Category Archives: Health

Health

My gluten-free, low-carb challah bread recipe

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Gluten-free bread can be tasty. It is our experience that gluten-free bread is best enjoyed when one does away with the expectation of duplicating the taste and texture of wheat. It’s very difficult, when all you’ve ever known are gluten breads, to suddenly find satisfaction in something that isn’t gluten. But satisfaction can be achieved.

This is a heavily modified version of Bette Hagman’s recipe for gluten-free challah bread. It is modified to exclude high-carb flours and dairy. Continue reading My gluten-free, low-carb challah bread recipe →

Health

#OliveOil: buyer beware!

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Life with food allergies is fraught with mysteries, a few of which, I suspect, are never elucidated. My daughter has many allergies and, as a result, her food is prepared at home, from single ingredients that are carefully-vetted to exclude soy, corn, palm, gluten, and dairy, just to name the main culprits. We’ve had too many accidents that resulted in a trip to the emergency room to stray too far from our regimen. While a great number of those accidents were traceable to a food she ingested, or the possibility of cross-contamination, there were still a great many instances where there was an illness and no obvious culprit.

Olive oil is a staple in our kitchen. Up until recently, while I would strive to buy our olive oil mostly from either Costco or Whole Foods, I would buy it at my local grocery chain when in a pinch. Recently, I ran out of olive oil as I was getting ready to make a limited run to the local grocery. I bought a liter bottle there. Within hours, my daughter was sick. While she was not sick enough to need the emergency room, she was noticeably ill and we didn’t know why. After all, nothing new was added to her diet. Right? Continue reading #OliveOil: buyer beware! →

Health, My NY Times Comments

Mark Bittman: The Food Industry’s Solution to Obesity – NYTimes

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Mark Bittman

You can buy food from farmers — directly, through markets, any way you can find — and I hope you do. But unless you’re radically different from most of us, much of what you eat comes from corporations that process, market, deliver and sell “food,” a majority of which is processed beyond recognition.

The problem is that real food isn’t real profitable. “It’s hard to market fruit and vegetables without adding value,” says Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “If you turn a potato into a potato chip you not only make more money — you create a product with a long shelf life.” Potatoes into chips and frozen fries; wheat into soft, “enriched” bread; soybeans into oil and meat; corn into meat and a staggering variety of junk.

You can possibly blame them for stupidity: Even a mindless parasite knows that if it kills its host the party’s over, and by pushing products that promote “illth” — the opposite of health — big food is unwittingly destroying its own market. Diet-related Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease disable and kill people, and undoubtedly we’ll be hearing more about nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, an increasingly prevalent fatty liver disease that’s brought on by diet and may lead to liver failure. Continue reading Mark Bittman: The Food Industry’s Solution to Obesity – NYTimes →

Health

New Painless Treatment For Cavities

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King’s College London – King’s spin-out will put tooth decay in a ‘time warp’

Dentists could soon be giving your teeth a mild ‘time warp’ to encourage them to self-repair, thanks to a new device being developed by dental researchers. Reminova Ltd, a new spin-out company from King’s College London, aims to take the pain out of tooth decay treatment by electrically reversing the process to help teeth ‘remineralise’. Continue reading New Painless Treatment For Cavities →

Health

Olga Khazan: U.S. Healthcare: Most Expensive and Worst Performing | The Atlantic

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The origin of the phrase “You get what you pay for” is sometimes attributed to the fashion mogul Aldo Gucci, who said, “The bitterness of low quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded.” But when it comes to healthcare, Americans get neither quality nor affordability.

The United States healthcare system is the most expensive in the world, but when it comes to health outcomes, it performs worse than 11 other similar industrialized nations, according to a new report released today by the Commonwealth Fund. Continue reading Olga Khazan: U.S. Healthcare: Most Expensive and Worst Performing | The Atlantic →

Health

Mother Jones: These Popular Plastic Bottles May Be Messing With Your Hormones

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By Mariah Blake

Many BPA-free plastics leach BPA-like chemicals that are potentially damaging to human health, a dilemma Mother Jones explored in our expose on the plastics industry earlier this year. But consumers have had no way of knowing which of the items lurking in their pantries might wreak havoc on their hormones. Until now. A new paper in the journal Environmental Health identifies specific plastic products—including AVENT baby bottles, CamelBak sippy cups, and Lock & Lock food storage containers—that leach estrogen-mimicking chemicals. Perhaps more importantly, it also names a few options that are hormone free. Continue reading Mother Jones: These Popular Plastic Bottles May Be Messing With Your Hormones →

Health

New Findings on Timing and Range of Maternal Mental Illness – NYTimes

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By Pam Belluck

When her second son was born, six weeks premature, Emily Guillermo recalled thinking, “You’re not supposed to be mine. You were not supposed to be made.”

Postpartum depression isn’t always postpartum. It isn’t even always depression. A fast-growing body of research is changing the very definition of maternal mental illness, showing that it is more common and varied than previously thought.

Scientists say new findings contradict the longstanding view that symptoms begin only within a few weeks after childbirth. In fact, depression often begins during pregnancy, researchers say, and can develop any time in the first year after a baby is born. Continue reading New Findings on Timing and Range of Maternal Mental Illness – NYTimes →

Health

Best Things to Buy at @WholeFoods – DailyFinance

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By Cameron Huddleston

Whole Foods Market (WFM) is often jokingly referred to as “Whole Paycheck” because this natural-foods chain sells higher-priced organic fare and specialty items. Check out with a cart of grass-fed, hormone-free ground beef, organic heirloom tomatoes and artisan-crafted cheese, and you could easily pay twice as much as you would spend for similar conventional items at a grocery store. But is the ritzy reputation always warranted?

Surprisingly, there are deals to be had at Whole Foods. You heard right: Even bargain-conscious shoppers can find well-priced goods at this high-end grocer. That’s great news for those of us who are in the habit of making one trip to Whole Foods for splurge items and a second trip to the grocery store for staples such as milk and pasta. Continue reading Best Things to Buy at @WholeFoods – DailyFinance →

Health

Why Chef Marcus Samuelsson Finds Calm In A Chaotic Kitchen (VIDEO)

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Marcus Samuelsson seems at ease just about anywhere. Born in Ethiopia, adopted by a Swedish family and now based in New York, the famed chef has thrived both at home and abroad. But there’s only one place where he finds total comfort: the kitchen at his restaurant Red Rooster Harlem.

Samuelsson invited cameras inside this sacred culinary space in an original short from Oprah’s “Super Soul Sunday.” In the above video, he explains how the kitchen represents so many intimate, familiar things all at once. Continue reading Why Chef Marcus Samuelsson Finds Calm In A Chaotic Kitchen (VIDEO) →

Health, My NY Times Comments

#NYTOpinion: Mark @Bittman: What Causes Weight Gain

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Mark Bittman

If I ask you what constitutes “bad” eating, the kind that leads to obesity and a variety of connected diseases, you’re likely to answer, “Salt, fat and sugar.” This trilogy of evil has been drilled into us for decades, yet that’s not an adequate answer.

We don’t know everything about the dietary links to chronic disease, but the best-qualified people argue that real food is more likely to promote health and less likely to cause disease than hyperprocessed food. And we can further refine that message: Minimally processed plants should dominate our diets. (This isn’t just me saying this; the Institute of Medicine and the Department of Agriculture agree.) Continue reading #NYTOpinion: Mark @Bittman: What Causes Weight Gain →