Jonny Bowden's Blog, page 30

Honey Drumsticks with Calorie-Burning Cayenne

Can chicken drumsticks be healthy?

You bet. Just add a bunch of terrific spices such as metabolism-boosting cayenne pepper and the anti-inflammatory, anticancer superspice turmeric, accompany with a great salad, and you’re in business!

This recipe was developed by Chef Jeannette Bessinger, the Clean Food Coach, for our book, The 150 Healthiest 15-Minute Meals on Earth.

 

Ingredients:

8 chicken drumsticks (about 2 ½ pounds raw)

1-teaspoon garlic granules

1 teaspoon of onion powder

1 teaspoon of paprika

¾ teaspoon chili powder

¾ teaspoon cayenne powder

1-teaspoon ground cumin

¾ teaspoon turmeric

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons (28mg) lemon or lime juice (preferably fresh-squeezed)

¼ cup (85g) honey

 

Instructions:

Preheat grill to medium (or preheat the broiler). Make two deep diagonal cuts across the meaty part of each drumstick. In a gallon-size zip-closure bag, mix together garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, chili powder, cayenne, cumin, turmeric, and salt.

Add drumsticks to the bag and move them around until evenly coated, pressing the spices into the cut grooves. Place drumsticks on a lightly oiled grill or broiler pan and cook for 15 to 20 minutes (depending on plumpness) or until nearly done.

While chicken is cooking, in a small bowl, whisk together the lemon and honey. Divide the mixture and use half to baste the chicken for the last minute of cook time. When chicken is off heat baste the remaining citrus honey before serving.

Life-Work Balance: Myth or Misconception?

Not long ago, the German carmaker Daimler gave its employees a gift– less workplace email. When a Daimler employee goes on vacation now, anyone who emails him gets an autoresponder referring the writer to another employee who’s currently on call, and then—get this—the email disappears.

Poof. Like Mission Impossible. Just evaporates.

Then, when the employee comes back from vacation, he’s not looking at seven hundred unanswered emails. “The idea behind it is to give people a break and let them rest,” said a Daimler spokesperson in an interview with Time magazine.

What Daimler’s doing might sound to you like a ridiculous idea or it might sound like your idea of workplace heaven. That’s almost beside the point. What is the point is that Daimler—and other companies—are beginning to recognize that the lines between “work” and “life” have gotten increasingly blurred, and that it’s in everyone’s interest that we try to find some balance.

So let’s talk about that for a minute.

We’re only talking about the concept of “work-life” balance because there’s an increasingly disturbing feeling out there in the community ether that our “work” life has become way too intrusive on our “real” lives. There’s an undercurrent of sadness and resignation—you can feel it when you talk to people about these things—that we no longer make any time for ourselves, and that the time we do try to make for ourselves is contaminated by constant interruptions from work-related emails and texts.

Hence the question: How do you find work-life balance?

The real issue here is not a set of firm, fast rules for how much “time” to spend on each. It’s also not to figure out exactly when you should disconnect the work phones.

The real issue is something psychologists call “agency”.

Let me explain.

“Agency” is the sense that you are in control, that you are steering the ship, that you are the “agent” responsible for what is happening in your life. People who have no sense of agency frequently feel powerless, are constantly stressed, and often wind up depressed. No wonder. A lack of agency equals powerlessness, and no one feels particularly good about that one.

I believe the overriding theme in “work-life” balance is not so much time management, but agency.management. Think about it for a minute. You’re out to dinner with someone you’re trying to get to know—or do a deal with—or go to bed with—or deepen your friendship with—or any of a dozen other things—and you put your phone on the table.

It rings. It dings. It texts. “Excuse me, just have to take this for a minute”, you say. Then—“OK what were you saying again? Your mom has leukemia? Oh, I’m so sorry. Wait, excuse me, just have to take this, it’s work..”

