MUFAs

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Do you not recognize the title of this blog? Well, I’ll tell you what it means: MonoUnsaturated Fatty Acids.

These are found in olives, and olive oil, and avocadoes, and nuts, and a few other places.

MUFAs are good for you. They defeat heart disease, and (some say) even cancer. They are very good for your cholesterol. They even help you control your weight.

MUFAs are the latest recruits in the nutrition wars. Remember “superfoods”? The list keeps growing. Recently, in the Providence Journal, they featured something called “seaberries” (also called “sea buckthorn,” Hippophae). They are said to have a “citrus-like” flavor that’s “somewhat unpleasant.”

But they’re good for you!

Remember goji berries? And acai? Also very unpleasant-tasting. I also find pomegranate juice unpleasant, unless it’s mixed with raspberry or something more palatable. All three of the above – goji, and acai, and unadulterated pomegranate – taste (to me) like dirt laced with motor oil.

But they’re good for you!

My student employee Joshua recently brought in a whole papaya, which he tried to eat. Papayas are a superfood, right? But his papaya (he told me later) was a little unripe: hard and sour. He ended up throwing much of it away.

But they’re good for you!

Here’s the thing about foods with MUFAs: we know them already, and they taste good. I like olives, and olive oil, and avocadoes, and cashews, and walnuts, and peanuts, and dark chocolate.

It’s like the old canard about American moms and French moms: “American moms tell their kids: ‘Eat it! It’s good for you!’ But French moms say: ‘Eat it! It’s good!’”

I’m with the French moms on this one.

Eat more MUFAs. They’re not just good for you; they’re good.

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Microbes, probiotics, and prebiotics

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Some time ago, Michael Pollan had an article in the New York Times Magazine about the cohabitation of microbes and human beings. It turns out that each one of us is a huge colony of cells, some of them specifically human, but the majority foreign to us. We contain more single-celled microbes than human cells, believe it or not.

But we coexist with those microbes. They live in us, and on us, and have done so for a very long time, and we have found ways of coexisting that are beneficial to all. Some microbes help to regulate our digestion; others regulate our immune systems; and so on.

Example: Helicobacter pylori. H. pylori was discovered several decades ago to be the main cause of stomach ulcers. Before this discovery, ulcers were one of those things you just suffered with, like arthritis. After the discovery, a quick course of specific antibiotics cured ulcers double-quick.

Except that it turns out that it’s more complicated than that. H. pylori helps regulate stomach acid when we’re younger; when we’re older, it causes ulcers. This (Pollan speculates) may be on purpose: maybe the body and the bacteria are collaborating to kill us, to move us off the stage so that younger and stronger people can take over.

H. pylori has been largely eradicated now. Is this a good thing? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Pollan also takes on the issue of probiotics. Can we tend our gut flora as if it were a kitchen garden? Perhaps. We already do it with yogurt, and pickles, and sauerkraut, and all kinds of things. But now you can buy foods with “beneficial” microbes, which will colonize your stomach and intestines and make you unbelievably healthy.

Then there are “prebiotics.” These are foods that serve as quick-start fuel for microbial populations.

I tried one of these a few years ago.

Evidently I have a very lively microbial population in my gut. Giving it a little extra food was like giving Hitler the A-bomb.

I will never eat anything labeled “prebiotic” again.

I love my internal microbial population, but I don’t want them to take over completely.

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Salt is evil. Or is it?

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Mark Bittman recently wrote about how people talk about food in good-and-evil terms. Salt is always bad. So is sugar. Fat is always bad too. Gluten is the devil. Quinoa and spelt, on the other hand, are wonder foods. Soy used to be wonderful, but now it’s suspect. Same with sweet potatoes.

Here are some facts: Salt is a necessary nutrient. Sugar is just a carbohydrate, like many others. Fat is concentrated energy in food form, which is why we find it so appealing. Gluten is just wheat protein; some people may have a sensitivity to it, but most people really don’t. Quinoa and spelt are nice additions to the diet, but don’t cure cancer. Soy is generally fine, as are sweet potatoes.

Now go online and read the reactions from Bittman’s readers! Some of them were furious. He was telling them something contrary to their own beliefs.

