For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

In case you missed it, here’s the archive of my appearance on Dead to the World with David Gans (KPFA radio) from Wednesday night. One of my longest discussions of Foodist to date. It will only be available until May 29:

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/91603

UPDATE: Here’s a more permanent version if you want to listen after the KPFA archive expires.

This week around the interwebz the salt police take a blow, chili peppers reduce Parkinson’s risk, and why sunshine is important for more than just vitamin D.

Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).

Links of the week

• No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet <<I’ve spoken before about why I disagree with the anti-salt alarmists, but here’s more evidence if you need it. I also recommend Michael Ruhlman’s rant about idiocy of this kind of nutritionism. Good reading. (NY Times)
  
• 7 Characteristics Associated with Long Life (and How to Cultivate Them) <<And while we are on the subject of overdoing nutritionism, here’s a friendly reminder that there’s more to longevity and happiness than food. (Mark’s Daily Apple)
• Vermont House passes GMO-labeling law <<Fantastic news from the state of Vermont this week, which appears to be more enlightened than my home state of California. Fingers crossed this one goes all the way. (Grist)
• Could Eating Peppers Prevent Parkinson’s? Dietary Nicotine May Hold Protective Key <<Want to help lower your risk of Parkinson’s Disease without resorting to smoking? (Yes, cigarettes protect against it). Turns out the small amounts of nicotine in foods like peppers and tomatoes can also lower risk. (ScienceDaily)
• Can High-Protein, Low-Carb Diet Boost Fertility Treatment? <<This isn’t conclusive research yet, but since higher protein, lower carbohydrate eating patterns tend to be more nutrient dense, it is potentially a simple and healthy way to increase pregnancy odds if you’re struggling. (Medline)
• Sunshine Could Benefit Health and Prolong Life, Study Suggests <<It’s about more than vitamin D this time, showing us once again that there’s more to good health than isolated nutrients and supplements. (ScienceDaily)
• Why It’s Important to Cook Your Own Meals <<I couldn’t agree more, and this is a great explanation of why. (Mark’s Daily Apple)
• Pets may help reduce your risk of heart disease <<Cause and effect can be difficult to sort out, but it seems pet owners (particularly dog owners) have healthier hearts than people without pets. Thanks Toaster! (AHA)
• Brain Diseases Affecting More People and Starting Earlier Than Ever Before <<Degenerative brain diseases are becoming more prevalent, and it isn’t just because we’re getting older. Fortunately for Summer Tomato readers, a healthy lifestyle is one of the best ways to prevent them. (ScienceDaily)
• Artichoke Freekeh Risotto <<Though I have been meaning to, I’ve never actually tried freekeh. This may finally be the recipe that puts me over the edge. (David Lebovitz)

What inspired you this week?

Photo by roygbivibgyor

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the dangers of sugar, and one reader asked:

So if you bake things from scratch with things like unsweetened apple sauce instead of sugar and whole grains and seeds etc… can they still be considered healthy? Like are healthy muffins or banana breads possible?

The reason this is hard to answer is because “healthy” is not a black and white word. Instead it is a fuzzy word with many shades of gray. That is because health is not made or broken by any single food, it reflects your daily choices and habits. Health is a pattern, not an event.

Adding less sugar or more nutritious ingredients may indeed move an item a few degrees in the healthy direction, but it won’t change the fact that a muffin is a muffin and will always contain some sugar and flour, and never be an example of healthy eating.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t eat a muffin and continue to be healthy.

The problem with a “healthier” muffin is a philosophical one, because the reality is we do not eat muffins for health. We eat them for enjoyment, which is arguably as important as health when considering your quality of life.

So is it worth sacrificing the pleasure you get from eating a muffin to make it slightly closer to something it will never be?

I think this answer will be different for everyone. For myself, it is definitely no. I’d rather eat fewer (or smaller) tastier muffins than any lesser version of the same.

But muffins don’t mean much to me, whereas for some of you muffins represent a cherished time with your grandmother, a Sunday morning ritual with your child, or some other deep, meaningful activity worth continuing regardless of health considerations.

In these cases, maybe there is a place for the slightly healthier muffin. Or maybe there is another habit you have that can be made healthier, so the impact of the occasional muffin is less significant.

Foods like muffins mean something different to everyone because they must be considered in the context of the diet as a whole. A breakfast muffin is certainly a worse idea if you had a 7 layer cake the previous evening, or if there are nachos in your immediate future.