Look, I may be exaggerating, but not by much. That phone on the table is a subtle reminder that you are NOT in charge here. You are in reactive mode, not authorship mode. You are reacting to random stimuli (an e mail–a text–something urgent at work–a new facebook posting of kittens dancing) and suddenly whatever interaction you were engaged in immediately gets bumped to second place while you deal with the latest intrusion into your personal space.

This is not what being in charge of your own life looks like. It’s what’s being a puppet looks like, even if the strings are invisible and of your own creation.

So the real issue here is not so much how you divide your time between work and play, but how you live your life—as cause or as effect.

Once you take a stand that you will be cause in the matter—whatever the matter is—things begin to shift for you. Whether you are “cause” in the matter of attending to a work emergency (and being fully present for that emergency and engaged with it), or whether you are “cause” of the matter of an intimate and quiet and uninterrupted dinner (and being fully present for that dinner and engaged with your dinner companion), it almost doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are not at the effect of random circumstances, but that you are the author of your own experience.

Begin owning your own experience, initiating your own interactions, and choosing what—and when—to engage with. And when you do engage, engage fully. Be present. Be mindful. Be aware.

Be conscious.

If you start with that premise—that it’s all about mindful engagement with whatever you choose to be engaged with—much of the “problem” of work-life balance begins to fade away.

And a sense of personal power—of personal integrity, wholeness, and engagement—starts to emerge.

A good first start—leave your phone in your pocket when you’re having dinner.

And turn the ringer off.

Saturated Fat Is Making a Comeback!

Saturated fat is making a comeback.

I know, I know. It’s hard to believe. After forty years of never being able to hear the term “saturated fat” without the modifier “artery-clogging”, after being told for more than four decades that saturated fat is “bad” fat that will lead to high cholesterol and heart disease, after obsessively banishing animal fats from our diet and replacing them with “healthier” fats like canola oil (insert “rolled eyes” here), the tables are finally turning, the tides are finally shifting, down is up and up is down, and in the Alice in Wonderland world of nutrition, eating fat is “in” again.

Of course, eating fat was never “out” to begin with, at least in some circles. The classic cookbook Nourishing Traditions by Weston Price Foundation director Sally Fallon and biochemist Mary Enig makes generous use of natural, traditional foods like full-fat dairy, cheese, and grass-fed meat. Atkins never swayed from his position that it was perfectly OK to eat fat and that the real problem in the American diet was sugar and starch. Researchers such as Eric Westman, M.D., at Duke and Jeff Volek, R.D., Ph.D, at the University of Connecticut have done study after study showing that higher fat / lower carb diets do none of the harm we were taught they do. Their studies show that properly done high fat diets produce a wealth of benefits including improved body composition and lower triglycerides.

And “cholesterol skeptics” like myself  have argued for years that the demonization of saturated fat has been based on little more than the dual notions that 1) saturated fat “raises” cholesterol, so therefore, 2) saturated fat causes heart disease. (The first is partially true, the second is completely false. More on that in a the next paragraph.)

We now know that the effect of saturated fat on cholesterol is far more complex than we previously thought—it actually raises HDL cholesterol (which is mostly good), lowers LDLb cholesterol (which is very clearly bad) and raises LDLa cholesterol (which is pretty much neutral). So your overall cholesterol number may well go up when you consume saturated fat, but you’re actually healthier!

Furthermore, we also know that cholesterol is turning out to be a piss-poor predictor of heart disease, so the whole issue of saturated fat’s effect on cholesterol becomes kind of a moot point.

The issue of saturated fat and heart disease, however continues to be of concern to many people, but even that concern is beginning (thankfully) to fade in light of recent research. Not long ago, Patty Siri-Tarino, Ph.D., and Ronald Krauss, M.D., of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute published a seminal study that showed clearly that the amount of saturated fat people eat predicts exactly nothing about their risk of cardiovascular disease. “Intake of saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease or stroke, nor was it associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease”, they wrote.

