Are frozen vegetables processed food?

The answer is Yes.

Frozen vegetables are processed through the following steps (Ref 1):

Harvest - Factory receiving and quality checks - Sifting and Washing - Blanching - Freezing - Weighing and Bagging - Quality Control - Delivery

The current industry standard of blanching is set at 86ºC. Take an example of broccoli. Blanching practically kills enzyme myrosinase, which is necessary to form sulforaphane, one of the powerful cancer-preventive compounds in broccoli.

However, Illinois scientists (Ref 2) suggest either lowering the temperature to 76ºC or adding 0.25 percent of Daikon radish on the frozen broccoli. The first remedy help preserve 82% of the enzyme. And the second one works by adding the enzyme myrosinase from Daikon radish onto the frozen broccoli to form sulforaphane.

In addition to Daikon radish, cabbage, arugula, watercress, horseradish also contain myrosinase. So sprinkle a tiny amount of these raw vegetables to frozen cooked broccoli and you will still get the cancer fighting phytochemical sulforaphane.

Purslane, weed, food or medicine?

I have tried to grow a garden in Salinas of Santa Elena in Ecuador recently. It never occurred to me that it would be that difficult. The temperature is perfect for growing things, around 25 degree Celsius and I water them everyday. However, the ground is extremely salty, as the house sits ocean front. In addition, Salinas, meaning saltworks in Spanish, has been farming salt for many years, thus making it even more salty than other ocean front places.

However, there is one weed that grows extremely well. Even though I plug out some everyday, I just cannot keep up with their growth.

Now I am back in Canada, spending too much time on the internet. I came across some articles regarding edible weeds. Voila, the weed that bothered me so much is called purslane (Verdolaga in Spanish, Portulaca oleracea in Latin) and packed with nutrition. So next time I am in my house in Salinas, instead of trying to eliminate them, I will just eat the weed.

Nutrients and medicinal properties:

1. Purslane contains more omega 3 fatty acids (in the form of alpha-linolenic acid) than any other leafy plant.

2. The two types of betalain alkaloid pigments, the reddish betacyanins (visible in the coloration of the stems) and the yellow betananthins (noticeable in the flowers and the slight yellowish tint of the leaves), have been found to have antimutagenic properties in laboratory studies (a good review of natural antimutagenes can be found here).

3. It is a good source of vitamins and dietary minerals, especially vitamin A, C, E and magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron.

4. Could be a good candidate for anti-aging research, as it contains dopamine and DOPA. Betacyanins isolated from Purslane improved cognition in aged mice.

Harvesting:

The last inch or two of the leafy stem will be the most tender. When stressed by drought, which is where they are in my garden under normal circumstance, purslane switches to a different photosynthesis pathway: the leaves trap carbon dioxide at night and convert them into malic acid (the sour taste of the apple). Under the sun, malic acid is converted into glucose. So when you harvest early in the morning, the leaves are significantly more tangy than harvest in the late afternoon, which have more glucose.

How to eat purslane?

1. Add them in salads

2. Stir fry them with chicken, pork or shrimp

3.Use them as garnish in ceviche

4. Cook them in a soup

I cannot wait to try them.

Air pollution or eating wheat significantly shortened life expectancy?

A recent study linked air pollution to shorten life expectancy. It is probably true except that I found the argument very weak. The authors used data from China and found that the life expectancy is five and half years shorter in the north than in the south. And it argued that for decades (1950 to 1980), a government policy provided free coal for heating, but only in the colder north; researchers found no other government policies that treated China’s north differently from the south; therefore, air pollution must have been the culprit.

However, the authors did not mention that the same policy in the same period also provided rice for the south and wheat for the north as the main staple of food. I am quite surprised that nobody told the authors since anyone who lived in China during that period should have known. I left China in 1988 and for every month since I was an adult, I collected about 10 kilos of rice per month (government issued ration coupon). Since I could not eat that much rice a month, I used to exchange the coupon for eggs in the black market. People in the north got about the same amount in wheat flour. It is true, there was very little migration as the authors stated, since migration was strictly controlled. 

In addition to government policy, the eating habit was very different as well. There was very little availability of green leafy vegetables in the north. There were other vegetables, such as Napa cabbages, eggplants, carrots etc., but almost no green leafy vegetables.

I am sure air pollution poses health risks. However, I could have used exactly the same data from China and concluded that eating wheat or not eating green leafy vegetables shorten life expectancy.

Interesting Articles recently

1. Herbal extract from Rhodiola rosea boosts fruit fly lifespan by nearly 25% and it promotes longevity separately from dietary restriction. (here)
2. Testosterone improves verbal learning and memory in postmenopausal woman. The test was done using LibiGel, BioSante Pharmaceuticals or a placebo applied to the upper arm for 26 weeks. (here) 
3.  Osteoporosis drug stops growth of breast cancer cells, even in resistant tumors. (here)
4. Blocking overactive receptor in Alzheimer’s recovers memory loss and more. (here)
5.  Artificial Sweetener "mannitol" a Potential Treatment for Parkinson's Disease. (here)
6. Ten breakthrough technologies of 2013 according to MIT Technology review. (here)

Bill Gross's take on "Don't sweat the small stuff. It's all small stuff."