The challenge for us as individuals is to be selective about which of our food habits we prioritize, which we drop, and which we upgrade.

It’s up to you to make the call.

Lastly, just to be sure we aren’t getting too serious with all this philosophy today, here’s the venerable Betty White describing her own delicious muffin.

Do you try to make desserts healthier?

Originally published April 20, 2011.

Few things annoy me more than rules about eating. Rules remind me of restriction, which reminds me of deprivation, which smells an awful lot like dieting. And as every foodist knows, dieting does more harm than good toward your health and weight loss efforts, and saps the fun out of life. Thanks, but no thanks.

Unfortunately, “eat whatever you want” isn’t the best health advice either, especially in 2013 when food-like products are easier to find than real food most of the time. This is a problem I’ve been dealing with for years here at Summer Tomato, and tackled head on in my new book Foodist.

Focusing on real food is a good start. I describe real food as anything that looks like it came from the land, air or sea, and not from a lab or factory. But with so much confusing and seemingly contradictory dieting advice out there, it can be helpful to have more tangible guidelines about what a healthy meal actually looks like.

To help with this I designed the Foodist’s Plate, created roughly in the same format as the USDA’s MyPlate. I think the MyPlate is a huge improvement over the antiquated Food Pyramid of yore, but there are still enough flaws in its design to warrant a do-over.

The Foodist’s Plate differs from MyPlate in several ways. First, I moved fruit off the dinner plate altogether and indicate that approximately half of your plate should be filled with vegetables.

I have nothing against fruit, and think it makes a wonderful snack or dessert, so I placed it to the side. The reason I did this is because research has shown that when you tell people to “eat more fruits and vegetables” they tend to ignore the vegetable part and just eat more fruit. For optimal health, however, vegetables should be the focus and the Foodist’s Plate reflects this. Enjoy fruit whenever you like, but when making dinner emphasize the veggies.

I also specify that the vegetables should be cooked in natural, minimally processed oils. It is completely baffling to me that the USDA spent decades telling us that fats and oils are public enemy No.1 for health, then completely ignore it on their latest recommendations (unless you dig through 20 pages of literature––you all did that, right?). It’s no wonder people are confused about dietary fat.

The latest research shows that while processed oils (e.g. trans fats) are unhealthy, natural oils do not contribute to heart disease, while making food more satisfying and improving the absorption of some nutrients by the body. Cooking with oils improves the nutrition of your food.

Another big difference between the Foodist’s Plate and MyPlate is my take on grains and “protein.” Since protein is a nutrient, and not an actual food, I instead encourage choosing wild fish or pastured (grass-fed) meats, if possible. I emphasize wild, natural meats because the antibiotics, hormones and unsanitary living standards (think E. coli) of industrially produced meats are far more worrisome than animal fats, in terms of health.

For the starchy section of the plate, I reduced the portion size and emphasize beans (or lentils) and intact grains, which I distinguish from the confusing term “whole grains.” Briefly, intact grains still look like grains and include things like rice, oats, quinoa and farro. Because of the FDA’s legal definition of “whole grain,” things like wheat and corn can still be processed into oblivion and still qualify as “whole.” This is why things like Cheerios can still be called “whole grain,” and I call BS.

I removed dairy from the Foodist’s Plate altogether not because I think it is dangerous, but because I consider it optional, like nuts and seeds. I enjoy cheeses, yogurt and other dairy products (though I always choose non-industrial dairy to avoid artificial hormones––my skin does not react well to these at all), but with up to 70% of the globe being lactose intolerant, it’s hard to consider milk and dairy essential to health.

For liquids, water is what you should be drinking most of the time. Coffee and tea (without added sugar) as well as moderate amounts of alcohol may be uniquely healthy and can be enjoyed in reasonable quantities.

To give you a sense of appropriate portions I include a measurement for the Foodist’s Plate of 10 inches. Dinner plates have become enormous, and since a clean plate is a powerful psychological indicator that a meal is over, it can be helpful to use smaller plates if you’re looking for a painless way to cut down on your daily calories without noticing.

Keep in mind that the Foodist’s Plate is intended only to be a helpful guide, not a rigid eating plan. There are thousands of ways to have a healthy meal, even if you leave off entire sections of the plate. There’s no need to freak out about any one meal or ingredient. Similarly, don’t be discouraged even if your average meal falls outside the range of what the Foodist’s Plate suggests. It is intended as an aspirational goal for when everything is going right.

