it with: Walmart.
In conjunction with the First Lady’s efforts, Walmart will open stores in 275-300 new locations over the next five years in food deserts across the U.S., the Washington Post reports. It’s part of a larger fresh-foods effort on the company’s behalf that also includes doubling sales of local produce in its stores by the end of 2015 (currently, it uses a little under five percent).
Whatever you think about the grocery giant (that’s right, grocery; Walmart makes up about a quarter of grocery sales nationwide), there are people in many parts of this country for whom Walmart is one of few available options for fresh produce and other unpackaged foods. (When I lived in Brooklyn a guy I knew who was raised there told me how he and many long-time community residents welcomed any hint of plans that a retailer like Walmart or Target would land there.) Writes Fast Company columnist Ariel Schwartz:
Would small, locally owned groceries be better for food deserts than Walmart? Possibly—they help foster community and probably pay a bit more than Walmart’s notroiously low wages. But here’s the thing: These mom-and-pop groceries aren’t showing up fast enough in food deserts, if at all.
At least Walmart is providing fresh food options to communities who might not otherwise have them, she concludes, and I’m prone to agree. People like to argue about things like this as if everything isn’t connected, but its going to take all sorts of efforts to change the food culture in this country. Opening Walmart stores in supermarket-deficient communities isn’t the solution, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be part of it.
It’s not just Walmart that’s part of Obama’s initiative: Walgreens, Supervalue, and regional supermarkets Brown’s Super Stores and Calhoun Foods are also in on the efforts. Calhoun is based in Alabama and Tennessee, two states where obesity levels are among the highest.
There are other strategies for improving people’s access to fresh fruits and vegetables (and fish and meat) than planting chain stores all about: encouraging people to grow their own food, bringing farmer’s markets and the like to as many communities as possible.. You might find these efforts preferable to more Walmarts—but not everyone is going to grow their own food, and farmer’s markets can be sporadic or more expensive. To realistically improve health and nutrition via food access in this country, there’s room for CSAs and Sam’s Club.
Photo: Fast Company
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Afternoon Links: Summer Fruit Skewers For A Hot Weekend
• Your friend the fridge (Your Tango)
• After snack: a brilliant summer fruit skewer you have to try (Vitamin G)
• Do you think your marriage would be better if you lived apart? (Betty Confidential)
• Daily clean-up: minimize cleaning products (Shelter Pop)
• 10 ways to improve your sex life (Third Age)
• Botox health benefits versus the risks (Truth in Aging)
• Can fish oil fight aging? (You Beauty)
• Chill out with yoga expert Kristin McGee’s one-step frozen yogurt recipe (Well + Good)
• Tips for Happy Hour: calories in popular cocktails and bar snacks (Fit Sugar)
• 7 foods to eat for healthy eyes (Organic Authority)
• What’s a calorie? (and other nutrition buzzwords, defined) (That’s Fit)
• 5 reasons why having a plant is better than having a boyfriend (The Frisky)
Post from: BlissTree
Cooking With Kohlrabi: 6 Ways to Tame This Strange, Nutritious Vegetable
Raw kohlrabi—a small, purple- or green-skinned member of cabbage family also known as the ‘German Turnip’—is crisp like an apple and tastes something like a cross between cabbage and radish. I encountered this strange vegetable (which, without leaves, resembles a sort of rubber-shelled alien tomato) at my local farmer’s market last Tuesday (it can grow almost anywhere) and, tempted by its weirdness and 50-cent price tag, took two home with me, instructed by the seller to ‘bake it like a potato.’
A half cup of sliced raw kohlrabi has 19 calories, 2.5 grams fiber and is high in Vitamins A, C, and calcium. Of the two varieties, purple is sweeter (and most say better-tasting) than the green. Small, younger kohlrabi have the most flavor and softer, easier-to-cut outer shells; they can be eaten without peeling. Larger kohlrabi globes need to be peeled, so choose ones that are two and a half inches in diameter or smaller (about tennis ball size at the largest).
