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?

When I was new to D.C., many people gave me the same advice, “Avoid Anacostia.”

Separated from the District’s heart by the Anacostia River, the southeast swath of the city loosely known as Anacostia has long been associated with high rates of violent crime and poverty.

But after finally venturing across the river this week, I associate it instead with a beautiful new organic garden—complete with fruit trees, 18 raised vegetable beds, a greenhouse and rainwater catchment—thriving in a public schoolyard.

The Great Garden of Anacostia, as the students had dubbed it, was visible through a high metal fence as soon as I emerged from the metro station. Late-season vegetables, herbs and fledgling berry bushes were sunbathing in rectangular beds of reclaimed wood, filling what was once a forlorn field wedged between the street, Thurgood Marshall Academy and Savoy Elementary School. Two of the beds are raised high enough to tend from a wheelchair, and a special glue on the gravel path has made the surface almost as smooth as pavement, yet still porous.

It’s been attracting a lot of attention.

“Most people, they walk by and see us working out here and say, ‘What are you doing in all that dirt?!’” said Kijon James, a 15-year-old sophomore at Thurgood Marshall. “But I like that’s it’s organic. It’s more healthy, and it’s helping the environment.”

New school garden at Savoy Elementary and Thurgood Marshall schools, in the Anacostia region of Washington, D.C. Courtesy of Earth Day Network.

I took a tour with Sean Miller and Josh Volinsky of the Earth Day Network, which has funded and coordinated the creation of gardens of 100 schools nationwide so far as part of its Green Schools initiative. The group typically spends about $3,000 to $5,000 per garden, but invested closer to $15,000 in this one because it’s meant as a “showcase,” Miller explained.

“We wanted to shine a light on D.C. because they’ve passed this landmark legislation, providing some of the most seminal leadership on healthy schools in the country,” he said, referring to the Healthy Schools Act, which seeks to address obesity and improve children’s health by revamping school meal programs, setting exercise goals, and establishing school gardens and other environmental programs.

“This should be commonplace,” Miller added, noting that he’s seen smaller, simpler gardens built for only a few hundred dollars with donated materials. He estimated that there are about 2,000 school gardens nationwide right now, including 70 in the district, which has a Schoolyard Greening program.

“Many kids don’t know where their food comes from, and this can introduce them to new vegetables they wouldn’t try if they didn’t grow it themselves,” said Schoolyard Greening’s Gilda Allen. “And getting out in a garden, reconnecting with nature, can really benefit kids—it can even help hyperactive kids calm down.”

Students from Thurgood and Savoy built the garden over the summer, with help from community volunteers, Schoolyard Greening, the D.C. Farm to School Network and other groups. Throughout the school year, students will water, weed and tend the plants, using the greenhouse to nurture seedlings through the winter.

The hands-on involvement means the students “take the garden very personally,” says Imani Scriber, 16, a Thurgood sophomore who proudly showed me the beds she helped plant as part of an environmental science class.

Courtesy of Earth Day Network.

“We’ve got lettuce, cabbage, basil, chives, parsley, white raspberries… The blueberry bushes were the hardest because we had to dig deep, and we ran into bricks and stuff from the old houses that used to be here,” Scriber said. “Our goal is to eat our own products. We’re going to cook them in class…I’m very eager to see how everything comes out. And there are things in this garden I’ve never even eaten before, like squash.”

As we talked, an orange butterfly fluttered among the plants a few feet away.

“Look at that monarch!” Scriber exclaimed. “We’ve seen bugs we’ve never seen before—we actually saw a bumblebee. A real, fuzzy, distinctly black-and-yellow bumblebee!”

Meanwhile, her classmate, Kijon James, couldn’t stop staring at the fruit trees.

“I’ve never seen an apple tree around here before, so that’s exciting,” he said. “Of course, I’ll be in college by the time it grows an apple, but I’ll come back and see it.”