If you do not have regular access to local, organic foods, do the best with what you have. Eating vegetables and fruits from any source (organic, local, or not) is better than not eating them at all. If wild-caught fish or grass-fed meats are unavailable in your area or are too expensive to be a regular part of your diet, that doesn’t condemn you to a lifetime of disease and excess belly fat. Maybe you’ll need to rely a little  more on beans and lentils, or have to eat farmed or canned fish every now and then (I did all this and more through college and grad school). You can still eat healthier than the vast majority of Americans and continue to eat the foods you love by simply making an effort to eat more fresh vegetables and fewer processed foods.

Upgrading your healthstyle is about figuring out what works for you, regardless of the circumstances you find yourself in.

For more on how to get healthy and lose weight without dieting check out my book Foodist.

Shopping at the farmers market is one of my most rewarding healthstyle habits

Now that you all have your copies of Foodist I’m sure you’re itching to get started upgrading your healthstyle, and I want to help.

This week I’ve partnered with the habit-building app Lift, which is available on iOS as well as your web browser (if you join the Foodist group), to help you get started building healthy habits.

Once you join Lift head over and follow me. I have all sorts of fun habits I try to cultivate including trying new foods, eating something green, walking 10,000 steps a day, and shopping at the farmers market. Feel free to participate in any or all of these, and add your own if you want. Keeping track makes it much easier to stick to your goals.

I’ve also created a special Foodist group of habits in the Lift app for those following the Foodist healthstyle recalibration (Chapter 9). The recalibration requires eliminating sugar, wheat, dairy and alcohol for 2-8 weeks in order to to help restore insulin sensitivity and troubleshoot other food-related health issues. In the book I recommend the recalibration for people with more than 20 pounds to lose who may be metabolically compromised (insulin resistant) or suspect they have food sensitivities.

Although the recalibration is not required for foodists, it can be really useful for those who have had trouble losing weight in the past. If you choose to participate, you’ll be sent a short survey so we can see how the recalibration is affecting you.

Either way I hope you join me on Lift, it’s a great resource for building a better healthstyle. If you add any interesting new habits, feel free to mention them in the comments so other people can check them out and join in.

Post your hardcover copy of #foodist (w/hashtag) on Instagram now thru 5/14 for chance to win a personalized copy!

Foodist is finally released into the wild.

Every word I’ve ever written here at Summer Tomato has led up to this book. It’s what people have been asking for since I first started writing, a step-by-step guide to losing weight without the pain and suffering that comes with dieting.

Foodist is about more than what to eat and what not to eat. It’ll teach you why it’s not only OK to embrace the foods you love, but why enjoying what you eat is absolutely necessary for success. It provides you all the tools, tips and knowledge you need to start making changes in your healthstyle today, and how to ensure that the efforts you put in now will last a lifetime.

After reading Foodist, you’ll never need to diet again.

Spread the Word, Get Some Love

Since Foodist is my first book, media attention has been limited. That means I need your help getting the word out.

If you have a blog, Facebook account, Twitter account or even a few friends or family members you think may be interested, please consider mentioning Foodist. Drop a comment below with a link or tweet at me (@summertomato) and I’ll happily retweet your post.

If you are near a bookstore, please go in and buy a copy or ten. For some reason bookstore sales count more than online sales. Lame, I know, but bookstores are still nice places to spend time and I don’t mind supporting them. If the store doesn’t carry Foodist or doesn’t have many copies, please ask them to order more.

If you have a few more seconds to spare, please head over to Amazon and leave a review. These reviews are incredibly helpful for people considering buying the book.

INSTAGRAM COMPETITION: If you have an Instagram account you can enter to win a personalized signed copy of Foodist directly from me. Take a fun picture with your hardcover copy and post it using the hashtag #foodist on Instagram between now and May 14. Two winners will be selected.

Thank you for time and support and for helping spread the word that there’s more to life than dieting. Your support means the world to me. 

Photo by Humphrey King

Weight loss is tricky business. Obviously what you eat has a huge impact on your health and body weight. But anyone who has ever tried to modify their diet for the sake of losing weight knows it isn’t so simple.