Beliefs!

Now here’s a somewhat different case. Watch this video and think about it, and then continue reading:

This is “Sam Sandwich,” an animated character created by the Disney Channel. Sam teaches kids to eat healthily. There are lots of episodes, and I invite you to watch some; they’re cute, and some of them teach valuable lessons, like don’t eat candy for lunch, etc.

But what lesson did you learn from the above video?

If you’re an adult of average intelligence, you will have noticed Sam’s comment that “a pinch of salt makes food taste better, but too much is bad for you.” If you’re a child, you will hear: SALT IS BAD FOR YOU.

I heard about Sam Sandwich from a colleague, who found that her little boy wouldn’t eat anything salty anymore, because “Sam Sandwich says it isn’t good for you.” Evidently he’s a picky eater to begin with, and this has made matters even worse.

Bittman has shown us that adults are credulous enough. Sam Sandwich shows us that children are even more so.

Enough, already. Stop frightening children. And let’s have a little reasonable conversation.

If possible.

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Fast food

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Partner and I took an impromptu holiday on Cape Cod recently. We had a nice meal at Captain Parker’s in West Yarmouth, which is a terrific little seafood restaurant. We had a couple of nice country breakfasts at the Hearth ‘n Kettle in South Yarmouth, which gives you a nice hot pitcher of coffee with your meal.

And we also ate at McDonald’s and at Wendy’s.

Partner and I normally don’t eat fast food. But on holiday: why not?

Just as a test, I ordered a Big Mac. It was almost as I remember from the 1970s and 1980s: it had the same feeling, and the same squishy delectableness, but they hadn’t put enough of the Special Sauce on it! I was a little disappointed. (Special Sauce, for the younger among you, is a mix of mayonnaise, relish, mustard, and other seasonings.)

How about Wendy’s? I’m not a faithful diner here, but their food is good. I had a double-burger thing, and some fries, and a “milkshake” so thick that I couldn’t use a straw. Very nice, all in all.

Much has been written lately about the fast-food cabal and how horrible their food is nutritionally. So the chains – McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s – are making soft and gentle noises about wanting us to eat healthily.

They’re kidding, of course.

They do enormous amounts of research into our natural cravings for sweet and salty and protein, and work until they find perfect combinations. (The Big Mac is one of those perfect combinations.)

They’re devious. They want you to eat there every day.

Don’t do it, kids. Beat them at their own game. Make it a treat, once in a while. It won’t hurt you. It’s really delicious, in its peculiar salty / sweet / protein way.

Just don’t overdo it.

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Sardines for dinner!

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I believe that, if you crave something, you should eat it. Your body is wiser than you are, and if it’s asking for a particular kind of food, probably you should give it the food it’s asking for.

I crave sardines sometimes. I started eating them in Morocco in the 1980s, because they were cheap and didn’t need cooking and were good with fresh bread. Also, the Atlantic waters off the Moroccan coast are rich with sardines (or they were in those days).

I learned then that sardines are not always four inches long and are not born in little metal cans. The best sardines are seven or eight inches long, and are wonderful when you grill them. The Moroccan fishermen kept all the best and biggest sardines, and we ate them with pleasure in Moroccan bars and restaurants. The rest were shipped to canneries.

But even small canned sardines are tasty.

In Morocco, you could buy sardines canned with preserved carrots, and peppers, and tomatoes, and anything you might wish. They were all delicious. Here in the USA, you can buy them in oil, or with hot sauce, or with mustard.

They are pungent, of course. The house smells of sardines for a few hours after I eat them. And you really shouldn’t heat them up, because they stink like holy hell if you do that.

Sardines are full of healthy stuff: calcium (you’re eating their feathery bones as you eat their succulent flesh), iron, omega-3 fatty acids, phosphorus, protein. They contain next to no carbohydrates. They contain Coenzyme Q10, which is an antioxidant and does just about everything but cure cancer.

They have a bad reputation, I think, those dusty little cans sitting in the back of the cupboard.

Get those little cans out of the cupboard and open them and have a feast.

Live a little.

