Category: Health issues

Whether meat is good for you has been debated for decades. Now we have a new study, a huge study which included 500,000 adults, and the verdict is clear: Meat is very bad for you if you eat it every day. Eating meat every day increases the chance of early death (from heart disease or cancer) by 30 percent. For women, the statistics were particularly grim. For example, women who ate the most meat every day had a 50 percent higher chance of early death from heart disease.

One of my particular interests, as many of you know, is the analysis of propaganda. The Washington Post’s story on this study (which was on the front page), has a quote from someone at the American Meat Institute:

“Meat products are part of a healthy, balanced diet, and studies show they actually provide a sense of satisfaction and fullness that can help with weight control. Proper body weight contributes to good health overall.”

The fallacy in the first statement is easy enough to unravel: “Meat products are part of a healthy, balanced diet.” That is precisely the point the study addressed. How did the study’s conclusions differ from what the American Meat Institute says?

The second fallacy is more difficult to unravel, because it requires knowledge that many people don’t have. The claim is that science shows that eating meat can actually make you healthier because eating meat contributes to weight control. That is intentionally misleading. It’s actually fat and protein that provide satisfaction and fullness. That fat and protein can just as easily come from vegetable sources, and it will be a whole lot better for you. This is the way most propaganda works. A claim is made that may be sorta kinda obliquely true, but the fallacy can be detected only if one is aware of some other facts.

There are so many benefits beyond health from reduced consumption of meat. Meat farms use huge amounts of water and energy, and they cause nasty pollution, both to air and water. Meats these days are particularly dangerous because they contain hormones and antibiotics that factory farm animals are pumped with. Meat production also is inefficient, because the protein fed to the animal far exceeds the protein derived from its meat.

Garlic and broccoflower pasta. They probably smelled it all the way to Danbury.

Last night I went to bed at 10 and fell asleep immediately. I woke up and looked at the clock. It said 6:10 a.m. I thought the clock was wrong, because I thought I had just gone to bed. Deep sleep like this is not the rule for those of us of Boomer age. I used to think I would never sleep through the night again without getting up, but now I often sleep through the night. Partly, I’m sure, it’s because it’s so quiet here. And partly it’s because my stress level is a tiny fraction of what it was in San Francisco. But I’m beginning to suspect there is another factor — garlic.

I ate an entire head of raw garlic with my supper last night. If you Google for “garlic and sleep,” you’ll find that there is indeed some evidence that garlic promotes sound sleep. Last night’s garlic was in a pesto that I made from fresh basil from my garden. The tomatoes are gone, and their old vines have been sent to the compost bin. But the basil is flourishing. Still, who wants pesto every night. It’s hard to think of dishes that can tolerate raw garlic in large quantities.

I’m running an experiment tonight. I had another entire head of garlic with dinner. In the fridge there was a head of broccoflower that I bought at the Food Lion in Walnut Cove. I sautéed the broccoflower in coconut oil, to which I added a bit of white wine mixed with vegetable boullion to control the temperature. I’ve gotten in the habit of tossing cooked pasta in brewer’s yeast before I add the pasta to whatever it’s going in. I threw in some olive oil and some pepper. I ate it all, with no guilt.

Remember that garlic needs to be crushed or minced and allowed to sit for a while before you eat it to allow that magical garlic chemical reaction to take place. I like to add salt to the garlic during this process. It helps make the garlic sweat, and the salt zings the garlicky flavor. There’s no reason in the world why garlic shouldn’t be treated like a vegetable, instead of as seasoning. Except for social reasons. Around here, there’s only the cat to notice, and she seems to like garlic breath.

Maybe you have to be an old hippy like me to appreciate dishes like this. Google for terms like “garlic and health.” It’s fine medicine. Cheap, too, even if you buy the good garlic from Gilroy.

I’ve made a lot of flaxseed pones in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve learned from my mistakes. Most important: Don’t put too much liquid into the batter. If the batter is too wet and runny, the pone will never finish baking, and the texture will be gooey and disgusting. Keep the batter thick, so that it stands up when you put it into the baking pan. If the batter is so thin that it runs out to the edges of the pan, then the batter is too thin. Don’t worry if the batter mounds up in the baking pan. It will fill out once it starts to rise in the oven. I don’t quite understand the chemistry of this, because the opposite is true of biscuits. For a proper texture, biscuit dough needs to be as moist as possible. But flaxseed pone batter needs to be thick, thick, thick.

A second hint: Though I think there is no nutritional difference between golden flaxseed and brown flaxseed, the golden flaxseed makes a much prettier pone, the same color as corn bread. In fact, if you get your batter recipe right, many casual eaters of flaxseed pone would think they’re eating cornbread. It’s that good, and the texture of the bread is totally agreeable, in spite of the fact that flaxseed meal is much more like psyllium seed meal than corn meal.

Experienced makers of cornbread already know this, but for the newbies: Well-seasoned cast iron skillets are best for making pones. Get the skillet hot in the oven before adding the batter. If you’re making a supper pone, add some finely chopped onions to the skillet when you put the skillet into the oven to preheat. Half butter and half olive oil in the bottom of the skillet, with the onions sizzling during the preheating of the skillet, will make a fine crust for a supper pone. For a breakfast pone, omit the onions. Onions or not, the batter should sizzle when you pour it into the hot skillet.

The late-winter diet here in North Carolina is starting to change a bit. The Florida oranges seem to be getting more expensive and a bit more dry. But some fine turnip greens are showing up in the stores, cheap and fresh. And I still can’t get over how much better the onions are here than they are in California.

Here’s my earlier post on flaxseed pones.

Also, some Californians don’t seem to know what a skillet is (Hi, Clint and Joshua).

This morning’s flaxseed pone.

I frequently say that, after a certain age, we all should eat like diabetics even if we’re not. Bread is the hardest thing to cut down on. On the glycemic index, whole grain bread is no better than white bread. Cornbread also is no better than white bread. But hot bread is essential with the local winter diet, which revolves around (or revolved around, 50 years ago, but it’s still the best and cheapest winter food) pinto beans, cabbage in some form, and onions.

For a while I’d meant to experiment with flaxseed meal, having heard of its many virtues. But I had assumed that it would be difficult to work with. One Internet recipe I came across, for example, used five eggs. Why in the world (I thought) would someone put five eggs in a quickbread unless it was nearly impossible to get it to rise. It turns out that the five-egg recipe was just a stupid recipe.

Flaxseed meal will do anything cornmeal will do. A well-beaten egg definitely helps the batter and texture of the bread, but if you leave the egg out and use a bit of unbleached white flour, the flaxseed bread will rise just fine. I don’t use recipes for quickbreads, nor do you need one if you’re accustomed to making cornbread. The basic ingredients for flaxseed bread are flaxseed meal, a small amount of unbleached white flour, baking powder, and buttermilk. If you substitute flaxseed meal one-for-one for cornmeal in your favorite cornbread recipe, you’ll probably be fine.

The virtues of flaxseed meal are incredible. It’s low carb, high-protein, and low on the glycemic index. Plus, flaxseed is the richest vegetable source of omega-3 oil, almost as rich as fish oil. Flaxseed meal also has the same virtue as psyllium seed.

I’m getting rid of cornmeal and switching to flaxseed meal.

This link is for the Californians who don’t know what a pone is. And by the way, East Coast onions are better than California onions. I haven’t yet figured out why. Georgia?