What kind of Goose? Aspara-goose!

I decided to begin this Tip of the Day series with a really simple one. You might say this concept is self-intuitive, blatantly obvious or even understandable to the average waterfowl. A Canadian Aspara-goose for example …

To be clear, mainly what I’m talking about is vegetables. Generally speaking, I prefer cooked vegetables to raw vegetables, but you know those obnoxious people with ridiculous tans and veins bulging from the sides of their neck who drill us ad nauseam with the fact that raw, alive veggies are more nutritious that cooked, dead veggies? Well, they’re right. At least on that central point. I would disagree that lightly and skillfully cooked vegetables are “dead,” but LESS nutritious, sure, that’s a fact.

You see, it’s not so much the vitamin and mineral content that’s destroyed by the cooking process — the main exception being vitamin C, which has very low heat tolerance — but other substances called phytochemicals or phytonutrients, under which there are many subcategories. You may have heard some of these terms bandied about: polyphenols, sterols, flavones, catechins … the list goes on. The bottom line is that we (vis a vis SCIENCE) are just beginning to grasp the myriad benefits of these plant-derived compounds to the human species. For a good overview of the major categories of such compounds and where they occur, read this.

If you’re planning to sautee multiple veggies for example, say garlic, onions, yellow (summer) squash, swiss chard and cherry tomatoes — don’t throw them in the pan all at once. Think about the nature of each ingredient and how you prefer them cooked. Personally, I would go in the following order, with maybe a minute or so in between:

1. Tomatoes
2. Garlic and onions
3. Squash
4. Chard

Why the tomatoes first? Well, that brings us to one noteable caveat to this advice — again, with the exception of vitamin C content, cooked tomatoes are more nutritious than raw ones. Specifically, a phytochemical called lycopene (also found in watermelon, grapefruit and even asparagus!) can be significantly increased by cooking tomatoes — and this is no small matter, considering that lycopene is the most devestatingly effective singlet oxygen (free radical) quencher known to mankind. Which is to say, it’s one of the best antioxidants available. Which is to say, it can help you become healthier and live longer. Some recent studies even show potent anti-cancer benefits from lycopene.

So the next time you wolf down half a pizza, at least you can rest assured knowing your singlet oxygen free radicals are well quenched.

Approximate cost: $250

Where I purchased: Don’t remember

Why I would buy this product again:
Solid craftsmanship, relatively easy to clean, variety of uses.

Why I would not buy this product again:
Juicing is a very time-consuming process, from cleaning and chopping your produce to cleanup of the equipment, countertops, etc.

Am I likely to buy this product again?
No. Hopefully this one will last my lifetime.

Approximate cost: Virtually zero, not including overall maintenance of the garden … and sweat equity, of course.

Where I purchased: N/A. Picked from my own garden.

Why I would buy this product again:
In the future, I will only buy tomatoes (out of season) at the grocery store once in a blue moon, and most likely they will be organic cherry/grape tomatoes for salad. In terms of why I will continue to eat tomatoes, from my own garden and/or farmer’s markets – 1) they are an excellent source (perhaps the best) of lycopene, a carotenoid with demonstrated anti-cancer properties, namely prostate and stomach cancers. Lycopene is also a powerful antioxidant, specifically against singlet oxygen free radicals. Tomatoes also contain lutein, an essential compound for eye health, which has been shown to offset macular degeneration. Finally, tomatoes are a great source of vitamin C, which of course always helps in the battle against scurvy!

Why I would not buy this product again:
In terms of buying tomatoes from a grocery store, I will avoid doing this because they are relatively tasteless. Any non-vine-ripened tomatoes have likely been picked green and artificially ripened/reddened with ethylene gas. Yuck.

Am I likely to buy this product again?
Again, depends how you interpret that question … I love good tomatoes, period.

Ratings (out of 5)
Nutrition: 4
Taste: 5

Other notes:
The two varieties from my garden reviewed here are Peacevine Cherry and Yellow Perfection (heirloom). Both were started from seed under grow lights in late January 2011 and planted the last week in March 2011 here in Birmingham, AL. It was a very warm late winter this year so I took a chance on the frost and got them in the ground early. The gamble paid off, as I began harvesting vine-ripened tomatoes from these plants in mid May.

