The basics of eating the New American Diet, and the beginning of a whole new life
Not every debate can be settled by science.
No matter how unified the research community is on the reality of climate change, there are still plenty of politicians (most of them from states where oil companies have headquarters) who are willing to stand up on the floor of Congress and deny it. No matter how much fossil evidence there is for the theory of evolution, there are many among us who don’t believe in it. (And sometimes, when you take a look at our representatives in Congress, you may agree there’s been no evolution at all.) And lots of lobbyists, many of whom might have made money saying things like, “Cigarettes don’t cause lung disease,” are now available to pitch ideas like, oh, a little atrazine in your drinking water (a common obesogen that comes courtesy of the golf course greens or cornfields in your neighborhood) won’t hurt things a bit. Lobbyists, politicians, and zealots get away with denying science whenever the evidence can’t be seen with our own eyes.
But some science is undeniable, because the evidence is all around us. No one in his right mind would deny the existence of gravity, because all you need to do is throw a ball into the air and you’ll see how real it is. Most of us accept that bacteria cause sickness, because we can see them under the microscope and kill them with antibiotics. And it’s hard to dispute that the Earth is round, when you can actually fly all the way around it yourself. The proof is right there, in front of us, clear and undeniable.
And so it’s hard to walk down the streets of your town, or drive to the local mall, or swing by the nearby big box store, or even look into the mirror, without seeing with your own eyes the indisputable evidence of another scientific finding:
The Old American Diet has loaded our bodies with obesogens, stripped vital nutrients from our food, added a shocking number of unnecessary calories, trained our bodies to store fat, stolen away our muscle-building abilities, and kept us hungry and unhappy. The Old American Diet has drained our wallets of our hard-earned pay while giving us junk in return; it’s used our tax money to subsidize food-industry practices that have turned diabetes from a relatively rare disease into an epidemic that’s sucking away 20 percent of our health-care dollars; and, in doing all of this, it has damaged our environment, stolen our children’s inheritance, and put our quality of life at risk. In short:
(We’ll pause now for our representatives in Congress to pocket some more lobbyist money and then protest that everything is just fine.)
The answer to all these problems begins with you. That’s the conclusion of prominent obesogen researcher Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., curators’ professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri: “The way you can do something is through your behavior in your home,” he says. “We need to turn off the tap in a way that protects the future.” Making simple, painless adjustments in the way you eat will strip fat from your body, protect your family from harmful flab-creating chemicals, improve your physical and emotional health, defend our environment from further damage, and save you a lot of money.
That’s why we created the New American Diet. And it’s based on the simplest of principles:
The New American Diet is the natural answer to the broken food system we’ve been living with for the past 50 years. These seven simple guidelines are easy steps that anyone can follow to shed pounds, improve brain function, protect our environment, and save money along the way.
1 GUIDELINE 1
Build your diet around the New American Diet Superfoods.
The first step in the New American Diet is to trade in the seven saboteurs of the Old American Diet (trans fats, refined carbohydrates, salt, high-fructose corn syrup, pesticid-eridden produce, corn-fed meats, and obesogen-laden foods) for the New American Diet Superfoods, which focus on good fats (monounsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids), fiber, mood-boosting folate, heart-healthy whole grains, organic produce, and grass-fed meats. We’ll explain these more in Chapter 5, but here’s a preview:
Eggs
Whole grains
Avocado and other healthy fats
Meats (pasture-raised and free-range)
Environmentally sustainable fish
Raspberries and other berries
Instant oats
Cruciferous vegetables and other folate-rich greens
Apples and other fruits
Navy beans and other legumes
Dark chocolate
Ice cream and other healthy desserts
Enzymes and probiotics (yogurt)
Tea and other healthy beverages
2 GUIDELINE 2
Eat a BIG breakfast.
Eating the right breakfast is the most important thing you can do for weight loss—yet 20 percent of us still skip it altogether. Study after study finds that skipping breakfast leads to weight gain: A University of Massachusetts study found that skipping breakfast makes you 4.5 times more likely to be obese. Even waiting longer than 90 minutes after waking to break your fast can increase your chances of obesity by nearly 50 percent. Plus, eating more of your daily calories at breakfast will keep you satisfied longer and protect you from
gaining weight, according to a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology. After following 6,764 healthy, fit people for almost 4 years, researchers found that those who ate just 300 calories for breakfast (or 15 percent of their daily total) gained almost twice as much weight as those who ate 500 or more calories at breakfast (25 percent of their total).
