One of the most significant things I did to help me boost my healthiness, and drop 40 pounds and keep it off for 4 years this January 2012 was eliminating and avoiding "chemical cuisine."
I define chemical cuisine as any food with ingredients that include additives, preservatives, antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, GMOs, pink slime and anything not made by Mother Nature - the best food engineer on the planet, in my humble opinion. With all these chemicals in our foods, it's no wonder health issues are on the rise.
If an ingredient sounds like it came from a chemistry experiment, I don't eat it. Eat real foods is my mantra.To simplify, I love Jack Lalanne's food philosophy, "If man made it, I don't eat it." The man lived to be 96 and was still working out til the day he died. Amazing!
If you too would like to start eliminating the chemical cuisine from your daily eating, here are a couple resources that can help educate you and guide you to brands and retailers that carry more all natural foods.
Resource: The Center for Science in the Public Interest
Here is a great and simple summary of, "The Safety of Food Additives" - which additives to avoid, banned additives, and safety ratings for all listed additives. There is even a handy chart you can print out and stick on your fridge.
Resource: The Non-GMO Project
The Non-GMO Project has a fantastic database that lists all the food brands that have been Non-GMO Project verified. The Non-Gmo Project is a non-profit organization and offers North America’s only third party verification and labeling for non-GMO food and products. Their certification has been widely adopted by the industry and consumers. I love that someone took it upon themselves to set some standard since the FDA has done very little in the way of GMO Food regulation.
If you have an iPhone, the Non-GMO Project database is also available in app form for free - handy for when you are at the grocery store.
Are there any other resources you use to help you avoid the chemical cuisine?
I am a fan of Paula Deen. I know that may seem odd given that I am all about healthy eating and on a bad day Anthony Bourdain proclaimed her "the most dangerous person in America" because of her decadent cooking. Time.com created a slideshow of her 9 most gluttonous recipes. Fried Butter Balls, y'all!
Paula reminds me of that larger-than-life aunt who is always fun and the life of the party. You love her to death because her cheeriness is so infectious but yet you also know that she doesn't always make the best choices and who knows when she'll say or do something flirtatiously inappropriate. But that's okay, those are her quirks and we take the good with the "needs improvement." We all have a relative like that.
I love Paula's energy and her obvious love of family and friends. As far as her cooking style, to me she is the Queen of comfort food. I would never recommend Paula's food for everyday eating but when it's time for those 20% days, the times when anything goes, Paula knows how to do that well. Remember, we're all about 80/20 eating here at Noshtopia.
But Paula is not just a grandmother, mother, wife and daughter, she is a brand. She has a built an empire around her style of cooking and now that she has gone public about having Type II diabetes her brand will have to change. Her brand must change because people will not watch her continue to cook the way she used to and be almost complicit in her unwellness by supporting with ratings even if Paula (and we) like to believe that her style is about moderation. Watching a diabetic eat Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding on TV is just not going to fly. At that point, it is no longer entertainment auntie Paula.
What I found most telling in her interview with Al Roker when asked if she was going to change the way she cooks and the way she eats, Paula dodged the question like a politician and simply said, "I've always eaten in moderation." If the answer was yes, she would straight out say, "Yes!" So clearly, the answer is no. She has not changed the way she eats and with her new deal with Nova Nordisk, pharmaceuticals and exercise are her means of diabetes management.
Frankly, I'm put off by the pharmaceutical endorsement but I get it, it's a business decision, and it's Paula's choice. As someone who also promotes a certain eating style, I have found it educational to read the tweets and posts reacting to Paula's diabetes announcement. People are definitely looking for consistency, authenticity, and accountability. Paula Deen has definitely disappointed many but she's also captured compassion from many others. The spectrum of reaction is wide, but clearly, the obvious is that we all now expect her cooking to change and evolve with her health.
Idealistic eating wellness wish
I would love Paula Deen to watch movies like Forks Over Knives and see that her Type II diabetes can be reversed with food versus pills - the Farmacy versus the Pharmacy. She can still eat okra, just sauteed instead of battered and fried. Of course, that would be an idealistic situation and Paula is not ready for nor desires that kind of change, obviously, at least for now. But we'll see what happens with her show ratings and product sales going forward.
Paula is in a wonderful position right now, if she chooses, to show how food can heal and affect a demographic of people especially in the Southern states where Paula is from where obesity and diabetes rates are highest in our country. Many can relate to Paula and the lifestyle changes she has to make for her health.
What did she bring to the table
Out of curiousity, I visited her new co-branded site with Nova Nordisk, Diabetes in a New Light. Of course, the first place I went to investigate was the recipe section. Now being a former marketing/advertising Pro who has done many launches, I was expecting at least a half dozen recipes to get people started. I was curious to see what these lighter Paula Deen recipes would look like.