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Salt, and MSG, and lead: Joe Jackson sings "Everything Gives You Cancer"

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I read lots of different publications. I read Reader’s Digest, which is very cheerful, but is also very conservative. I also read Mother Jones, which is unashamedly liberal. I read the Atlantic, and New York Magazine, and the Financial Times . . .

 

 

Well, I tell you, it’s exhausting.

 

 

It’s especially exhausting to figure out their takes on various issues.

 

 

Salt, for example. Reader’s Digest recently excerpted an article from the New York Times (!) which showed that maybe salt isn’t as bad as we’ve been bad as we’ve been led to believe.

 

 

To be sure: any nutrient, in excess, is bad for you. But how much is too much much? We’ve been told over the last few decades that we eat too much salt, and it’s killing us: hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease.

 

 

Except maybe the research studies aren’t supportive of this.

 

 

O dear!

 

 

Monosodium glutamate? Also not necessarily a killer, according to a British book I read recently. (Of course, they said that salt was the real villain.)

 

 

And a recent article in Mother Jones found widespread lead poisoning in urban areas, which seemed to correlate to areas of elevated crime, etc.

 

 

Sing it, Joe Jackson!

 

 

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Diets

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I was talking the other day to a coworker about her weight-loss plan, which is making her considerably thinner. Sadly, it’s one of those high-protein / low-carbohydrate diets which always backfire.

 

 

See, your body has several different metabolic settings. When it’s getting mostly protein (as with the Atkins Diet and its many imitators), it swings into a metabolic cycle that burns up your body fat very quickly. Then, unfortunately, if unchecked, it begins to digest your muscle mass, including your heart muscle. You must be very careful on these diets.

 

 

Fortunately, most people stay on these diets for limited periods of time, because they’re expensive, and because the range of foods is so limited and monotonous.

 

 

I have known about these diets since the 1980s, when a coworker (nice-looking, but with a pot belly) confided his weight-loss secret to me: now and then – once a year or so – he’d live on bologna and eggs for a couple of weeks, and his pot belly would disappear.

 

 

(Other dangers of this kind of diet: the waste products are highly toxic. You need to drink a lot of water, all the time, in order to detoxify yourself. Also, you need to consume a certain amount of carbohydrates, just to reassure your body that it doesn’t need to start consuming itself.)

 

 

Better, in some ways, the Maria Callas Diet (which is championed by my workfriend Apollonia, who has never tried it, but who thinks it’s a wonderful idea): swallow a tapeworm. It will keep you thin, no matter what you do.

 

 

Eep!

 

 

To quote Paul Bartel, who plays a “thinologist” in the 1990s movie “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills”: “It’s like I told the police: if you have a bunch of rich people in one place who are determined to lose weight, some of them are going to die.”

 

 

Or you could just eat less and exercise more.

 

 

You should choose the diet that’s right for you.

 

 

(Unless it poisons you, or devours you from within.)

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Jell-O

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Back in January, I shared my New Year’s resolution to follow in Vanna White’s footsteps and try at least one new recipe a week. 


I managed it, for a while.  Then I got a little lazy, and made something I’d made before, and decided to rephrase the resolution as follows: “I will make at least one recipe (from scratch) every week – preferably something I’ve never made before – but an old and well-loved recipe is okay too.”


Now we are into March, which is the month in which moribund New Year’s resolutions generally die and are forgotten.


I made Jell-O last week.


Yes, I know.  Little box, boiling water, cold water, put it in the fridge.  But let me ask you: when’s the last time you made Jell-O?  (I’m lying, actually; it wasn’t Jell-O, it was Great Value Lime Gelatin Dessert, which I bought at Walmart for fifty-five cents.)


We were in Walmart – I needed black socks, and a picture frame, and isopropyl alcohol.  And Partner said: “What about groceries?”


I never think of grocery shopping in Walmart, but I began looking down the grocery aisles, and my goodness how cheap everything was!  We did pretty much our entire weekend grocery shopping right there, plus lots of impulse items.  The gelatin was one of these; I was darting down the aisle and saw those demure little boxes there, and I had a quick flashback to my childhood, and they were fifty-five cents!, and –


Well.  Naturally I made it with mini-marshmallows.  (These were ancient, and hard as rocks, but I put them in the microwave for a few seconds and they puffed up and became young and soft and fresh again.)  My mother used to put mandarin oranges in her Jell-O; I only wish I had some.  I need to stock up.


