Michael Pollan's Food Rules, animated

Source

Top culinary destinations

According to Keith Bellows, Editor in Chief of National Geographic Traveler magazine,
“A meal is more than an intake of calories; it’s an exercise in cultural immersion. What people eat, when they eat, where and how they source the food, what gastronomic rituals they observe – all offer telling insights to a place and its people.”

It's that time of year to start dreaming about the next vacation destination.
Here are Bellows' top 5 culinary destinations.
What's yours?
(I'm a little partial to #5 myself...)

Seafood for Thought: Part 2 (End of the Line)

The End of the Line is the first major feature documentary film on the impact of overfishing on our oceans... and it looks really good!

Scientists predict that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048!

Filmed over two years, The End of the Line follows investigative reporter Charles Clover as he reveals "the dark underbelly and hidden costs of putting seafood on the table at home or in restaurants". It's filmed across the world – from the Straits of Gibraltar to the coasts of Senegal and Alaska to the Tokyo fish market, and features top scientists, indigenous fishermen, politicians, celebrity restaurateurs, and former tuna farmer turned whistleblower, Roberto Mielgo.

"The End of the Line is a wake-up call to the world".

For more information about the movie and other ways you can take action, click here.

The End of the Line is also a book (by Charles Clover) which I've started... will let you know what I think!





For Part 1 of Seafood for Thought, click here!

Do Locavores Have it Wrong?

In 2007, locavore was the New Oxford American Dictionary's word of the Year. I remember first hearing the word in 2008.

The movement has since really taken off, helped by wonderful book written by two Canadians- Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon-The 100-Mile Diet. Click here for a previous blog about the book.

Food miles is the cornerstone of the locavore movement: the distance food travels from the farm to our plate.
It's estimated that the the average food we eat has travelled 1500-3000 miles... oftentimes more than that.

What are the Benefits of Eating Locally?

According to its many advocates, eating local foods (which hasn't really been defined yet, but within a 100-mile radius is what the 100-mile diet is all about) not only minimizes the fossil fuels used to bring the food to us, but results in food that tastes better, is better for our health, better for local economies. It also allows us to reconnect with the seasons and with the people producing our food.

Is Local Food Healthier?

Kind of.
In a recent publication of its Current Issues (Jan 2010), Dietitians of Canada's concluded that there is no evidence that supports that local foods are healthier...
but
Limited evidence does show that certain foods (like broccoli, kale, green beans, red peppers, tomatoes, apricots and peaches) lose nutrients when they travel long distances. Preliminary studies indicate that local grass-fed meat may also be more nutritious.

Eat Locally: Not the Answer?!

Lots of people also choose to eat local because it's a way to stand up to our current "messed-up" food system : "local is a way to counter the global". There's the well-known expression: "voting with your fork". While I'm not a locavore, I've become very conscious of where my food comes from... and haven't eaten a banana or citrus fruit in months!

According to James McWilliams, author of Just Food: Where locavores get it wrong and how we can truly eat responsibly, I'm not alone.
Since 1990, there has been a 4-fold increase in farmer's markets with more and more people wanting to know where their food's coming from.... which is great!

BUT

According to McWilliams, focusing on eating locally is a form of denial. Not only, is it not globally sustainable, it's flawed to think that food miles is what's bad for the environment, and simplifying the issue into "distance is bad, local is good" prevents us from finding real solutions.



Life-Cycle Assessment: Food's Carbon Footprint

McWilliams talks about the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA)- a measurement that goes beyond food-miles and looks at the carbon-footprint of food- at all the stages. It factors in things like water usage, waste, harvesting techniques, pesticide use, climate, storage, etc.

LCA tells us that the the production and processing of food actually uses the most fossil fuels (45%)... transportation uses the least (11%)!

What Does This Mean?

According to the LCA, and McWilliams, if you live in th UK, it is 4 times more energy-efficient to buy grass-fed lamb imported from New Zealand than to buy local grain-fed lamb (this point was corroborated by Michael Pollan in an interview )!

An LCA of the Danish fishing industry found that changing fishing method could reduce fuel-use tremendously- using a net hanging vertically in the water (a seine) used 15 times less energy than using a trawl (a weighted net dragged across the ocean floor). So, it would make more sense to ask about fishing method rather than food miles....

A great paper written by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimuzu- We Have No Bananas- agrees with McWilliams. They point out that importing produce from areas where they grow naturally emits less greenhouse gases than growing them locally in greenhouses or cold-storing them to extend their shelf-life.

