Quick Eats: BBQ Black Beans with Sweet Potatoes

April 22, 2011

Even though it goes against my paleolithic viewpoint, I just am not in the mood for eating meat these days. Part is it’s spring and I want lighter fare, part is because I’m very tired thanks to cytomegalovirus and am opting for easy to make things. This uber simple dish has just a handful of ingredients and is done in about 20 minutes. And it’s delicious — sweet, smokey and beany.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2″ cubes
1T oil/fat for cooking (I used bacon drippings, but olive oil or coconut oil would work well)
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1/4 C BBQ sauce (I like Bone Suckin’ Sauce)
Tabasco sauce — optional (I like the chipotle one)
Handful chopped cilantro

Instructions:

  1. Heat pan over medium heat. When hot, add oil/fat and swirl around. Add sweet potatoes and cook until tender and slightly browned. When done, remove from pan.
  2. Add blackbeans, 1/2 the cilantro, and BBQ sauce to the pan. Cook until heated through. Turn off heat.
  3. To serve: Divide sweet potatoes into 2 bowls followed by BBQ black beans. Sprinkle remaining cilantro on top and eat!
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My version of a heart-healthy diet

April 19, 2011

So, yesterday I talked about my perspective on fat and why I think vegetable oils are evil. This probably has you scratching your head wondering what a heart healthy diet is. Here’s my take.

Here’s a summarization of yesterday’s post:

  • LDL is not bad; oxidation of LDL is bad
  • Polyunsaturated fats are evil — they make your LDL oxidize and form trans fats when you cook with them
  • Saturated and Monounsaturated fats are good — they protect your LDL from oxidation and are heat stable
  • LDL pattern matters MUCH more than the number:
    • Low fat diets make your LDL small/dense which is bad
    • High fat/low carb diets make your LDL light/fluffy which is good

Now, the American Heart Association recommends that for heart health you limit fat to 30% of total calories, and keep  saturated fat to no more than 7% of calories. If you need 2,000 calories/d, this would be 67 g fat, and 15 g saturated fat (about 1 tablespoon of butter).

I don’t have a problem with limiting fat to 30%, that’s pretty reasonable. At 9 calories per gram, fat grams can add up fast. But I do take issue with the saturated fat recommendation for the reasons I’ve already discussed.

The Rogue Dietitian Heart-Healthy Diet™:

  1. Make saturated and monounsaturated fats the main fats/oils in your diet. This includes butter, bacon drippings, coconut oil, beef fat, and olive oil. Bonus points if it comes from grass-fed animals.
  2. Avoid vegetable oils (except olive and canola) as much as possible. And dear god, please don’t use margarine.
  3. Eat at least 4 cups of vegetables, and 1 serving of fruit. You need a variety of antioxidants found only in plants.
  4. Everyday get at least 1 serving of any of the following: chocolate, red wine, berries, tomatoes, pomegranite. These are potent antioxidant foods.
  5. Minimize grains — eat no more than the size of your fist at each meal.
  6. Take fish oil. Make sure to take it with 100 IU vitamin E to prevent it from oxidizing.
  7. Take at least 2 g Vitamin C. More would be better. I’ll write about vitamin C soon.
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The Unsubstantiated Villainization of Dietary Fat

April 18, 2011

Dietary fats, cholesterol and heart disease is a long and winding story. I’ll try to keep it brief, but this may get long.

To begin the story, back in the 50s this guy named Ancel Keys set out to correlate a nations diet with heart disease. From this came the Seven Countries Study, of which modern nutrition and health advice is based. This study found identified overweight and obesity as the major contributing cause of chronic health conditions (obvious, I know, but someone had to be the first to point it out). Moreover, this study found that nations who ate less saturated fat, or less fat overall had lower rates of heart disease. In particular, Mediterranean countries came out lookin’ great. (Italy, Crete especially) So, from this study (and followup studies) is where we get the idea that fat is bad for our hearts, and saturated fats are especially evil.

There was one problem — data from 22 countries was available and for reasons I don’t know, 15 country’s data was not eval’d for the 7 Countries Study. Subsequent analysis of all data actually showed that higher fat intakes were correlated with better health. Another problem was that they didn’t differentiate between saturated fat and trans fat — it was all lumped in together. Keep in mind that back in the 50s, trans fat was RAMPANT in the American food supply.

Now, around the 70s they started looking at this cholesterol stuff and CORRELATED increased cholesterol with heart disease. Eating saturated fat makes your cholesterol go up. This is why we have been told to avoid cholesterol in the 80s, and saturated fat has been vilified for decades. (And, this link has never been PROVEN — to this day it’s still called “the lipid hypothesis.”) Coincidentally, this has helped the pharmaceutical industry make billions each year on the sale of statin drugs to lower cholesterol, even though modern research shows they don’t help avoid heart disease.

