Posts Tagged ‘daniel’

Realwashing

Monday, May 14th, 2012

from our team monday

After years of “functional food” being popular – people are rightly becoming increasingly skeptical of food being designed by scientists to be healthy.  More and more evidence is coming out supporting the idea that the body is incredibly sophisticated at picking out nutrients and vitamins.  No longer is a vitamin pill equal to an apple – in fact, the human body is specifically designed to absorb the vitamins from whole food, rather than from the isolates that are stuck together with additives and flavors.  Evolution has ensured that the thousands of years of people eating whole food grown in nature has trained the body appropriately.  It’s becoming clear that not all vitamins, fiber, and protein is the same.  All those years scientists wasted extracting and isolating the very best parts of fiber from the grain and the protein from soy, and spraying food with vitamins.

Here comes the real food revolution.  Well, sort of.

In response to the trend of consumers demanding real food – food scientists and marketers have responded by making food real again!  Are you skeptical?  You should be.

Expect more food with long shelf lives that is marketed as simple, wholesome, and real.  We’re already seeing aseptic looking white packaging with Helvetica font featuring once big branded food that is now “simple”.  Foods are being reformulated to remove High Fructose Corn Syrup, substituted with something called evaporated cane juice – which sounds a lot more real than sugar, which is what it is.  Products are being fairy dusted with whole wheat flour, or something called wheat flour, which is actually just white flour.  Natural flavors which are scientific concoctions barely understandable by the people that make them, are flavoring our foods – instead of the ingredients themselves.  Pictures of farmers are shown in commercials growing things like potatoes and vegetables – clearly leaving out pictures of the corporate offices and lobbyists doing most of the work.  More and more growth is coming from organic – yet, quite a bit of those products are being imported from places with different organic standards than the United States.  People are fighting for GMO labeling, yet the government insists that there is no difference between genetically modified and “real”.  Meat is being reformulated to remove pink slime, yet the antibiotics and corn pellet diets remain.  Farmed salmon is injected with dye to give it its “real” pink color.

Call it the real food revolution.

Or just realwashing.

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Daniel

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Olive Oil, Salt and a Little Heat

Monday, April 9th, 2012

from our team monday

I have considered myself a cook since being a very young child.  I used to watch cooking shows on television as a young boy – my favorite being The Urban Peasant (a long running Canadian cooking show).  As I got older, I became obsessed with science meets food with Good Eats and Alton Brown, and today I’m a huge fan of Cook’s Illustrated and their methodical attempts to perfect food.

What I have learned through cooking is that simple food is usually best.  It sounds very Californian to say that we should let ingredients shine, but I think it’s true.  If you can’t make the main ingredients taste good, then you shouldn’t be cooking!  I’m not a vegetarian, but I love vegetables.  As a child, I only liked vegetables – they were typically steamed, cut into a salad, or occasionally in a more fancy dish.  But I found them slightly bland and uninteresting.  Today, vegetables are the main part of my diet, thanks to a simple technique called roasting.

This recipe works with pretty much every vegetable.  Cut up said vegetable into ½“ to 1” pieces.  Put in a bowl and toss with a liberal amount of olive oil, salt and freshly ground pepper.  Place on a foiled and greased cookie sheet being sure that the pan is not crowded – use two sheets if needed.  Put in a 425 degree oven for 30-50 minutes tossing every 10 minutes.  You’ll be rewarded with some fine caramelization of the vegetables which will enhance the taste of the vegetables.  The reason roasting vegetables tastes so good, is because most vegetables are made up of mostly water.  Roasting at high heat causes the vegetables to lose a lot of their water content, concentrating the flavor of the vegetable.  The added sugars from caramelization and some fat/salt enhance the flavor.  My favorite vegetables to roast include butternut squash, beets, sunchokes, eggplant, brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower.  For some great variation, try the below:

-          Cauliflower: add 1-2 coarsely chopped/diced onions to the roast

-          Brussels Sprouts: Right before they’re finished, pour a few tbsp. of balsamic vinegar over them, and allow them to continue roasting until the balsamic is a glaze

-          Squash: add a few teaspoons of curry powder

-          Fennel: add some fresh apple and maple syrup

-          Kale: it’s hard to beat roasted kale – they come out crisp like chips!

-          Mushrooms: Add some chopped garlic to the mix, and finish with fresh parsley

-          Beets: serve with goat cheese

-          Carrots: Roast with fresh thyme

The roasting trick works with pretty much any vegetable – though I wouldn’t recommend celery or cucumbers.

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Daniel

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Motivating Motivation through Willpower

Monday, March 12th, 2012

from our team monday

Different people have different ways of becoming and staying motivated.  There is the camp of those that need the benefit of social pressure to encourage adhering to goals.  Alternatively, there are those that rely on internal mechanism to push toward such goals.  I tend to fall in the latter camp.  I have never had a particularly challenging problem with motivation.  This may sound obvious, but I happen to believe that the key to staying motivated lies with building strength in willpower.

Motivating to do something good is frequently the corollary of staying motivated to avoid something bad.  Weight loss and stop smoking programs are the best examples of avoiding bad things.  But things like doing well in school can be thought of in the same way – motivating to study is similar to avoiding watching television or playing minesweeper.

I’m typically best able to stay motivated by being clear about the willpower required to meet the goal.  If willpower wasn’t required, there wouldn’t really be any necessary motivation!

A good example is exercise.  I’m one of those people that views exercise as a means to an end.  I don’t love running, but I do run – typically because it’s very good for me.  I feel good at the end of running as doing something good for myself, though the act of running feels like at least a bit of work.  Staying motivated is important – and in order to carve out time to exercise, I have to forgo other things that would seemingly be more pleasure inducing.  That’s where my willpower comes in.  At the end of the day when I have the exercise bag next to me, I internally focus and choose to forgo something like a drink with a friend, in order to exercise.

Another example is healthy eating.  I cook a lot for myself, and have to exercise a lot of willpower in order to stay on a healthy eating path.  At a restaurant, I’ll have to demonstrate will power to order a healthy option.  While cooking for myself, I’ll exercise willpower by using olive oil over butter, less salt than ideal, and eating to be full – not stuffed.  Instead of having a full size portion of dessert, I’ll have maybe a couple of bites – demonstrating some willpower.

The good news is that by being such a willpower control freak, I have learned for the anti-negative to be pro-positive.  Instead of looking at the small piece of dessert as forgoing dessert, I see it as enjoying a piece (albeit small) of something tasty.  Similarly, I look at exercise as health inducing – rather than joy preventing.

Building willpower has allowed me to stay motivated and enjoy meeting my joyful goals.

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Daniel

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