And I’d forgotten the wonderful smell that rises out of the bowl when you pour the boiling water over the gelatin powder: sweet and fruity, really heavenly.  Then you stir it slowly, and it seems to thicken before your eyes.


The instructions on the box told me to stir for two minutes.  I did, while meditating.  I thought about a story one of my college professors told: gelatin, while mostly protein, is not a “complete protein,” in that it doesn’t contain all of the amino acids human beings require in their diet.  This was not known until after the First World War.  Sadly, many WWI refugees were given a diet high in gelatin, because it was known to be protein; many became very malnourished, and some died.


Also: you know what they make gelatin from, right?  Hides. Hooves.  Yum!


(I ate it on Sunday evening.  It was very refreshing.)


(I also accidentally spilled some on the rug. I tried to clean it up, but I missed one blob, and Partner stepped right on it, and shrieked. You can only imagine what it feels like to step on a blob of cold Jell-O.)


I still maintain that I’m keeping my New Year’s resolution.


Next week maybe I’ll make Gorton’s Fishsticks.

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The joy of soy

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Normally I buy a pint of milk once every two weeks.  I use maybe half of it, on cereal and in occasional baking/cooking projects.  Then I buy a new one and throw the old one away.  Expensive and wasteful.  But what’s to be done?

 

 

Well, there’s soy milk, naturally.  And cashew milk, and almond milk, and all kinds of other things.

 

 

I tried soy milk about two years ago.  I was suspicious of it; I was prepared for it to taste weedy and green and wild, not like milk at all, but like edamame, about which I am not crazy.  And, naturally, I conned myself into thinking it did taste like that, and so it fulfilled my worst expectations.

 

 

But it kept preying on my mind.  So, a few months ago, I bought two waxed-paper cartons of WestSoy soy milk, one vanilla-flavored (which sounded mostly innocuous and less like edamame), the other plain. 

 

 

I find that I like them both.  The vanilla soy milk is delicious on cereal – better than regular milk.  The regular soy milk is also not bad. 

 

 

Soy milk lasts a lot longer in the fridge than regular milk.  You have to shake it up before you use it, but I don’t have a problem with that.  And it’s faintly sweet (at least the WestSoy product is), which is pleasant.  I want to see how it works in baking projects, and mashed potatoes, and sauces, and things like that. Then we’ll see.   (It’s also – supposedly – packed with some botanical equivalent to estrogen, so I will be watching to see if it takes away any of my intense masculinity.)

 

 

My brother-in-law Dwight was a dairy farmer for years.  He and my sister used to leave little nasty notes at restaurants when they were served margarine instead of butter.

 

 

I can only imagine what Dwight might think of soy milk.

 

 

But, hey, you gotta live a little.

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Paula Deen, diabetes queen

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I have written about Paula Deen at least twice before.  She is one of those (you should pardon the expression) larger-than-life people who command your attention.


Her backstory is admirable.  She had something like agoraphobia, needed to work, started cooking and baking and selling food, and is now a small industry herself.  She is cheerful and funny.


Her recipes are atrocious.  Do I need to tell you again about her “English Peas” fiasco?  Not to mention the fist-sized balls of peanut butter and powdered sugar, or the bread pudding made with Krispy Kreme donuts. 


Paula, you see, discovered some years ago that primates like us crave sugar and fat. So: her recipes revolve around those two things.  (I will not soon forget her show on which two big muscular guys carried a huge block of butter to her on stage, as if it were a royal palanquin.  Or the recent incident in which a  muscleguy smeared butter on his abs and commanded Paula to lick it off.  And she did!  And then rode him around the stage.  But I digress.)


Paula discovered a couple of years ago that – gosh! – she had developed adult-onset (type 2) diabetes.


She did not speak of this until very recently, when she struck a deal with a drug company, Novo Nordisk, to become their spokeswoman.


