Healthy Food & Healthy Living by Dr. Ayala

Herbs for Health, Beauty and Flavor

Herbs are a gift of nature.

Herbs are among the easiest plants to grow. They practically thrive on neglect. They do need a good amount of sun, but otherwise they don’t ask for much—they prefer soil that isn’t too rich, they don’t need much water or space, and most herb plants have no insect and disease problems.

Whether you’re growing just a few pots indoors, or have an expansive garden, growing herbs for cooking can be your most satisfying and efficient gardening projects ever. The cost of the plant is in the range of what a small bunch of herbs cost in the supermarket, and the plant will give you ongoing beauty, yield and health.

I mix herb plants with other annuals and perennials, and also grow them in pots, which I take indoors in the winter.

You can start harvesting immediately. Herbs actually need to be harvested often to ensure vigorous new growth, as for many of them, if the plant’s allowed to flower and seed, it will end its growing season.

Herb up your salad

Now, it’s time to use your herbs, and the possibilities are endless. Tiny amounts are sufficient to add complex flavors, and elevate the simplest of dishes to new heights of taste.

Fresh herbs are my secret ingredient in many preparations, and while I agree that butter as a secret ingredient improves the taste of many dishes, herbs do so while adding nothing but health; they add no fat and no calories at all.

I add fresh herbs to every salad I make (and there’s even scientific support for my habit – see below). I chop whatever I picked from the garden into the salad right before serving, or process it into the salad dressing. You can add any culinary herb you like: basil, parsley, dill, chives, tarragon, cilantro and mint go very well in lettuce salads.

I have lovely tasting cucumbers growing in my garden now. My 11 year old son picks them and has been making and feeding us his favorite Greek salad for lunch since he discovered how tasty the cucumbers are:

Greek Salad Recipe

A true Greek salad has no lettuce (not that I have anything against lettuce in a Greek salad). It’s essentially a tomato, cucumber and red onion salad, seasoned with salt, black pepper, and oregano and dressed with olive oil. Even the feta cheese and kalamata olives are only optional additions

Ingredients:

2 large tomatoes, cubed
1-2 small cucumber, finely chopped
½ red onion, sliced into thin wedges
1/3 cup cubed feta cheese
1/3 cup pitted black olives
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon chopped fresh oregano leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
A dash of lemon juice (optional)

Directions:

Combine everything, adjust seasoning, and serve immediately.
With some fresh bread this is a perfectly satisfying lunch.

Herbs for health

Herbs don’t just add flavor. Herbs and spices are a more concentrated source of dietary antioxidants than many other food groups, including fruits, berries, cereals and vegetables. Adding just a few leaves of herbs to a salad can increase the amount of antioxidants in the salad in multiples.

In a study that used the oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) method for measuring the antioxidant capacity of salads, aromatic herbs were added to the salad and replaced some of the lettuce in it. Adding cucumbers, tomatoes and onion didn’t cause a dramatic change in the antioxidant capacity measurements. But when lemon balm and marjoram, at a concentration of 1.5 % (that’s 1.5 grams herbs for every 100 grams of salad) were added, the antioxidant capacity of the salad doubled with the lemon balm, and increased four-fold for the marjoram.

The researchers from the Universitia di Urbino in Italy conclude:

“Aromatic herbs represent a reservoir of phenolic compounds concentrated in just a few grams of material and can represent one of the simplest ways to increase the phenolic content and antioxidant capacity of the daily diet, with possible health benefits. Our data show that the introduction of aromatic herbs into the salads markedly increases the phenolic and ORAC values of the whole salad.”

By the way, lemon balm and marjoram aren’t even the most antioxidant rich herbs. Oregano and thyme are an even richer source of antioxidants.

You can read more about antioxidants and herbs here.

Next time you pass by lonely herb pots for sale, adopt a few and start experimenting with them. They’ll give you so much back for just a little bit of water and a small amount of attention.

Ayala

“Fun food:” Is it nutritious? Is it even fun?

Most parents are aware of the marketing efforts directed at their kids through advertising. Besides direct advertising on television and in internet games, packaging of food in a way that appeals specifically to kids is another way food is marketed to our kids. All of these tactics affect our kids’ choices (at least their nagging choices).

How does packaged food target kids?

Manufacturers introduce “fun” in their packaging. Specific colors, iconography (including cartoons), graphics, language and shapes (animal and cars) allure the kids, beckoning them to take a look. Packages offer free games, tie-ins with popular kids’ programs and films, and “lets have fun” messaging. Kids know immediately that this is a food playfully designed for a kid.

Professor Charlene Elliott from the University of Calgary, Canada, studied 367 products targeted specifically at kids to assess their nutritional value. The results appeared in the July issue of the UK-based journal Obesity Reviews.