And it’s not just your waistline that suffers: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey II revealed that serum cholesterol levels are highest among those who skip breakfast. According to Harvard researchers, eating breakfast makes for smaller rises in blood sugar and insulin throughout the day. And regulating blood sugar and insulin swings helps reduce levels of harmful LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.
So think of your first meal as the foundation of your dietary success: Eat the bulk of your daily calories in the morning, and then taper off as the day goes on. The ideal breakfast combines quality protein and whole grains with produce and healthy fats. Try whole-grain waffes drizzled with melted peanut butter and a sliced banana in place of syrup. That will provide satiating protein, ratchet up the fiber, and cut down on your sugar load.
3 GUIDELINE 3
Include folate-rich greens every day.
Folate is one of the nutrients by which all diets should be measured. If folate levels are low, chances are your diet needs some tweaking. Folate is crucial for proper brain and body functioning, according to Harvard researchers. Low levels of folate are linked with depression, low energy levels, and even memory loss, and studies show that adding folate-rich greens to your diet reduces fatigue, improves energy levels, and helps battle depression. Folate deficiency is linked to most of the major diseases of our time, and it leads to an increased risk of stroke, heart disease, cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, depression, a decreased response to depression treatments, and increased weight gain. Plus, a study of those trying to lose weight, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, found that a 1 nanogram per milliliter increase in serum folate levels increases the chance of weight loss success by 28 percent. Recently, a study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by Duke University researchers found that folate is protective against fetal exposure to BPA (more on that in Chapter 10).
Folate is a water-soluble B vitamin, and while you can get it in supplement form as folic acid, your body will absorb more of the nutrient from whole foods. The best food sources provide at least 20 percent of the daily value per serving; try romaine lettuce, spinach, kale, endive, collard greens, and Swiss chard.
The best way to make sure you’re getting enough folate-rich greens is to eat them with as many meals as you can and eat them first. (The New American Diet Plan in Chapter 6 will show you just how easy this is.) Not only will you consume more vegetables and fewer calories from other foods, but the fiber content will help slow the speed at which you digest your meals, helping you sidestep those swings in blood sugar that lead to hunger and cravings. Plus, researchers at Brigham Young University found that those who ate an additional 8 grams of total fiber for every 1,000 calories they consumed lost nearly 4½ pounds over 20 months.
| SOURCE | CALORIES | FOLATE | FIBER |
| turnip greens | 18* | 107 mcg | 1.8 g |
| mustard greens | 15 | 105 mcg | 1.8 g |
| endive | 8 | 71 mcg | 1.6 g |
| romaine lettuce | 8 | 64 mcg | 1 g |
| collard greens | 11 | 60 mcg | 1.3 g |
| spinach | 7 | 58 mcg | 0.7 g |
| radicchio | 9 | 24 mcg | 0.4 g |
| kale | 34 | 19 mcg | 1.3 g |
| Swiss chard | 7 | 5 mcg | 0.6 g |
| *All based on 1 cup, raw | |||
4 GUIDELINE 4
Eat sweets, but avoid hidden sugar.
Research shows that nearly a quarter of our daily caloric intake—325 calories on average—comes from sugar. That’s the equivalent of 20 teaspoons a day! That’s a lot of Krispy Kremes. Here’s a dirty secret that the food industry doesn’t want you to know: A lot of that sugar isn’t coming from sweets like baked goods, desserts, soda, and fruit juices. It’s being sneaked into your diet, in places you’d never think to look.
Smoked salmon, peanut butter, beef jerky, seasoned raw meats, lunchmeat, bread crumbs, tomato sauces, salad dressings, condiments (including ketchup), rice mixes, crackers, and bread—almost all major brands contain some kind of sugar, even though sugar is entirely unnecessary in making these products. So what’s it doing there? It’s there to get your taste buds hooked; once you’re trained to crave these hidden sugars, you’ll want to buy even more packaged goods with even more sugar in them. And just because the word “sugar” doesn’t appear on the label doesn’t mean your food isn’t loaded with it. Look for these aliases: maltose, sorghum, sorbitol, dextrose, lactose, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, glucose, molasses, brown rice sugar, fruit juice, turbinado, barley malt, honey, and organic cane juice. A good rule is to skip any product that lists one of these sugars in its first four ingredients.
