Hazelnuts have always been around my house. When I was a little girl we even had a dog who knew how to crack them open and enjoy the kernel inside! They're a common ingredient in holiday cooking, which has me thinking of hazelnuts a lot right now.
Hazelnuts are not as commonly known in the United States as other nuts, but they are a great PCOS-friendly food to become acquainted with. Hazelnuts are very high in monounsaturated fatty acids, putting them in a category similar to macadamia nuts, olives, and avocadoes.
In addition, they are a good source of iron, calcium, zinc, and potassium.
You can enjoy them the way Coco used to, simply cracking them open and eating them, or you can grind them into powder to use in baked goods, breading for fish and poultry, and salad dressings…anywhere you might use ground flaxseeds. (I like the way my coffee tastes after I've ground hazelnuts then coffee in my coffee grinder!)
Here's a great recipe for hazelnut pad thai from the Hazelnut Council. To make it even more PCOS friendly, try it with Shirataki Noodles and use either hazelnut oil or canola oil for cooking.
I was recently asked about whether or not Nutella was healthy for PCOS. Compared to some other choices, it's not really so bad. Hazelnuts are a good source of monounsaturated fats, and folate. However, it has added sugar and palm oil, which are not ingredients you should be consuming on a regular basis.
I found a healthy hazelnut spread recipe online which looks easy to make. The palm oil has been replaced with canola oil. I encourage you to undercut the amount of sugar, say start with 1/2 cup, and increase to taste, to see how little you can get away with.
This time of year hazelnut powder is available at Trader Joe's, which makes this recipe even easier.
Oh, boy, this German girl is happy to know one of her faves is back on the radar!
I don't like avocado. I grew up with avocado trees in my own yard and all my neighbors' yards, and never, ever, ever (did I mention EVER?) could I stand the taste of avocado, no matter how it was presented to me. I figured, I probably wasn't missing out on anything anyway. Even at Mexican restaurants, while everyone dug into the guacamole with gusto, I enjoyed the salsa on my chips just fine without the green stuff.
Imagine my surprise, when I started learning about good nutrition and healthy cooking and discovered I was in fact missing out. I learned that avocados are high in monounsaturated fat, which is said to help lower cholesterol, or keep it low. They're also a great source of potassium, fiber, folate — all good for your cardiovascular health!
So here I was, wondering if I'd ever find a recipe using avocados that would actually make this fruit palatable to me (yes, it's a fruit!). I wasn't necessarily going out of my way to find a recipe, but serendipitously, as I clicked through various websites, I came across this recipe for a chocolate avocado cake on Joy the Baker's blog, and the curiosity of baking with this healthier fat source instead of butter was too strong to resist. Plus, I love chocolate.
Monika Woolsey and I have been talking about this cake — and about baking with avocado in general — for weeks now. Today was the day. I didn't follow the recipe to the letter, because I didn't have enough powdered sugar, but really, it could use a little less anyway! Also, I used macadamia nut oil instead of whatever the recipe called for.
The outcome was REALLY surprising, in a good way! The cake itself is moist, but not greasy, definitely chocolatey, without even a hint of avocado. Instead it has a hint of macadamia nut! YUM!
The frosting is another story. I couldn't leave it green, the way it is in the original recipe — 3 avocados and powdered sugar = green frosting. It looked like the slime from Nickelodeon and the sight of it turned my stomach. So I added 3 tbsp cocoa powder, crossed my fingers and turned on the mixer one more time. The result: chocolate frosting. Unfortunately, the frosting doesn't taste as good on its own as the cake does, so I wasn't wild about licking the spatula.
The combination of the two, however, was very good! I will definitely play with this recipe a little more and maybe even make some cupcakes or a batch of brownies like this!
And yes, there are still several cups of sugar and 3 cups of flour, so it's not a miracle food that's great for your health. However, it could work with a little less sugar, and all the good stuff from the avocado bring it up a notch or two in the"good for you" department.
By the way, if you'd like to learn a little more about the avocado, check out the World's Healthiest Foods website — it's a great resource!
Here's the recipe, I'll note my deviations in parentheses…
Chocolate Avocado Cake, with Avocado Frosting
3 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used macadamia nut oil)
1/2 cup soft avocado, well mashed, about 1 medium avocado (I ended up needing two since the ones I had were so small)
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 8 or 9-inch rounds. Set aside.
2. Sift together all of the dry ingredients except the sugar. Set that aside too.
3. Mix all the wet ingredients together in a bowl, including the super mashed avocado.
4. Add sugar into the wet mix and stir.
5. Mix the wet with the dry all at once, and beat with a whisk (by hand) until smooth.
6. Pour batter into a greased cake tins. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
7. Let cakes cool in pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto cooling racks to cool completely before frosting.