Before we get to the findings, a few words about the method of this study:

• The 367 products were selected from a Canadian supermarket, and included only “regular” foods within the dry goods, dairy, produce and frozen food categories. The study excluded typical “junk food”—confectionary, soft drinks, cakes, potato chips etc., as these are expected to be of poor nutritional value, and don’t need testing.

• Assessment of nutritional value was done using the criteria outlined by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI): Healthy food should not derive more than 35 per cent of its calories from fat (excluding nuts and seed and nut butters), should have no more than 35 per cent added sugar by weight, and upper limits for sodium levels are defined depending on the food category.

Regarding the nutritional value of fun foods, the study found:

• 89% of the kids’ products studied were classified as having poor nutritional quality” (PNQ)

• Within the dry goods kids foods (including granola bars, cereal bars, pasta, soups), high sugar levels were the main culprit.

• Within the refrigerated and frozen foods (packaged lunches, pizzas), many products had high fat or sodium.

• Less than 1% of the foods specifically targeted at children in a Canadian supermarket are fruits and vegetables; the only “kids’ foods” in the produce section were small apples and baby carrots.

Nutritional claims abound

Fun foods don’t portray just happy drawings and cartoons. The majority of these foods (62.7%) had nutrition claims on the box. Examples range from the Smart Spot™ (a logo with a check mark in the middle, designed by PepsiCo, and displayed on those products from this company supposedly meeting nutritional standards), to phrases like “low fat,” “good source of calcium,” “trans-fat free,” etc.

The interesting finding was that among the 326 fun foods that were of poor nutritional quality, 202 (62%) had nutritional claims.

So while the nutritional claim of “low fat,” “no trans-fat” or “good source of iron” might lead one to think the whole product is nutritious, that isn’t necessarily the case—the product may be full of sugar, non trans-fat or sodium.

Another hidden message of health on products marketed to kids is the healthful physical activities the cartoon images are engaged in—many of the cartoons are depicted playing some kind of sport.

The strange world of food designed for kids

Elliott comments:

“Fun food products are no longer contained within the cereal aisle; they pervade the entire supermarket and are available for every eating experience (breakfasts, snacks, lunches, dinners). Fun food marketing suggests that children should be served 'special' foods made uniquely for them, that family meals should be reconfigured into foods for children and foods for adults, and that children's fare should be more interactive, more colourful, increasingly removed from the 'natural'.

All of these suggestions can create a problematic relationship between food and children, working to create a space in which children become accustomed to the 'unnaturalness' of food and learn to appreciate the value of food as fun, sport or distraction (instead of focusing on nutrition). As I discuss elsewhere, in consistently emphasizing a food's play factor, artificiality and general distance from 'regular' foods, fun food marketing can work to create a particularly unnatural relationship with food in children.

Food becomes framed as entertainment, and this entertainment is both premised on and emphasizes the artificiality of what is being consumed. (Remarkably, it is only in the world of children's food that artificiality is actually framed as a selling feature.)”

I totally agree.

The notion that kids need their own food is very wrong in my opinion. Beyond infancy, children don’t require any special diet. The same foods that are good for adults are good for kids, the only emphasis would be that it’s even more important for kids to eat nutritious food, as this is the time their body is growing, and their eating habits are formed.

From both the health and the practical point of view, I really don’t see why parents would make (or buy) one meal for their kids and another for the adults. There’s no such thing as “grown-up” food—there’s just good nutritious food for sensible humans, and since kids are smaller, they should get a smaller portion.

I often get upset by kids’ menus in restaurants. I think there should be an option to order a smaller, lower priced dish from the regular menu for kids—something like a half-price/half- portion for young diners sounds like a simple way to go. But the typical kids menu is often the same old French fries, hot dogs, butter-and-cream-drowned macaroni and cheese, as if that’s the only thing kids can imagine eating.

If we raise our kids with the expectation that food for them should be dumbed down to “fun food” with toys, how are they supposed to learn what good food is?

I find great pleasure in preparing and eating real food. I’m using the word “pleasure” and not “fun,” because fun in the context of food has come to mean the silly, artificial and superficial way to have a good time. Kids that grow up expecting food to have rainbow colors, glow in the dark, pop in your mouth and be shaped like Batman have no understanding of food, or its connection to the natural world and our health. I honestly believe they also don’t get real pleasure from their food; their meal is an extension of their entertainment.

Fun food usually isn’t nutritious or “fun.” The standards for nutritious food set by this study are quite minimal, and were met by only about 10% of the fun foods. Fun food also replaces the real joy a kid can get from helping make a meal from basic ingredients, of tasting food that has real food quality, and of connecting to people—understanding where the food came from, talking with the people who grew the food (farmers markets can be a real source of “fun”) and sharing the same meal with everyone in their household.

