This recipe can also be a perfect template to add your favorite veggies to. Root vegetables like turnips and rutabagas can add a whole new dimension to the flavors. Enjoy!

Beef and Vegetable Stew

Ingredients

• 1 lb. (500 g) lean ground beef
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 medium carrots, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1 can (28-oz/796-mL) diced tomatoes
• 4 cups (1 L) water
• 1 tsp. (5 mL) salt
• 1 tsp. (5 mL) crumbled dried basil
• 1/2 tsp. (2 mL) crumbled dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp. 1 mL black pepper
• 1 cup (250 mL) corn niblets (fresh, frozen or canned, drained)
• 1/4 cup (50 mL) barley

Cooking Instructions

1. Combine ground beef and chopped onion in a Dutch oven or other large saucepan with a cover. Cook over medium-high heat until the meat starts to brown slightly, about 6 to 8 minutes.
2. Stir in carrots and celery and cook, stirring for a minute or two. Add tomatoes with all the juice from the can, the water, salt, basil, thyme and pepper. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to low, cover and let simmer for 15 minutes.
3. Add corn and barley. Stir and continue to cook over low heat for 50 to 60 minutes or until barley is tender.

Servings: 6

A quick fix for busy weeknights, this fragrant stir-fry of chicken, fresh ginger and bok choy is flavored with sesame oil, sherry, soy sauce and hoisin sauce and served over warm angel hair pasta.

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) yam noodles
• 1 teaspoon coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 skinless, boneless chicken breast half – cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
• 2 leaves bok choy, diced
• 1/4 cup chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons dry sherry
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1-1/2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2 green onions, minced

Cooking Instructions

1. In a large pot with boiling salted water cook yam pasta until al dente. Drain.
2. Meanwhile, in a large nonstick skillet heat coconut and sesame oil over medium high heat. Saute onion and garlic until softened. Stir in chopped chicken, and cook until chicken browns and juices run clear. Stir in ginger, bok choy, chicken stock, sherry, soy sauce, and hoisin sauce. Reduce heat, and continue cooking for 10 minutes.
3. Toss pasta with chicken mixture until well coated. Season with salt. Serve warm sprinkled with minced green onions.

Nutrition Facts
Servings per Recipe: 2

Kirk likes to double or triple the recipe and have left overs..

Amount Per Serving

• calories: 498cal
• total fat: 9.2g
• cholesterol: 35mg
• sodium: 1263mg
• carbohydrates: 75.2g
• fiber: 5.5g
• protein: 28g

G. Baden / Zefa / Corbis

Parents who suspect that artificial ingredients in food are affecting their children’s behavior can now point to some cold, hard proof.

A carefully designed study released Thursday in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal, shows that a variety of common food dyes and the preservative sodium benzoate — an ingredient in many soft drinks, fruit juices, salad dressings and other foods — causes some children to become more hyperactive and distractible than usual.

“In terms of a question that’s been raging for years, it’s the best study to date — an extremely good study,” says Dr. Philip Shaw, a research psychiatrist in the Child Psychiatry branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. 

The study prompted Britain’s Food Standards Agency to issue an immediate advisory to parents to limit their children’s intake of additives if they notice an effect on behavior. In the U.S., there’s been no such official response, but doctors say it makes sense for parents to be on the alert.

Meanwhile, the food industry is awaiting further research. “We take our responsibility to consumers seriously and will study the research finding in great detail,” says Cathy Cook, spokesperson for the International Association of Color Manufacturers.

The research, led by Jim Stevenson, a professor of psychology at England’s University of Southampton, involved about 300 children in two age groups: 3-year-olds and 8- and 9-year-olds. Over three one-week periods, the children were randomly assigned to consume one of three fruit drinks daily: one contained the amount of dye and sodium benzoate typically found in a British child’s diet, a second drink had a lower concentration of the additives, and a third was additive-free. All the children spent a week drinking each of the three mixtures, which looked and tasted alike. During each weeklong period, teachers and parents, who did not know which drink the kids were getting, used a variety of standardized behavior-evaluation tools — some observational and one computer-based — to size up such qualities as restlessness, lack of concentration, fidgeting, and talking or interrupting too much. 

