When I got home from picking up my weekly share one day back in the spring, I sliced some beautiful, new pink and white radishes as thinly as I could, laid them on small, thickly buttered whole-grain crackers, and set them on a colorful tray on the kitchen counter while I prepared to wash strawberries and lettuce.  Everyone helped to make them disappear.  Sweet and spicy, soft and crunchy, the combination of textures and flavors was as supremely satisfying as such an earthly pleasure can be.  The spicy, crunchy radish; the fragrant, seeded crackers; and the sweet, warm butter.  Bright yellow butter from cows who eat grass growing in bright yellow sunshine.

Real butter?  Are you kidding?  Doesn’t butter contain saturated fat?  Yes it does. And isn’t saturated fat supposed to be bad for you?  On the contrary.  Here are a few interesting tidbits for you to digest:  Olive oil is 13% saturated fat.  Cocoa butter, the main fat in dark chocolate, is one of the most highly saturated fats on the planet.  And trans fat, which has been absolutely and incontrovertibly identified as a cause of premature coronary artery disease, is an unsaturated fat.  It cannot, therefore, be true that unsaturated fats are good for you and saturated fats are bad.  William Castelli, director of the Framingham Heart Study, which initially enrolled 6000 people from Framingham, Massachusetts, and has been running since 1948, reported that the data indicate the more saturated fat one eats, the lower that person’s serum cholesterol appears to be.  The study has found that people who eat the most saturated fat weigh the least and are the most physically active.  So don’t deprive yourself–deciding not to eat something simply on the basis of its saturation gets you nowhere.

Here are a few more facts about saturated fats. We are made of saturated fat.  Because they are highly stable, they give our cells their integrity.  They play a vital role in bone health by promoting incorporation of calcium into the skeletal structure.  They lower Lp(a) [also called “lipoprotein a”], a substance in the blood that is highly correlated with premature heart disease.  The short- and medium-chain length saturated fats (found mainly in butter, chicken fat, coconut and palm oil) have antimicrobial properties; they enhance immune system function.  In other words, maybe it’s more than just the steam in chicken soup that makes it such a fine choice when you’re under the weather.

A more useful way to understand fats is to consider whether they are natural or synthetic.  Dr. Mary Enig, a lipidologist at the University of Maryland and the first to blow the whistle on trans fats back in the 1970s, has studied fats for her entire career.  She points out some of the fundamental changes that occurred in the American diet through the 20^thcentury.  Previously, most consumed fats were either saturated (butter, lard, tallow (beef), coconut) or monounsaturated (olive oil).  Today, the majority of fats are polyunsaturated, derived from soy, corn, safflower and canola.  Because polyunsaturated fats are inherently unstable, most are hydrogenated or refined to extend their shelf life.  Hydrogenation is the process by which manufacturers turn liquid oils into shortening and margarine by adding hydrogen.  This is how trans fats are created.  Trans fats act like saturated fat in cooking (think of Crisco), but they work more like plastic once they get inside you.  They aren’t really food, they just act like it.  That’s what I mean by synthetic fats.  Bottom line:  If it isn’t found in nature, don’t eat it.

In view of these interesting ideas, let’s talk more about butter.  Butter has just about the widest variety of fatty acid lengths and shapes of any food.  Why?  Well, let’s think about it.  Where is butter found?  In milk.  Who drinks milk?  Babies.  Like humans, goats, kittens, deer, water buffalo, calves, and yak.  Developing mammals.  Developing organisms need high-quality food that’s going to provide all the raw materials necessary to build the tremendous variety of tissues in their bodies.  Bone, heart and skeletal muscle, brain and nerves, corneas, kidneys, liver, nails, hair, you name it.  Butter also contains conjugated linoleic acid, a fatty acid that normalizes fat distribution and decreases truncal obesity.  Truncal obesity means abdominal fat, the kind that collects at the waistline and is a risk factor for diabetes and heart disease.

Here’s one more reason to eat butterfat, which you can also get by drinking whole milk.  Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin.  This means that it is found in fat.  No fat, no Vitamin D.  Along with decreased sun exposure, the large drop in whole milk, cream and butter consumption has resulted in an epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency throughout the country. Not only does Vitamin D enhance calcium absorption and protect your bones and teeth, it improves your insulin sensitivity and lipid profile.  It also helps protect you from diabetes and other autoimmune diseases.  If you have concerns about your own Vitamin D status, ask your doctor to check your levels. 

