I’ve written previously about lactose-free and soy-free yogurt options for those among us with uncooperative digestive systems.

The yogurt which established a new Greek Empire in your supermarket

But the google-searches for lactose-free yogurts continue unabated, and since I posted that initial article, the only brand of dairy yogurt on the market that used lactose-free milk (True Yogurt) has become unavailable due to the loss of their production facilities.

Despair not, my fellow lactards.  There is another yogurt option that your intestines may find tolerable: European Style yogurt.

You may have noticed the European invasion in your local dairy aisle: there’s a veritable Greek Empire led by brands like Fage, Oikos, Chobani, The Greek Gods, Trader Joe’s Greek Style yogurt and Brown Cow Greek yogurt; then there are the Icelandic Skyrs (Siggi’s), and the continentally-inspired “European-style yogurts” (Cultural Revolution).  What these products all have in common is that they’re strained to remove a large amount of the lactose-containing liquid (whey) found in your typical American-style yogurt, so they’re a) very thick; b) naturally higher in protein; c) naturally lower in carbohydrate.  Now: since all of the carbohydrate naturally found in yogurt is lactose (milk sugar), a lower carbohydrate yogurt means a lower-lactose yogurt. For some people who can tolerate small amounts of lactose but still have trouble with conventional American-style yogurt, these products may be perfect for you.

How low-lactose are European-style yogurts?

Ounce for ounce, your typical European-style yogurt will have about half or less of the amount of lactose as a standard American-style yogurt.  (This is also very good news for people with diabetes, as plain European style yogurts are very low-carb.)

Let’s start with a standard American-style product for comparisons’ sake: a 6oz container of plain, Dannon low fat yogurt, which contains 11g of naturally-occurring sugar, all of which is lactose (milk sugar).  All conventional yogurts will contain roughly this same amount of lactose, which means any additional sugar listed on the label beyond 11g is added sugar for flavor.  (As a sidebar: if you’d like to read more about how much added sugar is too much added sugar when it comes to yogurt, read this response to a reader who asked that very same question.)

By way of comparison, a standard 5.3oz container of Greek-style yogurt contains 6g lactose (or about 7g for brands sold in a 6oz container), which amounts to 45% less lactose than American-style yogurt.

If that doesn’t excite you, there are thicker, more strained versions out there with even LESS lactose.  A standard 6oz container of Siggi’s Icelandic-style yogurt contains a mere 4g of lactose, or 64% less lactose than American-style yogurt.  (It also has 16-17g of protein and 20% of your daily calcium needs.)

If their labels don't lie, 2% fat Cultural Revolution yogurt has the least amount of lactose (2g) you can find in a milk-based yogurt

And finally, there is Cultural Revolution yogurt, whose low-fat version (2%) is an unimaginably low-lactose product: Just 2g of lactose in a standard 6oz container. That’s 82% less lactose than a conventional American style yogurt.  (Note that the whole milk version (5%) has more lactose: 5g per 6oz container.)

One last–and important–lactose-related factoid when it comes to yogurt is this: the live, active cultures (bacteria) in your yogurt will have predigested some of its lactose before you even eat it, which is why yogurts (and cheeses) are often better-tolerated than straight liquid milk in people with some degree of lactose intolerance.

To put this in mathematical terms: a very low lactose yogurt + some lactose pre-digested by the yogurt cultures= a very good chance people with some (but not complete) lactose intolerance will be able to enjoy yogurt again.

Ready to give real yogurt a try again?

My recommendation is always to choose plain (unflavored) European or Greek-style yogurt if you like how it tastes–or if its convenient for you to doctor it up with a touch of your own sweetener or favorite add-in (I’m partial to almonds + 1 tsp honey, or just a sprinkle of granola).

Virtually all flavored yogurts are loaded with added sugar–often over 3 tsp worth in a teensy little container.  (As a rule of thumb, 6 tsp added sugar per day is a good limit for most women.)  Flavored Greek Yogurts are no exception, and all sugar listed on the label beyond the lactose content detailed above is straight up added sugar.  (In fact, I’ve seen many Greek yogurt products with an unheard-of 30g+ of sugar per container!  I won’t name names, but you know who you are, you sugar-pushing bullies…)  Note: if you’re concerned about lactose, you may want to avoid Cabot’s Greek Style Yogurt: their yogurts contain added whey protein concentrate, which contains lactose.  As a result, their Greek Yogurt has the same amount of lactose as your standard, American-style version.

You make a mean Skyr, Siggi.

If your tastebuds simply won’t adapt to the flavor of plain, then there are some brands that have less added sugar than others.  When I’m not buying plain, here’s what I’d buy:

• Siggi’s Icelandic style yogurt in Vanilla, Grapefruit, Blueberry or Orange-Ginger  (These flavors have 10g total sugar, or 1.5tsp added sugar.  So does the Acai flavor, but I think it tastes kinda weird.  Sorry, Siggi.)  Plus, its made with milk from hormone-free, grass-fed cows.
• Cultural Revolution yogurt in Vanilla, Strawberry, Peach or Raspberry.  These flavors have 10g-11g total sugar in the whole milk variety, which is ~1.5tsp added sugar; and only 8g total sugar in the 2% (lowfat) variety.  And bonus, its made from organic milk.
• Stonyfield Farm’s Oikos Greek-style yogurt in Vanilla only (has 11g total sugar per container, and it’s made with organic milk.)  The other flavors have way too much sugar added for me to recommend them.
• In a pinch, Brown Cow Vanilla Greek Yogurt isn’t egregious at 12g sugar per container… but it’s pushing the limits.

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An inviting citrus display recently spotted at Dean & Deluca

On the eve of the Super Bowl, I’ve got the Citrus Bowl on my mind.  Only in my world, the Citrus Bowl actually refers to a huge platter on my kitchen counter piled high with mounds of sunny, spherical fruit.  (Sorry football fans; I don’t even know who’s playing tonight…)  You see, I’ve been on a major citrus bender recently.  The available offerings this year seem even more plentiful than usual, with amazingly sweet mandarins, dramatic blood oranges and exotic pomelos playing wingman to winter standbys like navel oranges, tangelos and pink grapefruits.  It’s enough to make a girl forget about her beloved Clementines, whose season has pretty much passed.

Much Ado About Citrus

Diets higher in citrus fruits have been associated with a decreased risk of stroke. A large, prospective study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association back in 1999 quantified the protective effect as follows: each additional serving of citrus fruits (including juices) in the diet was associated with a 19% reduced risk of stroke (the effect size was even greater for women than for men).  High citrus fruit consumption in the diet has also been shown to correlate more closely with a reduced cancer risk than high Vitamin C consumption, indicating that there’s something protective going on in those citrus fruits beyond just the Vitamin C.

As the above suggests, citrus fruits are a prime example of a whole food being greater than the sum of its parts, nutritionally speaking.

California Mandarins--stems, leaves and all--are in stores now. They're astonishingly delicious.

The membranes of a citrus fruit, for example (those white and translucent skins and stringy bits that surround the fruit segments) are loaded with several phytonutrients called flavonoids.  Examples of such flavonoids found in oranges, for example, include limonoids and hesperidin; both compounds which are currently being investigated for their cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure-lowering effects.  And according to the research scientists at the USDA whom I grilled recently, while it’s true that these compounds do make it into citrus juice, levels tend to be higher in fresh-picked, unprocessed fruits (or fruit juices squeezed at home from fresh fruits)–particularly when you eat the membranes too.  And while we’re on the topic of squeezing your own juice, here’s a fun little citrus fact I picked up from my buddies at the USDA: there’s a compound that occurs naturally in mandarins/satsumas called synephrine, which is the same ingredient you’ll find in many popular cold and allergy  medications (like Sudafed).  So loading up on some mandarins or squeezing yourself some mandarin juice if you find yourself under the weather this cold season is a scientifically-based, natural way to get some relief while getting some fiber and meeting your Vitamin C requirements for the day. Take that, Sudafed!  (Note that synephrine is also the same compound that replaced ephedra in many diet pills under the code name Citrus Aurantium, although there’s no compelling data to suggest it actually helps people lose weight.)