Consulting the Internet, I found many people seem to eat kohlrabi raw, sliced up apple-style or shredded and thrown in salads. Its leaves can also be cooked and eaten, its popular in Indian cuisine, and can be used in a number of vegetarian recipes. I sliced it thinly and sauteed it with olive oil, garlic and crushed red pepper (because that’s my first instinct with everything), which worked in a pinch. Here’s an easy kohlrabi salad recipe from Worden Farms:
Mediterranean Kohlrabi Salad
Adapted from Harris’ Gardening Almanac
1 bulb kohlrabi
1 dozen radishes
1 tomato
1 green bell pepper
6-8 stalks scallions
half a lemon
2 tbsp. extra vergin olive oil
salt
Dice all vegetables and toss into large bowl. Sprinkle salt to taste, squeeze juice of half a lemon into mixture, pour in olive oil and toss. The salad can be eaten immediately, but has fuller flavor if left to marinate in refridgerator for a few hours.
A few more ways to try it:
- Kohlrabi & Apple Slaw – Lighter than cabbage slaw and laced with lemon and fresh mint for a summery feel.
- Kohlrabi & Squash Empanadas – “It’s crisp and refreshing when sliced thin and eaten raw or grated into a slaw,but I actually like it even better when sauteed,” says this recipe’s creator. “It releases its juices and becomes almost buttery in texture.”
- Lentil Kohlrabi Salad – Pair kohlrabi with toasted sunflower seeds, sesame oil, onion, and lentils (which the EWG recently said have the lowest carbon footprint of food sources of protein).
Photo: Simply Recipes
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Post from: BlissTree
Cooking With Kohlrabi: 6 Ways to Tame This Strange, Nutritious Vegetable
My Refrigerator, My Self: Mark Menjivar’s Portraits Of A Fridge
You are what you eat might be one of the most overused health cliches, but Mark Menjivar has given it a new spin with his portrait series of the same name. His subjects faces and bodies don’t figure into the photos at all; instead, he photographs their uncensored refrigerators; surprisingly interesting stuff.
As his artist statement explains, the photos aren’t just meant to be voyeuristic looks into the homes of other Americans:
For three years I traveled around the country exploring food issues. The more time I spent speaking and listening to individual stories, the more I began to think about the foods we consume and the effects they have on us as individuals and communities. An intense curiosity and questions about stewardship led me to begin to make these unconventional portraits. A refrigerator is both a private and a shared space. One person likened the question, “May I photograph the interior of your fridge?” to asking someone to pose nude for the camera. Each fridge is photographed “as is”. Nothing added, nothing taken away. These are portraits of the rich and the poor. Vegetarians, Republicans, members of the NRA, those left out, the under appreciated, former soldiers in Hitler’s SS, dreamers, and so much more. We never know the full story of one’s life. My hope is that we will think deeply about how we care. How we care for our bodies. How we care for others. And how we care for the land.
We practically devour the Refrigerator Look Books over at Well+Good NYC; it’s always fascinating to peer into other peoples’ kitchens, especially those who we regard as health role models. But Menjivar proves that it’s not just nutritionists and yoga instructors whose ‘fridges deserve to be on display; his portraits show a cross section of America that’s nearly as informative as U.S. obesity rates and statistics about food deserts. It’s easy to talk about the Standard American Diet in theory, but a look at the vast differences between food stocks in just a few of his portraits shows that there are some major discrepancies in our country when it comes to what we eat.
Photo: Mark Menjivar via Jay Parkinson
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My Refrigerator, My Self: Mark Menjivar’s Portraits Of A Fridge
6 Health-Boosting Basil Recipes for Summer
We all know basil is good for making pesto or flavoring Italian food, but this incredibly-easy-to-grow herb also touts various cool health benefits, from clearing up your skin to detoxifying your liver. And that’s not all:
- Basil oil was found to help fight ulcers and inflammation
- It’s also been shown useful in fighting acne.
- In traditional Indian medicine, basil was used in treating bronchitis, diarrhea, arthritis, fevers, insect bites and more, as well as thought to possess “antifertility, anticancer, antidiabetic, antifungal, antimicrobial and cardioprotective” properties.
- Recent research on basil’s pharmacological effects backs up the case for “therapeutic uses of this plant.”