Most of us understand intuitively that broccoli is healthier than cookies. We can talk about sugar, fat, gluten and antioxidants all day, but that doesn’t change the fact that cookies taste good and you still want to eat them. Any weight loss plan that simply tells you what to eat and neglects why you make the choices you make is unlikely to help you in the long run.

Nutrition knowledge is important, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. The real secret is understanding your behaviors and motivations at their roots, and using this information to have a meaningful impact on your health. In this sense, good health starts in your brain, not on your plate.

The first thing you need to understand is that we don’t have as much control over our food decisions as most of us assume. We tend to believe that we can call on willpower anytime we wish and use it to order a salad instead of a burger, and if we fail to do so it is our own fault. However, self-control is not something we can simply turn on or off, and as a result the process of decision making––particularly when it comes to food––is much more complex.

Approximately 20 percent of the calories we expend daily are used by our brains. Because brain activity is so costly, things like self-control and decision making cannot be relied on indefinitely. As a result, willpower is a limited resource.

Like a muscle, willpower becomes fatigued when exercised too frequently. All the decisions you make throughout the day deplete your willpower, and when you start running out of steam your ability to choose healthy food over more convenient food rapidly diminishes.

Ironically, increasing your blood sugar can help restore willpower to some extent. But finding a healthy way to raise blood sugar in a state of depleted willpower can pose quite the dilemma. Tired brains find it much easier to just grab a cookie.

The way our brains cope with the willpower conundrum is to automate as much of our decision making as possible. It does this by creating habits. Habits are specific behaviors that occur in response to a trigger or cue. They are also always associated with some kind of reward, which in turn reinforces and strengthens the trigger.

For example, a buzz in your pocket is a cue to reach down, grab your phone, pull it out and glance at the screen. The information you see causes a bit of dopamine to be released in the reward center of your brain. We humans love novelty, which is why most of us have a reflexive response to checking our mobile devices when we receive a notification. This is how habits are born.

Once established, habits occur automatically without expending any willpower or mental effort. Scientists have estimated that up to 90 percent of our daily food decisions occur as a result of habits. This saves our brain energy for more difficult decisions where habits cannot be used.

How can this knowledge help us lose weight?

For one thing, it shows that willpower is not particularly reliable as a means to achieve lasting weight loss, and we’re better off spending our efforts creating healthy habits.

It also teaches us that any habit we wish to develop needs to impart a meaningful reward in order for it to stick. You can probably guess that some vague promise of future thinness is not sufficient––the reward for any habit needs to be immediate and tangible.

This means that in order to achieve long-term weight control you need to find healthy foods you actually enjoy eating, physical activities you like doing, and spend your time making these as convenient and accessible as possible.

Fabulous news, right?

Using willpower for restrictive dieting is difficult and incredibly unpleasant. We can all let out a collective sigh of relief that it doesn’t actually work. To achieve true success in health and weight loss, we’re better off quitting diets altogether and focusing on building healthy habits we enjoy.

Try starting with something as simple as breakfast. Warm muesli with a splash of almond milk and cinnamon only takes two minutes to prepare and is absolutely delicious. Invest in a pedometer and challenge yourself to reach 10,000 steps a day. Setting and achieving an attainable goal is a very powerful reward, and is one of the reasons so many people love videogames.

Since our brains are easily overwhelmed, don’t try to develop too many habits at once. Work on just two or three habits at a time, and build from there. Habits take anywhere from two weeks to six months to take root, but on average about two months. Start with the easiest ones and work your way up. Once you’ve built enough good habits, your health will take care of itself.

To learn how to stop dieting, build healthy habits, and make life awesome check out my new book Foodist.

Ruby Chard

Baa is an Ossetian, born in Turkey and currently living in Austria. Vacationing in Istanbul, she checks out markets to hunt down delicious greens. A software developer with a soft spot for academic research in that field, an avid knitter (baahar.etsy.com) and reader, she makes time to cook meals with real food and advocates a lifestyle of moderation so that you can enjoy the foods you love longer. You can also find her on Pinterest and Twitter.

Farmers Market Update: Istanbul

by Baa

District Market Kücükyali

Istanbul. An overly satiated city of 13 million. There are several ways fresh and local produce finds its way to us in this chaotic but wonderful city: weekly markets in each district, produce shops on almost every street, and finally street vendors who walk around with their carts and shout. You can hear them from afar, with their intriguing calls, because they distort the words to make their call sound… better? harmonious? Beside the occasional riddle as to what they are actually selling, they provide people with top-notch service. You can lower down a basket from your window with the money, shout your order and get your goods without even leaving your apartment.

