Photo by Flickr user Tavallai.

These days, the classic wedge salad—wherein the chef smothers a chunk of crisp Iceberg lettuce with creamy blue cheese dressing, and crumbles bacon all over the top—is seen as a cornerstone of American “comfort food.”

The dish is also often credited with single-handedly causing an “Iceberg comeback.” All of this raises the question: Did this crisp salad green, the “polyester of  lettuce,” really go so far away that it needed to come back? And if so, can one menu item really make a difference?

But first a note—for those who aren’t old enough to remember—about just how ubiquitous Iceberg lettuce once was. Introduced for commercial production in the late 1940s, Iceberg (or crisphead) lettuce was the only variety bred to survive cross-country travel (the name Iceberg comes from the piles of ice they would pack the light green lettuce heads in before the advent of the refrigerated train car). Therefore, throughout the middle of the century, unless you grew your own or dined in a high-end establishment, iceberg essentially was lettuce.

Most of the nation’s lettuce is grown in California, and in 1974, leafy green “non-crisphead” varieties of lettuce still made up only around five percent of the total acres grown in California. Then things changed. For one, consumers became more aware of the nutritional value of greens that are, well, greener. (Made of a high percentage of water, iceberg has only around 1/20th the amount of vitamins as the darker leafy greens, says David Still, a plant science professor at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona.)

America’s everyday lettuce for half a century was losing market share. By 1995, other lettuce varieties made up to around 30 percent of the lettuce American’s ate, and it has been rising steadily since, according to the California Leafy Greens Research Programs (a salad industry group). That’s precisely why, by 2007, the Salinas, California-based Tanimura and Antle—the nation’s largest lettuce supplier—decided it needed to start promoting Iceberg. And rather than compete with varieties that have more flavor or nutrition, Tanimura and Antle went straight for nostalgia, and opted to draw a connection to steaks, fathers, and sports. A press release from the time reads:

Mother’s Day has strawberries, Thanksgiving has celery, but historically no holiday has been associated with Iceberg lettuce,” says Antle. “What better product to claim ownership of Father’s Day than the cornerstone salad of steakhouse menus?

Wal-Mart, Albertsons, and several other big retailers hung signs and banners promoting the campaign, and sales got a boost. The company also planted wedge salad recipes around the food media world, in hopes that they would inspire chefs to return to this American Classic.

It’s hard to say whether the Father’s Day angle made a difference, but the larger effort to reconnect to Iceberg to simpler times with fewer complicated health choices appears to have worked. Sort of.

On the one hand, chefs like the fact that Iceberg is a completely neutral way to add crunch and filler to an otherwise flavorful medley of ingredients. So it appears that this classic salad will be sticking around on menus for a while. (Last fall the San Francisco Chronicle ran a list of nearly a dozen upscale restaurants serving some variation on the wedge salad, including everything from croutons, to apple, walnuts, and avocado. One Napa restaurant even serves it with the Iceberg frozen for extra crispness.)

On the production level, however, Iceberg may never return to it’s reigning position. It’s a little cheaper to grow and has long been easy to ship and store (the name Iceberg is said to come from the way the round lettuces were shipped by train in big piles of ice), but it has a hard time standing up to romaine, butter, and all the other specialty greens that have become popular in recent years.

This also appears to be true outside the U.S. In 2011, for example, UK-based Telegraph declared: “The era of Iceberg lettuce is over,” as “bagged leaf varieties such as [arugula] and watercress are up by 37 per cent compared to last year.” Of course, it may never be hard to find Iceberg lettuce in fast food tacos and Sizzler salad bars.  But the decline of Iceberg might also signal some good news for Americans’ diets.

“Iceburg sales have gone down, but romaine has gone up,” says Mary Zischke from the California Leafy Greens Research Programs. “Tastes have changed. And the darker, leafy greens have a better story to tell from a nutrition standpoint.”

Compared to 20 years ago, Zischke added, “there are a lot more choices. Especially in some parts of the country, like the Midwest.” Overall, she’s glad to report that: “The product mix has changed, but our [greens] industry has also gotten bigger.”

Photo: holtmi

Give a baby her first spoonful of mashed spinach or blended brussell sprouts and you can likely watch her face pucker up in shocked torment. Veggies tend to be a dreaded childhood bane for many youngsters, yet there are exceptions to the vegetable hate rule. Sweet potatoes and carrots, for example, tend to score highly. But why is that? As a general rule, much of our likes and dislikes spawn from sweetness – or at least our perception of it.

Evolutionarily, we’re programmed to like sweetness, since it’s indicative of calorie-rich sugar. Millennia ago, when we were just beginning our evolutionary journey as Homo sapiens, those individuals who preferred and thus consumed sugar had an edge. Sugar imparts a quick energy boost, so desiring, locating and consuming sugar-rich food could mean the difference between out-maneuvering a predator, keeping warm during a cold night or bearing healthy children. Our closest relatives, such as chimpanzees, also share this propensity towards the sweet. Chimps regularly concoct creative ways to brave beehives to reach the sweet honey inside.    

In today’s world of car commutes, office jobs and sugary snacks, however, our attraction to sugar turns against us, helping to fuel an epidemic of obesity. The processed food industry realized this a long time ago when it dawned on them that cranking up the sugar content of even the most cardboard-like snack automatically makes it delicious to our primitive food brains. 

But sugar, it turns out, is not the only sweetness driver. The sweetness of a farmer’s market strawberry or a hand-picked blueberry comes largely from volatiles, or chemical compounds in food that readily become fumes. Our nose picks up on and interacts with dozens of these flavorful fumes in any given food, perfuming each bite with a specific flavor profile. The sensations received by smell and taste receptors interact in the same area of the brain, the thalamus, where our brain processes them to project flavors such as sweetness. ”The perception of sweetness in our brains is the sum of the inputs from sugars plus certain volatile chemicals,” said Harry Klee, a researcher with the university’s Horticulture Sciences Department and Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Program, said at the American Association of the Advancement of Science conference, held last week in Boston. “The volatiles act to amplify the sugar signal so that we actually think there’s more sugar in the food than is actually present.”

A dozen or more volatiles can occupy a single food. Some trigger the sensation of sweetness, others of bitterness or sourness. If we could better understand just how these chemicals interact in foods and in our brains, we could genetically tweak foods to be more to our liking.

Scientists from the University of Florida think that “fixing the flavor” of foods such as tomatoes would make them more appealing to shoppers, which on the long run may facilitate a healthier society. “If we make healthy things taste better, we really believe that people will buy them more, eat them more and have a healthier diet,” Klee said. “Flavor is just a symptom of a larger problem,” he continued. “We have bred crops for a higher yield, while quality and nutritional value have dropped.” 

