Can you tell I really like peanut butter?

Nutty About Peanut Butter
As American as apple pie, peanut butter has made its mark on American cuisine since the early 1900s. Whether it's partnering with jelly on bread or is the featured ingredient in cookie dough, it's an enduring favorite. Most households have a jar of it in the kitchen at all times.

But is peanut butter good for you? Well, like most nut butters, peanut butter is high in fat and calories (with around 190 calories and 16 grams of fat per 2 tablespoons). But the good news is, you get a lot of nutrition for your 190-calorie investment. Nuts and nut butters are a great source of protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals.

In 2003 the FDA approved a qualified health claim for peanuts and certain tree nuts. It basically says that scientific evidence suggests that eating 1.5 ounces per day of most nuts (as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol) may reduce the risk of heart disease.

Most of the research suggesting health benefits to nuts has involved lowering the risk of heart or cardiovascular disease or their risk factors. But there is some evidence nuts may help with other diseases as well. For example, peanuts are a source of the phytochemical resveratrol (also found in grape skins and red wine). A recent German study explored resveratrol's possible cancer-preventing effects in colorectal cells.

Acts Like a Nut
The funny thing is, the peanut is actually a legume, native to South America, that happens to look and taste like a nut.

Nutritionally, peanuts act like nuts, too. About half their weight comes from fat, with the rest split fairly evenly between protein and carbohydrate (with fiber). About half of their total fat comes from monounsaturated fat, the kind that is linked to more healthful blood lipid levels. One-third of the fat comes from polyunsaturated fat (all of which is omega-6 fatty acid, not the superhealthy omega-3). About 14% of the fat is naturally saturated.

What to Look for in Peanut Butter
When shopping for peanut butter, look for a natural style product with little to no added fat or sugar. Some companies add partially hydrogenated oils to the regular type of peanut butter. And depending on the amount added, this could add trans fats into the equation.

When it comes to sodium, even most natural brands of peanut butter add some salt for flavor. A little goes a long way, though. Around 120 milligrams sodium per 2 tablespoons usually does the trick!

'PB' Without the 'J'
Here are 10 tips for eating peanut butter beyond the PB&J:

- Spread peanut butter on whole-grain toast or bagels instead of butter or cream cheese.
- Add peanut butter to fat-free or low-fat salad dressings (with compatible flavors) for added thickness and flavor. Beat them together until smooth -- using an electric mixer, small food processor, or whisk.
- Add peanut butter to muffin or pancake batters instead of butter or margarine (when the taste is compatible).
- Add peanut butter to smoothies, especially chocolate- or banana-flavored smoothies.
- Add peanut butter to stir-fry sauces for added flavor and thickness.
- When making peanut butter cookies, keep the peanut butter, but for the butter/margarine the recipe calls for, substitute a less-fat margarine (one with 8 grams of fat or less per tablespoon).
- Peanut butter adds plant fat and protein to make a well-rounded, satisfying snack out of whole-wheat crackers, sliced apples or bananas, or celery sticks.
- Make a vanilla or chocolate peanut butter treat by mixing a tablespoon of natural peanut butter into 1/2 cup of light vanilla or chocolate ice cream or frozen yogurt.
- Add peanut butter to granola bar recipes for extra flavor and to help bind the oats and other ingredients together.
- Use whole-grain bread and less-sugar jam to whip up a healthier peanut butter sandwich

Peanut Butter Safety
Recently, the FDA warned consumers not to eat certain jars of peanut butter produced by a particular plant in Georgia, which may be contaminated with salmonella. Historically, it has been the potentially carcinogenic aflatoxin -- produced by particular fungi -- that was the thing to watch in peanut butter, not the notorious salmonella (usually linked to poultry and raw eggs). Aflatoxin can contaminate grains and nuts before harvest or during storage. Corn and peanuts are thought to be at highest risk of aflatoxin contamination.

One of the best things you can do to minimize aflatoxins in the future is to store your grains and nuts in a dry, cool environment. That's why I always refrigerate my peanut butter and freeze nuts that I’m not going to use right away.

To prevent rancidity in your peanut butter, keep your jar of natural-style peanut butter in the refrigerator. And if you don’t go through a lot of peanut butter, buy the smaller sized jars.

Read the full article here.

You probably know someone just like this

Today I want to write about two different types of people who both are very misguided in their approach to a sensible diet. Both are attempting to lose weight. One just wants the weight off, no matter how it happens; the other wants to be healthy but is extremely naive and gets caught up in all the latest trends and hype, and caters blindly to a set of ever-changing "rules" about what comprises a good, healthy diet.

The first person is the desperate dieter. This person will go to extreme lengths to lose weight, claims to be determined to lose weight, and yet is only interested in the "quick fix" approach and refuses to make the necessary lifestyle changes to actually accomplish her goals. For example, this person might start drinking a "weight loss tea" on Monday morning, two weeks before planning to attend an event that she wants to look her best for. The tea makes her sick--literally. She has violent boughts of vomiting and diarrhea. Simultaneously and repeatedly, lasting the whole day and into the next morning. She is so sick at one point that it actually starts to scare her. By Tuesday afternoon she feels mostly alright again so she makes some more tea for herself.