Stevenson found that children in both age groups were significantly more hyperactive when drinking the stuff containing additives.

Three-year-olds had a bigger response than the older kids to the lower dose of additives — roughly the same amount of food coloring as in two 2-oz. bags of candy. And, there were big individual differences in sensitivity. While the effects were not nearly so great as to cause full-blown ADHD, Stevenson nonetheless warns that “these adverse effects could affect the child’s ability to benefit from the experience of school.”

He notes that a separate pilot study found that kids can become more hyperactive within one hour of consuming food additives.

The Lancet study is the first to nail down a link between artificial ingredients and hyperactivity, though the connection has long been suspected and was the basis for the Feingold Diet, which eliminates all artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners and preservatives and was popularized in the 1970s as a treatment for ADHD. Though such a diet alone is not a proven treatment for ADHD, some clinicians routinely advise parents of kids with ADHD to stick with a more natural diet.” I’m not maniacal about it, but I tell parents that your kid will do better if they are on a diet that is free of additives and junk food,” says psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, author a several books on ADHD. “I urge them to eat whole foods; they’ll be healthier anyway.”

Now that a link has been found, researchers will be looking to confirm the British study and build upon it. “My guess is that if we do similarly systematic work with other additives, we’d learn they, too, have implications for behavior,” says Dr. James Perrin, professor of pediatrics at Harvard. “My friends who study the food industry say we have about 70,000 new products a year, so children are facing tremendous numbers of new opportunities for things that may not be good for them.” The study, he says, is one more reason to cheer the movement toward organic and natural foods.

Can Sugar Substitutes Make You Fat?

By Alice Park Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008

When it comes to dieting, most of us are willing to resort to a trick or two to help us curb our appetite and eat less

— drinking water to fill up when we’re hungry, for example, or opting for artificial sweeteners instead of sugar to get the same satisfying sweetness without the offending calories.

But new research suggests that the body is not so easily fooled, and that sugar substitutes are no key to weight loss —

perhaps helping to explain why, despite a plethora of low-calorie food and drink, Americans are heavier than ever.

In a series of experiments, scientists at Purdue University compared weight gain and eating habits in rats whose diets were supplemented with sweetened food containing either zero-calorie saccharin or sugar. The report, published in Behavioral Neuroscience, presents some counterintuitive findings: Animals fed with artificially sweetened yogurt over a two-week period consumed more calories and gained more weight — mostly in the form of fat — than animals eating yogurt flavored with glucose, a natural, high-calorie sweetener. It’s a continuation of work the Purdue group began in 2004, when they reported that animals consuming saccharin-sweetened liquids and snacks tended to eat more than animals fed high-calorie, sweetened foods. The new study, say the scientists, offers stronger evidence that how we eat may depend on automatic, conditioned responses to food that are beyond our control. (See a special report on the science of appetite.)

What they mean is that like Pavlov’s dog, trained to salivate at the sound of a bell, animals are similarly trained to anticipate lots of calories when they taste something sweet — in nature, sweet foods are usually loaded with calories. When an animal eats a saccharin-flavored food with no calories, however — disrupting the sweetness and calorie link — the animal tends to eat more and gain more weight, the new study shows. The study was even able to document at the physiological level that animals given artificial sweeteners responded differently to their food than those eating high-calorie sweetened foods. The sugar-fed rats, for example, showed the expected uptick in core body temperature at mealtime, corresponding to their anticipation of a bolus of calories that they would need to start burning off — a sort of metabolic revving of the energy engines. The saccharin-fed animals, on the other hand, showed no such rise in temperature. “The animals that had the artificial sweetener appear to have a different anticipatory response,” says Susan Swithers, a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University and a co-author of the study. “They don’t anticipate as many calories arriving.” The net result is a more sluggish metabolism that stores, rather than burns, incoming excess calories.