A Caveat about Grapefruit

You may have heard that you should avoid grapefruit or grapefruit juice if you’re taking certain medications, including certain calcium channel blockers (for high blood pressure), statins (for high cholesterol), immunosuppressants and antidepressants.  Not only is this true, but the interaction also occurs with grapefruit-related citrus fruits such as Pomelos and Seville Oranges (otherwise known as Sour Oranges or Bitter Oranges; they’re popular in Hispanic cuisine). There are multiple culprits in these fruits that are responsible for the interaction, including the flavonoid called naringin, which competes with these drugs for the same metabolic pathway in the liver.  Grapefruit wins the competition, which means the drug circulates for longer in the body before being broken down.  This results in potentially dangerous blood levels of the drug and a high risk of adverse effects.

Citrus Salads, Sweet & Savory

There are so many awesome citrus flavor combinations:  Orange and mint.  Grapefruit and fennel.  Orange and beets.  Grapefruit and vanilla.  Orange and almond. It’s really hard to go wrong.  But just to get you started, here are a few of my favorite ways to work through the mounds of wintry citrus love on my kitchen counter:

• Mark Bittman’s easy and visually-arresting Winter Citrus Salad

• Fennel Grapefruit Salad from the queen of content, Oprah.  (You can use gluten-free croutons from Gillian’s or Gluten Free Pantry if you so desire)

• Mâche salad with blood orange, pistachio and pomegranate from Bon Apetit.  (Use arugula if you can’t find mache).

• Grapefruit Vanilla Salad (serves 4):  Combine 2 cups water + 3/4 cup sugar + 1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise, in a saucepan.  (Don’t worry, you’re not actually going to be eating all of this sugar…)  Stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves.  Once its dissolved, stop stirring, turn up the heat and boil the syrup for 1 minute.  Turn off the heat and let cool completely.  Remove the vanilla bean and either discard or reserve for garnish.  Pour the syrup in a bowl with 3 lbs of sliced pink grapefruit, mix well, and let marinate in the fridge for at least an hour.  Serve with a slotted spoon.    A great brunch dish.  Works beautifully with a sprinkle of fresh, chopped mint leaves, too.

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While the universe of food bloggers readies its collective arsenal of chocolate dessert porn in anticipation of Valentine’s Day, I’ve decided to take a fashion risk and pay homage to a red-colored, heart-loving delicacy that gets notably less airtime at this–or any–time of year: Borscht.

Now, if the word ‘Borscht’ conjures up romance-quashing images of hardscrabble nineteenth-century Eastern European peasantry for you, then I’d like to make the case for why this beautiful potage has just as much right to kick off your Valentine’s Day meal as the Red Velvet cupcake has to finish it off.

Of course, if you’ve never heard of Borscht, then I’m delighted to introduce you to this versatile and time-honored beet soup.  You may find it served hot or cold, vegetarian or meaty, Ukranian style or Russian style, clear and magenta or spiked with sour cream to produce an opaque, creamy pink color.  However it’s executed, you can be sure that every self-respecting Borscht-lover will claim that their grandmother’s version is undoubtedly the best.

Borscht is heart-y

Borscht is made with beets, and beets are loaded with nutrients that nourish your heart and support cardiovascular health. (It’s not a coincidence our grandparents lived so long despite their habit of spreading chicken fat (schmaltz) on bread and eating chopped liver by the gallon.)

For starters, beets are an excellent source of folate and a good source of blood-pressure-lowering potassium.  Diets rich in folate-rich foods have been associated with a decreased risk of heart disease in multiple large studies, though researchers are still trying to figure out why.  (Folic acid supplementation has not been shown to have the same effect.  Go figure.)   1 cup of boiled beets contains about 75 calories, 16g of carbohydrate (of which 3.5g are fiber), ~35% of the daily recommended intake of folate, and 15% of the daily value of potassium. (Canned beets lose about 30% of their folate compared to beets you boil yourself, but remain a very good source despite that).

Betacyanins are the purply red pigments that give beets their rich, gorgeous magenta color, and they happen to be powerful antioxidants.  While antioxidants are used throughout the body to help prevent cell damage that can give rise to mutations, animal studies suggest a possible benefit in colon cancer prevention in particular.

Betaine, another compound found naturally in beets, has anti-inflammatory properties. Studies have shown that people with diets rich in foods containing betaine had lower levels of inflammatory markers in their blood–like C-reactive protein and homocysteine–compared to be people with diets low in betaine-rich foods.  These inflammatory markers are associated with an increased risk of heart disease, so it seems that the lower the level, the better.

Borscht is hip

Veselka, the venerable and hip Ukranian diner in NYC’s East Village, features Ukranian Borscht as the very first item on its menu, and reportedly serves 5,000 gallons of it every year.  A photo of the restaurant’s famous borscht adorns the cover of its recently-published cookbook, whose pages feature not one but FOUR separate recipes for their intoxicating magenta brew, including their Famous Borscht, Cold Borscht, White Borscht and Christmas Borscht.  (You can get their famous Borscht recipe here, but vegetarians beware that their version calls for pork butt and beef stock.  Try their Christmas Borscht version for a meatless option, and see below for some cooking tips.)

Borscht is so hip that I suspect its only a matter of time until Bobby Flay challenges Veselka owner Tom Birchard to a Borscht Throwdown.

How to cook and enjoy Beets

While beets can absolutely be eaten raw (usually you’ll find them grated in a salad), you’ll most often encounter them roasted or boiled. Beets cooked from scratch are a thousand times more flavorful than canned beets, and have a much lovelier texture, so if you’ve tried the latter and were unimpressed, you might want to give them another try!  Cooking beets is a cinch, but can be a bit messy.  Here’s how it goes:

If you buy beets still attached to their greens, trim the greens off, leaving about an inch on top. Leaving some of the stem helps keep the healthful pigments from leeching out during cooking.  Save the trimmed portion!  Beet greens are super nutritious and you can chop them up and drop them into any ol’ soup… they’re sort of like swiss chard taste-wise…a bit bitter.)  Just soak them a few times in cold water to remove all of the dirt before cooking.  Wash them if you’re going to boil, but really give them a good scrub if you’re planning on roasting them.  DO NOT PEEL the beet before cooking, or they will bleed more of their nutritious colorful pigments… and make a giant mess.

Nothing says 'I love you' like a bouquet of boiled beets

To boil: Drop trimmed beets into boiling water.  Let them boil until they are soft enough to be pierced easily with a knife, anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, depending on size.

To roast: Rub clean beets with a little bit of oil (olive or grapeseed works well), wrap well in foil, and place on another foil-lined pan.  (The double-foil will make sure that the sugars from your roasting beet don’t drip onto the pan and burn).  Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes to an hour (depending on size).  Your beets are ready when they can be pierced easily with a knife.

To peel cooked beets: peel cooked beets while they are still warm (but cooled off enough to handle.)  Some people like to use gloves for this to avoid staining their hands.  My favorite way to peel a beet is by scraping the sides of the beet with a plain ol’ spoon while standing over the sink… the peel will slide right off and the mess will be contained.  I do it bare-handed ‘cuz that’s just how I roll.

One of my favorite ways to eat beets is cooked, in a composed salad, spiked with some sort of vinegary drizzle (a syrupy balsamic vinegar works great here) to cut the sweetness.  Beets pair beautifully with citrus fruits for a colorful, seasonal salad that injects some gorgeous color into your wintry food wardrobe. Try this classic (and easy) recipe for Beet, Citrus & Mint salad to take advantage of the amazing bounty of winter citrus available right now.

Beet Pee

Don’t be alarmed if, after eating a heaping serving of beets or borscht, your pee is tinted pink or reddish. It’s called “Beeturia” (I swear, I don’t make this stuff up), and it’s totally harmless.  Be forewarned that your number twos might also take on a bit of a rosy hue a day or so after you’ve gone on a beet bender…. once again, totally normal and totally harmless.  Consider it a post-Valentine’s Day treat for your colon.

