Day 344- Cleaning Out the Kitchen

We made New Year's resolutions over a month ago, but how many of us were able to stick to those resolutions? If you are one of the many people that are still struggling to make healthier changes for 2012 maybe it is time to start by cleaning out your kitchen. That old saying, "out with the old, in with the new" is exactly what is needed to kick start healthy eating in your home. I have compiled 10 tips on how to stock your kitchen for success!

1. Remove anything that contains hydrogenated oils, or that contains the word hydrogenated on the label; such as margarine or shortening. These items contain trans fat and have been shown to cause cardiovascular issues, diabetes, and possibly even cancer.
2. Canned foods should be avoided. A much better choice is fresh or even frozen vegetables. Cans contain BPA that can leach into the foods. BPA may affect neural development in fetuses, and have been linked to endocrine disorders, heart disease, and cancer. Canned foods are also higher in sodium and sulfites, which are used as preservatives. About one in every 100 people are allergic to sulfites, and the reactions can be quite severe.
3. Avoid products that contain more than 5 ingredients or that list ingredients that you can not pronounce or understand. Visit my post on deciphering food labels for more tips on what to avoid. Also disregard health claims made on products- all gluten-free products are not healthy. Deep- fried potato chips may be made gluten-free, but that doesn't mean that they are something that you should keep in your pantry. Remember ingredients are listed in order of what is most prominent to the least. So if sugar and salt are at the top of the list, that means they are the most prominent in that item. Look for labels that have what you are eating at the top of the ingredient list, without all the extra flavorings and additives.
4. Stock your cupboards with healthier alternatives. If you are a baker, there are many alternatives to white flour that will still taste delicious, but won't have quite the same affect on the blood sugar. Eliminate the harmful "white" products from your kitchen, such as white flour, white bread, and white rice, these items raise your blood sugar and can lead to blood sugar dysregulation. Substitute instead with items such as brown rice, almond, or coconut flour. If you aren't gluten-free sprouted grain bread is a good choice when it comes to a bread option.
5. Stock up with lots of fresh organic fruits and vegetables. For tips on how to store your fresh produce and reduce waste, read my blog, I'll Eat That, by guest blogger Amanda Buhl on how to reduce waste and get the most our of your produce. Take the advice from author Michael Pollan, "if it was grown on a plant, not made in a plant, then you can keep in your kitchen."
6. Reduce sugars and avoid artificial sweeteners such as sucralose, splenda, high-fructose corn syrup, etc. Read my blog on sucralose to learn how this chemical affects the body. These artificial sugars are foreign substances to the body and thus the body does not know how to process them. These substances can eventually lead to blood sugar disorders and obesity.
7. Keep only good healthy oils in the kitchen. Some staples to include are coconut oil, olive oil, nut oils, and grapeseed oil. Remove vegetable oils, soy oil, and canola oil. You want to make sure you pay attention to the individual oil's smoke point to avoid the oil from going rancid during cooking. It is also good to keep only a small amount of oils out, while keeping most of them refrigerated and in dark containers for a longer shelf life.
8. Stock your freezer with premade soup stocks and food dishes that you can heat up for days that time is not on your side. This will help to reduce impulse grocery shopping or take-out food.
9. Enjoy spices! Eating healthy does not have to mean bland food. Stock up of a variety of yummy exotic spices, as well as good quality sea salt.
10. Have good snacks on hand. We all get the munchies, so make sure that there are healthy foods easily available to you when you want to nibble. Nuts and seeds on hand are a great idea. Visit my blog, This is Nuts, to learn about soaking nuts.

Pura Vida!

Alica Ryan, NTP

Day 53- Grass-Fed vs. Corn-Fed Beef

I went for over 10 years without eating red meat (well occasionally I had beef jerky), not for really any other reason other than I just didn't like the taste, smell, or texture of red meat. I grew up with beef that my family raised, so I knew what good quality meat was at a early age. Yeah, the butchering process disgusted me, and the cow hides that we had hanging in our garage, but I didn't decide to stop eating meat for those reasons.