Swithers stops short of saying that the animals in her study were compelled to overeat to compensate for phantom calories. But she says that the study does suggest artificial sweeteners somehow disrupt the body’s ability to regulate incoming calories. “It’s still a bit of a mystery why they are overeating, but we definitely have evidence that the animals getting artificially sweetened yogurt end up eating more calories than the ones getting calorically sweetened yogurt.” 

Though it’s premature to generalize based on animal results that the same phenomena would hold true in people, Swithers says, she notes that other human studies have already shown a similar effect. A University of Texas Health Science Center survey in 2005 found that people who drink diet soft drinks may actually gain weight; in that study, for every can of diet soda people consumed each day, there was a 41% increased risk of being overweight. So even though her findings were in animals, says Swithers, they could lead to a better understanding of how the human body responds to food, and explain why eating low-calorie foods doesn’t always lead to weight loss. “There is lots of evidence that we learn about the consequences about eating food,” she says. “And we have physiological responses to food that are conditioned.”

So does that mean you should ditch the artificial sweeteners and welcome sugar back into your life?

Not exactly. Excess sugar in the diet can lead to diabetes and heart disease, even independent of its effect on weight. But it’s worth remembering that when it comes to counting calories, it’s not just the ones you eat that you have to worry about. The calories you give up matter too, and they may very well reappear in that extra helping of pasta or dessert that your body demands. Your body may actually be keeping better count than you are.

Throughout the year, broccoli is one of the easiest foods to locate, as most supermarkets across the United States offer a hearty supply of the nutrient-rich vegetable.

While broccoli has gotten a bad reputation as being one of the most dreaded vegetables on the dinner plate for a child, there are actually many different delicious ways to prepare the vegetable with the alluring green stalk and bushy top.

When it comes to basic nutrients, broccoli is a mother lode.

Ounce for ounce, boiled broccoli has more vitamin C than an orange and as much calcium as a glass of milk, according to the USDA’s nutrient database. One medium spear has three times more fiber than a slice of wheat bran bread. Broccoli is also one of the richest sources of vitamin A in the produce section.

But the real surprise is this vegetable’s potent cancer-fighting components.

At the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, food chemist Dr. Paul Talalay has gone so far as to name his lab after “Brassica,” the genus that includes broccoli and cauliflower. Talalay and his team at the Brassica Chemoprotection Laboratory have discovered that broccoli is rich in substances called isothiocyanates — chemicals shown to stimulate the body’s production of its own cancer-fighting substances, called “phase two enzymes.” According to Talalay, these enzymes, in turn, neutralize potential cancer-causing substances before they have a chance to damage the DNA of healthy cells.
If you don’t like broccoli, take heart: In 1997, Talalay and his researchers at Hopkins discovered to their surprise that broccoli sprouts, the week-old seedlings of the mature plant, are exceptionally rich in a form of isothiocyanate called sulforaphane — 10 to 100 times as rich as broccoli itself, in fact. More and more markets now carry the tender shoots, which are delicious on sandwiches and salads. Trader joes has them under the name broccolini.
My partner and I now buy the big bag of Broccoli flourettes and make a large batch, by steaming them usually, and keep in the fridge and eat them everyday. We put them in salads, mixed with brown rice and salmon for a lunch bowl, or cold out of the bag as a snack. My Japanese roommate from years back would flash boil for 1 minute and then mix the drained flourettes with equal parts soy sauce and sesame oil whipped together. They tasted even better the next few days!