Surprisingly, there was only one recipe. Just one, and the solo recipe was for a lighter version of her Lady and Sons Lasagna. More shocking to me was that the lasagna recipe listed 7 cheeses in it: Ricotta, Cottage, Parmesan, Mozzarella, Gruyere, Sharp Cheddar and Neufchâtel. Granted, the recipe called for no-salt, fat-free and reduced fat versions of these cheeses, and I'm no dietitian but really, 7 cheeses?
You can make delicious lasagna with just 2 of these cheeses. In fact, you can make an awesome dairy-free lasagne. The recipe does list nutrition information: Per serving: 260 calories, 9 g fat (5 saturated, 0 g trans), 55 mg cholesterol, 380 mg sodium, 23 g carbohydrate, 3 g fiber, 23 g protein. Before eating though, you have to cut the lasagna in 12 pieces to ensure you are getting a single serving size. I'm thinking these servings are very small and most would easily eat 2-3 servings for a dinner portion.
What I found off-putting about the Diabetes in a New Light website is that I wanted to sign-up for the newsletter to get future recipes but Nova Nordisk makes you list your home address and asks you a whole bunch of health-related questions that felt intruisive to me obviously to data-mine and create a database to let me guess, sell us more drugs and services. Dear Nova Nordisk, to get more people to sign-up just ask for the email at sign-up. Let us mingle with the recipes first and like the value we're getting. You can hit us up later for deeper information.
I wish Paula Deen all the best with her healing and health. Indeed, it will be fascinating to watch what she does on her shows and other ventures going forward.
This week, starting yesterday with our fresh juice toast, we're going to spend each day celebrating the life of Jack LaLanne, a man who had so much impact on my views on health and wellness.
In my opinion, this quote has got to be one of the simplest yet most influential philosophies of Jack LaLanne when it came to his own food perspective.
In 2007, I started to adopt Jack's philosophy almost 100%. I started by cutting out all aritificial sweeteners namely drinking diet soda...something I've been drinking for years.
Slowly, I adopted the philosophy that no one makes food better than Mother Nature and really, when you start eating real whole foods, organic or all-natural, you will see a significant difference not only in taste and experience, but in your overall health.
If you have local restaurants that support a farm-to-table philosophy, check them out and try new dishes. As well, support local farmer's markets for fresh produce and helping out your local economy.
I am totally with Hippocrates in his saying, "Let food be thy medicine." I have never felt better in my self since eating more fresh whole fods.
For Friday night snackage with wine before dinner, I made this most awesome fresh guacamole and instead of getting traditional tortilla chips for dipping, I got some of these Mediterranean Snack Food Company baked lentil chips which to my happiness are vegan and gluten-free. Doing some cabbage dancing!
I've never had lentil chips before, and I really enjoyed the chips. They are made primarily with bean flour consisting of lentil, adzuki, and garbanzo bean with some potato starch. And talk about filling, you can eat 22 chips for only 110 calories with 4 grams of protein and 3 grams of fiber. The chips are also low in fat at 3 grams/serving. That's a big touchdown in my book!
I got the sea salt flavor, and the lentil chips also come in sea salt & cracked pepper, and cucumber dill flavor. Definitely try these baked lentil chips! They are a fun alternative to the higher fat chips or the diet-marketed chips which usually taste like crispy cardboard to me. These baked lentil chips have way more taste charisma!
Last week, I tried Bison meat for the first time in this Bison chili. This week, I was visiting Prescott, Arizona with some friends and we stopped by for lunch at the Raven Cafe. I was curious to see on the menu an open-faced Elk burger on rye so I tried it out.
Elk is the second largest member of the deer family. Because elk is not a large-scale farm meat, it is typically free-range, and free of hormones and additives
The Elk burger was tasty! If no one had told me, I would have thought I was eating regular beef...although the elk burger did have a slight gamey taste to it but not too bad.
As you can see the burger was covered in gravy and onions which can make anything taste better, but I scraped off as much of the gravy as I could to get to the meat. I'd like to try an experiment and make a bison and elk meatloaf.
Whenever I've had coconut water it's just been plain water. At Whole Foods, the lady at the juice bar noticed I was scanning the coconut waters. I wanted to try something different as I noticed different flavor combos, and so she must have read my mind because she said to me:
"Have you ever tried coconut water with pulp in it?"
"Why no...Is it good?" I replied inquisitively.
"It''s my favorite. I like the chunks because it's kinda fun to chew as you drink," replied the friendly juice lady.