You’ll have to be more aware of food labels in order to cut these unnecessary sugars out of your life. Here’s an exercise: Walk into any convenience store and buy any beverage you want—as long as it doesn’t contain high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). (This may take a while: In most bodegas and convenience marts, there’s nothing to drink that doesn’t contain HFCS, except for water, milk, and 100 percent juice.) Not only is HFCS a great way to add unnecessary calories into your body, but more and more research is indicating that HFCS itself may work as an obesogen. “It’s the fructose,” says Robert Lustig, M.D., professor of clinical pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology and director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health Program at the University of California—San Francisco. “In people in a hypercaloric state [overweight people whose metabolisms aren’t burning the calories they’re putting into their bodies], fructose disrupts leptin signaling.” Leptin is the hormone that tells us when we’re full. “Their brains are constantly telling them that they’re starving—which causes them to overeat. Plus, it causes insulin resistance. So, it could be said that fructose acts like an endocrine disruptor,” concludes Dr. Lustig, because insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes, is also a disorder of the endocrine system. We’re just starting to understand HFCS’s other effects. A study released in October 2009 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that in warm temperatures, HFCS converts to a toxin called hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). The researchers found a possible link between HFCS fed to honeybees by beekeepers and “colony collapse disorder”—the mysterious deaths of America’s bees.
You may think you have the perfect solution: artificial sweeteners. Zero calories, and tastes just like sugar, sort of (if sugar were made out of metal shavings). Great, right?
In fact, artificial sweeteners can make you gain weight. Here’s how: As you swallow diet soda, the sweet taste makes your body anticipate the arrival of calories. When they don’t show up, your body gets confused and triggers the hunger response, sending you looking high and low for those missing calories—and often finding them in the snack bowl. A 2005 study by researchers from the University of Texas found that people who drank one can of diet soda per day had a 37 percent greater incidence of obesity. And because artificial sweeteners are 200 to 2,000 times sweeter than sugar, stirring a teaspoonful into your daily cup of joe may mean that when you do use real sugar, it just doesn’t taste sweet enough for you, so you grab extra sugar packets or a sweet side treat.
Now, we don’t want you to give up on sweet stuff altogether. Sugar, honey, real maple syrup—if that’s not proof that Someone Up There loves us, what is? You should enjoy these wonderful things, but only when you want to enjoy them, not when some food manufacturer is sneaking a creepy, chemically engineered obesogen into your hot dog relish just to mess with you. By reading labels and steering clear of foods with unnecessary added sugars, especially HFCS, you will cut calories, shed pounds, and reprogram your taste buds so they stop craving supersweet foods. Then you can devote your sweet tooth to treats that should be sweet, like chocolate, berries, and ice cream. Or, to put it another way:
The Old American Diet = chemical and/or natural sugar in everything = more calories + more flab
The New American Diet = real sugar, but only in real treats that are supposed to have sugar = fewer obesogens + fewer calories (and more desserts!)
5 GUIDELINE 5
Eat slowly, preferably with other people.
One of the funny things about the Old American Diet is that you can’t relax and enjoy it. It’s meant to be eaten fast, or while driving, or while watching TV, or while standing over the sink. (Right, bachelors?) Because of our tendency to expedite our meals, we’ve lost the ability to listen to our bodies, to know when we’re full, to really taste our foods, to enjoy eating. Marketers capitalize on our on-the-go-osity by offering up new ways to shrink meals into smaller, more convenient forms—the pinnacle of which is Ensure, “complete nutrition in a bottle.” But a meal in a bottle is not a meal. It’s a calorie-laden drink.
Our taste buds are out of practice. They can’t taste anything anymore. If we actually took the time to taste, say, a Cool Ranch Dorito or even a plain old potato chip, there’s no way we would scarf down as many as we do in one sitting. Instead, we’d hear our bodies screaming: “Whoa, slow down! Salt overload!”
So the New American Diet isn’t just about what we eat, it’s about how we eat. Researchers are only now starting to look at the effects of mindful eating on diet and weight gain, and the results are surprising:
A recent study looked at the satiety levels of people who chewed almonds 10, 25, or 40 times. They found that those who chewed the almonds 40 times were less hungry, had fewer spikes in insulin, and stored less fat than those who chewed fewer times. Translation: Taking the time to really chew your food makes it more satiating and leads to less accumulated fat and weight gain. Consider:
* A 2006 Canadian study found that when people ate lunch while sitting at a set table, they consumed a third less at a later snack than those who ate their midday meals while standing at a counter.
