Author Archives: Dr. Sukol

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Orange Smoothie

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Summertime!  Put this in your blender and drink it!
  • 1 whole orange, peeled
  • 1 small-med zucchini
  • 1/2 cucumber, peeled
  • 1/4 cup raw cashews
  • 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup oats, quinoa flakes, or soaked buckwheat groats
  • a handful of ice
Blend all the ingredients in a high-speed blender until creamy. Makes one very generous smoothie, or two smaller ones to share. Thank you to Heather at Gluten-Free Cat for this awesome recipe, the closest thing to a creamsicle that you’ll find anywhere in or near the vicinity of me!

Sugar: The First Artificial Sweetener

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“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”  George Orwell

Lately I’ve been thinking about the four major stripped carbohydrates as each having its own century or two. In my mind, corn starch/syrup belongs to the 20th century, rice to the 19th, wheat to the 18th, and sugar to the 17th (and 16th) centuries. One foodstuff at a time, humans figured out how to strip away the germ and the fibrous outer coat to increase shelf life, marketability, and profitability. I have nothing against capitalism, by the way, just not at the expense of our health. I am a physician, dedicated to preserving the health of my patients and my community.

Is it possible that we simply tipped the balance, previously straining, but not exceeding, our abilities to tolerate increasing amounts of stripped carb over several centuries, until we reached the 20th century and the amounts in our food supply skyrocketed with the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup? Perhaps. I do think that most of us can tolerate a small amount of stripped carb now and then. Especially if we are active.

Today I want to focus on sugar, the first product humans figured out how to strip. The sugar industry obtains its raw materials from three major sources: dates, beets, and sugar cane. Each of these is high in fiber; that’s how it’s found in nature. What must it have been like when, for the first time, large amounts of sugar began to be manufactured and distributed? Yes, small amounts were being produced in pockets of communities scattered around the world, but there had been nothing like it before, at least not in industrial doses. Previously, recipes for sweets would have used honey, or maple syrup, or mashed dates. Applesauce also comes to mind, or other mashed fruits. Small amounts, restricted to certain times of the year. But the concentrated sweetness of sugar revolutionized the way people cooked, ate their meals, drank their tea.

Turning to what I call “sweet n pink, sweet n blue, sweet n yellow,” and so on, I am concerned about the food industry’s heavy marketing of these alternative “artificial sweeteners.” If you’ve decided that sugar isn’t good for you, the food industry has a variety of alternatives at the ready, and it markets strenuously the message that artificial sweeteners are a great way to get your “sweet fix” without having to pay a price, metabolically speaking.

Yet, there is now research showing that more than two diet sodas per week were associated with an increased prevalence of diabetes and stroke. In one particular study, depression appeared actually to be caused by diet sodas in excess of four daily. We don’t have sufficient evidence yet to prove causality for diabetes and stroke, but I’m not going to stand in the middle of the highway waiting to find out.

Other recently published research showed a 20% rise in insulin levels on consuming sucralose, marketed as a splendid alternative to sugar. High insulin levels are the underlying cause of so many chronic diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, arthritis, gall stones, fatty liver, and more. What else raises insulin levels? Stripped carbs, like white flour, white rice, corn syrup, corn starch, and, of course, sugar. Sweet n white?

Fish don’t know about the water in which they swim; it’s their world. Birds don’t see the air in which they fly; it’s simply their world. All over the world, humans are surrounded by a diet consisting of enormous amounts of items that we did not evolve to eat. Though we ourselves no longer see it, I’m absolutely certain that George and Martha Washington’s grandparents would have more than a few questions were they to find themselves in the “food court” at the nearby mall.

So I ask you to consider: Was sugar the first artificial sweetener?

