Let’s take another look at an important subject:
Have you ever heard anyone say that all you need to do to eat a more nutritious diet is to get rid of the white flour and sugar? That seems pretty radical to most people. What’s the point? What’s wrong with white flour and sugar? And what would such a change accomplish?
Love, love lentils! They’re beautiful (and cheap) bought in bulk and stored in glass jars in the cabinet. They cook fast, compared to all the other beans, and you never need to soak them. The red ones cook quickest of all, so don’t be afraid to make this if you’ve got just one-half hour to get soup on the table. I’ve shared some of Mark Bittman’s recipes in the past. This one’s from his Kitchen Express–quick and easy. If you already pulverized some cilantro (or basil) a few weeks ago, and stuck it in the freezer for safekeeping, pull it out now — this is the recipe to use it on! I guessed at the quantities as it is written as a narrative. Continue reading
Several times a month or more, a friend thrusts their latest cholesterol results in front of me and asks for an explanation. “What do you think of these results?” “Are they okay?” “My doctor said the HDL is too low.” “Why are my triglycerides so high?” “What should the LDL be?” “Why is the total cholesterol number high if all the individual numbers are good?” This week I’m talking about what your cholesterol results mean, and how to make them better.
First, let’s discuss how the total cholesterol is computed. Simple. Add the LDL to the HDL, and then add one-fifth of the triglycerides. That’s your answer. So if the LDL is 100, HDL is 50, and triglycerides (TG) are 100, the total cholesterol number will be the sum of 100 (LDL) + 50 (HDL) + 100/5 (TG) = 100 + 50 + 20 = 170. Very good. Here’s a second example: If the LDL is 150, HDL is 50, and triglycerides are 500, the total cholesterol will be the sum of 150 (LDL) + 50 (HDL) + 500/5 (TG) = 150 + 50 + 100, or 300. Not good. You want your total cholesterol below 200 or so, unless the HDL is high, in which case the total may be higher than 200, but that’s good. High HDL levels are beneficial; they lower your risk of coronary artery disease. Continue reading
Today I spend a few minutes on the topic of prevention, to which I have devoted my entire professional career.
Early on, it became abundantly clear to me that I could have a more significant impact preventing many of the problems that presented themselves in my office than chasing after them with treatments that did nothing, after all, to prevent them. Americans are not strangers to successful disease prevention. Over the past century, death rates in the United States from malaria, cholera, TB (tuberculosis), scurvy, pellagra, and typhoid, not to mention scarlet fever and rheumatic heart disease, have all plummeted. Illness and injury generally fall into a few major categories: microbial infections, nutritional deficiencies, toxins, and traumatic accidents.
It’s been decades since my parents, Chef Ira and The Gardener, first coined a name for the way they eat, the “wrinkle-free” diet. While it started as a joke, an answer to the fact that they didn’t seem to be aging as quickly as their friends, it’s not a joke any more. The wrinkle-free diet’s magic, it turns out, happens not on the surface, but deep inside, through changes to a special part of our chromosomes that scientists call the telomere. Continue reading