Tag Archives: nutrition

Be a Food Adventurer

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If I were being really specific, I’d call this dish “Sauteed Sweet Potato with Shallots, Chile Cobanero and Lime.” Because there’s a story there.

In Guatemala last week, as with our previous trip with Common Hope in 2012, Christopher and I went in curious about the stumbling blocks to better nutrition. One would think in a third world country the answer would end abruptly with “lack of money.” But it doesn’t. It turns out two other boulders loom just as large: 1) not knowing how to cook unfamiliar foods and 2) fear no one will like said foods.

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Sound familiar?

I am so intrigued that the same roadblocks exist in developing countries as  here in the land of more-than-plenty. And I have a story (yes, it has to do with chile Cobanero) that shows it’s possible to leapfrog past those roadblocks once you know what it takes to do it.

One of the things I did last week was to teach a cooking class to a dozen kiddos in the Common Hope youth group. Several of them had told the organizer that they were considering cooking as a profession, so I thought I’d teach them about flavor building–first how to sear and saute, then how to add flavor to steamed foods with things like citrus zest, flavored oils and whatnot.

Oh … and did I mention the whole class was about vegetables?

More than a few shoulders drooped when the kids saw green beans instead of brownies, but they were attentive and respectful from the get go. I started out by sauteeing cubed quizquil (pronounced ‘whiskEEL’)–which tastes to me like a cross between a sweet potato and a zucchini–in hot oil with shallots until it got nice and caramelized. Then I tossed it with lime juice and cilantro and was about to shake on a bit of local chile powder (props to you if you guessed it was called chile Cobanero) when I caught a look of utter disgust on the kids’ faces. I halted mid-shake.

“Are you telling me you don’t like chile Cobanero?” I asked. A dozen little heads nodded sheepishly.

I put the jar down and thought for a second. “Alright,” I said, “then I’m just going to have to make you food adventurers.”

They perked up.

“Where do adventurers go?” I asked. “Do they go only to places they know?”

Heads shook and someone piped up, “No, they go new places they’ve never been before.”

“Aha. Exactly. And that’s what I’m going to ask you to do.”

So I divided the quizquil between two plates while I explained that I would only put chile powder on one of them. Then it was up to them, as food adventurers, to take a bite of each and decide which one they liked. I wasn’t asking them to like the chile Cobanero, I was only asking them to try the chile Cobanero … they were food adventurers, after all.

You’ve probably guessed by now that I wouldn’t be telling you this story if it didn’t have a (very) positive outcome. Not only did those kids polish off that plate with the chile powder, they then insisted I sprinkle it on the other plate … and on everything else they cooked themselves that afternoon.

As I hugged each kiddo farewell, I could smell the woodsmoke that infused hair and clothes and knew they were going home to a very different kitchen than the one we were standing in. Yet they were leaving with a new understanding of themselves and a wider view of what was possible; I’m not kidding when I say joy literally sparkled in their eyes.

The whole experience left me pondering how often we allow road blocks to remain in our lives–no matter what circumstances we’re living in–simply because we don’t give ourselves permission to be curious and humble … the two absolute essentials for “adventuring” into places yet unknown.

Eat Some Eggs

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Eggs are one of those foods that got a very bad rap during the low-fat era, poor things. The yolk, especially, was banished from virtuous plates and in its stead appeared cartons of clear goo; essentially eggless eggs. Such a pity. As with many of the dietary mandates from that period, much of what we shunned eggs for–they’ll make us fat, they’ll clog our arteries–turned out to be a bunch of hooey.

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Here’s what is true. Eggs are an excellent source of protein and essential nutrients. And guess where all that good stuff is found? That’s right, the yolk. The part we’ve been leaving out. Eggs won’t make you fat either; one large egg has just 75 calories, about the same as a small apple.

But perhaps the biggest shame of having relegated eggs to the no-no list is that we’ve deprived ourselves of so much pleasure. I cite a freshly-laid egg fried in extra virgin olive oil as my first major food epiphany–yes, it was THAT good. Egg pasta made with super-fresh eggs is an absolute revelation; golden-hued with the texture of silk. And a yolk added to a dressing (think Caesar) or a pasta sauce (like carbonara) adds unparalleled lusciousness.

So when you’re dyeing your eggs this week leave a few for the plate as well . . . all the better if you can talk a friend or a farmer into sharing a few fresh ones with you!

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines: What’s ahead from the government?