(Photo: A Sweet Pea Chef)
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Post from: BlissTree
Want To Lose Weight? Eat Like A Dog
In a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 32 women were given macaroni and cheese every day for a week. By the end of that time, the participants were so uninterested in their meals that they consumed 100 fewer calories each day. Why didn’t we think of this? Of course eating like a dog can help you lose weight!
We’re really not that surprised here—who could possibly want to eat that much mac and cheese? But we’re not buying the fact that this so-called diet could work in the real world. First of all, where is the nutrition? You can’t possibly consume the same food every day—whether it’s mac and cheese, pizza or even salad—and get all of the adequate nutrients that your body needs. Secondly, what happens when someone goes back to eating “normal” foods? Wouldn’t they be so hungry for other foods that they would go back to old eating habits?
According to Shelley McGuire, associate professor of nutrition at Washington State University and a spokesperson for the American Society for Nutrition, that remains to be seen:
This provides a very interesting new piece to the obesity puzzle by suggesting that meal monotony may actually lead to reduced calorie consumption. The trick will be balancing this concept with the importance of variety to good nutrition.
Researchers stand by their theory that reducing the variety of food choices could be an important component to losing weight. We stand by our philosophy that variety is the spice of life and everything in moderation.
What do you think? Would you try this?
Photo: Thinkstock
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Post from: BlissTree
The Social Animal: 1 In 5 Restaurants Underreports Their Menu’s Calorie Count
Looking for another reason to hate the Olive Garden? No? Here’s one anyway: it was one of the primary culprits in a new study claiming that nearly a fifth of American restaurants underreport the calorie counts of their dishes by at least 100 calories. (Other big-name offenders included Boston Market, Outback Steakhouse, and, I’m sorry to report, Chipotle.)
The study examined 269 menu items at 42 fast-food and sit-down restaurants in three states and compared the actual lab-tested calorie counts to those reported on the restaurants’ websites. (In defense of Chipotle, et al., two of those three states were Indiana and Arkansas, which might not be, well, representative when it comes to calorie intake.) One item apparently had more than 1,000 calories more than it was supposed to: a side order of chips and salsa at (the inaccurately named) On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina. How a side order of chips and salsa could possibly have 1,000 more calories than any food item on earth is beyond me. Maybe the salsa contained three too many sprigs of cilantro…
Scientists Discover Reproduction Requires SexAnd the award for Stupidest Headline of the Week (a very competitive category, by the way) goes to Physorg.com for this little gem: “Asexual ants are actually having sex: study.” A word like “reportedly” or “purportedly” at the beginning would have helped this one a bit, as would some more traditional colon use. Then again, if it was impeccable diction and punctuation I were looking for, I’d go to Engorg.com, not Physorg.com.
Anyway, it’s the scientists involved in these studies on purportedly asexual ants who deserve the snide commentary. Between 2005 and 2009, three studies of Mycocepurus smithii (“Michael Smith” in English) colonies in Puerto Rico turned up no males. Dissection of the colonies’ queens revealed that their sperm-storing chambers were dry. The biologists thus concluded that the ants must reproduce asexually.
I’m no biologist, but I would have stopped them right there: Wouldn’t the presence of sperm-storing chambers suggest that sperm was involved somehow? Turns out, well, yes. In a new study, Harvard’s Christian Rabeling and his team discovered four colonies along the Amazon River that exhibited “a variety of genes typical in a sexual society,” along with a queen whose sperm-storing chamber was full of, yep, sperm. “The researchers still have yet to find a male M. smithii,” however, “even within the apparent sexual colonies. They suspect the males may be used for mating and then sent packing.” I know how they feel.
If You’re Reading This On The Can, You’re Not AloneAccording to a new study by Plaxo—a company that stores mobile device data and is thus perhaps not the most objective source for a study like this, but regardless, I couldn’t resist including this one—19% of cell-phone users have dropped their phone in a toilet and been forced to buy new one. “This data corresponds with another study from Google that stated nearly four out of every ten people bring the phone into the bathroom for use,” according to the article.