Now, back to the Borscht

There are countless versions of Borscht.  Russian style tends to have more “stuff” in it: piles of cooked or pickled beets, cabbage and/or potatoes, making for a heartier soup.  Ukranian style tends to be brothier, but often features some meat or a mushroom dumpling or two floating around, which adds some heft. You can approximate the homemade dumpling effortlessly by tossing some store-bought mushroom tortellini or ravioli into your soup.  For a gluten-free version, look forDePuma’s (amazing) gluten-free Wild Mushroom Ravioli, or  Conte’s gluten-free Potato Onion Pierogis. Other common borscht accessories include lima beans, hard boiled eggs, meat, potatoes, or any combination thereof.  All borschts are generally garnished with dill and a dollop of sour cream, which can be swapped out for a fat-free plain, greek-style yogurt seamlessly if you’re looking to keep your borscht on the lighter side.

I made Veselka’s vegetarian Christmas Borscht (pictured to the left, recipe link above) and used the gluten-free Conte’s Pierogis instead of the (homemade, 2+ hour-prep time mushroom-onion dumplings) the recipe called for.  Considering my grandma used to serve store-bought Borscht from a jar, I figured she probably wouldn’t have disapproved of this little shortcut.  It was delicious, and the house smelled amazing while the beets were pickling on the stovetop and the aromatic vegetable broth was simmering.

A multi-culti V-day: Ukranian borscht with Polish pierogis (hidden) and Greek yogurt

However, in case you want to find your own Borscht beshert (that’s Yiddish for ’soul mate’) before committing to the recipe I used, here are some other attractive candidates for you to consider, both vegetarian and non:

Hot Beef Borscht: for the meat and potatoes man…and the woman who loves him.

Russian Borscht: vegetarian; served chilled, with hard boiled eggs.  To cool down after a passionate Valentine’s encounter, perchance?

Hot Borscht recipe styled after the version from the Russian Tea Room of old: A quicker version; uses store-bought beef broth and includes cabbage and tomato.  For nostalgic New York couples who can’t afford the new, $18-a-bowl version offered on the restaurant’s current menu.

Borscht with Beet Greens: for the frugalista and her coupon-clipping man, who love the idea of using every last bit of the beet…greens and all.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your Borscht of choice!

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Introducing the Burgeriest (soy-free, gluten-free, vegan) homemade Veggie Burger

For some time, friends and readers have been asking me to share a recipe for a good, easy to make, homemade veggie burger.  And so my New Year’s Resolution this year was to make good on my promises to do so. (Besides, it’s a heck of a lot easier than losing weight.)

As it turns out, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction out there with the available options.  Most commercial offerings have gluten or soy; ingredients which many people avoid by choice or necessity.  And most recipes for homemade versions are incredibly time-consuming, multi-step ordeals; I still have nightmares about the 2-hour Shutter’s veggie burger project I took on two summers ago that involved cooking brown rice from scratch (45 minutes), cooking beets from scratch (1 hour), and mixing them with a laundry list of hard-to-find-GF-versions-of  pantry items* to produce a delicious but exhausting veggie burger.  Then there was that Martha Stewart Chickpea burger that tasted suspiciously similar to falafel.  (Tasty…but if I had wanted falafel, I would have just made falafel…).  I had all but given up on finding a tasty, easy homemade burgery veggie burger until the most recent article in a recent New York Times series on the safety (or lack thereof) of ground beef sold in America provided the second wind I needed to find a delicious, easy, healthful ground beefless recipe for my dear readers to make at home.

Resolved: Eat Less Red Meat in 2010

Even if you’re not a vegetarian, swapping out a beefy burger for a meatless one every so often will do you good– and help you make good on those New Year’s Resolutions to start eating more healthily.  In a landmark study of over 550,000 people aged 50-71 years (that’s crazy huge, by the way) by Sinha et al published in March, 2009 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers followed subjects for 10 years to determine how various dietary factors contributed to mortality. They controlled for all sorts of factors, including race, smoking, alcohol use, weight, exercise habits, vitamin use and multiple dietary habits.  And they found that men and women who ate more red meat were  31% and 36%, respectively, more likely to die for any reason during the 10 year period when compared to people to ate the least red meat. Cancer was the leading cause of mortality, followed by cardiovascular disease.  On average, the group with the lowest red meat consumption ate only about 1/3 of an ounce per 1,000 calories in their diet, compared with the highest meat consumption group, which ate about 2.5 oz red meat per 1,000 calories in their diet.  In other words, in a typical 2,000 calorie diet, the lowest-risk group ate less than 1 oz red meat per day on average (~4.5 oz per week), versus the highest risk group who ate about 5oz per day (~17 oz per week).  The results were statistically significant for trend, meaning that even reducing red meat consumption somewhat from the highest level (without going as low as the lowest-intake level) was still associated with a reduced risk of death.

The bottom line: swapping out one average beef burger a week with a meatless version brings you 3-6oz closer to the group whose dietary habits have been associated with the lowest risk of death within 10 years. And what better New Year’s Resolution than to live past New Year’s 2020?

The Best Homemade Veggie Burger Recipe

And so, after countless veggie burger experiments, spanning several years and multiple genres, I’m pleased to point you in the direction of Mollie Katzen’s Lentil-Walnut Burger. I know what you’re thinking when you hear “lentil-walnut.”  You’re thinking about long-

Two Lentil Walnut burgers on a (gluten-free) bun

haired tree huggers.  70’s style health food stores that smell like vitamins. Hemp, bean sprouts and Birkenstocks.   But do try to keep an open mind.  Mollie loves food, and she knows food.  As such, this burger tastes nothing of lentils or walnuts; it’s greater than the sum of its parts.  The batter has a similar texture and appearance to ground beef–it looks like a beef burger when cooking and when cooked.  Not in the creepy Boca Burger way, but in a ‘it definitely feels burgery rather than bean-pattyish’ way.   The burgers have that same savory, umami flavor profile of a beef burger–delivered by the cider vinegar and mushrooms?–rather than the more bean-and-vegetably flavor typical of a veggie burger.  And you can make the whole batter in the time it takes to cook lentils: 30 minutes flat.  (If I may offer a tip: mash the cooked lentils with your hands–squeeze ‘em real good until they’re totally mush.  It helps make a very coherent batter.) So give this tie-dyed, hippie burger a chance, will you?

To make Mollie’s recipe gluten-free you have several options instead of the bread crumbs/wheat germ/oats she calls for:

1. Use gluten free breadcrumbs, like Gillian’s, Hol-Grain, or Glutino
2. Use gluten-free oats, like Bob’s Red Mill
3. Use the Quinoa Flakes you have leftover from making my gluten-free Quatzoh Balls (of course this will make the recipe more hippie than it is already)
   
4. Make your own gluten-free breadcrumbs by toasting your favorite frozen gluten-free waffle and tossing it in a food processor (Click here for instructions from the clever gluten-free goddess who came up with this nifty idea

Approximate nutrition info per burger (assumes each recipe makes 6 burgers and you use 1 TBSP of oil to cook the burgers in a non-stick pan.  Excludes bun.):  250 calories, 29g carbohydrate–of which 10 huge grams are fiber (so, a net of 19g of carbohydrate–or one and a half diabetic exchanges), 11g protein, 12g (heart-healthy, unsaturated) fat, and 3.8mg iron (~20% of the daily value of 18mg).  Serve with ketchup and a slice of tomato to help absorb the iron from the beans and spinach.

** If I haven’t scared you away from the Shutter’s recipe and you’re up for the challenge, you can substitute Wheat-free Tamari sauce for the soy sauce.  Premier Japan makes a gluten-free Hoisin sauce.  And use any of the bread-crumb-replacement strategies listed above in place of the oat bran or wheat germ she calls for.  And for goodness sake, use canned beets instead of roasting your own fresh ones as I foolishly did and you can redeem that extra hour of your life to play Rhythm Kung Fu on the Wii Fit Plus you got for Christmas.