* A University of Massachusetts study found that people who watched TV during a meal consumed 288 more calories on average than those whose eyes weren’t glued to a screen. The reason: What you’re seeing on television distracts you, which keeps your brain from recognizing that you’re full.
* University of Rhode Island researchers discovered that consciously slowing down between bites decreases a person’s calorie intake by 10 percent. Breathing helps you gauge how hungry you are, since it directs your mind toward your body, according to the study authors.
* Another study, from the University of Minnesota, found that people who eat on the run end up consuming more saturated fat and sugar than those who take the time to sit down to eat. And USDA scientists recently found that people eat 500 more calories on days they consume fast foods compared with days they don’t. (That’s enough to pack on a pound a week!) After studying the dietary habits of 1,700 men and women, they found that the best way to guarantee that you take the time to stop and eat is to dine with other people. So schedule lunches with friends or coworkers, find a snack buddy, make dinners family meals, and try to prepare most of your meals yourself. (See Chapter 6 for dozens of easy meals made with healthy, fresh ingredients.)
* Finally, a recent study in the journal Obesity found that Americans eat until external cues, such as an empty plate, tell them to stop. The French, on the other hand, use internal cues, such as no longer feeling hungry, to determine when a meal should end. But remember, it takes your brain 12 to 15 minutes to receive the signal that your stomach is at max capacity, so wait for it. If you pause between bites, chances are you’ll get that signal before you’ve scarfed down seconds. The lesson: Your body knows how to stay slim. Don’t let the food marketers fool it—and you!
6 GUIDELINE 6
Buy as many things as you can locally.
Whether it’s a salmonella outbreak linked to tomatoes, tainted peanut butter products, or even poisoned raw cookie dough, one thing is very clear: Our industrial food chain is broken, and our watchdogs are asleep on the job. We need to rethink where our food comes from, and eating local is fast becoming the safest and cheapest answer to our food problems. But eating local isn’t just about eating food that’s safer.
It reduces global warming. Experts estimate that at least 20 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gases come from the agriculture industry, and a significant percentage of these gases come from fuel burned by the planes, trains, trucks, and ships that transport the goods. As we said above, the average piece of produce travels 1,500 miles (that’s like going from Miami to Boston) to get from Old MacDonald to your neighborhood Giant. A University of Washington study compared two meals, identical except for their origin—one was made with local products, the other with imported ones—and found that the plate of frequent-flier food produced 68 percent more greenhouse gases than the food gathered close to home.
It tastes better. Shipping produce long distances does more than leave a size-12 carbon footprint. Even when vegetables are touted as farm fresh, they may be several days old by the time they land on your plate. That’s because, in addition to the time needed to pick, clean, and box it into crates—typically 2 to 7 days—much of the produce in U.S. grocery stores is trucked in from out of state. Take your salad greens: Almost all of the nation’s lettuce comes from California, so if you live on the East Coast, by the time it gets to your Caesar salad, it can be up to 2 weeks old. That’s why your strawberries and peaches can taste like flavorless mush. Local farmers, though, can wait until produce is ripe and ready before they harvest it, and they usually sell their stock within 24 hours of picking.
It’s healthier. The longer produce is exposed to air and light after it’s been picked, the more nutrients it loses. A farmer who sets up shop in his own backyard can grow a range of rare and heirloom produce. That means you’re eating from a wider spectrum of the plant world and getting more good stuff . If you want the freshest, most nutrient-dense vegetables, buy them at the local farmers’ market. (See “Locavore Lore” on page 94 for the best ways to find locally grown food.)
It isn’t easy to eat entirely local, especially in the dead of winter. So don’t drive yourself crazy. What you’re looking to do is to ease out those fruits and vegetables that began their lives in Chile and got old and tired flying all the way to your local store. Here’s how:
Join a farm. For an annual fee that’s a fraction of your grocery budget, you can become a member of a local community supported agriculture (CSA) farm. They’ll deliver a selection of fresh goodies every week. Some CSAs offer meat, dairy, and flowers as well as produce. localharvest.org/csa
Shop at farmers’ markets. They’re the best source for local food, and the U.S. now has more than 4,000 of them. amsusda.gov/farmersmarkets
Plan your route. You can eat local even when traveling if you plan ahead using the Eat Well Guide. It’s a free online directory of fresh, locally grown, sustainably produced food in the U.S. and Canada. You can map out family farms, restaurants, farmers’ markets, grocery stores, CSA programs, U-pick orchards, and more. eatwellguide.org
7 GUIDELINE 7
Add some organic produce, meat, and dairy into your diet when you can.
