Strategy to reduce salt consumption and blood pressure

The doctor has taken me off the status of pre-hypertension. However, I still need to control salt intake to control the blood pressure.

I am a widower plus am too lazy to cook myself. I take my normal meal once a day in a restaurant where I do not have control over how much salt be in my daily meal, normally in the mid-morning. I then take only fruits in the afternoon and sometimes soy milk for the protein. Both fruits and soy bean milk has no or very negligible salt. That is how I reduce my salt consumption

High pesticides food and substitutes

Organic fruits and vegetables may be a better alternative to conventionally grown ones, but they are expensive and not everyone can afford them as a regular fare. They are also not easily available. One may be forced by circumstances, financial or otherwise, to fall back on conventionally farmed fruits and vegetables.

However, not all fruits and vegetables are equal. Some when grown conventionally, fruits and vegetables are treated with more pesticides than others or may retain more of the pesticides. Here is a list of the top 10 foods containing the most pesticides, according to the Environmental Working Group:

High-pesticide food: Strawberries
Main nutrient: Vitamin C
Healthy alternatives: Blueberries, raspberries, oranges, grapefruit, kiwifruit, watermelon

High-pesticide food: Bell peppers
Main nutrient: Vitamin C
Healthy alternatives: Green peas, broccoli, romaine, lettuce

High-pesticide food: Spinach
Main nutrient: Vitamins A and C
Healthy alternatives: Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, asparagus

High-pesticide food: Cherries
Main nutrient: Vitamin C
Healthy alternatives: Oranges, blueberries, raspberries, kiwifruit, blackberries, grapefruit

High-pesticide food: Peaches
Main nutrient: Vitamins A and C
Healthy alternatives: Nectarines, watermelon, tangerines, oranges, grapefruit

High-pesticide food: Mexican cantaloupe
Main nutrient: Vitamins A and C
and potassium
Healthy alternatives: U.S. cantaloupe grown from May to December, watermelon

High-pesticide food: Celery
Main nutrient: Carotenoids
Healthy alternatives: Carrots, broccoli, radishes, romaine lettuce

High-pesticide food: Apples
Main nutrient: Vitamin C
Healthy alternatives: Watermelon, nectarines, bananas, tangerines

High-pesticide food: Apricots
Main nutrient: Vitamins A an C and potassium
Healthy alternatives: Nectarines, watermelon, oranges, tangerines

High-pesticide food: Green beans
Main nutrient: Potassium
Healthy alternatives: Green peas, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, potatoes, asparagus

Easy weight control tip: eat slowing

Obesity is a major health problem giving rise to ill health like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases like hypertension (high blood pressure), heart attacks and strokes. Many go to great length to control weight like dieting, going to gym for exercise, etc. There is one easy thing weight control tip - eat slowly.

According to an Osaka University research which studied the relationship of eating speed, feelings of "fullness and being overweight, they found fast eaters to be 84% more likely to be overweight than those who eat slowly. This tendency is even more remarkable for women where women who eat fast are two times more likely to be overweight. For those who wolf down their meals are 3 times more likely to be overweight. So if you want to slim down, eat slowly and take your time to chew your food thoroughly.

Source: BBC News (Health)

Rolled oats, quick cooking, instant: What is the difference?

Until recently, I have been cooking and eating rolled oats for breakfast. I find it helped keep my blood cholesterol level down, even though there seemed to be a genetic tendency toward high cholesterol as seen in my siblings. However, it appeared to me that rolled oats are getting more and more difficult to find. It is much easier to buy quick cooking oats or instant oats.

I have always tried to avoid highly processed food wherever possible. So I took the trouble to contact a market leader oats manufacturer to ask about the difference between rolled oats, quick cooking oats and instant oats. I was told that the only difference is the degree in the size of the oats to which they have been reduced. Instant oats are ground or cut to a much smaller size than quick cooking.

