How to Cut Open the Mighty, Prickly Pineapple

Although most people picture Hawaii as the place to find pineapples, Christopher Columbus, the same explorer who "sailed the ocean blue" to discover the Americas for Spain, found pineapples on the island of Guadalupe. Landing on the island in 1493, on his second trip to the New World, he came upon a Carib Indian village, with serpent designs carved into pillars and this strange fruit that Columbus described as looking like a pine cone but tasting sweet like an apple. I suppose that's where the name pine-apple came from.


Pineapples are gorgeous in their natural skins. The real beauty is in the aroma and taste of the succulent fruit inside, as it presents itself to any kitchen knife wielding home cook who can conquer the prickly prize. There's an art to opening a pineapple. Without this precious knowledge you could end up with stinging finger pricks, giant fruit flying across a slippery counter onto the floor, or a long tedious ordeal trying to peel the skin off this elusive treat.


Oh, you could go buy cut-up pineapple. But where's the fun of that? Who ever got bragging rights for opening a plastic container? Right. So here you go: How to cut open a pineapple in five easy steps.

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1. When a pineapple is ripe, its leaves should be fresh and green, the fruit's body firm. With clean hands, lay the pineapple on its side and cut of the top, 1/2 inch or so below the leaves. Now cut 1/2 inch off the bottom.

2. Now you can stand that beast on end and slice away the tough skin, deep enough to get most of the "eyes" out.

3. From here you have a choice. Lay the pineapple back down and slice it into rings, coring the center of each slice, or ...






keep the fruit upright and slice it carefully into quarters, like the one on the right.







4.  If you cut it this way, you still need to remove the tough core. Just lay each quarter on its side and slice off the hard center in one go.






5.  Now you're ready to create toothpick worthy chunks.

Hello, party.

Which Came first, Big Gulp or Couch Potato?

Mayor Bloomberg’s scratched proposal to ban “big-gulp” over-sized sodas from New York restaurants sparked predictable public objections from the highly profitable soda industry.  Bans like this would mean the soda industry is “being demonized and discriminated against” said Steve Cahillane, president and CEO of Coca-Cola Company’s Refreshments unit.*  Demons aside, the soda industry has a point

There is a lot more to the obesity epidemic than the amount of sugary soda children and adults are drinking.  Although, ask any dietitian and they’ll tell you that one of the best ways to cut calories is by switching from soda to water. But colas were around when your great-grandparents stopped for lunch, and there were far fewer obese Americans in the early 1900’s.

Here are some differences between their generation and ours, all of which may be contributing to the obesity epidemic:

• 1.      The amount of time the average American child or adult spent sitting in front of a TV, radio, computer, or video game vs. the amount of time they were up and moving around.

• 2.      The size of the soda they were drinking, and the ratio of soda to water, milk or other beverages in their daily diets.

• 3.      How many advertisements for junk food they saw or heard in a day. How many fast food restaurants they passed in a day, or week.

• 4.      How far they walked in a week, and the access to safe sidewalks and roadside pathways compared to today. The use of bicycles as transportation, especially among the young.

• 5.      Frequency of meals eaten at home, cooked by a parent from fresh produce , whole grains, and locally sourced meat, fish, and eggs. No matter whether they lived in a city or in a rural area.

So you see, it wasn’t JUST the size of the drink. It was the size of every portion, the quality of food, the family making time to cook and eat together, the amount of non-chair time in a day, and the freedom from a constant bombardment of junk-food marketing. The soda industry does have a point, obesity isn’t all their fault by any means.

But they’re also missing the point. Huge portions of empty calories are a major contributor to obesity. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine reported in 2010* that “Preload experiments generally have found that sweet taste, whether delivered by sugar or artificial sweeteners, enhanced human appetite.” They noted that people’s “food reward pathways”… the things that stimulate our brains and appetites, were only partially rewarded, leaving diet soda drinkers craving more calories and more sweet flavors. 

To cite Coca Cola Inc.’s pro-active anti-obesity measures, Cahillane told the Associated Press  "We're offering more and more diets and lights and we're spending more and more of our money advertising diets and lights to give people a choice to bring their calorie count down."  More money advertising soda, that’s their contribution? Um, thanks?

Sorry soda industry, but as a nutritional wellness ambassador I wish your “big gulp” drinks would go away... from lack of interest! Soda, is one of the worst “red light foods” and should be considered a when-all-else-fails (and there’s no beer, or drinkable water) choice. Still, if Bloomberg HAD banned large soda drinks, would New Yorkers stop getting fat and out of shape? Of course not. Plus, it treads shaky legal ground. The silver lining is, we got people’s attention. I hope kids were listening, because informing children of soda’s downside, especially when this news is not just from parents, is a great idea.

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~ images courtesy  www.kickthecan.info

quoted: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/coca-cola....

research included:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/

the Search for the Miracle Diet book

January is the time of year when the mighty masses, from lithe yoga instructors to heavy-set sallow-faced pre- and post- heart surgery patients make a beeline for the diet section of the bookstore. Fresh from college or retirement party, they gingerly pick at the vast selection of diet titles, or go straight for the latest fad-diet best-seller. Some leave empty-handed in frustration. 