Broccoli with Toasted Garlic

Copyright, 2005, Ellie Krieger, All rights reserved
Show: Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger Episode: Home Cooking

Ingredients

•    1 pound broccoli, washed and cut into florets
•    1 tablespoon olive oil
•    3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
•    Salt and pepper

Directions

Put broccoli, with water still clinging to it from being washed, into a large microwave safe bowl or dish with a lid. Cover the bowl with the lid and microwave for 5 minutes.
In the meantime, heat the oil in a large skillet over a medium heat and add the garlic. Cook the garlic in the oil, stirring frequently, until it is golden brown, about 3 minutes. Transfer the toasted garlic to a small dish.
Remove the bowl of broccoli from microwave and carefully uncover it, drain it and pat it dry. Put the broccoli into the skillet with the olive oil and saute over a medium heat for 3 minutes. Sprinkle with toasted garlic, and season with salt and pepper.

Nutrition Facts

Per Serving
Calories:
73
Total Fat:
4 grams
Saturated Fat:
0.5 grams
Protein:
3 grams
Carbohydrates:
8 grams
Fiber:
3 grams

I took a little quick survey a couple days ago…I wanted to find out about peoples experience with green tea.  I found that almost everyone had tried it and knew it was good for you; most had had it hot only, like at an Asian Restaurant, and about half the people has some in their pantry. Well, I am defiantly exited about the new news on green tea. Here’s an easy way to turn a routine workout into a powerful waist-whittler: Drink green tea.

That’s right. Ditch the Gatorade and instead sip several mugs of the green stuff throughout the day. Research shows that the wonder duo of green tea and exercise may target belly fat better, so it shrinks more easily than with exercise alone, that is why you will find tons of green tea extracts in products like Xenadrine and Hydroxycut.

In a study, overweight adults who engaged in an exercise program for 12 weeks lost more belly fat if they also drank green tea daily. The green tea seemed to boost overall weight loss and triglyceride control in the study group, too. The magic amount of tea needed for the effect? Enough to get about 625 milligrams of catechins plus a little caffeine every day (roughly 7 cups daily). That may seem like a lot, but throughout the day it is easy. If you have difficulty sleeping at night, stop drinking the tea around 5 or 6pm.

Researchers think that catechins in green tea might blast tummy fat by acting on enzymes that influence the body’s calorie- and fat-burning mechanisms. And catechins and caffeine together may boost the body’s metabolism.

So great, green tea will help with weight loss, but what if I do not like the taste?

Well, just like red wine, there are lots of types of green tea. There is Sen-cha, a nice simple Japanese grren tea that is one of my favorites (available at Trader Joes), there is Mat-cha a slightly sweet Japanese green that is typically drank iced, (like the one at Ichiban) there is a Gan-mai Cha which is roasted brown rice green tea which has a richer flavor and aroma, there is jasmine green, lemongrass green, the choices are endless. You also have the choice of getting it in bags or bulk and steeping it in a pot, drinking it hot or cold.
I have begun to brew a batch of tea at night and place it in an old juice jar, let it cool and bring it to work, if I finish the jar, there are my 7 cups that day.

So let me take a moment and let you know about my bad experiences with green tea. First, some of use discovered in Acupuncture School where everybody drinks green tea, that some people of European decent will get gas from cheap Chinese green tea, never had a problem with Japanese type though. Secondly, green tea for the most part, should be brewed with water that is not boiling. Let the water cool for 2 minutes first to about 85 degrees Celsius, then brew. Brew time is very short for green tea, about 2-3 minutes, after that it may become bitter and too strong. A high quality green tea bag can be used up to 3 times; still producing health benefits and flavor, so have a small plate to rest your tea bag on in between uses.

So although it is still a little cool out there, here is a recipe to enjoy this spring and summer and get your green tea fix!

Green Tea and Mango Splash

Feel the island breezes as you sip this cooling concoction.

Ingredients

1 cup strongly brewed green tea, (2 tea bags to 1 cup water)
2 cups mango nectar
Ice cubes
Mint sprigs, for garnish
Mango slivers, for garnish
Directions1. Combine tea and mango nectar in a pitcher. Serve over ice, garnished with mint sprigs and mango slivers.