I just got a good vibe from that lady so I picked up a bottle of Taste Nirvana's Real Coconut Water with pulp made in Thailand. I took an up close shot of the coconut water so you could see what the pulp looks like.
Ya know what, I agree with the juice lady, it is kinda fun to chew as you drink. Plus, the chunks make the drink taste just a tad sweeter to me. I really appreciate that one 9.5oz bottle has just 75 calories, 1 gram of fat and 9 grams of sugar. There's even 2 grams of fiber. Bonus!
And as another added bonus, I had heard that coconut water is also a good hangover remedy because the water is packed with electrolytes which helps a hangover because the body is basically really dehydrated from the alcohol, and electrolytes help to rehydrate.
Last weekend, I had an opportunity to see if coconut water could indeed be a non-boozy hair of the dog option and ya know what, it did help!
Isn't that basil lovely? Herbs are not anything new to me, but fresh herbs are...and now I want to grow my own garden. I've always bought herbs dried in bottles at the supermarket.
One of the reasons I love going to my local farmer's markets is that I can get all kinds of fresh herbs anywhere from 50cents to $2 a bunch...which is plenty to last me a week.
I have become completely enamoured with the fresh herbs especially basil, thyme, rosemary, and sage because the flavoring really is just so heavenly, and the herbs really do make a big difference in food. I also like to the mixed bags of herbs where you get a surprise mixture. It's fun to play with the herbs and see what new ways you can dazzle the palate.
With some herbs, you don't even need that much to get a wallop of flavoring which I find amazing. Admittedly, I have become completely spoiled by the fresh herbs and have a hard time with the dried bottled herbs. The cool thing is that many herbs can be grown indoors and I'm thinking my next home project will be a mini herb garden.
I love the herb garden over at Dr. Andrew Weil's new True Food Kichen restaurant especially the 9' wall of fresh Rosemary. One day, coming clean with one of my secret fangirl crushes, I want to go visit Martha Stewart's culinary herb garden...if you can call it that. That garden is so ginormous, I bet you could put a Ferris Wheel in there and charge tickets.... and the garden is just herbs.
On Martha's website, they give a really good education on the herbs in the garden like the difference between Annuals and Perennials. It's really helpful that they include pictures of each herb so you can start to learn how to recognize each herb.
How about you? Do you love fresh herbs too and which ones are your favorite?
Straight up I will say that I am not a fan of mock meats, faux meats, or whatever you call these wanna-be meats made mostly with some form of soy protein and wheat gluten...which for some might as well be allergy nuggets.
I know a bit harsh, but let's be honest, and I say this with all do respect because I have tried many, many versions, in hopes of finding one I like as part of me wants to keep believing.
However, many mock meats end up having this rubbery or gummy experience that is just ick for me, and lots are packed with sugar my guess as a way to improve the taste. Plus, I tend to avoid soy, and have yet to find a mock meat that is soy-free. If you know of one, please do share!
All is not totally lost though, as I have had some good ones and luckily here in Phoenix at Green's restaurant, their "Secret BBQ Chicken Sandwich" is one of those tasty mock chicken sandwiches and see it even looks like real chicken. Green's sandwich was named by PETA as the #1 best Faux-Chicken Sandwich in the US. Here's the full Top 10 list.
At the grocery store, I saw these BBQ Pulled Shreds made by Gardein, and what caught my eye was the photo of the sandwich which looked like your average pulled pork sandwich along with the bright pink label screaming, "NEW BOLD BBQ Sauce!" (the sauce label is new) The shreds were also on sale for really cheap, so I thought I'd try it out.
Because I wanted to get all fancy pants for my review here, I tried to duplicate the photo on the packaging. Instead of lettuce, I used arugula because I had a bag of it in the fridge. I used a multi-grain organic bun I got at the Whole Foods deli, and I added a sweet hot mustard and some Brianna's Poppyseed dressing. I know, lots of sauce going on here, but the flavor combo was good my friends!
First up, the thing I enjoyed the most about the pulled shreds was the BBQ sauce which is indeed bold and on the sweet side which is how I like my BBQ sauces. The shreds have a bit more sauce on them than on the package photo which for me was great.
Did the shreds taste meat-like? I'll say mostly because if you gave this to someone and didn't tell them, they would sense something was off. I did like the fact that one serving of the shreds has 19g of protein. Excellent!
The mock BBQ Chicken Sandwich at Green's is so close that it would be tough to tell...which in my book is the ultimate sign in imitation, if a meat eater can't tell the difference.
I would eat the Gardein BBQ Pulled Shreds again...if someone made it. It's tasty but I wouldn't go running to the store to specifically go get it. If I was planning a BBQ and wanted to offer a vegan option, I would buy the Gardein shreds for my guests.