What we think of as flavor actually has a great deal to do with the subtle smells of volatiles. Not convinced? The researchers predicted as much. In Boston, they whipped out samples of gummy bear-like candy (raspberry and blueberry Sunkist fruit gems to be specific) to prove the power of volatiles to the audience. As instructed by the Klee and his colleagues, I pinched my nose shut tight, then popped the candy into my mouth, chewed and swallowed half of it. As if I had a seriously stuffed up nose from a bad case of the flu, the candy felt squishy and lackluster on my tongue. This bland sensation, the researchers explained, is taste. Now, they instructed unplug your nose, and swallow the rest of the gummy candy. A wave of intense sweetness hit me like a sugary rainbow of fruity flavor. This is olfaction at work, explained Linda Bartoshuk, one of Klee’s colleagues at the university’s Center for Smell and Taste. “Who experienced a rush of flavor and sweetness that seemed about twice as powerful as before?” she asked. In a room of around 100 people, about half the hands shot up. 

Several years ago, Klee made a mission of saving the modern tomato’s flavor in the hopes of ultimately improving consumer health. Those efforts have led him down a winding vine of chemistry, genetics and food science. 

Rather than starting his investigation with tomato growers–who are paid to churn out attractive tomatoes, not make a flavorful food–Klee began with consumers, or the people who buy and eat tomatoes. He wanted to understand what makes good and bad flavor on a molecular level. Figuring out the formula for creating a delicious tomato that still maintains the high yields and disease resilience of the watery, bland supermarket offerings could give growers an easy-to-implement toolkit for improving their offerings.  

Klee and his colleagues ground up dozens of tomato variety, then asked 100 different people to sample the fruits of the researchers’ labor and report back on their favorites and least favorites. Using that feedback, the researchers could identify which of the tomatoes’ more than 400 volatiles actually drove flavor. What they found indicated that consumers prefer tomatoes with a perceived sweetness – emphasis on “perceived.”

For example, yellow jelly beans, a breed of tomato, contain around 4,500 milligrams of sugar per 100 milliliters. A matina tomato, on the other hand, contains around 4,000 mg per 100 ml. Yet people perceive matinas as being about twice as sweet as yellow jelly beans. Volatiles drive the perception of what we think is sweetness in these two tomatoes.

Typically supermarket variety tomatoes vary in their sugar content, but they usually range from around 2,000 to 2,500 mg per 100 ml. The cherry tomato varieties typically sit in the 3,000 to 3,500 mg per ml range.

Just 15 to 20 volatiles control the majority of a tomato’s flavor, the researchers found.  ”Some of the most abundant chemicals in a tomato have absolutely no influence on whether people like it or not,” Klee said.

This knowledge in hand, they went about creating a recipe for the perfect tomato, which resembles an heirloom. Their ideal fruit represents the average of what the research participants ranked as their preferred tomato. While absolute individual preferences may vary by demographics, cultures and whether or not someone is a supertaster, Klee believes that nearly everyone would agree that “this is a really good tomato.” 

The next step, Klee says, is to move those desirable traits into the high yielding varieties of tomatoes. In the lab, he and his team successfully crossed modern tomatoes with their perfected heirloom, creating a hybrid. The new tomato maintains the deliciousness of the volatile-laden heirloom but produces twice as much fruit and keeps the modern strain’s resistance to disease. So far, yields aren’t quite at the level to convince commercial growers to change their ways, but Klee believes production improvements will get his tomato to the marketplace eventually. 

“Can volatiles enhance sweetness while reducing our use of sugars and artificial sweeteners?” Bartoshuk posed. “We think: yes.”

Salt is only one spice in the cabinet, and not the only one that matters. Photo by Ross Heutmaker.

In the culinary world, it’s clear that the last decade has been a fairly salt-centric one. In the early 2000s, chefs returned to the tradition of salting meat several hours to several days in advance of cooking it. And Thomas Keller, famed French Laundry chef, called salt “the new olive oil.”

“It’s what makes food taste good,” said Kitchen Confidential author Anthony Bourdain. And they’re right, of course; salt is an easy win, whether you’re cooking at home or in a professional setting. But has our love for the stuff gone too far?

In this meditation on American chefs’ love of salt for TIME Magazine, written around the time a New York state legislator proposed banning it from restaurant kitchens, Josh Ozersky wrote:

The food marketplace is under constant pressure to make everything tastier, more explosive, more exciting, and salt is everyone’s go-to flavor enhancer because it opens up the taste buds. It’s basically cocaine for the palate — a white powder that makes everything your mouth encounters seem vivid and fun … The saltier foods are, the more we like them. And the more we like them, the more salt we get.

How do we slow down the treadmill? Well, for some, it’s not a choice. Take Jessica Goldman Foung – a.k.a. Sodium Girl.  She’s been on a strict low-sodium, salt-free diet since she was diagnosed with lupus in 2004 and faced kidney failure.

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” she recalls. “I could be on dialysis for the rest of my life, or I could try to radically change my diet. I already knew food was very powerful healer, so I figured I would try that first.”

Using the few low-sodium cookbooks she could find, Goldman Foung taught herself to cook. The books were helpful, but they were also written for an older population.

“They looked like text books, there was no color photography,” she says. “These were recipes that would prevent congestive heart failure, but they weren’t what you’d pull out before having dinner guests over.”

When she started blogging and writing her own recipes (and occasionally finding ways to visit restaurants, with the help of some very generous chefs), Goldman Foung decided to take a different approach. “I didn’t want to apologize for the fact that it was salt-free. I wanted to make something so good, the fact that was salt-free would be an after-thought.”

So Goldman Foung went about experimenting with ways to build flavor without sodium, all while keeping a detailed record on her blog. And this month, as collection of recipes and tips called Sodium Girl’s Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook will appear on shelves, where she hopes it can impact the larger conversation around sodium.

Rather than just getting rid of the salt, Goldman Foung has also developed a finely-tuned sense of how sodium work in all foods.

Goldman Foung has experimented with a range of spices, but before she does that, she looks to whole foods for a variety of flavors. “You don’t even have to go to the spice rack. You can get peppery taste from raw turnips and radishes, you can get bitter taste from chicories, and natural umami from tomatoes and mushrooms. And you can get actual saltiness from a lot of foods themselves.

“Understanding where the sodium comes from helps you reduce it, but it also helps you utilize it to really increase flavor in your cooking,” she says. Beets and celery, for instance, are naturally higher in sodium than other vegetables, so Goldman Foung began using them to impart a “salty flavor” in things like Bloody Marys, pasta sauces, and soup bases. But they’re not the only foods have some that contain sodium. Take cantaloupes; it has 40 mg of sodium per serving, “which is probably why it pairs so well with Proscciuto,” Goldman Foung adds.

She also recommends playing around with other unlikely ingredients – oils, beer, etc. — and modes of cooking (think roasting or smoking) if you’re looking to eat less salt. Her latest fascination has been tamarind paste, which she uses to make a low-sodium teriyaki sauce (see below).

