nutritionwonderland

Category: Food

  • David vs. Goliath: A Maasai Warrior, Regional Food Crisis & Agricultural Innovation (The Backpack Farm Program)

    David vs. Goliath: A Maasai Warrior, Regional Food Crisis & Agricultural Innovation (The Backpack Farm Program)

    Welcome Rachel Zedeck of the Medea Group who explains to a Western Audience some of the problems going on in Eastern Africa, specifically how an inadequate agricultural system fails its own people.  She puts forward a new solution – the Backpack Farm Program – and explains how it could help the people.  Rachel will be regularly contributing her advice and experience on developing sustainable agricultural systems using a microfinance model in Eastern Africa.

    ————-

    It was late in 2007 when I first arrived in Southern Sudan by way of Kenya, to research a new model of socially responsible agricultural development. Within a year and half, I was emotionally raw and physically exhausted. My personal battle with African development models had taken its toll. Even with several years of field experience in post conflict countries, I was ready to quit and crawl home.

    Moses, a Maasai in modern day Kenya

    Then, I got into a taxi driven by Mr. Moses Lenchula Lenkupae.  Well dressed, soft spoken and polite, I immediately felt safe in his presence.   Perhaps this was because Moses is a Maasai warrior from Samburu, an arid and picturesque region 7 hours drive from Nairobi.

    Well educated by Kenyan standards, he came to Nairobi to drive a taxi because it was the easiest way for him to find employment.  He explained to me that as the eldest son in his family, he needed to help support his mother, 7 brothers and sisters – and now his father’s second wife and two newborn babies.

    Immersion Comes at a Price

    During the following months, I learned more about his family as well as the plight of the Maasai people in Samburu.  Both groups regularly face raids on their cattle from the neighboring Turkana, Pokot and Borana tribes as well as corrupt police units regularly spilling over into bloodshed.  Just last week more than 21 Samburu Maasai were killed in tribal violence.

    But the Maasai have struggled since the turn of the century when a viral epidemic killed large herds of cattle and goats.  This tragedy was followed by severe drought caused by successive years of short rains.  Over half of the Maasai and their animals perished.  Soon after, more than two thirds of Maasai lands in Kenya were taken away by the British and Kenya governments to create settler ranches, which are now the well trodden wildlife reserves and national parks of both Kenya and Tanzania.

    Drought, a common site in the Horn of Africa – thanks to suburbanbloke on flickr

    In 2009, severe drought is once again killing Maasai herds in Samburu. The damage extends throughout Kenya’s pastoralist regions, including Mombassa and the arid North East Province (NEP).  Herds of animals are being brought into the cities despite the drought, but they are often sick and dying animals, too weak or poor quality for sale.  That has sent the prices of cattle, goats and sheep plummeting, sometimes more than 80%.  Local herders have little recourse since they do not know how to diversify their business models during high risk months.

    But still Moses continues to drive his taxi through town either in a well pressed oxford and tie or his traditional red robe and beads.

    The Grain Crisis

    The pain doesn’t stop there for Moses or East Africa though.  As a result of drought and short rains, the region’s grain belts are simply not producing enough grain to support regional demand; coupled with disproportionate demand for food aid to support humanitarian emergencies in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan (North and South). In the last 18 months, the grain prices in the East Africa region have fluctuated wildly with average maize price in 2009 some 20-60% higher than historical norms.

     

    Dramatic PRice Fluctuations in Staple Crops, image thanks to isivivane.com

    These numbers represent more than simple price fluctuations or the impact of drought, but also the region’s integrated vulnerability.  If one country in the East Africa region suffers from short rains and a weak harvest, then the region suffers as a whole.  But there are those of us who believe there is always hope.

    With an estimated 100 million small landholder farmers in East Africa and an additional 25 million in South Africa, these farmers represent a tangible, practical solution to the region’s food insecurity while increasing rural income as well as impacting the GDP in their prospective countries.  How to turn more than 100 million farmers into a productive food system for Africa, capable of overcoming regional conflict and drought, has been out of reach. These economic problems become more real when you see them up close.

    My friend Moses’ sister Rose was brought to Nairobi last year with acute Malaria and almost died.  There is only one clinic in his community and it refuses to treat anyone who can not prove they can pay at the gate before entering the compound.  Luckily Moses can help provide with his taxi income but many others cannot.

    Ideally the community could fund their own health clinic, providing the services they need at prices they can afford.  But none of that can happen amidst famine, where entire families struggle to survive. Western safety nets are unknown here and the people of this region need to be earning enough from either cattle or subsistence farming to provide for their families.  I don’t want to see another Rose go without the care she deserves, which has driven me to find a solution.

    A Practical Solution – A Farm in a Backpack

    With both the land and a workforce capable of producing food, my organization began to see that maybe the commercial world could succeed where so many UN and NGO programs had failed before.

    In April 2009, after two years of frustration, I finally secured what I call my ‘wonder’ team of agriculture experts. Together we have launched the Backpack Farm Program. The program enhances bottom pyramid value chains which target small landholder farmers’ production models with cutting edge agricultural inputs, training and monitoring.

     

    The Drip Irrigation Model

    Currently, small landholder farmers lack both the technical capacity and financial equity to enter the wholesale markets – which could substantially alter the food crises of East Africa.  Their yields are typically poor, estimated at one-quarter of the global average leading to insidious hunger and poverty.  To counter the weak production, our partner Lachlan Agriculture designed the “fusion farming” model, a combination of biological products, botanicals and reduced toxicity pesticides.

    By eliminating the need for traditional fertilizers, and distributing a customized and cost effective drip irrigation system and training on green water management (rainwater) techniques, we think the Backpack farm model could potentially create a huge shift the mindset of how to develop rural economies and impact Africa’s food insecurity.

    Bringing It Home

    Solutions like the Backpack Farm Initiative can’t wait.  I often think about Moses.  While he isn’t rich, he can help his family and saves to expand his business.  His real dream is to attend an American university to study animal husbandry and then return to Samburu to attract new commercial investments in cattle farming.

    Moses talks about Samburu like it is his own magical kingdom, one given to him by his ancestors. He reminds me of what real struggle and commitment means in Africa.  I have no right to give up on my dream of being part of the solution to feed Africa when he continues to work 18 hour days to help his family survive.  I hope to help him lead the warriors in his village to build a new future for his people by using the land they have lived on for thousands of years in a new way that is genuinely sustainable for the people of East Africa.