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Black Friday is just 5 days away, and while the rest of the country gets ready to stampede through shopping malls to pick up this year’s must-have what-have-you’s, I’m doing some stockpiling of my own at the local supermarket.  For the next six weeks or so, the once-a-year, get-em-while-they-last inventories of two of my most favorite winter treats are well-stocked and ready to be eaten. I’m talking about sweet, sunny and seedless Clementines by the crateful, and barrels of sweet, starchy fresh Chestnuts ready to be roasted.

In a season where centerfolds of over-the-top seasonal desserts beckon me from every glossy foodie magazine I encounter, there’s a lot to be said for finishing off a festive holiday gathering with communal bowls of clementines and chestnuts instead.  When the dinner plates are cleared and friends linger around the table over tea or wine, I find that slowly peeling away at a clementine or fresh chestnut is a calming ritual of sorts, preventing idle hands that might otherwise be tempted to make quick work of, say, an entire gooey pecan pie. Both of these low calorie treats finish off the meal with a hint of sweetness and lend themselves to being enjoyed slowly and shared among friends.

My Darling Clementines

Clementines are seedless citrus fruits related to mandarin oranges and grown mostly in Spain and Morocco (though increasingly, I’m seeing Clementines grown in Florida and California being sold alongside the imports).  Their appeal starts from the moment you effortlessly peel off their loose skins without encountering any sort of sticky mess…it continues on as you peel off segment after segment… and it culminates with that happy little burst of sweetness in your mouth.  Eaten segment by segment, you can savor one little clementine slowly, thus drawing out the pleasure of post-dinner pecking that much longer.

One clementine has about 35 calories, 9g of carbohydrate (of which 1g is fiber) and 60% of the daily value for Vitamin C. (2 clementines would be the equivalent of one fruit serving).  Which means that even when you reach for that third, fourth and fifth clementine, ’tis no reason for guilt.  (The same cannot be said with respect to bites of pecan pie.)

***

How to choose, roast and eat fresh chestnuts

Before I met my husband, roasting fresh chestnuts was something that I thought only happened in Christmas carols.  But he taught me the fine art of choosing the best chestnuts…

• squeeze fresh chestnuts before buying and and select ones that are nice and hard
• any softness or “give” means they’re not fresh and will be impossible to peel once you’ve roasted them

… and roasting fresh chestnuts:

• score a small “x” on the flat side with a paring knife (a MUST… this allows steam to escape and prevents a chestnut explosion in your oven)
• lay them score side up on a baking tray
• sprinkle them lightly with water
• bake them at 400 degrees in a toaster oven or 425 degrees in a conventional oven for 10-15 minutes
• Note that roasting times will vary by oven; look for the scores to start curling back as an indication that the chestnuts are done.  Alternatively, you can take one out and test its done-ness by carefully peeling it (use a dishtowel or gloves…it’ll be hot!) and seeing if the nutmeat is nice and soft.

… and eating fresh chestnuts:

• just peel off the hard outer shell from the open flaps created by your x-shaped scores–while they’re still warm.   (Get cracking on the peeling as soon as they’ve cooled just enough to handle.)
• Share!

If you want a demo of the process described above–or just a voyeuristic peek at the man who roasts my chestnuts and invented the Chana Saag recipe you all know and love– Alex prepared this handy little tutorial video for you:

I’ve written before about the unique nutritional composition of chestnuts (and chestnut flour), which are technically tree nuts but have swapped the characteristic fat of tree nuts for starch instead.  As a result, they’re much lower in calories, ounce for ounce.  If you haven’t had the pleasure of tasting a fresh-roasted chestnut, they’re sweet and slightly nutty with a soft and sometimes crumbly texture.  One ounce of roasted chestnuts (about 3 chestnuts) have about 70 calories, 15g of carbohydrate (one diabetic exchange), of which 1.5g is fiber, 1g of protein and <1g fat.  It also has 12% of the daily value for vitamin C, which makes it quite an oddity in the nut world.

***

As we enter into the crazed pre-holiday shopping period, I urge you not to omit these edible must-haves from your list.  By the time you’re scooping up deeply-discounted leftovers from distressed holiday retailers on December 26, these annual gems will already be in short supply.  And unlike this year’s Zhu Zhu pet that will soon wind up on the bottom of the toy box along with last year’s Tickle Me Elmo, the memory of happy times spent with friends and family in a room perfumed with the scent of roasting chestnuts and citrusy clementines is sure to be treasured all year long.  (Of course, if my friends and family were to buy me a Wii Fit for Hannukah, I’d treasure that all year long, too.  I swear.)

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Don't you just want to cuddle up with this cute, fuzzy Taro?

Cassava (aka: Yuca, Manioc), Ñame (Caribbean Yam), Yautia (aka Taro), Batata (aka Boniato, or Sweet potato)… if you haven’t come across these staple root vegetables of Hispanic and Caribbean cuisines, what better time than autumn, when roasted roots and chunky stews take front and center?

I was formally introduced to my Hispanic roots last year, when I had the opportunity to take a tour of NYC’s historic Essex Street Market with Lorena Drago, a fabulous dietitian, author and diabetes educator.  Lorena opened my eyes to the wide, wonderful world of starchy root vegetables that hail from the southern hemisphere.  Cooked, these root veggies would generally take the place of a potato or serving of cooked grains as the carbohydrate in your perfectly-balanced plate.  Generally, these root veggies are good-to-excellent sources of potassium (which helps lower blood pressure, especially in conjunction with a reduced sodium diet) and Vitamin C; and while not extremely high in fiber, will have more fiber than a calorically-equivalent portion of white OR brown rice, which makes them a nutritious substitute.  On average, 1/3 cup of the cooked root vegetables listed above will have the same amount of calories and carbohydrate as 1/3 cup of white or brown rice, but will have 2g of fiber; the white rice has essentially no fiber at all and the brown rice has 1g of fiber. (If you follow a diabetic diet, 1/3 cup of any such option would be considered 1 carbohydrate exchange).

Loosely translated, Pan de Yuca means "God loves Celiacs and wants us to be happy."

If you’re ready to get in touch with your Hispanic roots, consider this:

• Yautia (Taro) should be relieved of its thick and sometimes hairy peel (not unlike that of a coconut) before cooking; Drago describes its flavor as sort of a “combination of artichoke heart and boiled chestnuts.”  Um…hello?  Could that possibly sound more appealing?  In this regard, it reminds me a bit of Jerusalem artichokes, only it is higher in carbohydrate but less likely to cause gas.  You can use it in soups and stews like a potato, or cut it in chunks, boil, mash and season it with a drop of butter or greek yogurt, salt and pepper to make whipped taro along the same lines as mashed potatoes.
• Ñame is probably the most nutritious of the bunch; it’s the highest in fiber (1/2 cup serving has 3g fiber and counts as 1 starch exchange) and is loaded with potassium, vitamin C and Vitamin B6, which makes this Caribbean version of the yam resemble a banana more than a conventional American sweet potato, nutritionally speaking.  Drago describes the flavor as a “slightly sweet, smoky baking potato” with a texture that is “softer and lighter” than a typical yam.
• Batata (Boniato) is a Caribbean sweet potato very popular in Cuban cuisine.  It sort of resembles a typical sweet potato on the outside but tastes more chestnutty than overtly sweet and squashy like the sweet potatoes you’re probably used to.  You can use it as a substitute for conventional potatoes in all the usual ways.
• Yuca (Cassava, Manioc) is generally eaten boiled or fried, but must always be peeled before eating!  Baked yucca “fries” are a nice compromise; they’re more fibrous than potatoes, and therefore offer a nice textural change from the ordinary.  Click here for some dietitian-approved ideas for cooking with Yuca.

Equally interesting to me is the role of flour derived from cassava/yuca (which you’re probably more familiar with under its alias of Tapioca Flour) in traditional (gluten-free) breads and rolls.