As Goldman Foung sees it, most Americans have developed a dependence on salt, and other high-sodium ingredients, without realizing it. But a gradual decrease in their use can open up a sensory realm many of us are missing out on.

“Once you really do adjust to less salt and actually start tasting your food, it’s a pretty stunning experience,” says Goldman Foung. “After tasting, say, grilled meat or a roasted pepper for the first time after losing the salt, you need very little else.”

The recipe below has been excerpted from Sodium Girl’s Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook.

Tamarind “Teriyaki” Chicken Skewers

Long before I discovered my love of sashimi, I fell in love with the viscous, sweet taste of teriyaki. With anywhere from 300 to 700mg of sodium per tablespoon, however, teriyaki chicken from the local takeout is now out of the question. So, to meet my cravings, I let go of the original dish and focused on finding a substitute with a similar color, thick coating, and unique flavor. The low-sodium answer lay in tamarind paste — a sweet and tart concentrate made from tamarind seed pods. It is popular in Indian, Middle Eastern, and East Asian cuisines, and can even be found in Worcestershire sauce. Its acidic properties help tenderize meat, and in Ayurvedic medicine it is said to have heart-protecting properties. Or in Western medicine speak, it may help lower bad cholesterol.

While it is no teriyaki, this tamarind sauce sure makes a convincing look-alike. The savory sweetness of the tamarind will delight your palate. If you have any leftover herbs in your kitchen, like mint, cilantro, or even some green onion, dice and sprinkle them over the chicken at the end for some extra color and cool flavor. And to make a traditional bento presentation, serve with a slice of orange and crisp lettuce salad.

Serves 6
1 tablespoon tamarind paste (or substitute with pomegranate molasses)
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons unseasoned rice vinegar
2 teaspoons molasses
1⁄4 teaspoon garlic powder
3 garlic cloves, diced
3⁄4 cup water plus 2 tablespoons
1 tablespoon corn starch
2 teaspoons sesame oil
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1⁄2-inch-wide strips
Bamboo skewers
White toasted sesame seeds, for garnish
2 green onions, thinly sliced (everything but the bulb), for garnish

+ In a small pot or saucepan, mix together the first 7 ingredients (tamarind paste to 3⁄4 cup water). Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, then reduce to low and cook for 10 minutes.

+ In a separate bowl, mix the cornstarch with the 2 tablespoons of water until it is dissolved and smooth. Add the cornstarch mixture to the pot and stir until it is well combined and the sauce begins to thicken like a glaze. Continue to cook and reduce by one third, 2 to 3 minutes. Then turn the heat to the lowest possible setting and cover the pot with a lid to keep the sauce warm.

+ In a large skillet, heat the sesame oil over medium-high heat. Add your chicken pieces and about a quarter of the sauce and cook for 5 minutes without stirring. Then toss the chicken pieces, doing your best to flip them over, adding another quarter of the sauce. Cook until the inside of the meat is white, 6 to 8 minutes more.

+ Remove the chicken from the heat and allow it to rest until the pieces are cool enough to handle. Weave the chicken onto the bamboo skewers, about 4 per skewer, and lay them flat on a serving dish or a large plate. Drizzle the remaining sauce over the skewers and sprinkle with white toasted sesame seeds and the sliced green onions. Serve and eat immediately.

+ Sodium count: Tamarind paste: 20mg per ounce depending on brand; Molasses: 10mg per 1 tablespoon; Chicken thigh (with skin): 87mg per 1⁄4 pound.

Filmmaker Byron Hurt’s father died at age 63 from pancreatic cancer. To the end, Hurt says, his father loved soul food, as well as fast food, and could not part with the meals he had known since childhood. Hurt began to look at the statistics. The rate of obesity for African Americans is 51 percent higher than it is for whites. He saw a long list of associated risks, including cancers, heart disease and diabetes. Black females and males are more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Looking around at his own community, Hurt had to ask, “Are we a nation of soul food junkies?” The search for an answer led him to his newest documentary, “Soul Food Junkies,” premiering tonight on PBS.

Filmmaker Byron Hurt with his mother, Frances Hurt, and sister, Taundra Hurt. He also made the documentary “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.” Courtesy of Byron Hurt

The film includes interviews with historians, activists and authors to create an informative and deeply personal journey through soul food’s history. Hurt unpacks the history of soul food, from its roots predating slavery to the Jim Crow South to the modern day reality of food deserts and struggles for food justice. One woman interviewed, who served Freedom Riders and civil rights activists in her restaurant’s early days, tells Hurt that being able to care for these men and women who found little love elsewhere gave her power.

Now a healthy eater, Hurt says he hopes the documentary can speak to others who find their families facing similar discussions around health, while also telling the story of soul food.

Soul Food Junkies examines the American cuisine from multiple perspectives. Photo by Shawn Escoffery

A lot of people give their definitions in the documentary, but how do you define soul food?

When I think about soul food, I think about my mother’s collard greens, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and sweet potato pies. I think about her delicious cakes, her black-eyed peas, her lima beans and her kale. That’s how I define real good soul food.

Was that what was typically on the table growing up?

It was a pretty typical meal growing up. Soul food was a really big part of my family’s cultural culinary traditions but it’s also a big part of my “family.” If you go to any black family reunion or if you go to a church picnic or you go to an [historically black college and university] tailgate party, you’ll see soul food present nine times out of ten.

Why do you think it’s persisted and is so popular?

Well, it’s a tradition and traditions really die hard. Soul food is a culinary tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation. People are very emotionally connected to it. When you talk about changing soul food, people become unsettled, territorial, resistant. It’s hard. A lot of people, to be quite honest with you, were very afraid of how I was going to handle this topic because people were afraid that I was going to slam soul food or say that we had to give up soul food and that soul food was all bad.

My intent was really to explore this cultural tradition more deeply and to try and figure out for myself why my father could not let it go, even when he was sick, even when he was dying. It was very difficult for him, so I wanted to explore that and expand it out to the larger culture and say what’s going on here? Why is it that this food that we love so much is so hard to give up?

Where does some of the resistance to change come from?

I think the sentiment that a lot of people have is that this is the food that my grandmother ate, that my great-grandfather ate, and my great-great-grandfather ate, and if it was good enough for them, then it is good enough for me, and why should I change something that has been in my family for generations?

Hurt still enjoys soul food, but he says he’s made significant changes in his preparation of it. Photo by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

How were you able to make the change?

Through education and awareness. There was this woman I was interested in dating years ago, when I first graduated from college. So I invited her over to my apartment and I wanted to impress her so I decided to cook her some fried chicken. I learned how to cook fried chicken from my mother.

She came over and I had the chicken seasoned up and ready to put into this huge vat of grease that had been cooking and boiling for awhile. She walked into the kitchen and said, “Are you going to put that chicken inside that grease?”