  • Is the Strawberry the Future of American Agriculture? (Day 1)

    Is the Strawberry the Future of American Agriculture? (Day 1)

    Nutrition Wonderland’s first stop of the journey is an exceptionally beautiful place called Oxnard, California. It anchors a rapidly growing area but more importantly, it is the principal city in the Oxnard Plain – one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world. Known as the Strawberry Capital of the World, Oxnard also grows cucumbers, peppers, herbs, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, lima beans – the list goes on. In short, this place is an agricultural mecca.

    The model?

    Still, this community is at a turning point. The same beauty that gives the region bumper crops also jeopardizes its agricultural future. As it turns out, a delicately crafted piece of legislation and high yield crops are all that stands between the region turning into a concrete jungle like formerly agricultural Orange County. We spoke with the California Strawberry Commission in the California Strawberry Festival’s Oxnard office this past week about some of the challenges and opportunities facing their industry – and more generally – agriculture.

    The Past into the Present

    Carolyn O’Donnell, the Communications Director for the California Strawberry Commission, introduced us to some of the background involved with Oxnard and its strawberries. The community gets its name from agriculture; its named after a pair of sugar beet processing brothers that came to the area back in the late 1800s. Today, the region is home to the majority of strawberry production in the United States, an intensive production of continuing harvests that occurs twice annually.

    One of the most interesting points in our discussion came from Sue Odgers, resident of the area for 50 years who has watched Oxnard transform from a 1970s population of 26,000 to well over 200,000 today. The region wasn’t always known for its strawberries as it is today, she told us. The community used to be known as the lima bean capital of the world, along with growing a sizable amount of sugar beets.

    Crops Growing in Oxnard

    Our tour of some of the farms in the area bear out Odgers observation. We saw many fields of red bell peppers ready for the picking, an incredibly sophisticated tomato hothouse and, of course, some early planting of strawberries. The common theme with all these crops? Higher selling prices at market. After all, strawberries are far more sexy than lima beans.

    Moving To High Dollar Crops

    The move from cheaper crops to high dollar produce mirrored the change in population. Strawberries specifically are a very high dollar crop, so each farm can extract more dollars-per-acre than with lima beans. The switch in crop cover, it turns out, was a vital move in maintaining the area’s agricultural base – and one that could easily be overlooked as other agricultural communities look to emulate Oxnard’s success.

    With all the extra strawberry coverage in Oxnard, we asked about pesticide usage, as berries in general regularly score highly in pesticide residues (.pdf link). O’Donnell pointed to continued growth in organics, now over 5% of the crop, and also mentioned that these harvests are inherently more sustainable than other crops simply because multiple harvests can come out of one field in the same year. The Commission is also making a push to replace methyl bromide by funding research into methods that can reduce dependence on the dangerous fumigant.

    Connecting to the Community

    Sue Odgers, a volunteer who sits on the California Strawberry Festival board, also plays a vital role in connecting the community to its signature crop by helping to organize an annual festival. Now in its 27th year, the two day California Strawberry Festival is a celebration of the food – and the region. Local arts and crafts creators stand shoulder to shoulder with growers, cooks and community leaders.

    A Picture of the Festival in Action, thanks to the CSC

    Attendance is strong and focused around enjoying a variety of strawberry products, the favorite of which is a build-your-own strawberry shortcake booth. Odgers also described the scholarship fund the festival has setup. Now over $1,000,000 strong, the scholarship goes directly to help the children of migrant farms workers afford higher education.

    Creating the connection between the farmers and residents of the cities on the Oxnard Plain is crucial so that residents see sprawl as taking away something meaningful from the communities. Such involvement helped the Ventura County region stay ahead of the development as we learned from Annika Forrester, the Food Safety and Grower Communications Specialist for the California Strawberry Commission.

    Ventura County’s Different Plan

    Oxnard’s complex farming past has evolved into legislation to stay ahead of the changes wrought by sprawl Forrester explained. Every 10 years, the state of California requires each county to publish its ‘General Plan’ for land use which, taken together, guide growth around the state. California tends to reinforce suburban style land uses which primarily convert agricultural land into tract home and strip mall development, according to sources inside the planning office we contacted.

    Image from the S.O.A.R. Intiative

    The first community to actively organize against this planned encroachment was Napa Valley back in 1990, whose voters passed the Measure J. Its legal success against developer’s challenges that went all the way to the California Supreme Court provided Ventura County – home to Oxnard and other agricultural communities – a blueprint for how to protect their lands.

    This culminated into the S.O.A.R initiative of Ventura County, an amendment to the General Plan passed back in 1998. The initiative locks in land uses primarily so agricultural lands stay that way. Ventura County went a step further and established an urban growth boundary, appropriately called CURB, that restricts all development outside said lines (Learn More Here). Only a simple majority vote can bend the CURB’s restrictions.

    All the members of Strawberry Commission referred to the impact this legislation has had on the region. Without it, it seems beyond likely that many more acres of prime farmland would have been lost to development.

    A Way Forward

    To get people to eat better and practice better nutritional habits, we as a nation must physically have the right foods available for people to eat. Strawberries, along with the myriad of other crops coming out of the Oxnard Plain, are part of that answer. We have all seen the studies associating produce consumption with a reduction in chronic disease [1, 2, 3] – but translating a health answer into development policies is complex and hard to understand at a distance.

    From what we saw, the Strawberry Commission is doing a good job of bridging that chasm between frenetic city life and more traditional agricultural farmers with their festival. While we would have hoped to see more than 5% of their total crop as organic, that percentage is surely growing – and its still more important that the crop continues to exist, organic or not. And that’s the real issue facing Oxnard and many other communities – how do we make development and agriculture work together?

    Communities will have to assign higher values to agriculture in general. Oxnard is fortunate in that sense. The community came together to draft aggressive legislation that aimed to keep the area’s agricultural history intact. Switching from lima beans to strawberries and other high value crops also helped by driving up the value of agricultural lands, giving local farmers some ammunition against soaring land prices. But not every community can be the strawberry capital of the world.

    Balancing population growth while still being able to grow the food for those new mouths will require delicate planning that may change from community to community. Oxnard, with a combination of legislation, community involvement and adoption of higher value crops, is a great example of how to make this work. However, development challenges will continue and forward thinking communities have to get out in front of the issues before land uses change forever.

    When we travel up the coast to Santa Cruz, we will explore the other side of this issue: conservation of undeveloped land. The big question we will be asking is how to transition conventional agriculture into a lower impact, sustainable land use that can co-exist with natural open spaces. We will be speaking with the Wild Farm Alliance, the Monterey Aquarium and the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Sustainable Agriculture school to find out how they think it can work.

    ——————
    This is the story from Day 1 of Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America.

  • Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America Begins in California

    Nutrition Wonderland’s 2009 Tour of America has begun! We are now in California, visiting with a host of organizations that are changing how agriculture and medicine are practiced. If you want to know more about our tour, check out an overview of our mission on this tour. See our stops in the interactive map below:


    View Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America – California in a larger map.

    Here is the latest list of who we are visiting out on the road during this first stretch of the journey and what we are doing there:

    • Hollywood Farmers Market – Hollywood/LA, CA: We will attend the largest farmers market in the Los Angeles metro area and speak with farmers about establishing a directory for all of their wares.
    • California Strawberry Association – Oxnard, CA: We will be discussing how Oxnard became the strawberry capital of the world, the renown festival and history of the areas.
    • USDA Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement Expansion Session – Monterey, CA: We will be attending the USDA’s meeting on expanding this food safety initiative, weighing the pros and cons.
    • Wild Farm Alliance – Watsonville, CA: We will be talking with leaders of the organization about how to make conservation and sustainable agriculture co-exist in a world with limited resources.
    • University of California, Santa Cruz: Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems – Santa Cruz, CA: We will be discussing many of the complex conservation agreements the University researchers are engaging farmers with.
    • Rainbow Light Vitamins – Santa Cruz, CA: We hope to learn about the secret sauce that makes food form vitamins more effective at nutrient absorption than their regular counterparts.
    • Farmsreach.com – San Francisco, CA: We will be speaking with the founders of this organization that are using technology to help overcome some of the market obstacles facing better local food distribution for regional restaurants.
    • All Edibles Landscapes – Oakland, CA: Leaders of this organization will be teaching us the virtues of building micro-agricultural systems in small homeowner’s gardens.
    • University of California, Davis: MIND Institute – Sacramento, CA: UC Davis researchers will be showing us the progress behind the MIND Institute’s groundbreaking Autism Phenome Project, the largest pro
    • Lundberg Farms – Richvale, CA: One of the original pioneers in sustainable farming, we will speak to the famous rice farmers in Northern California about why they began promoting this style of farming before so many others.

    We will post our pictures, stories and videos as we visit everyone. As you can see, we are already quite booked up but if you are interested in saying hello, drop us a line at mailto:[email protected]

  • When You Should Eat

    When You Should Eat

    More often than not, dieters focus exclusively on what’s going into their bodies. They cut out food groups, add food groups, count calories and create meal plans. But research has found out that while what you eat does matter, when you eat has a big impact, too. According to new research from Northwestern University published in the journal Obesity, eating at night can increase weight gain by more than 25%!

    The Background

    Watch the clock when you are eating, thanks Steven Depolo

    Our bodies have an innate timing system called the “Circadian Rhythm” or “Circadian Clock.” Hormones and chemical releases tend to tell us when we’re supposed to wake up, when to sleep, and a variety of other day-to-day activities. Some of these can be altered with consistent changes to daily patterns – getting up a few hours earlier, for example, can affect when your body decides it’s time to get up. But others are dependent on external influences and are much harder to shift. It’s been suggested for a long time that our bodies internal clock has a big effect on our weight loss or gain.

    Meals eaten in the morning, for example, have different hormonal effects than the same meals eaten in the afternoon. One of the major factors seems to be cortisol levels, which, after not eating all night long, are much lower in the AM.

    When dieting, we’re often warned not to eat late at night. This conventional wisdom, however, has generally had little support scientifically. No studies have shown whether the daily effects we see are absolute or simply due to current patterns. In other words, if a person were to change when they normally eat, it’s possible that the effects we see from morning v. afternoon meals would change, too. Specifically, if one were to eat at night, it’s suggested that the increased cortisol levels would negate the effects seen by other meal-timing studies.

    So where does the “don’t eat at night” wisdom come from? Well, mostly, scientists have shown that people tend to eat more when they snack later, thus increasing their overall calorie intake and subsequent weight gain.

    But Northwestern University researchers started to think there was more to it. They noticed that late-night shift workers who end up regularly eating at odd hours of the day tended to weigh more than their daytime shift counterparts. Were they really just eating more than the daytime shifts, or did the timing of their meals have an effect on their weight?

    Northwestern University researchers hypothesized that there was more going on. They wanted to know if our body’s daily rhythms have an impact on how food is processed. So, they designed a study with mice to determine if eating at night has an affect on weight gain.

    The Study

    Watch those midnight snacks, or fat mouse disease might strike.

    To determine how our circadian clock affects weight gain, the researchers took mice and fed them a high fat diet. They split the mice into two groups, allowing both groups of mice to eat as much as they wanted for 12 hours, and recorded how much they ate and their activity levels.

    The only difference between the groups was that one group was fed during the normal waking hours, the other, during the night. They gave each group the exact same food with the exact same nutritional values and fat content, to see if timing alone affected weight gain. After six weeks – plenty of time for their mice bodies to adjust to the patterns – the results were staggering.

    Both groups ate the same amount of food and had the same levels of activity. And, because they had such a high-fat diet, both groups gained weight. Those fed during the day increased their body mass by an average of 20%. But the nighttime fed mice gained a lot more than that, increasing their body mass by an average of 48%. That’s 28% more weight gain just by eating at night instead of during the day!

    The researchers are following up by looking into the molecular mechanisms behind this increased weight gain. Their hunch is that the few hormones that are on strict circadian clocks (ones that don’t change even when you stay up all night repeatedly, for example) might influence how fat is processed in the body.

    The Take Home Message

    Just like you have to think about your activity levels when working towards weight loss, you have to consider when you eat as much as what you eat. And not eating at night is just one facet of this: how many meals a day, what you eat at which meals, and when you eat those meals during the day also have impacts on the overall success of the diet. Cutting calories isn’t everything!

    Arble, D., Bass, J., Laposky, A., Vitaterna, M., & Turek, F. (2009). Circadian Timing of Food Intake Contributes to Weight Gain Obesity, 17 (11), 2100-2102 DOI: 10.1038/oby.2009.264

  • Book Review: Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink

    Book Review: Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink

    pon searching for research for my last article about the social aspects of eating, I stumbled upon a book with a very intriguing title. It’s called “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think“, and is written by a nutritional scientist by the name of Brian Wansink. He studies the psychology of eating, and has spent his career trying to understand the hidden cues that determine what and how much we eat.

    Mindless Eating Quick Facts

    It seemed like an intriguing concept: studying the little changes that make us “mindlessly” eat. And at under 300 pages, it is a quick easy read. It promised to show “why you may nor realize how much you’re eating, what you’re eating – or why you’re even eating at all” – a tall order for a short, pop-psych book. I figured if it even half delivered on that promise, it would be an interesting read, so I sat down and dove in. Here’s my thoughts on the book.