Nutrition Information

Per serving
Calories: 97
Carbohydrates: 25g
Fat: 0g
Saturated Fat: 0g
Monounsaturated Fat: 0g
Protein: 0g
Cholesterol: 0mg
Dietary Fiber: 1g
Potassium: 102mg
Sodium: 4mg
Nutrition Bonus: What you get: Antioxidants, vitamins A and C. (Chew the mint and you’ll get an extra bit of fiber and folate.)

Today we profile Parsley the partner to Bulgur (the sister to cracked wheat) in the fabulous Middle Eastern salad known as Tabouleh. Parsley is native to the Mediterranean region of Southern Europe. While it has been cultivated for more than 2,000 years, parsley was used medicinally prior to being consumed as a food. While parsley is a wonderfully nutritious and healing food, it is often under-appreciated. Most people do not realize that this vegetable has more uses than just being a decorative garnish that accompanies restaurant meals. They do not know that parsley is actually a storehouse of nutrients and that it features a delicious green and vibrant taste.

“parsley is a wonderfully nutritious and healing food, it is often under-appreciated”

The flavonoids in parsley-especially luteolin-have been shown to function as antioxidants that combine with highly reactive oxygen-containing molecules (called oxygen radicals) and help prevent oxygen-based damage to cells. In addition, extracts from parsley have been used in animal studies to help increase the antioxidant capacity of the blood. That means more of a good thing!

In addition to its volatile oils and flavonoids,

parsley is an excellent source of two vital nutrients that are also important for the prevention of many diseases: vitamin C and vitamin A (notably through its concentration of the pro-vitamin A carotenoid, beta-carotene). Parsley is also very high in Vitamin K.
The two most popular types of parsley are curly parsley and Italian flat leaf parsley. The Italian variety has a more fragrant and less bitter taste than the curly variety. Depending on the recipe, one may be preferred but either can be used if it is what is in your fridge. Italian Parsley (flat leaf) looks a lot like Cilantro so if you are not sure, treat off a leaf and taste it, and then you will know. Nothing worse that spending lots of time in the kitchen on a recipe only to get thrown under the bus by a wrong ingredient. Back in my juicing phase, I would juice carrots, beets, spinach and parsley, put it in an old spaghetti sauce jar and sit it throughout the day. It was about 7% parsley and a great way to get your veggies. When caring for your parsley, store it in a plastic bag in the fridge and do not wash it until you are ready to use it. You can dry out and save flat leaf parsley but freeze curly leaf and put it directly in the food from the freezer.

Parsley is the most popular herb in the world

and the best recipe to profile it’s taste is Tabouleh. Tabouleh is a salad like no other. Made with fresh veggies, olive oil and spices, it can be eaten in pita bread, scooped onto pita bread, or traditionally with a fork. In the Middle East, fresh grape leaves are used as a scoop. Tabouleh can be made with a variety of veggies according to taste. You can add carrots, cucumbers, red or green onions. I always suggest tasting as you go along in preparation. You can also add romaine lettuce for a fuller salad.

Tabouleh

Ingredients:

•    2 bunches of fresh parsley (1 1/2 cup chopped, with stems discarded)
•    2 tablespoons of fresh mint, chopped
•    I medium onion, finely chopped
•    6 medium tomatoes, diced
•    1 tablespoon salt
•    1/2 teaspoon black pepper
•    1/2 cup bulghur, medium grade
•    6 tablespoons lemon juice
•    6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
•    Romaine lettuce or grape leaves to line servicng bowl (optional)

Preparation:

Soak bulghur in water for 1 1/2 to 2 hours in cold water until soft.

Squeeze out excess water from bulghur using hands or paper towel.

Combine all ingredients, except for salt, pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil.

Line serving bowl with grape leaves or romaine lettuce, and add salad.

Sprinkle olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper on top.

Serve immediately or chill in refrigerator for 2 hours before serving.