That was the first time that anyone had sort of challenged that. To me it was normal to cook fried chicken. Her mother was a nutritionist and so she grew up in a household where she was very educated about health and nutrition. So she said, this is not healthy. I had never been challenged before, she was someone I was interested in, so from that day forward I started to really reconsider how I was preparing my chicken.

When she challenged you, did you take it personally at first?

I think I was a little embarrassed. It was like she knew something that I didn’t know, and she was sort of rejecting something that was really important to me, so I felt a little embarrassed, a little bit ashamed. But I wasn’t offended by it. It was almost like, “Wow, this person knows something that I don’t, so let me listen to what she has to say about it,” and that’s pretty much how I took it.

Hurt says now when he visits soul food restaurants, he tends to fill his plate with vegetarian options, staying away from chicken and meats. Photo by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

How would you describe your relationship with soul food today?

I do eat foods that are a part of the soul food tradition but I just eat them very differently than how I ate them growing up. I drink kale smoothies in the morning. If I go to a soul food restaurant, I’ll have a vegetarian plate. I’ll typically stay away from the meats and the poultry.

The film looks beyond soul food to the issue of food deserts and presents a lot of people in those communities organizing gardens and farmers markets and other programs. Were you left feeling hopeful or frustrated?

I’m very hopeful. There are people around the country doing great things around food justice and educating people who don’t have access to healthy, nutritious foods and fruits and vegetables on how they can eat better and have access to foods right in their neighborhoods…I think that we’re in the midst of a movement right now.

How are people reacting to the film?

I think the film is really resonating with people, especially among African American people because this is the first film that I know of that speaks directly to an African American audience in ways that Food, Inc., Supersize Me, King Corn, The Future of Food, Forks over Knives and other films don’t necessarily speak to people of color. So this is really making people talk.

Check PBS for showtimes and healthy soul food recipes.

What puts the buzz in energy drinks? Photo courtesy Flickr user Like_The_Grand_Canyon

Beating the lazy, mid-afternoon summer heat with a cold energy drink?

Energy drinks are a staple among active Americans, who substitute the canned, sugary beverages for coffee or tea and have launched brands like Red Bull, Monster and Rockstar to the top of a $7.7 billion industry. Not only do energy drinks pack a caffeine-punch, they are filled with energy-boosting supplements.

It’s a tough call whether the benefits associated with supplemental boosters outweigh all the unhealthy sugars that give energy drinks their sweet flavor. Red Bull contains 3.19 grams of sugar per fluid ounce, Monster contains 3.38 g/oz. and Rockstar has 3.75 g/oz. Marketed as health drinks, energy drinks are as high in sugar as classic Coca-Cola, which contains 3.25 g/oz. of sugar.

So what exactly are those “energy-boosting natural supplements” that supposedly set energy drinks apart from other sugary beverages — and how do they affect the bodies of those who consume energy drinks?

Taurine: Although it sounds as though it was dreamed up in a test-lab, taurine isn’t foreign to the human body. Its name stems from the fact it was first discovered and isolated from ox bile, but the naturally-occurring supplement is the second-most abundant amino acid in our brain tissue, and is also found in our bloodstream and the nervous system.

The taurine used in energy drinks is produced synthetically in commercial laboratories. Since excess taurine is excreted by the kidneys, it’s improbable that someone could overdose on the supplemental form. To be on the safe side, one expert recommends staying under 3,000 mg per day. Animal experiments have shown that taurine acts as an antioxidant and may have anti-anxiety and anti-epileptic properties. Some studies have even suggested that dosages of the amino acid may help to stave off age-related bodily degeneration.

And taurine’s anti-anxiety effects might be useful when consumed as part of an energy drink; the amount of accompanying stimulant found in popular beverages is capable of causing some seriously anxious jitters.

The caffeine chemical in the guarana plant is called guaranine. Native to South America, the plant is picture here in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Photo courtesy of Flickr user ggalice.

Guarana: The caffeine component of many energy drinks is guarana, which comes from a flowering plant native to the Amazon rainforest. In fact, most people in South America get their caffeine intake from the guarana plant rather than coffee beans. Guarana seeds are about the same size as a coffee bean, but their caffeine potency can be up to three times as strong.

Both coffee and guarana have weight-loss inducing effects through the suppression of appetite, a common side-effect of caffeine. Although caffeine can improve mental alertness, it can also cause dizziness, nervousness, insomnia, increased heart rate and stomach irritation. 

Ginseng: Some of the most interesting, if not debatable, effects come from supplemental Panax ginseng, which is included in 200mg doses in several energy drink brands. As a traditional herbal treatment associated with East Asian medicines, ginseng has many folkloric uses — although many of those uses are not proven scientifically. Rumored uses for ginseng have included improved psychologic functioning, boosted immune defenses and increased sexual performance and desire.

Myths aside, ginseng does offer some attractive benefits. Studies have indicated positive correlation between daily ginseng intake and improved immune system responses, suggesting ginseng has anti-bacterial qualities in addition to boosting a body’s “good” cells.

Panax ginseng root extract has been used in traditional East Asian medicine for centuries. Photo courtesy of FloraFarm GmbH / Katharina Lohrie via Wiki Commons.

Ginseng has also been shown in animal and clinical studies to have anticancer properties, due to the presence of ginsenosides within the extract of the plant. Ginsenosides are a type of saponins, which act to protect the plant from microbes and fungal and have been described as being “tumor killers”. Scientists are still working to understand the effects of ginseng supplements for use in preventative and post-diagnosis cancer treatment.

Energy drinks may be overhyped as a source of supplemental substances. All of the supplements found in energy drinks can be bought individually as dietary supplements, which allows consumers to ingest the substances without the complementary sugar load found in energy drinks.

Please, though, if you’ve ever sprouted wings after chugging back an energy drink, we’d like to be the first to know.

In 1933, James Hilton, a British novelist who read about travels in Yunnan Province in National Geographic magazine, wrote a novel called Lost Horizon, which describes a mythical kingdom set far, far away from the rest of time: Shangri-La. Three years later, Frank Capra turned Hilton’s paperback best-seller into a film. The place entered our lexicon as an earthly retreat from the worries of modern civilization.

The fictional Shangri-La appears to be an amalgam of Yunnan Province and Tibet. But the people of the Hunza Valley in Pakistan became, in the American mind, the closest thing to the real-life incarnations of the people of Shangri-La. The Hunzakut people reportedly lived to be 100 and had a practically illness-free existence in an inaccessible mountain valley. Paeans to healthy Hunza proliferated. President Eisenhower’s cardiologist reported that Hunza men could eat 3,000 apricots in one sitting. In 1960, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an editorial extolling the virtues of the Hunza diet as a harbinger of hope for human longevity and modern medicine.