    One Word: Whoa

    This book is simply great. Amazon.com readers have given it the stellar rating of 4 1/2 stars, and I agree. It’s easy to read, completely intelligible, yet delves into the hard science behind psychological nutrition studies. I’m extremely impressed with how fluidly the author explains the science and the meaning of it. You don’t have to have a PhD to understand the research that has been done and what it found. And that’s a good thing, considering how unique and mindblowing the research is that he talks about.

    Does food with a brand name taste better? Yes, actually. Does the size of your plate change how much you eat? Um, yeah, it does. Do you change how you eat based on how others eat? Yep. Do you presume that there’s no way you fall into the same silly traps as everyone else? Yes, and yet you do.

    The key point that Wansink makes, in my opinion, is that no matter how smart you are, how much you think about food, or how carefully you think you make your decisions – you, too, mindlessly eat. We might acknowledge that others could be tricked, but not us. That is what makes mindless eating so dangerous. We are almost never aware that it is happening to us,” Wansink writes. He’s done studies using students who have just taken a 90 minute class on the subject, intelligent groups of people, experts in a particular profession, and even the very scientists who do the research themselves! All of them mindlessly eat and drink. No one is immune to these small, pervasive influences.

    However, that’s no reason to get all upset. Sure, give us a short, wide glass and we’ll drink more than if given a tall skinny one. We’ll eat more from a big package than a little one. But that means you have a way of changing your diet and your eating and drinking habits – just get taller glasses and eat from smaller packages. Throughout the book he gives simple tips that, if followed, allow you to eat and drink 100 less calories a day. 100 calories. That’s it. While it seems slight, it’s what he calls the ‘mindless margin’ – the amount you won’t notice you’re not eating.

    Food For Thought

    The Cover

    As I’ve told you before, your body reacts strongly to what it thinks is starvation – aka a sudden drop in food intake. It doesn’t really matter if you were eating too much before anyhow, your body freaks out and fights against our attempts at weight loss. I’ve warned of the physiological side effects of serious calorie cutting and crash dieting. It’s no surprise that Wansink, too, berates this behavior. The key to successful weight maintenance, he claims, is instead to shed pounds slowly by seemingly not changing a thing. To mindlessly lose weight instead of mindlessly gain it.

    And it makes sense, too. If you cut 100-200 calories out a day you’ll be able to drop about a pound a month without even trying. You’ll get slimmer without feeling deprived or frustrated. He suggests picking 3 changes and trying them for one month, tracking daily how you do. You don’t have to be perfect, but the daily, written reminder will help you get on track and follow your goals. After all, it only takes a month to change a habit – 28 days, according to scientists. So if you can make it the first month you’re much more likely to be able to continue it past that.

    Just imagine how great you would feel if you do that and eat a little healthier, too.

    I think that just about everyone I know can benefit from reading this book. As Wansink writes:

    “We may not be able to outlaw every drive-through restaurant or tax every pint of ice cream in our community, but we can re-engineer our personal food environment to help us and our families eat better.” While we may not be able to change all of the ways we mindlessly eat, we can change a few of them, and that’s enough to have a marked impact on our day to day lives. And in doing that, “we turn the food in our life from being a temptation or a regret to something we guiltlessly enjoy.”

    After all, as Wansink concludes, “The best diet is the one you don’t know you’re on.” I agree.

  • The Social Side of Eating

    The Social Side of Eating

    Much of nutrition focuses on the individual. You are responsible for picking the right foods, eating healthy, exercising, and doing what’s best for your body. Nutrition consultations are one-on-one, focused on the single person’s dietary needs and deficiencies. And that’s great – if you’re single, have no friends, and live and work by yourself. But the truth is most of us are a part of a larger network of people, whether it be because we’re married, work in a large office, or have a tight-knit group of friends. Who we eat with, as it turns out, has a big impact on what we eat. To ignore this influence when thinking about diets and food is a recipe for disaster.

    How who you eat with affects what you eat

    The idea of eating as a social activity is nothing new. Who you eat with has always been important in the social lives of humans, whether it be who eats first at a ritualistic feast or who gets invited to the dinner parties thrown by presidents or diplomats. Heck, even what you eat has social implications – if you can afford to indulge on the finest filet mignon or beluga caviar. Food and social interaction are deeply entwined in the human psyche, a fact which we tend to ignore in our daily lives.

    Of course, our bodies don’t ignore it. Without even realizing it we change how we eat based on the people around us. Women, for example, eat less calories when they’re eating with men than when they eat with women. Both men and women eat less in front of a stranger of the opposite sex, but women eat particularly less if the guy is attractive. In general, people eat about as much as they see other eating, and eat more when in larger groups of people or when we think other people have eaten more. Even more impressively, how much you like a food item can be influenced by seeing the like or dislike of that food by others.

    But the changes aren’t limited to just who is around in terms of number and gender – their relationship to us has a big impact as well. Guys eat more around their guy friends than male strangers. In fact, men eat more around their guy friends than any other pairing of people. Couples and females around strangers eat much, much less. Married couples eat healthier than single people do, and in turn live longer lives and have reduced risks of diseases like diabetes and heart disease according to national health data like that provided by UK’s Office of National Statistics. In the UK, for example, the mortality rate for single men between 30 and 59 is 2.5 times higher than their married counterparts. Other research has found that married elderly couples are more likely to eat breakfast.

    The Big Question: Why?

    Why do we change what and how we eat around other people? There are a number of reasons. The first has to do with cultural attitudes towards eating. In general, people associate eating less with being feminine and more attractive. So, for women, eating less in front of people they want to impress makes sense. Similarly, men around their guy friends might want to seem more macho or masculine by consuming more. One study found that this effect is even more pronounced when participants are shown images of attractive members of their own gender first. Women are trying to conform to a societal expectation to be small and skinny, while men try to prove themselves by being bigger and better.

    Men and women eating less than in front of their same-sex friends. (Thanks flickr user alex_kuruz)

    But even still that only explains some of the effects. Why are married couples so much healthier than the rest of us, for example? You’d think that a single man or woman, in a constant effort to impress members of the opposite sex, would be in peak condition, while their married counterparts, having at least, in part, secured a mate, would begin to eat poorer. This is especially true when you factor in kids. After all, with kids come the tempting snacks that are left over from kid-oriented meals. And scientists have found that parents eat more than other married couples. But even still, in many developed nations like the UK, married women with children are the healthiest group of people, followed closely by married men. If they’re not trying to constantly impress others, why are they eating so well?

