What to avoid when eating out

Chef Anthony Bourdain, in his acclaimed book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, lists a few things he's weary of when eating out.

Here are some of them.

He avoids 'Discount Sushi'.

He never orders fish on Mondays (in NY restaurants). According to Bourdain, the fish market in New York is closed on Friday, therefore fish is ordered Thursday for the busy weekend and the second order goes in Monday for Tuesday. As such, the fish served Monday is 4-5 days old. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to order fish.

Tuesdays are the best days to eat out. Chefs usually get Sunday and/or Monday off and food orders come in for Tuesday... so the chef is well rested, the food is fresh and it's not busy, allowing the chef and staff to take care of you. Food is fresh Friday and Saturday but the kitchen staff is really busy therefore aren't paying as much attention.

Bourdain doesn't eat mussels in restaurants unless he knows the chef or seen for himself how they're stored or cooked. In only takes one bad mussel to make you very very sick.

He avoids Hollondaise sauce. This sauce is an emulsion of egg yolks and clarified butter and has to be held at room temperature. Bourdain has never known of any restaurant to make this sauce to order, meaning it sits at room temperature for a long time, allowing bacteria to fester.

Bourdain points out that in most restaurants, the bread is recycled off of people's tables. Although this doesn't bother him much, if it bothers you, you may want to avoid it!

He doesn't eat in restaurants with dirty bathrooms. Bathrooms are relatively easy to clean, kitchens aren't.

According to Bourdain, the key is rotation. A varied menu and a half empty dining room is a bad combination.

Bon Appétit!

Nausea and Vomiting during Pregnancy... Why?

Congratulations to my friend Nadine who is expecting her first baby- she's so excited and I'm very happy for her!

According to Dr. Atul Gawande, in his book ‘Complications: A surgeon’s notes on an imperfect science’, 60-85% of pregnant women experience pregnancy sickness. 5 out of every 1000 women will experience such severe nausea and vomiting to actually lose weight.

You’d think that throwing up while pregnant is evolutionary counterproductive since a growing embryo needs nourishment but Gawande presents the work of evolutionary biologist Margie Profet who claims it’s actually a good thing. She points out that many foods have natural toxins that are safe for healthy humans since we've developed elaborate detoxifying systems. However, embryos don’t have these systems in place. According to Profet, pregnancy sickness is a way to minimize the embryo’s exposure to toxins since women sufferers tend to prefer bland foods that don’t easily spoil and they stay away from foods high in natural toxins, like certain bitter foods and animal products that aren’t fresh.

The embryo is most sensitive to toxins in the early stages of development when it’s developing its organs, explaining why pregnancy sickness occurs mostly during the first trimester. At this stage, the embryo is small and its caloric needs are easily met by the mom’s fat stores.

Although obviously very uncomfortable for the mother, the good news is that women with moderate to severe pregnancy sickness have lower rates of miscarriages than women with mild nausea or none at all.

20% of women will experience nausea and vomiting after the first trimester, some may even suffer for the whole length of their pregnancy. In these severe cases, the risk of dehydration and electrolyte imbalance is very real and these women will require IV fluids and careful monitoring.

Some studies have shown that ginger might be an effective natural treatment for nausea and vomiting. Other possibly helpful tips include eating smaller meals more frequently, avoiding drinking fluids with meals, avoiding spicy foods and fried foods, cooking in the microwave to produce less odours, eating plain crackers or dry cereal before getting out of bed in the morning. Medication is sometimes prescribed as well.
It's often recommended that you take your prenatal supplement later in the day if you suffer from morning sickness.

Formula Kills Babies

I’m sure you've heard this story already but two babies are dead and 1253 more are sick (340 are still hospitalized) in China as a result of contaminated baby formula that was found to contain melamine, the same chemical that killed cats and dogs when it was found in pet food last year. Melamine is a chemical additive commonly used to make plastics and fertilizer. It’s high in nitrogen and when products are tested for protein, they actually just test for nitrogen. As such, this cheap additive has been used to make it appear like a product is high in protein. Melamine and one of its by-products block kidney function and, as a result, the poor babies have been suffering from kidney stones.

The contaminated milk powder has been traced to a major Chinese dairy, Sanlu Group Co. The group recalled its products last week although the Chinese media reported that some parents were complaining of problems since March. So far, over 10 000 tons of milk powder has been seized or recalled. Yesterday, Chinese authorities announced that they’ve arrested two men suspected to be responsible for the contamination.

Although Canada and the States don’t import formula from China, it’s possible that it has found its way here illegally. As a result, The Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have warned consumers to avoid baby formula from China- read the label!

Remember, if possible, breastfeeding is best....

The Omnivore's Dilemma

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan is one of my most recent reads and it’s an eye-opening book. Pollan is a journalist and in this book, investigates the origins of 4 different meals, through their various foods chains.