Avocado Buttercream Frosting from Alton Brown (honestly, it's FAR from resembling buttercream!)
8 ounces of avocado meat, about 2 small to medium, very ripe avocados (I used 3 small avocados, which only yielded 6.5 oz)
2 teaspoons lemon juice (I didn't have lemon juice so I used lime juice)
1 pound powdered sugar, sifted (I only had 1/2 pound of powdered sugar, so that's what I used, 8oz)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
***NOTE: I also added 3 TBSP of unsweetened cocoa powder to get rid of the green color, but if you like the green, skip the cocoa!
1. Peel and pit the soft avocados. It’s important to use the ripest avocados you can get your hands on. If the avocados have brown spots in the meat, avoid those spots when you scoop the meat into the bowl.
2. Place the avocado meat into the bowl of a stand mixer fit with the whisk attachment. Add lemon juice and whisk the avocado on medium speed, until slightly lightened in color and smooth, about 2-3 minutes.
3. Add the powdered sugar a little at a time and beat. Add vanilla extract until combined. If not using right away, store in the refrigerator. Don’t worry. It won’t turn brown!
***NOTE: The stand mixer didn't do a good enough job of making this even remotely close to frosting-like, so I took out my handy immersion blender and went to town on it. The result was a really smooth and shiny frosting with no visible bits and pieces of avocado!
Way back in the early 80's when I was a brand-new dietitian, we were taught to teach our clients to avoid nuts because of their high fat content. Today, nuts are the new health food. But research is often written up in ways that place a specific nut in the spotlight, without a big-picture perspective.
For example: Walnuts are routinely listed as"the" nut to eat because of their high omega-3 content. Most people do not realize that the omega-6 content of walnuts is so high that it is mathematically impossible to improve your dietary omega-6 to omega-3 ratio by eating only walnuts and no other nuts. Does that mean you shouldn't eat walnuts? Absolutely not! In all honesty, it is mathematically impossible to improve your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio with any nut. It is, however, yet another example of the imbalances we create when we focus on a handful of"super foods" and don't pursue variety.
Being the statistics nerd that I am, I spent the other afternoon looking at 10 different nuts in several different ways. I came to some interesting conclusions. Let me work you through what I did. I don't mean to be tedious, I just want to be transparent so anyone else can work through the analysis just as I did. If you're just looking for what nuts are best to eat,simply skip to the bottom of this post.
1. Analysis one: Best anti-inflammatory index (potential for a food to prevent or promote inflammation, as indexed at http://www.nutritiondata.com/), ranked in order of best to worst: macadamia hazelnut almond cashew peanut pistachio Brazil pecan walnut pine 2. Analysis two: Omega-3 fatty acid content, ranked from highest to lowest per ounce of nuts: walnut pecan pine pistachio macadamia cashew hazelnut Brazil peanut almond Important point of interest: almonds are the only nut that contain absolutely NO omega-3 fatty acids. 3. Analysis 3: Omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, ranked from lowest (most beneficial) to highest (least beneficial) walnut macadamia Brazil pecan cashew pistachio hazelnut pine peanut almond 4. Analysis 4: Total omega-3 and monounsaturated fat content, ranked from highest (most beneficial) to lowest macadamia hazelnut pecan almond cashew brazil peanut pistachio pine walnut 5. Analysis 5: Total saturated fat content, ranked from lowest (most beneficial) to highest walnut almond hazelnut pine pistachio pecan peanut cashew macadamia Brazil SUMMARY ANALYSIS: In each list, I placed a number"1" next to the top item, and numbered each nut below it in numerical order. Then I added up the scores for each nut based on their rank in each category. The lowest score shows the overall rank. This helps nuts that many not have one outstanding quality still receive a decent ranking--it gets credit, in other words, for being all-around pretty good without being written off for having one quality that is considered"bad" striking it off as"unhealthy". It also keeps a nut with one outstanding quality for getting too much credit when there may be nutritional aspects that truly keep it from being a superfood. The final rankings, with the most potentially beneficial at the top: macadamia hazelnut walnut pecan cashew almond/pistachio (tied) Brazil/pine (tied) peanut I guess you could say…just like people, all nuts have their good and not-so-great qualities. By spending too much time with one, you'll miss out on the benefits of the others. Diversify your interests, and you'll get the best benefit.
This blog post is a guest post written by inCYST Network member Christine Marquette, RD, LD, CLT, HFS. Chris is especially well-informed about healthy eating for vegetarians with PCOS.