Their argument is summarized in the following statement:

"...food miles are, at best, a marketing fad that frequently and severely distorts the environmental impacts of agricultural production. At worst, food miles constitute a dangerous distraction from the very real and serious issues that affect energy consumption and the environmental impact of modern food production and the affordability of food".

Hmmm. Interesting...

What are the Best Nutrition and Food Books?

Well... the best according to me anyways!
Would love to know what you favourite nutrition, food and cook books are!

Books That Changed What I Eat




















Best Books for Nutrition Information (my go-to books)


















Best Sport Nutrition Resource Book



















Best Vegetarian/Vegan Nutrition Resource Books


















Best Food Writer
Ruth Reichl





















Book That I Use Most in my Practice


















Best Books About the Restaurant World
(from the perspective of a chef (left) and server (right))





















Best Books About Learning To Cook


















Best Book About Food Celebrities





















My Favourite Cookbook
















The Two Last Books I Read and Really Enjoyed






















Books on my Nightstand

"La pâtisserie, c'est comme les gens"

"Pastry is like people... Some dough needs a lot of kneading, some requires much less. Some dough is satisfied to rise just a little, while other dough needs to double in size. All dough needs warmth to rise."

-Taken from Kathleen Flinn's wonderful memoir, The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry , about her experience moving to and living in Paris and attending the famed Le Cordon Bleu culinary school.
I just finished this book- an easy and enjoyable read about a women pursuing her passion for cooking...while living in a foreign city and trying to learn the language. The author offers her readers a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the grueling training that goes on at the Paris culinary school and, along the way, manages to inspire us to follow our own dreams.

Food, Inc.

"If you knew, you might not want to eat it."
"Faster, Fatter, Bigger, Cheaper."
"So much of our industrial food turns out to be rearrangements of corn."
"We can get 2 hamburgers for the (price of a vegetable)."
"We've never had food companies this powerful in our history."
"They have managed to make it against the law to criticize their products."
"When we run an item past the supermarket scanner we're voting for local, or not, organic, or not."
"Imagine what it would be if, as a National Policy, the idea would be to have such nutritionally dense foods that people actually felt better, had more energy and weren't sick as much. See, now that's a noble goal."
"People have to start demanding good wholesome food of us and we'll deliver, i promise you."




Wow.

Wonder Foods

"Of course there are no wonder foods. There are good diets and bad diets."
Dr. Joe Schwarcz

I'm reading Joe Schwarcz's latest book An Apple a Day: The myths, misconceptions and truths about the foods we eat.

Wonderful read... will blog all about it in the days to come!

Supersized USA

Population: 293,027,571
Percent of population overweight, male/female: 72/70%
Percent of population obese, male/female: 32/38%
Percent of population over the age of 20 with diabetes: 8.8%
Percent of dieting men/women on any given day: 25/45%
Percent of all dieters who will regain their lost weight within 1-5 years: 95%
Caloric intake available daily per person: 3,774 calories
Annual alcohol consumption per person (alcohol content only): 9.6 quarts (~9 liters)
Cigarette consumption per person per year: 2,255
Sugar and sweetener available per person per year: 158 lbs
Soft drink consumption per person per year: 54.8 gallons (~207 liters)
Meat consumption per person per year: 275 lbs
McDonald's restaurants: 13,491
Liposuction surgeries per year: 400,000
Gastric bypass surgeries per year: 150,000
Percent paid by taxpayers for obesity-related medical costs: 50%
Annual spending on dieting and diet-related products: $40 billion

Taken directly from Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel

Julie & Julia

Foodie: An amateur who not only loves food, but is interested in it. Interests and activities of a foodie include the food industry, wineries and wine tasting, food science, cooking & baking, restaurant opening and closings, food fads and health and nutrition.
A foodie will never answer "what are you eating" with "I don't know".

I guess I'm a foodie...

This movie, about a famous chef and a foodie & blogger, looks amazing! Here's the excerpt from the project this movie was based on:

The Book:

"Mastering the Art of French Cooking". First edition, 1961. Louisette Berthole. Simone Beck. And, of course, Julia Child. The book that launched a thousand celebrity chefs. Julia Child taught America to cook, and to eat. It’s forty years later. Today we think we live in the world Alice Waters made, but beneath it all is Julia, 90 if she's a day, and no one can touch her.

The Contender:

Government drone by day, renegade foodie by night. Too old for theater, too young for children, and too bitter for anything else, Julie Powell was looking for a challenge. And in the Julie/Julia project she found it. Risking her marriage, her job, and her cats’ well-being, she has signed on for a deranged assignment.

365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen.

How far will it go? We can only wait. And wait. And wait…..

The Julie/Julia Project. Coming soon to a computer terminal near you.

