The Hemp Connection [Search results for beer] 

Last night, after a long day at the computer, I walked over to the gym for a swim. And as I always do, I stop in to Trader Joe's to see what food and drink they were sampling. I have been so busy working I completely forgot St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner.and TJ's was sampling corned beef and beer for a themed promotion.

As I swam, I thought about some less fatty options you cysters could try this year. Which, beer fresh on my palate, led to my looking up recipes for beer soaked salmon (see below)…and then to a Google search for the health benefits of (moderate!) beer consumption to justify posting the recipe…and I found quite a bit!

•Hops contains flavonoids which may help to prevent certain kinds of cancer.

•Beer contains vitamin B6, which protects against heart diseases by preventing the build-up of a compound called homocysteine.
•Beer contains folate! And you know how much inCYST loves folate!

•Magnesium, another mineral you see us write about in this blog, is also found in beer.

•You'll find vitamin B12 in your lager as well, which is needed for maintaining normal growth, good memory and concentration.

Since many of the readers of this blog are trying to conceive, I must caution you that consumption of any kind of alcohol is not recommended if you are or are trying to be pregnant. In this beer salmon recipe from the Food Network, there is opportunity for the alcohol to evaporate with cooking, leaving the nutrients behind. You can use garlic powder instead of garlic salt, and cut the brown sugar in half, if you wish. Since it's maple syrup season, you might even substitute a little bit of that instead if you have some on hand.

I found a nice quinoa stuffing with leeks, walnuts, and cherries at http://www.myrecipes.com/ that you might like to try along with the salmon.

Of course, you can enjoy the meal with a nice hearty beer if you wish, there will surely be some left from your six pack at dinner time! In my house, it's going to be the Guinness seasonal that inspired this blogging journey.

May the face of every good news and the back of every bad news be toward you…
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

My friend Steven recently returned from a vacation to Australia. He shared this photo of vegemite ice cream! It reminded me that our friends Down Under have a culinary love affair with a food our vegan readers should become better acquainted with. That is, brewer's yeast.

Vegemite (also known as Marmite if it is produced in the UK, New Zealand, or South Africa, and Cenovis if made in Switzerland) is a dark paste made from brewer's yeast leftover after the brewing process. It's most commonly eaten as a spread on bread, as shown in this photo.

Some of the more common descriptions of Vegemite's taste include: salty, bitter, like beef bouillon. One friend described as"Australian miso". It's never really taken off in the United States, but my friends from places where it is common do seem to"Jones" for it when they've gone awhile without a fix.

Nutritionally, Vegemite is an incredible powerhouse! It is very high in thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and folic acid, all vitamins which women with PCOS need more of. Kraft, maker of Vegemite, has a website with some interesting recipes for the adventurous reader, including this one for a roast pumpkin and leek risotto. I may have to buy some myself just in the name of trying that one!

One of the things I like about Vegemite is that it is actually made from the leftovers of the beer-making process. In short, leftover yeast cells are processed and combined with salt, celery extract, and onion extract to make the popular black paste. So it's green as well as nutritious, meaning everyone wins!

If you happen to be reading this from Vegemite's home turf, be on the lookout for a new product released just last month. My First Vegemite, actually designed for children, is 50% lower in sodium. It's also fortified with vitamins B6 and B12, which makes it even more attractive to vegans, who have a hard time finding sources of vitamin B12 that are compatible with their food philosophy.

While nutrition purists may insist that Vegemite is too salty, I maintain that in moderation, and used in other recipes, it has its benefits. Amazon.com has not yet picked up this new product but I did find it on eBay.

I'm not an expert on this food, but I'm told Vegemite's cousin Marmite, which is actually available at the local Fresh and Easy, is milder in flavor and also contains vitamin B12 which the original Vegemite does not. That IS available on amazon.com if you're not close to Australia, Fresh and Easy, or other store catering to expat Aussies.