First of all, I love that this story is on a website called Digital Trends. Secondly, who are these people, and where can I go to mock them in person? For a moment, I tried to picture scenarios in which dropping an iPhone into a toilet was possible, much less common. Yapping with legs spread treacherously wide? Texting with one hand, wiping with the other? Then I thought better of it—some things are better not left to the imagination. Anyway, if you are one of these unfortunate people—and apparently there is a one in five chance you are—you might already know that submerging your soaked phone in dry rice (jasmine, for a better scent) is a commonly used resuscitation technique. You can thank me later. Just don’t expect me to shake your hand.
Penis Size Vis-à-Vis Economic DevelopmentI’m just going to skip the foreplay and cut right to the chase on this one. According to a new study by Prof. Tatu Westling of the University of Helsinki—a long-known hotbed of hot Finnish coeds and, now, in-depth analyses of junk length—size may matter after all, at least when it comes to economic development. (When it comes to other developments, it’s all about the motion of the ocean. Trust me, ladies. Please? Trust me?) “It is argued here,” Westling writes, “that the average size—the erect length, to be precise—of male organ in population has a strong predictive power of economic development during the period” 1960 – 85. “This paper’s major contribution has been the identification of this perplexing link.” If he says so.
Dubious conclusions aside—the main thing I learned was that even a paper devoted entirely to penis size can be dull in the hands of an academic—it is nonetheless worth skimming for the prose alone, most of which is unintentionally hilarious. More than anything, it is a veritable treasure trove of inadvertent double entendres (“The size of male organ is found to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with the level of GDP in 1985”; “Did countries with little male organs continue their growth spur?”) and complete awesomeness cloaked in bone-dry academic-journal prose (“One striking result is the collapse in GDP after male organ exceeds the length of 16 centimetres”). Reading it is, at times, like watching a hippo try to cross a minefield. Occasionally even Westling falls prey to the lure of easy puns. “It clearly seems that the ‘private sector’ deserves more credit for economic development than is typically acknowledged,” he writes. He’ll be here all week.
Sadly, the study is conspicuously short (heh heh) on takeaways. “For obvious reasons the male organ narrative yields little in terms of feasible policy recommendations,” Westling writes. “Beyond mass [im]migration, not much can be done on the average size of male organ at the population level.” Evidently he has never heard of ExtenZe. As for you size queens, I recommend checking out Tables 6 and 7 in the appendix, which include average “male organ” length by country. Assuming the State Department doesn’t lift its travel ban on the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to both a bloody civil war and, apparently, the best-endowed men in the world) anytime soon, you might consider booking the next flight to Quito—Ecuadorean men boast an impressive seven-inch average. You know what they say… Once you go Ecuadoran, it ain’t ever borin’.
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The Social Animal: 1 In 5 Restaurants Underreports Their Menu’s Calorie Count
Summer Seasonables: Easy Zucchini, Summer Squash Currant Muffin Recipe
With squash and zucchini still leftover from Saturday’s farmer’s market, plus some pink and red currants that were too bitter to eat on their own, I decided the only thing to do was make muffins. A little wheat flour, flaxseed, buckwheat honey and rice milk (plus a trip to the corner store for baking powder and baking soda) later, I had muffins that are sweet enough to eat for dessert but healthy enough to eat for breakfast.
Because I only had one small muffin tray with six mini-muffin-size cups*, I put the remaining batter in a bread-loaf pan. I am not really versed in bread-making, so I don’t now if there’s some special thing that needs to be done to officially make something bread, but this mix seemed to work just fine as either bread or muffins, with the bread requiring just a little more time in the oven.
Zucchini, Summer Squash & Currant Muffins
Ingredients:
1 ¼ cup whole wheat flour
¼ cup whole ground flaxseed meal
½ cup rice milk
3 eggs or ¾ to 1 cup applesauce
2 tablespoons buckwheat honey (or other dark, semi-sweet honey)
½ cup sucanat (dried cane juice sweetener. This is just what I had; you could just as easily use brown sugar or can sugar or something like that, or try replacing with agave nectar)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup pink and/or red currants
1-2 cups finely shredded summer squash and/or zucchini
1 teaspoon salt
dashes of ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger
Preparation:
Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix together flour, flaxseed meal, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt.