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Falafel with Tahini

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Here’s a pretty amazing recipe from my hero Mark Bittman.  Traditionally, falafel are deep fried, but baking is easier, cleaner, and probably better for you. Falafel is great; once upon a time I lived on it for two years. You can eat it in whole wheat pita with lettuce, tomato, and cucumbers, and drizzled with tahini. You can thin the tahini with a little more lemon juice and/or water, and pour it over falafel and greens to make a yummy salad. Of course, you can also eat falafel cold, one at a time, straight from the refrigerator, for breakfast.
  • 1 3 /4 cups dry chickpeas
  • 2 garlic cloves, chopped
  • 1 small onion, quartered
  • 1 Tbsp. cumin
  • 1 /2 – 1 tsp. cayenne
  • 1 cup fresh parsley or cilantro, chopped
  • 1 – 1 1 /2 tsp. salt
  • 1 /2 tsp. black pepper
  • 1 /2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
  • 4 Tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 /2 cup tahini (sesame paste)
Place the chickpeas in a large bowl and cover with water by at least 3 inches.  Soak for 12-24 hours, checking the water level a few times and adding more as needed to keep the chick peas covered. Once the chickpeas are done soaking, preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Drain and rinse the chickpeas, and add them to a food processor along with the with garlic, onion, cumin, cayenne, parsley or cilantro, pepper, baking soda, lemon juice, and one teaspoon of salt. Pulse the mixture until minced, but not pureed. Add water bit by bit, by the tablespoon if necessary, but keep the mixture as dry as possible. This is a good time to stop, taste, and add more cayenne if you’d like.
Grease a large rimmed baking sheet with 2 Tbsp. olive oil. Using the palms of your hands, roll approx. 1 tablespoon of the chickpea mixture into a ball about 1 1 /4 inches in diameter. The recipe should make about 20 balls.
Place the balls on the baking sheet, one by one as you make them, and then flatten them into thick patties with the flat open palm of your hand. Brush the falafel tops with the remaining 2 Tbsp. olive oil, and then bake 10-15 minutes per side until golden-brown.
To serve, whisk the tahini with the remaining 1 /2 tsp. salt and 1 /2 cup water until very smooth, and drizzle over falafel.
This recipe makes approx. 8 servings.  Once the chickpeas have soaked, it takes about 45 minutes. Leftovers are great refrigerated or frozen. To reheat, wrap them in foil and bake 15-35 minutes at 350F until hot all the way through, time depending on whether they are cold or frozen.

A Shopping Guide for Crackers

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In case you’ve been wondering which crackers should be on your plate, this printout will provide you with a head start. Click on the link above to download the printable PDF.
Rule #1: Don’t let the name of the cracker guide your decision making. Remember my special name for the information on the packages — advertising! “Stoned Wheat” sounds pretty good, right? Not. What about “multigrain,” which sounds like it should point you in the right direction, yes? No. “Organic,” “bite-size,” “natural,” or even “wheat?” “What about TLC?” That last one cracks me up.
Then, there’s one more thing. Notice also the big difference in the number of crackers that constitute a 1-ounce serving! Could be 3; could be 30.
I’m not saying anything here about the quality or the sources of the wheat and other grains used to make these crackers. More than anything, this post is a lesson in how to read packages.

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Lila’s Lovely Loaves of Almond Bread

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My dear friend Lila comes for dinner almost every Friday night, and she always brings a couple of loaves of this bread for us to enjoy. You might say that we are spoiled, and you would be right. This is a great recipe, flavorful and satisfying. She’s made it with almonds, and she’s made it with pecans. Both are great, though the crust of the pecan version, a cross between crunchy and chewy, is slightly more satisfying to me.
Dry ingredients:
  • 1 1 /2 cups almond or pecan flour*
  • 3 /4 cups tapioca starch (substitute arrowroot starch for a paleo version)
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 1 tsp baking soda
Wet ingredients:
  • 7 tbsp almond milk or water
  • 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp honey (substitute maple syrup for a vegan version)
  • 4 tbsp ground flax seed
Preheat oven to 350F. In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the wet ingredients and allow to sit for 5 minutes. In a separate larger bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Then add the wet ingredients to dry. If the dough seems stiff, add more water. Consistency should be more like a thick batter than a stiff dough. Don’t overmix.
Spoon into parchment-paper-lined small loaf pans. Bake 30 minutes. Turn out onto a cooling rack. Wrap up the loaves and share them with friends to enjoy together!  *Lila uses Bob’s Red Mill almond flour, but you could also grind blanched almonds (or other nuts) in a blender or food processor, as long as you’re careful not to overgrind them into almond butter. Pecan meal can be purchased at nuts.com.
Many thanks to Alea at myrealfoodlife.com for this recipe.  It won’t rise all that much since it’s gluten-free, egg-free, and yeast-free. But it’s still worth it. The flavor is beyond delicious and the texture of the crust is unbelievably good!

