Category: Uncategorized

I� now live in a parallel universe.

In this universe, people eat at bars, not drink. You have trouble getting a place or a seat at a bar to drink.

Everyone is eating, elbow to elbow, one long table, menus, wineglasses, knives and forks, bread baskets and butter plates, entrees, salads and desserts, like a commissary from hell. Drinkers are second-class citizens, forming an obedient second tier, a peanut gallery, balancing their cocktail glasses carefully for the mountainous trip over the shoulders of diners, locked together like the Rockies, through the hazardous passes of talking heads and moving arms, back and forth to the bar.

Bartender, There’s an Olive in My Soup

Modifying the consumption of different food-groups may keep body weight from creeping up over time, new research suggests.

The six-year study found that adults who boosted their intake of fruit during the research period put on less weight and body fat than those whose fruit consumption dipped. The same benefit was seen among men and women who started drinking more skim or low-fat milk, or who cut back on fatty foods.

Although high-fat, Atkins-style diets have been advocated for weight loss, the new study provides evidence that over the long-term, relatively high fat intake promotes weight gain, according to lead author Vicky Drapeau.

The findings support the standard public health recommendation that adults eat more fruits and vegetables and limit fat intake, noted Drapeau, a researcher at Laval University in Quebec, Canada.

In addition, she told Reuters Health, the results suggest that low-fat milk, and possibly other calcium-rich foods, are important in weight control.

Cutting Fat, Boosting Fruit May Fight Weight Gain

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Professor Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University was thinking about the taste of food: “There is a taste which is common to asparagus, tomatoes, cheese and meat but which is not one of the four well-known tastes of sweet, sour, bitter and salty.”

It was in 1907 that Professor Ikeda started his experiments to identify what the source of this distinctive taste was. He knew that it was present in the “broth” made from kombu (a type of seaweed) found in traditional Japanese cuisine. Starting with a tremendous quantity of kombu broth, he succeeded in extracting crystals of glutamic acid (or glutamate). Glutamate is an amino acid, and is a building block of protein. Professor Ikeda found that glutamate had a distinctive taste, different from sweet, sour, bitter and salty, and he named it “umami.” 100 grams of dried kombu contain about 1 gram of glutamate.

The Discovery of Umami

Inside a packed ballroom at a Holiday Inn, 13 government-appointed scientists sat regally around a table, debating servings of fish.

“What do we want to recommend for children? Fish twice a week?” asked chairwoman Janet King.

“Small fish,” said another panel member.

“Children are advised to eat smaller portions of fish than adults?”

“Can we defer a vote on that?” pleaded another.

The panel of nutrition researchers had been talking this way for 45 minutes. The ballroom was filled with listeners scribbling away on notepads — some looking a little haggard. Those in the audience already had witnessed exhaustive discussions on protein, sugar, fat, grains, breakfast, exercise and a record-breaking 2½-hour standoff on vitamin D.

“Mind-numbing isn’t the half of it,” said a woman in line for the restroom. “I want to strangle them.”

After a year’s work, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is in the final stages of overhauling the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are to be formally adopted next year.

Hashing out diet guidelines isn’t as easy as it sounds