a yummy recipe

Here's my new favorite breakfast - a delicious protein smoothie. The recipe is very versatile, built around the following basics:

1 cup milk of choice (cow, rice, almond, etc.)
1 tbsp nut butter of choice (peanut, almond, cashew, etc.)
1/2 of a banana, frozen works best
2-3 ice cubes
1 scoop of whey protein (chocolate or vanilla flavored)

Put all ingredients into a blender and give it a whirl!

This is very yummy and can contain anywhere from 10 to 25 grams of protein (maybe even more), depending on your choices. It's a good idea to have a bit of protein at each meal and snack to keep your blood sugar balanced all day long. A good rule of thumb for calculating how much protein you need is to divide your body weight in half and use that number for your daily protein needs in grams. So, if you weigh 150 lbs, you should strive for 75 grams of protein throughout the day, spread out between meals & snacks.

Something fishy is going on...

"Eat more fish. They are high in omega3's."

"Eat less fish. It's high in mercury."

The more I delve into nutritional information, the more it contradicts itself. One area where this is especially true is with seafood. Do we or don't we eat it???

Recently, I read yet another great book - The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World, by Betsy Block. Besides being a fantastically funny writer, she's a mom on a similar quest to mine who wrote a clever book about her journey through the gray areas of nutrition.

Here's the research she found on fish...

Green Light, or go ahead and eat away:
wild-caught salmon from Alaska
US farmed barramundi (NOT Nile perch, which is often mislabeled as barramundi)
sardines
anchovies, hold the pepperoni
atlantic herring
atlantic mackerel (NOT king or Spanish)
farmed oysters
arctic char
farmed bay scallops
US farmed tilapia
farmed mussels
tiny salad shrimp
US farmed crayfish
US farmed catfish
farmed clams
crab (NOT king crab from Russia)
Pacific cod (NOT Atlantic cod)
calamari/squid
wild-caught pollock from Alaska


Red light, or don't even think about eating this:
Tilapia from China and Taiwan (I've seen the water in China. I have to agree.)
Chilean seabass/toothfish
Atlantic cod
Atlantic flounder, sole, haddock, hake, halibut
Monkfish
Orange roughy
Farmed salmon (aka Atlantic salmon)
Shark
Skate
Red snapper
Grouper
Imported caviar
Swordfish
American tuna
Tilefish

Listed as the top 7 clean, omega-3-rich fish are wild-caught salmon from Alaska, barramundi, sardines, anchovies, Atlantic herring, Atlantic mackerel, and farmed oysters.

After reading this book, I stopped into a vitamin store and on my way out, the clerk handed me none other than a little credit card listing mercury levels in fish! It pretty much agreed with Ms. Block's conclusions, highlighting the ever popular canned tuna. High in mercury: tuna (ahi, yellowfin, bigeye, canned albacore). Medium level of mercury: canned chunk light tuna and skipjack tuna. No tuna of any sort is listed as low in mercury levels on either listing, sadly enough. Also, one of my favorites that didn't make Betsy's list made the "medium level" list from the vitamin shop - mahi mahi.

So what does this all mean? Well, for me, it means less canned tuna around here and more Alaskan salmon. It does not yet mean pizza with anchovies. Yuck. Also, if you take fish oil supplements, make sure they are from a reputable company and are labeled as mercury free. Again, I like Nordic Naturals.

Clean Food, by Terry Walters

Picked up a new book today at Barnes & Noble, and found a new hero in its author, Terry Walters. Subtitled "A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source," this book contains more than 200 recipes made from clean, whole foods based on what's in season. Terry Walters, a holistic health practitioner, so eloquently puts into words in her book's introduction what I constantly rant and rave about to friends and family. So, here's what she says. Wish I had said it first.

"In this country, the topic of food is charged with emotion and controversy. The whole meals of my past are now an illusion. Nothing is as it appears on the surface. Our produce departments and grocery store shelves are lined with unknowns - pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, chemical additives, and process upon process, stripping our food of its inherent nutritional value. Behind each glass of milk or piece of meat is an agenda, a lobbyist, a Fortune 500 company, a distribution chain, a processing plant...you need to squint to see the farmer and you need binoculars to find the cow!" (Did I mention this woman is my new hero?!)

She goes on: "The further we remove ourselves from the source of our food, the less we are able to maintain physical and emotional balance. Our processed food diets are so lacking in nutrition that we require coffee to wake up, sugar to get through the day, television to calm down, alcohol to let go of our inhibitions, chocolate and ice cream to feel satisfied, pills to sleep through the night and drugs to provide us with the illusion of health. The vitamins and nutrients that were so rich in my mother's whole meals are hard to come by, and the nourishment from that mealtime is even more rare. Have we become a society that is artificially sustained?"

I cannot rave about this book enough! And I plan to spend the next year attempting all of its seasonal recipes, finding new favorites and enjoying the healthy cooking journey.