I'm still wrapping my head around vegemite ice cream…though my adventures with jalapeno beer (local), reindeer sausage (on a trip to Alaska), and elk steak (on a ski trip to Steamboat Springs) were far from disappointing. Hmmmm…may I'll have to scheme a business trip to Australia and do some in-depth journalism…

To our many Aussie readers, thank you for your visits! I see you on our stats and I appreciate your visits. I've actually been timing new posts to show in concert with YOUR early evenings, not ours. I hope you find us helpful, mates…be sure to ask questions when you have them! And if you have ideas for how to use your food that we newbies might appreciate, please share!

To our vegan readers, stay tuned. More on brewer's yeast tomorrow. You REALLY need to become friendly with this nutritional gem.

Practically ever client I have ever had, has come to me with some kind of expectation that the secret to their weight problem/eating disorder/heart disease lies in a magical set of recipes filed away on my computer. If I don't hand them recipes, they feel as though I have failed them.

It's not that I don't mind creating recipes, in fact, it is one of my very favorite things to do! But I feel as if I give you too much structure in what I encourage you to do, you miss the point of cooking. And I feed the delusion that some specific set of instructions on a piece of paper is going to magically fix your problem.

So today I thought I would share what my morning has been like. I hope you will see, that the best kitchen inspirations come from the most surprising places. You often have to put the recipes away in order to see them.

My culinary challenge this week for Chow Locally is developing recipes for mustard greens. My big barrier to this challenge is that try I as I might, and trust me, I have done so many, many times, I just can't get into mustard greens. They are pretty bitter to my palate. But since we have about 125 customers wanting to know what to do with the mustard greens we gave them, and since mustard greens grow pretty well in Phoenix, I got the feeling the Universe decided to tell me it was time to cut the mustard (Ha! Couldn't resist!)

I didn't snap my fingers on this one. I am pretty sure by now, in fact, I have read every single blog post about mustard greens, looking for ideas that sounded like they might work for a wide spectrum of taste buds. When I woke up this morning, needed to try a recipe, I had no idea what I was going to do.

In typical procrastinator's style, I decided to clean my kitchen instead. And…there sat inspiration #1: a couple of inches of stale beer that I was not able to finish last night. It was tasty, a local brewery's White Chocolate Ale, and I didn't want to throw it away. I realized since it was sweet I could get away with less sugar, which I had been thinking of using.

On the way but not totally there, I decided to procrastinate even more by working on my pile of samples from Expo West. This is what my living room floor looks like for about 2 weeks after I get home!

Out from the pile popped my collection of samples from a great family-owned business over in Orange County, Matt's Munchies. They have created a fun variety of healthy fruit leathers. The ginger spice, which is really a ginger and cinnamon-laced mango leather, became ingredient #3.

I poured the beer in a skillet, heated it up to dissolve the mango leather, and then put my chopped mustard greens in to let them braise. I cooked them all the way down until the sugars started to caramelize.

OK, I lied, it did use recipes in this process…but not in the way you are thinking. Because I'd read literally hundreds of recipes in search of inspiration, I noticed that a lot of Indian recipes for greens incorporate just a touch of brown sugar. So I knew if my concoction had something sweet in it, it would caramelize and offset the bitterness that make mustard greens challenging for me.
I am not going to give you any more instructions than this, and you won't get a nutrition analysis. You all know the ingredients here are good ones, and to give you more of a script defeats the purpose of my nudging you to free yourselves of overly rigid behavior in the kitchen. I promise you, your very favorite foods will be the ones where you left the script and started having some fun!

Finally, I threw in just a touch of sweetened coconut flakes for color and texture.

Click here for the top ten list of superfoods! Eat these foods and live 10 years longer!

The world has gone koo-koo for antioxidants!

I've been encouraging readers to increase their antioxidant intake, too…but did you know too many antioxidants can be a bad thing?

If you've been reading up on antioxidants, the word polyphenols may sound familiar. They are a category of antioxidants that are believed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Foods high in polyphenol content routinely show up on"superfood" lists and include: tea, wine, berries, beer, grapes, olive oil, chocolate, walnuts, peanuts, and pomegranates.

