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.

The Power of Expectations!

When we believe something will be good, it generally will be good. Studies show that it doesn't just change our beliefs psychologically, it also changes the physiology of the experience itself.

It turns out that knowledge doesn't merely inform us of a state of affairs, it actually reshapes the sensory perceptions to align with the information we received. That is, the knowledge of what we are going to eat actually modify the neural activity underlying the taste itself, so that when we expect something to taste good or bad, it will actually taste that way.

Interesting, don't you think?

What you know modifies your taste, changes the way you perceive and appreciate the food!

This will be quite useful when you invite people for dinner or encourage people to try something new.

However this is also how branding and marketing get us hooked on a product. We expect the product to be good because of the name, the artful presentation, the video clip or the well-designed box that suggest benefits, cultural images or social connections, and we experience greater pleasure from the product and the process of consuming it.

Don't believe that expectations change the experience? Check this out.

Coke versus Pepsi.
It's all in the head.

Escape from Freedom!

Do you have a hard time making choices or decisions? Do you feel overwhelmed or even anxious when you have to pick out of several options presented to you, because of the fear of missing out the others?

You are not alone, my friend. Quite the opposite, you are just the same human being as the next one.

Erich Fromm said in his book "Escape from Freedom" that we are beset not by a lack of opportunity, but by a dizzying abundance of it.

We keep telling the kids we can do anything and be anything we want to be.

That is all good, only that I see two problems, if we forget to read them the fine print.

Let's make the case within the realm of food.

We have talked about our brain and how evolutionally ancient it is (our food brain). When it comes to food, when our brain is primed to believe "do anything we want, experience everything", when we believe that without the knowledge of what's in our best interest and about the food system we have today, it is (in fact, it has been) a recipe for disaster. In a nut shell, if the food system doesn't work for you, you can't just take everything and every opportunity when the food is presented to you. Do you know whether that is real food or just edible food-like substances, how it is produced or manufactured, and what it does to your body and mind? That is the first problem.

The second problem is in living up to it.

I know, you are going to say, "didn't you just say we should not eat everything we could? So, is experiencing it all a bad thing to avoid or a good thing to live up to?"

Exactly! If you do it right, it's a good thing. If you do it blindly, it's beyond bad.

In my opinion, a good thing that's worth living up to, is something we must develop ourselves in every possible way so we can discern the nuance, truly appreciate the expression and consume the offering responsibly. The development of the capacity to perceive will enhance and maximize the experience, making it a lot more meaningful and substantial to you and to the planet.

Moreover, when you have the capacity to distinguish real from fake, your craving will be geared towards food that is naturally good to you. That is how you reclaim your freedom in choosing what you eat and trust me, when it comes to deciding what can touch your body, you want the sole ownership of that right.

On the contrary, if we ignore to build up our understanding around it, we, as human beings, tend to spread ourselves too thin, eating everything we could unselectively, trying the newest product with the most health claims, running from one hip place to the next but never quite feeling enough or satisfied. Do you know that the processed food today, is meticulously and scientifically engineered to make us "insatiable" and always want more of it. How can you stay in control of your appetite and palate without knowing it? You have an illusion of freedom in your food choices but as a matter of fact your brain and palate have scientifically been hijacked.

Problem two in a nut shell: if you don't know what you are eating, it's bad, beyond bad. Build your food skill from tasting it and then preparing it.

Sugar!

Sugar not only sweetens food, it adds flavor, texture, decoration and it helps food to brown easier through caramelization process. It works to make baked goods more appealing in color, more moist and tender in texture, and it works to stabilize egg white meringues when making pavlovas and the like.

Sugar can be categorized by color and granularity.

White Sugar

1. Confectioners Sugar, Icing Sugar or Powdered Sugar
   It is also referred to as xxx to 10x sugar (more X's indicating finer grains), and the sugar is ground further into a fine powder that can come in different degrees of fineness. Confectioners sugar dissolves immediately in liquid, and is often used to make icing and frosting for baked goods. Because powdered sugar clumps up easily, there is always a small amount of cornstarch added as an anti-caking agent. If the recipe calls for pure powdered sugar, such as for French macarons, you can use pure granulated sugar and grind it finer in a coffee grinder, or crush it in a mortar and pestle by hand.