One of the things I like best about my CSA (community-supported agriculture) is the surprise. There’s nothing like opening a bag to discover something I haven’t seen before, something whose name I don’t know, or something I wouldn’t have purchased under other circumstances.  This is nothing new; I’ve always felt like this, even before finding recipes was as simple as typing the name of an ingredient and tapping the ‘enter’ key.  And it appears that it’s no secret, either; I was asked about my plans for the Swiss chard before I’d even left the parking lot this past Thursday, and there was a similar question by phone within a few minutes of arriving home!  I shared my favorite plan: wash thoroughly, place the soaking wet, chopped stems under the leaves in a frying pan, steam for a minute or two just until the leaves begin to wilt, and then add a generous dollop of butter.  Or olive oil if you insist although, in my humble opinion, it is not the same.

I don’t ride roller coasters and I don’t like scary movies.  I’ve always felt that real life provides all the excitement I need.  But I do enjoy traveling, particularly to places that I would never otherwise have chosen to go.  To me there is nothing more fun than going along for the ride, cheering on people as they trust their instincts and follow the threads of their passions wherever they lead.  I like ending up in places, physical or otherwise, that I myself would never have chosen.  These have always been the greatest adventures of my life.

Even though it’s on a much smaller scale, my weekly share of produce gives me a similar feeling.  I appreciate the zucchini, onions, and leafy green lettuce, but I adore the Swiss chard, the chamomile (jam it into a small mug and pour boiling water over it) and the things whose names I don’t know yet. They take me somewhere I have never gone.  And that brings me to the subject of garlic scapes.

Earlier this season, you may have been one of many who asked, “What exactly are garlic scapes?” Garlic and its Allium family relatives (leeks, chives, scallions, onions) begin their underground lives as soft bulbs. As garlic bulbs harden, a shoot rises up and curls above the ground.  This shoot,or flower stalk, is called the scape, and I read that it appears only on the finest hardneck varieties of garlic.  If left unattended, the scape eventually straightens, hardens and turns the opaque white/beig
e color of a garlic peel.  As it absorbs its share of energy from the plant, it also prevents the bulb from growing large and fragrant.  So farmers harvest the scape in full curl, when it is still tender and delicious.

Here are a few things that you can do with garlic scapes.  You can 1) grill them like asparagus; 2) chop them up and add them to eggs, vegetables, salad, rice, pasta or a stir-fry; 3) cut them to green bean size, saute them in butter and salt for 6-8 minutes, and add a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar the last minute of cooking; or 4) make garlic scape pesto.  Toss pieces of 4-8 garlic scapes into a food processor.  Add grated parmesan cheese and walnuts, toasted if you’d like.  Use pumpkin seeds if you don’t eat nuts.  Pour in 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, some salt and pepper, and give it a spin —> voila, garlic scape pesto!  Spread pesto on toast, add it to pasta, or place a tablespoonful in a little ramekin with a raw egg (cracked open, no shell).  Bake in the toaster oven at 350 for 10-12 minutes.  The flavor of this simple recipe is so heavenly that if you make it for breakfast, it will put a glow on the rest of your day.

The last entry I wrote was about the vegetannual, the mythical plant creation of Barbara Kingsolver that represents the gardens that, like in real life, produce all food in its proper season, in its own time.  Like all gifts from the garden, garlic scapes have their own season, so don’t miss your chance to eat ‘em up next time they come around!

©2009 Roxanne B Sukol

              Welcome! to “Your Health is on Your Plate.”  This is where I, Dr. Roxanne Sukol, a practicing internist in Cleveland, Ohio, explain how I care about what you eat.  I spend my days teaching folks how to tell the difference between nutritious food and the rest of what’s out there.  It’s not what you think: The American diet is causing obesity in 2/3 of the people who eat it, and diabetes in 13% of Americans. Thirty percent of current nine-year-olds are projected to become diabetic. Something is wrong with this picture. Diabetes and obesity are preventable diseases– so let’s prevent them.

Remember, your health is on your plate.