Later that day, in the gymnasium, White House assistant chef Sam Kass and pastry chef Bill Yosses were the celebrity guests at an event celebrating D.C. Farm to School Week and D.C. School Garden Week (which also happen to coincide with National School Lunch Week). If Kass’ random sampling of the students’ views on vegetables was representative, there’s still work to be done.

“What’s your favorite vegetable?” he asked the students.

“Broccoli!” shouted one, but another said she didn’t have one.

“C’mon, you’ve gotta give me something,” Kass said, holding the microphone in front of an elementary-aged girl. She made comical faces as he suggested a few vegetables.

“Okay, fine. Carrots. But I do like junk food,” she informed him.

Well, it’s a good start, anyway.

After almost three years of working right down the street, I finally made time to explore the U.S. Botanic Garden on a recent lunch break. I expected mostly flowers, but found a food nerd’s Eden: So many of my favorite edibles, in their purest forms! So many tidbits of culinary history and science! So many spices to sniff!

Cacao tree at U.S. Botanic Garden, courtesy of Flickr user beatifulcataya

Their current exhibit (through October 11), called “Thrive! From the Ground Up,” is all about the plants that humans rely on for sustenance and health as well as flavor and beauty. Along the terrace outside the conservatory, there’s an herb garden with everything from anise to zaatar, and an envy-inducing “kitchen garden” with eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, kohlrabi, chard and more, including many heirloom varieties. There’s even a “beverage garden,” featuring plants whose fruit can be squeezed, steeped, fermented or distilled into drinks.

Inside, a fun exhibit called Spuds Unearthed, created in collaboration with the Potato Museum, pays homage to the potato’s role in cultures around the world. That exhibit also ends soon, but you can see it anytime in this video about potato history on our site.

And as if all that’s not enough, the garden often hosts lectures and demonstrations, many of them food-related; check out the events calendar for information on upcoming programs about spices, potatoes and more. Yesterday, the featured demonstration was about cooking—or rather, not cooking—with cacao. A sign for the event promised “Raw Cacao Bliss: Free!” Well, how could you resist that?

I stepped inside the classroom in the garden’s conservatory, where A. Thu Hoang, a Bethesda-based raw food chef and culinary instructor, was measuring chopped dates (1 cup), walnuts (3 cups), raw cacao powder (2/3 cup), vanilla (1 tsp) and sea salt (1/4 tsp) into a food processor to create a “10-minute chocolate cake.”

Raw cacao powder has more antioxidants than typical cocoa powder, which has usually been heated and chemically altered, Hoang said, and at least one study I’ve read confirms this idea. Raw cacao powder is available at most health-food stores, though it costs about twice as much as the processed stuff.

Although the end result wasn’t exactly what I would call cake—more like a dense, moist, sticky paste patted by hand into a cake shape—it was surprisingly tasty, and a thick coating of frosting topped with fresh raspberries made up for its aesthetic flaws.

My favorite part was the frosting, which she made by blending more raw cacao (1/3 cup) and dates (1/3 cup) with agave syrup (1/4 cup) and avocado (1/2 cup). Yes, avocado! I was skeptical, but its creamy texture turned out to be the perfect substitute for butter, and its taste was very subtle beneath the dominant chocolate flavor. It looked a lot like this—see? Would you guess there was avocado in there?

There were about 20 people in the audience, and many of them seemed to be new to the concept of raw food or even health food in general, which resulted in some funny moments. One woman asked about substituting “toasted pecans” for walnuts in the cake, then stopped to berate herself mid-sentence: “What am I saying? Then they wouldn’t be raw! This is about raw foods! I’m so sorry!”

I could relate; although I’ve heard of raw-food diets, it remains a fairly foreign concept to me. After the demonstration, I asked Hoang how long she’d been following such a diet, and why. She got into it about three years ago and doesn’t follow a 100-percent raw diet all the time, she said, but has noticed that even a 70-percent raw diet has given her much more energy (“you don’t even want caffeine anymore, honestly!”) and made her skin more supple (“after all, fruits and vegetables are full of water, and our bodies are mostly water”).