2. Snow Sugar or Doughnut Sugar
   This is similar to powdered sugar, only it doesn't melt as easily as it consists of dextrose, starch and anti-binding agents to retain its structure when dusted on pastries that require refrigeration.  Commercial bakers use this on cakes, doughnuts and other pastries for decorative purposes.


3. Caster Sugar 
   Caster sugar is finer granulated white sugar. Because the crystals are finer, they dissolve quicker than regular granulated sugar, which makes it ideal for making meringues, syrups, and cocktails.


4. Granulated Sugar 
   It's also called refined, table, or white sugar. When people talk about "sugar," this is usually what is referred to. It's the most common type of sugar for daily all purpose use. It is made from sugar cane or sugar beets (99.95% Sucrose).


5. Pearl Sugar, Nib Sugar, or Hail Sugar 
   Pearl sugar is a opaque-colored specialty sugar that comes in different sizes by brand, often used in Scandinavia and a few other countries in Northern Europe. It is not completely round, but comes in large chunks and has a coarse, hard texture. Because it is heavily compacted, it holds its shape, and doesn't melt when exposed to moisture or high heat. Pearl sugar is commonly used to decorate pastries, cookies, and buns. Sprinkling it over the top of a bread or pastry or mixing it into the dough will give the baking goods extra crunch, sweet bursts and a nicer finishing aesthetic appeal. 


6. Cubed Sugar or Sugar Cubes
   Sugar cubes are compressed blocks of sugar that are designed to dissolve easily in hot liquid. The individual grains of sugar are not held tightly together.

Multi-Color Sugar

1. Sanding Sugar 
   It is used mainly for decorating with its colorfulness and large crystals, which are resistant to heat. The crystals add crunchiness to the texture. Sanding sugar can be found in different colors for decoration.

Brown Sugar

Raw brown sugars range in the amount of processing they receive, but they are brown because, unlike white sugar, they have not had all of the molasses chemically and physically removed, except the "light brown sugar" and "dark brown sugar", which are made of refined sugar with a little molasses added back. The least processed of the brown sugars—Rapadura or panela—often still has the minerals and enzymes intact.

1. Cane Sugar 
   Cane sugar is produced solely from sugarcane and is minimally processed. It has a larger grain, golden brown color, and it is usually more expensive than regular white sugar. Use the same amount as you would granulated sugar when you substitute it.


2. Turbinado Sugar 
   Turbinado Sugar is a minimally processed raw cane sugar that's been steam-cleaned with a light molasses flavoring. This sugar variety has non-uniform, medium-size, light-brown crystals. Though its color is similar to standard brown sugar, it's not the same thing. Turbinado sugar has a delicate caramel flavor and can substitute for granulated sugar in recipes if the color is not going to be an issue. Use the same amount you would granulated sugar.


3. Light Brown Sugar 
   Light brown sugar is refined white sugar with a little molasses added in. It has a slightly sticky, wet, sandy texture and a delicate caramel flavor. It adds color and more flavor for dishes and baked goods. Use the same amount when substitute it for granulated sugar in recipes. To substitute for light brown sugar with dark brown sugar, mix 2 parts of dark brown sugar and 1 part of white granulated sugar. Or use one cup granulated sugar with 1 tablespoon of molasses to substitute one cup light brown sugar.


4. Dark Brown Sugar 
   Like its lighter counterpart, dark brown sugar is refined white sugar with molasses added in. It contains more molasses than light brown sugar, resulting in a stronger, more intense flavor. Light and dark brown sugar can be used interchangeably. You can substitute brown sugar with granulated with a little molasses. Use one cup granulated sugar with 2 tablespoons of molasses to substitute one cup dark brown sugar.


5. Demerara Sugar or Demerera Sugar
   Demerara sugar is a variety of raw cane sugar that is partially refined and is originally from Guyana. It is very close to Turbinado Sugar, but with a larger, coarser grain and uniform crystals. Like Turbinado sugar, it has a golden brown color and a natural molasses flavor. Use it for coffee or tea, or as a topping on baked goods to add complex and round sweet flavor.