“Hunzaphilia” is one of the many compelling (if a bit chronologically disordered) stories in historian Harvey Levenstein’s new book Fear of Food. The natural, edible fountain of eternal Himalayan youth fit into a long line of claims about exceptional longevity—except that, at least among the Hunzakut, it contradicted the truth. One Japanese doctor, Levenstein writes, reported “rampant signs of poor health and malnutrition—goiter, conjunctivitis, rheumatism, and tuberculosis—as well as what seemed to be horrific levels of infant and child mortality, which are also signs of poor nutrition.”

Nonetheless, the idea that these healthy people cut off from the rest of the world could live practically forever would persist, Levenstein writes, thanks in part to an ex-I.R.S. employee named Jerome Irving Rodale. Like Hilton, he had never traveled to the Hunza Valley, but Rodale was well-versed in the robust genre of books touting the Hunza—including both Robert McCarrison’s 1921 Studies in Deficiency Disease and G.T. Wrench’s 1938 The Wheel of Health, one of the basic texts of the health food movement.

Rodale’s book The Healthy Hunzas attributed their longevity to whole grains, dried apricots and almonds, as well as breastfeeding, relatively low alcohol use and plenty of exercise. “They are a group of 20,000 people, none of whom dies of cancer or drops dead with heart disease. In fact, heart trouble is completely unknown in that country! Feeble-mindedness and mental debilitations which are dangerously rampant in the United States are likewise alien to the vigorous Hunzas.”

Later, Rodale founded Prevention magazine, and Levenstein writes, “It regularly used the Hunza as examples of how eating natural foods could ward off the illnesses caused by the over-civilized diet.” By avoiding modern science and with it the ills of modern society—all on the basis of what it was not—Rodale’s exaltation of a more “primitive” people paved the way for the Paleolithic Diet, the Primitive Diet and the modern natural foods movement as a whole.

Yet Hunza health and longevity remains apocryphal, and Rodale himself left us with one of the movement’s more dramatic cautionary notes. One week after telling Wade Greene, a reporter for The New York Times Magazine, “I’m going to live to be 100 unless I’m run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver,” Rodale went on the Dick Cavett show, served some asparagus boiled in urine, and then died on Cavett’s couch. He was 72.

Image: Wind-powered apricot cracker via Nigel Allan/Geographic Review, 1990.

Gestational diabetes is a risk for older pregnant women. Image courtesy of Flickr user 05com

When I decided, at age 40, that I wanted to try to have a child, I knew I faced a few elevated risks over younger women: first and foremost, I might not be able to conceive at all. I mentally prepared myself—as much as I could, anyway—for that and other possibilities, including the higher risk of the baby having a genetic defect.

So far I’ve been fortunate. The one risk I hadn’t given much thought to—the higher chance of developing gestational diabetes—is the only one that has been a factor in my pregnancy. I’m fairly healthy, I have no history of diabetes in my family, and I try to eat well—lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and few highly processed junk foods.

But older pregnant women—and that means even women as young as in their late 20s, believe it or not—can have a harder time regulating insulin, leading to increased blood sugar levels. Gestational diabetes, if not controlled through diet and exercise, can cause high-birth-weight babies and potentially lead to delivery complications, as well as increasing the risk that the child will develop obesity and type 2 diabetes later in life. For the mother, there’s also the risk of high blood pressure and a higher likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes in the future.

I haven’t been diagnosed with gestational diabetes so far. But because my blood sugar was a little high during my early glucose tolerance test (this is given to all pregnant women around 28 weeks, but women of my age are also sometimes tested earlier), I was advised to exercise more frequently and follow a low-carbohydrate diet, the same advice given to those with the diagnosis.

The last thing a pasta-loving pregnant lady with a sweet tooth wants to hear is that she should cut out carbs. I have always been skeptical of the low-carb diet craze, suspecting it was a ploy by meat-lovers to make eating triple bacon cheeseburgers acceptable—as long as they’re sandwiched between lettuce leaves instead of a bun.

Luckily, the diet prescribed for me was not so extreme. The point is not to lose weight or to cut out carbohydrates entirely, but to limit them and to ration out their consumption throughout the day, always combining them with protein and a little bit of fat.

There were a few surprises in the information the dietician gave me. An unpleasant one was that my usual breakfast—a bowl of cereal—was out. Even sugarless, high-fiber varieties far exceed my maximum allotment of 30 grams of carbohydrates for the morning meal. (Blood sugar levels are especially prone to spiking in the morning, so the breakfast allotment is lower than that at lunch and dinner.) On top of that, I was surprised by how many carbs there are in a glass of milk—about 13 grams per cup. My other favorite breakfast, a bagel with cream cheese, was also way over the mark. Instead, I’ve switched to a whole grain English muffin with peanut butter.

On the upside, I’m not going to starve. In addition to the three regular meals, I’m supposed to eat a morning and afternoon snack, plus a smaller evening snack. And I can still have pasta, but instead of a big bowl of it on its own, it should be a side dish or mixed with enough vegetables and protein so the carb portion is limited. The happiest news of all? On those rare occasions when I am allowed to squeeze in a little treat, I was told it’s better to go for ice cream than sorbet, because the fat helps slow down the breakdown of carbs. Can do, doc.

Perhaps it's time to start teaching kids useful kitchen skills in home economics classes. Image courtesy of Flickr user cafemama.

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “home economics”? Perhaps the image of a perfectly attired Stepford wife criticizing the texture of the first pound cake you attempted to make or memories of the flyby course you took when you wanted to put in minimal effort and come out with a passing grade at the end of the term. For many people, the class has a reputation for being an outdated course where the most you learn is how to make biscuits and maybe a cake from a mix and use uni-tasker kitchen appliances. (During a perfectly useless semester in seventh grade, I was made aware of the wonders of an electric sandwich press, but it’s not something I would ever include in my kitchen arsenal.) But with a little retooling and updating, home economics classes could be a valuable tool in the fight against obesity.

Home economics had its start in Lake Placid, New York during a series of annual conferences held between 1899 and 1910. Organized by MIT sanitary engineer Mary Richards, librarian Melvil Dewey and a host of other educators, the meetings were dedicated to finding ways to apply the latest in science and technology to improve life in the American home. In 1908, the conferences led to the creation of the American Home Economics Association, which lobbied the federal government to fund educational programs, and the resultant classes were a means of guiding young people through modern consumer culture. Between stocking a pantry, furnishing and maintaining a home, caring for children and managing a budget to take care of it all, there are a lot of issues a person has to juggle in order to make a home function smoothly.

But along the way home ec attained the reputation of being a relic, a gender-stereotyped course meant to confine women to domestic roles. Some school systems have managed to breathe new life into the course by divvying it up into more specialized classes—like courses that specifically address food preparation, which might be more attractive to prospective students in the age when Food Network-style programs inject fun and excitement into life in the kitchen. However, because home economics is typically classified as an elective course, it—like art and music classes—is prone to being eliminated from a school’s course offerings.