Say the word “organic” and some folks still think of ponytailed hipsters in Birkenstocks noshing on trail mix and chaining themselves to trees. But the more we learn about the effects of pesticides on our bodies—and especially, on our weight—the more it makes sense to start cutting down our exposure when we can. More than half of the most widely used pesticides on the market today are known obesogens, including nine of the 10 pesticides we come in contact with the most through food.
Of course, you’re not going to eliminate pesticides and herbicides from your life entirely—like the Jonas Brothers, they’re everywhere. So remember, you don’t have to become a zealot. In fact, cutting down your exposure is much, much easier than you might think: Simply abide by the Clean Fifteen, and look for organic versions of the Dirty Dozen.
When it comes to meat and dairy, the issue isn’t just about hormone exposure—it’s also a matter of nutrition. (And remember, more nutrition = fewer calories = less flab.) A study in the journal Meat Science compared the nutritional content of organic and nonorganic chicken meat. The organic samples contained 28 percent more omega-3s—essential fatty acids that are linked to reduced rates of heart disease, depression, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, inflammation, and Alzheimer’s disease.
The same holds for meat and dairy. Grass-fed beef contains 60 percent more omega-3s, 200 percent more vitamin E, and two to three times more heart-healthy conjugated linolcic acid (CLA). Recent studies revealed that organic dairy contains 75 percent more beta-carotene, 70 percent more omega-3 fatty acids, and 50 percent more vitamin E than regular milk. It also provides two to three times the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin. Even though organic milk is more expensive—about $3.50 versus $2.50 per half-gallon—it’s worth it. And you can cut costs by going online. Many organic dairy companies, such as Stonyfield Farm (stonyfield.com) and Organic Valley (organicvalley.coop), offer printable coupons online.
If you’ve ever compared a tomato ripe off the vine with one of those mealy, mass-produced, flavorless ones, you know the superior taste that just-picked food delivers. Eating local allows you to capture that flavor difference and promote sustainable, community-based agriculture while favoring “low-mileage” foods over ones that have traveled long distances to arrive at your plate. There are other benefits to eating locally too. One study found that people have 10 times as many conversations at farmers’ markets as they do at supermarkets. Another study concluded that local-based food systems generally use 17 times less fuel than conventional food systems. But sticking to a mostly local diet isn’t always easy. Here’s what you need to do to find the best local foods:
You can become a member of a local community supported agriculture (CSA) farm. You purchase a share and, in exchange, you get a box of fresh produce, dairy, and/or meat every week. A typical CSA charges $400 to $600 for up to 6 months of freshly harvested fruits, vegetables, herbs, flowers, and meat. While some CSAs are open only from late spring through early fall, others are open year-round. A farm called 2Silos near Columbus, Ohio, offers a protein share: A typical month’s bounty, for $60, might include 10 pounds of meat, including grass-fed steaks, breakfast sausage, free-range chicken, and lamb roast, plus two dozen eggs and extras such as soup bones and organ meats. The DeBerry Farm in Oakland, Maryland, offers a box of vegetables, herbs, berries, and melons for about $20 a week. Some deliver, while others drop boxes at a central location. Either way, you avoid the shopping-cart derby. To find a CSA near you, go to localharvest.org/csa. And when possible, shop at a local farmers’ market. To find one near you, go to ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets.
Buying local doesn’t have to mean you’re stuck eating only what’s ripe now. In the summer, produce is plentiful, but seasonal food can be tough in late winter or early spring, before many crops are ready for harvest. While squash (acorn, butternut, and hubbard), potatoes, turnips, cabbage, leeks, kale, and Swiss chard can be found even in the dead of a Northeast winter, you can buy other produce in bulk in the summer and preserve your bounty. Freeze or can berries when they’re at their peak, and you can enjoy them year-round.
In every kitchen, you’ll find an appliance that offers a quick and foolproof way to capture the taste, texture, and nutrition that we all treasure in fresh-picked produce. We’re talking, of course, about your freezer.