6. Muscovado Sugar or Barbados Sugar 
   Muscovado sugar is a British specialty unrefined brown cane sugar and is very dark brown with a particularly strong molasses flavor. The minimally processed crystals are slightly coarser and stickier in texture than “regular” brown sugar. It has a much stronger and distinct flavor that is wonderful in barbecue sauce, marinades, and savory dishes. 

Sugar You May Not Know

1. Chinese Rock Sugar (
   冰糖)
    or Lump Sugar 
   Chinese Rock Sugar is made by cooking the refined sugar until it starts to color. It is then cooled and solidified as an opaque, gold-colored sugar lumps. Traditionally it comes in irregular lumps of crystallized sugar of varying sizes that you have to whack before using. The crystals can be up to 2 1/2 cm (1 inch) wide. These days you can find it in different degrees of fineness and very easy to use. It has a clear taste, with no discernible caramel tones. It is rounder and not as in-your-face sweet as regular white granulated sugar. Because it's less sweet, it doesn't overwhelm the flavour of tea or dishes as much as white sugar can. 


2. Coconut Sugar 
   It's the same as palm sugar.


3. Jaggery Sugar or Java sugar 
   It's a variety of palm sugar. Jaggery is a traditional non-centrifugal cane sugar consumed in Asia, India and Africa. It is a concentrated product of date, cane juice, or palm sap (see palm sugar) without separation of the molasses and crystals, and can vary from golden brown to dark brown in color. It contains up to 50% sucrose, up to 20% invert sugars, and up to 20% moisture, with the remainder made up of other insoluble matter, such as wood ash, proteins, and bagasse fibers. Jaggery is mixed with other ingredients, such as peanuts, condensed milk, coconut, and white sugar, to produce several locally marketed and consumed delicacies.


4. Kurozato (
   黒砂糖) 
   Sugar and Kuromitsu (
   黒蜜) 
   Syrup
   It is typically made from unrefined Okinawan kurozatō ("black sugar"), and is a central ingredient in many sweet Chinese or Japanese dishes.  Chinese and Japanese black sugar is very close to Muscodavo sugar with minimal processing and most minerals intact, which is believed to have health benefits. It is one of the ingredients commonly used in Asian desserts and pastries. For example it is used in making steamed cakes, muffins, wagashi, and it serves well with kuzumochi, fruits, ice cream, pancakes, sweet tonic soups, etc.


5. Maltose or Malt Sugar 
   More prosaically, it is a sugar made from grains by malting them. The grains might include barley, rice or wheat. It can come as a thick, sticky clear or amber color syrup sold in tins or tubs, or as a white or off-white crystalline powder with no odor to it. It is less sweet than honey, and only 1/3 as sweet as white sugar. It dissolves easily in water. Malt Sugar is commonly used in Chinese cooking, breads, sweets or pastries. For example, it can be diluted with water and brushed on the skins of ducks in making Peking Duck.
   
   
   Moreover, diastatis malt is used by bread makers to feed the yeast and improve the texture.  Nondiastatic malt is used in bread as a flavoring and preservative.


6. Misri Sugar or Mishri Sugar 
   Misri refers to crystallized sugar lumps, and type of confectionery mineral, which has its origins in India and Persia, also known as rock sugar or lump sugar elsewhere. It is used in India as a type of candy, or used to sweeten milk or tea..


7. Palm Sugar or Coconut Sugar 
   It comes in block should crumbled when you squeeze it with fingers. 
   Palm sugar was originally made from the sugary sap of the Palmyra palm, as well as the date palm or Sugar date palm. Now it is also made from the sap of the sago and coconut palms and may be sold as “coconut sugar.” Date sugar can also be made with the fruit of the palm by pulverizing very dry dates, but note that sugar made this way will not dissolve well in liquid.
   
   
   Palm sugar varies in color from a light golden color to a rich dark brown. It tends to be extremely grainy, with dried forms being highly crumbly, and it is typically minimally processed.