In smaller bowl, combine rice milk, eggs or applesauce, buckwheat honey, and sucanat. Mix in shredded zucchini and summer squash, and currants.
Combine ingredients in smaller bowl with flour, etc. Stir/whisk together.
Fill muffin cups (or loaf pan). Let muffins cook about 20-35 minutes (you’ll probably need to do the old toothpick/fork-test to see if they’re done, since exact time depends on your oven, what you’re baking in, etc.).
Bread should bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Let cool, and enjoy—with the squash and flaxseed, buckwheat honey and minimal sugar, these muffins are low-cal (similar recipes say about 100 calories per regular-sized muffin) and good for you, besides being something you’ll want to gobble up immediately.
* I have this terrible problem with ordering very tiny things from Amazon, because they make them look bigger in the pictures and I always forget to read the actual dimensions (you should see my tiny metal shelf and tiny dust-buster…).
** generally, I would make these vegan, but I had a bunch of fancy brown eggs in the fridge
(Muffin recipe inspiration via Happy Herbivore)
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Post from: BlissTree
Summer Seasonables: Easy Zucchini, Summer Squash & Currant Muffin Recipe
7 Worst Restaurant Foods: Have You Ordered These?
If you’ve ever set foot in The Cheesecake Factory, you know about their monster-sized desserts. But did you also know about their cheeseburger topped with a fried egg that ended up on the latest worst restaurant foods list? By now, I think we can all agree on the fact that menu items like this are ridiculously bad for us. And yet, Americans continue to eat these fat- and calorie-laden foods, and restaurants continue to oblige.
According to the latest report from the Center for Science in Public Interest, that cheeseburger—which is also topped with grilled smoked pork belly, cheddar cheese, onions, lettuce, tomato and mayo in addition to a fried egg—contains a whopping 1,530 calories and 36 grams of fat. (Keep in mind, it is recommended that we take in no more than 2,000 calories and 20 grams of fat per day.) The list of unhealthy items doesn’t stop there though.
Here’s the complete list of America’s seven worst restaurant foods:
- The Cheesecake Factory‘s Fried-Egg Cheeseburger: 1,530 calories and 36 grams of fat
- The Cheesecake Factory‘s Ultimate Red Velvet Cake Cheesecake (which can weigh close to three-quarters of a pound): 1,540 calories and 59 grams of saturated fat.
- Applebee‘s Provolone-Stuffed Meatballs With Fettuccine: 1,520 calories and 43 grams of saturated fat—plus 3,700 milligrams of sodium (more than two day’s worth of salt)
- Cold Stone Creamery‘s Large Peanut Butter and Chocolate Shake: 2,010 calories and 68 grams of fat
- Denny‘s Fried Cheese Melt (which includes four fried mozzarella sticks and melted American cheese between two slices of sourdough bread): 1,260 calories and 21 grams of saturated fat
- IHOP‘s Bacon ‘N Beef Burger: 1,250 calories and 42 grams of saturated fat, and Morton’s Porterhouse Steak with 1,390 calories plus 36 grams of saturated fat
- Morton’s Porterhouse Steak with 1,390 calories plus 36 grams of saturated fat
It’s not like we don’t know these foods are bad for us just by the description. So why do people continue to eat them? There are many theories here (including laziness, lack of control and ignorance), but the one that comes to my mind is the fact that we don’t pay enough attention to how we feel after we eat. You can’t tell me that indulging in a humongous piece of cheesecake, bacon cheeseburger or milkshake is really going to make us feel good when we’re done. And by good I mean energized, bright and clear-headed. We pay so much attention to how something tastes going in and how entitled we are to indulge, that we don’t give nearly enough attention to the after-effects. Like that bloated, sick, gluttonous, tired feeling after we consume too much of the wrong thing. It’s kind of like exercise, we do it because of how great we feel when we’re done. If we looked at eating the same way, items like these would eventually get taken off the menu because no one would order them. Salad anyone?
Have you ever eaten any of these items? If so, how did you feel afterward?