What is wrong with this picture?? Does the above approach seem like a reasonable way to lose weight to any rational, sane person? What exactly does the tea claim to do, I'd like to know. Is it marketed as a laxative or is it actually supposed to suppress the appetite or enable you to burn more calories somehow? Do they even bother to make a logical argument as to how it works, or is it just "miracle tea"? Sure, one might lose some weight this way... perhaps even five pounds or so in just a few days. Of water weight. Purely as a result of being radically dehydrated. To the desperate dieter, though, five pounds is five pounds; who cares where it comes from??

The second person is the uninformed dieter. This person takes any new information she receives, regardless of the source, as the gospel truth. One day she might hear that chocolate is good for the heart. She immediately tells all her friends, sends e-mails to all her co-workers, and revels in being able to eat chocolate again (since she had long since written it off as a no-no food). The next day someone tells her that the chocolate is bad for the skin. How disappointing, she says, and gives up chocolate again. For months or even years she has been eating whole grain bread for the health benefits. Then one day she reads something on the Internet that says the gluten in wheat bread is bad for women. She does not question why--something about women's hormones, she asserts--or in what way. Instead she sighs and throws her hands up in the air and resigns to eating potato bread from now on, or rye. Some of the new information she hears might conflict with old information. No matter; she assumes something new has been discovered that discounts the previous claims. Next week she might be convinced to choose real sugar over artificial sweetener only to revert back a day later; it's ok to eat eggs one month but the next month some new evidence says it's not again.

At least the uninformed dieter is attempting to be healthy, but at what point would she begin to question some of these "facts" and seek out the truth on her own? If someone she's never met who has no credentials or authority on the matter claimed that eating three tablespoons of lard every evening prevents cancer, would she go out and buy a tub of lard? I think she would. And she'd eat her lard adamantly, every evening, vehemently spreading the news about the benefits of lard, until the day someone else mentioned to her that saturated fats can raise cholesterol levels. And then she'd throw away the lard and shake her head in disappointment because maybe she was really enjoying the lard (pretend with me for a moment here). And yet she would still not learn that one cannot simply assume that everything she reads or hears or THINKS she hears is factual. For an indeterminate period of time, everything she eats will be dictated by what she thinks she "should" be eating, based not on tried and true scientific research or even, God forbid, her actual preferences, but solely on the latest rumors pertaining to optimal health and weight loss. She may actually be successful in losing weight and achieving good health; if she is, it is purely luck of the draw as she's no better off imposing such wildly fluctuating restrictions on herself than she would be to just use common sense and practice moderation. She's only setting herself up to grow weary of the whole scene and/or become so dependent on outside guidance that she feels she can no longer "trust" any food, let alone her own body. And really, can anyone consider that to be truly healthy??

World's easiest* peanut butter cookies

Re1 cup peanut butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg

That is the original recipe in it's entirety, but I've always added 1/2 cup oatmeal to bulk it up a bit and add some texture. This is the only thing I think I've ever cooked that I don't need instructions for!

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes (mine have always taken more like 11-13, probably due in part to the extra ingredient and also the fact that I make big, fat cookies!).

Makes about two dozen small or 18 large cookies.

Give them a try!

*and possibly the best, you be the judge

What's the Buzz: HFCS

WHAT IS IT? High-fructose corn syrup is produced by milling corn to produce corn starch then processing the corn starch to yield corn syrup. The corn syrup at that point is almost entirely glucose. Enzymes that change the glucose into fructose, which is sweeter than glucose, are added. The resulting syrup (after enzyme conversion) contains approximately 90% fructose and is known as HFCS 90. To make the other common forms of HFCS, the HFCS 90 is mixed with 100% glucose corn syrup in the appropriate ratios to form the desired HFCS. The typical types of HFCS are: HFCS 90 (most commonly used in baked goods) which is approximately 90% fructose and 10% glucose; HFCS 55 (most commonly used in soft drinks and comparable in sweetness to table sugar) which is approximately 55% fructose and 45% glucose; and HFCS 42 (most commonly used in sports drinks) which is approximately 42% fructose and 58% glucose.

The process by which HFCS is produced was first developed in 1957, then refined in the 1970s. Over the period of about 1975-1985, HFCS was rapidly introduced in many processed foods and soft drinks in the US. Since that time, HFCS has replaced cane sugar in a large variety of foods in the USA. The main reasons for this switch are:

- HFCS blends easily with sweeteners, acids, and flavorings and is easier to transport because it is a liquid.
- HFCS usage leads to products with a much longer shelf life because it retains moisture, resists drying out, controls crystallization, and prevents microbiological growth.
- HFCS is cheaper due to the relative abundance of corn, farm subsidies, and sugar import tariffs in the United States.