Before antioxidants were trendy, they were known as tannins. In some circles, tannins were even called"anti-nutrients". They may make protein difficult to digest and absorb, and they can bind and reduce the absorption of non-heme iron, a primary source of iron for vegetarians. If you're juicing and emphasizing any of the above foods, you may also be at risk for issues with protein and iron.

I'm not sure if the the term"polyphenol" has come into vogue to increase the marketability of a compound formerly associated with nutritional problems, or if we simply have learned more about their benefits over time. The important thing is, as with every food you can choose to include in your day, balance, moderation, and respectful use are all key if you truly want to capitalize on their nutritional gifts.

Here are some simple things you can do that can allow you to capitalize on the benefits of polyphenols while minimizing the problems they pose.

1. Avoid falling into the"top ten" trap and eat a wide variety of foods. Mix things up! I like to throw a shot of pomegranate juice into my carrot juice.

2. Be sure your daily diet is adequate in vitamin C, which can help to increase iron absorption. Vitamin C sources lower in tannins include: guava, parsley, broccoli, lychee, persimmon, papaya, canteloupe, and garlic.

3. If you drink orange juice, go for the all-natural kind. Commercial brands often ADD tannins in order to increase the"pucker factor" consumers associate with their product.

4. Enjoy coffee and tea in moderation. Even the"healthy" green kind.

And remember…variety…variety…variety!

There has been a lot of information circulating around the Internet recently about the dangers of agave nectar. It prompted me to take a little closer look. And I'm glad I did. What I've learned will be part of an ongoing series about the benefits and disadvantages of different types of sugar. It's a complex issue, so to make it more understandable, I thought I'd break it into installments. If you have comments about any of this, please feel free to post. I do moderate comments and won't be putting any up until the series is finished, in case you get ahead of me. I will take your comments into consideration as I proceed with this topic. Thanks for understanding.

According to a 2010 report in the European Journal of Food Safety, a comprehensive review of studies evaluating the effects of various carbohydrates and sugars on metabolism, simple sugars begin to have negative effects on health when they exceed 20% of total calories. That is simple sugars of all kinds--sucrose, fructose, and galactose. Here is how that translates into diets of varying calorie levels, so you can put this information into perspective.

Calorie level Healthful limit for sugar intake, calories Healthful limit for sugar intake, grams
1500 300 75
1600 320 80
1700 340 85
1800 360 90
1900 380 95
2000 400 100
2100 420 105
2200 440 110
2300 460 115

With fructose, the threshold is 7.5% of total calories; more than that, and negative health effects, such as elevated triglycerides, begin to appear. In other words, fructose should be used judiciously, even though it has a lower glycemic index.

Calorie level Healthful limit for fructose intake, calories Healthful limit for fructose intake, grams
1500 112 28
1600 120 30
1700 128 32
1800 136 34
1900 144 36
2000 152 38
2100 160 40
2200 168 42
2300 176 44

A can of soda would contain the following, based on the type of sweetener it contained. It mathematically fits into the above guidelines, but in a way that makes it hard to consume fruits, which also contain fructose, and stay within the calculated limits.
Sugar calories Sugar grams Fructose calories Fructose grams
Cane sugar 150 38 75 19
Beet sugar 150 38 75 19
High fructose corn syrup 140 35 77 19
Agave nectar* 102 25 87 22

*Agave nectar was a little bit harder to figure out. I did manage to find a Denver-based company called Oogave that makes sodas using agave nectar. Their Esteban's Root Beer is what I used for the above analysis.

My first find in a Google search brought me to Full Throttle, an energy drink manufactured by Coca Cola. Unbelievably, the"blue agave" flavor of this product contains no agave nectar at all, is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, and contains 220 calories in a can! They are definitely hoping the consumer would jump to conclusions about this product.

Are you juicing at home?