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You may not turn to the government as your best source for nutrition advice, but the upcoming Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 will influence what you eat in one way or another. These are the “official” recommendations, and they’re updated every five years. They shape everything from food labeling to public food programs, including school lunches.

The USDA and Department of Health and Human Services, which issue the guidelines jointly, appointed an advisory committee of top researchers in fields of nutrition, medicine, and food safety and technology to evaluate the latest scientific evidence and submit their recommendations in June. Now the USDA and HHS are considering the committee’s proposals, along with public comments (from public-health advocates to food-commodity special interests), and will release the final guidelines later this year.

As with past Dietary Guidelines, this report’s recommendations are aimed at turning our nation’s tide of obesity. Too many Americans are overweight or obese yet “undernourished in several key nutrients,” the committee notes.

What struck me, as I culled through the 700-page report, was how familiar their suggestions are, in that many of their recommendations reflect NOURISH Evolution’s four pillars.

Sound Nutrition: A plant-based diet

Since they were first published in 1980, every version of the dietary guidelines has advised Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables. But the latest recommendations take it a step further, advocating a “total-diet approach” emphasizing plant foods: “Shift food intake patterns to a more plant-based diet that emphasizes vegetables, cooked dry beans and peas, fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds.”

They also call for us to eat more seafood and fat-free and low-fat milk and milk products, while consuming lean meats, poultry and eggs in moderation.

It’ll be interesting to see how that recommendation is interpreted in the final 2010 guidelines released later this year. Lobbies, like the National Cattleman’s Beef Association and the National Chicken Council, exert tremendous influence on the USDA and may take a dim view of a government guideline for a plant-based diet.

Eco-Bites: Choose environmentally sustainable food

The committee also calls for increased “environmentally sustainable production of vegetables, fruits, and fiber-rich whole grains.”

However, it stops short of recommending organic agriculture as that sustainable solution, saying that the evidence is too limited to declare organically cultivated produce and grains nutritionally superior to conventional. They also conclude that conventional fare is safe, since it meets the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards. (On an encouraging note, however, the USDA appears to be boosting its support of organic and local farming.)

The report also recommends increasing sustainable aquaculture in order to meet the recommendation to eat two (4-ounce) servings of seafood per week. But it doesn’t delve into what constitutes responsible aquaculture, either from a health or environmental perspective. The genetically engineered salmon which is under consideration for approval by the FDA next week will prove an interesting in-the-trenches benchmark on how they’re really defining “sustainable” aquaculture.

While we’d like to see the recommended guidelines call for organic agriculture and responsible aquaculture in more specific terms, the fact that they even touch on these topics is remarkable.

Mindful Meals: Eat attentively

The committee acknowledges that there’s a huge disconnect between what experts, including the government, advise people to eat and what they really eat. “Americans must become mindful, or ‘conscious,’ eaters, that is, attentively choosing what and how much they eat,” the report notes.

We couldn’t agree more–if you don’t pay attention to what you eat, all the great nutrition advice in the world means nothing. But we’re curious how this will play out in the final guidelines, since mindful eating is an intangible, though crucial, part of the equation and the Dietary Guidelines tend to favor concrete advice.

Kitchen Tips: Learn to cook

It’s no surprise that the report scolds Americans for eating too much food away from home, noting that portion sizes have ballooned over the years as we eat out more often. Meals away from home are a big reason why an astonishing 35% of the American diet is now made up of solid (saturated) fats and added sugars–aka “SoFAS” in the report.

To remedy that, the proposed recommendations urge Americans to return to the kitchen to “improve nutrition literacy and cooking skills, including safe food handling skills, and empower and motivate the population, especially families with children, to prepare and consume healthy foods at home.”

They also call for nutrition, cooking and food safety to be incorporated into school curricula from preschool on.

We’re intrigued to see how this recommendation is interpreted in the final guidelines. Will they recommend a certain number of meals per week prepared from scratch at home? How do mindful eating and home cooking fit onto a pyramid? Or will they dispense with the Food Guide Pyramid–which was first introduced in 1995 and evolved into the confusing color-coded, personalized MyPyramid in 2005–in favor of a simpler, whole-food diet?

If they do latter, it will indeed look familiar … it would look a lot like the NOURISH Evolution approach.