Approximate cost: $4

Where I purchased: Whole Foods

Why I would buy this product again:
Short, all-natural ingredient list. Good assortment of vitamins and minerals. Heart-healthy oats. Very crunchy and quite tasty, as well.

Why I would not buy this product again:
Sugar a bit high at 12 g per serving.

Am I likely to buy this product again?
Perhaps. Would not hesitate to buy on sale, but probably won’t become a regularly stocked item in the pantry.

Ratings (out of 5)
Nutrition: 3
Taste: 4

Other notes:
I consumed this cereal with skim milk, however, since the recording of this episode I have switched to 2% milk. Incidentally, whole milk is not 100% by comparison but in fact 3.25%, this number indicating the total percentage of butterfat in the milk (butter actually being 80% butterfat). At any rate, my opinion based on the latest science is that fats (yes, even saturated fats such as butterfat) from quality animal sources such as organic cow’s milk are indeed very healthy in reasonable quantities – and, given this context, you’re getting ripped off for skim milk, which is generally the same price as reduced fat or even whole milk.

Thanks to Chef Keith Snow and HarvestEating.com.

Starter Mix:
Add 1 cup bread flour to 1 cup warm water in mixing bowl.
Mix together by hand and let sit at least 3 hours, preferably overnight.

Add to another bowl in this order:
2 cups bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp dry yeast
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp salt
1 cup warm water
2 eggs, beaten
Starter mix (from above)

Thoroughly mix/moisten without kneading.

Cover with plastic wrap and let sit in warm area (warmed oven, etc.) for about 2 hours.

Prepare pot for baking bread with cooking spray all around.
Put circle of parchment paper on bottom and top with cooking spray.

Turn dough onto well-floured surface.
Fold over and press out air bubbles 6-8 times, adding flour on top each time.
Fold under to make round loaf and transfer to pot.

Let rise in warm area for another 1-2 hours.

Preheat oven to 400.

Bake bread for 30 minutes.
Cover with lid (or foil) and bake another 30 minutes.

Just a quick note for those in and around Birmingham … there is a new community supported agriculture (CSA) outfit serving our area — Moore Farms and Friends — and having tried them out for a couple weeks now I can recommend it. The big plus is that a one-year membership only costs $30, then you can order what you want from week to week (or order nothing). I’ve found the vegetables to be of high quality and the meats and dairy products also to be particularly delicious. And almost everything is organic, grass-fed, etc. Finally, they have multiple delivery locations around the city including the Summit, Homewood and downtown.

The website is MooreFarmsandFriends.com.

I believe local farmers are vital to the cultural and economic fabric of our nation, so I hope you will consider supporting them in one way or another … and getting yourself some highly nutritious food in the process!

Approximate cost: $3.50

Where I purchased: Publix Grocery Store

Why I would buy this product again:
No hydrogenated oils, no artificial anything, catchy name.

Why I would not buy this product again:
Lackluster taste, fairly expensive (around $4).

Am I likely to buy this product again?
No.

Ratings (out of 5)
Nutrition: 4
Taste: 2

Other notes:
Again, not to beat a dead fatty acid here, but hydrogenated oils should be avoided, due to their tendency to cause inflammation and become oxidized once incorporated into LDL cholesterol. Of course regular vegetable oils like sunflower or safflower (which is in this product) can also be problematic in both of these regards, just not quite as much.

Free diabetic supply kit with every jumbo cake purchase.

Steve Dupont here, and let’s just get one thing straight from the getgo — I am not indicting the American food culture as a whole, which I believe has many praiseworthy traditions, regional curiosities and, yes, even nutritional benefits. More on that later, including some of the promising new trends I’m seeing out there, but first …

I want to talk about what I would call American “celebration culture” or perhaps even more precisely, “perfunctory celebration culture” — holiday parties, office parties, daycare/school parties and the mother of all culinary and nutritional abominations, children’s birthday parties. The last two, of course, being very personal to me not only because I have children two children myself, and have agonized through many such functions, but because I honestly care about the health of all children, not just my own.