Here's how the same volume of a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 mix of beet, carrot, and spinach juice compares.
Sugar calories Sugar grams Fructose calories Fructose grams
120 24 31 7.8
Calories are not that much different, and total sugar, but the sugar type does. If you were to add fruit, that value would go up.

To give you an idea of what happens when you switch from sugar to agave nectar in the same recipe, I analyzed the same amount of watermelon Arnold Palmer recipe from last week's post. I adjusted the amount of agave nectar based on the fact that agave nectar is 72% sweeter than sugar.

Sugar calories Sugar grams Fructose calories Fructose grams
Made with sugar 20 5 9 2.3
Made with agave 18 4.5 10 2.5
Takeaway messages:
1. Any sweetened beverage,"healthy", or homemade, soda or juice, regardless of how it is sweetened, is a significant source of sugar and fructose. It is a dietary choice that should be made with respect, and sparingly.
2. Soda made in Mexico, even though it doesn't have high fructose corn syrup in it, is still problematic in large quantities.
3. The advantage to agave nectar is that it can help you to cut your total sugar intake, and reduce your glycemic load, but you still need to be aware of the quantity you consume.
European Food Safety Authority. Scientific Opinion on Dietary Reference Values for carbohydrates and dietary fibre. EFAS Journal 2010; 8(3): 1462.

http://www.nutritiondata.com/

http://www.livestrong.com/

I was standing at the grocery check out line last night, and my eyes unavoidably wandered to the magazine rack as I waited my turn. The weight-loss headlines on all those health and fitness magazines seem to scream, competing for my attention!

“The only workout you’ll ever need!”

“5 easy steps to a flat belly!”

“Lose 10 pounds this week without giving up dessert!”

“Get back into those skinny jeans with these three easy moves!”
I can’t help but roll my eyes and wonder if anyone who writes these really cares what happens beyond the purchase of the magazine. Most of those types of articles tend to recommend crash diets disguised as sound nutrition plans, and play to readers’ desires of maximum return on minimum investment with regard to exercise. But none of these things will set you up for long-term success.

If I could rewrite some of those headlines, they might look more like this:

“Get back to basics to get back in shape!”

“Lose the ‘extras’ and shed the extra weight!”

“Move it to lose it!”

“Get SMART about your goals!”

Those are my go-to tips for realistic weight management. There is such a focus on the “losing” part, and not much talk about what happens afterward! It’s easy to forget the work isn’t done after you’ve lost the weight. The ultimate goal then, isn’t just to lose the weight, it’s to maintain your new, healthier weight and the habits that got you there.

Get back to basics. In the kitchen, that means get back to fresh food, things that don’t tend to come in boxes and bags or are delivered through a drive-thru window. In life, that means, go outside and take a walk. Or, step away from the computer once in a while and walk over to your coworker’s desk to talk (instead of emailing) about that project you’re working on.

Lose the extras, like soda, excessive alcohol and mindless snacks. Ask yourself: Do I really need to sip on Mountain Dew all day while I work? And do I have to get the cookie with that salad I ordered just because it’s free? One beer or one glass of wine to unwind or enjoy with dinner is nice… but do I really need more than that? And when I’m at the movies… seriously. Is it that hard to watch a whole movie without a vat of popcorn or a suitcase-sized box of M&Ms on my lap?

Move more! It doesn’t matter if the perfect conditions for a regular workout routine are not in place. That should eliminate excuses like “I have no time.” And “I can’t afford a gym membership.” Just do something – NOW. Just make the commitment to moving more than you currently do.
Not starting, or giving up simply because things aren’t going perfectly are the complete opposite of jump starting anything. I choose instead to aim for progress, not perfection.

Get SMART about your goals! SMART goals are specific and measureable, attainlable and realistic, with a time-sensitive deadline. One of my clients set great SMART goal this year: “I will train to complete the Pat Tillman Run on April 16th in under 40 minutes by running three times a week for the next three months, building up my endurance and distance until I can run 4.2 miles within my goal time.”

How about you? What have you found to work best, what real-world tips would you offer to someone who wants to get their health and their weight under control?