    For one, you have to blame the women. Women eat less and healthier than men do on a day to day basis, period. For example, women eat more fruits and vegetables than men, a difference attributed to increased knowledge about nutrition by women. When men marry women, it’s like having a personal nutritionist there 24/7. This is shown by the fact that marriage, while beneficial to both partners, is far more beneficial to a man’s health than a woman’s. When men lose their partner, either due to divorce or death, their health plummets. Wives also take their husbands away from the constant influence of their male peers, who they tend to eat much poorer around. Part of this, of course, is society’s fault. Maintenance of a family’s nutrition and health are seen as a women’s role, whether women like it or not. Perhaps, as society changes and gender roles become more balanced, the marked increase in health for married men compared to married women will disappear.

    Wife keeping her and her husband healthy by cooking the right food at home. (Thanks flickr user stevendepolo)

    Though, of course, it’s important to note that women get health benefits from marriage, too. It’s possible that, by getting married and having kids, women choose the role of a family’s nurturer and eat better for themselves and, in turn, force their families to do the same. But that’s not the whole story. One of the most likely reasons for healthier married women is simple – they’re happier. When we’re happier, we eat healthier, drink less, and exercise more. Of course, another big benefit for couples is shared eating. Couples are much less likely to eat out than single men and women. Mostly, this is attributed to motivation – single men and women simply have less motivation to cook when they’re cooking for one. Cooking at home leads to healthier meals (because you know what actually goes into it) as well as smaller portions. Basically, by getting married, women tend to end up doing those simple dietary changes that are so heavily recommended by nutritionists – eat the right amount of healthy food at home.

    How Do You Use This Knowledge?

    Well, for one, you can get married. I’m just kidding! The key is to act like you’re married, whether you are or not. For example, cook your own meals. Eat regular meals, as if you had to rely on feeding someone else. Or make yourself feed someone else – maybe instead of cooking for one you can arrange packed lunches with your friends, where each of you takes turns bringing in lunch for a small group at work. That way you’re not relying on take out or prepared meals, and you have the motivation to actually cook something. Or cook big meals and freeze them – it’s easier to convince ourselves to cook in big portions, and if you freeze it, it’ll last you as long as you need.

    Whether single or married, be aware of what you order when you’re in a large group when you’re eating out, and pay attention to how much you eat at office parties or other buffet-style meals when you eat in. If possible, do your best to take a moment and really think about what you’re going to eat so that you’re not swept up in the social aspects of the meal. Is someone ordering appetizers? Maybe you should get a smaller meal, knowing that you’ll munch on the chips and salsa first. As hard as it may be, ignore your mom when she tells you what to eat at family gatherings and make decisions for yourself. When people think about what they’re eating, they tend to eat better – so don’t just mindlessly munch! After all, while you may be influenced by the world around you, you’re also able to rise above those influences and control your own behaviors.

    References

    1. Young, M., Mizzau, M., Mai, N., Sirisegaram, A., & Wilson, M. (2009). Food for thought. What you eat depends on your sex and eating companions Appetite, 53 (2), 268-271 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.07.021
    2. Mori D, Chaiken S, & Pliner P (1987). “Eating lightly” and the self-presentation of femininity. Journal of personality and social psychology, 53 (4), 693-702 PMID: 3681647
    3. Herman CP, Roth DA, & Polivy J (2003). Effects of the presence of others on food intake: a normative interpretation. Psychological bulletin, 129 (6), 873-86 PMID: 14599286
    4. SALVY, S., JARRIN, D., PALUCH, R., IRFAN, N., & PLINER, P. (2007). Effects of social influence on eating in couples, friends and strangers Appetite, 49 (1), 92-99 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2006.12.004
    5. Bock, B., & Kanarek, R. (1995). Women and men are what they eat: The effects of gender and reported meal size on perceived characteristics Sex Roles, 33 (1-2), 109-119 DOI: 10.1007/BF01547938
    6. Harrison, K., Taylor, L., & Marske, A. (2006). Women’s and Men’s Eating Behavior Following Exposure to Ideal-Body Images and Text Communication Research, 33 (6), 507-529 DOI: 10.1177/0093650206293247
    7. Eng, P. (2005). Effects of marital transitions on changes in dietary and other health behaviours in US male health professionals Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 59 (1), 56-62 DOI: 10.1136/jech.2004.020073
    8. Welch, N., Hunter, W., Butera, K., Willis, K., Cleland, V., Crawford, D., & Ball, K. (2009). Women’s work. Maintaining a healthy body weight Appetite, 53 (1), 9-15 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.04.221
    9. Welch, N., Hunter, W., Butera, K., Willis, K., Cleland, V., Crawford, D., & Ball, K. (2009). Women’s work. Maintaining a healthy body weight Appetite, 53 (1), 9-15 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.04.221
  • Understanding our Bodies: Dopamine and Its Rewards

    Understanding our Bodies: Dopamine and Its Rewards

    As much as we’d like to deny it, there’s a lot more involved in our decision making when it comes to food than just the advice of our inner and outer nutritionists. For the most part, we know that we should be eating. Yet time and time again when a friend asks us if we want to go grab a Big Mac or when we’re walking down the aisles in the grocery store, we neglect our own advice. Why? Why are those foods that are so terrible for us so darned appealing?

    Would you believe me if I said it all has to do with 4-(2-aminoethyl)benzene-1,2-diol? Well, you might, if I explained that “4-(2-aminoethyl)benzene-1,2-diol” is the chemical name for the infamous addiction neurotransmitter Dopamine.

    The Deal with Dopamine

    The reason bad foods taste so good, dopamine.

    Dopamine is one of our body’s neurotransmitters. It’s one of the most common biochemical compounds in animals, and is found in everything from invertebrates to us. It has a variety of functions, not all of which are fully understood. We do know that it is key in behavior, cognition, motivation and reward. In other words, it helps tell your body when you’ve done something good, and promotes our brains to remember what we did that was good and repeat to get the reward again.

    When we receive a reward of any kind, dopamine is released in our brains. Over time, this stimulus and release of dopamine can lead to learning. Researchers have recently found that how quickly and permanently we learn things relates directly to how much dopamine we have available in our brains. As we get rewarded over and over again for something, we learn that we should keep doing whatever that is very deeply, and it’s hard to unlearn those kinds of behaviors.

    Logically, it’s one of the neurotransmitters targeted for treatment of addictions. Whether chemical or psychological, addictions are made when our brain gets a dopamine boost over and over from a behavior. We learn to not only associate that behavior with the happy reward, but to crave to do that behavior when the rewards aren’t around. Even when there are better, easier, and less destructive ways to make ourselves feel better, our brains are trained to do that one action that it is used to doing – a drug, a drink, sex, whatever – to feel that satisfaction again.