In the case of our daycare center, in particular, I think part of the problem may be quite simply too many parties. After all, just by virtue of having a dozen kids in the class, plus two teachers, ensures that you have an average of one party a month. Then you add in holidays — Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, plus Mardi Gras, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day … and probably a few more obscure ones I’m forgetting. Then you have beginning of the year parties, end of the year parties and random parties in between like going away parties or new baby brother/sister parties. When it’s all said and done, we’re talking about a party every other week or so. Many parents attend all of these. I do not. Moreover, whenever possible, I’ll admit I try to pick up the kids early or keep them home on party days to spare them the chemical assault …

Which brings us to the food fare typical of such events, which has actually become so consistent as to have more or less a template. In fact, many times a teacher or parent will post a sign-up sheet for an upcoming party, which may look like this:

Cheese puffs ___________________________
Potato chips _________________________
Chicken nuggets _______________________
Cookies ____________________________
Donuts ____________________________
Juice ________________________________
Soft Drinks ___________________________

So let’s just take these items one by one, with my nutritional concerns (many of which should be quite obvious):

Cheese puffs: Partially hydrogenated oils, GMOs (corn, canola), artificial colors, MSG

Potato chips: Same deal, minus the artificial colors (but I fear it’s only a matter of time before we see “party colors” chips on the market)

Chicken nuggets: By far the nutritional powerhouse of the group — at least they contain protein — but you can bet it’s going to be the lowest-grade factory farmed chicken full of antibiotics, fillers and preservatives, in addition to the hydrogenated oils, MSG and God knows what else.

Cookies: Sugar (probably from GMO sugar beets or GMO corn syrup), hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors and/or colors.

Donuts: Ditto.

Juice: Sugar, pesticides, whatever’s in the municipal water the juice factory uses to reconstitute the concentrate (i.e. chlorine, fluoride). Even most brands that say 100% juice are nothing of the sort. If so, the ingredient list should read: Apple juice. But instead, a product like Capri Sun 100% Apple Juice lists: APPLE JUICE FROM CONCENTRATE (WATER, APPLE JUICE CONCENTRATE), CITRIC ACID (FOR TARTNESS), NATURAL FLAVOR. I’m sorry, people, that’s not 100% juice, not even close! Moreover, one little pouch (177 mL) contains a whopping 20 g of sugar with none of the fiber or phenolic compounds found in real, fresh apples.

Soft drinks: GMO high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, fluoride (I once read that Coke filters their water and Pepsi uses unfiltered municipal (tap) water, but have not independently verified this). Okay, so in most cases young kids at least are not drinking this swill, but my jaw dropped the other day at a Father’s Day party when one of the dads requested a cup of Diet Coke for his son. To the teacher’s credit, she thought he was joking, but no. “Mommy drinks it all the time at home and he actually likes it,” dad said. This was a three-year-old child!

Right, so that’s quite a recipe for expedited disease and, yes, death. Indeed, a proverbial celebration of obesity, early onset type 2 diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, heart disease … go down the list.

Again, I think it’s a product of too many celebrations, but also we’ve allowed ourselves to become lazy, to get into a rut, to feel the peer pressure to conform, and to place frugality above good nutrition (or even less-bad nutrition). I am guilty of this myself on occasion. Of course, another inherent problem is that most schools and daycares nowadays, for reasons of liability I suppose, prohibit serving anything to children that was prepared at home. Everything must be store-bought. Which just seals the deal on the “corporatization” of our children. By the age of five, many will refuse to eat just about anything that doesn’t come from a bag or box or can with a familiar label, which is truly sad.

There are the rays of hope out there, like I said at the top — the increasing popularity of farmer’s markets and locally produced food in general, the raw and slow food movements, guys like Jamie Oliver and Keith Snow who rail against the system … so I believe a viable and sustainable counterculture, if you will, is on the rise.

It does take courage though, oftentimes, to go against the grain and even risk insulting those who dogmatically adhere to this junk food, fast food, whatever’s cheapest food way of life. And I must constantly remind myself that many of these people — especially the children — simply don’t know any better. Therefore we must not judge them, or scorn them, but lead by example and show them there’s another way.

Not just for better health, but better enjoyment of life through the food we eat.