There’s the industrial meal- Pollan follows corn from a field in Iowa and a steer from a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) to his McDonald’s meal eaten in his car.
The ‘Big Organic’ meal- the author follows ‘Rosie’ the chicken from an organic industrial farm to Whole Foods and asks “could a factory farm be considered organic?” along the way. He also eats organic asparagus grown in Argentina and examines the ethical and environmental implications of doing so.
His third meal is grown locally through sustainable agriculture on a ‘beyond organic’ farm and is a real education not only on the value of eating locally, of “opting out of a globalized industrial agriculture” and of how our food choices profoundly impact our environment, but on the symbiotic relationship between man, animal and the land.
The last meal is one the author forages himself- hunting and gathering all the ingredients and includes an enlightening discourse on the ethics of eating meat.

Reading this book has been the catalyst for me to change the way I eat and, as such, has been life-changing. I recommend you read it and guarantee that it will revolutionize the way you think about the food you eat.

If you don’t have time to read the book, Pollan gave a great talk at UC Davis in 2006 that covers all the main points of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It’s about an hour, but worth it.

Slow Food

The Slow Food movement started in Italy in 1989 as a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome. The movement’s founder, Carlo Petrini, sought to fight industrial ‘fast food’ eating and remind consumers not only of the joys of eating, but of where their food comes from. Slow Food, now an international association with over 85 000 members in 132 countries, proposes responsibility on the part of the consumer- something they’ve termed ‘ecogastronomy’.

The movement is committed to safeguarding local and traditional foods and methods of preparation, to educating about the risks of fast food, factory farming, agribusiness and monoculture, to promoting ‘taste education’, to lobbying against use of pesticides, to teaching students and prisoners gardening skills, to developing political programs to preserve family farms and to encouraging ethical buying practices in the marketplace.

Just recently, Slow Food USA hosted the inaugural Slow Food Nation in San Francisco. Founded by Alice Water, one of the most influential American chefs and one of the earliest champions of the organic and local food movements, it was the largest celebration of American Food in history, with about 60 000 people in attendance.

Does High Fructose Corn Syrup make us fat?

Have you seen the new commercials put out by the Corn Refiners Association? They’re meant to convince us that the much talked about High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is no worse for us than table sugar or honey. For a while now, HFCS has been targeted as the cause of the obesity epidemic. That’s because the rise of obesity parallels the increased use of HFCS by food manufacturers, both of which started in the 1980s. By 1984, Coca-Cola had completely replaced sugar with HFCS. Corn sweeteners are made from corn, and corn is a subsidized crop and is therefore cheaper than sugar to use, explaining the huge increase in its use. In 2005, about 77 lbs of corn sweeteners were produced per capita in the US, compared to 35lbs in 1980.

Does HFCS make us fat?

According to most experts, including the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, and probably to the delight of the Corn Refiners Association, HFCS itself is not responsible for making people fat. Although far from natural, as the Corn people would like you to think, HFCS does start out as simple cornstarch- basically made up of chains of glucose molecules. Enzymes from cultured molds are then added to the cornstarch to break down the long glucose chains. To increase the sweetness, enzymes from various species of a bacteria are added to convert some of that glucose to fructose. HFCS is usually either 45% or 55% fructose. Table sugar, or sucrose, also contains glucose and fructose, in equal proportions. As such, it can be deducted that the physiological impact of both these sweeteners are similar.

However, a recent study published in the July issue of the Journal of Nutrition found that study participants given a drink containing more fructose than glucose (50% each and 75% fructose/25% glucose) converted sugar into body fat at a significantly higher rate than those given a drink of just glucose. These findings are interesting but it would be misleading to use these results to imply that fructose is responsible for increasing body fat. First of all, the study only had 6 young and healthy subjects. More importantly, however, we’ve known that we metabolize fructose somewhat differently than glucose but, even the lead researcher of this most recent study has said, we also know that fructose is not responsible for weight gain and dieters should not eliminate fruit, which have a high fructose concentration, from their diet. Excess caloric consumption results in weight gain. Incidentally, Americans are consuming an additional 200 calories per day compared to what they were eating 30 years ago.

Want to lose weight? Reduce caloric intake and that involves reducing all sugar intake- including HFCS.

Sources:

“Limiting Fructose May Boost Weight Loss, Researcher Reports”. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080724064824.htm

“Food Additives”. http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm

“Corn Refiners Ad Campaign Called Deceptive”. http://www.cspinet.org/new/200806231.html

Pollan M. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin Books 2006.

Willett W. Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy. Free Press 2001.

Nestle M. What to Eat. North Point Press 2006.

Schwarcz J. That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles. ECW Press 2002.