Guess how she’s dealing with her (at least partially self-inflicted) disease?


She’s walking on a treadmill.  She’s not drinking sweet tea anymore.  She is (presumably) taking medication.


She continues, however, to be a spokeswoman for Bad Sugary Fatty Food.


Kids: turn away from her.  Don’t watch her show anymore.  Ignore her.  I did a few years ago, after the Krispy Kreme bread pudding.  She’s a freak.  She’s cute and winsome, but she’s not a role model.


Even Fox News agrees with me.  And how often do you suppose that happens?

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The Vegetarian Times

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Last weekend I cooked a pork roast.  I also read the latest issue of the Vegetarian Times.

 

 

Yes, I know. 

 

 

But here’s the thing: I am not the carnivore I used to be.  I go meatless two or three days a week at least.  I like very much Mark Bittman’s compromise: be as meatless as you can be without driving yourself crazy.

 

 

There are some good recipes in the most recent issue of the Vegetarian Times. I intend to try the black-bean-and-sweet-potato enchiladas, and maybe the stuffed mushrooms, and the nice Hungarian crepe-and-jelly dessert. 

 

 

But there is also a whole mindset to this vegetarian thing, a fiery self-righteousness.  One reader wrote to complain that a recent article might actually encourage people to eat sweet corn, which – gasp! – might be genetically modified.  The editors duly apologized.  References to obscure food items – tempeh, kombucha, chaga, spelt – are everywhere.  It’s like any other club: the members really don’t want you to understand what they’re talking about. 

 

 

It’d be helpful if they relaxed a bit.  It’s not a religion, after all; it’s just a way of eating.

 

 

I was especially bemused by references to something called Quorn.  Evidently it was a meat substitute, but I had no idea what it was; I assumed it might be something like soy. 

 

 

But, oh my, it’s ever so much better than that!

 

 

It’s a mycoprotein: a substance produced by a fungus called Fusarium venenatum.  The fungus produces strands called hyphae, which resemble the fibers in meat.  If you grow this fungus in a vat and harvest it, you can moosh it up and turn it into a meat substitute.

 

 

I have no problem with this; I’m Polish on my mother’s side, we love to eat fungi.  But the nice people at Quorn were concerned that people might not like their product, so they started telling little white lies.  They said, for example, that Quorn was “mushroom protein.”  (Our friend Fusarium is a fungus, but not all fungi are mushrooms.  Fusarium, to be frank, is a mold.  It is probably not good for sales to say so out loud.)  If you haven’t seen Quorn much in the USA, that’s because a couple of other companies screamed loudly that Quorn causes dangerous allergic reactions in a significant percentage of consumers.  (It appears that the claim is vastly overblown, and that Quorn is no more dangerous than, say, mushrooms.  Or peanuts, for that matter.)

 

 

And who funded the anti-Quorn campaign?  Why, a company called Gardenburger.  You may known them.  They make meatless products. 

 

 

See?  Vegetarians aren't necessarily nice people.

 

 

This makes me feel better, because I know I will never be a nice person, vegetarian or not.

 

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American fatness

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There are lots of foreign tourists in Disney World and at Universal – an amazing number, actually.  I noticed this trip that they’re starting to put both Spanish and Portuguese on the signs; I assume this is for Brazilian tourists.   There are Brits and Dutch everywhere, and Chinese and Japanese and Koreans.  (There was a Dutch group at our hotel, and I know it’s horrible and bigoted of me, but when I see a skinny Dutchman light a cigarette and hold it between two fingers while surveying the room, I can only think of every villain in every World War II movie I’ve ever seen.) 

 

 

But here’s the thing: most of the foreign tourists are not overweight.  Some of the Brits and Brazilians are rugby-player stocky, but they are almost never fat.

 

 

For real honest-to-God fat, you really need to go American.

 

 

My dear lord!  When you’re walking in a group of Americans, it’s like a herd of mastodons.  The bellies!  The butts!  What do they eat?  How much do they eat?  Are they aware that they look like circus freaks?

