Meatballs - So Good, In So Many Ways

So many recipes come from the internet these days. It makes it super easy to share ideas. Natasha and I will share links to recipes for meals that we enjoyed. Each meal will contain a protein, fat, carbohydrate and fiber. If you have your own to share, send them to us and Natasha and I will try them and share them in future posts. Or share them in a comment below!

Although I would not say that I’m a paleo eater, I tend to follow paleo food bloggers because they use real whole foods, they’re practical, and often really delicious. Mel Joulwan has introduced the yumminess of meatballs into my cooking. I cook up one of her double batches and have delicious protein for the week. Here is a link on all the benefits of incorporating meat balls into your menu plan.

While I am making the meatballs, I cook up some brown or white rice and bake a butternut squash that make up some of my carbohydrates for the week.

For my green veggie, I’ve taken to making a kale salad which become more delicious each day in the refrigerator.

Trader Joe’s dried cherries mixed with cashews is my current snack idea.

Food of the Month: Blueberries

"Eat fresh non-sprayed dark berries, such as blueberries."

Traditional medicine (medicine older than the last 100 years) says dark berries, such as blueberries, are good for lots of conditions: vision, prevention of varicose veins, improvement of memory, slow the progression of heart disease, diabetes, and prevention of urinary tract infections, to name a few.

When I started naturopathic medical school, more than 20 years ago, the pushback to traditional medical statements about one fruit helping so much was How can one small fruit do so much? My response was the same as for any medication: It’s what’s in it.  Why would a pill be more powerful than what our body has consumed for thousands of years? 

Now we know a lot more about blueberries and if you search Pubmed, you’ll see that they are starting to be treated as a medicine. Blueberries are full of compounds that help with inflammation, help with glucose control, prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine (a neurotransmitter that helps us see colors and objects in our imagination), prevent cancer... the list continues. The World's Healthiest Foods website has a great description of the science if you are interested..

Many people are talking to me about memory; blueberries and other dark berries have been my go-to medicine to help.  A quick look through Pubmed found an article about a study where the treatment group got blueberry juice 2 weeks before receiving general anesthesia and the control group did not. It was found the group who drank the blueberry juice had better attention and memory after receiving general anesthesia than the control group.

Ok good to remember for our next planned surgery, but there are other places where chemicals affect our brain. Blueberries help protect us in any place where we are exposed to volatile chemicals: panting a house, being in a home with chemical air fresheners, working on machinery, being in an area with forest fires… If you can smell it and it’s annoying to you, you can try some yummy blueberries. And there a good treat to improve your memory in general.

My favorite ways of eating blueberries:

By themselves: First, make sure they are organic or non-sprayed. The pesticides are not helpful because these are some of the chemicals you are trying to avoid. Second, wash with cold water. Third, pick them up and place in your mouth. Yum!

In yogurt: Mix together plain, full-fat greek yogurt, almond extract and vanilla extract to taste, pecans, blueberries.

In any salad!

It’s also interesting to notice if blueberries count as a carbohydrate for you. It is ok if it doesn’t, you have to consider your whole health and where you are on the spectrum of need for sweet taste. But can it be enough carbs for a salad or the yogurt? For me, some days they are and some days they are not.

Food of the Month: Artichokes

When I am talking to people who say they dislike veggies, I always ask are there a few that they like. If they can’t think of any, I start naming veggies that they might like. 

I usually start with artichokes. Most people, but not all, like artichokes. Usually, the expense comes up. “Well, they are over $4 per can at the market.” Yes, and at Trader Joe's, artichokes canned in water are less than $3 per can and they will not rot in a week. How many veggies have gone to waste by not eating them in time? Fresh is better, of course. But we are looking to do a little better than what we we're currently doing and trying to create sustainable behavior.

Plus they are super healthy for you. I like them in terms of helping with energy and mental clarity for a number of reasons:

First, they are high in antioxidants such as Vitamin C and A.

Next, they are great for our liver in that they help the liver produce bile. Bile helps our us absorb fat soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K. Bile also helps kill bacteria that is on our food and neutralize the acid from our stomach so that it does not injure our small intestine.

Lastly, and back to food and mood, artichokes are high in fiber. Fiber is one of the mechanisms that help with glucose control. However, there seem to be other mechanisms at work because they're more effective at this than can be accounted for by the amount of fiber. Probably because it supports the liver.