Casabe is a crispy, crackery Latin American flatbread made from Cassava flour; look for it in the Hispanic food aisle of your local supermarket; it’s usually sold wrapped in paper.  And then there is Pan de Yuca, which goes by many different names depending on the country, but is essentially a tapioca flour-based cheese roll. They are beyond easy (and fast) to make, and have a wonderful savory, chewy appeal when served hot from the oven.  While they get hard as rocks after a day or so of baking, they are easily revived to their soft, chewy selves with a quint stint in the microwave, and are versatile enough to accessorize breakfasts and dinners alike.  Stale rolls could also be cubed, toasted and stored in an airtight container to be used as a gluten-free crouton or possible base for an upcoming gluten-free Thanksgiving stuffing. Using lactose-free milk and a nice, mature hard cheese like Parmesan will keep these rolls virtually lactose-free, if that’s also a concern.

Recipe: Pão de Queijo- Brazilian Cheese Buns

1/2 cup lowfat milk (or your favorite milk alternative)

2 TBSP olive oil

1/4 tsp salt

2 1/4 cups tapioca flour (aka Cassava flour)

2 eggs

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Bring the milk, oil and salt to a boil
2. Remove from heat.  Slowly combine half of the tapioca flour into the liquid mixture.  (It won’t all absorb at this point.)
3. Add the eggs one at a time, each followed by half of the remaining flour, and mix into a well-combined batter, which will be thick, gummy and somewhat difficult to stir.  Do your best.
4. Using your hands, mix the cheese into batter, kneading until well incorporated.
5. Using wet hands, roll the dough into golf-ball-sized balls; this quantity of batter should yield 15 rolls.
6. Bake for ~15 minutes at 375 degrees , or until rolls are puffy and golden brown on top.
7. Serve immediately; they taste the best when hot!

Approximate nutrition info per roll: 100 calories, 16g carbohydrate (1 starch exchange), 0g fiber, 2g protein and 3.5g fat.

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Bigger is not better: smaller pumpkin varieties have thicker and more flavorful flesh for cooking than the big varieties.

Three Octobers ago, I took a pumpkin cooking class taught by Michael Krondl, author of The Great Little Pumpkin Cookbook. While the web and magazine world abounds with ridiculously good sweet, desserty pumpkin recipes, there’s a surprising lack of good savory recipes that feature pumpkin.  (Frankly, even the vast majority of savory butternut squash recipes published online and in cookbooks are limited to soups and risottos in the same few flavor combos: with nutmeg, apple and/or sage).   Globally, pumpkin stars in savory entrees in a variety of cuisines, including Sichuan Chinese (our local place does an amazing shredded pumpkin with spicy green peppers), Afghan, Indian and Persian.

The unfortunate absence of savory pumpkin recipes in our country’s food circuit  makes Krondl’s book an indispensable (and cheap) little reference guide for those of you who have savory designs on your pumpkin: his fantastic recipes feature flavor pairings from pumpkin-chipotle to pumpkin-chestnut to pumpkin-pecorino.  With his permission, I am sharing his recipe (below) for Sweet & Sour South Indian Pumpkin to enable you to dip your proverbial toe into the savory orange waters.

Picking a pumpkin

When picking a pumpkin to cook with, you’ll need to use different criteria than when picking one for Jack-O-Lantern purposes.  The big ol’ carving pumpkins have very little flesh and lack flavor; however, you can most certainly save their seeds, toss them in a bit of oil and salt and toast them in your toaster oven for a resourceful little snack.  For cooking, look for the little round ones called “sugar pumpkins” or just “pie pumpkins.”  Alternatively, you can use calabaza squash/”cheese pumpkins”: they’re the beige ones that look like butternut squashes shaped like pumpkins.  In a pinch, a kabocha squash/”Japanese pumpkin” works great, too; that’s the one that looks like a dark green pumpkin. See the note below on how to peel a pumpkin; don’t be intimidated… it’s not as hard as you might think, so long as you have a good chef’s knife.

Hooray for Vitamin A

Pumpkin, like all winter squashes, is a stellar source of Vitamin A.  It also contains high amounts of Vitamin C and potassium, which helps control high blood pressure.  1 cup of (raw) cubed pumpkin, which will cook down to slightly less volume, contains a mere 30 calories, 7.5g is carbohydrate (of which ~1.0g is fiber), 61% of the daily value for Vitamin A, 17% of the daily value for vitamin C, and 11% of the daily value for potassium. And yes, even pumpkin eaten in the form of pumpkin pie is likely to meet most of your daily Vitamin A requirements, assuming it was made with 100% pumpkin puree instead of “pumpkin pie filling.”  Furthermore, since Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin, you can tell yourself that the dollop of whipped cream on top of your pie is nutritionally expedient to ensure proper absorption of the vitamin.  While Vitamin A is best known for its important role in maintaining vision, it also plays an important role in immunity (arguably more so than does Vitamin C); dietary vitamin A is converted into an active form that can enter into the DNA of immune cells and positively influence their ability to produce antibodies–as well as the ability of certain infection-fighting white blood cells to replicate. So far, studies have shown that Vitamin A therapy in deficient children can reduce the severity of measles and diarrhea; alas, it has not been shown to have the same effect on respiratory infections like, say, the swine flu.

Recipe: Sweet & Sour South Indian Pumpkin (from The Great Little Pumpkin Cookbook, Michael Krondl, published by Celestial Arts, Berkeley, CA).  Reprinted with permission from the author.

1 TBSP ground coriander

1 tsp chopped fresh ginger

2 garlic cloves, chopped fine

Pinch cayenne pepper, or to taste

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

3 TBSP canola oil

2 lbs pumpkin, peeled* and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces (about 6 cups)

Salt

2 TBSP lemon juice

3 TBSP light brown sugar

1 TBSP chopped cilantro

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. In a small bowl, combine the ground coriander, ginger, garlic, cayenne and black pepper.
3. Heat the oil in a large ovenproof casserole over medium heat until hot.  Add the spice mixture and cook, stirring until it turns very aromatic, about 1 minute.  Do not burn!  Immediately add the pumpkin and stir to coat with the spices.  Sprinkle with about 1/2 tsp salt and cover.  Set in the oven and bake until the pumpkin is just barely tender, about 25 minutes.
4. Remove the pan from the oven.  Using a slotted spoon, remove the pumpkin pieces.  Set the pan over medium-high heat, stir in the lemon juice and cook, uncovered, for 1 minute.
5. Stir in the brown sugar and cook 3-4 minutes until the sugar dissolves and the juices are syrupy.  Add the pumpkin and toss.  Season with more salt & pepper to taste.
6. Sprinkle with fresh cilantro and serve.

Serves 4 (generously) as a side dish.

Approximate nutrition info per serving:  170 calories, 20g carbohydrate (of which ~1g is fiber), 10g fat.

* How to peel a pumpkin

Krondl further explains: “the easiest way to peel a pumpkin, or any hard-skinned winter squash, is to cut it in half and scoop out the seeds and all the stringy bits.  Then cut the pumpkin into 2- to 3-inch slices.  Place these cut side down on a cutting board and use a large sharp knife to cut away the skin.  Store cut-up pumpkin up to 4 days in the refrigerator.”

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The Golden Girls had their cheesecake.  Garfield had his lasagna.  But for me, a nutritionist with Eastern European roots and a budget,  cabbage has emerged as the lead comfort food contender as the weather turns cool and I yearn for something warm, soft, sorta sweet but still savory… and yes, healthy, too.

OK, let’s not be too literal here.  While I did roll up a big batch of vegetarian stuffed cabbage, my cruciferous dalliances this week have also included Brussels Sprouts–in all their soft and roasted and caramelized glory (they look like baby cabbages, after all).   It’s autumn… the time of year when cruciferous vegetables of all colors (think purple cabbage and cauliflower to orangey rutabaga), shapes (think psychadelic broccoflower with its gothic spires) and sizes (think baby brussels) take center plate.  Who says cold-weather produce is boring?