    One of the reasons cocaine is so addictive, for example, is that it prevents the brain from removing dopamine from the space between neurons as quickly, causing reward circuits to fire for longer and more intensely than they normally would. Thus anything done on cocaine that causes a dopamine release feels even better – like if someone hands you a dollar, you feel like you’ve been given a twenty instead. When users stop, suddenly life itself just seems less rewarding, and their bodies crave that happier, more-fulfilled state of mind.

    Effects of cocaine on dopamine activity in the brain

    The important thing to note is that dopmaine doesn’t change the pleasure (or lack thereof) involved with a behavior, just how much we want to do it. For example, rats who have been artificially depleted of dopamine simply won’t eat, but when force fed, they make facial expressions which suggest they actually enjoy it. Similarly, increasing dopamine makes rats crave sweet rewards more, but doesnt change how much they actually like them. Even if you don’t like something at all you can end up wanting to do it if it causes some kind of consistent dopamine release.

    Dopamine and Eating Behaviors

    This is important to our diets because, for one, we get little dopamine rewards when we eat. The more spaced out your meals are, the more time your body spends with lowered dopamine levels. Thus eating smaller meals more frequently actually keeps dopamine levels higher. People who have genetically low levels of dopamine have been shown to be more likely to overeat, most likely because they aren’t getting enough of a dopmaine response. Similarly, the more dopamine receptors a person has, the better control they have of their diet and what they eat. Unfortunately, genetics can have a lot to do with it, so for some people, sweet rewards are harder to fight.

    But it gets worse. The exact conditions when we receive our “reward” stimulus are imprinted on our brains, too. Research has shown that rats that are given chocolate in a given situation learn to expect it, and the same situation triggers reward networks in the brain even without the chocolate being present. So once our brains connect bad food with a particular mood, feeling or state of mind, it’s hard to reverse it. For example, if eating dinner is a time when family gets together, people feel warm and friendly, and are bonding, then when later in life you’re feeling lonely, you might try eating to make yourself feel better. This is especially true for people who are conditioned at a young age to associate sweets with some kind of good deed – get an A, get to eat a sweet otherwise forbidden. Later, when they want the same feeling of accomplishment, they often turn to the food stimulus to create the feeling. It’s exactly why we all know what “comfort food” is.

    The temptations of your sweet tooth. (thanks jujuly25)

    And, of course, then there’s the worst part: unhealthy foods actually trigger the brain’s reward systems better than healthy ones. Sugar and sweets can trigger the brains reward systems completely separate of their tastes. In our bodies, it appears, dopamine release is calorie-dependent, thus the more you eat in a sitting, the more dopamine is released, and the more rewarding the meal is. Of course, very dense calorie-packed junk foods just lying around waiting to trigger your brain’s reward system make it that much harder to eat healthy. And, of course, over time if you eat a lot of sugary, high-calorie foods, your brain’s dopamine system gets desensitized, making it harder and harder to get the same reward from those foods, meaning you eat more and more of them.

    But despite the bad news, there is a lot of good that can come from understanding your body’s reward system and how it relates to diet. Instead of being defeated by your brain, you can actually train it.

    Dopamine and Diet

    There are things you can do to train your body and brain to eat healthier. For one, do your damnedest to avoid those calorie-packed, super sugary, and generally bad foods. If you never eat them, your brain never gets the chance to associate them with the dopamine reward, thus making it so you don’t crave them. Resisting the initial temptation makes it easier to resist the temptation in the future, and instead of getting dopamine boosts from sugar, you’ll get them when you eat your healthy meals. Soon enough, your brain associates good food with dopamine rewards, and you’ll start to find yourself wanting to eat something healthy when you want a rewarding brain boost.

    Eating smaller, more frequent meals, or meals with healthy snacks in between, can also help keep your brain feeling rewarded, and thus less likely to want those dopamine-boosting bad boys like sugar and sweets.

    There are also nutritional elements that you can ensure are in your diet to make your body less dopamine-seeking, thus less craving of those unhealthy foods period. Research suggests that Iron, Vitamin B6, Folate and Vitamin E are key to maintaining healthy levels of dopamine and dopamine receptors in your brain, so you get the proper reward you deserve from your healthy meals, too. By keeping your brain dopamine-stocked at natural levels, you make it so you don’t need super stimulus like a Cinnabon to get the dopamine flowing.

    Dopamine pathways in the brain thanks to flickr user mathplourde.

    There’s also some research which suggests that Flavonoids, those lovely antioxidants found in berries and red wine, promote healthy dopamine neurons. So ensuring that you make room in your diet for some blueberries isn’t a bad idea, either.

    Closing Note

    Keep in mind that research into how exactly dopamine relates to eating – what we eat, how we eat, etc – is still very new. While we know quite a bit, new studies are released every day which increase our understanding of this incredibly complex system. It’s not a good idea, yet, to try to take any kind of dopamine supplement or drug for weight loss or management, as extreme excess dopamine can have devastating neurological effects. For that matter, direct dietary ingestion of dopamine is a fruitless endeavor, since dopamine itself can’t cross the blood-brain barrier.

    In short, there’s no easy way out of this one: you have to just eat right, daily, to train your brain to enjoy it. It’s like exercise – you’re never going to get in shape without putting in the hours, no matter what the infomercials try to tell you. You won’t have a healthy, level and balanced dopamine system until you cut out the extremely-excessive calorie foods and eat healthy day in and day out. Eating a well rounded diet is the best way to make your body crave a healthy diet.