After all, what does Toucan Sam have to do with breakfast?

Dr. Ayala

A Balanced Diet for a Healthy Brain

A balanced diet, along with regular exercise and sleep, are important not only in preventing heart disease, diabetes and cancer; they can also help protect the brain and ward off mental disorders.

UCLA professor of neurosurgery and physiological science Fernando Gomez-Pinilla reviews a multitude of studies about food's effect on the brain in the July issue of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

In a paper titled “Brain foods: the effects of nutrients on brain function,” he makes some fascinating points:

The mere act of eating sends signals to the brain

• When we eat, the nerves in our gut signal the brain. Stimulation of these nerves has been shown to treat some types of seizures, and have potential benefits in the treatment of depression.

• Our gut secretes hormones when food is ingested. Several of these hormones have been shown to be associated with cognition. Several gut hormones or peptides (small proteins), such as leptin, ghrelin, and insulin have been found to influence emotions and learning processes as well as overall mental function.

Healthy brain food

Perhaps the best recognized nutrients that affect brain health are the omega-3 fatty acids. Omega 3 fatty acids are polyunsaturated fats that are “essential”—our body needs them, but cannot make them from scratch. Therefore, they need to be part of our diet. These fats are abundant in some fish (salmon), flax, walnuts and kiwi fruit.

Gomez-Pinilla shows there are some promising results showing improved learning and memory, less cognitive decline in the elderly, and some effect on such mental disorders as depression and mood disorders, schizophrenia, and dementia as a result of consuming omega 3 fatty acids,

Flavonoids (plant molecules with many health benefits, besides their antioxidant activity) -- found in various fruits (citrus) and vegetables, cocoa, ginkgo tree, wine many culinary herbs and green tea -- are also recognized as beneficial brain food. These food components have been shown to affect cognitive enhancement in rodents, and improve cognitive function in the elderly.

Also worth mentioning is that curcumin -- the curry spice used widely in India -- has been shown to reduce memory deficits in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease and brain trauma. It is hypothesized that the high use of curcumin in India might contribute to the low prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in that country.

Junk food is unhealthy for the brain

Gomez-Pinilla’s paper also examines the effects of unhealthy diets on brain function, and states:

“In contrast to the healthy effects of diets that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, epidemiological studies indicate that diets with high contents of trans and saturated fats adversely affect cognition.”

It references studies on rodents, in which “junk food diets,” -- characterized by high contents of saturated fats and sugar -- have been shown to cause decline in cognitive performance, and other changes in the brain after only three weeks of treatment!

What can we learn from this study?

The author notes (emphasis is mine):

“Owing to the encouraging results of clinical and preclinical studies that showed the beneficial effects of foods on the brain, the topic has attracted substantial media attention. Some of the information that has been conveyed has been hazy or exaggerated, and has contributed to people's apprehension of taking advantage of scientific advances.

As discussed, several dietary components have been found to have positive effects on cognition; however, caution is required, as a balanced diet is still the stepping-stone for any dietary supplementation. By the same token, popular dietary prescriptions that might help to reduce weight do not necessarily benefit the physiology of the body or the mind.

The fact that dietary factors and other aspects of lifestyle have an effect on a long-term timescale contributes to an underestimation of their importance for public health. Accordingly, the slow and imperceptible cognitive decay that characterizes normal aging is within the range-of-action of brain foods, such that successful aging is an achievable goal for dietary therapies. The capacity of diet to modulate cognitive abilities might have even longer-term implications in light of recent studies that imply that nutritional effects might be transmitted over generations by influencing epigenetic events.

Research indicating that an excessive intake of calories might negate the positive effects of certain diets suggests that there is an undefined line between abundance of foods and neural health.”

To me, this paper is further confirmation (as if we needed any) that we indeed are in many ways what we eat, and what we eat has a profound effect on our health, including our brain’s health.

I also appreciate the cautious way in which we’re advised by Gomez-Pinilla to interpret new studies:

“…a balanced diet is still the stepping-stone for any dietary supplementation”

The tried and true way to eat well is a balanced diet with real food. The study of supplementation with specific nutrients is in its infancy, and many of the studies are small and on animal models. We should therefore try to incorporate real foods that are good sources of omega-3, for example, (such as walnuts), as these foods are known to be nutritious and part of a healthy diet, and not get excited by highly processed foods with omega-3 added to them as a marketing gimmick.

