Placebo Effect!

Expectations change our sensory system and alter the way we experience subjectively and objectively.

We may be laughing at people who believed in the effect of snake oil and think we are different now but Placebos still work the magic on us.

Placebos are effective in two stages to shape our expectations. Imagine that we first see the health claims all over the box of a new product, we believe in them and we decide to try. Great expectation makes us feel better after having it. Our faith results in positive initial experience and we are confident to go on. Sooner than later, we are conditioned to expect positively after repeated experiences and release chemicals to prepare us for the next pleasant outcomes, just like Pavlov's dogs salivated at the bell rings.

This explains why it's so hard to stop eating the junk food that we know is bad for us.

When we allow ourselves to reach for the convenient junk foods while feeling most hungry, sad, tired, stressed and frustrated, we are totally vulnerable to expect something good to lift us up, and boy, they are good! They are ingeniously designed and engineered so! Of course they cure all our ailments and we are hooked. We become emotional eaters of this cure-all.

We just went through the most effective Placebo process, thinking it's not much more than merely spoiling our appetite for the next meal, without knowing that it might be far more difficult to strip away the preconceptions and its self-enhancing Placebo effect once when our brains are primed and conditioned.

My point? If you have to, have it early in the day, when you are happy, full, and share it so you don't have to finish the whole bag by yourself.

Notes:

Hormones such as endorphins and opiates can block agony and produce exuberant highs and dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain's pleasure system when you expect a rewarding experience.

My Five Simple Rules For You to Master Cooking!

Here you go:

1. Sharpen your taste buds. (More sequels of my posting about taste to come!)

2. Recipes are maps. You are the driver at wheel.

• Don't be obsessed about the measurements. Season to your taste, your liking.
• Taste and adjust is part of the fun in the journey. Embrace and own it.
• Don't be afraid to get lost. Explore and experiment is fun.
• Change ingredients for what you have on hand! My notes provide you basic rules and options.
• One of the keys to sustainability is that you have to like it, not to be told to.

3. Shop like your grandma.

• Well, I've done part of it for you by posting weekly sales.
• Inspect the produce. 
• Don't be afraid to ask the workers for more if the shelf is empty.
• Ask for rain checks if they are all out for sale items.
• Go to farmer's market. Know your local growers if you can.
  (List of State by State farmers' markets)

4. Stick with real, fresh, local and seasonal.

5. Pick on the quality of food, not quantity.


For people who have decision fatigue, feel free to use my grocery shopping rules:

• Choose those closest to the earth, soil, habitat - vegetables, fruits, chicken, fish, wholesome real food.
• Choose those that don't require the packages - the produce.
• Choose those that don't require ingredients list.
• Choose those with short ingredients list, generally the less the better.
• Choose those with ingredients that you know and can pronounce.
• Choose those that don't have to shout for their health benefits and claims.
• Wednesday is the best grocery shopping day, less people shop on Wednesday.

If You Can't Trust Your Eyes...

I hope you understand your brain and how it perceives better after the games on your eyes.

What about your auditory perception? Can you always tell me what pitch it is, if I play a single note on the piano? Or can you always tell me which one is higher or lower if I play two notes on the piano?

For the majority of us, it is way easier for us to perceive a group of things and tell a relative difference or distinction.

This could actually be good news for us. If we know how our brains work, we can help the brains to help us in reaching our intended goals!

How about this:

If you want to control your diet, you should start with the plate size.

Cheers.

Brain Food for Tea Time!

Can we eat to help our brain function better?

Your brain needs vitamins and essential fatty acids to function. They also support your heart and your body's general well being.

When you feel like having something to help you focus in the long, awkward time between lunch and dinner, don't just munch away and let temptation rule you. First defense line to guard your health is snacking mindfully.

Like I mentioned not all calories are created equal. You can snack to really fuel your body and your brain or undermine them.

By the way, the most important thing to help your brain is good sleep. If you are sleep deprived or suffer from insomnia, don't try to eat your problem away. Get some good sleep first. (I'll post something in that regard later.)

Here is a list of food that would help your brain function.

1. Broccoli, Cauliflower - your brain's best friend with high level of vitamin K, which has a great deal of health benefits, including enhancing cognitive functions. Steam it for only 2 to 4 minutes or roast it instead. Sprinkle with chopped garlic, olive oil, and chile flakes for the boost.
2. Fish high in EFA's and Omega-3 - oily fish like salmon, sardines, trout, and kippers contain EFA's in a ready-to-use form. Omega-3 supports brain and nerves system and prevent cognitive problems, sleep disorders, learning disabilities and depression. The essential fatty acids from fish and nuts can not be produced by the body and have to be ingested from our diet. 
3. Fruits high in vitamin C - blackcurrants, tomatoes, blueberries. The antioxidants that your body gets through regularly consuming fruit and vegetables are an important part of your diet, as they improve your cognitive performance and ward off stress, to help you think and learn better – essential for all of us out there. Their high level of vitamin-C that can help nerve cells and brains function better and prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease.
4. Sweet potato or banana for potassium -  Potassium is needed for good oxygen flow to the brain to support concentration and productivity. Sweet potato has more potassium than a banana and lower GI for a lower and longer sugar burning boost. Bake it with a sprinkle of salt, Cajun.
5. Nuts - they are whole food with low GI, high-protein for brain fuel and they are very filling. Walnuts are a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, like oily fish. However, watch out for the calories as they are, after all, high in calories from oil. Take a moderate amount and don't refill after you finish them.
6. Chocolate, the darker the better - not the kind from candy bars. I prefer 80 percent or more and I eat them with pumpkin seeds or nuts such as almonds.