For some reason, I do want to try the Gardein Santa Fe Good Stuff because the photo looks like a really delicious piece of stuffed chicken breast. Yes, I am easily lured in by mouth-watering photos.
I will give Gardein this, the food photos on their packaging are excellent and make the mock meats look like real meats. That is impressive from a marketing standpoint to get people to try the product.
Have you tried any of the Gardein products? What did you think?
At the Association of National Advertisers' annual confab earlier this month, Coca-Cola Co. Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer Joe Tripodi talked of doubling its sales -- now at $31 billion -- within 10 years.
Doing simple math, that means in the year 2020, Coca-Cola is aiming to hit $62 billion in sales. 60% of growth is expected to come more from international markets like China and India. Mr. Tripodi also said he wants Coca-Cola to achieve 3 billion servings a day by 2020.
Ironically, which I didn't know until now is that Coca-Cola's motto is "Live Positively." My inner voice asks, "How can high fructose corn syrup flavored water help us live positively?"
For a moment, let's take a look at some soda and health stats:
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo combined control a whopping 73.9% of soft drink sales in the U.S. which includes teas, lemonades, sports drinks and waters....basically anything that is sugared water. Here's an interesting soft drink infographic created by Philip H. Howard an Assitant Professor of Michigan State University depicting the Soft Drink Industry Structure.
According to a diabetes study by the Population Health Metrics, diabetes in U.S. adults could rise from 14% in 2010 to 33% in 2050...which means 1 in 3 adults. It''s no secret that soft drinks are a contributor to diabetes. In this Harvard School of Public Health study on a correlation between sugary drinks and diabetes, "drinking one or two sugar-sweetened beverages a day increases diabetes risk by 26%."
According to the August 2010 issue of Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource on soda and obesity and Type 2 Diabetes, "Drinking too much soda could have health consequences ranging from weight gain to osteoporosis to kidney problems." Diet sodas are no better either.
Now these are just a few stats on the relationship between soda and health. Being a business person and having been a shareholder in companies before myself, I'm all for businesses growing because that means more jobs and a stimulating economy. Coca-Cola is a huge conglomeration and does own some of the most well known health drink brands like Odwalla and SmartWater (although VitaminWater was recently slapped with a lawsuit for being mis-marketed as "healthy.")
I get that Coca-Cola has to grow as a company.
However, if Coca-Cola is to hit their $62 billion in sales in 2020, that means more of us are going to have to drink more soda more often...and not just in the U.S. but all over the globe!
So, if we are drinking more sodas more often, that means we are not going to get any better health-wise, just a few health studies lead to that fact. Coca-Cola becomes profitable by contributing to our unwellness.
But being open-minded and an idealist I ask, will Coca-Cola change their formulas and use less High Fructose Corn Syrup and use more natural sweeteners? Will Coca-Cola be open to using natural low calorie sweeteners like Stevia in their diet sodas? Will Coca-Cola create and promote more organic or all-natural drinks?
My Magic 8-Ball says, "It is doubtful." Why? Because right now, Coca-Cola has a winning formula sales wise, so why change it...unless the government forces them to or we as consumers just stop buying the stuff. However, if Coca-Cola decides to create more natural drinks, than hey, I'll be one of the first to applaud the effort.
On a personal level, I wonder what it will take for people to drink less soda and for companies like Coca-Cola to create more genuinely healthful drinks because I do not consider drinks loaded with HFCS, artificial sweeteners and/or dyes healthy drinks. Drinking a flourescent purple sports drink with high fructose corn syrup in it just because it has electrolytes in it seems counter-productive to me.
I was craving a smoothie yesterday, so I stopped by @WFMRaintree to see what they had. I ususally make smoothies because trying to find places that make dairy-free and soy-free smoothies is like trying to find a thimble in a haystack - not as hard, but challenging enough.
When I saw the Tropical Green Smoothie, I got excited because there was no dairy or soy in it. Instead, the smoothie contains coconut water. Now that, you don't see every day! I'm intrigued.
For a moment though, I did pause a bit because it has spinach, mango, bananas, pineapple, and coconut water.
The idea of spinach blended with tropical fruits didn't sound tasty, but the lady at the bar told me her 6 year-old loved it, so well, that was enough testimonial for me. If a kid will eat it, then Steph will eat it - my Peter Pan complex rears it's cute head.
The smoothie is a Kermit the Frog green - kinda bright. However, the kid has good taste. You don't even taste the spinach. You get all kinds of flourishing deliciousness. I could almost hear the Un-Cola 7-Up dude go, "Mahvelous!" in his deep sexy Trinidadian voice.