The district markets are traditionally built every week in some designated streets of the district. Sellers come the night before and start building up their stands. In the morning, you find the streets transformed into a tent labyrinth of produce and all kinds of goods, from clothing to toys and kitchenware.

Even though most of the sellers at district markets are re-sellers, you can always find some people who bring in the produce from their garden or small farm. Especially, their dainty parsley and mint smell and taste delicious. It makes you want to start grazing right there.

Dainty Parsley and Other Herbs

Recently, organic labeled food became a trend here and several markets emerged. The ecologic market that we specially frequent to buy our weekly greens for breakfast, has a few locations spread over Istanbul. The market in Şişli takes place outdoors, under a designated roofed-area every Saturday. Beside the stands that sell produce, there are also several food stands where women make traditional pastries (gözleme) filled with cheese and spinach or parsley. In Turkey, there is always a tea vendor nearby. So, get a gözleme and some black tea and enjoy a nice lunch out.

Ecologic Market in Sisli

Spinach is always high on my to-buy list. It is amazing how much the taste can differ compared to the bland, frozen spinach I have to buy in Austria. These crisp, small spinach leaves can be easily eaten raw, ideal to put into a salad.

Luscious Spinach

Artichokes are in season now and are especially promoted for liver health. They are a bit expensive though, 2.5 USD a piece. The bigger ones are being holed out by the sellers and sold in plastic bags filled with lemon+water to preserve the color. Most people cook them topped with peas, cubed carrots and potatoes. When I am too lazy to cook them, I eat them simply raw. The smaller ones are better purchased and cooked whole.

Artichokes

Kale and chard are in season too. Turkish people buy kale mostly to make sarma, where a minced meat or vegetarian filling is wrapped up with these leaves. As a lazy cook, I would consider making that dish only for guests or on special occasions. For everyday use, it is enough for me to chop them up and cook with some olive oil, or sometimes to use it as a pastry filling (börek) together with cheese.

Kale and Chard

Unfortunately, summer fruits are not out yet. I cannot wait to see the market in full bloom and color when they do. However, it is time for unripe plums. Delicious, green, sour, juicy plums that Turks love to eat with salt. I love them as they are. At least the first mulberries are out to bring some more color into the market.

Plums and Mulberries

This week I also discovered these sorrel leaves (Kuzukulağı) that taste like lemon. Together with ramps that taste like garlic, they go in every salad I make now.

Sorrel

Here you can find a lot more than fresh produce. Beside the usual suspects like olives, cheese and eggs there are also several stands with honey, molasses and tahini.

Honey, Molasses and Tahini

I am planning to explore more of the markets around here. Turkey is full of herbs and vegetables that grow in the wild and come out only once a year––for the people who know to look for them, of course. Every market seems to have another thing to be discovered. Exciting times!

What did you find at the farmers market this week?

If you’d like to share your local farmers market with Summer Tomato readers, here are the guidelines. 

For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

PLEASE NOTE: This is the last day to get a free Fitbit, Mercado bag, phone calls with me, an invite to the Foodist launch party, and other great prizes. Pre-order Foodist today!

This week we learn why we shouldn’t trust food labels, how economic woes can improve health, and the tastiest ways to travel without resorting to airplane food.

Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).

Links of the week

• Jedi Mind Tricks: How to Get Loved Ones to Lose Weight <<This is the most personal story I’ve ever shared about my family’s health and weight loss journey. My dad was one of the lucky ones. I hope it inspires you. Thanks to Tim Ferriss for allowing me to share the extensive excerpt from Foodist with his audience.
  