More recently, two separate studies, both published in the Annals of Internal Medicine —one by Rajiv Chowdhury, M.D., and one by Lydia Bazzano, M.D., Ph.D  — essentially came to the same conclusion.

So does this mean you should go out and eat nothing but bacon, butter and steak?

Not so fast, grasshopper.

While saturated fat has never, in my mind, been the culprit in anything, it’s important to remember that saturated fat behaves differently in the body depending on what it’s eaten with. If you’re eating a crummy, typical American diet high in processed carbs, starches and sugars, you probably should eat a low-fat diet.

But you shouldn’t be eating that kind of diet in the first place, at least not if you care about your health.

It’s also important to remember that fat—in general—is where toxins are stored. So if you’re eating fatty animals that were raised in horrific feedlot farm conditions, cattle that was fed grains, antibiotics, steroids and other hormones, that stuff’s going to wind up in their fat, and, if you eat it, it’s going to wind up in you. So although I have zero fear of saturated fat and consume copious amounts of it in my own diet, what I do NOT consume is feedlot meat—not because of the saturated fat, but because of the steroids, antibiotics and hormones it comes with. If the only meat available to me was the crap they serve in fast food restaurants and the stuff they sell in most grocery stores, I’d probably become a vegetarian.

Fortunately, grass-fed meat—which is a health food—is becoming much more widely available. Michelle recently discovered grass-fed meat at one of our favorite stores, Target. Yup, Target When she first told me about it, I figured something had to be wrong, but a little digging revealed that the source of Target’s meat is an absolutely wonderful farm called Thousand Hills Cattle.

These guys are the real deal—they truly care about their animals and their meat, and they produce an absolutely first-rate product that tastes as good as any meat I’ve ever eaten. And it’s 100% grass-fed, not “finished” on grain, as many other “grass-fed” meats are. Kudos both to Thousand Hills farms and to Target for making it available. Yes, it’s about a buck more than crappy meat. It’s worth it ten times over.

Earlier in the article I mentioned that “properly done” high-fat diets have the potential for enormous health benefits. (I’m currently working on a book with Steven Masley, MD, on just this topic—it will be published by Harper Collins in 2016. Stay tuned.)

What do I mean by “properly done”? Here are the Cliff Notes:

If you’re eating a diet rich in whole, unprocessed foods..
If you’re consuming plenty of vegetables, some low-sugar fruit like berries, and plenty of fiber from beans, legumes, nuts and non-starchy veggies
If you’re consuming wild (as opposed to farmed) salmon or grass-fed (as opposed to feedlot farmed) beef..

..then the amount you need to worry about the fat in your diet—including (but not limited to) saturated fat– is exactly zero.

As Walter Willet, M.D., Ph.D., the esteemed nutritional epidemiologist and head of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health has said on numerous occasions:

“The percentage of calories from fat in a diet (is not) related to any important health outcome.”

The Death of the American Breakfast Cereal?

The cereal business is in the toilet.

According to a report in the business section of the New York Times, sales of flaked cereals (like the iconic Corn Flakes) are down 5.5% and sales of all types of cereals are down 10.7%. The title of the print version of the article– Mikey Doesn’t Like It Very Much, Anymore– refers to the iconic 1974 television commercial in which two brothers are trying to get their very picky little brother to try a new “healthy” cereal called Life that neither of the brothers has any interest in eating.

“Let’s get Mikey to try it”, one of them says. “He won’t like it. He hates everything.”

Apparently, we are all Mikey now.

To which I say, “Hallelujah, brother!”

As someone who’s not exactly known for mincing words, let me be blunt: Cereal is crap. The overwhelming majority of it is processed dreck, nothing more than candy with a good PR campaign. The memes about cereal are implanted early in our lives—just think of your associations to Wheaties and Cherrios, two utterly useless food products each of which has over 20 grams of processed carbohydrates per serving. Wheaties in particular has benefited from one of the best public relations campaigns since “Betcha can’t eat just one”, which is why the first thing most of us think of when we hear “Wheaties” is “Breakfast of Champions”.