...And now to a theater near you August 7th!

Watch out for The Joy of Cooking too much!

I just received the Mindless Eater newsletter put out by the Cornell Food and Brand Lab Team (founded by Brian Wansink, author of the great eye-opening book Mindless Eating) in which they report a study they did published in the Feb 09 edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine. The group looked at 14 of the 18 recipes that appear in each edition of the very popular cookbook The Joy of Cooking throughout its 70 year history and found that the caloric content of the recipes increased by about 43.7% ! Furthermore, 17 of the 18 recipes showed an average of 63% increase in caloric content per suggested serving.

The authors found that in 1936, the average calories per recipe was 2124 and about 268 calories/serving. In 2006, the average calories per recipe rose to 3052 and about 436 calories per serving!

The recipes the team look at included macaroni & cheese, beef stroganoff, brownies, sugar cookies and apple pie. The caloric content increase is due to:

Changes in serving sizes.
What served 7 in 1936 served only 4 people in 1986!
In 1997, the basic waffle recipe made 12 six-inch waffles The same recipe in 2006 make 6 waffles.

The use of higher calorie ingredients.
For example, in the 1997 edition, the beef stroganoff recipe called for 2 Tbsp sour cream. The 2006 edition called for 1 cup!

Wansink points out that people often blame eating out for weight gain, but what we eat and do at home may be equally bad.

What can you do?
Rather than adhering to the cookbook's serving size suggestions, use your judgement. A recipe that claims to serve 4 can probably easily serve 6 or more. Make those brownies or cookies smaller. That cake recipe can be cut into 18 slices insted of 12 etc.

Don't feel that you need to follow a recipe to the letter. Use lower fat ingredients, ie. skim milk instead of 2% milk, low fat sour cream, lean meats. I always cut the sugar they ask for in half. Don't pack down the brown sugar. I replace at least 1/2 of the all-purpose flour (usually all of it) with whole wheat flour. I always use less fat. You can replace some of the oil they ask for in baked good with applesauce. Use less chocolate chips. Use less meat and add more vegetables. etc.

Beth Wareham, editor of the 2006 edition of the Joy of Cooking, even states that " in putting together the latest edition, writers and recipe-testers used their common sense in terms of ingredients and serving sizes, and they figured readers have some common sense of their own. "

The 100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change

I recently finished the book the '100 Mile Diet: A year of local eating' and I highly recommend it- it will change the way you think about what you eat. The book has spurred a phenomenon (I actually blogged about the movement this time last year!), enticing many to move towards a local-based diet and even inspiring a TV show- The Canadian Food Network hosts the 100 Mile Challenge in which the Canadian authors of the book, partners Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, challenge 6 families from Mission, British Columbia, to follow a 100-Mile Diet for 100 Days.

Not long ago, I blogged about another book that had a similar effect on me: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. (As I mentioned in that blog, if you don't have the time to read the book but have a free hour, check out Pollan's great lecture in which he covers the main point of his book by clicking Here). Equally inspiring but written in a completely different format, the authors of The 100 Mile Diet take turns writing the chapters of their memoir, sharing their experience of eating only foods within a 100 mile radius of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Alisa and James bring us through their very personal journey over their year: their daunting realization of what they wouldn't be able to eat (sugar, coffee, chocolate, chips, peanut butter, orange juice, Cola, canned soup, oreos, Ben & Jerry's, beer, Cheerios, all-purpose flour...), dealing with the monotony of eating a lot of potatoes during their first winter and their relationship troubles to discovering the joys of making a great meal from scratch using ingredients of known origin, learning how different and wonderful fresh food tastes, developing relationships with local growers (and with their food) and finally becoming completely self-sufficient on local foods... All while making their readers feel that they if they could do it, so can we.

Why should we aim to eat locally? The authors explain that we're so separated from our food and value it so little, even ignoring the huge impact eating factory-produced foods and foods shipped from across the country (or the world) has on our environment and our health:

A few facts from the book:

• The food we eat typically travels 1500-3000 miles before landing on our plate.
• A regional diet consumes 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet based on food shipped across the country.
• The United States has lost 2/3 of its farms since 1920.
• Soft drinks, sweets and alcoholic beverages account for 25% of all calories consumed in America. Meanwhile, Americans eat half as many servings of vegetables recommended- 50% of the vegetables eaten include just 3: iceberg lettuce, potatoes and canned tomatoes.

The group Food & Water Watch just posted a great Virtual Grocer that allows you to find out where the food you buy comes from. Try it! It's so interesting.
For example, did you know that if you buy a kiwi in the States, there's a 4 in 5 chance it's imported- most likely from Chile or New Zealand. Asparagus? 57% of the asparagus sold in the States comes from Peru.