Chris has just finished writingthree great e-books about PCOS: (1) The Quick Start Guide to PCOS, (2) The Nutrition Guide to PCOS, and (3) The Supplement Guide to PCOS, which you can get for a 20% discount with the code INCYST20 at checkout.
Chris' private practice is located in Austin, TX. If you're farther away, you can keep up with herat her blog and on Twitter, at @ChrisMarquette, and on herFacebook fan page.
The Truth About Canola Oil
By Christine E. Marquette
Have you read somewhere on the internet, or better yet, gotten an email from a friend, that says canola oil is not healthy, and worse, is down right dangerous? I’ve gotten these emails myself, and have seen some of the websites disparaging canola oil. In an effort to set the record straight, I first looked up the nutritional profile of canola oil on the USDA’s Nutrient Data Library, and compared it to Olive Oil. Keep in mind that virtually every website that provides nutrient analysis information gets their data from this website.
What I found was that canola oil contains about 1 gram (g) of saturated fat, 8.86 g of monounsaturated fat, and 3.94 total grams of polyunsaturated fat per tablespoon.1 The polyunsaturated fat includes 1.28 g of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA omega 3) and 2.6 g of omega 6 fatty acids. Olive oil contains 1.86 g of saturated fat, 9.85 g of monounsaturated fat, and 1.42 total g of polyunsaturated fat per tablespoon.1 The total polyunsaturated fat includes 1.32 g of linoleic fat and 0.103 g of linolenic fat; it does not contain any ALA omega 3 fatty acids (or EPA or DHA omega 3). As you can see, canola oil actually has more omega 3 fatty acids in the form of alpha-linolenic acid than olive oil. This is one positive regarding canola oil.
But a lot of the fear mongers will say that even if this is true, canola oil has high levels of erucic acid, which is dangerous. Originally canola oil did come from the rapeseed plant, which is a member of the mustard family, and did have high levels of erucic acid, but newer “breeds” of rapeseed plant used to make canola oil now have very low levels of erucic acid.2 I did not find any studies showing that the level of erucic acid in canola today causes any health problems.
Others will go on to say that even if the erucic acids are low, it is still bad for you because the polyunsaturated fats in it are unstable and can become inflammatory. If canola oil was truly inflammatory, the various clinical studies on canola oil would have shown it. Instead, there have been several studies in humans showing canola oil “produces hypolipidemic, anti-inflammatory, and antithrombotic effects,” which means it is indeed heart healthy. 3, 4
I did not find a single scientific study that showed any detrimental effects on humans from conventional canola oil. It is true that 80% of canola oil in North American is genetically modified to make it resistant to herbicides, which has not had an effect on its fatty acid profile. 5 There have also been some websites claiming that it has been banned in Europe. I have not found this to be the case either. It is true that in Europe there is a ban on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), so canola oil produced there comes from non-GMO rapeseed plants and is called “oil seed rape” rather than canola oil, but as far as its nutrient profile (percentage of omega 3s, monounsaturated fats, etc.) it is the same as conventional canola oil produced in North America.6
I can understand the fear in using GMOs, as some studies have shown certain foods that have undergone this process have gone on to cause problems in rats. The exact effect in humans is still under investigation. To allay that fear, I would suggest sticking with organic, non-GMO canola oil. Also make sure that no matter what type of oil you choose, if it is unrefined, avoid cooking at temperatures higher than about 355 F as high heat can cause chemicals to be released from unrefined oils that may increase the risk of cancer.7,8
1 USDA Agricultural Research Service Nutrient Data Laboratory/USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference; accessed online June 16, 2011 at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/
3 Indu M and Ghafoorunissa. N-3 Fatty acids in Indian Diets – Comparison of the effects of precursor (alpha-linolenic acid) Vs product (long chaing n-3 poly unsaturated fatty acids). Nutrition Research, Vol 12 Issues 4-5 April-May 1992, pp. 569-582.
4 Ghafoorunissa. Fats in Indian diets and their nutritional and health implications. Lipids. 1996 Mar;31 Suppl:S287-91.
5 Canola Quick Facts: Why Growers Choose GM Canola. Accessed online June 17, 2011 at http://web.archive.org/web/20071026034326/http://www.canola-council.org/facts_gmo.html
6 Canola Oil: The Myths Debunked. Accessed online June 17, 2011 at http://www.canolacouncil.org/canola_oil_the_truth.aspx
7 Canola Oil. Accessed online June 15, 2011 at http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/canola.asp
8 Is Canola Oil Hazardous to Your Health? Accessed online June 16, 2011 at http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blcanola3.htm
Used with permission. Copyright 2011 Christine E. Marquette
