West and East lie the Health promise land

Today Forbes.com released a list of all fifty states ranked from healthiest to unhealthiest, based on "22 indicators of health, including everything from how many children receive recommended vaccinations, to obesity and smoking rates, to cancer deaths." Healthy is a very vague and broad term, and therefore hard to measure quantitatively, in my opinion, but of course I wanted to know how we stacked up.

About average, it seems: Pennsylvania is 28th. (For family: Ohio is33rd. And for Joel: New York is 25th. Smack dab in the middle.)

Number one was Vermont, while Mississippi held up the rear. Interestingly enough, California only came in at 23rd. Maybe there's more good actors out there than we thought. 

But Colorado, the state I was born in and spent my first 4 years, showed up at 8th. Must be something in that Rocky air.

<3 pEaNuT bUtTeR!~!~!~

When I found out I had high cholesterol, one of the things that was suggested was to eat more oatmeal, or anything made from oats. (I know we've all seen the Cheerio's commercials about lowering your cholesterol if you eat like 500 bowls of Cheerio's every day for the rest of your life.)

Which, you know, was no big deal. Oatmeal's good. But--my idea of "oatmeal" was a sugar-doused flavored product. Even when my mom made me real Quaker Oats as a kid, I put a lot, a lot, of brown sugar on it. Like it was essentially sugar with a coupla lone oats tossed in.

So what to do now? How to make it appetizing without reversing the health benefits? I started by adding raisins, which plump when you cook them and add some natural sweetness, but I couldn't help but sprinkle a packet of Splenda on there too. When I became a little more informed and thus wary of artificial sweeteners, I stuck to just raisins. And it was okay, but I honestly had to force myself to make it. Like I would never wake up craving it, or even really wanting it, but I would shove it down my gullet anyway, reminding myself of its artery unclogging powers.

Then this past summer, I was at Kelsey's house one morning and she was making oatmeal for me, her, and her boyfriend George. When she asked George what he wanted in his, he said peanut butter. I remember doing a double take. Peanut butter? In oatmeal? I asked her who the hell she thought she was mixing these two things. She laughed at me.

Since then, I've embarked on a love affair with the union of these two previously disparate foods. I was already shacking up with peanut butter, have been for a long time. But now oatmeal's invited, and for the first time I really want him there.

If you've never had this, and you like peanut butter, I'd definitely recommend giving it a try. I mix about a half cup of oats with a cup of skim milk (but you can make however much you want) and usually just pop it in the microwave, but if you are cooking for more than one person, I'd recommend the stove. Then mix in about a tablespoon of peanut butter while the oatmeal's hot and it will sort of just dissolve. This breakfast has about 18 grams of protein (if you make it with skim milk, which I don't know how anyone eats it with water without barfing), about 335 calories, and, yes, about 11 grams of fat, but only about 1 1/2 grams are saturated; the rest are either polyunsaturated or monounsaturated (the good-for-your-heart kind.)

And if you use almond butter instead of pb, its extra monounsaturated fats serve up a double whammy sucker punch to lower LDL cholesterol (the bad one). Unfortunately, almond butter is a quite a bit more expensive. Thus far I have only picked it up wistfully in the grocery store, set it back on the shelf with a sigh, and slowly pushed my cart down the aisle, looking over my shoulder with big, cartoonish eyes. Someday, we will be united.

the mother of all grains

A friend asked the other night about the vegetable I mentioned on my blog, so I said you mean collard greens? and she said, "No, that other one.... that qu--something."

What she was referring to is quinoa (KEEN-wah), which is eaten as a grain; thus my confusion. I realized I wrongly assumed while writing that post that just because my family is used to eating something, and I've seen it talked about in health magazines, doesn't mean everyone knows about it. Slap on wrist.

A mini bio, then, on my little buddy of a grain:

First of all, quinoa is a leafy plant similar species-wise to beets and spinach, but unlike these veggies, the leaves aren't generally eaten--just the seed, which is cooked in the same fashion as grains like rice and couscous. (So, ironically, my friend was absolutely right in calling it a vegetable, even though it caused me to stare at her blankly for several seconds.)

But quinoa has a definite one-up over these other grains because it has an unusually complete amino acid structure, making it an ideal high-protein choice for vegetarians or vegans or just people like me who shy away from relying too much on the flesh of animals. Plus it's got fiber and minerals and wouldn't ya know!--it's delicious too. Unlike the sometimes dry texture of a grain like bulgur wheat, quinoa is light and fluffy and easy to digest.

Besides nutrition, quinoa are also steeped in rich history. They were first harvested by the Incas and are still grown in the Andes--i.e. in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile. So although this grain is relatively new on the American health food scene, it is ancient to South Americans, who have been eating this "mother grain" (which is what quinoa means in Quechua, the language of the Incas) for thousands of years.

Now, I hope you are thinking "hm, well Kayla where can I purchase this tiny miracle?" and the answer is at virtually any grocery store. There is a downside though--the price for quinoa is a bit steeper than that of rice or bulgur (seems like if you want nutrition in this country, you better expect to cough it up) and it's only increasing along with demand. I've had my two 12-ounce boxes of quinoa for months--*cringe* shows how much I cook--and honestly cannot remember how much they cost, but I did a little calculation of what is sold on Amazon (they really do sell everything! hotdamn) and it seems like it's around 5 bucks a pop. But--a little perspective: there are 8 servings per box, thus it's still less than a dollar per serving.