If you think that crap is really the “breakfast of champions”, then I’ve got some really lovely property to sell you right under the Brooklyn Bridge.

The god-awful, sclerotic American Dietetic Association—oh, excuse me, they’ve now renamed themselves the “American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics”, since they apparently think that a new name will make them seem more relevant —has been shoveling the party line about cereal being a great source of fiber for as long as I can remember, but that’s a load of unmitigated do-do. The average cereal has about 2-3 grams of fiber per serving. Compare that to the 11-17 grams per serving of beans or 8- 10 grams per avocado. Cereal as a “fiber heavyweight” is as much a myth as the Loch Ness monster.

And while many commercial cereals claim to only have a few grams of sugar, that’s more a function of creative labeling, fuzzy math, and hidden agendas– the same kind of thinking that winds up classifying ketchup as a vegetable. Manufacturers can be very creative when it comes to deciding which carbohydrates they consider “sugar”. And it doesn’t much matter anyway, because these processed carbs turn into sugar in the body faster than you can say “diabetes”. Fiber heavyweight? Sorry, Charlie.

I’m almost angrier about the poseurs like Life, Grape Nuts, Special K and Total, because they actually pretend to be health foods and lure unsuspecting, overworked moms into thinking that they’re doing their families a favor by feeding them this stuff. No one pretends that Lucky Charms and Captain Crunch are anything but candy, but many people believe that the “healthy” cereals like Life– which has 25 grams of carbohydrate, 6 grams of sugar, and a paltry 2 grams of fiber –are actually healthy.

Umm…..not so much.

Look, the field of nutrition is experiencing the beginning of what Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions called “a paradigm shift”. New research continues to pile up making it harder and harder to ignore the fact that we were bone-headedly wrong about saturated fat and cholesterol. Not coincidentally, it’s also becoming increasingly apparent that we were dead wrong about the demons in the American diet.

It was never dietary fat that was the enemy. It was never fat that was making us sick, fat, tired and depressed.

It was sugar. And foods that the body converts to sugar in a New York minute.

Like the overwhelming majority of commercial breakfast cereals.

So I’m not exactly shedding tears for General Foods and General Mills. They’ve been selling us this crap for decades, spending millions of marketing dollars to convince us that these cash cow food “products” are actually necessary for our health, while plying organizations like the American Dietetic Association with millions of sponsorship dollars to keep sending out the message that we should build our diet around healthy “complex” carbs.

And please, don’t buy into the marketing drivel about “whole grains”. You can’t pluck a grain from the earth and eat it—all grains require processing, and by the time a grain (whole or not) has been pounded and pulverized into flour, or turned into a flake of “Special K”, you might as well be eating pure sugar. Why do you think they have to “fortify” cereals in the first place? They’re just putting back tiny amounts of the vitamins and minerals that were lost in the processing. You might as well take a multi-vitamin and save the calories.

When it comes to commercial breakfast cereal, I feel like the kid who’s been shouting “the emperor has no clothes—(and by the way, his body’s not that great either)” for about a decade.

Except now the grown-ups are finally paying attention.

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my-single-biggest-challenge

My Single Biggest Challenge

If I had to pick the single biggest challenge I have as a health educator, it would be this: Getting people to look beyond the headlines. (Omega-3’s cause prostate cancer! Saturated fat causes heart disease! Vegetable oils are “good for us”!) Looking deeper doesn’t come naturally to us—we’re a sound bite society with a short […]

Does it Really Cost More to Eat Healthy?

I want to talk to you about two subjects virtually everyone is interested in: food and money. Specifically, I want to address the frequently heard complaint that it costs much more to eat healthy. Don’t worry—I’m not going to give you a lecture about how much broccoli you could eat for the price of a Big Mac, […]

Does it Really Cost More to Eat Healthy?