8. Panela Sugar or Panocha Sugar or Piloncillo or Rapadura  
   It is the least processed of all the cane sugars, and is rich in dietary iron. Unrefined, it is commonly used in Mexico (called Piloncillo) and in Central and Latin America, where it has been around for at least 500 years. Made from crushed sugar cane, the juice is collected, boiled and poured into molds, where it hardens into blocks. Panela is also known as rapadura in Portuguese.


9. Sucanat Sugar
   Sucanat (a contraction of "Sucre de canne naturel") is a brand name for a variety of whole cane sugar that was introduced by Pronatec in 1978. Unlike refined and processed white cane sugar and brown cane sugar, but similar to panela and muscovado, Sucanat retains its molasses content..

Spiced Sugar

1. Cinnamon Sugar 
   Mix 1 part ground cinnamon with 7 parts of granulated sugar.


2. Maple Sugar
   It's made from dehydrated and granulated maple syrup and is often sprinkled on pastries, cereal, pancakes and toast. 


3. Vanilla Sugar 
   Put the natural vanilla bean in the sugar for a week and you'll have this lovely scented sugar.

Browning Tips.

• Don't overcrowd the pan. My rule of thumb is that the food should cover 90% of the bottom of the saute pan and somewhere between 85% to 90% is okay. All the food should be in contact with the bottom of pan, the heat source, in one single layer. If your pan is too small, cook in batches.


• Heat up the pan without the oil first. The pan is not as delicate as the oil, which has a smoke point and a flash point.


• It is a high heat cooking method so choose the oil accordingly.


• Heat up the pan for about 3 min and make sure there is no liquid before you add the oil. Some people would drop a little water to test if the pan is hot enough. If you do so, make sure the water is all gone. Pour the water out or cook it off before you add the oil.


• Don't add oil into a hot pan with very little liquid because the little droplets of water in hot oil will burst and might splash hot oil onto you. This is also why you should always pat the food dry in high heat dry-cooking with fat method.


• If you overload the pan, the ingredients make the pan's temperature plummet and the foods end up steaming in its juice rather than properly browned. If there is too much juice in the pan, the temperature will remain at 212F boiling point until all the juice is vaporized and before we see any serious browning. All the extra cooking time while waiting for the juice to be gone would have already cooked the food to the ideal doneness internally without yielding the desirable browning and flavors. If you keep cooking to have the browning, the food would most likely end up overcooked, dry, juiceless and grainy.


• When you put the food in a pan, thinking the pan and oil have been heated hot enough, but you see juice coming out of the food and you don't hear the signature "Psssst....." sizzling, pick up the food immediately and let the pan heat up to cook off the liquid. Or place the food aside, and pour off the liquid before you make the second attempt to brown. This way, you won't over cook it. Bottom line, there can't be any liquid in the pan when you want the color and flavor.


• If the food cover less than 80% of the pan, the area without food would overheat and burn the oil. For our one-pot club members, use something that won't release liquid but can add flavors such as ginger, green onions or carrots to keep those areas occupied. Cut them into bigger thicker slices so it's easier to handle because you may have to keep flipping and moving these little helpers to avoid burning them (for this reason, I won't use onions), while you leave the meat undisturbed for 4-5 minutes. If the aromatics brown too fast, pick them up and place them on the meat to cool down.


• When you brown the meat, you need to leave those meat alone for 4-5 minutes on medium to medium-high heat without messing with them. You need to let the heat do its thing if you want the Maillard Reaction to happen. When you hear the sizzling sound quiets down, it means all the liquid in contact with the pan is gone and the temperature is rising fast. That tells you to check more often now, about every 1-2 minutes.


• Pat the meat or fish dry before cooking. Surface moisture creates steam when it hits a hot pan or grill and impeding browning until the liquid is gone.


• Run your knife like a squeegee against the skin of fish or meat to scrape off the water trapped in it and pat dry to be sure.


• To draw more moisture out of the surface, you can sprinkle salt on all sides of the fish, chicken, or meat. Leave it in the refrigerator uncovered. For fish, 30 minutes to a couple of hours will do. For meat or chicken, you can do this overnight to 24 hours ahead. Beside making browning more effective, this method will give you crispy skin when baking or roasting them.