 

 

Then you notice the people on scooters.  For grandmas and grandpas, and for the handicapped, scooters are great.  But then you see these mammoth sacks of flesh driving their little scooters down the main drag, presumably just because walking is just such a hassle, and you want to knock them over.

 

 

Naturally there are a lot of Southern tourists in Florida.  A lot of the men look like football coaches or ex-players: you know, tall, sunglasses, sort of brawny.  But there always seems to be that gigantic belly in front, which sort of ruins the jock image.

 

 

And then there are the wives. 

 

 

Also (and most sadly of all) there are the children.  There was a Minnesota family near us at the airport gate in Orlando, with two small very active boys.  And both of them had adorable little pot-bellies sticking out in front.  And, judging from the looks of Grandpa and Dad sitting nearby, those adorable little pot-bellies aren’t going away any time soon.

 

 

Honestly, folks: why are we doing this?  I tell you that this is not normal.  We need to reassess our national diet and our national approach toward nutrition, but immediately.

 

 

And, while you're reassessing, pass me them there Cheez Doodles.

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Stop eating so much sugar and fat!

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We crave fat. When we eat it, our bodies produce something called endocannabinoids, which resemble the active ingredient in marijuana. And that makes you want to eat more fat.

 

 

We were born to be hunter-gatherers, as my student/assistant Noah reminded me the other day. (He's taking pre-med classes, and is also a varsity football player, so he knows his stuff.) The closer we keep to the Original Human Diet – complex carbohydrates, proteins – the more naturally our body responds to them.  (Noah claims he eats nothing but oatmeal and brown rice and chicken.  I have seen him eat chocolate, however.  Hmm.)  With unlimited access to fat and sugar . . . well, unpleasant things happen, like obesity, and diabetes, and fatty liver. We were not intended to have quite this much sucrose in a given day. As for fat – well, it was pretty scarce back on the savanna when our ancestors were chasing gazelles. Grandma and Grandpa Australopithecus gobbled it all up as soon as they found it, and their bodies taught them to crave more.

 

 

And we, their descendents, still crave it.

 

 

My Polish grandmother used to eat lard on bread. “Lard is rich people's food,” my mother said.

 

 

Yikes.

 

 

I've never gone quite that far, but I recall buying a dozen Dunkin' Donuts in one of those big pink-and-orange boxes, and eating all twelve while on the phone. (This was back in my plump-and-pleasant days, naturally.)

 

 

Nowadays I'm skinny and agile, and if any gazelles come past, I will lope after them and run them down.

 

 

Anyway: eat less fat. And sugar. They'll kill you.

 

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North African food

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When I first arrived in Morocco in 1984, the Peace Corps nurse spoke to us about health issues. “You won't need to worry about the food,” she said. “Believe me. You will eat well.”

 

 

She wasn't kidding. In Morocco and Tunisia, we ate spectacularly. Bread and cheese and fish from the corner store were always fresh and delicious. Fruit and vegetables were always local and beautiful. Local places always had roasted kebabs and fresh bread. Tajine, and couscous, and salade mechouia, and brik, and chakchouka. Harira, the magnificently thick aromatic soup with which one breaks one's Ramadan fast.

 

 

There was also the wacky stuff. I have written elsewhere of my adventures with kamounia, a dish which can be made with just about any organ meat (usually liver or kidneys, but which, one memorable day, came with a sheep testicle riding on top). Ojja, the delicious Tunisian dish with tomatoes and hot peppers and eggs and sheep's brains. Osbene, the North African version of haggis: guts and vegetables, stuffed into guts, then baked.

 

 

(There are gray areas, of course. There is a Tunisian dish called meloukhia, prepared with meat and olive oil and dried powdered jute leaves. It ends up looking like chunks of sponge rubber marinated in motor oil. It smells like death. And some people love it.)

 

 

One day in 1986, a friend with US Embassy commissary privileges bought us a whole bunch of food – American food! packaged and boxed and canned! - and we had a feast.

 

 

And we were all sick for three days. Utterly miserable.

 

 

After several years of pure food, we'd eaten (in a single meal) huge doses of preservatives, and additives, and pesticides, and hormones, and chemicals.