The take-home message is to put canned artichokes in the kitchen cabinet for when you are in a rush and won't otherwise get your veggies in.

Here's a study about artichokes for further reading.

Short Cuts: Use a hand blender to support physical and mental health

The key to eating better is having the right tools to prep food quickly and deliciously. To get my clients to eat more veggies, I often encourage salads. For the busiest individuals, they can buy a package for pre-washed lettuce, add a tomato, a couple of canned artichoke hearts, and ½ avocado, plus a link of sausage cooked over the weekend or a can of skipjack tuna. Add salad dressing and it is good to go.

Making my own salad dressing keeps me from getting bored of salads. One day it is apple cider vinegar, garlic, mustard and olive oil. Another day, it is tahini, apple cider vinegar or lemon, tamari, garlic, graded ginger from a jar, and water. Great with baked cauliflower. Third options is red wine vinegar, olive oil, handful of cilantro, garlic. All of these come together in less than 5 minutes by having a hand blender.

• Here are some ideas to inspire yummy experimentation with salad dressings.

The short cut that makes the biggest difference for me is using a plug-in hand blender. I tried the cordless blenders and then I never had power when I needed it. I have had the Cuisinart version for years, but you can buy cheaper ones - they all seem to work. What’s awesome about hand blenders is that it takes 3-5 minutes to make the best salad dressing, so quick that you can easily make a different one every time. As a bonus, hand blenders help make great soups in the wintertime too.

How a hand blender helps support mental health:

• When cooking is easier, we do the self-care of feeding ourselves well more often. Eating at home generally offers healthier choices, particularly if we make it ourselves.

• Ideally we should be eating 5 or more cups of veggies every day to nourish our bodies; Salads generally have 3-5 cups, and we’re more likely to eat them with good-tasting dressings.

• Cooking for ourselves is a chance to decide if we like something or not. We get to experiment. We set our own standards for the day. We get to practice creativity and how to recover from small failures (by learning which combinations of ingredients we don’t like). Salad dressings are a cheap and recoverable place to start. You can try a new dressing quickly with the hand blender and if you don’t like it, throw it out and try again.

• Hand blenders cost $20-40 and is a tool for self care.

Again if we are going to cook more, we have to make it easier.

Here is an example of what I am taking about:

Be sure to write in your questions on how to do the self-care for better mental health. Feel free to write anonymously ("I have a friend…")

Food of the Month: Apple Cider Vinegar Decreases Inflammation

Spring is here! My salads are back. I always feel better when I am eating more salads.

When I was in college I found a book in the library that had a series of questions written to a doctor in the early 1900s and posted in a newspaper. The answer to many of the various problems was to include 1-2 tablespoons for apple cider vinegar in the diet. This is part of how I got started in natural medicine: it made sense to me that diet impacts health because I know that I feel better when I add some acidity (apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, or lime juice) to my diet a few times a week.

I have been poking around PubMed, the free-to-all medical literature search engine, to piece together why apple cider vinegar has been used throughout history for both physical and mental health. This year in the Journal of Food Medicine (see links below), apple cider vinegar has been shown to reduce malondialdehyde levels. Malondialdehye levels are a marker for inflammation. Studies have demonstrated that it is elevated in major depression, social anxiety, ADHD, schizophrenia, and bipolar, as well as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Clinically, I use it to help start digestion for various GI challenges. A little cider vinegar in water before a meal increases the gastric acid in the stomach and gets digestion going. I have also had patients use it, along with garlic and ginger, to prevent colds and flus.

But, lets get back to spring salads and using apple cider vinegar.

Braggs Organic Apple Cider Vinegar is the only one that I have found that is both unfiltered and unpasteurized. I also like Trader Joes’ Organic Apple Cider which is unfiltered but pasteurized.

I love making my own salad dressing because then I know what is in it and I can use olive oil which is better than the oils often used in commercial salad dressing. And I can make any number of salad dressings with lots of different flavors!

Benefits of using apple cider vinegar:

1.      Dressing salads results in eating more veggies.

2.      Mixed with water, it makes a good stomach elixir for digestive problems. Mix 1 tablespoon in 1/8 cup of water before meals. Try this for 5 days to see if gastric reflux decreases and energy and mental clarity increases. Over time it will also help the absorption of iron and B12.