The rest are also good for brain function but may suit better in your meal plan.

1. Curry - Turmeric, the spice that gives curry and mustard their yellow color, contains a chemical called curcumin. Research has shown curcumin’s ability to boost memory, slow the progression of Alzheimer’s and stimulate neurogenesis, which is the process of creating new brain cells. It may also clear out amyloid plaques, the brain gunk thought to be a cause of Alzheimer’s, and calm inflammation of brain and nerve cells.
2. Chickpeas - They contain high level of magnesium, a mineral that plays a key role in energy metabolism. Magnesium is highly beneficial for brain cell receptors, speeding message transmission. Magnesium also relaxes blood vessels, letting more blood through to feed the brain.
3. Buckwheat - buckwheat is a natural mood-calmer because it's high in relaxing tryptophan, providing 25 percent of your recommended allowance in a one-cup serving. Buckwheat is also a good source of magnesium, with 229 mg per serving. (Though some forms of cooking drop the magnesium content.)  Technically a fruit seed, buckwheat is gluten-free and high in fiber, so it’s a great grain substitute. Throw it in soups or stews, or cook it and add it to salads. You can even boil it up as a hot breakfast cereal, much like grits or cream of wheat.

Sorry it's a bit long, but when it comes to our brain, we just can't cut corners, eh?

Dessert Disaster!

When we eat a big helping of dessert calories packed with refined sugar and carbohydrates, which pass through our digestive system quickly and load up our bloodstreams with sugar in the form of glucose, our food mechanism would turn that big surge of glucose into energy and store it for later use, yes, in and around our bellies.

That means, 100 calories from syrup isn't the same 100 calories from a handful of almonds or from a bowl of brown rice in terms of how our body responds to them.

Foods with high GI, high sugar content and no protein or other nutritional value are usual a great quick fix for your hunger pangs, or boredom snacking, but they’ll leave you more tired, hungry and dissatisfied than you were to begin with.

The better way to eat is to choose snacks that will nourish your body and your mind – and keep your hunger at bay.

We all need tasty treats to keep us swinging until work is done in the afternoon and we don't have to give up all desserts, we just have to select a better kind, if not the right kind.

Note: 

Glycemic Index (GI) - 

It measures how a carbohydrate-containing food raises blood glucose. Foods are ranked based on how they compare to a reference food — either glucose or white bread. A food with a high GI raises blood glucose more than a food with a medium or low GI. The lower is better and generally, foods with glycemic index of 55 or lower is considered low, 56 – 69 as medium; and 70 and above as high.

Brown rice has much lower GI than white rice, while white rice has a lower GI than glutinous rice (the sweet sticky rice that makes mochi or rice dumpling.)

The same food can have different GI reading when prepared in different ways, for example, white rice porridge has lower GI than steamed rice.

When you eat rice with protein, that can lower the GI of the whole dish, as you can imagine the protein can slow down the break-down process for rice to turn sugar so it can't rush to our bloodstream as fast. That's why the same calories in a cup of sugar water as opposed to that in a handful of almonds have quite different impact to our body.

When Evolution Is Outpaced ...

Why do we eat too much and even continue to eat when we are full and consciously know we are undermining our health and shortening our lives? Why does our eating mechanism seem to be malfunctioning and going against our best interests?

The answer is, human beings have an evolved mechanism to eat whenever food is available.

Human nature evolved mostly on the plains of Africa, where our ancestors wandered around as nomadic scavengers, gatherers, and hunters, long before we settled in communities. Our days were spent looking hard for food. When we found some, it made a lot of sense to eat as much as we could because we had no way to store or carry extra food, and we didn't know how long it might be until we would eat again.

These days we have much more food than we need. We can eat as much as we want, 24 hours a day.

To make matters worse, we seem to have a particular penchant for sweet and fatty foods. Maybe these are fairly common on the plains when we evolved, so we did not need to be a glutton for vegetables. However, sweet fruits and fatty animal flesh were hard to get. When our prehistorical ancestors found sweet fruits and killed an animal, it was advantageous to eat as much as possible. So unless we work very hard to control ourselves, we feel fine and happy to finish that juicy hamburger and head off for dessert.

