Friday, March 30, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Roasted Asparagus: As Delicious as it is Simple
Roasted asparagus seems to be the overall favorite and although you can find many, many recipes out there, I have found that keeping it simple brings the best results.
First, you'll need one or two asparagus bundles. If we're eating as a snack, rather than with a meal, I always use 2 bundles because they disappear so quickly.
Ingredients:
2 bundles of asparagus, thin spears, with tough ends chopped off
Good quality olive oil
Sea salt
Ground black pepper
Juice of half a lemon
Method:
Preheat oven to 450
Drizzle olive oil over asparagus spears and toss with your hands until well coated
Generously sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss some more
Place in a single layer on cookie sheet and roast for about 10-15 minutes or until crisp tender and browned in places
Let cool for about 3-5 minutes and sprinkle with the lemon juice.
These are good enough to eat alone or you can always dip in a little homemade ranch dressing. (Recipe to come.)
Sooooooooooo, so good.
The Wheat Lobby Smokescreen
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/03/the-wheat-lobby-smokescreen/comment-page-1/#comments
The Grain Foods Foundation, the Whole Grain Council, and other lobby/trade groups for the wheat industry are in panic mode. After all, a recent 4.5% reduction in bread sales for the year were just reported. While 4.5% is not a big percentage, it is a percentage of a huge number. This is big.
According to SymphonyIRI Group (a Chicago-based market research firm), unit sales of fresh bread declined 4.5% in the 52 weeks ended Jan. 22 [2012] . . . The one-year volume decline likely was the steepest in the history of sliced bread. [Emphasis mine.]
So the Wheat Lobby and trade groups have been organizing behind several counterarguments to maintain the “healthy whole grain” franchise, including:
“Wheat is not genetically-modified.”
Dr. Glenn Gaesser of the Grain Foods Foundation recently offered this “counterargument” on a TV interview I did. This statement has also cropped up a number of times in various articles and reports that aim to counter the claims I am making, suggesting that it is part of a concerted, planned defense.
They are correct: Wheat is not genetically-modified. In the language of geneticists, “genetic modification” or genetic engineering refers to the use of gene-splicing technology to insert or remove a gene. While wheat has indeed been extensively genetically-modified in laboratory settings, no genetically-modified strain of wheat is on the open market. And I never said it was.
But that does not mean that the genetics of wheat have not been changed. Its genetics, in fact, have been extensively changed using techniques that include hybridization, repeating backcrossing (to winnow out specific characteristics like short height or seed head size), embryo rescue (to rescue otherwise fatal mutations), and chemical, gamma ray, and x-ray mutagenesis (induction of mutations, used for instance to create the popular strain of wheat that is herbicide-resistant). These techniques, as any geneticist will tell you, are far less predictable, less controllable . . . far worse than the act of inserting or removing just one gene. But that is conveniently left out of the sound bites that come from the Wheat Lobby.
“Grains have been eaten by humans for thousands of years.”
Well, humans have been enslaved for thousands of years, children put to work and abused, the strong dominated the weak . . . but that doesn’t justify any of it.
Whole grains of 2012 are also not the whole grains of 1950, the 19th century, the Bible, or pre-biblical times. Modern wheat, in particular, is genetically distant from its predecessors, thanks to the extreme genetic changes (not genetic modification!) inflicted on wheat in the 1960s and 1970s in the name of increased yield-per-acre.
“Healthy whole grains have repeatedly been shown to reduce risk for diabetes, heart disease, and colon cancer.”
That’s is true . . . if whole grains are compared to processed white flour products. It is guilty of the kind of flawed logic that dominates nutritional thinking:
If something bad for you is replaced by something less bad and there is an apparent health benefit, then a whole bunch of the less bad thing is good for you???
This flawed logic is used to justify replacing high-glycemic index foods with low-glycemic index foods (more properly called less-high glycemic index foods), hydrogenated fats with polyunsaturates.If “healthy whole grains” are compared to no grains, i.e, no wheat, then dramatic turnarounds in health are witnessed. The 1% of people with celiac disease are not the exception; they are the “canaries in the coal mine” telling us that wheat is inappropriate for any human to consume . . . especially the semi-dwarf strains made worse by geneticists.