OK so that’s the background. Now the nitty gritty.

When we talk about “cholesterol” there’s total cholesterol, LDL (“bad” chol), and HDL (“good” chol). Each serves a purpose in the body. Drs are especially obsessed with LDL for this is the stuff that winds up clogging your arteries. The thing is, LDL cholesterol in and of itself isn’t bad. What matters are two things: a) what pattern is it (small/dense or light/fluffy), and b) is it oxidizing?

LDL floats around the body doing it’s thang. When it gets oxidized is when it gets deposited in your arteries. Now, LDL is made up of the fats you eat. So, if you eat a lot of sat fat, your LDL is made up of sat fat. If you eat unsat fat (vegetable oils), your LDL is made up of unsat fat.

Sat fat is “bad” because it makes your LDL go up, the dr freaks out and puts you on a statin to the tune of $1200/yr. Unsat fat makes it go down, so drs and dietitians get happy. (Well, not THIS dietitian but you’ve already know I’m pretty rogue.)

Here’s the kicker: saturated fats don’t oxidize! Unsaturated fats do. To be more precise, monounsaturated fats (olive, canola oil) oxidize 10 times more readily than sat fat. Polyunsat (corn, soybean oil) oxidize 100 times more readily than sat fat.

So, while all those “heart healthy” polyunsat fats (PUFs) are lowering your LDL, they’re also making it oxidize like crazy and wind up in your arteries. What’s more, since PUFs oxidize (bond with stuff) so easily, when you heat them and add anything with water (which is to say, all foodstuffs) you’ll form trans fats, a double whammy for your heart!

The other fun thing is that fat makes your LDL light + fluffy, which is the good pattern. Diets low in fat (and high in grains) make it small + dense, which is really bad.

So, IMHO sat fat = good. Polyunsat fat = bad. Olive oil is ok, but I honestly consider corn and soybean oil to be poisons we shouldn’t eat. I use bacon drippings, olive oil, and butter.

Now, the vilification of bacon is one of my other hot topics. It is my life’s work to reverse public thinking on this.

Image courtesy of not_on_display

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Quick Eats: Spring Solstice Soup

April 15, 2011

Spring has sprung here in northern New England, and with the lightness in the air comes a desire to eat some lighter meals. This soup combines the tail end of winter’s root vegetables, with the first tender green vegetables of spring. It’s packed with nutrition, light on calories, and quick to make — stove to table in less than 30 minutes.  This is a great use for leftover grilled chicken. I recommend serving it with a slice or two of multigrain bread slathered with Kerrygold butter.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 qts chicken broth
2-3 chicken breasts
2-3 cloves garlic, smashed
1 handful potatoes, cut into bite sized chunks (I used Russian banana fingerling)
1 small rutabaga, about the size of a large fist, cut into 1/2″ dice
2 carrots, cut into 1/4″ discs
2 parsnips, cut into 1/4″ discs
10 asparagus spears, cut into 1″ pieces
1 handful peas
1-2 T fresh dill, chopped
Salt + Pepper to taste

Instructions:

  1. Bring chicken stock to a boil in a large pot or Dutch oven.Meanwhile, grill chicken breasts and set aside once done.
  2. Once the stock is boiling, add garlic, potatoes, rutabaga, carrots, and parsnips. Return to a slow boil, and simmer for 10-15 minutes or until vegetables are tender.
  3. Add asparagus and peas. Continue to cook for 5 minutes more. When done, cut up chicken and add.
  4. Ready to serve! Stir in the dill and then ladle into bowls. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
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Sorry for the posting hiatus

April 14, 2011

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Life is happening. All over me. For those who don’t know, my very special, favoritst cat was diagnosed with an aggressive oral cancer back in November. Despite the oncologist saying he only had 4 to 8 weeks, we have managed to keep him going for 21 weeks (and counting) using a variety of alternative therapies. If there’s interest perhaps I will post about his regimen sometime.

Anyway, at the beginning of March he took a bad turn for the worse and has been slowly going downhill since then. I’ve been a wreck, and the stress has beaten me down causing a reactivation of cytomegalovirus. CMV is basically like mono (weeks of profound fatigue) with hepatitis. So, for the past 4 weeks I’ve been in bed watching Netflix on my iPad, snuggling with my cat, and comforting my achey liver.

I have lots of things to post on though! Some new recipes, musings on dietary fat and salt, and vegetable gardening. More to come…

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Cutting out fruit

March 28, 2011

I just came across this blog post on my Facebook feed where this blogger is explaining that she doesn’t eat fruit to aid her weight loss efforts:

Fruit is absolutely packed with sugar. Sure, the outdated food pyramid they showed us in kindergarten emphasized that “fruit is good for us” and it does contain fiber, vitamins and phytonutrients. However, a lot of the beneficial nutrients found in fruit are just as available in vegetable sources WITHOUT the sugar.