• Yes, that means you can also brown food in the oven. A broiler is the same idea as an inverted grill, a source of concentrated quick-cooking heat. Chicken and meat take about 10-12 minutes to broil at 450F to 500F. You will want to check halfway through, after 5-6 minutes and flip them.

Why Browning...

Suck at Cooking? Myth Busted.

I know, it's fun, it's tongue in cheek entertainment and I enjoy watching it. However, I don't think there is a certain way that can be called "right" when it comes to cooking.

Cooking is an art and a very intimate, very personal sensory experience. I believer there is no "right" or "wrong" ways, there is only "this" or "that" way that people choose according to what their taste buds are telling them.

A lot of people are intimidated because they don't want to embarrass themselves by "being wrong", so they completely outsource the food preparation to, uh, the food industry or the restaurant industry. That's really tragic because they fail to realize that's a high price they can't afford to pay.

Certainly for professional chefs and cooks, there will be general expectations and guidelines of the food they are serving, but it is not so when you prepare food for yourself and your family.

Recipes are not mechanical manuals for you to follow to a Tee. They are to be adjusted, changed, modified to fit you, to please you! It is you who could say, this is not right for me, I don't like it, and not the other way around. Your palate is the judge and you are the ruler of it.

The more you allow yourself to know about food, the more comfortable you are to handle and prepare them, the more choices and control you'll have for your own and your planet's future.

Simple rules, accessible, approachable, sustainable ... that's my mission.

Flavor Is Not Taste!

Try an experiment. Make some Jell-O desserts with different flavors, or take something that comes in different flavors with the same texture, shape, and even color so you can't tell by any other way except tasting them, for example, jelly beans that come in surprise flavors. You can even mash up some fruits with the same texture.

Now, pinch or plug your nose first, cover your eyes and ask your friend to feed you blindfolded.

When you eat that mysterious Jell-O, jelly bean or puree, can you decide the flavor of it? Is it apple, pear, carrot, potato, yam, watermelon or butterscotch? You notice the sweetness and the texture, maybe a little acidity, but without the sense of smell, you shouldn't be able to tell what flavor it is.

Now, let your nose go and taste again. You'll notice that the flavors become apparent, and likewise the distinction between taste and flavor becomes apparent. Taste and aroma in tandem become the flavor you perceive. In other words, we decide the flavor of food through our taste perception of the tongue and our smell perception of the nose.

Recognizing the distinction between the taste and flavor will help you season your food in the kitchen. Most of the challenges in cooking have to do with the interaction of tastes with one another (Basic Five Tastes), and is not about esoteric herbs and spices.

Further more, if you find yourself eat without tasting or savoring it, it may be time to slow your pace down a bit.

Cheers.

Have You Tasted Lately?

The taste buds on our tongue and palate can perceive the five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory. These five basic tastes are meaningful from our evolution history and they are the markers for things that helped us survived.

As we talked about in the posting Dessert Disaster and Food Brain, sugar is a marker for ripeness in fruits and vegetables, which did not come very often in prehistorical age. When our smart prehistorical ancestors encountered a bush of ripe berries, they topped out their carb tanks to provide the energy for the existence, and thus had the chance to pass on the genes with the predisposition to sugar.

Saltiness is a marker for sodium, minerals, and micronutrients that we need to regulate our fluid balance and body functions.

Sourness is a marker for under-ripeness or even spoilage. It is to alert us to think twice before eating that further. Without that, we might eat too much of unripe fruits and get sick or a stomachache.

Bitterness is a marker for alkaloids in a plant-based diet, which are often poisonous. It is a warning that it is risky to put that in our mouth again, as it might kill us.

Savoriness, or called Umami in Japanese (a trendy term used by chefs), is the flavor of protein that has begun to break down through enzyme activity or through long cooking process. Savory flavors can be found in soy sauce (brewed and fermented with enzyme), cured meats (fermented), aged cheese, miso (Japanese fermented bean paste), and broth or stock (cooking fish or livestock bones for a long period of time).

Enter flavor.

Isn't it the same thing? Not quite. Be right back ...

How to Make a Double Boiler?