It’s a myth that fresh produce is better for you than frozen. Indeed, fresh produce usually has to be picked before it’s ripe if it’s going to make the long, long journey from some remote village in South America to your dinner plate. And you know how fresh you feel after flying 1,500 miles, so imagine what happens to your food! But foods that are going to be frozen can be picked at the height of ripeness, with all the minerals and vitamins from the earth stored inside. So don’t be afraid to opt for frozen whenever it’s convenient. And if you do buy fresh, don’t be afraid to make your freezer your friend.
* Wash and trim. Prepare produce as though you were about to cook it. Remove the stems, trim string beans and peas, and shuck and remove the silk from corn.
* Blanch vegetables (except for corn and tomatoes). Even after you pick your crops, enzymes continue to break down the nutrients, convert sugars to starches, and generally degrade flavor and texture. Blanching with steam or boiling water stops this action and preserves fresh-picked color. Tests have shown that, after 9 months, vegetables that were blanched before freezing retain significantly more vitamin C and other nutrients than vegetables frozen without blanching.
* General Produce
(buy organic when possible)
Bananas, cantaloupe,
mangoes, lemons,
limes, avocados,
carrots, yams, scallions,
sprouts, beets,
tomatoes, garlic
* Organic Produce
(if you can’t find these items organic, choose something else on the list)
Red bell peppers,
romaine lettuce,
celery, spinach,
apples, kale,
Swiss chard,
collard greens
* Frozen Fruit
Blueberries (buy frozen wild blueberries if you can find them),
red raspberries,
organic cherries
* Frozen Vegetables
Broccoli florets, peas, edamame
* Dairy
Organic milk, organic yogurt, Greek yogurt, cheddar cheese, string-cheese sticks,
ice cream (look for Stonyfield Farm or Julie’s Organic)
* Nuts and Seeds
Almonds, walnuts, peanuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, ground flaxseed
* Organic Dried Fruit
Raisins, prunes, apricots
* Spreads
Peanut butter and
almond butter (organic, no salt or sugar added), black currant jam, black bean dip, hummus
* Oils and Sauces
Olive oil, sesame oil, canola oil, low-sodium soy sauce, red-wine vinegar, cider vinegar
* Herbs and Spices
Basil, parsley, cilantro, watercress, cumin, curry powder, chili powder, cinnamon, red-pepper flakes
* Grains
Fresh or dried pasta, instant oatmeal (no salt or sugar added),
whole-grain cereal, whole-grain bread, whole-wheat flour tortilla wraps, wholewheat English muffins, whole-wheat pita chips, long-grain rice
* Beans and Lentils
Black beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, kidney beans, red lentils
* Olives
Spanish green, kalamata, and black
* Meat
Buffalo burgers, free-range organic chicken, grass-fed organic beef
* Fish
Wild Alaskan salmon, farmed rainbow trout, Pacific halibut, chunk light tuna (in a pouch, not a can)
* Eggs
Free-range organic eggs
* Sweets and Sweeteners
Dark chocolate bar, maple syrup, local honey, vanilla extract
Steam blanching does the best job of preserving color, flavor, nutrition, and texture. Water blanching tends to leach out water-soluble vitamins. Soaking vegetables to clean them can also literally wash away nutrients; better to rinse and brush them quickly under cold running water. Water blanching is more effective at getting rid of yeasts, molds, and bacteria, if they are present, and for removing cabbageworms from cauliflower and broccoli. With either method, timing is key. Under-blanching can actually encourage quality-zapping enzymes.
1. Add 1 to 2 inches of water to a pot and bring to a boil. Using a basket or loose cheesecloth, suspend a layer of the prepared vegetables just over the boiling water, and cover the pot.
2. Steam until produce is crisp-tender, making sure the vegetables are not clumping together and that they are cooking evenly.
3. Remove, cool, dry, and pack.
* Pack tightly. Flimsy containers and bags can let in air, allowing food to oxidize and suffer freezer burn. Use only wraps, bags, and containers designed for freezer use. Fill the containers, leaving a ½-inch space at the top for expansion. Push out any remaining air from bags before sealing, and “burp” plastic containers to remove air.
* Thaw safely. Freezing stops the growth of bacteria but doesn’t kill it, so don’t leave food to thaw at room temperature. Cook frozen food directly from the freezer, or thaw it in the refrigerator and then use it right away.
* Freeze berries and sliced fruit on a tray. To avoid crushing delicate fruits such as raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, spread them on a lined baking sheet and place in the freezer for 2 to 3 hours, until frozen solid. Transfer fruit to freezer bags or plastic freezer containers. They will keep frozen for 6 months.