What can you do to eat more locally?

Start small- aim to try making one local meal a week, for example.
Find the farmer's market nearest to you and make it part of your weekly food shopping.
Consider joining a CSA- Community Supported Agriculture- allowing you to support a specific local farm by paying a lump sum at the beginning of the growing season and then receiving that farm's food products (whatever is in season) year-round. If you're in the States, Local Harvest is a great resource to find a local CSA; In Canada, click Here.
Buy local produce in bulk and learn how to preserve it. Click Here for more info on preservation.
Try planting a small vegetable garden!

Foods That Fight Cancer- Part 3

Cancer Fighting Menu

We’ve seen already that the authors of the great book Foods that Fight Cancer: Preventing cancer through diet, Richard Béliveau and Denis Gingras, leading cancer researchers, recommend you eat ½ cup cruciferous vegetables (particularly broccoli and brussel sprouts) daily as well as 2 cloves of garlic and ½ cup onions most days of the week. According to their research, they’ve found that these foods, as part of a healthy diet, contain important anti-cancer compounds.

The authors also recommend you eat 1 tsp of turmeric a day.

Turmeric is a yellow spice and a staple in Indian cuisine. In fact, Indians consume 1.5-2 grams of the spice a day, on average! Turmeric is actually responsible for the yellow colour of prepared mustard in North America, but the quantity is so small that we’d have to eat 4kg mustard a day to consume as much turmeric as the average Indian. Not appealing.

Cancer rates in India are about 1/3 of that of the United States, lung and colon/rectum cancer rates in India are negligible compared to the States. Although no epidemiological study has looked at the link between turmeric and this huge disparity, the spice is almost exclusively consumed in India and its primary active ingredient, curcumin, has been studied in labs and found to have very strong anti-cancer potential. Giving the compound to lab animals that were introduced to carcinogens prevented the appearance of tumours. Curcumin is thought to have the greatest impact on colon cancer.

What is important to note is that a molecule found in pepper (black pepper and long pepper, not chilli pepper), piperine, increases the absorption of the turmeric’s curcumin by a factor of 1000. So, add 1 tsp turmeric and ½ tsp pepper to your curries, pastas, soups, salad dressing for a little flavour and a little cancer prevention. Curry powder is also great as it contains both turmeric and pepper.

Enjoy 1/2 cup blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries a day.

Berries contain a high number of phytochemical- anti-cancer compounds produced by plants. For example, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries have a high level of

ellagic acid that has been found to interfere with the development of cancer.

Blueberries contain a very high level of the phytochemical anthocyanidins, followed closely by raspberries, strawberries and cranberries, that is thought to be responsible for the antioxidant potential of berries. It has also been found to impede cancer cell growth, leading to cell death.

Enjoy berries year round- buy them frozen in the winter, ensuing that no sugar has been added, and defrost them to use in cereal, yogourt, make shakes with them or have them as a dessert topping... or as a dessert!

Drink 3 cups of green tea a day.

According to the authors, “green tea is by far the more important contender in the dietary cancer prevention race”.

Catechins are the main polyphenols (class of phytochemicals) found in green tea and are responsible for its anti-cancer properties, especially the catechin called EGCG.

The authors warn that just because the package says ‘green tea’, the product may not have a high amount of EGCG as it’s affected by cultivation area, season, processing etc. In general, Japanese green teas (especially Sencha-Uchiyama , Gyokuro and Sencha) contain a greater amount of the catechin than Chinese teas.

Brewing period- the time that the leaves are steeping in boiling water before drinking- is another important factor to consider. A longer brewing time (8-10 minutes) is favoured as it allows the catechins to be extracted. A bad quality tea brewed for a short time can have up to 60 times less catechins than a better quality tea brewed for a longer time.

As a result of the large variations in polyphenol compositions of green teas, it’s been hard to study. New studies are looking at the amount of polyphenols, rather than green tea, ingested. Nonetheless, the current research suggests that green tea is beneficial in cancer prevention, particularly bladder and prostate cancers, as well as breast and stomach cancer. Animal studies have shown that EGCG prevents the development of cancer triggered by carcinogens, specifically skin, lung, breast, esophageal and colorectal cancers.

Apart from choosing Japanese teas that contain a higher amount of anticancer compounds, and brewing it for at least 8-10 minutes, aim to drink freshly brewed tea, avoiding thermoses, and spread out your 3 cups of tea to get the most benefit.

More of the menu to follow... stay tuned!