The long-term scale in which food affects health is what makes nutrition science so tricky. If you replace dish-washing soap for dish-washer detergent in your dishwasher, you’ll know immediately that this wasn’t a good idea (I did that once; the soap bubbles filled the kitchen, and were ready to consume me).

Not so with our bodies -- our body is incredible in its adaptability, and the effects of sub-optimal treatment will many times not be noticed for years and decades. That’s also why the study of nutrition in humans is so difficult -- you’ll need to follow study subjects sometimes for years to really test a hypothesis.

It’s also interesting to note that these nutrients that are highly valued for brain function are no new invention -- they are traditional foods, mostly plant foods, that have been eaten for centuries, and have only lately been abandoned and replaced by junk.

What is new is that we’re now starting to understand the molecular effects and added benefits of these very old foods on our brains.

Ayala

WALL•E and a scary, obese future

But we can take action now to address an obesity epidemic

Pixar’s new animation film WALL•E bravely tackles two global issues. It takes on the environmental issue, and audiences are sure to appreciate that. But it also makes a statement about fitness and the obesity crisis, and I wonder how comfortable – or uncomfortable -- moviegoers will feel about the mirror this film holds up to ourselves.

(Modest spoiler for the next two paragraphs!)

Viewers will see mankind portrayed as so grossly overweight and unfit, that they’re unable to walk or care for themselves. Our descendants move about in automated chairs, continuously chatting, surfing and entertaining themselves through chair-mounted video screens.

And, as a symbol of how humankind got to their enormous girth, is the ever-present super-sized drink -- always near by, always ready to be gulped.

(OK, spoilers are finished.)

This cautionary tale of what mankind’s future could be like is, of course, an exaggeration, but there is serious concern that our environment has become so “obesogenic,” that the natural outcome of going with the flow results in continuous weight gain, and deteriorating health.

Weight loss and overweight prevention

As we all know, there are countless ways to treat overweight conditions and obesity. In fact, a new diet -- with the same promise -- seems to be invented every moment.

While the best way to lose weight and keep the weight off is still debated, what is very clear is that the treatment of obesity (with a goal of weight loss) is very challenging, and sustaining a lower weight is a continuous lifetime undertaking.

Much less research and emphasis is placed on weight gain prevention. I was therefore excited to read the American Heart Association recently published a scientific statement in Circulation (a weekly, peer-reviewed publication) in which it calls for a comprehensive, population-based strategy for obesity prevention.

The statement says population-based initiatives targeting eating and physical activity, geared toward prevention of weight gain in adults and children, are “essential.” By treating the population at large, and modifying the environment to one that facilitates healthier choices weight gain prevention should be easier, and individuals will be less prone to weight gain even if they’re not highly motivated and actively trying to control their weight.

An editorial by Dr. Reginald L. Washington titled “Prehab versus Rehab: The Winner Is Clear”, accompanies the paper and explains:

“Perhaps prehabilitation would be more successful in decreasing obesity in populations. This is primarily because there are two components to the obesity epidemic: individual participation and population factors that cannot be controlled by individuals. These population issues need to be addressed before an individual becomes obese, and this prevention can be viewed as prehab.

Citizens live in an obesogenic environment. This is a toxic environment in which there are multiple factors promoting obesity at the same time. Not unless and until all of these factors are simultaneously addressed and reduced will the obesity epidemic decrease.

The majority, but not all, of these obesogenic factors are out of the individual's control. An example would be the convenience and availability of fast foods. Individuals may try to eliminate or decrease the consumption of fast food in their diet. However, they are bombarded with fast food commercials in the media.

Additionally, the convenience, taste, and cost of fast food often make these items irresistible, particularly to people who have limited financial resources. The prevalence of fast food restaurants in lower socioeconomic environments adds to the problem. It is very difficult in these environments to find affordable and presentable fresh fruit. On the other hand, it is extremely easy to find affordable, convenient, and tasty fast foods. There are few supermarkets and healthy restaurants in these neighborhoods. These are examples of population issues and individual issues acting together to prevent the decrease of obesity.”

I truly believe we need to do something about changing our food and activity environment. We can all start with our own home, and make our pantry one that has mostly or only healthy choices, and develop a routine that gives us plenty of physical activity.

We can then move on to the larger circle of influencing the food environment in our kids’ schools, summer camps and extra- curricular activities (is it, for example, really necessary to give out snacks and sugary drinks after every soccer game?).

The bigger changes we need are admittedly harder -- legislation and policy changes interventions, as well as infrastructure investment in walkable and bikable neighborhoods, are indeed daunting tasks.

But unlike our future selves portrayed so chillingly in WALL•E, we have to get motivated about obesity prevention, because treating obesity and its health consequences is so much more difficult and costly.

What steps do you suggest for making our environment healthier?

Dr. Ayala