I have one rant for today: Margarine!
Margarine has always felt wrong to me but I didn’t know why until, about two years ago, I was reading Dr. Ogi Ressel’s book entitled Kids-First: Health with No Interference.Dr. Ressel is a father of three, a chiropractor, a researcher, a lecturer and a pediatric and x-ray expert, living in Ontario. He has also been a staff writer in Alive magazine (which I highly recommend) and Canada’s Healthy Living Guide magazine.
I have never been able to find a copy of this book on Amazon but here is the link from the publisher: http://www.longlifecatalogs.com/SHOP/STORE/viewItem.asp?idProduct=211
It’s a great book and it has great information about behavioural drugs and asthma and anything pertaining to children’s health. The part I want to talk about today is what he says about margarine.
Margarine seems OK in theory but it is its processing that makes it unhealthy. Vegetable oils are heated to very high temperatures which causes the oils to become rancid. Dr. Ressel then says that a Nickle catalyst is added with hydrogen atoms to solidify this rancid oil garbage. Then deodorants and colourants are added to take the smell away and make the grey solid turn into that lovely, appetizing cream colour.
The solidification process causes harmful trans-fat acids to be formed. These are carcinogenic, mutagenic and difficult for the body to digest.
Dr. Ressel states that once finished, margarine is one molecule away from being plastic. We’re supposed to store food in Tupperware containers not spread it on our toast! He also issues a challenge. He says that if you don’t believe him you can leave a container of margarine out in your garage and even after months it won’t have changed. Flies won’t eat it and bacteria won’t grow on it. Does this sound like something you want to be ingesting?
I was looking on the Alive website today and they had an interesting statement. Trans fatty acid content does not have to be disclosed on labels in the US or Canada. Hydrogenated oils and trans fatty acids are included as polyunsaturated fats (the source material) so that manufacturers can maintain saturated fat-free claims for their products. So the whole idea of margarine being better for you is total garbage. You can read the article here: http://www.alive.com/3631a4a2.php
The article also states that margarine will increase your levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower your levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL).
Butter on the other hand is a much more suitable spread/cooking medium as it is stable at high temperatures. Alive magazine as well as many other resources state that butter and coconut oil are the most stable frying oils. Olive oil ranks really well as well but canola oil and most other inexpensive oils will begin to develop carginogens due to the heat way before they fry much of anything. So in low temperatures they are OK (as in vinaigrettes) but I don’t bother stocking them at all. The processing makes a difference in the quality and health factor of the oil and since they don’t usually specify the methods of extraction on these oils, I don’t buy them. When cooking you’ll want to use a virgin or extra-virgin olive oil that has been cold pressed (or unrefined) or you can use butter.
Butter also has stores of vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and cholesterol. Although a diet high in cholesterol is bad for you, a little butter won’t be harmful in a properly balanced diet. In fact, children need fats in their diets and as a vegetarian family, fats are never a concern.
I do try to use butter as little as possible and substitute all I can for oils. This is only because dairy farms are big contributors to animal suffering. After all, your veal comes from the males calves of dairy cows. Dairy farms have no use for male calves and since they can’t be milked they are either chopped up into dog food in their infancy or raised in tiny crates for veal.
One more thing to add about aspartame from Dr. Ressel’s book, he writes: Methanol, from aspartame, is released in the small intestine when the methyl groups of aspartame encounters the enzyme clymotrypsin.
Free methanol begins to form in liquid aspartame-containing products (ie. pop, juices etc.) at temperatures above 86 degrees F also within the human body which is at 98.6 degrees F.
The methanol is then converted to formaldehyde. The formaldehyde converts to formic acid, an ant sting poison. He goes on to say that toxic formic acid is used to strip epoxy and eurothane coatings and that it can’t be good to be ingesting it. That only accounts for 10% of aspartame’s toxicity! There are other parts of aspartame mentioned in his book that are even worse than what is mentioned in the excerpt above.
On to some positive stuff. One of these days I will talk about all the good things hidden in our fruits and veggies but that is much too much work for today.
I will talk about seaweed though. Seaweed is a power house of many amazing minerals. It is chlorophyll-rich and one of the best sources of electrolytes! Brendan Brazier states in his bookThe Thrive Diet that they have 10 times the calcium of cow’s milk and several times more iron than red meat.
My favorite way to eat seaweed in is sushi! I love avocado sushi but you can add anything from veganaise, carrots, cucumbers, mushrooms, sprouts, lettuce, peppers, anything you can think of. I have even tried tofu slices wrapped in arrowroot powder and fried in olive oil (see your health food grocer for arrowroot powder). They make a decent substitue for fried shrimp.
I found a website with good instructions for rolling sushi. See it here: http://sushiday.com/archives/2006/10/26/how-to-roll-maki-sushi/
The only thing I want to add to these instructions is that I always use water to seal the flap that end the sushi roll. It helps to keep your sushi roll from falling apart. Then make sure to use a really low sodium soy sauce (the regular stuff tastes too salty and detracts from the sushi) and some wasabi (you’ll find it on the shelf beside the nori sheets but it must be refrigerated after opening). Yumm…wasabi! I know what I am making for lunch!
I am including two rice recipes.
Traditional white sushi rice:
This is much easier than it looks. You basically just do a 1:2 ratio of sushi rice and water. I use one and a half to two cups of rice and that makes about six rolls. You are supposed to rinse the rice until all the water runs clear. I often forget this step. Oops. The sushi rice is important because other types of rice will stay dry and won’t stick together very well. Aged rice is even better.
Cook until the rice is tender, sticky and the water is all gone. While the rice is cooking you want to combine 5tbsp of rice vinegar, 3 tbsp of sugar and 2 tbsp of salt. You heat that until the sugar is all dissolved and then let cool.
Once the rice is cooked you transfer it to a large wooden bowl or a large ceramic bowl will do and use a spatula constantly dipped in the rice vinegar mix to separate the grains of rice. Let cool until at room temperature. I have often let sit in the fridge a bit when I am in a hurry. The recipe is derived from the book SUSHI made easy and my own experiences making sushi.
Then follow the instructions for rolling your sushi in the link above!
Brown rice:
The instructions are pretty much the same as the recipe for white rice but the recipe urges you not to refrigerate. I imagine this would make the rice quite dry.
This recipe is derived from Skinny Bitch in the Kitch and I haven’t tried it yet.
You can also add other forms of seaweed (such as arame) into miso soups and rice dishes.
Here’s to slimmer waist lines, good food and great health!