From a manufacturer's point of view, HFCS is a revolutionary advance in food science!


WHY IS THIS A CONCERN? Fructose is one component of sucrose (cane or table sugar), which also naturally contains glucose. In laboratory and human tests, it has been found that excess sucrose increases blood levels of cholesterol, triglyceride (another type of fat), uric acid, insulin, and cortisol--all associated with an increased risk of heart disease. Sucrose also raises blood pressure and increases the fragility of blood platelet cells, making them more prone to clotting. As dramatic as those findings were, when substituting pure fructose for sucrose in the same experiments, the effects are magnified with fructose. Fructose was determined to be, in effect, "the dangerous part" of sucrose. In contrast, glucose did little more than cause cavities. Studies have also concluded that pure fructose produces significantly higher fasting plasma triacylglycerol values (a risk factor for cardiovascular disease) than a pure glucose diet. While fructose has been advocated for years as a safe sugar for diabetics because it doesn't trigger a rapid rise in blood sugar, the cardiovascular consequences of consuming large amounts of fructose may outweigh the benefits for diabetics who already face a higher than average risk of developing heart disease.

It is an interesting thing about fructose, that it does not stimulate insulin secretion and does not require insulin to be transported into cells like other carbohydrates, and at first this may seem like a great thing. However, the lack of insulin response can be viewed by some as a double-edged sword because insulin also controls the fate of another hormone--leptin. Essentially, leptin signals the brain to stop sending hunger signals when you've had enough to eat. Since fructose doesn't stimulate insulin, there will be no subsequent increase in leptin levels, thus no feeling of satiety achieved by consuming fructose alone.

Some advocates of HFCS (notably, those who manufacture goods containing HFCS or benefiting from it's production) regard such findings as "media hype", stating that information about the effects of HFCS have been "blown out of proportion" because the aforementioned studies looked at the effects of fructose alone and not actual HFCS in a relastic context. High fructose corn syrup, they proclaim, actually contains varying ratios of fructose and glucose, which are roughly the same products produced by the breakdown of natural sucrose in the body. Still, as evidenced by a myriad of other independant lab experiments, even large quantities of the natural from sucrose are known to stimulate the liver to produce triglycerides, promote glycation of proteins, and induce insulin resistance which can be a contributing factor in developing diabetes. We now know this to be especially true of fructose, regardless of whether it is 100% pure fructose or a mixture of fructose and glucose.

While some forms of HFCS may not inherently be more dangerous than natural sucrose, the problem comes with the sheer quantity of "hidden" fructose being consumed through the HFCS in processed foods: most people are surprised to learn of the abundance of HFCS in foods we don't normally associate with being "sweet", from breads to pasta sauces to bacon and even beer. Its commonly used in so-called "health products" like protein bars and energy drinks, and of course in candy and soda pop. Overall sweetener consumption, and in particular high-fructose mixtures, has increased since the introduction of HFCS. Thus, the proportion of fructose as a component of overall sweetener intake in the United States has increased since the early 1980s.


WHAT ABOUT FRUIT? Fructose is commonly known as "fruit sugar." So does this mean fruit has the same effects on the body as HFCS?

Fortunately, natural sources are much less potent simply because the quantity of pure fructose consumed is significantly less than found in most processed foods. Fructose accounts for only 5 to 7 percent of the weight of cherries, pears, bananas, grapes, and apples. That's about 5 to 8 teaspoons per pound of fresh fruit. There's even less fructose--2 to 3 percent, or roughly 2 to 3 teaspoons per pound--in strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, oranges, and grapefruit. Compare this to conventional soft drinks, which almost universally contain 11 percent HFCS by weight--a whopping 2.2 pounds per case. Honey, refined by bees, contains 40 percent fructose, but its extreme sweetness deters most people from consuming it in large amounts.


THE FINAL VERDICT: Though many hazards are associated with fructose and HFCS, the overall ill effects appear to be largely dose dependent, according to experts. There is very real concern with a diet that is comprised predominantly of processed foods, especially as younger generations become more frequently exposed to convenience diets. Conversely, if you eat primarily whole, natural foods, and avoid large quantities of processed or sweetened foods, you have little to worry about with an occasional sugary treat. "We have not taken a no-sugar stance," one nutritionist says. "We have taken a no-excessive-sugar stance."

Why a blog about food?

Because I like food. I like to eat food, I like to learn about food, and I like to share what I know about food.

I don't like a lot of the negative associations that have arisen concerning food, such as the idea that it is a necessary evil we must strive to defeat if we are to be healthy and happy with ourselves. I also dislike the concept that food is merely fuel for our bodies and should have no emotional or psychological ties. There is a middle ground; it can be so simple as to be instinctive to even the youngest child. In fact, children set a great example for the rest of us.

This is a place for me to post information, thoughts, and feelings. I welcome the same in return.