 

 

Kids: you think foreigners eat strange things? Read the side of your Cap'n Crunch box sometime. The entire periodic table is in there.

 

 

And now I've gone and made myself hungry for guts and brains.

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Sugar is not your friend

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There was an article in the Times recently about sugar being a toxin. (I'll link to it here, but the Times now has its Gottverdammt “paywall” in place, so you may or may not be able to access the link. Sorry.)

 

 

Yes, you heard me. Sugar is a toxin.

 

 

The article actually explained this, in terms that a semi-educated blockhead like me could understand.

 

 

In short: not all carbohydrates are metabolized in the same way.

 

 

Your body wants glucose for energy. It gets a lot of glucose from metabolizing starch from food like potatoes, and grains, and other plant foods. Starches are basically long chains of glucose molecules. Yum! your body says, and takes the starch apart into its constituent glucose molecules. It has lots of ways of doing this; even saliva does it, a little. Since (up to very recently in human history) most of our glucose intake was in the form of starch, our bodies have evolved very neatly to perform this task.

 

 

Sugars are a little different. Sucrose – table sugar – is a double molecule: one molecule of glucose, one of a different sugar called fructose, linked together. Glucose is an all-purpose molecule, and can be metabolized pretty much anywhere in your body. Fructose can only be processed in one place: the liver.

 

 

And here our troubles begin.

 

 

Sucrose is half fructose, as I said. And I'm sure you've heard of “high fructose corn syrup” (HFCS), which is cheap to make, and is actually sweeter than regular sugar. Well, now let's say you have a nice Snickers bar. Right away you're flooding your system with a burst of glucose, which sends your poor pancreas into conniptions, so it sends out a lot of insulin to help regulate the glucose metabolism process. And then, of course, there's all that fructose heading for your liver for processing.

 

 

If this goes on too much, it leads to a condition called “fatty liver.”

 

 

Also – delightful! - with so much insulin washing around in your system all the time, your body's cells can become what's called “insulin-resistant.” Your pancreas pours out insulin all the time, but it's not accomplishing what it's supposed to do.

 

 

Related conditions: obesity, obviously. “Metabolic syndrome,” a risk factor in heart disease and diabetes. And, more recently, a very distinct link to some kinds of cancer.

 

 

Sigh.

 

 

Solution: eat less sweet stuff. Mostly plants, as Michael Pollan says.

 

 

No problem, baby. I love sweet potatoes and black beans.

 

 

You can just call me Mister Health.

 

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Fiber: a beginner's guide

 

 

Partner and I are both over fifty, and you know what your doctor tells you to do once you're fifty.  It involves fasting for a day beforehand, and not eating red food, and – ahem.

 

 

Our test results have been okay so far.   I had some small abnormalities a few years ago, but they weren't serious enough to merit special attention.  But it's been around five years, and I have my yearly physical in a few weeks, so I have a feeling I know what will be happening again soon. 

 

 

If I have learned anything through all of this, it is to eat more fiber.

 

 

A man of my age and weight needs about 25 grams of fiber a day.  A paperclip, or a raisin, weighs a gram.  So if I eat twenty-five paperclips worth of fiber a day, I will be fine, and the inside of my colon will be as clean and delicate as a baby's skin.

 

 

This is easier said than done.

 

 

Here's the fiber lowdown:

 

 

•                  Foods that you think might be full of fiber are not full of fiber.  Most cereals.  White bread.  A surprising number of vegetables.

•                  On the other hand, beans have a lot of fiber: red beans, black beans, kidney beans, Roman beans, cannellini beans.  Also chickpeas.  Also lentils.  Prepare to be very gassy.

•                  Peas are remarkably high in fiber.  In fact, anything with a skin is rich in fiber.  Each cute little pea has a little skin around it.  See?

•                  Pasta is made from hard wheat, and so is full of fiber.  Marinara sauce is made from whole tomatoes, and is also full of fiber.  No wonder Italians are so vibrant.  It’s the fiber!

•                  You can actually buy Double Fiber bread.  It tastes just like regular bread, and it blasts through you like an Atlas missile.  It's terrifying.

 

 

This is what we do for health.

 

 

It's worth it.