Furthermore, over time the cutting-edge knowledge about nutrition and sanitation that was the impetus for home ec in the first place came to be viewed as common sense. But is common sense really all that common? We hear all the time that Americans are getting fatter, and a cultural preference for prepackaged convenience foods isn’t helping matters. If this is the case, couldn’t a home economics course focused on planning and preparing nutritionally balanced foods help alleviate this problem?

It’s a question assistant professor of history Helen Zoe Veit explores in a recent New York Times oped. A victim of the stereotypical kind of class where you learn how to make doughnuts from prefab biscuit dough, she argues that instead of condescending to students’ fledgling abilities in the kitchen, classes should teach them how to cook real food. “Too many Americans simply don’t know how to cook,” she says in the article. “Our diets, consisting of highly processed foods made cheaply outside the home thanks to subsidized corn and soy, have contributed to an enormous health crisis.” Those sentiments are shared by nutrition scientist Alice Lichtenstein and physician David Ludwig, who wrote an editorial on the subject in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “[G]irls and boys should be taught the basic principles they will need to feed themselves and their families within the current food environment: a version of hunting and gathering for the 21st century,” they say. “As children transition into young adulthood, they should be provided with knowledge to harness modern conveniences (eg, prewashed salad greens) and avoid pitfalls in the marketplace (such as prepared foods with a high ratio of calories to nutrients) to prepare meals that are quick, nutritious, and tasty. It is important to dispel the myths—aggressively promoted by some in the food industry—that cooking takes too much time or skill and that nutritious food cannot also be delicious.”

Personally, I couldn’t agree more. I learned my way around a kitchen because I had a mom who cooked all the family’s meals. That’s the standard of living I want to maintain because I prefer the taste of “from scratch” food over the prefab stuff. If I didn’t have that kind of a model at home to follow, I might have ended up trying to sustain myself predominantly on convenience food. Wouldn’t giving home ec a much-needed facelift—and maybe even making it a graduation requirement—potentially turn out more savvy, self-efficient and healthy young adults?

Hurricane Dean, a category 5 storm, rampaged through the Caribbean in 2007. Image courtesy of Flickr user -eko-.

We here in D.C. got a bit of a shakeup Tuesday afternoon when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck. There are other parts of the United States and the world that put up with far worse seismic disturbances, of course. But for us, this was far from the norm. And to top things off, we have Hurricane Irene making her way up the coast. In these parts, storms should not have eyes and I’m hoping she keeps her distance and we won’t feel her full force like current weather reports are predicting. (Isabel was all the hurricane I ever care to endure.) But wherever you live, it’s a good idea to be prepared for whatever disasters might spring up. You really don’t want to be that person at the grocery store before, say, Snowmageddon who in a fit of panic decides to stock up on wine and Dreamcicles instead of essential foodstuffs. And really, who thinks of cooking at times like these? You might someday find yourself in a situation where you won’t be able to use your usual cooking tools—an oven won’t do you much good if the electricity goes out—and you need to have an emergency plan for feeding yourself.

Let’s start with the basics of stocking your pantry. The American Red Cross recommends that you store enough food to last you for two weeks. Foods that will serve you especially well include: ready-to-eat canned meats and fruit, prepackaged beverages, high energy foods (granola, peanut butter, etc.), compressed food bars, instant meals (like cups of noodles) and comfort food (why not try to make the best of a bad situation?). Avoid salty foods and be careful with items that require water to prepare since you may need to rely on your water stash to keep hydrated and clean. Try to avoid really bulky items, especially if storage space is an issue. And a person should generally have about half a gallon of water a day for drinking, so stock up accordingly. Things like pasta, beans and rice are cumbersome to prepare in less-than-ideal conditions and should also be avoided. In the event of a power outage, consume perishables you have in your fridge and freezer before diving into your emergency store of dry goods.

And while it’s hard to be the consummate kitchen maven in the face of disaster, it’s still possible to manage food prep without a fully functional kitchen, which the Canadian Red Cross illustrated in a Wal-Mart cooking demo earlier this month. Local chefs were brought in to create recipes that could be made without water or electricity, and came up with dishes such as “disaster tacos”—canned chicken, aerosol cheese and salsa piled into a shell—and hemp seed bean salad. For more ideas, check out The Healthy Hurricane/Disaster Cookbook by Dr. Marcia Magnus of Florida International University. Free to download, it’s a helpful guide for how to pull together balanced meals and snacks. Some recipes do, however, require heating. For those of you who can swing by a book store, try flipping through books like Apocalypse Chow (especially if you’re a vegetarian), The Storm Gourmet or Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook.

If weather conditions allow you to go outside and use a kerosene heater or a grill, more power to you. Some people create stoves from tin cans that use alcohol for fuel, and you can find a number of tutorials on the web on how to craft one; but bear in mind that even the Boy Scouts of America has banned the use of these devices by their troops, so this is a device you use at your own risk. If you plan ahead, you can buy commercially manufactured stoves that use fuel pellets or stoves that use Sterno as a heat source. These are all pieces of camping equipment and are intended for use outdoors.

You can also search around the Internet for no-cook meals, though this method for meal planning requires a lot of sifting. Even though these recipes don’t require an oven, you might need other electrical appliances to prepare them, or the prep work itself might be more than you want to manage under stressful conditions. If you’ve ever had to put food on the table while all hell is breaking loose around you, tell us about how you managed to muddle through.

Oh, and one last piece of advice: Don’t forget the can opener.

What foods can't you get on a stick these days? Image courtesy of Flickr user Aaron T. Goodman.

Earlier this month, an ice cream shop in Columbia, Missouri decided to take advantage of the summertime resurgence of cicadas. Employees caught the critters in their backyards, boiled them, coated them in brown sugar and milk chocolate and then added them to a batch of ice cream. The insects are perfectly safe to eat and enough ice cream connoisseurs were unfazed by the “ick” factor of eating bugs that the batch quickly sold out. (One patron compared the cicada’s flavor to peanuts.) However, because there are no regulations regarding the preparation of cicadas for mass consumption, the health department stepped in and asked that the store discontinue that particular flavor. Creepy crawly cuisine may be way off the average person’s radar, but entomophagy—the fancy Latin term for eating insects—is beginning to gain attention in the Western Hemisphere.

The practice of eating bugs dates back millennia. In scripture, the book of Leviticus lays out laws and codes for day-to-day living in the ancient world, including diet. While Chapter 11, verses 6 to 8 puts the kibosh on eating rabbit and pork, verse 22 gives the green light to eating certain insects: ”Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.” (Other translations also include katydids.) In present-day cultures, bugs have gone so far as to attain delicacy status—be it the fried caterpillars served in Africa, grasshoppers with soy sauce in Japan or water boatman eggs in Mexico city, which are supposed to have a caviar-like flavor and can cost more than beef. Even some of Washington, D.C.’s upscale dining spots offer exotic spins on familiar foods, such as tacos stuffed with grasshoppers.