I want to talk to you about two subjects virtually everyone is interested in: food and money.

Specifically, I want to address the frequently heard complaint that it costs much more to eat healthy.

Don’t worry—I’m not going to give you a lecture about how much broccoli you could eat for the price of a Big Mac, or how, if you were really inventive, you could make a four course nutrient dense meal for the price of two large bags of Dorito’s and a 2 liter coke.

That stuff may be true, but it doesn’t speak to your experience, which is that calories are generally cheap, and good food (like grass-fed meat) isn’t. And that it takes a lot of work (and time!) to make healthy food that’s economically viable, while dropping by the take-out window at Taco Bell takes neither.

So let me start by saying two words about that: It’s true.

And let me follow it with two more: So what?

Now before you think I’m being calloused and unsympathetic, hear me out. When President Herbert Hoover spoke inspiringly of putting “a chicken in every pot”, chicken was an expensive commodity—in 1930, you’d pay a whopping $6.48 a pound for chicken (in today’s currency). Last year, in contrast, the price was $1.57.

So this is a good thing, right?

Well, yes and no.

See, one of the casualties of modern life is we’ve lost the ability to think ahead. We’re so focused on the now, on immediate ratification, that few of us stop to think of long range costs. This is why we have a credit card crisis in America. This is why “buy now pay later” is virtually the national anthem. And it affects every area of our lives. People lease cars based on how much their monthly payment is, not how much the real cost of the lease is over 3 years. We pay the minimum requirements on our credit card. We eat what tastes delicious now and figure we’ll start our diet “tomorrow”. Everything in modern life is skewed to sacrifice long range consequences on the altar of immediate reward. If it feels good now, do it—and worry about the consequences later.

And you can see just how well that’s been working out.

So sure, we can now get chicken for a buck and a half a pound. But the real costs of that “bargain” are hidden. Chickens are bred to grow breasts so large that they literally topple over and can barely breathe or stand. They are shot full of hormones, steroids and antibiotics (a contributing factor in the looming crisis around antibiotic-resistant bacteria). Many health professionals feel the “meat-cancer” connection that seems to show up in some association studies has little to do with meat and everything to do with the chemicals and hormones that the meat is filled with.

Sure, you can buy that kind of meat a lot cheaper than you can buy pasture-raised. But you’re kicking the can down the road. You may not be paying more cash at the register right now—but payment will come due just as sure as death and taxes, and it won’t be cheap.

That many diseases and conditions are lifestyle related is no longer in doubt. Lifestyle choices—and dietary choices especially—have a huge influence on cancer, cognitive impairment, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Calories are cheap in the standard American Diet, but the costs of that diet are anything but. You just don’t have to pay for them right now.

But pay for them you will. Make absolutely no mistake about that.

So does it cost more money to eat healthy? Sure it does—at least at first. But it costs even more not to eat well. You might not notice it right now, today, at the cash register. But a decade or two from now, the bill will come due.

And it won’t be fun.

Look, one of the most difficult lessons any of us as parents have to teach our children is to look at the long range picture. A 20 year old doesn’t care about what happens when he’s forty (let alone sixty)—he cares about Friday night. (That’s why it’s so hard to get kids to save money.)

But are we adults really any different?

Look, I have an advantage over a lot of you in that I’m in my 60’s and I know how this game turns out. I’m passionate about making people understand how much it matters to eat well when they’re younger because I know what it feels like “on the other side”. I’m 67, look 47, feel 37, and act 27. I have boundless energy. I get up without an alarm clock at 6 AM. I play tennis every day. I have a healthy libido and a wonderful relationship. I have a great career, amazing health, an optimistic outlook and I look forward to every day.

And I know—I know—that’s because I’ve been eating well (albeit a bit more “expensively”) since I was 38. And, like a person who’s been putting a few bucks away every month since he’s twenty and now, at 70, is enjoying millionaire status, I’m enjoying the results of 30 years of spending a little more and eating a little better.