A Week of Chicken Soups & Chive Flower Vinegar

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Here is what you need to know as you read how I revived a spent chicken carcass this past week. From the time I was a young child, I was taught not to waste. It was a core value of my family. My parents were young children during the Depression, and my mother grew up with her own grandmother, an immigrant, in a 3-generation household. My great-grandmother was the family cook, and this is why my mother remains the only person in my world who knows how to make chicken fricassee with chicken feet. Her grandmother, for whom I am named, wasted nothing.

Now then, this week’s adventure. Last Monday evening I discovered a chicken carcass on the second shelf of the refrigerator. It had been pretty well picked over, but there was still lots of meat on it. Unfortunately, because those were bits that just don’t have a name, everyone else was done with it. But I saw opportunity.

I picked up the carcass and dropped it into a large soup pot. I covered it barely with cold water, and added 2 tablespoons of white vinegar. I turned on the heat to just 225F, and walked away. In the morning I found a lovely chicken broth, more full-bodied than expected, and almost sweet from the slow caramelization process initiated by the slow cooking. For breakfast, along with my scrambled egg, I ladled off a couple of scoops and drank the broth. I added a little more water to the pot to replace what I had taken. The broth continued to cook.

Tuesday evening I sliced a few leaves of kale into ribbons and put them into soup bowls. Then I ladled a few scoops of the hot chicken broth over the kale, which quickly turned bright green. I also scooped out a few large chunks of chicken. With white bean and cucumber salad, a great dinner. Once again, I added water to the pot to replace what I had taken, and the broth continued to cook.

The next morning, after I drank a mug of the warm broth, I added a few small white turnips (sliced thinly), a carrot (peeled and cut into large chunks), and a potato (scrubbed and quartered). Then once again, I left. Wednesday evening I ate a big bowl of chicken soup with vegetables. It was delicious. The soup was a warm caramel color now, full of flavor and body. The bones, especially the smaller ones, were beginning to crumble, so that if I missed one in picking out the chunks of meat, it didn’t matter, because it would simply disintegrate in my mouth.

The final morning of the experiment, after having filled a to-go mug with broth, which I later drank gratefully during an early-morning meeting in what turned out to be a freezing cold room, I dumped a large amount of kale into the remaining soup and left it to cook all day. That night, when I arrived home, I scrambled an egg and poured it into the hot soup as I stirred it in a large, slow circle. Egg drop soup, the final soup of the week. If I had had some tofu I might have cut it into cubes and added that, too.

At the end of this experiment, a few large bones remained in the pot, and not much else. Almost everything else had disintegrated. I had turned a chicken carcass, rich in calcium and collagen (the protein in the bones), into half a dozen meals. The collagen was what had made the broth so rich and full-bodied.

My great-grandmother would have expected no less.

[Note: I used plain white vinegar this time. Next time I will use the chive flower vinegar I made this week, which consists simply of stuffing lavender chive flowers into a glass jar and covering them with white vinegar. The resulting pink vinegar is visually stunning, with a magnificent aroma. You can see what I mean in the photo above.]

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Lemon-Sesame Kale Salad

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A kale celebration for kale lovers everywhere (!), this recipe comes (with many thanks) from Angela at vegangela.com. If you don’t happen to have any kale right now, you can still make this salad with any other greens growing in your garden or sitting in your fridge. Radicchio is a good addition, too.
Do I post a lot of recipes for kale? Maybe. But I know hardly anyone who eats enough green, leafy vegetables.
 
  • 1 head of kale
  • 1 cucumber (peeled, seeded, and diced)
  • 2 ripe avocados, diced
  • 2 medium tomatoes, diced 
  • 2 cups (1 can) chickpeas, rinsed well and patted dry
  • 2 Tbsp. sunflower seeds (shelled) for garnish
Dressing:
  • 1 /2 cup tahini 
  • 3 /4 cup water
  • 2-3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • 1 garlic clove (med-large), minced
  • salt and pepper to taste
Prepare the veggies and beans, and toss into a large bowl.  Set aside.
In a small bowl, whisk together all dressing ingredients, adding just a bit of water drop by drop (one teaspoon at a time) if necessary. Remember the water in the veggies will thin the dressing further.
Pour the dressing into the vegetables, mix gently, and serve immediately.  Garnish with sunflower seeds.