• The 10 Biggest Food Label Lies <<Food labels are intended to confuse you. Here’s some tips on how to decipher them (including some from me). (Women’s Day)
• A Potential Way to Eat Eggs Without Dying <<BS of the week. Call me crazy, but it seems a bit irresponsible to publicly recommend an unproven supplement to fix a problem with a food that has never been shown to promote heart disease in free living humans. Grrrr. (The Atlantic)
• Betting on Behavior Change <<I’m a big fan of anything that helps build healthy habits. Here’s some great tips from the Nutrition Diva.
• How Cubans’ Health Improved When Their Economy Collapsed <<When the Soviet Union stopped supporting Cuba with cheap petroleum, they were forced to return to the fields, eat more natural foods and be more active. Their rates of disease plummeted, despite their poverty. Fascinating, huh? (The Atlantic)
• Contaminated ground turkey found in 21 states: report <<In case you hadn’t heard, you may want to skip the industrial turkey burgers for awhile. (Medline)
• Children on Track for a Heart Attack <<This makes me so sad. Being a kid is hard enough, now they’re having to deal with grown up problems like stiffening arteries as well. Parents, please take this to heart. (Wall Street Journal)
• Of course you’re stressed. Just look at you. <<Chronic stress makes you look older. Just one more reason to practice mindfulness and other activities that reduce stress. (LA Times)
• RECIPES AND TIPS FOR HEALTHY TRAVEL <<Frequent travel is one of the biggest barriers to good health for some people. Here’s some lovely recipes and tips to avoid the toxic (and gross) airplane food. (My New Roots)
• How to Cook Morels <<Few foods exemplify the beauty of seasonal cooking like morel mushrooms. They’re delightful and simple to prepare, and I’ve even known some self-proclaimed mushroom haters that have found them delicious. (Ruhlman)
• Triangulation 101: Darya Rose <<I made a visit to TWiT studios this week and chatted with Leo Laporte about Foodist. It’s the most info that’s ever been shared about the content of my new book. Give it a watch when you get a chance.

Photo by x-ray delta one

Moms are wonderful. But as Mother’s Day approaches, I am reminded once again that my parents’ generation didn’t do the greatest job of equipping us to feed ourselves healthy foods.

Of course this isn’t exactly their fault. The food industry tried their best to ensure that we all became dependent on frozen foods and ready-made meals. Fortunately we now know enough to reverse a lot of these trends, but developing new habits can be more difficult as we get older.

The good news is that it isn’t too late for Mom. This year let one of your Mother’s Day gifts be to help make her life easier and improve her nutrition by sharing some of these kitchen upgrades. And if you’re really serious about this stuff, a copy of Foodist makes a wonderful Mother’s Day gift as well (wink, wink).

12 Ways to Upgrade Mom’s Kitchen Skills

1. Sautée instead of steam

Probably the most common way vegetables are ruined in the kitchen is the steam basket. Almost everything tastes better and is healthier when cooked in a little olive oil. Don’t forget to sprinkle your veggies with a little sea salt and toss some minced garlic in toward the end. It’s not much more work and it tastes way better, so you’ll happily eat those veggies.

2. Spring greens instead of ice burg or romaine lettuces

While I have nothing against either of the latter two greens from a flavor perspective (particularly when they are organically grown and fresh picked), the industrial varieties you typically find at the grocery store are rather uninspiring. For an easy upgrade, recommend that your parents grab the box of mixed spring greens instead. These have become easier to find, and if nothing else you’ll be getting a wider range of nutrients from a mixed greens bag rather than a single lettuce varietal.

3. Olive oil instead of margarine

At some point we all became convinced that butter was bad and we should use margarine instead, and many people still do. We eventually learned that margarine was made from highly processed hydrogenated oils that drastically increase the risk of heart disease, and that butter was actually better. However, I avoid common industrial butters because of the hormones and antibiotics used in the livestock (I actually get breakouts if I eat industrial dairy). Grass-fed butter is a nice alternative, but can be expensive and difficult to find. Olive oil is a great option and my go-to choice for most cooking.

4. Tongs instead of a spatula

This discovery revolutionized my experience in the kitchen. Get your mom a pair of 12-inch silicone tipped tongs and you’ll stop having to watch as carrots and zucchini slices fly out of the pan. Cooking vegetables has never been easier.

5. Quinoa instead of rice

I like rice, but it’s easy to forget there are other grains out there. Quinoa is very nutrient dense, and cooks up much faster than traditional rice. Just boil for 15-20 minutes and strain. Easy peasy.

6. Dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate

I think chocolate makes an excellent gift for anyone, especially Mom. Make this year’s gift even more luxurious by springing for the fancy dark chocolate varieties instead of the more common milk chocolates. Dark chocolate has far more of the healthy polyphenols and other antioxidants that improve health, and also has less sugar. If you get the good stuff it shouldn’t be bitter at all, it should be divine.