Cabbage: the Nutritious Pater Familias of the Cruciferous family

Cabbage is the symbolic head of the family (pun not intended, but still funny, no?) of cruciferous vegetables, also called Brassica vegetables.  The family is a descendant of the the mustard plant family, and its tree has branches that include leafy veggies like kale, collard greens and watercress; stalky flowering plants like broccoli, cauliflower and their bizarre love-child, Romanesco (aka- Broccoflower); root vegetables like turnips and rutabaga; as well as cabbage-eque type leafy heads, like kohlrabi, bok choy and brussels sprouts.  (I apologize to any biology teachers out there who are no doubt cringing at my unscientific taxonomic descriptions; what they lack in scientific rigor, they make up for in utility.)  These various expressions of cabbageness each feature their own nutritional highlights, and will receive their 15 minutes of blog fame in due time.

Cabbage itself is an excellent source of Vitamin C (which it starts to lose once it’s cut, so it’s best to buy whole heads and cut them yourself than to buy pre-shredded slaw mixes for convenience).  If you’re making cabbage soup or otherwise braising cabbage, the Vitamin C will leach out but remain in the broth/sauce for you to enjoy; however, if you’re boiling cabbage in water and then tossing the cooking liquid, you’ll lose out on much of the Vitamin C content.  Best to steam it or saute it for a short period of time (less than 5 minutes) to retain the vitamin content and help keep your immune system tip-top until health insurance reform is a done deal.  (Full confession: the recipe that follows below does not exactly heed this advice.)

What distinguishes cabbage (and its other cruciferous relatives) nutritionally from many other vegetables is a group of phytochemicals called glucosinolates.  These particular phytochemicals have been demonstrated to be some of the most effective cancer-fighting compounds in the food supply, and as a result, epidemiological research has consistently shown that eating at least 3 servings per week of cruciferous vegetables is linked to a significantly lower risk of developing certain cancers, such as lung, prostate, colon and bladder, and possibly also breast and ovarian.  The way this family of phytocehmicals exerts its anti-cancer effect is by up-regulating the genes that code for multiple naturally-occurring enzymes in our liver which are responsible for detoxifying toxic compounds and carcinogens.  In this way, cruciferous vegetables are among the best “detox” foods one could eat (take THAT, juice fasts!)… not to mention that their high fiber content helps your body to physically remove toxic waste from the body by keeping things “moving along” in the intestines.

1 cup of cooked cabbage has about 30 calories, 7g of carbohydrate (3.5 of which is fiber), 50% of your daily Vitamin C needs and 92% of your daily Vitamin K, which you need for proper blood clotting and bone mineralization.  (Speaking of: If you’re taking the blood thinning medication coumadin (warfarin), best not to start on a cabbage soup diet without consulting your doctor, as the high Vitamin K content will counteract the medication’s anti-coagulation effect.) All this AND a cancer-fighting benefit, you ask?  Could cabbage be any perfecter?

Why yes, in fact.  Cabbage (and its relatives) is also a respectable source of highly-bioavailable calcium:

• Chinese mustard greens (Gai choy) appear to be the best cruciferous source of calcium; 1 cup chopped has the same amount of bioavailable calcium as a cup of milk.
• 2-2.5 cups of raw bok choy (it cooks down considerably, so don’t be put off) contains about the same amount of bioavailable calcium as a cup of milk, and is considerably easier to find than aforementioned gai choy
• Generally speaking, 1 cup of your standard raw cruciferous vegetable, including cabbage, will provide anywhere from 5-10% of your daily calcium needs, depending on the variety

My happy little vegetarian stuffed cabbages, huddling together in the pan

Recipe: Vegetarian Stuffed Cabbage

My mom makes an amazing stuffed cabbage in a sweet and sour tomato-based sauce; it’s one of her favorite comfort foods (ah, genetics…)  While I look forward to indulging in her version–stuffed with ground beef and rice– once or twice a year when she makes it for the holidays, I prefer to keep things on the more vegetarian side when I cook and eat at home.  To that end, I tracked down this interesting Middle Eastern recipe for cabbage stuffed with a blend of rice and chickpeas, which was surprisingly easy to make.

A few notes on the recipe:

• As written, it will serve 8-10 people… not 6 as the author generously suggests.  If you want to serve 4-5 people, halve the filling recipe and use 12 cabbage leaves instead of 24, which you will easily get out of a medium head of cabbage (plus a few more to have extras, as some will tear).  But keep the quantities the same for the finishing sauce, as halving it is a bit too stingy.
• By way of clarification, the rice for the filling should be raw, not cooked.  Be sure to add adequate salt to the filling mixture so the rice doesn’t cook up too bland.
• If you use canned diced tomatoes for the filling, why not use some of the leftover tomato liquid in lieu of some of the water to simmer the stuffed cabbage rolls in?  It will add some nice tangy flavor and replace some of the Vitamin C lost from the brutal waterboarding you subjected your cabbage leaves to.
• If you don’t have dried mint in your spice rack for the finishing sauce, you can open up a tea-bag of herbal peppermint tea and use that
• For tips on rolling technique, check out my previous post on making stuffed Grape Leaves; it’s an almost-identical process.  And a similar flavor profile, now that I think of it.
• When you make the rolls, don’t be concerned that they look much smaller than you’d expect–around the size of a single stuffed grape leaf, in fact.  They plump way up and the rolls seal themselves quite well during the cooking process.

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Chestnut flour crepes with a smear of French chestnut creme... this is what autumn in heaven must be like.

As if on cue, the arrival of the Fall Equinox brought with it that crisp scent of morning air… and the beginnings of incredibly tempting magazine recipes for all things autumn.  While butternut squash, predictably, leaves other ingredients in the dust as far as its frequency of mention, I’m seeing more and more mention of chestnuts as an accompanying flavor to everything from pastas and meats to desserts.

Since good, quality fresh chestnuts are still a little ways away (but be assured: once they arrive, you’ll hear about it from me first), I decided to whet our collective appetite for their delightful, sweet and nutty flavor by giving chestnut flour some airtime.

I’ve already encountered chestnut flour this year on my fabulous gluten-free honeymoon to the South of France, where one vendor at a village festival was selling fresh crepes made from farine de châtaignes (chestnut flour), filled with an obscenely decadent chestnut creme (think Nutella, but made with chestnuts and honey) or your choice of typical crepe fillings.  I particularly appreciated this authentic version of the sweet crepe; after all, French cuisine offers us a wonderful gluten-free savory crepe option in its buckwheat crepes (called Crêpes de Sarrasin), but most sweet crepes are still made with plain old wheat flour.

But we patisserie-deprived gluten-eschewers can now have our crepes, and eat our Madeleines, too.  The wonderful people at Dowd & Rogers offer a long list of chestnut flour gluten-free recipes on their website, including this one for Chestnut Flour Crepes and this one for Chestnut Flour Madeleines.  (I cannot tell you how long I’ve been looking for a gluten-free madeline recipe!  Substitute the milk and/or egg replacement of your choice to modify these recipes for your dietary restrictions.)  In true French fashion, the latter recipe uses a full stick of butter, which translates into about 1.3 tsp of butter per Madeline.  Health food it is not, but my philosophy is that having to break out the madeleine pan, preheat the oven and wait for 20 minutes every time we want to indulge in a little bit of cakey naughtiness is a very good way to prevent the impulse binge.  Bake them, enjoy them, share them, and that’s the end of it.

Given how rarely we come across chestnut flour, you may be as surprised to learn, as I was, that it was a traditional substitute for wheat flour in Italy during the middle ages, and was used extensively for making bread and pasta.  Sadly for us, most pasta, gnocchi and bread recipes that call for chestnut flour (Farina di Castagne) combine it with wheat flour.   If you can eat gluten, you can try substituting up to 1/4 of the all-purpose (white) flour in your baked goods/pasta recipes with chestnut flour, or in recipes that call for some cake flour in addition to the all-purpose flour, try substituting all of the cake flour with chestnut flour.  If you’re baking gluten-free, you can try substituting part or all of the white rice flour in a recipe with chestnut flour. To be sure, it’s an expensive swap, but as you’ll see below, it’s a glycemic-ly advantageous one if you can afford it.