So if that is true, it is only the degree of physical processing that the oats had been subject to. Physical processing like grinding or cutting the oats are not going to change its chemical composition, so it appear pretty harmless to me. With this knowledge, I am now less cautious about buying quick cooking oats or instant oats.

I will check with the other oats manufacturer to see if I get the same answer. If they all tell me the same thing, I will have no hesitation in buying instant cooking oats, for they will be more environmentally friendly as they take less cooking time, thus would be more energy efficient plus they save time.

Papaya, the wonder and cost effective fruit

I have long been a regular consumer of the papaya fruit. When I attended a talk organized for premium account holder of OCBC Bank (Oversea Chinese Banking Corporation Bank) by Dr. Lim Hua An, he started off with the exact quotation you see in this blog Header -"Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food". He divided his talk into 3 parts, Nutrition, Colon Cleansing and the third part I couldn't remember.

My confidence in him increased when to my question as to which is more important, he answered "nutrition". He said if you get your nutrition correct, the rest will automatically follow.

He also said one of he best fruit to eat is the humble papaya:



He confirmed what I had believed all along, that papaya contains lots of carotene and vitamin C. To me, on per weight basis, it is also one of the cheapest fruit I can buy and thus the most cost effective. I hope to edit this post later to write more about the virtues of the lowly papaya fruit. At the moment, I am in a hurry to use this post to demonstrate the use of an image to sign your post. I will post the link to the instructions later.

Poll: Raw garlic is the most powerful antibiotic plus health food

Vovici Online Survey Software

The above poll was created with a 30 day trail subscription, so I don't know if it will still be useable after that 30 days. Anyway, here is some information I have gathered about garlic:

I attended a talk by a medical doctor who divided his talk into 3 sections - nutrition, colon cleansing and the third one I forgot. Anyway, my confidence in him was he stressed nutrition first, and said that if you get your nutrition right, the rest will follow. Plus he also started his presentation with the famous saying you see in this blog Header - "Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food" by Hippocrates. He also said the same thing as what I had wrote about in Landmark legislation on nutrition (click BACK button to get back to this post), that more and more medical schools are now teaching nutrition as a subject.

He also said raw garlic is the most powerful antibiotic as garlic do not spoil. He compared it to a banana which goes bad just after a few days. I myself have experience with raw garlic. I use a juice extractor to extract the juice from garlic, use the extracted juice plus the pulp plus other stuff like honey to marinate chicken for a long time before I use turbo broiler to roast the chicken. Even though I leave the marinated chicken for a long time, it never spoil. Plus the taste is delicious. You should try it one day.

I also have a post Crush your garlic before you cook it or eat it raw (click BACK button to get back to this post).

So I hope you go through all this information before you vote in the poll, or if you have already voted, you can edit your vote.

Benefits of whole grains

What is whole grain

A grain consists of three parts – bran, germ and endosperm, and when they are all present, they are considered as full grain. Often grains are refined by grinding and polishing to appeal to less knowledgeable people. Some people do not like whole grain because they don't look beautifully white and may feel "grainy" when they chew on them. I love whole meal bread not only because I believe they are more healthy, but I like to chew on them, and they don't kind of stick to the gum when I eat them compared with white bread. Many healthful and nutritious ingredients are removed by the grinding and polishing process and become nutritionally deficient. Some have said that they have observed bugs dying when trying to sustain themselves on refined grains in silos.

Benefits of whole grains

Whole grains have more dietary fiber, protein (especially the amino acid lysine which cannot be synthesized by our body and is a building block for proteins plus it plays a crucial role in the production of various enzymes, hormones, and disease-fighting antibodies), dietary minerals like selenium, magnesium, phoosphorus and manganese. Whole grains also contains vitamins like vitamin B6, vitamin E and niacine. Most of the antioxidants and vitamins are found in the germ and the bran of a grain which are removed by refining.