I was impressed and intrigued, and the idea has special appeal when you’re standing in the Botanic Garden, surrounded by couldn’t-be-more-raw bananas, cacao, vanilla and other ingredients. For about 10 minutes, I thought maybe I could “go raw.” But Mitsitam cafe was on my way back to the office, and they were serving hot pumpkin soup….

Irish moss, an acquired taste. Image courtesy of Flickr user Airstream Life

Today’s post is by Smithsonian staff writer Abigail Tucker.

On my recent trip to Ireland—where I discovered “real” Irish soda bread—I expected to encounter potatoes aplenty, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Traditional champ (or mashed) potatoes and chips (fries) were offered alongside more cosmopolitan spuds like Dauphinoise potatoes, basil-oil potatoes and potato curry spring rolls. At a folk life museum not far from my great-grandmother’s hometown, we saw a dipper (a stick for poking holes in the soil during potato planting) and a sciob (a basket for draining potatoes.) In the courtyard outside stood the local village’s black metal Famine Pot, used to serve soup to the starving in the 1840s, when the potatoes disappeared.

Yet potatoes were never all that old-time residents ate, I learned from Colm Melly, husband of my grandmother’s cousin Sadie and a resident of County Donegal on the northwest coast. In his memoir, “Brighter Days in Donegal,” about growing up in this rural corner of the country before World War II, he explains that local children were skilled at snaring rabbits, hooking sand eels, scouting for beehives and hazelnuts and gathering cockles. A pet piglet was never long for this world. (Grieved children eventually recovered enough to play football with the animal’s dried bladder, however.)

One local delicacy in particular caught my attention: Irish moss, the seaweed formally known as Chondrus crispus, which yields the extract carrageenan.

“When the salt water receded, we collected tufts of wet moss and spread it out to dry on rocks above the high water mark,” Colm’s memoir explains. It produced a medicinal jelly and functioned, he notes, as “an excellent aphrodisiac.” Housewives boiled the “moss” in milk and served it with cream, or as a pudding.

The shopkeeper who sold me a small bag of dried Irish moss promised that I wouldn’t even notice the seaweed taste—if I added enough whiskey, that is. Sadly, Amanda and I did not have whiskey on hand when we tested the milk concoction back here in D.C.

As directed, we rinsed the crunchy purple tufts to eliminate the “small sea shells, stones or crustaceans” that might be lurking within, then soaked them for 20 minutes in cold water. After the greenish fronds softened and unfurled, we dropped the seaweed in a warm pot of 2-percent milk flavored with honey, cinnamon and black pepper.

We let it simmer for a bit longer than the recommended five minutes—neither of us was especially eager to drink it—but while somewhat gluey, the liquid tasted pleasingly sweet, with a maritime tang. It eventually cooled into something more like pudding, which Amanda bravely sampled and declared the equal of any tapioca. (She also had the revolutionary idea of caramelizing the top, a la crème brulee, in a subsequent experiment that may or may not actually take place.)

There are plenty of edgier recipes out there; I saw one for Irish moss lasagna and another for Irish moss salad with apples and mayonnaise. While it smells slightly funky, the seaweed is chock-full of nutrition. For instance, the quarter-pound bag I bought boasted some 3,000 milligrams of potassium (a banana has only about 450 mg).

Still doesn’t sound like something you’d be willing to try? Surprise! You probably already have: carageenan extract is commonly used as a gelling agent in dairy products and toothpaste.

National Hispanic Heritage Month starts today, and it’s a great opportunity to celebrate our ever-growing Latino population, which will make up 29 percent of the U.S. population by 2050. But it’s also an opportunity to confront an ever-growing threat to that population: childhood obesity.

“Although our loving Latina grandmothers have taught us that an overweight child is a healthy one, science has showed us otherwise…evidence suggests that it leads to an early death,” said Dr. Juan Rivera, part of a panel on child health during the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s public policy conference here in D.C. on Monday.