All About Chestnut Flour

While Chestnuts are technically tree nuts (and therefore people with tree nut allergies should take care… you may or may not have a reaction to chestnuts!), Chestnut Flour is quite different than the flours/meals of other tree nuts, such as Almond Flour or Hazelnut Flour.  To start, chestnut flour is very low in fat; in fact, chestnuts have a starchy profile that makes their flour more similar to typical grain flours in its nutritional (and functional) profile than the typical nut flour.  By way of comparison,

• 1/4 cup almond flour contains 160 calories, with 6g carbohydrate, of which3g are fiber, 6g is protein and 14g is fat
  
• 1/4 cup of chestnut flour contains ~95 calories, with 21g carbohydrate, of which <1g is fiber, 1g protein, 1g fat*
• 1/4 cup all-purpose white (wheat) flour contains ~114 calories, with 24g carbohydrate, of which <1 is fiber, 3g protein, <1g fat

* Note: if you come across the Dowd & Rogers brand, there is clearly a typo on their nutrition facts label–one which I have emailed them about.  A 1/4 cup serving does NOT miraculously contain only 25 calories.

While chestnut flour is still considered a high glycemic index food (the source I consulted rated it a ~65 on the index; a food must be 50-55 or lower to be considered ‘low’), it is still considerably lower on the GI scale than typical flours used for baking, glutinous and gluten-free alike, such as white rice flour (GI=~95), potato starch (GI=~95), Arrowroot starch (GI=~85) and white (wheat) flour (GI=~85)**.  To be sure, it’s considerably more expensive (and hard to find), but for those of you looking for lower GI, GF substitutes for the white rice flour in your recipes, chestnut flour could be a good option… so long as you’re not allergic to tree nuts, that is.

If you’re not sure what all of this means, a sidenote: the GI, in a nutshell, is an index that compares the blood sugar response a food produces compared to the response created by pure glucose (sugar), which equals 100 on the index.  A food with a high GI (say, 95) essentially produces the same spike in blood sugar levels as eating pure sugar.  Generally speaking, in the flour world, the lowest GI flours will always be those that are higher in protein and/or fiber, such as quinoa flour, chickpea flour, whole wheat flour, rye flour, teff flour and buckwheat flour. Research has shown that diets with an overall lower-glycemic effect (mostly diets rich in whole grains, beans and vegetables as opposed to diets high in refined grains and sugar) are linked to a variety of positive health outcomes, particularly a lower risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease.  Since so many of the most commonly-used gluten-free flours are so darn starchy, it’s good to be aware of your lower GI options and choose them whenever possible.

** Just another note on the numbers: GI values will vary–sometimes widely– depending on the method used to measure them (such as whether the researcher compared the food to glucose or white bread), and the particular samples of food products analyzed.  GI data should be used directionally–as in, to compare the relative effect of one food to a similar food–rather than as absolute numbers set in stone.  To complicate matters, a food’s ACTUAL effect on your blood sugar will be influenced by how much of it you’re eating and whatever else you’re eating it with… assuming you’re not going to be eating plain chestnut flour as a snack.  This is the idea behind a concept called the glycemic load, which is what you *really* care about.

If you are going to be partaking in a high-GI indulgence, it’s better for your blood sugar to eat it AFTER a meal that contained some fat, protein and fiber so that the latter nutrients will blunt the glycemic effect of the food.  In other words, eating a cupcake on its own as an afternoon snack will produce a higher blood sugar spike than eating that same cupcake after a sensibly balanced meal. And of course, taking a nice brisk walk after the snack or the meal will also help dampen the glycemic effect of whatever you’ve eaten.

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Few few foods evoke as much controversy as does soy.  Depending on who you are and what expression of soy you’re eating, it can be either a healthy source of high-quality protein that may have some protective benefits against breast cancer risk, or a highly-processed food ingredient that may compromise your health and well-being in a handful of ways.

On one hand, there are multiple, large observational studies out of Asia which show a statistically significant association between higher intakes of natural soy foods and lower risk of developing breast cancer among (mostly post-menopausal) women.  And even those Asian studies which don’t support this association have not shown that eating more traditional soy foods ever increases the risk of breast cancer.  American studies have, by and large, failed to show a similar association, but most researchers chalk this up to the fact that even “high” intakes of soy in the U.S. are lower than the lowest intakes in Asia, meaning that American women are likely not eating enough of the natural phytochemicals in soy called isoflavones that have been credited with its potentially protective effect against breast cancer.  Furthermore, most of the soy eaten in the U.S. is not in the form of traditional, whole-r foods like tofu, miso, tempeh and natto like it is in Asia, but rather in the form of a processed, concentrated, soy-derived food additive called soy protein isolate (SPI), whose isoflavone content may or may not be comparable to that in traditional soy foods.

On the other hand, there is a quieter, but nonetheless disturbing, body of research out there that is linking higher intakes of soy with a variety of unwelcome health outcomes, including thyroid disorders in susceptible people, increased rates of food allergies (especially peanut), intolerances and asthma, and the potential for sexual development problems in children fed soy formula.  If the body of evidence continues to grow and proves these associations more definitively, there are probably a few different biological mechanisms at work here.

• Soy may influence the sexual development of children (especially children fed soy formula as infants) and the hormonal balance of women through the effect of naturally-occurring compounds called “phytoestrogens.” Phytoestrogens are plant estrogens similar enough in structure to the hormone estrogen produced in humans that they can actually bind to our estrogen receptors; soy isoflavones are one of several phytoestrogens present in soy.  Phytoestrogens appear to have potentially beneficial and potentially detrimental effects, which complicates the matter of evaluating soy’s healthfulness.  One one hand, researchers believe that phytoestrogens may compete with more biologically potent human estrogen for receptor sites in our body’s various tissues, and in so doing, it may DECREASE the risk of estrogen-linked cancers like breast cancer in adult women.  But in infants who are still developing, introducing high levels of soy phytoestrogens through soy formula can build up in their tiny bodies quite quickly and possibly influence their sexual development adversely.  Virtually all data on this possible association comes from animal studies– not human studies–so the evidence is not iron-clad that soy formula will increase the risk of problematic sexual development in human children.  However, animal studies suggest that possible side effects could be low testosterone leading to infertility in males and early-onset puberty in females.

• An effect of soy on the thyroid could be mediated by compounds in soy called goitrogens, naturally-occurring compounds that suppress the thyroid’s function by blocking its ability to take up iodine.  In soy, the isoflavone called genistein (which may be one of the same compounds responsible for soy’s beneficial effect on protecting against breast cancer), is goitrogenic.  To be sure, soy is not the only food in which similar goitrogenic compounds naturally occur: cruciferous vegetables (including broccoli, cabbage, turnips and brussels sprouts), millet, and strawberries also contain various types of goitrogens.  So what makes soy different than these other foods?  For starters, the goitrogens in most of these other foods are generally deactivated by the cooking (or fermentation) process.  What’s more is that we tend not to eat these foods in such quantities that the goitrogens in them–neutralized or not–will have any sort of adverse effect on us.  Unlike these other foods, however, the goitrogenic isoflavones in soy are not neutralized by typical cooking and fermentation processes.   In the case of, say, infants, whose sole source of nutrition is soy formula… or adults who are knowingly or unknowingly eating multiple foods everyday “fortified” with soy protein, the levels of goitrogens may become problematic and wreak a bit of havoc on the thyroid… particularly in people with underlying thyroid problems or who are genetically susceptible.  Low-levels of thyroid hormone (hypothyroidism) can cause attention-deficit disorders, memory problems, depression, loss of energy, thinning hair and weight gain.