Many believe whole grains help to maintain a healthy heart. The most important benefit of whole grain compared to refined grain is the dietary fiber which is deficient in refined grain. Dietary fiber helps reduce the incidence of digestive system diseases, some forms of cancer, gum disease, coronary heart disease. It is also believed to help reduce the chances of one getting diabetes because carbohydrates from whole grains are digested and retard the entrance of sugar into the bloodstream. And of course it helps one have more frequent and easier bowel movements which is important to have a healthy colon and probably reduces the chances of developing piles because one do not need to strain hard to defaecate.

Food As Medicine - The Tasty Approach To Better Health

By Rebecca Prescott

Annemarie Colbin, in her book, Food and Healing, presents a chapter on altering diet to combat specific conditions. Her recommendations are based on her own experience as a student of macrobiotics and health food, and a teacher of natural healing and balanced eating. As well as her observations of those whom she treated in consultations, and the transformations of her students over the years. Despite her background in macrobiotics and vegetarianism, Annemarie isn't dogmatic about food - she recognizes that what is healing for one person, during a particular period of their life, may not be healing for others, or even for that same person at different stages of their life.



She takes as her cue the fact that regular foods have been used for their medicinal value in most traditional cultures. The underlying principle is one of restoring balance. Illness is considered a state of imbalance within the body. And like in homeopathy, she believes that remedies can cause similar symptoms to that which they cure - if the symptoms they can cure are not present, and they are taken in sufficient quantity. So, the remedy should no longer be taken once the symptoms of imbalance, the illness or condition, disappears. Otherwise, the remedy may in fact cause similar symptoms to reappear. If this is the case, the remedy should not be taken again, as the remedies are (according to this principle), causing the new symptoms. Serious medical conditions she does not rely on food cures for. She recognizes that Western medicine also has its place. But food being what it is, can also be a useful healing adjunct in those situations.



One thing that impressed her was food's ability to alter our metabolism quickly. She described this epiphany after cooking a meal for some South American friends, who were used to a diet that was high in protein and fats. When they ate the meal prepared by her, which was high in complex carbohydrates like whole grains and legumes, and low in fat, sugar (for dessert), and low in protein, they found alcohol affected them in a way it usually didn't. The same amount they normally drank, which did not make them drunk with their usual fare, got them quite tipsy on hers. She observed from this that alcohol, being expansive in nature, balanced out the highly contractive protein and fat they normally ate. These ideas, of particular foods having an expansive or contractive nature, is one that she learnt from the Oriental healing systems she studied.



This approach touches on a core difference between Western understanding of both food, and medicine, and traditional Chinese medicine's (TCM). TCM has as its conceptual underpinning, the study of relationships between things. Western approaches, to both nutrition and medicine, are based on a reductionist approach. They explore isolated nutrients, diseases that are studied under the microscope, with a symptom that then suggests possible causes, defined within a narrow and static frame. Ted Kaptchuk illustrates this when he describes how, when he was studying TCM in Macao, one of his teachers was talking about shingles. His teacher described how shingles on the face was different to shingles elsewhere, say, on the trunk. The reason behind this was that "the Chinese view demanded another perspective - seeing the relationship of the symptom to the whole body". (Kaptchuk) he goes on to say: "The question of cause and effect is always secondary to the overall pattern...The total configurations, the patterns of disharmony, provide the framework for treatment." (Kaptchuk)



References: Ted Kaptchuk, Chinese Medicine, The Web That Has No Weaver (Rider Books, London)

Annemarie Colbin, Food As Healing (Ballantine Books, New York)



About the Author: To learn more about acne natural cures versus natural acne treatments, check out this article exploring the use of Chinese Herbs: http://www.vitaminstohealth.com/acne-natural-cure.html



Source: www.isnare.com

All about Poultry

Found this interesting Article Poultry Talk. It is one of the many good articles of the Wellness Letter which relies on the expertise of the School of Public Health and other researchers at University of California, Berkeley, as well as other top scientists from around the world. If you don't have time to surf over there, here is a brief summary of what is in that article:

Eating white meat (chicken or turkey) is better than eating red meat as poultry has less fat and fewer calories, especially if the skin is removed. However, the healthiest diets are still diets rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains (and include some fish) and lower in animal products of all kinds.

