Posts tagged ‘protein’

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February 29, 2012

Recommendation: See Forks Over Knives

I heard about Forks Over Knives when it came out. I wanted to see it, but it just never happened. So with our streaming Netflix account now set up, I finally sat down and watched it. It’s in a similar vein as Food, Inc., but is focused on the health ramifications of different diets. Specifically, it points out mountains of evidence, much of it compiled by doctors who both grew up on dairy farms, that a diet heavy with animal products generally leads to diminished health, whereas a diet rich in plant foods improves health. Some of the case studies and anecdotes provided in the movie are striking. People change their diets and improve their health enough to quit taking prescription drugs, lose weight, and feel better than they ever have.

I read and hear a lot about the many virtues of a vegan-or close to vegan-diet and the damage caused by meat and dairy. I’ve been on board with cutting down on meat for a while, but no one had ever convinced me that dairy isn’t a good idea. Forks Over Knives made me think again about my milk, yogurt and cheese intake. The movie points out that milk, long called “nature’s perfect food” is the perfect food if you’re a rapidly growing calf. They point to multiple studies that found a diet of 5% animal protein led to vastly decreased incidence of cancer growth in both rats and humans. By my own unscientific calculation, that’s approximately one serving of milk, butter, yogurt or cheese a day. A diet of 20% animal protein, on the other hand, corresponded with much more cancer growth. Calculating based on this amazing infographic, that’s totally within the American diet (the meat, eggs, nuts & dairy categories account for 27% of the calories on the most recent information).

Obviously, the counter to this is that dairy gives us protein and calcium. I mentioned protein last week, so I’ll refer to Grist’s series on the subject. The calcium piece is counterintuitive. Dairy, it seems, causes a kind of acidosis in the body, which the body fights by neutralizing the acid. To do this, it draws on its most readily available source of calcium—you guessed it, bones. Making matters worse, milk fat blunts the acid in the body, so when you remove the fat, the acid is that much more potent. Crazy, right? Oh, and you can get calcium from leafy greens. Bring on the kale!

Needless to say, I really, really recommend seeing this movie. The explanations are clear and accessible, and more scientific than mine. There are a lot of numbers and statistics, but they’re presented with compelling stories so the movie is entertaining and informative. I’d say what Food, Inc. did to shed light on industrial food production, Forks Over Knives does to show the effects of an industrialized diet and the relative simplicity of the solution. After all, “eat fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes” is so simple it seems too good to be true.

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February 22, 2012

Food in the News

It seems to me lately that the food industry is getting a lot of media attention—much of it unwanted. Part of that is probably because I follow news outlets that report on these things, but in general the companies who feed us appear to be coming under new scrutiny from the public and the media alike. Here are some of the stories that have caught my attention lately:

Protein Propaganda: I cannot express how thrilled I was when Grist started its series on protein a few weeks ago. This piece of the series focuses on the equivocation between animal products and protein. If you think of meat when you think of protein, thank the meat and dairy industries and their respective lobbying and marketing efforts. Never mind the evidence that plant based protein is plentiful and better for your health than animal based. If you’ve ever hesitated at the idea of foregoing meat at a meal, please, PLEASE read this. And if you’ve ever wondered how much protein we actually need, or what its environmental impacts are, or anything else about protein, really, this series is for you. Grist has done a fantastic job of outlining the status and importance of protein in the US.

Tomato Politics: If at some time, when you’ve come into a grocery store, you’ve gazed in curiosity at mounds of fresh tomatoes, glistening at you as you take off your scarf and gloves as you come in from the cold, and wondered where these mystical orbs could be from, check out this Mother Jones article. At the very least, these (likely) crunchy- and pink-inside spheres of summer are global travellers, and odds are, they caused some kind of strife wherever they came from. This article examines just one sliver of the organic winter tomato industry and it’s not a pretty picture. The solution presented is pretty simple: if you want tomatoes in winter, buy them canned. I’d recommend looking for BPA-free cans, but those can be hard to find. Better yet, buy local tomatoes by the crate during the high season (when farmers or friends with gardens will practically pay YOU to take them away) and take up canning.