Think of Food as Food

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Several years ago I was interviewing the highly-respected Greek nutrition scientist Dr. Antonia Trichopoulou. She had studied thousands of Greeks over a span of several decades in order to understand the nutritional effects of a Mediterranean diet (defined by an abundance of healthy oils, whole grains, vegetables and legumes) on long-term health. “So just how healthy is olive oil?” I asked, eager to codify the benefits of each food group for the article I was writing.

food as food“Olive oil is an essential part of what makes the Mediterranean diet healthy,” she answered. But as I scribbled notes and scanned studies, she continued on. “If we look at one nutrient at a time, though, we miss the way they interact. It’s a cocktail of everything that makes this type of diet so good.”

As I tried to deconstruct food into its building blocks, Dr. Trichopoulou kept bringing them back into context, talking about how tasty greens are when sautéed in olive oil with garlic and a squeeze of lemon, or how Greeks like to snack on simmered beans. “It’s much more effective to look at the health of your whole lifestyle rather than individual foods.”

That interview changed the way I thought of healthy eating. Yet amid the constant barrage of diet and nutrition advice here in America I sometimes find myself slipping back into that old reductive view of food. Avocados and olive oil cease to be really tasty things and instead turn into “good sources of monounsaturated fats” (with a tinge of guilt because, well, they’re fats). Tomatoes morph from luscious little orbs into things that are “packed with lycopene,” and whole grain bread goes from being a textural marvel to being “heart healthy.”

While it’s important to understand the impact that certain food groups and nutrients have on our bodies–and we have and will continue looking at them from several different angles on –what Dr. Trichopoulou taught me is that it’s even more important to carry that information back up to 35,000 feet and remember that, ultimately, if your plate is full of things that didn’t come out of a box or container it’s probably a healthy meal.

Most important of all, though, is to remember to think of food as food.

Make a Move for Kids’ Nutrition

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A week ago Friday, 500 chefs assembled at the White House (and hundreds more, including me, joined the ranks online) to kick off the Chefs Move to Schools program, part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign to improve kids’ nutrition and eradicate childhood obesity within a generation. The plan is simple: chefs “adopt” a local school in hopes that they’ll be able to help transform the kids into healthier eaters. “Chefs are coming from the outside in and they’re bringing good food to the equation,” says Kim O’Donnel, chef and food writer extraordinaire.

chefs move to schoolsPart of that shift has to happen at a policy and administrative level. Right now, each child eligible for a free school lunch is allotted $2.68 per meal from the federal government. The buzz you’re hearing about school lunch reform (both the House and Senate have measures on the table) will wrangle an additional 6 cents and stricter nutritional standards (including on vending machines). That means there’s plenty of room for creative solutions, which is precisely why the first lady tapped this particular group. “Chefs are always making lemonade out of lemons,” says Kim.

The other side of the equation, though, is improving nutrition by getting kids to want to eat healthier–to imbue in them the pleasures of fresh food amidst this world of fast food and drive-thrus. Michelle Stern from What’s Cooking, a blog about cooking with kids for a better body, planet and community, said the first lady had several suggestions for the audience, from cooking demonstrations to planting a garden to working with teachers to introduce food into the curriculum.

But it’s not just chefs who can affect what kids want to eat—and do eat—in schools. You can too. Here are some ideas that bubbled up from my own experience and conversations with Kim and Michelle:

  • Get Kids Involved. “Once you get kids involved in one step, they immediately take ownership,” says Kim. “Even things like taking tortillas out of a package or learning to use a can opener … If they’re invested in the meal, they’re more likely to want to eat it.” You can do this for an entire class, your kids’ friends on a play date (see me and Noe on TV showing how to make food fun for kids here) or simply for your own kids. But it will make a difference.
  • Get Kids Growing. If you have a garden, invite kids in to explore. My husband planted our daughter a “candy tree” (really a cherry tomato plant) when she was less than a year old and the tradition stuck. This year, Noemi and I added a strawberry patch to the garden. It’s incredible to witness the sheer delight she gets from seeing snacks appear day after day. If you have kids and no garden, plant something—anything—in a pot or box or on a sunny sill just to give your kids that experience of watching something grow.
  • Share What You Know. You may well have more to offer your local schools than you think. Know how to bake bread? Fantastic … there’s a science project just begging to be mined. Are you from a country with a rich culinary heritage? Beautiful … a map, a story and a few dishes and you’ve got a social studies presentation. Do you have a computer? Print out or e-mail stories and recipes that you feel could be of help or inspiration to teachers or other parents … you can start right here on !