What’s the difference between farm-raised and organic chicken? Well, organic chicken are raised on 100% organic feed and no antibiotic is used, plus the welfare of the chicken have to be promoted (a rather vague provision). However, slaughtering methods are the same no matter how the chicken was raised, and that’s where most contamination with Salmonella and Campylobacter, two potentially deadly strains of bacteria found in raw chicken, occurs.

The free-range label means the birds have access to an outdoor pen, via portals on the poultry house. They may never go outdoors, and you shouldn’t picture them roaming free in a big yard. “Pastured” chickens, sometimes sold in high-end markets, are also raised in cages, but the cages sit on grass and are moved from time to time. There is no evidence that chickens labeled “free-range” or “pastured” taste better, are more nutritious, or get more humane treatment than other birds.

Facts about the biology of cancer, diabetes, why. nutrients are so vital to health, etc.

Want to hear Jerry Brunetti, who has survived terminal cancer by eating with common sense while refusing. conventional treatment, gives a talk about some indisputable facts about the biology of cancer, diabetes, why. nutrients are so vital to health, etc. Surf over to Conspiracy Theory: Food as Medicine. Just make sure you have lots of time because it is a long talk divided into 2 videos.

Crush your garlic before you cook it or eat it raw

When you crush garlic it releases an enzyme, alliinase, that catalyzes the formation of allicin, which then breaks down to form a variety of healthful organosulfur compounds. Cutting it may help but is not as effective as crushing it.

Crushing garlic releasing useful substance has been known for some time, but a study lead by Claudio Galmarini and colleagues at the Institute of Nutrition and Technology of Foods in Argentina suggests crushing garlic before cooking can reduce the loss of garlic's healthful properties. They found that even a few minutes of cooking reduces the levels of the chemical compounds but reduction is steepest in whole garlic and less pronounced in garlic that has been crushed before cooking.

They postulated that crushing garlic before cooking probably allow alliinase to work before cooking inactivates the enzyme. Their report notes allowing crushed garlic to stand for 10 minutes before cooking may further enhance formation of those compounds before heat inactivates alliinase.

Source: Science Technology News: Scientists offer garlic cooking tips

Update 1 March 2007: I eat chopped raw garlic occassionally with my meal. I have insturcted the maid to crush the garlic before chopping it up. I now noticed a world of difference. Previously, I have to chew very well to get the "stinging" taste of raw garlic. Now, I hardly have to.

Do not eat Fatt Choi or Nostoc

Got a forwarded message from my sister in Australia. It was concerning "fatt choi" (cantonese prononciation), a black hair-like mass that I personally have helped to sell in my father's grocery shop as a youth, and have personally consumed, especially on Chinese New Year, which incidentally is just around the corner this year.

Here is the forwarded message:

---

Hello Chinese friends,
BE warned!
Cheers,
Benny

HK group calls for total ban on fa cai
Jan 31, 2007
The Straits Times

HONG KONG - A GROUP of Hong Kong researchers has called for a total ban on the sale of fa cai - a hair-like sea moss that is widely consumed during Chinese New Year.

The team from the Chinese University's department of biochemistry said international research showed that the plant - known as Nostoc or black moss in English - not only has no nutritional value but has also been found to contain a toxic amino acid that could affect the normal functions of nerve cells.

Eating black moss could lead to degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and dementia. Eating black moss could lead to degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and dementia, Professor Chan King Ming of the team told the media on Monday, the Standard newspaper reported.

China banned all exports of black moss in 2000 after listing it as an endangered species.

But Hong Kong has yet to ban the sale of black moss, keeping alive a demand that has encouraged cultivation of the plant in the mainland, Prof Chan said.

Black moss is widely eaten in Hong Kong during Chinese New Year, mainly because its Chinese name, fa cai, is homonymous with 'prosperity' in Cantonese and Mandarin.