So hold off on that golden arched value menu and buy something you won't wanna throw up 10 minutes later! Your belly will thank you.

Pollan's Parameters

As Joel mentioned in a comment on an earlier post, NYT Magazine released its Food Issue this past month, and Michael Pollan has some interesting digital-image-quote doohickeys in addition to his article that I'd LOVE to post on here to stimulate all your visual receptors but I can't. Damn you Adobe flash player for not allowing me to steal things.

Well, synopsis anyway: Pollan asked readers of Well, a health blog on nytimes.com, to tell him their personal eating-well rules. He posted his favorites. Now I post my favorites of his favorites, or parts of his favorites that are my favorites, based on originality, practicality, cleverness and of course humor. Now if only I had a digital design friend to make them artistically competent; alas.

My parents are both from Italy, and one of our family rules was that you could not leave the table until you had finished your fruit: "Non si puo lasciare la tavola fino che hai finito la frutta." It was a great way to incorporate fruit into our diets and also helped satiate our sweet tooths, keeping us away from less healthful sweets.

 (Resisting urge to translate that into Spanish...)

Don't eat anything that took more energy to ship than to grow.

"Make and take your own lunch to work." My father has always done this, and so have I. It saves money, and you know what you are eating.

 The Chinese have a saying: "Eat until you are seven-tenths full and save the other three-tenths for hunger." That way, food always tastes good, and you don't eat too much.

 Avoid snack foods with the "oh" sound in their names: Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, Hostess Ho Hos, etc.

Never eat something that is pretending to be something else ... If I want something that tastes like meat or butter, I would rather have the real thing than some chemical concoction pretending to be more healthful.

 (Except I don't know if I'm as gung-ho as this lady... she says "no 'low fat' sour cream", so does that mean no skim milk? What is low fat sour cream pretending to be?)

 "When drinking tea, just drink tea." I find this Zen teaching useful .... Perhaps a bit of mindfulness goes a long way first thing in the morning.

 "It's better to pay the grocer than the doctor."

(Or farmer!)


And my favorite, for its realism:

After spending some time working with people with eating disorders, I came up with this rule: "Don't create arbitrary rules for eating if their only purpose is to help you feel in control." I try to eat healthfully, but if there's a choice between eating ice cream and spending all day obsessing about eating ice cream, I'm going to eat the ice cream!

This Laura Usher and I have this in common. These rules are all great for principles and theories but I'd rather refer to them as "guidelines" than "rules". As I've stated before, I think it's the restrictive nature of diets (and their rules) that actually frustrates and inhibits healthy eating.


But to each their own; I'd rather see people talking about healthy eating, even in the context of restrictions, than not talking at all.


Which, by the way--Pollan is still taking suggestions. Have one you want to add? Go to Tara Parker-Pope's blog and post it in a comment. Think another one of Pollan's faves should have made it on here? Let me know. Democracy is fun.

Season of the Punkin

October means one thing other than my birthday and Halloween and cold weather and the leaves changing colors:

The Pumpkin.

They're everywhere:

• I indulged in a pumpkin muffin the other week and texted my friend Kelsey to remind her that she wasn't enjoying it with me. (This is a girl who bought a corny Halloween t-shirt because a pumpkin was on it, went to a pumpkin patch and hayride with her boyfriend last weekend and enjoys pretty much any culinary expression of the plant.) She texted back along the lines of: "you bitch I hate you."
• When I look out the window of my bus as it goes down 5th Avenue, the sidewalks and grass and nearly every inch of surface area outside a church are covered with these bulbous orange gourds, and I'm always tempted to yank the cord and jump off the bus to buy one, but then realize this would mean I'd have to tote an awkward, lumpy twenty-pound ball around campus with me all day. 
• Trader Joe's has a special cinnamony, nutmegy pumpkin pancake mix for sale right now that my mom and I made for breakfast this morning. This blogger suggests enhancing the pumpkinness of this breakfast experience with TJ's pumpkin butter... we just topped them with a little cinnamon and brown sugar for fear of turning orange.

This bright, multi-functional plant makes a big appearance every fall, so I thought it only fair to give it a little limelight on my blog. After all, pumpkins are chocked full of vitamins and minerals, particularly the antioxidant beta-carotene, which is converted into vitamin A in our bodies and can help your skin, eyes, and immune system. And they are yummy and can be converted into hundreds of different dishes, as evidenced by the recipe suggestions of these pumpkin-loonies (look, Kelsey, a club you can join.)