And then there’s Dairy: Sometime in the last decade or two, soy milk stopped being something you could only find at a co-op if you wore vegan sandals and hemp clothes. It’s pretty mainstream now and has a lot of closely related cousins. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of milk substitutes, unless you count coconut milk out of a can (not the drink and not the light kind). My love of coconut milk is as a cooking ingredient—seriously, put it in your soup. Apparently the dairy industry doesn’t like having competition and has mounted a campaign to diss and discredit its imitators. We’ve arrived at Small Bites, with a quick overview of the industry’s new “Real milk comes from cows” campaign. I hadn’t heard of the campaign, but it’s an interesting industry reaction to changing public sentiment. I like the point in the article that “real milk” could just be considered milk in the form it leaves the cow, rather than the pasteurized, skimmed, homogenized kind you get at the supermarket—if you want to know too much about that, check out this Food Renegade bit on “real” milk. Yuck!

One of the really big stories lately has been McDonald’s telling its pork suppliers to stop using gestation crates for their sows. It’s been covered in a number of outlets, including by Mark Bittman for the New York Times. Good for them, and it is a positive step. But, I can’t help wondering—maybe this is just my ignorance because I don’t go to McDonald’s—what’s on their menu that includes pork?

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December 1, 2011

Make Cooking Easier, Cheaper and Healthier

My husband and I aren’t vegetarians, but to be honest, I can’t tell you the last time I cooked meat at home. I think it was in February. Ditching the Meat+Starch+Vegetable=Meal equation has changed my culinary life and really improved how we eat. Cooking is much, much easier now and this improvisational style is the inspiration behind the meals you can make with Everyday Eats deliveries. Example: last night’s dinner was pumpkin-coconut rice with sautéed rainbow chard on the side. It was a “clean out the fridge” dinner—the pumpkin and coconut milk were leftover from a baking project last week. Both dishes were delicious.

I think the term flexitarian works for us. We eat meat regularly, when we’re at other people’s houses for meals, or if we’re out at a restaurant that doesn’t have many veggie options. Filet mignon and garlic mashed potatoes remains one of my favorite meals, but it’s a twice-a-year indulgence.

For some of the other 363 dinners a year, we’ve become connoisseurs of house made black bean and garden burgers in Portland. Um, the Leaky Roof and Hamburger Mary’s are faves in case you wanted to know. If you’re worried about protein deficiency (most Americans eat way too much protein, by the way, so don’t worry about it unless it’s a medical concern), check out this list of protein content of a ton of foods, and an interactive calculator to get an idea of what you need.

Anyway, I’m here to make the argument for non-meat sources of protein. There’s a lot of variety. You can get your protein from any of dozens (or hundreds?) of kinds of beans, lentils, whole grains, other legumes, nuts and vegetables. A lot of those contain only trace amounts of fat and lots of fiber.

Then there’s price. A pound of organic dry black beans in bulk might run you as much as 2 or 3 dollars. A pound of the cheapest meat in the store might be about the same (I’m guessing). It gets better. When you cook meat, lots of fat and water cook out of it, reducing the weight of the end product. Beans, whole grains and legumes go in the opposite direction: they gain water weight when soaked and cooked. I haven’t done the math to figure out exactly how much you gain or lose by choosing one or the other, but if you’ve ever soaked dry beans, you know what I mean.

The last endearing quality I’ll gush about is cross contamination. You don’t have to worry about it when you’re using “alternative” protein sources. Though it’s not the kind of thing you can do in a restaurant kitchen, at home, I reuse pots, cutting boards and utensils shamelessly. Dealing with raw meat makes more dirty dishes and means you have to clean a section of the counter like it’s a biohazard and turn on the faucet with your wrists. And you have to check your reusable grocery bags for meat juice then wonder if it got on everything else in the bag…ew. All you have to worry about with beans is sorting through them well enough to pick out pebbles and giving them a good rinse.

So, getting protein from beans, legumes and whole grains makes cooking easier, is more cost effective and adds fiber while subtracting fat from your meals. What’s not to love?

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