The Food Doctor

Last week another study came out, this time talking about Omega-3, saying that there’s no scientific proof that it does anything to help one’s heart. It’s just the latest study that’s been done on something that health food advocates have sworn will heal this or help that which have been disproven.

by Zane Hollingsworth via Flickr

What’s going on? There’s a lot of historical “proof” that many things will help cure different diseases or help to make us healthy. How many American mothers raised their children under the mantra “an apple a day will keep the doctor away”? Yet how many people now know that apples are one of the highest fruits in sugar content, thus high on the glycemic index and something that diabetics have to worry about having too much of?

Truth be told, if most people eat a proper diet they’re going to get all the nutrition they need most of the time. Sure, there are people who miss out on some nutrients because they don’t eat a true balanced diet, but in today’s world there are so many foods infused with so many vitamins and other things that it’s nearly impossible not to get at least a little bit of what you need from somewhere.

For instance, if you eat any cereal whatsoever, you’re covering yourself for a lot of vitamins that you used to have to eat something specific for. We don’t have scurvy anymore, even though everyone doesn’t eat oranges or citrus fruit, because it’s in so many other foods.

Back to supplements. With every passing day some college or independent research facility is putting a supplement to the test to see if it really offers any benefit that it’s stated to do. Anyone can put out a supplement and get around FDA regulations by saying it’s “not really” a medicine. Anyone can say they did a study to prove this or that. Then real science gets in the way and says “no, that’s not true”.

I’m not saying that maybe some supplements won’t help. What I am saying is that one needs to look at these things with a critical eye instead of just listening to the person in the health food store who’s telling you how great something is. You need to check out stories that will give you general information about nutritional supplements and make informed decisions instead.

There’s a friend of mine to whom I’ve talked over the years about changing some of his dietary behavior. I can’t claim success for his recent changes, but they do point out how a change for one reason can change something else.

He has recently lost 20 pounds in about 6 weeks. What’s amazing about it is that he didn’t set out to lose weight. What he did set out to do was reduce the amount of fat in his diet because he said he wasn’t feeling all that good after certain meals and wanted to change that feeling.

He started out by looking at what vegetables he would eat, which wasn’t a lot. He liked spinach, but had always eating it by boiling it and then putting a lot of butter on it. As a matter of fact, that’s how he ate all his vegetables. He decided to try a stir fry, with just a little oil and seasoning it with a few spices. Turns out he liked that a lot, but got hungry pretty quickly.

Through experimenting he started adding either chicken, salmon or shrimp to the meals, each with very little fat. That seemed to add a bit more heft to what he was eating so he didn’t get hungry as quickly. He also added other vegetables like carrots, onions, cabbage and broccoli. This turned out to be a great flavor for him.

One other thing he added as a regular thing was more cereal, which has no fat except for raisin bran. He was lactose intolerant but found that there was milk that was lactose free, and he bought 2% because that’s what he was used to from when he was younger. Turns out one cup of 2% milk, which filled his bowl, is only 5 grams of fat.

His plan was to reduce his fat intake so that it was less than 55 grams a day. He found that eating the meals he did was keeping him under 40 grams a day, even though he was suddenly eating 5 times a day. Eating more meals convinced his body to give up some of its fat reserves, and by not replacing all that fat, which came in many ways, he’d started losing weight.

He was stunned when, after two weeks, he decided to step on the scale and found that he’d lost 9 pounds. That was without almost no exercise. Since then he’s decided to give himself one day a week to eat whatever he wants and has added walking and some minor strength training into the mix. He’s also learned that by changing his eating behavior, he can’t eat like he was eating beforehand because it makes him feel sick, and he sees that as a good thing. He can eat a hamburger just fine, but a double burger with a large fries followed by ice cream… not anymore.

Sometimes simple food changes can be a good thing. It’s something to think about.
 

I am a food scientist, a term that may be misunderstood by a lot of people. What I do is figure out how companies can mass produce their food items based on original formulas and recipes so that those products will taste like expected later on.

by Tracy Hunter via Flickr

One might not know how hard it is to get something like this right, but all you have to do is think about making something as simple as cornbread and mixing together two boxes of ingredients at once instead of just one. You might initially believe that if you’re going to do this that all you have to do is double everything. However, you find that when you bake the cornbread, it’s not coming out quite as you thought it might. Maybe the middle doesn’t cook all that well or the outside gets burned, or maybe it doesn’t spread the way you expected it to in the pan.

In that small experiment, you realize that you have to change many things, from how long you bake to what temperature to even how much of the other ingredients you should put into your cornbread mix. Do you put more or less milk in? What about the eggs?

If things can go wrong with something that simple, imagine what it’s like when you’re looking to make thousands, if not millions, of a product at one time in a factory. The chemistry alone can be daunting. It’s not just ingredients or temperature at a certain point. It’s the type of oven or vat you’re cooking in, how you’re putting your product into its packaging, how long it should cook or cool, the order of ingredients, the power of spices… so many things. Many times the corrections are minor, but it could take weeks of testing to figure it out. Other times the corrections are major and costly; there are a lot of great products that never make it to market because it would cost too much to create them.

This is one reason why homemade products, or products made locally, cost so much more than products from large companies. Local products are made in smaller quantities to retain their quality, while larger companies might end up cutting some corners to get out what they do. Don’t take my word for it; make some rice krispie treats, then go out and buy a box of them, and taste them yourself. I believe you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

Question – Is frozen yogurt actually healthier than ice cream made with pure cream, and if so why? Answer: YES and NO-Depending on the Manufacturer/Brand name because of the ‘live’ GOOD bacteria that promotes gut/colon health. Also yogurt has less fat and sugars than ice cream. Please read the Ingredients list to make sure what [...]

Q. How long does it take for food poisoning to occur after eating something, and can you cook the bad stuff out of everything if you cook it on high enough heat? Answer to this Yes & NO. Read on……. Answer: Food Poisoning is mainly TWO kinds: A. Microbiological, B. Chemical. A. MICROBIOLOGICAL has three [...]

Question – How long does it take for food poisoning to occur after eating something, and can you cook the bad stuff out of everything if you cook it on high enough heat? Food Poisoning is mainly of three kinds: 1. MICROBIOLOGICAL: Spoiled food due to microbiological growth of “BAD” – Bacteria, Yeast, Molds and [...]

This is a 3-fer: Question – I have a problem with triglycerides and my doctor said I needed to stop drinking, even though I don’t drink that much. What’s the relationship between triglycerides and drinking and are these some alcoholic beverages worse than others? Alcohol is metabolized like sugar because it is a product of [...]

Question – What is it in fat that makes it taste so good when there’s more of it in something? Fat is the one that gives mouth feel and flavor impact to the foods we eat. What we like to eat is controlled by the ‘sensory properties of the food’. Salt, sweet, sour and bitter [...]

Two questions today: Question – I’ve always fried foods with butter or margarine and now I’m hearing of people frying things like eggs with olive oil. Is that better, does it change the taste, and are there other oils that will work just as well? Yes. It is better. Olive oil has its own ‘signature’ [...]

I have a sugar craving; in your opinion, what would be the best way to break it? The insulin in your blood is looking for the sugar (glucose) to maintain a safe level to cater to your energy need. You can try eating ‘slow burning carbs’, i.e., releasing glucose at a steady rate so you [...]