You’re thinking, “But sugar from fruit is different isn’t it? It’s healthy sugar.”

Nope, sugar is sugar. And saying that there is healthy sugar is like saying that there is healthy crack! It does not matter if it comes from fructose, sucrose (table sugar), an orange, honey or a slice of red velvet cake it will still have the same detrimental effects on your weight loss.

One of sugar’s major drawbacks for people trying to lose or maintain weight is that it upsets the body’s blood-sugar balance, triggering the release of insulin, which the body uses to keep blood-sugar at a constant and safe level. Causing spikes in your insulin becomes problematic because insulin promotes the storage of fat! So when you eat sugar whether it be from an apple or Starbucks brownie you are making way for rapid weight gain and elevated triglyceride levels, both of which have been linked to cardiovascular disease.

And when your insulin is spiked, you also increase your appetite. Ever notice after eating a piece of fruit or something sweet, you want something else to eat?

First of all, good for her for losing weight and keeping it off. There certainly is something to be said for doing whatever works, and clearly this is in part working for her.

With that said, all the nutritional inaccuracies in this post are making my head explode. I’m totally on board with eliminating empty sugars (soda, etc), but get totally bugged at the ‘fruit has sugar, therefor fruit is evil’ argument. Yes, glucose elevates blood sugar levels which will cause weight gain. Unlike the poster said, it absolutely DOES matter where the sugar comes from, and in what form. Half the sugar in most fruits is fructose which DOES NOT enter the blood stream — fructose does NOT cause insulin release. (And nor do other monosaccharides — glucose is the only one.) Now fructose has its own set of problems, so I’m not saying it’s ok to go load up on it, but the few grams in a piece of fruit are hardly reason to ditch fruit.

More over, the reason why my head explodes over the “sugar is evil” argument is that there is no discussion about total CARBS. Starches — like those found in pasta, rice and whole grains — are just chains of glucose molecules. The same glucose which will enter the blood stream, cause insulin secretion and then fat deposition. So tell me, then, why it is OK to eat a piece of whole wheat bread (11.5 g glucose from starch) but not an apple (4.5 g glucose)? If blood sugar levels and insulin are the major factors, the apple would be the better choice.

Fruit contains fiber and phytonutrients which she pointed out. And yeah, you can get these nutrients in other plant things, but fruits are really great sources of them. Frankly, people have a hard enough time getting enough plant things (non-grain) that I think cutting out fruit only hurts the cause. I do agree with her on juices being high in sugar — they are, although her data is inaccurate, jacking up the sugar content by 10-20% — and recommend limiting to 1 8oz glass per day.

So, please don’t go cutting out fruit based on advice from someone who doesn’t actually understand the science of nutrition. By all means, limit it to 2 pieces or 1 glass of juice a day.

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Rah rah safflower oil? Not so fast!

March 25, 2011

This week I came across this article, reporting on a recently published study reporting safflower oil positively affects heart disease risk factors.

Upon analysis, supplementation with safflower oil appeared to increase insulin sensitivity by 2.7 percent; decrease levels of the blood protein HbA1C, which is a marker of long-term excess glucose in the blood, by .64 percent; decrease C-reactive protein levels, which indicate inflammation, by 17.5 percent; lower fasting blood sugar levels by between 11 and 19 points on average; and increase HDL “good’ cholesterol levels by 14 percent on average — all within 16 weeks.

In this study they gave the participants safflower oil in addition to their everyday food. So, the safflower oil didn’t replace any fat, it was just in addition to. There are some good things here — lowering fasting blood sugar is nice, and 11 to 19 pts is substantial, and it’s nice to raise your HDL. Decreasing CRP… meh. So many things jack up CRP — allergies, infection, any kind of inflammation — that I don’t get all hot and bothered by CRP.

The lowering of A1C? All I can say is big fat whoop. A1C tell you the average blood sugar levels for the past 4 months, so it’s an important tool for monitoring diabetics to make sure they’re under good control (and compliant — this is how we know when they’re lying). So, lower A1C is a good thing. But lowering by 0.64%? That would be an A1C going from 7 to 6.95 — hardly clinically sugnificant. Frankly, I think reporting on it makes it seem more valuable than it actually is.

Really my biggest problem is how this article is all rah rah safflower oil! Studies like this really piss me off because they only look at biochemical markers which are CORRELATED with health conditions, yet ignore the underlying situation.