So go support a farmer and buy some pumpkins from a local patch and carve them up and roast the seeds and make a pie and enjoy the bounties of one simple little squash. And watch the Pumpkin King in the Nightmare Before Christmas while you're at it (and invite me because I know the words to all of the songs and will murmur them under my breath until you punch me in the arm several times.)

adventures to smoothie-land

So I bought that Greek yogurt earlier this week with the sole intention of using it in smoothies. If you've ever had Greek yogurt, you'll know it has a biting taste more like that of sour cream than what we associate with yogurt, which I'm sure causes most non-nutrition obsessed customers to turn up their noses. But funny fact: Greek yogurt is what plain ol' yogurt used to be until the days of additives and thickening agents. The only ingredients in it are skim milk, cream, and a plethora of good-for-your-belly cultures. Because of this, it has substantially more protein than regular yogurt (24g per cup vs. 7g per cup in Yoplait light vanilla). But, you're a real trooper if you can handle it plain. I can't. They sell different flavors in small containers but they are more expensive. So instead I bought the big one and a bag of frozen mixed berries (I already had frozen mango chunks) and decided to try my hand at the art of smoothie-making. What I got was more like frozen yogurt. I was so giddy about the delicious results I decided to post this pseudo-recipe in the hopes that you will try it out!

The only thing I really measured was the yogurt (not because I'm a fantastic chef by any means, I am just lazy and hate doing dishes) but I eyeballed the approximate measurements of the rest:

2/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
~10 chunks of frozen mango
~1/2 cup frozen berries
drizzled honey over it all
splash of skim milk (maybe 1/2 cup?)

Then blend blend blend. If you have a super shitty hand-me-down blender like mine, this could be... a process, mainly because this smoothie is pretty thick. I probably should have given my ancient appliance a break by adding more milk, (I realized while digging mangled mango chunks out of my dull blender blades), but I didn't, mainly because I got really excited when I realized it was like ice cream. But you can feel free to add more milk, different fruits, whatever. It's your discretion.

Which is probably the greatest part about home-made smoothies: you can make them however you want! To hell with recipes! And if you put in healthy ingredients (yogurt instead of ice cream, frozen fruit instead of ice cubes), you're gonna get a smooth, guiltless treat. I know smoothies are and have been a huge health craze for awhile, but if you buy them at some fancy shop they are usually pretty expensive and can add extra crap and calories. But if you make your smoothies at home, then you know what exactly is going into that blender and how much. No surprises there (except the extra cash in your pocket).

And remember, just because you are drinking it doesn't mean it's not a meal/snack. I think our waistlines all learned that several years ago from Frappucinos.

it started with eggs.

So there's this site I often use to find out the nutritional content of food. (I have no idea where they get their information from but it's very legit looking and has everything so I'll take it.)

I went on there earlier this morning as I made breakfast to find out just how bad egg yolks v. egg whites are, and they are very bad, if you are looking to raise your cholesterol just start drinking egg yolks. But I saw a link to an article about the "Paleo diet" and the graphics included two crossed spears and I thought "oh hey! somebody's talking about eating naturally!" so I clicked on it and very quickly became confused. The nutritionist talked about paleo diet vs. Mediterranean diet and what you can and cannot eat on one or the other and my eyes began to cross and I smelled something, perhaps my eggs, burning.

This is a good example of why I hate Diets. I'd say my hate affair started in the first half of this decade, when my dad and stepmom did the whole Atkins bullshit, trading their fruits for pounds of steak and bacon, then wondered why they weren't losing any weight.

Now there are aspects of the Atkins I agree with, and probably most diets for that matter. Protein will keep you fuller than carbs, especially refined ones, and I think that everyone should place sugar and white flour on the same nutritional battlefield as fat. Fat is not alone in this party.

My qualm is with the restriction aspect. The fact that this old guy's telling people you can't eat certain foods-- in an apparently very convincing way, because my parents treated him like a golden all-knowing god-- really grinds my gears. (Is it too early for a Family Guy reference? Probably.)

I believe that it's this restriction, these bans and rules that make people feel confined and unfulfilled while on a diet, and that's why they never work. Scenario: Woman hates body, tells self to stop eating sweets, does it for about a week, then caves in over tiramisu, hates self, feels like a failure, gives up, goes back to unhealthy ways. Convinced that she doesn't have it in her.

Have it in her to do what? Deprive herself in a completely unrealistic way? It takes a superhuman to only eat vegetables, fruits, lean meat, whole grains, and nuts... which is what "the paleo diet" apparently is-- no oils, no dairy. Or it takes someone with buckets of cash to throw away on personal (food conscience) trainers.

So to hell with these diets. America has been diet obsessed for decades and, guess what, we're still fat. I think it's time for every American to start thinking for themselves regarding their health, instead of putting it in the hands of people that I honestly don't trust, because their job is to get you to follow their diets. Stop thinking you aren't "qualified" to make your own decisions about what you eat; we're not dummies, but the Diet industry seems to think we are. It's just common sense, actually thinking about the food before you shove it down your gob. Like, say you crave chocolate. Ho-ho? Hmm... you are high in calories, could probably survive a nuclear holocaust what with all your preservatives, but you are deliciously chocolatey. Dark chocolate bar? You are even MORE chocolatey yet don't have all the crazy gunk ho-ho has! I choose you. But I also know you are high in fat, so I will not eat you everyday, because you are a treat and should stay that way.

But no seriously, try it out! And if you're not sure if something is or isn't good for you, do some research, just make sure Atkins isn't your only source.