    Previous posts in the Understanding Our Bodies series:

    References:

    1. Guilarte TR (1989). Effect of vitamin B-6 nutrition on the levels of dopamine, dopamine metabolites, dopa decarboxylase activity, tyrosine, and GABA in the developing rat corpus striatum. Neurochemical research, 14 (6), 571-8 PMID: 2761676
    2. Duan, W., Ladenheim, B., Cutler, R., Kruman, I., Cadet, J., & Mattson, M. (2002). Dietary folate deficiency and elevated homocysteine levels endanger dopaminergic neurons in models of Parkinson’s disease Journal of Neurochemistry, 80 (1), 101-110 DOI: 10.1046/j.0022-3042.2001.00676.x
    3. Martin A, Prior R, Shukitt-Hale B, Cao G, & Joseph JA (2000). Effect of fruits, vegetables, or vitamin E–rich diet on vitamins E and C distribution in peripheral and brain tissues: implications for brain function. The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences, 55 (3) PMID: 10795718
    4. McGuire, S., Sortwell, C., Shukitt-Hale, B., Joseph, J., Hejna, M., & Collier, T. (2006). Dietary supplementation with blueberry extract improves survival of transplanted dopamine neurons Nutritional Neuroscience, 9 (5-6), 251-258 DOI: 10.1080/10284150601086134
    5. Pleger, B., Ruff, C., Blankenburg, F., Klöppel, S., Driver, J., & Dolan, R. (2009). Influence of Dopaminergically Mediated Reward on Somatosensory Decision-Making PLoS Biology, 7 (7) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000164
    6. Arias-Carrión O, & Pŏppel E (2007). Dopamine, learning, and reward-seeking behavior. Acta neurobiologiae experimentalis, 67 (4), 481-8 PMID: 18320725
    7. Radhakishun FS, van Ree JM, & Westerink BH (1988). Scheduled eating increases dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens of food-deprived rats as assessed with on-line brain dialysis. Neuroscience letters, 85 (3), 351-6 PMID: 3362423
    8. de Araujo, I., Oliveira-Maia, A., Sotnikova, T., Gainetdinov, R., Caron, M., Nicolelis, M., & Simon, S. (2008). Food Reward in the Absence of Taste Receptor Signaling Neuron, 57 (6), 930-941 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.01.032
    9. Erikson KM, Jones BC, & Beard JL (2000). Iron deficiency alters dopamine transporter functioning in rat striatum. The Journal of nutrition, 130 (11), 2831-7 PMID: 11053528
  • Coconut Blasted Pork Loin With Grilled Scallions

    Coconut Blasted Pork Loin With Grilled Scallions

     

    Yummy Pork Loin, thanks to flickr user Joshbousel

    4 to 6 servings

     

    • 2 trimmed pork tenderloins, about 2 pounds
    • 2 cups shredded, unsweetened coconut flakes
    • 4 scallions, washed
    • Olive oil, for cooking
    • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

     

     

     

    Coconut milk in the making. (Thanks to flickr user TravelMuse…)

    Ingredients for marinade/sauce:

     

    • 2, 14 oz. cans, unsweetened coconut milk
    • 4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
    • 1, 1” piece fresh ginger, peeled and rough chopped
    • 1 lemongrass stalk, rough chopped
    • 1 large jalapeño, seeds removed, and rough chopped
    • 2 limes, juiced
    • 2 tablespoons soy or ponzu sauce
    • 2 teaspoons sugar
    • ½ bunch cilantro, rough chopped
    • Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste

     

    First, prepare the marinade by adding all of the marinade ingredients into a blender and puree. Pat the tenderloins dry with a paper towel and lay them into a vessel large enough to contain them and the marinade. Pour in the marinade. Don’t worry if the loins are not fully submerged. Cover the loins with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least four hours. If the loins were not fully submerged in the marinade, turn the loins over in the vessel at about halfway through the process and recover until the marinating process is finished.

    Now, once the loins have been marinated, remove them from the mixture and once again, pat dry with a paper towel, (you may have to scrape away some of the remnants from the marinade). Lay the loins on a large platter. Reserve the marinating mixture for later. Season the loin with the salt and pepper. Brush a thin layer of olive oil all over the loins, and the scallions. You are now prepared to grill.

     

    A nice addition to hearty tenderloins

    Before grilling the loins, first preheat an oven to 375 degrees. Spread the coconut flakes evenly over a sheet pan and bake until toasted and golden brown, about ten minutes. Remove and allow to cool. Next, strain the marinating mixture into a saucepan. Bring the sauce to a boil for a minimum of fifteen seconds. Reduce to a simmer and allow to cook for an additional five minutes. Adjust seasoning and keep warm until service.

    Now, grill the pork loins. Turn after five minutes or until a nice crusty brown sear is achieved on all sides. Tenderloins will be done when slightly pink in the middle. Allow to rest or cool slightly. While cooling, mark the scallion on the grill, both sides, and cook just until slightly limp.

    Roll the cooked pork loin into the coconut flakes. Try to cover evenly. Slice and arrange the pork loin on a platter with the grilled scallions. Drizzle the sauce over and enjoy.

  • Understanding Our Bodies: Amino Acids Are Important

    Understanding Our Bodies: Amino Acids Are Important

    Just about every diet I know of supports eating a large portion of protein. Whether the strategy is to cut carbs or to cut fat or to cut calories in general, just about everyone agrees that protein is good for you. But why? And do the sources make a difference? What about protein makes it so important, and what do you need to include in your diet to reap the benefits?

    Why Protein?

    In biochemistry, there are 4 main types of compounds:

    • fats
    • carbohydrates
    • nucleic acids
    • proteins

    They’re distinguished by their chemical structures. Proteins are compounds which are made up of amino acids, which all contain an amino (nitrogen-containing) and carboxyl (like carbon dioxide) group. Proteins are made when these amino acids are strung together and (often) folded into complex shapes. They can be structural proteins, like the keratin in our fingernails or the actin in our muscles, or they can be chemically functional, like enzymes. Proteins can also be very important in communication in the body – insulin, for example, is a protein. In fact, if you take away the water, 75% of our bodies are protein. All of these proteins require the right amino acids found in our bodies and our diets to be made. Watch this video to understand how they are made:

    Can’t make amino acids. Still a cute guy though. Credit: Aaron Logan

    While most microorganisms and plants can produce whatever amino acids they want, animals, including us, have lost the ability to produce certain amino acids. These amino acids are called the “essential” amino acids, or the ones we must intake in our diet. Without enough of a dietary source of these essential amino acids (of which, in humans, there are about 8, with 4 others needed by children), our bodies can have trouble making the proteins needed for ordinary functioning, and we can end up malnourished. On top of this, our bodies don’t store amino acids like they do fats or carbohydrates. To ensure we have the amino acids we need, we have to get them daily.

    It would be easy to attain the amino acids we need if all we had to do was eat enough of them as needed to make proteins, but alas, as always, our bodies are far more complicated. As the body digests protein, a large portion of the amino acids that result are deaminated and are used for fuel instead of as protein building blocks. This is done by a two processes, either gluconeogenesis where proteins are converted to glucose directly or an alternate pathway where they are fed into the natural energy cycle (the citric acid cycle) at a later point to produce even less fuel. This particularly occurs under starvation conditions, where the body will actually start breaking down its own muscle and other protein sources for fuel. As far as energy goes, protein is a poor source of it, containing only 4 kilocalories per gram as opposed to the 9 in fats.