They didn’t address or look at lipid peroxidation — the real culprit in heart disease. While polyunsaturated fats may lower LDL (“bad”) cholesterol (not discussed in present study), it also makes it oxidize 10 times more readily than monounsaturated fats, and 100 times more readily than saturated fats. When LDL is oxidized is when it is taken up by macrophages and deposited into arterial plaque.

Also, PUFAs oxidize easily when exposed to heat, so if you put high LA safflower oil in a hot pan and add anything with water (which is to say all foodstuff) you’ll hydrogenate some of the double bonds forming — wait for it — trans fats.

So please, don’t rush out to Costco and stock up on safflower oil. Use olive oil and bacon fat for cooking, butter for eating, eat at least 4 cups of vegetables a day, and go easy on the starches. (And obviously don’t eat crap.) Do this and you’ll increase your HDL, protect your LDL from oxidation, and lower your A1C.

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Weight Watchers Plan Now Less Dumb

March 10, 2011

I’ve had mixed feelings about the Weight Watchers Points plan. Originally rolled out in the late 90s, every food has a “point” value attached to it, about 50 calories per point though this can be more or less based on the fiber or fat content. You get a certain number of points to use in a day (24 was typical, about 1200 calories), and can eat whatever you wanted as long as you stayed in your point budget. There were also some bonus points awarded each week you could use for splurges. Non-starchy vegetables were free.

What I liked about this plan is that it got people paying attention to what they were eating, and how much. I also LOVED that vegetables were free, encouraging people to eat more of them. However, what I did not love was that the points system was rigged so you were penalized for eating fat, and rewarded for eating fiber. Now, I think eating fiber is great and all, but this system basically encouraged you to eat lots of carbs (where the fiber is) and low fat — and no regard was given to protein. This is a recipe for disaster — fluctuating blood sugar levels, hunger, diabetes. No thanks. So, for this reason I never recommended WW to people.

In late 2010, WW rolled out the newest incarnation of the Points plan, called Points Plus. BIG IMPROVEMENT! Points Plus now takes into consideration all macronutrients, including protein. Point values for foods are a bit different, generally giving 35 calories per point (+/- 5 pts) and you get more points in a day — 29 seems common.  According to the patent filing, there are now 11 g protein, 9 g carbs, and 3.8 g fat per point. Also, every 12.5 g fiber and 24 g sugar alcohols deducts a point from an item. Non-starchy vegetables continue to be free, and now fruits are too.  They have a list of “Power Foods” which include fruits, vegetables and lean proteins — foods which will fill you up (fiber) and make you feel fuller longer (protein).

For the most part I think this is great. This plan will help encourage eating more protein, and I love that fruits are free. True, fruits have sugar but if you’re feeling noshy you’re much better off eating a yummy grapefruit than a few cookies. So, in that regard the new Points Plus plan will hopefully encourage people to eat more real foods and less crap. I still disagree with the fat penalty, so if it were me, I would count 5 g fat as a point since fat has about twice as many calories as carbs and protein. But whatever, it’s a small difference.

In short, the WW plan is now one that I can get behind and endorse. I still think the Paleo or Zone Diets are better for overall health, but WW can be a good approach if you’re not willing to cut out your grains.

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Quick Eats: Grilled Chicken and Chickpea Salad with Feta, Mint, and Cumin Vinaigrette

March 10, 2011

This is a super easy recipe to throw together for a nice lunch or light dinner. When you’re grilling chicken, throw an extra breast or two on to have on hand — then this dish will be done literally in minutes.

Grilled Chicken and Chickpea Salad with Feta, Mint, and Cumin Vinaigrette

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts
1 15 oz can chickpeas
1 to 2 oz feta, crumbled
10 kalamata olives, halved
2 T olive oil
2 t ground cumin
2 T red wine vinegar
Fresh mint, thinly sliced (fresh or dried oregano works well too)
Salt + Pepper to taste

Instructions:

  1. Grill chicken breasts, let rest 5 minutes and slice. (Left over grilled chicken works great here!)
  2. Heat olive oil in a pan and add cumin. Heat for a minute or so, then transfer to bowl and add vinegar. (You can skip heating it if you want, but it gives it an extra oomph.)
  3. Drain chickpeas and rinse with water. Add to bowl with cumin, olive oil and vinegar.  Add olives, mint, salt and pepper and toss. Divide into 2 bowls, add chicken and feta and enjoy!
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Posted in: Dinner, Gluten-Free, Quick Meal, Recipe – 1 Comment

Freezing Winter Greens

March 9, 2011

This excellent post over at The Kitchn suggests freezing winter greens for later use. Basically, blanche, dry, chop and freeze. Then, you can grab a handful of, say, frozen Kale and toss into your can of Amy’s Lentil Soup to sneek in some extra vegetables.

Love it!

Posted in: Tips, Vegetables – 1 Comment
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