But why even look to bugs as a food source? First off, certain bugs, such as caterpillars, have a protein content that is comparable to beef. Second, farm-raising bugs is a big energy saver. Raising livestock is problematic because of the amount of energy required to create those neatly packaged cutlets at your local grocery store. Large chunks of land are set aside to produce feed and for the animals to live and breed, not to mention the fossil fuels needed to transport animals from farm to slaughterhouse and then to market. And, at least with the beef industry, cattle produce more greenhouse gases than cars, contributing to global warming.

Then there’s the matter of the resources it takes to fatten up an animal until it’s ready for the table. When the Wall Street Journal broke down the numbers, the same 10 pounds of feed used to produce 1 pound of beef or five pounds of chicken could also yield up to six pounds of insect meat. Furthermore, while we may think insects are dirty and unhealthy, recall mad cow disease and salmonella and the risk that those meat-borne pathogens pose to us humans. And certain bugs are fortified with fats and vitamins that could help fend of malnutrition and starvation. With the United Nations predicting we will have one-third more mouths to feed by 2050, while still trying to deal with existing issues of hunger and starvation, finding alternate, sustainable protein sources will become even more urgent.

In the meantime, summer is here and I’m sure you’ve noticed that bugs are in abundance. But if you’re feeling adventurous, there are a few things to keep in mind if you’re thinking about indulging in a six-legged snack:

1. Not all insects are edible. However, of the approximately 6 million species of insects crawling around, about 1,400 of them have been documented to be safe for human consumption. Do your homework beforehand.

2. If you are allergic to shellfish or chocolate, avoid eating insects.

3. Insects in your backyard may have been exposed to pesticides. It is unclear if pesticide residues on garden-variety bugs are harmful to humans if consumed, but if you’re looking to get insect-savvy in the kitchen, your safest bet is to buy farm-raised bugs. You may also be able to find some canned bugs, such as silkworm pupa, at an Asian grocery store.

Still ready and willing to take the plunge? There are a few bug cookbooks on the market, as well as the website Insects are Food, which features a continuously growing list of recipes and a list of places where you can buy your creepy crawlies. And yes, there’s even a recipe category devoted entirely to cicadas. But sadly, none of them are for ice cream.

The 2005 food pyramid design, to be retired this Thursday. Image courtesy of the USDA.

Some of the information I learned in school isn’t holding up so well. Pluto is no longer a planet; the basics of CPR have been heavily revised, so I am now the absolute last person you want around in the event of an emergency (though I will be more than happy to dial 911 on your behalf). And now the USDA is razing the food pyramid to make way for a new visual model intended to help Americans figure out how to plan a balanced diet. Set to be unveiled on June 2, the new graphic will be circular in shape. Science 2.0 compared the yet-to-be-released model to a pie, which is a counterintuitive visual given the Obama administration’s devotion to fighting obesity. But officially, we are to consider the new graphic as a dinner plate—which is a little more intuitive and hits closer to home than those monuments of Giza.

Introduced in 1992, the pyramid model had a good run. But it has come under fire for being oversimplified: it visually communicates that people should eat more carbs because they’re good and eat less fat because it’s bad, sidestepping the issue that there are good and bad carbs and fats. Furthermore, with the USDA promoting American food products, lobby groups—notably cattle and dairy special interest groups—complained about how their goods were placed toward the top of the chart, nearer to the foodstuffs one is supposed to use sparingly. The pyramid was revamped in 2005 to a more politically correct graphic that tried to communicate the proportion of each food group people should have in their diet. Furthermore, the color-coded horizontal bands didn’t try to subliminally indicate that some foods are inherently better than others. This redesign drew fire from potato lobbyists since spuds were de-emphasized in the new graphic. Furthermore, you needed to use the USDA website to get any concrete nutrition advice since the image itself didn’t offer any specific advice regarding servings and portion sizes.

A Daily Food Guide. This graphic illustrates the four food group system that preceded the food pyramid model.

The USDA began offering nutritional guides in 1894, which have been tinkered with and updated over the years. We had 12 food groups in the 1930s, and when that system was deemed overly complicated, it was reduced to seven in the 1940s, and for the first time the government suggested how many servings from each group a person should have. This was succeeded by the basic four food group system—milk, veggies and fruits, meats and bread—in 1956, which endured until the pyramid model was introduced in 1992. And of course there are lots of fun posters and other visuals the USDA used to attractively package nutrition information and grab public attention.

The grand unveiling of the new plate-shaped food guide will take place on tomorrow, June 2, at 10:30 A.M. EST and the event will be streamed live.

Pulp wood (but not the kind that may appear in your cheese or bread). Image courtesy of Flickr user rbglasson.

Ardent label readers out there know to scan nutritional labels for ingredients that they don’t want in their diet. But most people probably don’t keep an eye out for “wood pulp.” Well, chances are you won’t see that in print. Phrases you are more likely to encounter are innocuous-sounding terms such as “cellulose,” “cellulose gel,” or “dietary fiber.” The Wall Street Journal came out recently with a story on cellulose as a food additive, and some bloggers have been contributing their concerns about what’s being dumped into our food.

So, what exactly is cellulose? On the molecular level, it’s a string of sugar molecules. It’s the stuff that makes up the cell walls of plant matter. Cotton is an excellent source of cellulose in its purest form. Cellulose is a major component of wood, giving that material its signature strength. In the food industry, cellulose is used as a filler. Since humans don’t have enzymes that allow us to digest the stuff, it just passes through our digestive system, making it a go-to additive for diet products because it provides bulk without the caloric content. Cellulose is also used to make ice cream and cheeses smoother in consistency, and to keep strands of shredded cheese from sticking together. There are no known health risks and the FDA has limits on how much cellulose can be used in food products. It’s a natural additive, but the cellulose source might just gross out consumers.

The use of cellulose in food products is nothing new. Experiments in finding nutritionally neutral food sources date back to the early 20th century and the experiments of Frederick Hoelzel. An adventurous eater, he found that chopped surgical cotton doused with fruit juice could satisfy his appetite for a few days and in 1919, he developed cellulose-based flour. These early ventures didn’t fly with the American public. It wasn’t until 1955 that chemist Dr. O.A. Battista accidentally discovered edible cellulose by leaving a solution of cellulose and water in the blender a little too long. Expecting a gritty, sandy substance to end up at the bottom of the blender, he got a “noncaloric custard.” He used the flavorless gel to make a batch of cookies and, under the name Avicel, the product was quickly marketed to the food industry.

With the rising costs of raw materials like flour, oil and sugar, cellulose is going to be more attractive to manufacturers as a way to extend foodstuffs. For some people, this is cause to pinpoint the products that use the stuff. Personally, while I too prefer food that has been adulterated as little as possible, I think I might be more concerned about melatonin in my prefab brownies.

Screenshot of the Food Desert Locator home page.