And I can tell you that it’s worth it. Big time.

So does meat from grass-fed cows, eggs from free-range chicken, organic coffee and milk and strawberries and all the rest of it cost more? Sure it does. In the short run.

But if you can lift your head over the horizon to see the long view, that extra cash you’re laying out now will pay off in benefits you can’t even imagine.

Do the math. And then tell me whether or not it’s worth it.

I think it’s a no-contest. How about you?

You’re Probably Not Getting Enough of This Critical Nutrient…

I’m often asked by magazines to compile lists of the most important supplements to take on a regular basis. One supplement that always makes the cut—no matter what—is magnesium, and here’s why. First of all, magnesium deficiency can affect virtually every single organ system in the body. It’s involved in more than 300 enzyme reactions […]

You’re Probably Not Getting Enough of This Critical Nutrient…

I’m often asked by magazines to compile lists of the most important supplements to take on a regular basis. One supplement that always makes the cut—no matter what—is magnesium, and here’s why.

First of all, magnesium deficiency can affect virtually every single organ system in the body. It’s involved in more than 300 enzyme reactions in the body, including fat, protein, and glucose metabolism, muscle and membrane transport, and energy production.

In a classic article called The Importance of Magnesium to Human Nutrition, Michael Schachter, M.D, devotes a full four paragraphs to the possible symptoms and problems associated with getting too little magnesium—they range from salt and carbohydrate cravings to panic attacks, PMS, mitral valve prolapse, palpitations, cramps, muscle tensions, and insomnia.

When I was a personal trainer and clients came to me with muscle cramps, the first order of business was always to make sure they were getting enough magnesium and potassium through supplements and food. That almost always takes care of the problem.

Second of all, it’s a relaxer—magnesium actually helps open up the blood vessel walls, making it very important for keeping blood pressure in a healthy range. (In fact, magnesium is one of the key recommended supplements in the nutritional protocol at the highly regarded Hypertension Institute in Nashville. You can read about it in my friend Mark Houston, MD, MA’s excellent book, “What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Hypertension.”)

Third of all, it’s terrific for helping to lower or at least stabilize blood sugar, making it a top supplement in virtually all of the intelligent diabetes protocols I’ve ever seen. Magnesium also plays a critical role in the secretion and action of insulin. In the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, the risk for developing type 2 diabetes was significantly greater in both men and women with a lower intake of magnesium.

Speaking of which, almost no one is getting enough. Surveys consistently show that almost 3/4 of all Americans don’t even get even the paltry amount recommended in the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) developed by the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (formerly National Academy of Sciences). (Those numbers range from 310 mg a day to 420 mg a day depending on sex, age and pregnancy, and most nutritionists I know, including me, consider them laughingly and inappropriately low.) According to a study in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 68% of American consumed less than the recommended daily allowance of this critical mineral. Even the National Institutes of Health states that “dietary intake may not be high enough to promote an optimal magnesium status, which may be protective against disorders such as cardiovascular disease and immune dysfunction”.

So magnesium supplements always make my list of “most important to take on a daily basis”.

Which brings me to Effervescent Magnesium Citrate by DaVinci Labs.

While I take many of my supplements in pill form, I’m also a big fan of mixing them into shakes and drinks when an appropriate form can be found. I’ve tried mixing regular magnesium powder into shakes and, frankly, it usually doesn’t taste very good. What I love about effervescent magnesium citrate is it actually tastes like an orange drink. You can drink it by itself, mixed in water, or with a whole concoction of other powders, like I do. In fact, the orange, stevia-sweetened powder adds a nice fizzy texture and flavor to even icky tasting powders like the kind I drink regularly!

Now, instead of holding my nose when I drink down my daily morning powdered supplement mix, I actually look forward to it.

One small scoop provides 420 mg of magnesium citrate, and—just for good measure—a very nice 390 mg of potassium to boot.

This is a great product that I use every single day. Highly recommended! Try it now »