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With the season of baking in full swing, we need to be reminded of a few proper food handling techniques that can make a healthier holiday season and less trips to the urgent-care for tummy troubles.  There are also a number of seasonal favorites that require either special ingredients or a specific handling method that I’ve found ways to make healthier.

I recently saw a news report discussing the importance of not eating cookie dough.   As you may know cookie dough contains raw egg which has been linked to salmonella outbreaks in the past.  However, the flour itself has recently been found to have traces of E. Coli.  This is especially important with prepared, refrigerated cookie dough which can often be mistaken as safe because of quality control during production. Consumers should also be aware of pre-made dough, since these products go through the same basic process as at home, only on a much larger scale.   It’s also important to clean the surfaces the cookie has come in contact with to prevent cross-contamination.

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Since I’m on the topic of egg safety, let’s not forget a seasonal favorite, Eggnog.  While I find it a guilty pleasure for the calories, I’d love to make this myself but didn’t know how to do so safely. The idea is to cook the eggs well, at least to 160 degrees and chill well overnight afterwards. I found a delicious recipe that avoids any contamination issues, and one that is kid friendly.  Let me know how your works out in the comment box below.  Enjoy!

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With diabetes however, it’s important to re-evaluate how to view meals and mealtimes diffently than before .  A study published in 2001 in the British Medical Journal explored this issue and despite the 15-minute discussion it evoked, the subject is just as relevant today. It’s difficult to re-think eating habits and bad ones still persist.  The idea of between-meal snacks in fact should be instead thought of as meals, just smaller, with a total of 5 to 6 meals distributed throughout the day. Ideally the suggestion from experts is having a small meal every 2 1/2 to 3 hours. This also has an added benefit of helping you lose weight by keeping you feeling satisfied throughout the day with your body’s blood sugars evened out. You’re much less likely to either binge in a rage of hunger or reach for that candy bar or coke while in the grips of a cold-sweat, nausea-inducing blood sugar drop. Not coincidentally, this same study also showed that eating these multiple smaller meals had a 5% lower overall cholesterol (including the LDL, the bad cholesterol) compared to those eating only one or two meals regardless of calories consumed.

Smaller meals during the day become a kind of "grazing" .

While at first it may seem all your focus is on food all day. It helps however to think of this routine like  ’grazing’ since the calories consumed are done so in smaller quantities but in a more uniform pattern.  The easiest way to do this is slashing each larger meal in half instead of just adding a couple of extra snacks. This way the calories you’re already consuming will result in less blood-sugar highs and lows and keep you sane all with minimal cravings.

Happy grazing!

Is corn a healthy vegetable?  Obviously it’s a major ingredient – I used corn meal today in a recipe in fact- and its derivatives fuel an uncountable number of people, animals and machines.  Original to the Americas, corn is a traditional food of cultures situated in modernity and of cultures that remain aboriginal.

But I’m worried about additives to a popular food- popcorn.  The offender? diacetyl.

A study commissioned by the Seattle P-I (online newspaper) shows that top-selling butter substitutes, when heated, release vapor from a chemical additive called diacetyl. When inhaled, this vapor has been linked to a rare, sometimes fatal respiratory disease called bronchiolitis obliterans. Yes, many brands have elimiated this additive but there is still the aspect of the professional cook or chef who uses products containing diacetyl constantly over heat as a condition of their employment.  No one outside the industry is examining what consumers and workers who pop corn in theaters, discount stores, school gyms and fairgrounds are being exposed to.

The diacetyl vapors from some of the products are released in such volume that they could pose a significant risk to professional cooks who stand over hot grills or skillets for hours and use large amounts of these butter substitutes, according to the analysis. source

Remember being a kid and wondering why not eating is called a “fast”? Is it because we hope it gets over with as FAST as possible? As an adult, I have come to wonder why is a fast, or fasting, included in so many cultural traditions, including my own, and why would we embark on this type of challenge in the first place? What is the impetus to continue to include fasting into our “modern world”? And do we wish our life away while we are fasting hoping to get it over with, just to be able to have that tuna sandwich or whatever when it is time to break our fast???

The basics: What is a fast?

Main Entry: fast

Function: intransitive verb

Etymology:Middle English, from Old English fæstan

Date: before 12th century

1 : to abstain from food 2 : to eat sparingly or abstain from some foods

Who fasts? and how far do we have to go?

Importantly, a fast is an opt-in choice to lengthen the time between stimulus (need to eat) and response (eating.) Perhaps whenever we humans find ourselves at this moment, and it is usually a mere moment, between stimulus and response, we can actualize ourselves in a way unlike any other creature. Other rituals in diverse communities also serve to lengthen the time between stimulus and response- these rituals deal with basic human needs such as breathing (water/immersion rituals last a few seconds) to sexuality (abstinence vows lasting a lifetime.) My opinion -as a student of human development- is to place the most value on the types of traditions, and by this I include social traditions, religious/faith-based traditions, health traditions, all-of-the-above traditions, which have a definite beginning, middle, and end. I see much intrinsic value for the individual and her community, as a person practices the extension of the time between stimulus and response while not excluding any part of the equation. This can create an amazing, unified and beautiful connection between the physical and the non-physical. Fasting: we begin having eaten in the past, we refrain from eating despite the physical pangs of hunger, we resume eating by breaking the fast. Situate this procedure within a community or society, and the goal of flipping over Maslow’s pyramid can be achieved by an entire group in a single day.