Photo: Today.com
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Summer Thirst Quencher: Spiced Bourbon Honey Iced Tea
I was going to post this tomorrow, but if you’re in a part of the country that’s in the midst of a heat wave right now (it’s 96 degrees where I am, with a heat index of about 115), you might appreciate this thirst-quenching (and not-so-unhealthy) spiced bourbon and honey iced tea right now. We’ve been making it by the gallon around here, because it’s easy to make and just right for hot summer evenings (just remember in the morning that there’s bourbon in it; we’ve had mishaps…).
Since plain black tea is calorie-free, it’s really only the bourbon and the honey adding calories to the tea (or ‘punch’), for what works out to about 140 calories per 1-cup serving. Plus, you’re avoiding unnatural sugars, flavors and preservatives. Mix some up after work and it’ll be good to go by supper.
Spiced & Iced Bourbon Honey TeaServings: 6 Serving size: 1 cup
Ingredients:
6 cups water
3 (chai or India) spiced black tea bags
1 cup bourbon
⅓ cup clover honey
optional: 2 sprigs lavendar, if you’ve got it handy
optional: 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Make It:
Combine all ingredients in a jug or pitcher with lid. Put on lid and shake it up (alternately, I guess you could stir, if that’s more your style).
Let it steep in the fridge. (I mean, obviously, you could drink it right away, but it’s better after it sits for an hour or few.)
Serve on it’s own or over ice; you may want to pour through a strainer if you used lavender, to avoid getting it in your drink.
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Post from: BlissTree
Infographic: The Carbon Footprint Of Your Lunch
You might think your health and the environment are separate issues (and who has time for both?), but the Environmental Working Group is finally putting two and two together with their newly-released “Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change and Health.” It’s full of illuminating facts about the eco-impact of our food (like eating just one less burger per week is the equivalent to taking your car off the road for 320 miles), and the graphic below, from the report’s chart of foods with the highest (lamb, beef, cheese, pork, salmon) and lowest (lentils, tomatoes, 2% milk, beans, and tofu) carbon footprints.
Last week, we reported on a study saying going meat-free one day a week was better for the environment than eating a 100% local diet, and this makes it even clearer: If you eat meat, being conscious about where it comes from can be a matter of food safety, health and sustainability. “Choosing healthier, pasture-raised meats can help improve people’s health and reduce the environmental damage associated with meat consumption,” said the report’s author, Kari Hamerschlag, an EWG analyst.
It’s also nice to see EWG—which could be seen by some as a bit radical for its relentless campaign against The Toxins Among Us—take a realistic approach, instead of a PETA-style (or James McWilliams-style) extremism. The EWG acknowledges that convincing all, or even a majority of people, to go vegetarian or vegan is an impossible (and alienating) goal at this point in time, and instead focuses on the small steps we could all take, how just a little less meat consumption can be good for our health and the environment.
TV chef and EWG spokesperson Mario Batali said:
Asking everyone to go vegetarian or vegan is not a realistic or attainable goal, but we can focus on a more plant-based diet and support the farmers who raise their animals humanely and sustainably. This is why I am such a big believer in the Meatless Monday Movement and the EWG’s Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change and Health.
My favorite part of the guide might be this single sentence: If you buy less meat overall, you can afford healthier, greener meat, which can be more expensive. That’s something that’s not often mentioned when talking about the expense of natural, local and/or humanely raised meat.
A few more interesting facts from the guide:
- A 2009 National Cancer Institute study of 500,000 Americans found people who ate the most red meat were 20 percent more likely to die of cancer and at least 27% more likely to die of heart disease than those who ate the least. In women who consumed the most meat, the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was 50% higher .
- Various studies have found grass-fed beef has lower total saturated and monounsaturated fat; more heart healthy omega-3 fatty acids and a lower (healthier) ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids; higher levels of vitamin E, beta-carotene and B-vitamins; and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a nutrient associated with lower cancer risk.
- Toxins are also a concern with fish, especially tuna and farmed salmon. A 2004 analysis of two metric tons of farmed and wild salmon purchased from stores around the world showed consistently and significantly higher concentrations of PCBs and dioxins in farmed salmon.
- Most soy consumed in the US is highly processed and refined with chemicals. Because of how they are made, soy products may contain traces of carcinogenic substances.
Photo: Culinary in the Country
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