Am I a vegan or a Paleo? Do I want to get healthy or skinny? Will healthy food make me thin? Will diet smoothies make me healthy? Will my kids eat this stuff??

Can we go home now?

Of course you can. It's a new year; time to ask the real experts, and get some coaching. If your doctor says you’re pretty healthy, come join a wellness workshop or combine a cooking class with a nutrition app to help you get started (again). If your doctor says you have metabolic syndrome, or “pre-diabetes” go immediately to a dietitian! This is no time to see what Her Royal Princess did, or trust the word of some website called “lose 100 pounds in 15 days”. Her Royal Princess doesn’t have a 4 to midnight schedule waiting tables, isn’t raising three rambunctious boys, dealing with family medical issues, or flying to sales conferences every week. And the site that claims you can lose 100 pounds in 15 days isn’t the Mayo Clinic. They ain’t objective.

Speaking of objective, nutrition science has been making huge advances lately in our knowledge base, but meanwhile everyone with a program or wellness product is cherry-picking “news” that makes them look like they have the secret to your weight loss and health. The true secret is, when it comes to your body, don't rely on something that sounds way too damn simple to be true. Your beautiful body is one complex organism. Your adult intestines are about 26 feet long!

Talk to someone who can put themselves in your shoes, or join a group of people IN your shoes, because what you put on your lunch plate has everything to do with where you are in life and where you’re trying to go. After that, you’ll know which book to buy. Do you need to eat on the go? Perhaps you should avoid the slow-cooker health plan in favor of an app that helps you find nourishing restaurants in any city. While the 25 healthiest foods may be the same for nearly everyone, your method of getting them is yours only.

Hey, Happy New Year!  May your wishes become your path to success in 2013.

Food and Politics: Time for a divorce!

Here's the beef: I want to be able to walk into any food establishment without having to "declare" my stance on gay marriage. Don't you?

As a nutritional wellness advocate and food lover, it disturbs me when people label food as "elitist" or "patriotic". Before the Dan Cathy Chick-fil-A vs. Muppet food fight over the rights of gays to marry, there was a small media firestorm over what (then) candidate Barack Obama put on his hamburger. Spicy mustard, what what? How "un-American", his opponents cried. (Ketchup, apparently, was a Republican domain.)

This is ridiculous! The only labels you should ever apply to food fall into these categories:

1. Health factors
2. Taste
3. Freshness
4. Real or Fake.

Some say you are what you eat, and in a nutritional sense there's some truth to that. But to claim that certain foods make you more or less American, religious, liberal, conservative, elitist or populist is just a bunch of bologna (unhealthy and lacking in taste). Good, healthy whole food and spices are for everyone, and artificial over-salted over-sugared food that clogs your arteries and fogs up your mind are for nobody. Well OK, there are times and places... the Thanksgiving pecan pie, the annual bar-b-que festival... when a little brain fog and indigestion is felicitous.

There's a lot of danger in applying political labels to food. That danger lies in more than our solidarity as a nation: the option of eating lunch with our co-worker without having to worry about the political or religious ramifications of our sandwich condiments. The real danger of politicizing food this way is when it takes away from the message of nutritional health, and causes people to gravitate to different camps. One camp full of "elitist" food like organic strawberries, soymilk, and all sorts of ethnically seasoned delicious fresh food while another "average Joe" group stays in the fast-food and potato-chip camp.

Here, from Chick-fil-A's website, are the ingredients in their signature Chicken Sandwich. You want to label food? Here's a label for you:

Chicken (100% natural whole breast filet, seasoning [salt, monosodium glutamate, sugar, spices, paprika], seasoned coater [enriched bleached flour {bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid}, sugar, salt, monosodium glutamate, nonfat milk, leavening {baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate}, spice, soybean oil, color {paprika}], milk wash [water, whole powdered egg and nonfat milk solids], peanut oil [fully refined peanut oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness and dimethylpolysiloxane an anti-foaming agent added]), bun (enriched flour [wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate {Vitamin B1}, riboflavin {Vitamin B2}, folic acid], water, high fructose corn syrup, yeast, contains 2% or less of each of the following: liquid yeast, soybean oil, nonfat milk, salt, wheat gluten, soy flour, dough conditioners [may contain one or more of the following: mono- and diglycerides, calcium and sodium stearoyl lactylates, calcium peroxide], soy flour, amylase, yeast nutrients [monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate], calcium propionate added to retard spoilage, soy lecithin, cornstarch, butter oil [soybean oil, palm kernel oil, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavor, TBHQ and citric acid added as preservatives, and artificial color]), pickle (cucumbers, water, vinegar, salt, lactic acid, calcium chloride, alum, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate [preservatives], natural flavors, polysorbate 80, yellow 5, blue 1).

http://www.chick-fil-a.com/Food/Menu-Detail/ChickfilA-Chicken-Sandwich#?details=ingredients 

I defy you to find sodium aluminum phosphate, TBHQ, calcium peroxide, or "yeast nutrients" in your home pantry. But that's a whole nuther blog.

Raise a glass to choosing to feed yourself, your children, and your lovers fresh healthy REAL food, and not having to label yourself in the process.