"Remember just two things," an old friend once told me while I was struggling with a host of seemingly insurmountable problems. "One: Don't sweat the small stuff. Two: It's all small stuff." His advice produced an instant guffaw that soothed my short-term pain, but over the years it had become a source of serious personal reflection. There's a wallop packed into those two sentences that could keep philosophers or a slew of radio talk-show hosts busy for years. If it's all "small stuff" and life is but a dream, as the last line of the old song maintains, lots of gentle rowing is probably a great way to proceed down life's little brook. If, however, there's lots of small stuff and several big things, the pace quickens and a certain intensity is required. The trick, of course, is to determine what the big stuff might be and to recognize it when you you see it-not necessarily an easy task for anyone who seriously ponders the meaning and ultimate outcome of existence.

I have concluded, as you may have guessed, that there's both a lot of small stuff in this world that shouldn't raise a sweat and a few very big things that demand focus and constant attention. What's intriguing and somewhat frustrating, however, is how relative and mercurial even those big things can be as you move down the stream. Breaking up with your teenage girlfriend was certainly very big stuff at seventeen, but it hardly causes a ripple in the memory bank a decade later as you settle into marriage and family building. Failing to get a promotion or that new job was a crushing blow in your thirties, but twenty years later is written off as perhaps having been for the best. A wife's or husband's extramarital affair may have nearly brought a marriage to the brink of divorce, but failing health and the need for companionship as one approaches 60 relegate the incident to the category of "just one of those things." Over time, a lot of big stuff becomes smaller stuff, and in a way my friend's classic two liner makes sense. Maybe it is all small stuff!

But no, that cannot be right. Life has no meaning if it's just a series of historical events that quickly lose their significance. What's wrong with the above analysis is that those events should never have been considered big stuff in the first place. The big stuff, aside from life's inevitable tragedies, is really the delicate, almost imperceptible fabric of feelings, thoughts, and actions that form the total of one's life. It has less to do with event - what things happen to people - than it does with behavior - how we react to them. It's not about individual successes and failures, but how you play the game. Do you deal with people fairly, with kindness, with at least a modicum of selflessness, acknowledging a world outside your own existence? Do you come to peace with your maker and approach life's final harbor with hope for an infinite future? Or can you at least look back with some pride how you rowed your boat down this earthly stream that flows to a most uncertain shore? That's the big stuff. The rest, in retrospect, is really not worth your sweat.

Is a Calorie a Calorie?

I came upon an interesting article "Is a Calorie a Calorie?" written by Malden Nesheim and Marion Nestle today. I agree with everything they say except their conclusion. To me, a calorie is not a calorie if the source of the calorie differs. A calorie from plant-based whole food might be less or more than a calorie as compared to a calorie from processed food.

Plant based whole foods (whole grains, fruits, nuts, legumes and vegetables) all contain cellulose, a structural component of the primary cell wall, often referred to as dietary fiber. The energy (carbohydrate, fat and protein) is contained inside the cell wall. Cooking breaks down most cell walls and releases the energy we consume. We also digest cellulose with the aid of gut microflora, and the extent of digestion varies from one individual to the next (here). The energy produced are shared between us and our gut flora and not counted as Calorie. Most of the cellulose, or dietary fiber, acts as a hydrophilic bulking agent for feces. In other words, most cellulose is not digested, therefore, not counted as Calorie.

On the other hand, as argued in the above mentioned article, "But certain foods, again, retain some of their calories as they pass through our gut. For example, the fat in almonds and certain other nuts is incompletely digested. In a 2012 study, USDA scientist Janet Novotny and her colleagues found that the measured energy content of a 28-gram serving of almonds was actually 32 percent less than the Atwater values estimate." Is it because of the cellulose in almonds that makes it difficult for us to get all the energy content or is it because it costs a lot of energy to digest almonds? I do not know. I agree with the above author and a calorie is a calorie if you compare low carb diet to low fat diet and strictly in relation to weight gain or loss. But I do believe there is a huge difference between 1000 Calorie from refined pure starch and 1000 Calorie from mixed portion of whole grains, fruits and vegetables. We are still comparing carbohydrates to carbohydrates. If you want to compare fat, 1000 Calorie from pure fat/ oil is very different from 1000 Calorie taken from nuts. Whole foods are harder to digest, therefore, either we lose some Calorie because we could not get at them or because it costs more energy to digest them. In addition, whole foods contain vitamins/ minerals/ phytochemicals and fiber etc. that are beneficial to our health.

Obesity in itself is not a disease. As a matter of fact, about25% of obese people are healthy. Eating less is good, but eating well is better. Since we have to teach people how to eat healthy, we might as well teach the whole shebang.

Telling people including myself to eat less never works. We have such abundance of food available to us and a good appetite is healthy. It is only human to want to eat. But we can slowly trick ourselves into eating habits in a way that even though we are eating a large volume, we actually do not consume excessive Calorie. So in our house, we eat vegetable soups often. We snack on raw fruits and nuts. We never consume sugary drinks (including fruit juices). I personally believe there is nothing healthy about processed fruit juices. Once you get used to eating healthy, your body no longer craves for junk food.

Teresa Amabile on Track Your Small Wins to Motivte Big Accomplishments

Watched Teresa Amabile on "Track Your Small Wins to Motivate Big Accomplishments" today via 99u.com



Not only her advice is sound and useful. I am re-posting this video mostly for using her as an inspiration for physical and mental fitness to look forward to when women progress with age. According to wiki, she was born in 1949/1950, so she is in her early 60s.

Another excuse to be a beach bum

Research carried out at The University of Manchester has found hypertonic solution, which is a solution with an elevated concentration of salt, can ease inflammation purely through bathing in it (read the abstract here). Of course, the ocean is a perfect hypertonic solution. Another excuse to be a beach bum.