Surely the experts know all this!
Nope. They are, to an incredible degree, ignorant. I recently debated a PhD Professor of Nutrition at a major university, who was also Director of Research at a major agricultural corporation, who offered up the usual defenses of wheat, while accusing me of ignoring the evidence. So, when I informed him that the wheat of today is a high-yield, semi-dwarf variant that stands around 2-feet tall, with marked changes in its genetic code, he answered with . . . silence. After a bit of hemming and hawing, he finally blurted, “Well, the farmers did that so they could see over the tops of the fields!” Farmers, of course, did not introduce these changes to create the dwarf strain of wheat. In other words, the fact that modern wheat is the markedly altered product of genetics research was entirely new to this “expert.”
Monday, March 26, 2012
Is There Life After Ambien? Part Deux: Food That Promotes Sleep
Many people find tryptophan to be a safe and reasonably effective sleep aid, probably due to its ability to increase brain levels of serotonin (a calming neurotransmitter when present in moderate levels) and/or melatonin (a sleep-inducing hormone secreted by the pineal gland in response to darkness or low light levels.)
I found this diagram at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan that reflects foods high in tryptophan. I'm not sure what a dried egg white is. Or dried spirulina? And although I do know what dried cod and caribou are, I am pretty sure I'm not consuming them before bedtime, or anytime, in the near future. But soybeans I can try and pumpkin seeds? Love 'em!
And note: Have you heard about turkey being a sleep inducer? According to this chart . . .it's a big fat myth. It's all of those carbs you have with that bird that knocks you out on a Thanksgiving afternoon.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Is There Life After Ambien? Stretching for Sleep
In order to get my 8 good hours, without the use of any sleep medication, I recently had to change how I approach bedtime. I reluctantly ended my almost 2 year relationship with Ambien about a month ago, wiped away the tears from perhaps the most devastating break-up for me to date, and committed to the following:
1) Sweating for a minimum of 30 minutes every day, at least 2 hours before bedtime 2) Taking a warm bath at bedtime (HOT water increases your heart rate) 3) Slathering on lavender infused body oil following the bath. 4) Staying away from electronics at that point.
And 5) I have found this series of exercises further relax me right before I hit the bed, without the help of my beloved Ambien . . .or. . . Extra Sleepy/Sleepytime Tea. . . or Tylenol PM.
Do these stretches right before bed to fall asleep faster and sleep better.
Sleeping Swan What you'll need: A pillow
Tip: With each pose, breathe in and out through your nose for a calming effect on the nervous system.- Sit on floor with pillow in front of you. Bend left knee, bringing sole of left foot to right inner thigh. Lift butt and extend right leg behind you.
- Staying centered, gently hinge forward from hips, placing head on pillow. Extend arms forward, elbows slightly bent.
- Hold for 8 to 10 breaths. Roll back up. Switch legs; repeat.
Happy Baby
- Lie face-up. Bend knees into chest and grab inside edges of feet with hands, palms out.
- Bring knees out to sides, then lower toward armpits, keeping heels above knees, feet flexed.
- Hold for 8 to 10 breaths, gently rocking from side to side.
Bridge
- Lie face-up with knees bent, feet flat on floor, arms extended by sides, palms up.
- Keeping shoulders down, engage abs and press into heels to lift hips and back to form a diagonal line from shoulders to knees.
- Hold for 8 to 10 breaths; lower.
- Sit on pillow in a cross-legged position. Place left hand on floor to side of hip, left elbow slightly bent. Extend right arm by ear.
- Lean to left, keeping butt on floor, shoulders down.
- Hold for 8 to 10 breaths. Switch sides; repeat.
- Stand with feet hip-width apart, knees slightly bent.
- Place right hand on left elbow, left hand on right elbow.
- Bend over from hips, letting arms and head hang down.
- Hold for 8 to 10 breaths. Gently roll back up.
Are there any 'rituals' that you practice that help you get healthy shut-eye each night . . .sans the Jim Beam?
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