Food Health Weathercast

Anyone who finds it hard to believe that science is still light years away from knowing everything, you only need to take one look at nutritional science of the not-so-recent past. Especially lately, the nutritional recommendations have been changing at such a breathtaking, ever-accelerating speed that it’s simply impossible to ever know whether the latest bit of research finally holds any truth on whatever it focuses on, if it applies to a person with similar genetic background as yours, and whether the foodstuffs used in the research are similar to the ones you’re used to.

One recent example: it has been common knowledge for a long time that charring your steaks and vegetables produces a lot of carcinogenic substances which cause cancer when eaten regularly.

Until now.

 

The ever-changing nutritional science would leave anybody baffled with what we should or shouldn't eat

A Swedish study recently found that while carcinogenic substances indeed get created when steaks get their saliva-inducing streaks on the grill, the amounts are so low that they’re absolutely insignificant as to be dangerous. (Whether eating a leg of chicken with its marinade burned to a nice solid black is a marvellous culinary experience is a different matter.) Likewise, it has been known for some time now that the crust of the bread contains multiple times as many antioxidants as the fluffy inside.

Finds such as these are not uncommon. Some time ago a research showed that black rye bread, long having been touted as a much healthier option to bread made out of wheat flour of any kind, is actually not at all healthier than any bread made out of whole grains (like rye bread most often is).

All this, of course, affects the way people think about nutrition. Some years ago fats of any kind seemed to be considered unhealthy because they fatten you, so consuming so called “light” products was obviously healthier. It is, of course, now a little more commonly known that fats are essential. Just not saturated fats.

Except some saturated fats might not be as unhealthy. The reasearch is still out for whether the fat in the meat of grass-fed cows is healthier than that of corn-or soy-fed cows.

And, on a related note, some unsaturated fats might be unhealthy. Some time ago I overheard a couple of supermarket staffers discuss how they’d been thinking of switching from regular dairy products to soy milk products, because they’re so much healthier. But it is now known that the balance between different kinds of essential fatty acids (Omega-3 and Omega-6) has changed enormously in the last hundred years due to eating soy, corn and sunflower oil, among other things, or feeding livestock with soy and corn. This might be a cause for cardiovascular diseases. Maybe.

If there’s a conclusion to be drawn from all the nutrition research, it is this:

• It’s best to eat as many different types of food as possible, raw and cooked.
• Eat everything in moderation, including food supplements and the total amount of calories obtained from your diet.
• The less processed the food the better.
• Vegetables should dominate.
• A serving, two at most, of alcohol should be consumed every day.
• Make absolutely sure that you enjoy the food you eat.

And if, while following that advise, something in your diet doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. What’s good for someone might as good as lethal to someone else. If you feel better leaving out wheat, meat or beet, why keep on eating them?

Hunger (not Thirst) for Information

Lulu Grimes of Good Food has had an encounter with a mean sommelier. While my experiences with sommeliers are generally pleasant, a visit to one of Helsinki’s star-spangled gourmet joints lately left me and a friend wondering whether the wine that accompanies a dish really is such a big deal that it seems to actually surpass the food it’s served with in importance.

It might sound familiar: you’ve ordered a special menu and chosen to trust the restaurant’s choices for the wines to go with it. After a while the sommelier arrives and tells you everything he knows about the wine, the area it comes from, how it was made, grapes it was made from, the history of the winehouse, the producer’s name, his grandma’s name etc. He pours the wine and leaves.

Some time passes. Finally the food arrives. The waiter hurries through the list of components on the plate and disappears. “What was this green stuff here?” your friend asks, leaning over. “No idea.” “Tastes of a herb… What could it be?” Asking a waiter, they tell you to wait a minute while they go and ask, of course, eager to fulfill every request the customer makes. In a while the waiter returns and gives you the bit of information, but leaves you hesitant to also ask about the little red things you found under the potato after the waiter had gone.

Obviously it’s not a good idea for the waiter to spend 15 minutes going through a pedantic list of every ingredient in every garment on the plate while everyone, except for the one enthusiastic home cook who demanded to know what everything is, is waiting to get their teeth into the dish, but sometimes one gets a feeling that enjoying the food is somehow a very different experience from enjoying the wine.

Or could it be the wine enthusiasts that visit the gourmet restaurants who differ so much from us amateur gourmet cooks? Almost like it’s impossible to enjoy wine unless you know the second name of the producer or that the wine in question is expensive and rare enough. Who gives a toss about what the green jelly wrapped in the red stuff next to the lamb was made out of if it tastes good.

Pinching Pennies

Divine Caroline lists foods to satisfy your nutritional needs without blowing the bank.

All of these are available here in Finland, too, but some of them, like tofu, are maybe not as inexpensive as in US. I’d add salmon and chicken to the list, but then, good-quality salmon and chicken isn’t always easy to find or cheap, either.

Good Food’s Carol Wilson has a new year’s resolution: stop buying exotic, rarely used ingredients that mostly go unused just because some recipe tells you to add a pinch.

Going through our cupboards we found some ingredients that had passed their use by -date some time ago, but not many and nothing too eccentric. I’ve noticed it’s generally better to buy basic ingredients, i.e. nothing processed, and have a definitive idea what you’re using it for.

À la Cuisine!

Here’s a blog that I wish would come back. In his latest post the blog author Clement regrets that he has a tendency to get “momentarily distracted” with things other than food that come up in life. (Sounds vaguely familiar.) The post in question is dated 22 April, 2007 – almost two years ago.