• The third may be attributable to the fact that, since the launch of genetically modified (GMO) soy in 1996, >90% of soy grown in the world is now GMO, meaning that genes from different species of plants/animals are artificially injected into the soy plant to create novel proteins that our bodies have not before encountered in nature.  Some researchers suspect that in susceptible people–like young children who have immature digestive systems or people with weak/inflammed digestive systems (’leaky guts’)– these unfamiliar proteins can trigger immune responses to both themselves and to similar proteins which result in food allergies and intolerances, which are notably on the rise for some inexplicable reason.

One would have hoped that the FDA might have forced GMO soy developers (like Monsanto) to show evidence that their products did not, in fact, result in such outcomes before allowing them to unleash their products en masse into our food supply in the mid 1990s–as was done in many European countries.  But one would be disappointed to learn that this did not, in fact, come to pass.  And so, 13+ years after we’ve all been slipped GMO soy protein in everything from our infant formulas and granola bars to our breakfast cereals and fast-food burgers, evidence is just now trickling in that confirms some of these suspicions on the safety of processed soy in general–and GMO soy in particular.

So what’s an eater to do?

My vegetarian and vegan friends rely heavily on soy as a high-quality, complete source of vegetarian protein.  And health authorities keep telling those of us who eat meat to eat less of it… so wouldn’t soy be a lower-fat, healthy substitute?  It’s confusing to be sure.  I’ll be the first to admit that science has yet to offer a definitive answer on soy, but since this column is called “What I’m Eating Now,” I’ll give you my informed opinion, based on the state of the science and expert opinion today as I have come to understand it, on what I recommend with regards to soy. (And I should mention as a caveat that I don’t eat soy protein at all, since I have a digestive intolerance to it.  It’s worth mentioning that soy can be a difficult-to-digest protein for many, which is why the Asian cultures needed to ‘tame’ it through fermentation in many of their traditional foods.)

RED LIGHT SOY FOODS: Foods that just about everyone should avoid.

1. Soy infant formula. The figures I’ve seen show that 20%-25% of babies are being fed soy formula in this country, despite the fact that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends only TWO
   

   Soy infant formulas are not recommended for milk-allergic babies unless they can't tolerate hypoallergenic, hydrolyzed cow's milk formulas, either.

   indications for the use of soy formula for feeding infants.  1) For vegan infants who are not breastfed; 2) For infants who suffer from a very rare and serious condition called galactosemia, in which they cannot digest lactose (milk sugar) at all, and therefore cannot have any milk-derived formulas. Unfortunately, it’s common practice for pediatricians to tell moms who think or know their babies have a sensitivity to cow’s milk protein (casein) to automatically switch to soy formula.  In fact, it is recommended to first try a hydrolyzed cow’s milk formula, in which the long milk proteins are “pre-digested” into smaller fragments called peptides that should not trigger allergic responses.  There are partially hydrolyzed formulas that contain peptides (small chains of a few amino acids) and elemental formulas, in which the milk proteins are completely broken down into individual amino acids (for hypersensitive infants).  It is always recommended to try these formulas in a milk-allergic baby first before resorting to soy-based formulas; however, their significantly higher cost (and stronger smells) may be prohibitive for many.  Because formula is an infant’s sole source of nutrition, the effect of some of soy’s more problematic compounds can be magnified in such large quantities in such tiny bodies. Soy protein can be difficult for babies to digest owing to the presence of naturally-occurrirng compounds called protease-inhibitors, and the phytates in soy can inhibit the absorption of various minerals, including calcium, iron and zinc. (Note that fermenting soy eliminates these latter problems, which is why traditional Asian foods are able to avoid these problems).   The use of soy formula also appears to be linked to higher rates of peanut allergy and other food intolerances than the use of cow’s milk formulas, so I’d recommend to exhaust all other options before using soy infant formulas if you can… especially if your baby is at high risk for developing food allergies.

YELLOW LIGHT SOY FOODS: If these are daily staples in your diet, I’d cut back to a few times/week for the whole lot combined.  But probably no need to avoid them altogether.

1. Processed foods and drinks containing soy protein isolate (SPI) or soy protein concentrate (SPC), like frozen veggie burgers (Boca Burgers, Gardenburgers, Morningstar Farms Garden Veggie patties), vegetarian meat substitutes made with “TVP” (textured vegetable protein), protein-fortified breakfast cereals (yes…this includes the wildly popular Kashi GoLean…please don’t shoot the messenger!), high-protein shakes or soy protein powders, most meal replacement/”energy” bars (and even some Granola bars, sadly), and soymilk.  (This has been the hardest paragraph I’ve written to date, as I know that many people are fiercely loyal to some of these products for their taste, convenience and ‘healthy’ halo…and frankly, I’m scared of the fallout I’m likely to get.) The fact of the matter is that (1) few Americans (even vegetarians) are protein deficient, so all of this added soy protein in our diets is nutritionally extraneous, (2) unless it’s labeled organic, the soy protein in these foods comes from GMO soy that has NOT been safety-tested in humans and is starting to be associated with some negative (but not life-threatening) health outcomes, (3) it is a highly-processed ingredient subjected to a host of unsavory chemical solvents that may retain toxic residues that can add up when consumed in large quantities, and (4) these foods contain 2-6x more isoflavones than traditional soy foods, delivering a concentrated dose of phytoestrogens that may mess around with your hormonal balance in an as-yet-unknown and possibly unwelcome way.  Now I’m not suggesting that it’s necessary go cold-turkey by any means, but I am suggesting that if your daily routine involves a bowl of Kashi GoLean in Soymilk for breakfast, a high-protein energy bar as an afternoon snack, and a frozen veggieburger for dinner, it might be a good idea to inject some healthy variety into your diet.

Sunshine Burgers are a rare breed of veggieburger: soy AND gluten free.

Alternatively, there are plenty of great convenience products out there that don’t use any soy at all that you might consider trying as well: Larabars are soy and gluten-free; There are a variety of non-dairy, soy-free, calcium-fortified “milks” for your breakfast cereals, including Oat milk, Almond milk, and Rice Milk, Hemp milk (which is a fantastic source of omega-3’s); Sunshine Burgers are sunflower and bean-based frozen veggieburgers that are both soy and gluten free; Mix1 makes refrigerated soy-and-lactose-free shakes that are high in protein, vitamins and fiber.  If you’re a protein-powder person, try hemp protein powder or whey protein isolate as good soy-free, gluten-free, low-lactose alternatives to soy protein powder.

GREEN LIGHT SOY FOODS: Foods you can enjoy without worry.

1. Organic, fermented/traditionally-prepared Asian soy foods like tofu, natto, tempeh or miso. By choosing organic, you’re eliminating the big question mark hanging over
   

   When it comes to soy, do as your fictional Asian grandmother would do

   the use of GMO soybeans, and by choosing more whole, traditionally-prepared foods, you’re benefiting from the time-tested fermentation processes that help tame most of soy’s more problematic nutritional quirks.  As mentioned earlier, virtually all of the data that show a health benefit for soy foods in preventing breast cancer are based on studies of Asian women who ate these types of foods.  There’s no compelling data to suggest you should limit these foods in your diet that I have come across.

2. Organic edamame.  Edamame, or boiled young soybeans, contain a moderate amount of isoflavones and lower levels of anti-nutrients (the protease inhibitors and phytates discussed above) than mature soybeans do.  As a result, edamame make a fine snack whenever you get a hankering.  XXXXXXXXX
3. Soy oil (or vegetable oil containing soy oil) and soy lecithin: If you live in America today and eat anything that comes in a bag, box or wrapper, it’s virtually impossible to avoid these soy-derived ingredients.  Fortunately, you really shouldn’t have to worry about them.  Soybean oil, by definition, won’t contain any detectable protein, and soy lecithin is a phospholipid (also a type of fat) used as an emulsifier in foods (like chocolate, margarine or ice cream) to help keep fat and water from separating.  There shouldn’t be any actual soy protein in either of these ingredients; many (but unfortunately not all) people who are allergic to soy are even able to consume products that contain these ingredients.

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