Was this move on Washington the end-all be-all shift to end childhood obesity? Not quite. “(The initiative) needs some tending and time to mature,” says Stern. O’Donnel agrees that this is a first step and adds, “there are small things we can do in an incremental fashion that are a lot better than not doing anything at all. Let’s not worry about how all of this is going to turn out three years from now. Let’s focus on what’s happening now.”

So this week I extend the challenge beyond chefs to parents and neighbors alike … let’s make a move.

The Great Burrito Challenge: Fast Versus Fresh

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by Cheryl Sternman Rule

Faster, faster, faster! As the dinner hour approaches, time seems to speed up and the thought of cooking a from-scratch meal may overwhelm even the most well-intentioned among us. Ever count how many drive-thrus you pass on your commute home from work? I hope you’re a math genius, because the numbers add up remarkably fast. It’s no surprise that the cheap price and sheer convenience of fast food makes it a seductive option for millions of Americans each day.

But what if we broke down the “cost” of that convenience into all of its correlating parts? The quality of the ingredients; the nutritional profile of the meal; the financial cost; the environmental impact; time; flavor, texture and color; and the social experience at the dinner table. Only by examining all of these factors can we truly gauge whether, on busy nights, the drive-thru is truly the better option.

fast-freshTo do this, I served the same meal—beef and bean burritos—on two consecutive nights.  The first night, the meal came from Taco Bell’s drive-thru.  (My children looked at me in bug-eyed horror when I announced my assignment. Had I, their mother, been body-snatched by an alien?) The second night, I attempted to replicate the same burritos at home. I don’t claim that this was a 100% scientific comparison, but the overarching lessons are revealing nonetheless.

Ingredients: Props to Taco Bell for making it very easy to see exactly what is in their food. The full ingredients list of the Beefy 5-Layer Burritos I purchased can be found online here (click “see what’s inside” and then “ingredient details). It doesn’t take long to see hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, artificial colors, and preservatives among the flour, beef, cheese, sour cream, and beans. Could it be worse? Sure, but when I made similar burritos at home (see recipe below), I was able to mimic the final meal with far fewer overall ingredients, without hydrogenated oils and with fewer preservatives, colorings, and chemicals. I also cooked with organic, grass-fed beef, organic tortillas, organic beans, and organic low-fat sour cream. Winner? My version.

Nutrition: One Taco Bell Beefy 5-Layer Burrito had 550 calories, 8 grams of saturated fat, 1640 milligrams of sodium, and 9 grams of fiber. The sodium is especially interesting: a single burrito contained 71 percent of the daily recommended limit (2,300).  My homemade burrito, which I served with romaine and mashed avocado, had the same amount of saturated fat, but fewer calories (488), more fiber (11g), and, at 871mg, slightly more than half the sodium of Taco Bell’s. The avocado in my version also added healthy unsaturated fat. Winner?  My version.

Financial cost: Here’s where fast food blows all competition out of the water. I’d tucked $20 in my pocket before setting out for the drive-thru, assuming the burritos would cost about $5 apiece. I was stunned to see the final price: $.89 per burrito, plus tax. It took me a minute to realize what that meant: fast food is so shockingly cheap, it’s difficult for any fresh food to come close. My homemade burritos costed out at roughly $2.05 per burrito, which is more than twice as much, but still inexpensive by almost any standard (a family of four could eat my meal for $8.20), especially given that most of my ingredients were organic and the beef was grass-fed. From a purely financial perspective, though, the fast food was cheaper, hands down. Winner?  Taco Bell.

Eco-cost: Each Taco Bell burrito came wrapped separately in paper and the order was packed in a plastic bag. My raw ingredients, of course, had plenty of packaging, too. But are there additional environmental costs to the fast food meal? The feedlots where cattle are generally raised and slaughtered for fast food are likely to exert a much higher environmental toll that the grass-grazing cows used to make the beef in my burritos. The organic veggies in my version didn’t require the use of pesticides, either. Don’t forget that environmental costs can often be quite complex, extending deeper than merely the final packaging. Winner?  My version.

Time: From the time I told my kids to get their shoes on to the time we sat down to our drive-thru meal, exactly 18 minutes had elapsed. When I cooked the burritos myself (from ingredients I had already purchased), it took exactly 22 minutes to get the food on the table. The drive-thru saved only 4 minutes. Winner? Taco Bell, but barely.