The balance of concealment and revelation has a faith-based power which the practice of fasting can illuminate. Revelation cannot exist without its foil, concealment. Think of how our body reveals strong urges to satisfy hunger, and think of our emotions that have stronger urges to eat when we feel bad, happy, when we are not hungry but we’re at a party so we eat anyway. Think of the part of our humanity which some call the soul, or the spirit, or the psyche, or life-force, or other word. It is this aspect of the person which temporarily conceals the physical urges of hunger by avoiding their satisfaction during a fast. The need to eat is a basic need that cannot be set aside easily because life literally depends on it. But the power imbued within concealment should not be underestimated. Concealment is greater in power and scope than revelation. An amazing concept and true.

So if we are waiting around for a miracle or other law-of-physics defying act to be a magic refrigerator we open up to fulfill- moment by moment – every stimuli in life, consider that the power of concealment may evoke a stronger connection to our own humanity and perhaps even to a higher power.

Healthy fasts? Maybe, but is that the point?

Joel’s words: Whether or not you believe carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming or not, it is harmful to the environment and reducing your carbon footprint is a great idea.

I evaluated myself at one of the several sites mentioned [Carbon Footprint], one that is based out of the UK but has data to compare me to my peers here in central U.S.A. The calculations for the primary emissions are based on a combination of metrics from the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the UK’s Department for Transport, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). P.s. it was fun.

I gave US dollar figures for various types of fuel (electricity, coal, natural gas, LP, others) use at home and the results:

Total for your home = 7.437 tonnes of CO2
Total for your cars = 3.124 tonnes of CO2
Total secondary footprint = 4.813 tonnes of CO2
Total = 15.374 tonnes of CO2

* The average footprint for people in United States is 20.4 tonnes.
* The average for the industrial nations is about 11 tonnes.
* The average worldwide carbon footprint is about 4 tonnes.
* To combat climate change the worldwide average needs to reduce to 2 tonnes.

The final stage of the evaluation reveals several options to donate to offset one’s personal carbon footprint!

The 19th Annual Weber GrillWatch Survey says 31 percent of American grill owners are grilling meat more than they were a year ago because they are “trying to eat healthier.” Nearly 40 percent said they are grilling leaner meats, more vegetables (38 percent), more poultry (34 percent) and more fish (22 percent) than they did a year ago. Meanwhile, six percent indicated they are grilling more meat substitutes such as veggie burgers and tofu, and 5 percent are grilling more fruit, although women are more likely to do so than men.

Grilling is growing in popularity, evidenced by the following factors, among others:

–Fifty-seven percent of all grill owners say they grill throughout the year. Among owners of different grill types, those who use electric grills (65 percent), gas stand-ups (61 percent) and smokers (60 percent) most often are more likely to define “grilling season” as year-round than charcoal grill owners (53 percent)

–Americans are grilling more times per week. Seventy-one percent report they use their grill “at least once a week” during their grilling season (up from 69 percent last year), and 47 percent say they fire it up “at least a few times per week,” compared with 43 percent last year

The Weber GrillWatch survey, conducted by third-party Greenfield Online, polled 1,000 grill owners. All respondents were more than 21 years of age and own a gas, charcoal or electric barbecue grill or smoker.

To view the study in more detail, click here.
By Tom Johnston on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 For Meatingplace.com.

Happy Birthday, Green Options!

Green Options, that community of superheroes dedicated to environmental resources, education, and discussion, doesn’t have to fly around the Earth at an incredible speed, reversing our rotation and sending us back in time to make our reality better, cleaner and, most importantly, more sustainable. No, what the team at Green Options has been doing for us, while our beautiful planet revolves normally in the vastness of the universe for the past year, is combine together the expertise of a diverse group of talented individuals who are committed to ecology in the broadest sense.

There are many people to appreciate in the one-year-old GO project- from Publisher David Anderson and Senior Editor Jeff McIntire-Strasburg to the many blog writers and podcasters who activate their growing readership in amazing (and interesting) ways. The robust, link-layered posts bring us from our home garden to science class to Wall Street to the White House, with an eye toward internationalgreen trends, too. Don’t forget the kids on this trip!

The flavoured milk drinks are available in chocolate, strawberry and banana flavours and are sold in schools and colleges, as well as at 500 retail outlets across the UK.

On the heels of the international reports (also here) that organic food is better, Health Patio wishes we could serve all the “flavours” ourselves.

The backstory on the company was outed today by Steve Dube of Western Mail . Where a family farm may be prohibitively difficult to run physically as well as financially, a farm of families has met with great success with 3000 acres and 23 employees– a size that gives everyone a good standard of living and time off for holidays. The employees are mostly young families in the fertile countryside of this Wales (UK) community. The farm manager is newly returned from the United States, and it looks like Three Farms Milk co-operative – Llaeth Tair Fferm – faces the future with confidence.

In the spring of 2007 in London, look for these organic milk products as stars of the International Food and Drink Event- and read what the company says about itself:

Daioni (Welsh for goodness) is a range of flavoured organic milk drinks from a family run farm in Pembrokeshire, West Wales. Produced from organic semiskimmed milk it is low in fat (98.4% fat free) and sugar (<4.5%). All the ingredients are Soil Association and Vegetarian Society approved and meet Government nutritional guidelines for schools drinks. There are no artificial additives or colourings. Packaged in a handy 250ml and 125ml TetraPaks, with straw attached and an ambient shelf life of at least ten months, Daioni is ideal for lunchboxes, vending machines or just as a healthy alternative drink.