7. Look at ingredients instead of fat grams

For the longest time dietary fat was the boogeyman and many people still check labels religiously to see how much fat a food contains. This is pointless. Fat itself is not innately bad for you. To determine the healthfulness of a packaged food you and your mom are better off looking at the list of ingredients. The more the ingredients sound like real foods instead of chemicals, and the fewer of them that are added sugars, the better. Here’s more on how to decipher food labels.

8. Plain yogurt instead of frooty yogurt

Fruit yogurt sounds healthy, but it usually isn’t. Check the ingredients. If the yogurt contains more than milk, live bacterial cultures and fruit, something is amiss. You’re probably better off buying plain yogurt and adding fruit yourself.

9. Homemade salad dressing instead of bottled

Salad dressing is one of the easiest things to make. Just mix olive oil and some vinegar with a little salt and pepper. Feel free to get fancy by adding chives or stirring in a little Dijon mustard or miso paste, but those aren’t necessary. Check the ingredients, pre-made salad dressings tend to be some of the most egregious offenders.

10. Kale chips instead of potato chips

People love their chips. If mom just can’t give up the crunch of her afternoon snack, see if she’ll replace her potato or tortilla chips with kale chips. She may need to experiment with different brands (I’m a fan of Alive & Radiant Foods), but in my experience kale chips are some of the best tasting items in the “health foods” aisle.

11. Sparkling water instead of soda

If water seems too boring to have with a meal or as a mid-afternoon refresher, try getting in the habit of having some sparkling water and adding a lemon wedge or a splash of real fruit juice. You can save money by purchasing a SodaStream and making it yourself. Mom might like one too.

12. Almond butter instead of peanut butter

I LOVE me some peanut butter. The problem is that most of the supermarket varieties are highly processed and filled with hydrogenated oils. Try almond butter instead, as it is usually more natural. If you can find natural peanut butter (hint: the ingredients should be just peanuts and salt), that is a healthier option as well.

What are your simplest healthstyle upgrades?

Photo by » Zitona «

It’s a little known fact that before I became interested in neuroscience (which was well before I became interested in food) I spent three years as a literature major at Berkeley. The power of language to whisk us away to other worlds, different times and even into other people’s minds never ceases to astound me.

Fiction can often give me a better glimpse into a culture than even visiting, since the amount of time and exploration required to really get a sense for the mindset and lifestyle of the people who live there is substantial, and vacation time is typically limited.

Excellent works of fiction transform me as a person as I internalize the vibe of a book, and what I read has the power to influence what music I listen to, how I dress, and even how I eat. When a book really pulls me in its hold can last for weeks or even months at a time.

For instance, it’s impossible for me to read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, which I’ve done several times, without craving Spanish tapas and red wine for the better part of a month (this is also why Spanish food is one of my favorite cuisines). The Last Chinese Chef had me exploring obscure alleyways in Chinatown in search of the best dumplings and peking duck, and before reading it I would have said Chinese food wasn’t really my jam.

Midnight’s Children, the meta-award winning book by Salman Rushdie, forever changed the way I think and feel about Indian food. Spices and heat permeate the characters and events in Midnight’s Children, which is one of the literary tools Rushdie uses to portray his native culture. My obsession with Indian food lasted for months as I read this and other works by Rushdie, since I couldn’t stop reading him after finishing the first.

Initially this manifested as more trips to my favorite Indian restaurants, but eventually it led me to spend more time in the spice aisles at the grocery store and cook more Indian food at home. As I got into it I bought myself some Indian cookbooks and found an Indian grocery where I could get specialty ingredients. It was certainly one of the more delicious times in my life.

Though I don’t cook as much Indian food now as I did during that phase, the time I spent experimenting with Indian food at home gave me a decent sense of how flavors work together in the cuisine. I can now improvise with these tastes in the kitchen and often hint at them in various dishes that I cook without going all in. For example, instead of making a full curry dish I might make a yogurt and curry marinade for lamb, or add cumin, coriander and chilies to spice up my lentil salad.

One of the best ways to become a better cook is to care about what you’re making. Trying to recreate flavors you’ve had in restaurants or even just read about in books can help you dive deeper into a cuisine and get a better understanding of how tastes and textures interplay to make those characteristic flavor profiles we associate with different cultures.

How has reading spiced up your kitchen?

Originally published May 21, 2012.