Corn should be frozen uncooked, either on the cob or as cut kernels. Tomatoes should also go into the freezer whole and uncooked. Vegetables will last 6 months in the freezer; corn, 3 months. Note: Freezing will make tomatoes slightly mushy, so they are best used in soups and stews.
Imagine your doctor walking into the treatment room and scribbling out prescriptions for drugs to treat high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and thyroid disease—without ever testing you for those conditions. As improbable as that sounds, it’s happening all the time in the anything-goes world of vitamins and other dietary supplements. Cable TV is a slagheap of advertisements for supplements that claim to offer everything from memory improvement to muscular development to penile enlargement, and if millions of other folks are taking them, why shouldn’t you? After all, these claims are backed up by science, right?
Well, that’s a shaky assertion. A recent infomercial plugging an expensive supplement for eye health cited a clinical trial that showed an improvement in vision. But what the ad didn’t say is that the pill only helped individuals who suffered from macular degeneration, a serious eye condition; when healthy people took it, the pill increased their risk for prostate and kidney diseases.
And the hype can cut both ways. Just as you should be suspicious of claims that dietary supplements will give you 20/20 vision, be skeptical of reports that they’ll send you to your grave. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association made for dramatic headlines, thanks to findings that high doses of antioxidants can increase your risk of early death. The study—actually a meta-analysis of 68 previous studies—found that the risk of early death increased by 7 percent with beta-carotene intake, 16 percent with vitamin A intake, and 4 percent with vitamin E intake.
But it’s important to put these findings into perspective. What didn’t make it into the news reports is the fact that the population studied included people who suffered all sorts of chronic ailments, from Lou Gehrig’s disease to cancer, and in some of the studies, people were taking doses as high as 65 times the recommended daily value.
So the study doesn’t prove that healthy people will suddenly wind up in the hospital from taking too many vitamins. It does suggest, as do other studies published in the past several years, that there’s a threshold past which vitamin consumption can actually increase your risk for cancer and other diseases. What follows is a guide to make sure you don’t cross that threshold.
If you remember only one thing about vitamins and antioxidants, make it this: A healthy person with a good diet should take one low-dose multivitamin, such as Centrum, each day. Nothing more. Low doses of vitamins and minerals have been associated with the best results thus far in the most comprehensive clinical trials in the world. The largest of these, the SU.VI.MAX French clinical trial, involved more than 10,000 healthy men and women who took either a supplement or a placebo every day for more than 7 years. The men who took a daily supplement reduced their risk of heart disease, cancer, and early death. What was in the magical supplement? Only 100 mcg of selenium, 120 mg of vitamin C, 30 mg of vitamin E, 6 mg of beta-carotene, and 20 mg of zinc. So, roughly the daily value of a few key nutrients. That’s it. If your multivitamin doesn’t have doses close to those numbers, throw them out. High doses of antioxidants in pill form can actually fuel disease by not allowing our bodies to build up their own resistance to free-radical damage, essentially quashing our internal defenses.
While one multivitamin a day is a good guideline, you can take a blood test to determine a more precise accounting of exactly how much of a nutrient you need. One test available at almost every medical center in the U.S. is the vitamin D blood test (written as “25 OH vitamin D”). The recommended daily value for vitamin D is 400 IU, but recent research suggests the number should be higher, so don’t be surprised if the FDA increases the daily value to 800 IU in the near future. You’ll probably have to specify that you want this test, because it’s just not on doctors’ radars right now.
Some supplements may no longer be needed. A landmark 1996 study found that 200 mcg a day of selenium supplements could reduce the risk of prostate cancer. Today, however, selenium has been added to many foods, and there is at least 100 mcg now in most low-dose daily multivitamins. So, what was once a problem of deficiency could become a problem of excess, and excess amounts of selenium from that same 1996 study were found to potentially increase the risk of some cancers, especially skin cancer.
For 107 years, the leading cause of death for Americans has been cardiovascular disease. So before obsessing over micrograms of selenium, focus on your heart-disease risk. Find out your blood pressure, LDL, HDL, triglycerides, and cholesterol numbers, measure your waist circumference, and ask your doctor for a description of your heart health based on that information. Do not accept “your numbers are normal” (normal is relative), but investigate your results by comparing them to the ideal numbers. You can negate a family history of heart-disease risk if you get your HDL above 60. Assess your risk at americanheart.org.