A Four Million Dollar Gift

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Extraordinary news: The UCLA School of Law has received a $4 million gift from the Resnick Family Foundation to establish the Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy, with $3 million additional in matching endowment funds. The Resnick family has a history of commitment to projects that support the public health.

The press release states that this program is the first of its kind at a top tier law school. It “will explore ways to hasten improvements in the modern food system, focusing on reforming food law and policy for the benefit of the consumer. …This gift will support research, education and scholarship to promote public health and advance sound food law and policy.” It will address food safety, distribution, and access; reform of food law and policy.

Here, in a word, is what the Resnicks said: That since UCLA is located in the food capital of the world, and since California grows more food than anywhere else, and since the global food trade has changed the Western diet in an unprecedented way, with profound health implications, the goals of the gift include to help consumers understand what they’re eating, to improve the clarity and accuracy of food labeling, to broaden access to healthy food options, and, ultimately, to save lives.

That sounds good to me. The Resnicks are visionaries. Get in line, everyone. They were first, but they will soon be joined by more and more like-minded individuals.

This gift is expected as well to support consumer-oriented food law and policy, to help consumers learn to understand the food industry and central issues relating to food; to improve food labeling, to ensure food safety, and to increase access to healthy food. The Resnicks are committed to changing our awareness of food- and health-related issues, and to changing our eating patterns and associated health outcomes.

It’s time. It’s past time. This is good news.

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Roasted Broccoli with a Kick

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A few nights ago, I unwrapped five large stalks of broccoli from the tin foil in which I had safely wrapped them a full week earlier. If you did not know, tin foil is far and away the best way to store broccoli (and celery). I sliced off the bottom 1 1 /2 inches of the stalks, and then carefully peeled them all the way up into the florets. I sliced the stalk into 1 /2 inch slices, and broke the florets into generous, bite-sized pieces. Then I found this recipe from Lia Huber at Nourish Network. The addition of smoked paprika to this recipe gives broccoli, already a powerhouse vegetable, an extra-terrific “kick.”
  • 2-3 pounds broccoli (about 5 medium heads)
  • 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • generous pinch of sea salt
  • fresh ground black pepper
  • 4 medium cloves garlic
  • 1 /2 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Prepare broccoli as above, and place in a large mixing bowl.
Add oil, salt, and pepper, and mix very well until all pieces are well coated. Place broccoli in roasting pan, and roast for 10 minutes.
Smash and slice garlic, sprinkle on broccoli, stir carefully, and roast another 10 minutes. Sprinkle with paprika, toss again, and roast for 5 more minutes until broccoli is caramelized and tender. If you serve it now, hot and crispy, there may not be any left. But if there is, you may enjoy adding it to a bowl of rice and black beans, like I did for lunch yesterday.

For Memorial Day: Sweet & Spicy Baked Beans

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Before I left the house the other morning, I noticed that a mason jar in the cabinet had little more than a cup of navy beans remaining. I filled that jar to the top with cold water, and left. By evening, the beautiful beans had expanded to fill the jar completely. When I rinsed them I discovered, inside the jar, a lucky black bean that had stained several adjacent white beans a beautiful gray-blue. Why was it lucky? Wait ‘til you taste the recipe! Here is what I decided to make.

  • 1 1 /2 cups dry white beans (cannellini, navy)
  • 3 medium onions, diced
  • 1 /4 cup honey
  • 1 /2 cup ketchup
  • 1 teaspoon mustard seed
  • 4 shakes black pepper
  • 1 /2 teaspoon smoky paprika
  • 1 /4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 1 /2 teaspoon powdered ginger
  • 1 /2 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 /2 teaspoon allspice
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
  • 4 shakes hot sauce
  • 2 teaspoons salt

Soak the beans in water all day or night. Drain, and rinse. Chop the onions.

Add the beans to a slow cooker (crockpot or soup pot) and cover with water by 1 inch. Add onions, honey, ketchup, garlic, and all the spices. Allow to cook 8-10 hours.

Serve at your Memorial Day barbecue, or double the recipe to share at a potluck. If you put up the beans to soak this morning, they can cook all night and be ready in time for tomorrow morning!