Our food industry has made so much progress while we still have the same stone-age brain that we inherit from our gatherer-hunter ancestors, with a hard-wired mechanism telling us to eat as much as possible. We are so out-dated, out-paced, out-numbered and out-smart'ed that it is for sure a tough battle to fight, but we have to try no matter what.

If we don't know how our food brain works, if we don't know what we are dealing with, there is no chance we can prevail.

To read more, go to Your Stone Age Brain.

Yes, I know. You want the recipes for good food. They are on the way...

Did you check out my salt page yet?

Enjoy.

Enjoy Your Berries!

Double Berry Soda (yield one serving): 

Ingredients: 

• Strawberry 50g
• Raspberry 50g
• Preferrably honey 20g (or sugar 12-15g)
• Lemon juice 2 tsp
• Soda water

Directions:

1. Cut strawberries into small dices. 
2. Put strawberries, raspberries, honey, lemon juice into container, mix well and chill in refrigerator for 5-6 hours.
3. Add soda water to dilute and serve.

Berry Fruit Salad (yield one serving):

Ingredients:

Salad:

• Strawberries (cut in halves), blueberries, raspberries about 10-20g of each in equal parts
• Romaine lettuce or any greens 20-30g, cut into 1 inch pieces
• Celery 20g or half stalk, chopped.
• One kiwi sliced
• 1/4 apple sliced or cut into chunks

Dressing:

• Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries in equal part, about 15g of each
• Celery 15g or half stalk, diced
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp honey or sugar

Directions:

1. Put all ingredients in dressing in blender and blend until smooth.
2. Combine all fruits and vegetables in a mixing bowl and pour the dressing on the salad. Mix gently and transfer to a plate. Sprinkle chopped celery on top an serve.

Cold Fruit Medley Soup with Chickpeas (yield one serving):

Ingredients:
For soup:

• 1/2 red grapefruit, about 100g, peeled and diced     
• Six strawberries, halved
• 30g raspberries (about 6-8)
• 10 dried Goji berry
• 1/8 tsp salt



Dried Goji Berry

• 1/8 tsp black pepper

• Honeydew 50g, cut into bite-size dices
• 2 tbsp cooked chickpeas or beans

Directions:

1. Soak dried goji berries in a little water to soften.
2. Put half of total red grapefruit (50g), half of total strawberries (3 strawberries),  raspberries, 10 dried goji berries, salt black pepper in blender or food processor and blend until smooth.
3. Combine the mixture with honeydew dices, the other half of red grapefruit dices, the other three strawberry halves, and cooked chickpeas. Serve.

I hope you enjoy these recipes.

Go Nuts! Go Bananas!

I have a huge sweet tooth. I love nuts, fruits, cakes and the combination of all three, but today, I am going to focus on fruits since summer is around the corner and I don't want you to miss all the goodies coming our way.

Not only do fruits taste great by itself, they detox, cleanse and nourish us in many ways. For many people who dislike vegetables, it's the only thing they would eat uncooked and unprocessed.

A lot of nutrients found in the fruit peels and skins, such as the resveratrol in red grape, are very beneficial to us. Most of them have the same nutrients in flesh as well. To me, with or without the skins, they rock either way. Best of all, they satisfy my sugar cravings without the fat.

Check out more facts about fact about pythonutrients.

Since we got gorgeous berries at bargain prices this week, I am going to give you some recipes based on that. Stay tuned.

Detox, is it for real?

Detox, is it really difficult? Is it necessary?

Do you feel moody, exhausted, stressed and unhappy most of the time but have no idea why? Do you want to stay healthy, energetic but can not find enough time to shop, cook or exercise, so you just grab whatever and gobble it up, hoping that will fix it for you.

The diet we have today is very different from what it used to be, so is its availability, quality and the amount we consume. On top of that, we have a very different life style. Without some understanding in the food we eat, the art of cooking we can manage, the nutrition our human body needs to function at its best, we really are just shooting in the dark, are we not?

I intend to write short articles in this blog, focusing on where to find the best deals and prepare the food in the most delicious way I know of, but since I put up "Detox" as the first word in my description line, I feel I owe it to you to explain my food philosophy before posting anything further.

You must know that some people release their pressure through emotional eating, but that starts an evil cycle of stress, eating and guilt until many chronic deceases destroy our overall wellbeing.

Most of us are not to that extreme but when it comes to something so easy to see, so tempting to grab and so ready to jump into our shopping cart. Unwittingly, we have put a lot of those in us before we find our skin dehydrated, our hair losing quickly and our metabolism slowing down.

The problem maybe that we overeat, eat the wrong things, eat in the wrong way, and eat it for the wrong reason. Maybe the real question is, what is eating us that is causing us to feel hungry and in need of instant gratification from food all the time?

Fresh food doesn't necessarily cost more. Food, doesn't have to be expensive to make us healthy, to be sustainable for our planet earth. Cooking doesn't have to take up a lot of time to make it great, soothing and relaxing after a long hard day. That's the meaning behind my description line: "Detox, Easy, Fresh, Affordable and Sustainable."  That's my idea how food should be.

To read more...