The panel featured several politicians and nutrition experts. They looked at statistics—for example, the 27 percent rate of obesity among Mexican American teenage boys, compared with 17 percent among their white counterparts—and the evidence that this racial disparity is widening. They talked about the consequences of that trend, in terms of health and economics. They made a lot of good points. (And some I hope were hyperbolic: “There’s no reason that we should see a child that’s 250 pounds and only 5 years of age—that’s ridiculous,” declared Rep. Joe Baca of California.)

Chef Jose Andres spoke at a CHCI panel about child health and nutrition in Washington, D.C. on Monday. Photo by Amanda Bensen

But I confess, I wasn’t really there to hear them. I was there for local celebrity chef Jose Andres. He’s been an active supporter of the Obama administration’s moves to fight childhood obesity and an advocate for improving the quality of school lunches. He recently wrote an excellent editorial for The Atlantic’s food channel titled “Now Is the Time to Feed Our Children Well.” He’s even lecturing at Harvard this fall! I knew he’d have something interesting to say.

Andres’ talk was brief, but to the point. To stop the childhood obesity epidemic, he said, we should focus on three arenas—politics, education and business. On a political level, he spoke in favor of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act currently before the House. It “falls short” of the funding truly needed, Andres said, “but it’s a first step.”

He had harsh words for corn subsidies, arguing that they make it possible for soda and fast food to be cheaper than other, healthier foods, and that there is “a direct link” between corn subsidies and obesity rates in America and Mexico.

“Why don’t we give subsidies to carrots?” Andres asked. “Why don’t we give subsidies to every other vegetable?”

Education should also be part of the solution, he said, quoting the gastronomic philosopher Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin: “The future of nations depends on how they feed themselves.” In addition to giving kids access to better food, we should be giving them the information they need to make better eating choices.

Latinos can play a leading role in the fight against obesity because “good food seems to be in our DNA,” Andres said, urging his fellow Hispanic Americans to “go back to our roots.” During his childhood in Spain, he noted, he was rarely allowed to drink soda (one Coke a month, in summer) and although food seemed to be the center of everyone’s family and social life, he doesn’t remember having any friends who were obese.

In the case of business, Andres focused on restaurants, for obvious reasons. He referenced his own tapas-centric restaurants as proof that small plates can be big sellers, even though “when I started, people said it wouldn’t succeed because Americans like big portions.” Not that all eateries should switch to serving tapas, of course, but chefs and restaurants can change customers’ expectations of portion sizes: “The 24-ounce soda and the 36-ounce porter steak has to be something of the past. We have to actively change the way we feed America.”

We asked you for stories about college food in this month’s Inviting Writing, and it’s been fun to read the responses so far. If you haven’t submitted yours yet, there’s still time—please send it to FoodandThink@gmail.com by September 3rd.

Let’s start off with this one from Eve Bohakel Lee, a Louisville, Kentucky-based writer and editor who apparently shared my fondness for marshmallow goo as a college freshman…

Alchemy in a Bowl
By Eve Bohakel Lee

In my freshman year at Indiana University, I became acquainted with two things I’d had scant experience with previously: Rice Krispy Treats and chemistry. Both took place in the cafeteria of my dorm, and were interdependent.

Apparently, eating Rice Krispy treats with plastic utensils doesn't work. Photo courtesy of Flickr user elorgwhee.

As a kid, Rice Krispy Treats were something that you had at someone else’s house. I had the impression that they must have been very difficult to make, because my mother, possessing merely rudimentary cooking skills, never made them. And I’d barely survived chemistry class in high school, so would not have consciously sought it out if not for the promise of something closer to alchemy.

It was fall—a magical time of year in Bloomington—so I should have expected something wondrous, but I was unprepared to find it in the cafeteria at eight o’clock on a Friday morning. A girl at my table had a sweet-smelling concoction in front of her, which she was eating from a ceramic bowl with a spoon. The mysterious compound looked delicious and irresistibly messy.