When you are melting chocolate, or making Hollandaise sauce, you often see the recipe calls for a double boiler (also called water bath or bain marie in French), in order to heat the materials gently and gradually at fixed low temperatures, or to keep it warm over a period of time.

However, you don't have to buy one. A double boiler is the same as using a bowl over, but not touching, a slightly smaller pot with simmering water. This way you could control the heating process to the minimum fluctuation and you could lift the bowl with the material when it's overheated.

There are tricks if you can't find exact the sizes of pots to stack one over another.

1. Use a metal ring like shown in the picture, or use a shallow saucer, anything that can be heated on the stove top, can lift the upper bowl above the water and prevent water from getting into the material.
   
   
   


2. Use chop sticks. This is not as stable thus harder to maneuver and I would avoid it if I can. If you really have no other way to go around, it's worth a try.
   
   
   
   



3. If you have nothing else, a little touching won't be a killer. You just have to be more careful in controlling the heating and cooling - more ups and downs exercise for the arm.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Try microwaving it. The good thing about microwaving is, once you figure out the right timing, it's pretty consistent. However for the first trial, you need to do it in very short intervals (10 sec) and figure out the total amount of time required. Then in regular practices, work in rounds of 15 to 20 sec intervals to prevent overheating.

Happy heating.

Elephant in the Room: Stress!

Why are we so stressed out?

To detox, we need to understand stress.

Two Types of Stress:

To understand the causes of stress, we need to first know there are two kinds of stress: acute stress and chronic stress.

See, stress in our daily life is just like hurt or pain - they are there to protect us from further harm.

When people or animals experience an immediate threat to their well-being, they know something is wrong and danger might be there if we don't do something, thus acute stress occurs to alert us. Think about when we could not find our wallet or cellphones, the stress response kicks in to help us respond to the event. Once the event is over, our body returns to normal and the stress is gone.

These days, when people talk about stress, they usually mean chronic stress that's always there, in the background ready to rise up.

Animals don't seem to experience chronic stress, except those that live around human beings (yeah, and we thought they were the trouble makers.) - those we abuse or keep in cages. When left along, animals don't appear to have chronic stress like we do.

Three Causes of Chronic Stress:

There are three reasons why we are far more chronically stressed than animals or our prehistorical ancestors.

1. We changed our environment drastically

Wild animals live in pretty much the same environments like they have been living for millions of years in their evolution. We don't. We have changed our environment so much that most things that create chronic stress are the recent developments of civilization and culture, including traffic jams, computer crashes, constant interruptions and noise, air travel, financial market mess and stock market volatility.

2. We changed from being in immediate-return environment to being in delayed-return environment, thus uncertainty about the future rise.

No, I am not talking about the interest rate and long term treasury bond.

Wild animals live in immediate-return environment, while we found ourselves in a delayed-return environment ever since we started to rely on farming about 10,000 years ago (at the start of the agricultural revolution when we began to settle into permanent communities, build houses and grow our own food.)

In the immediate-return environment, animals get immediate feedback to know how things are going, or if their effort, responses to events work. (Well, if you get eaten, you get eaten, but at least you know the outcome right then.) Our ancestors also lived like that until very recently. They wandered around, searching for foods, dealing with threats or predators, interacting with other human beings and raising kids. Day to day, moment to moment they had constant feedback about how they were doing in meeting goals. Prehistorically, people couldn't do much for the future so they were focusing on meeting their day to day needs and there were very little uncertainty about how well they were doing.

These days we spend most of our time and effort for future goals. Can this relationship work out? Can we find a job after four years of college? When we put all our time and effort into something, there is no assurance that our hard work will pay off and the uncertainty about the future causes us constant stress.

3. To make things worst, there is often nothing we can do about it.

Just like the return is delayed, the threat is also delayed in the future, and it is in our mind rather than immediately present, even though it's every bit real. Our human nature wants to take action to remove the stressors but we find ourselves not able to do anything about it at the moment. Therefore, we feel frustrated and stressed out when we worry about things in the future that we have no control over.


Well, happiness and stresses are both connected to our well-being and eating well is part of the whole so we have to take a holistic approach. When we are off balance, we tend to stress eat without really enjoying, savoring and tasting whatever food has to offer and that's sad.

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.

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.