3.      Mixed with water, ginger and honey, it helps slow down or prevent colds. Mix 1-2 tablespoons in a cup of hot water with grated ginger and 1 tablespoon for honey, drink 1-3 times at first symptoms of a cold.

4.      It lessens nigh-time leg cramps. Mix 1 -2 tablespoons in a cup of hot water with grated ginger and 1 tablespoon for honey. Try for one week to see the effects.

Although these seem like a large range of challenges, apple cider vinegar works because it decreases inflammation – a driving force behind these and many other ailments.

Let us know how you use it and how it works for you. 

References:

• Apple Cider Vinegar Attenuates Oxidative Stress and Reduces the Risk of Obesity in High-Fat-Fed Male Wistar Rats
• Assessment of oxidative stress parameters of brain-derived neurotrophic factor heterozygous mice in acute stress model

Food of the Month: Dark Berries

Dark Berries: Raspberries, Blueberries, Cherries, Blackberries

This month’s theme it about how to help your brain recover more quickly from stress. One of my favorite foods to add to a client’s diet is dark berries. I am not going to get all geeky about the names of the chemicals that help your brain. You can look those up if you need them. What I am going to highlight is some of the great things they do for you when you consume them consistently.

Clinically, clients report better memories and a clearer ability to see in their minds. For example, the color of your car is ______? You can see your car even if the car is not actually in the room that you’re in, right? Eating berries helps the brain visualize concepts colors, and thoughts. Additionally, studies show that dark berries also:

• improve memory and the connections of nerves in the brain

• help prevent some cancers and cardiovascular disease

• are high in fiber, without a lot of carbs

• are high in antioxidants, which help reduce inflammation and protect cells from oxidative stress damage.

I’m often asked if it’s important to eat only organic berries. Organic assures that they have not been sprayed with pesticides, but some farms are not certified organic but don’t spray. It’s the residual pesticides that you want to avoid, so ask your grocers and if you can’t get non-sprayed berries, be sure to rinse them well before eating.

How much to eat? Fresh or frozen, 1 cup a day is not too much. Dried berries and juices are denser so limiting these forms to ¼ to ½ cup per day is a good rule of thumb. These serving sizes are about 15 to 20 grams of carbs. If you are trying to stabilize your glucose and prevent hypoglycemia, pairing the berries with 1/4 cup of nuts or ½ cup of Greek-style yogurt is a good idea. This will give you a carb to protein ration of 2-3 to 1. 

Food of the Month: Cashews

Throughout 2018 I am going to highlight a food or product that helps us fuel our brain and body. 

If you don’t know about The World’s Healthiest Foods website, I love it. George Meteljan has done a great job describing the benefits of individual foods and why they are healthy for us. He mostly focuses on physical health. I will add to this and describe why the food also promotes good mental health. 

Cashews 

If you enjoy cashews, a handful of them as a midday snack is a great fuel to stabilize the brain before you go home to the kids. First, it's a good protein source with almost 8 grams of protein per 1/4 cup. It's also loaded with good (unsaturated) fats which not only help your heart but also help the myelin sheath of your brain. The big bonus to cashews is that they are high in copper and magnesium. I am often thinking about whether an individual is getting the right nutrients to synthesize dopamine and serotonin and both of these minerals are needed for the synthesis of neurotransmitters for our brain. 

Magnesium helps calm, and thus organizes nerve activity; it can help with depression, anxiety and sleep. Copper helps convert dopamine to norepinephrine and serotonin into melatonin. In my office, I check for copper deficiency. People with overt copper deficiency will be able organize chaos and complete tasks (dopamine characteristics), but they don’t get any pleasure out of doing it (low level of norepinephrine). Sometimes they also have problems sleeping.

Since high levels of copper can cause problems for both physical and mental health, if I am going to supplement I do it carefully. I would not recommend supplementing copper without lab work. However, increasing copper through food sources is a different story. When we eat whole foods and have a diversity of foods in our diets, it's challenging to overdose on nutrients. If you don’t like cashews, feel free to eat other nuts as a snack. All of them have a healthier profile than the sugar-carb treats that are so easily shared at work. 

Do you have favorite foods, or foods or products that you're curious about? Post a comment below to let me know what you're interested in learning more about.