As I silently speculated about the identity of her decadent dish, staring at its lumps and goo, she took one more heaping teaspoonful, looked up at me, and said, “Rice Krispy Treats.”

How? How had I missed that going through line?

“Come here,” she said, rising and licking her spoon one last time. “I’ll show you.”

I followed her to the cereal station. She scooped a bit of Rice Krispies into a new bowl, topped it with four or five butter pats and scattered a layer of tiny marshmallows from the hot cocoa dispenser on top of it. She tossed another butter pat on top before putting the bowl into the microwave.

“How long do you cook it for?” I asked.

“Until the door blows off,” she joked, then glanced through the door and stopped the oven after about 20 seconds. She pulled her sleeves over her hands and removed a bubbling mini-cauldron of melted goo.

“Stir this up,” she said, as she produced a spoon and stuck it into the bowl. I obeyed.

“And voila! Rice Krispy Treats,” my new friend said, proud as a mad scientist announcing her latest invention.

She carried the bowl back to our table and I gingerly dug in and raised the spoon to my mouth.

I wasn’t thinking that the treat wasn’t perfectly square, or that the bowl would require an hourlong soaking to restore it to its original shine, or even that the confection had the ability to pull out multiple fillings in one mouthful.

I tasted it, and the feeling of power to do what I wanted shot through me. I was a grown-up. I could make Rice Krispy Treats whenever I wanted—even at breakfast. Magic.

Okra’s a strange little vegetable, the kind of thing you might not guess was edible if no one told you. Its prickly skin can sting your fingers, and slicing into it reveals little more than seeds and slime. I admit, if okra hadn’t been included in our CSA share these past few weeks, I would probably still be unacquainted with it—and I’m still not exactly in love.

But hey, I’m from New England. Okra’s a beloved staple in other regions, such as the American South, parts of Africa and the Mediterranean. According to the book “Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa,” by Fran Osseo-Asare:

“Okra is another indigenous West African vegetable that has spread globally. The English word ‘okra’ is derived from the Twi word ‘nkuruma’ and is famous in the United States as the thickening agent in the gumbo stews of Louisiana. The French word for okra is ‘gombo,’ which, like gumbo, derives from a Bantu word…When cut, it is…much valued for its mucilaginous or sticky properties.”

Okra, courtesy Flickr user FootosVanRobin

The okra plant, Abelmoschus esculentus, is a cousin of cotton in the mallow family. (Its hibiscus-like flowers inspired its original scientific name Hibiscus esculentus, but botanists later renamed it.) It’s a good source of vitamin C and fiber, as well as glutathione, an antioxidant with anticarcinogenic properties. Not all varieties have those sharp hairs on the outside of the pods, but if present, their sting can be quickly neutralized by hot water.

Here are a few ways to prepare okra:

1. Fried. Dredged in egg and cornmeal and fried to a golden crisp, it’s a “simple Southern classic.” Add a twist by making it curried.

2. Gumbo, of course. Try it with seafood, chicken and sausage, or no meat at all; there are a zillion recipes out there. If you’re short on time, see Cooking for Engineers‘ version.

3. Oven-roasted. It can be simply flavored with olive oil, salt and pepper, or smothered with spices. Maybe, like Cooking Books blogger Andrea promises, this spicy version will make an okra believer out of me yet.

4. Stew. If you’re not crazy about okra on its own, try disguising it with stronger flavors and textures, as in this tomato-based lamb and okra stew or bamya, an Egyptian stew made with beef broth.

5. Pickles. Or, “wickles,” (wicked sweet and spicy pickles) as this blogger puts it. Spicy seems to be popular—Alton Brown’s recipe uses dried chilis and black peppercorns, and even Ladybird Johnson’s pickled okra recipe included hot peppers.

Do you like okra? If so, what’s your favorite way to make it?