Flavor, texture & color: If the Taco Bell burrito hadn’t had the 18 ingredient nacho cheese sauce, the two meals might have tasted similar. But the cheese sauce, which included an unidentified catchall “natural flavor,” lent the TB burrito a gooeyness and impossible-to-replicate taste. Texturally, the TB burrito was mushier, too; the tortilla continued to steam in its paper wrapping and plastic bag, so when we got it home it had softened considerably. By contrast, heating my tortillas individually over a gas flame imparted a great puffy crispness. Serving a 2-minute side of mashed avocado and shredded romaine with lime added color, texture, and freshness to the home-cooked meal.  Winner? My version.

The overall dining experience: When we returned from the drive-thru, it seemed silly to put out placemats or even plates. We tossed the bag of food on the table, ate it straight from the packaging, and finished the meal in less than 10 minutes. Two of us woke up in the middle of the night to drink water, which is unusual. Was our thirst from the high sodium content? I can’t say for sure, but it’s possible. When eating our homemade burritos, we set the table properly and took our time discussing our days, and the differences between the two meals. Winner?  My version.

So what’s the lesson here? There are actually several. Fast food is cheaper, yes, but it’s not all that much faster if you have your ingredients handy, and the hidden costs are greater than they may at first appear. Ultimately, remember this: if you need to, you really can cook a 20 minute dinner using organic, quality ingredients—and avoiding most artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives—for less than $10 for a family of four. And (trust me on this) you and your family will feel a lot better if you prepare the meal yourself.

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Cheryl Sternman Rule is a food and nutrition writer whose work has appeared in numerous national magazines, including EatingWell and Body+Soul. She is the voice behind the food blog 5 Second Rule.


Gotta Get Your Grains

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You’ve probably seen the stickers marking products made with whole grains on supermarket shelves and heard of their many health benefits (a growing body of evidence shows that even one serving a day of whole grains can help reduce the risk of several chronic diseases). But the realm of grains extends far beyond the horizon of whole wheat bread. Ancient grains like quinoa, farro, amaranth and bulgur are making a comeback in today’s kitchens, and those with former hippie appeal like millet and wheat berries are getting a thoroughly modern makeover.

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All hulled grains are made up of three parts—the bran, the germ and the endosperm—and each part performs a particular kernalfunction. The outer bran layer serves to protect the more vulnerable germ and endosperm and is equipped with fiber and antioxidants. The germ has vitamins, minerals, healthy fat and protein to nurture the into sprouting new life, and the endosperm is like the power generator, holding the carbohydrates and protein that fuel growth.

When grains are refined into the white form we’ve come to know, the bran and germ are stripped away along with all of their nutritive value. All that’s left is the protein and starch of the endosperm. But whole grains have all three parts—and the fiber, antioxidants, micronutrients and healthy fats that come with each—intact. It’s a powerful package. Reliable studies have shown that amping up whole grain consumption reduces all sorts of health risks, from type II diabetes to heart disease and even some cancers. So it’s worth it to get your (whole) grains.

As exotic as whole grains may seem, there’s no reason to fear; they’re infinitely easy to prepare. Start your exploration of whole grains with this one on farro . . . and get ready to discover an exciting new world of texture and taste.

Illustration of kernel courtesy ChooseMyPlate.gov.

Experiment with Mushrooms

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Heh, heh. No, not those kinds of mushrooms. Not even wild mushrooms. I’m talking run-of-the-mill brown cremini. Humble fungi like these (and their even humbler cousins, white button mushrooms) have nutrients like niacin that help regulate hormones, and potassium, which helps lower blood pressure. Mushrooms are also known to combat certain cancers. Cancer like my friend Merede is fighting.

When I got the call last week that Merede wanted some girlfriend encouragement and was looking for ways to eat healthier, I brought along a big pot of whole-grain “risotto,” dense with cremini mushrooms. Sure it was healthy. But as Merede inhaled the scents, tasted its rich flavor, and shared the meal amid the laughter and voices of her friends, I guarantee the nourishing benefits went well beyond the nutrient value of the dish.

This week, experiment with cremini in a variety of ways both raw and cooked. Try slicing them thinly and tossing them with shaved celery and garlicky vinaigrette. Or sautéing quartered cremini in olive oil with minced shallots and rosemary and mounding them on top of a sautéed chicken paillard (a thinly pounded chicken breast). Or . . . try my recipe for Merede’s Mushroom “Farrotto” with Roasted Butternut Squash and Shallots. I speak from experience in saying it will truly nourish both body and soul.