Traditionally, the United States is portrayed as a land of plenty, yet many people live in areas without ready access to fruits, vegetables, whole grains and the other foods that compose a healthy, well-balanced diet. These areas are known as food deserts, and living in one can have serious ramifications on one’s health; it’s a risk factor for obesity and cardiovascular disease induced by junk food-heavy diets. According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is a close correlation between income level and ethnic background and the likelihood of living in a food desert, with poor, non-white populations being at a higher risk.

In 2008, 2009, as a part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative, the USDA’s Economic Research Service began gathering data about areas of the United States with limited access to healthy food, resulting in the Food Desert Locator, which launched last week. Here, food deserts are defined as census tracts with a high poverty rate that are more than one mile away (in an urban setting) or 10 miles away (in a rural setting) from a supermarket or large grocery store. You can also look at other statistics such as how many people within a census tract do not have a car. (If you own a car, making a mile-long trip to the store isn’t so bad; but if you can’t afford one, hoofing a mile carrying bags full of groceries is task most people would just as soon avoid.) This tool allows users to search a map of the United States to look at food desert statistics for a given area—and there are a lot of red patches on the map. Approximately 23.5 13.5 million Americans are living in food deserts, most of whom live in urban areas. With major supermarket chains keeping away from low income urban areas, the price of healthy options such as fresh produce are beyond people’s means since corner convenience store-type establishments sell those items at much higher prices.

The tool might spur local efforts to eradicate food deserts with solutions such as urban farming or Detroit’s Green Grocer Project, which provides grocers with funding to establish a sustainable, successful business.

Preschool Bento #211: July 9, 2009. Image courtesy of Flickr user Wendy Copley.

For students at Little Village Academy in Chicago, bringing lunch to school is verboten. Principals of Chicago’s public schools are allowed to implement a “no bag lunch” policy if they say it serves the needs of their students. Principal Elsa Carmona began the ban at Little Village Academy six years ago in response to seeing students eating chips and soda during school field trips. ”Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school,” Carmona told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It’s milk versus a Coke.” Exceptions are made for students with food allergies or other medical issues that would prevent them from being able to eat the school’s offerings.

Home-packed lunches have raised issues well before the Tribune‘s story lit up the Internet Monday morning. Because some children have life-threatenng allergies, public schools have been known to ban specific foods—such as nuts and nut-based products—to try to create a safe environment for those students with special needs. (Schools have also restricted milk and egg products, but these instances are comparatively rare.) Some schools also implement “no trading” policies, prohibiting students from exchanging food so that allergic reactions aren’t accidentally triggered. While some parents argue that asking an entire school population to adjust its behavior to accommodate the few, others rise to the challenge of working within the school’s parameters.

I started packing lunch in response to appalling food options offered at school. My high school cafeteria was littered with vending machines–soda, ice cream, snack foods, and one that offered every flavor of milk except plain—and your choice of Taco Bell and Subway fare for a main course. I had nutritionally balanced lunches by way of the federally subsidized lunch program in elementary and middle school—as well as eagle-eyed cafeteria staffers who would send you back in line if you came to the register without a fruit or vegetable on your tray. I still have no idea why school food became so poor once I got into high school, but I’m glad it got me into the habit of bringing my own food. And I still pack lunch on a daily basis. Knowing I have to fill the lunchbox in the morning has been a big incentive to cook for myself and to pack fruit to snack on throughout the day. And as others will attest, brown bagging it has some serious advantages—notably when it comes to saving money.

However, food from home and good nutrition are not necessarily one in the same. With childhood obesity levels staggeringly high, public schools are a venue where kids can be guaranteed access to healthy food, especially with the recent expansion of the federal school lunch program. And hopefully, those changes will indeed bring about positive nutritional changes. The blogger known only as Mrs. Q documented a year of eating public school lunches and the quality of the meals really ran the gamut. And who here remembers the state of school lunches served in Huntington, West Virginia before Jamie Oliver mounted an intervention?

Is this a nanny state policy or a step in the right direction? Continue the discussion in the comments area below.

Energy gels, courtesy of Flickr user nicholaslaughlin

Thirty percent of New Year’s resolutions made by Americans this year relate to weight, diet and health, according to a recent survey by the Barna Group, a Ventura, California-based research firm focused on the intersection between faith and culture. Unfortunately, a rather grim statistic glares those resolute Americans in the eye: nearly half of those who made commitments last year reported that they had experienced “no change” in their behaviors.

Inevitably, every January, I watch this saga play out around me in my office gym. There is a noticeable bump in traffic early in the month, but it gradually dwindles. As a runner, I try to maintain a level of fitness throughout the year, but I am certainly not impervious to the challenges of staying motivated. Things definitely shake my resolve. I always struggle when Daylight Savings Time ends in the fall. With it getting dark earlier, I opt to work out over my lunch hour instead of after work. But even that presents its problems. It’s often hard to tear away from work, and when I do, I usually run on a hungry stomach. The predicament has gotten me more and more interested in finding the perfect workout snack—something that gives me a needed boost but doesn’t slosh around in my stomach.

A couple of years ago, while training for a marathon, I experimented with stashing an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie in the pocket of a fuel belt I wore around my waist during long runs. While it, and other snacks, I’ve since read, such as Fig Newtons, Sweet Tarts, graham crackers, dried fruit, orange slices and, if it’s not too hot out, fun-size candy bars, can tide you over, there is a pretty wide selection of energy snacks tailored specifically to an athlete’s needs. (Note: Re-fueling is usually recommended after running or biking 45 minutes.)

At first, I’ll admit, they seem about as appealing, and foreign, as astronaut food (hence, my cookie), but they are worth a try. There seem to be two categories of energy snacks, and the difference takes me back to my pediatrician and the question she’d ask: liquid or chewable?

The first is energy gel. Gu Energy Gel, PowerBar Energy Gel and Clif Shot are three popular brands, and each comes in at least a one-ounce, 100-calorie packet, shaped much like a sample of lotion. They are easy to carry, and, with sugars, electrolytes and, occasionally, caffeine, they pack a punch. The products’ makers recommend consuming one to three packets (with a few gulps of water each packet) every hour of exercise to help maintain energy levels.

The second type comes in the form of fruit chews and, believe it or not, jelly beans. Clif Bar Shot Bloks, Gu Chomps, Power Bar Blasts and Honey Stinger Energy Chews contain about the same amount of calories per serving (from three to 10 pieces) as half of a gel packet. They re-supply the body with carbohydrates, usually antioxidants and sometimes amino acids and caffeine. It is recommended that they be eaten in different intervals, depending on the brand, starting after 45 minutes of exercise. Jelly Belly has even come out with sport beans to nosh on while running.

People seem to discover something they like, in a flavor they like, and then stick with it. Personally, I think the pudding-like gels are a bit messy and sit funny in my stomach, and the jelly beans, 20 miles into a marathon, can be exhausting to chew. But for me, the Cran-Raz Shot Bloks are just right.

What energy snacks do you prefer?