    Our bodies don’t fluctuate in amino acid concentrations like they do with other molecules. Levels of amino acids in the blood are almost constant, regardless of diet. However, that’s not because diet isn’t important, it’s because the body will begin to attack itself and break down muscle and other tissue to keep amino acid concentrations level. This can be why some extreme dieters seem to lose weight but feel lethargic or unable to exercise – by massively cutting calories, they probably cut a lot of protein out of their diets, too, and their bodies are basically eating their muscle tissue to get amino acids for more essential uses like cell signaling. Therefore, to get the total amount of amino acids we need on a daily basis, we actually have to eat a high amount of excess amino acids.

    When it comes to dietary intake, the weakest link is the most important. The most limited essential amino acid in our diet affects how well our bodies uptake the rest of them, so balance is key. In other words, whatever amino acid we’re most lacking in will set the bar for how our bodies intake all the others, and so to have healthy levels of all amino acids we have to have good balance and enough of each.

    The Essentials and Our Diets

    There are roughly 20 common amino acids, with 8 of them considered essential for adults and another 4 essential for children and infants. The essential ones for adults are:

    • isoleucine
    • leucine
    • valine
    • methionine
    • phenylalanine
    • threonine
    • tryptophan
    • lysine.

    Additionally, cysteine, tyrosine, histidine and arginine are required by infants and young children. It’s rare that a person needs to supplement their diet with any form of pill or powder to get enough amino acids, and doing so can be dangerous if not closely watched. For example, body-building supplements contain a high concentration of the first three amino acids mentioned, but over time, extreme excess of these acids can lead to nerve degeneration or even liver and kidney toxicity. In general, extreme excess of any amino acid is bad for the body. It’s hard to get that kind of excess from eating – our bodies naturally just turn most excess deitary protein into fuel, but you can over-supplement.

    Impact of Protein Deficiencies

    Because of the many uses and importance of amino acids in our bodies, it’s key that we get enough and a balanced amount of the essentials, which is far more often the problem than excess amino acids. Protein deficiency is a huge medical issue in developing nations, with protein-energy malnutrition affecting 500 million people every year and killing 10 million of them. Severe cases tend to include complete loss of immune function and thus increased risks from other diseases. While it’s fairly rare in developed nations, protein deficiency can affect the poor and often occurs in those who are crash dieting to lose weight or in older adults, particularly leading to conditions like osteoporosis, as protein is key when it comes to bone health. Those recovering from surgery, trauma or illness can also be protein deficient if they don’t increase their dietary intake to match their increased needs. Our bodies use protein when we’re healing, so its important to eat lots of it when we’re sick or recovering.

     

    Distended stomachs, a sign of malnutrition (thanks to Flickr user TKnoxB)

    It’s even possible that protein deficiency is a far more common problem than we think, and that many simply suffer from very mild affects. There are studies which have shown lower protein intake in certain minorities. Some biologists, like Bob Lanier, a biology professor at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas, have argued that a very slight protein deficiency might actually explain some of the variance in academic performance between poor minority and richer majority students. Since so much of brain function is tied to proper nutrition and protein intake, it’s entirely possible that even smaller changes in protein consumption, like that of crash dieters, could have an impact on mood and cognition, though few studies have looked deeper into this idea in adults. In children, however, a deficit in dietary protein as infants can have a marked affect on intelligence as older children, especially for boys.

    How to Get Amino Acids

    Steak could be the answer for your amino acids

    Overall, adults require approximately 60 grams of protein per day, with higher intake required in pregnant and nursing women and, to a lesser extent, men, due to their higher overall muscle mass. Nutritionally speaking, food sources for protein are generally referred to as “complete,” as in containing all of the essential amino acids, or “incomplete,” as in only containing some essential amino acids. Complete protein sources include meat, fish, eggs and dairy products, while vegetables, beans and other plant products are considered incomplete. By far, meats are the best sources of complete dietary protein, but they also tend to be high in fat. Fish and poultry tend to be fantastic protein sources since they’re lower in fat and contain other, valuable nutrients.

    This doesn’t mean, however, that you have to get all of your essential amino acids from meat, fish or dairy. Instead, a carefully balanced diet including a good variety of ‘incomplete’ sources can give you the full array of essential amino acids. For example, you can combine beans with brown rice, corn, wheat or nuts to get a complete set of amino acids. Also, soybean products like tofu and soymilk are complete proteins, so you can have a meat-less diet and still get plenty of dietary protein.

     

    Eat Salmon!

    The key is to eat 2 to 3 servings a day, or roughly 20 g per meal. If you get less in the morning, be sure to bulk up at lunch and dinner with lean meats or extra vegetables. And you have to eat protein DAILY, otherwise your body lacks the amino acids it needs for the day and begins to take them from places you might want them, like your sexy abs that you worked so hard for!

    Previous posts in the Understanding Our Bodies series:

    References:

    1. Peng Y, Gubin J, Harper AE, Vavich MG, & Kemmerer AR (1973). Food intake regulation: amino acid toxicity and changes in rat brain and plasma amino acids. The Journal of nutrition, 103 (4), 608-17 PMID: 4693672
    2. Müller O, & Krawinkel M (2005). Malnutrition and health in developing countries. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l’Association medicale canadienne, 173 (3), 279-86 PMID: 16076825
    3. Bonjour JP (2005). Dietary protein: an essential nutrient for bone health. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 24 (6 Suppl) PMID: 16373952
    4. Lovejoy JC, Champagne CM, Smith SR, de Jonge L, & Xie H (2001). Ethnic differences in dietary intakes, physical activity, and energy expenditure in middle-aged, premenopausal women: the Healthy Transitions Study. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 74 (1), 90-5 PMID: 11451722
    5. Lucas A, Morley R, & Cole TJ (1998). Randomised trial of early diet in preterm babies and later intelligence quotient. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 317 (7171), 1481-7 PMID: 9831573
  • Green Tea Coco Chiller

    Green Tea Coco Chiller

    A good way to eat (or drink) some coconut after reading Christie’s article.

    A delicious way to enjoy some coconut. Thanks flickr user Mel B.

    Ingredients:

    • 1 ½ cup ice
    • ½ cup diced honeydew melon
    • 2 oz. honey
    • 2 ounces coconut cream (Coco Lopez)
    • 2 ½ ounces brewed and chilled green tea
    • 10-15 fresh mint leaves

    First, add the ice into a blender, followed by the rest of the ingredients. Blend until smooth or preferred texture desired. Pour into glasses (maybe cut some orange wedges for garnish), find a porch swing and enjoy! Recipe makes two drinks.