Over the last few years, I have really changed my views on food and eating, and during this new transformation I decided that I was missing red meat from my diet. My husband who has always been a big meat eater, was stoked at my decision, and commended me when I started bringing home beef when I would go grocery shopping. But what we didn't see eye to eye on, what the type of meat that we would bring home. To me if I am going to eat red meat, I'm only going to buy good quality meat. He on the other hand went for whatever was on sale in the meat section.

So hence the purpose of today's blog. I have been working with my husband on learning how to read labels on meat, but the truth is there are so many other people out there, just like him, that don't know the difference between the types of meat that they are purchasing or the benefits from buying good quality meat. When it comes to grass-fed vs corn-fed beef, the difference can be surprising.

First of all, a little anatomy of the cow's digestive system. Grazing animals, such as cows and sheep, are designed to convert grasses into food that we can digest. Their rumen (cow's stomach) ferment the cellulose from the grass into protein and fats, due to the natural bacteria that resides there. Unlike the human stomach, the pH of the rumen is neutral. When cows are feed a corn diet, the rumen becomes highly acidic, which causes heartburn in the animal.

Michael Pollan, author of "Omnivore's Dilemma," "In Defense of Food," and several others, wrote an interesting article in the New York Times regarding feeding cows a grain-based diet:

"Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal’s lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal’s esophagus), the cow suffocates.
A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike that in our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.
Cows rarely live on feedlot diets for more than six months, which might be about as much as their digestive systems can tolerate. “I don’t know how long you could feed this ration before you’d see problems,” Metzen said; another vet said that a sustained feedlot diet would eventually “blow out their livers” and kill them. As the acids eat away at the rumen wall, bacteria enter the bloodstream and collect in the liver. More than 13 percent of feedlot cattle are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers.
What keeps a feedlot animal healthy—or healthy enough—are antibiotics. Rumensin inhibits gas production in the rumen, helping to prevent bloat; tylosin reduces the incidence of liver infection. Most of the antibiotics sold in America end up in animal feed—a practice that, it is now generally acknowledged, leads directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.” In the debate over the use of antibiotics in agriculture, a distinction is usually made between clinical and nonclinical uses. Public-health advocates don’t object to treating sick animals with antibiotics; they just don’t want to see the drugs lose their efficacy because factory farms are feeding them to healthy animals to promote growth. But the use of antibiotics in feedlot cattle confounds this distinction. Here the drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the animals probably wouldn’t be sick if not for what we feed them."

So why is it that we feed cows a corn based diet rather than what they were designed to eat? Because it's not only cheaper, but it's faster as well. Instead of waiting until the cows are large enough, say around 4 to 5 years, corn fattens them up faster so that they can be ready at as young as 14-16 months.

Alight, we already know that feeding cows corn-fed includes the use of antibiotics and increases the chances of disease being transferred to us, but what we haven't covered yet is the nutritional differences in grass-fed vs corn-fed beef. Grass-fed beef not only is lower in overall fat and in saturated fat, but it also provides more Omega-3 fatty acids, more conjugated linoleic acids (CLA), and more vitamin E. Corn-fed beef actually typically contains only 15-20 percent as much Omega-3 fatty acids as does grass-fed beef.

Now the hard part, where do we find this kind of beef? When shopping for beef, there are a couple of key words: Organic, Grass-fed, Free-range, and Hormone/Antibiotic free. Just because the label contains one of these key words, does not mean that the rest are just understood to be there as well. If a label states that it is "organic" and "hormone/antibiotic free," you still need to confirm that it was grass-fed, since even on organic farms cows can be feed grain, especially in their last few months. Then you have labels that only state that it was grass-fed, without the organic label. In this case you have to be carefully since the grass it was grazing on could have been treated with synthetic fertilizers and herbicides. So the end result to look for? Grass-fed and finished, organic meat is your top option!

Pura Vida!

Alica Ryan, NTP