• Archives

  • Feb23

    Drinks with Benefits: Wine and Tea (Top Resources)

    Posted in: Wellness and Health, Wine and Tea

    For the upcoming PBS Special “Eat and Cook Healthy!” I created four DVDs and a CD: one of the tastiest DVDs is “Drinks with Benefits: Wine and Tea”.

    It was a lot of fun to write and discover, and like ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine, I read a lot of medical, culinary and nutritional studies and analyzed them to prepare (I love research).

    For the book, there were nearly 3000 studies (with 20 pages in the book); for the Wine and Tea DVD, there are about 100 sources: here are the Top 5 books in each: Amazon links for convenience.

    Health Benefits of Wine: Best Books

    1. Age Gets Better with Wine,
    2. To Your Health: Two Physicians Explore,
    3. Youth Pill,
    4. The Longevity Factor,
    5. The Science of Healthy Drinking

    Health Benefits of Tea: Best Books

    1. Anticancer,
    2. A New Way of Life, New Edition,
    3. 20,000 Secrets of Tea,
    4. Healthy Teas: Green, Black, Herbal, Fruit
    5. Tea: Health Benefits and Applications

    Wine Pairing: Best Books

    1. The Wine Bible,
    2. Great Wine Made Simple,
    3. What to Drink with What You Eat,
    4. Perfect Pairing: A Master Sommelier’s Practical Advice,
    5. Food and Wine Pairing: A Sensory Experience

    Wine Tasting: Best Books

    1. The Wine-Tasting Notebook,
    2. Wine Tasting: A Professional Handbook,
    3. How to Taste: A Guide to Enjoying Wine,
    4. The Sommelier Prep Book,
    5. The Taste of Wine: The Art and Science,
     

  • Feb5

    Does the Right Food Treat Hyperactivity (ADHD)?

    Posted in: Environmental Health, Wellness and Health

    The new Lancet report on food and ADHD advances culinary medicine from prevention to treatment in kids.

    ADHD kids ages 4-8 ate five weeks of unprocessed food–a strictly supervised elimination “oligoantigenic” diet – foods least likely to cause an allergic reaction -rice, meat vegetables, pears, and water, complemented with potatoes, fruits, and wheat.

    But by the end of week 2, 17 of 41 children had no behavioral response to the diet. So it was further restricted to rice, meat, vegetables, pears and water.

    41 of 50 children finished the diet phase. 32, or 78%, responded favorably by having fewer symptoms. Overall, 32 of 50, or 64%, responded favorably.

    But 36% did not, including the 18% of kids and parents who didn’t participate.  So it is not a cure. And it does require cooking.

    Because when the offending foods were reintroduced, symptoms returned. And there was no IgG trigger food, meaning an allergic reaction per se was not present.

    Beginning in 1975, the Feingold Diet which was chemical-free, was prescribed for hyperactivity: the video explains how to avoid additives and colors in food.

    Lancet reported in 2007 that several food artificial colors and additives worsened hyperactivity in kids without ADHD. In July 2008 the European Parliament voted in favor of labeling foods with these additives “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” The additives are

    • Tartrazine
      Quinoline yellow
      Sunset yellow
      Carnosine
    • Allura red
      Sodium benzoate

    In the U.K., according to the Chicago Tribune, Kellogg’s strawberry Nutri-Grain Cereal Bars now contain natural alternatives: beet root red, annatto and paprika extra. Those sold in the U.S. contain Red No. 40, Yellow No. 6 and Blue No. 1.

    Five weeks of diet should be tried first in kids with ADHD, instead of Adderal. Adults with ADHD might consider a supervised therapeutic trial of unprocessed food for their symptoms as well.

     

  • Jul14

    Food as Medicine as a Movement

    Posted in: Wellness and Health

    When Johns Hopkins Medicine happily and positively publishes “Take Two Carrots and Call Me in the Morning” and Hopkins Public Health researchers pen a NPR-covered pilot study of better-for-you hospital food—within 2 months of one another–you know something is changing in mediicne.

    When the Harvard School of Medicine/CIA 5th Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives conference is oversubscribed, and Touro University asks me for a proposal to teach online cooking classes to students in three of its medical schools, something is cooking.

    When media luminaries like Drs Oz and Roizen proclaim on Oprah! that “food is medicine” (full disclosure: they are my friends), and Dr Hyman’s, Dr Mercola’s and Dr Weil’s HuffPo columns on the relative virtues of nutritional components and their affect on your health are among the most popular on the site, you know that the health-conscious public wants to support doctors who are on the same page.

    And when the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports becomes the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, and the First Lady invites pediatricians and chefs to the White House to talk about swapping out fryers for salad bars in schools, you know practicing physicians are going to get it.  And just maybe, lead it.

    Not every doctor has to write recipes on prescription slips. But the more we know about what our patients eat, and what they could eat and drink to help themselves look and feel better, the better we’ll serve.

     

  • Jun7

    Personal Food Revolution #7: Reverse Diabetes with What You Eat…Out

    Posted in: Common Conditions, Wellness and Health

    One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #7 of 7.*

    Carol has diabetes. She is 48 years old, the mother of two and a successful Washington litigator. She does not know what to eat at the dinner she must attend tonight.

    She eats out ten times weekly, usually orders chicken Caesar salad, and snacks on cheese, chocolate and energy bars. She often eats the last of her Taco Bell in the front seat of her car before going in for the night.

    I tell her that she can beat insulin resistance, which is causing her out of control diabetes. But she has to treat her disease like her best client–conscientiously.

    She is to avoid red and processed meat for 12 weeks: the heme iron increases diabetes risk. Ditto, any food with the words High Fructose or Enriched Flour or Sugar or Rice or Corn Syrup on the package.

    Tonight, like every night out, she should have two dinner salads with good vinaigrette over 20 minutes with good fish or lean poultry, and drink hot cinnamon tea afterwards. She should pack almonds, high protein cereal, tea bags and string cheese when she travels.

    Carol liked knowing what to eat, and practiced it, a lot, with coaching. She now teaches water aerobics in Virginia.

    *adapted from ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.

     

  • May24

    Personal Food Revolution #5: Eat Your Way to Lower Cholesterol

    Posted in: Common Conditions, High Cholesterol

    One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #5 of 7.*

    Tom’s case was a quandary: a Pulitzer-winning health reporter, he already exercised diligently, running about four miles most days. He had long ago given up meat and most cheese. Yet his LDL (bad) cholesterol was 169, way above the recommended 130 and an optimal 100.

    A single Dad, Tom’s two teenagers had grown accustomed to a stick of butter in their weekend Slow Roasted Hen.

    So I worked with Tom to add multiple terrific dishes to their eating cycle. There was a Turkish eggplant recipe, and white beans with escarole and tomato.

    His internist was astonished. His LDL dropped 33% to an acceptable 114; his healthy HDL cholesterol was up to 75.

    Apart from not spending his own and his employer’s money on drugs, Tom found another benefit to this program.

    His daughter regularly makes steel cut oatmeal for breakfast and enjoys split pea/carrot soup with tarragon, nutmeg and barley. And his son’s special request for dinner this past Saturday was grilled salmon with honey-mustard marinade.

    You can’t get that with a pill.

    *adapted from ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.
    **adapted from the Wall Street Journal report on lowering cholesterol, by Tom Burton.

    N.B. investigate top Amazon.com diet and nutrition alternatives to cholesterol medication

     
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