Eat Out Eat Well

food and health

Hippocrates, Medicine, And Food

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Hippocrates (born c. 460BC, died c. 377BC on the Greek island of Kos) is considered the father of medicine.  He spent his life proving that disease and healing were not acts of the Gods but rather physical phenomena that stem from natural causes — and that are potentially curable through observation, deduction, and treatment.

He took superstition out of healing and out of the hands of the priests and shamans — and put it into the hands of the people.

“Let Food Be Thy Medicine And Medicine Be Thy Food”

Hippocrates emphasized the importance of diet to health and to the body’s ability to restore itself.  He is famous for saying, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” a philosophy that is as pertinent and important today as it was thousands of years ago.

Common Foods That Can Make You Sick

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According to the Centers for Disease Control, most foodborne illnesses are preventable. Here’s some information from their newest report:

 1,034 foodborne disease outbreaks were reported resulting in:

  • 23,152 illnesses
  • 1,276 hospitalizations
  • 22 deaths

In outbreaks where the cause was confirmed, norovirus and salmonella continue to be the causes of the largest number of outbreaks and illnesses.

In outbreaks linked to food in which all ingredients belong to a single food group, these foods were responsible for the biggest number of outbreaks:

  • beef
  • poultry
  • fish

The food groups responsible for the biggest number of outbreak-associated sicknesses were:

  • fruits and nuts
  • vine vegetables
  • beef

Foodborne illnesses come not just from “bad” meat, fish, eggs, and dairy.  Be alert to spoiled or contaminated fruit, nuts, and vegetables, too.

 

Grilling? Five Ways to Decrease Dangerous Stuff From Forming On Your Food

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Two types of cancer causing compounds increase or form in some foods that are grilled or cooked at high heat.

Two Dangerous Compounds

Heterocycline amines (HCAs) increase when meat — especially beef — is cooked with high heat – not just by grilling but by pan-frying, too. HCAs can damage DNA and start the development of cancer.  Most evidence connects them to colon and stomach cancer, but they may be linked to other types of cancer, too.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) increase with grilling because they form in smoke and can get deposited on the outside of meat.

Five Things You Can Do

Here are five things you can do to decrease the formation of HCAs and PAHs:

  1. Cook or fry at lower temperatures to produce fewer HCAs.   You can turn the  gas down or wait for the charcoal’s low-burning embers.
  2. Raise your grilling surface up higher and turn your meat very frequently to reduce charring — which is highly carcinogenic. Grilling fish takes less cooking time and forms fewer HCAs than beef, pork and poultry.
  3. Marinate your meat.  According to the American Institute for Cancer Research, marinating can reduce HCA formation by as much as 92 to 99%. Scientists think that the antioxidants in marinades help block HCA formation.
  4. Add some spices and rubs. Rosemary and turmeric, for example, seem to block up to 40% of HCA formation because of their antioxidant activity. A study by Kansas State University found that rubbing rosemary onto meat before grilling greatly decreased HCA levels.  Basil, mint, sage, and oregano may be effective, too.
  5. Select leaner cuts of meat and trim excess fat to help reduce PAHs. Leaner cuts drip less fat – and dripping fat causes flare-ups and smoke which can deposit PAHs on your food.

Oh, What One Meal Can Do To Your Arteries!

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Macaroni and Cheese

This Might Make You Think Twice

Wow!  A meal that is high in saturated fat can affect your arteries within hours!

An article on “Xtreme Eating” in The Nutrition Action Newsletter alarmingly gave stats on some of the highest-calorie restaurant dishes in the US, meals they called “nutritional trainwrecks.”

Picking up on that, ABC News did an experiment on what one of these types of meals would do to someone’s arteries.

What They Ate

A young reporter and her producer had their blood vessels tested before and after eating some of the food mentioned in Nutrition Action’s article.

For lunch they each had the deep-fried macaroni and cheese appetizer from The Cheesecake Factory, followed by a bacon cheeseburger wrapped in a quesadilla from Applebee’s, followed by Uno Chicago Grill’s giant cookie smothered in ice cream..

All  told:  6190 calories and 187 grams of saturated fat, more than 3 times the daily calories and 10 times the saturated fat recommended by the government.

What Happened After The Calorie And Fat Overload

In the lab two hours after their monster meals, repeat testing was done.  The results showed that the producer’s blood had turned into cloudy, yellowish, pus–like fluid – “you could literally see the fat that was now flooding the system,” according to one of the doctors.  The reporter’s arteries had narrowed so much that the ultrasound showed that her heart was pounding and working much, much harder to pump blood through her arteries.

Some Words To The Wise

Bottom Line: According to the lab Director at the University of Maryland Medical Center where the testing was done, each and every meal affects your arteries.

Pritikin Longevity Center’s nutritionist Dr. Jay Kenney says, “Just as each cigarette you smoke damages your lungs, so does each high–fat meal damage the inside “skin,” or endothelium, of your arteries. And while the crippling effects [lung cancer or cardiovascular disease] from each cigarette or fatty meal may not be apparent for many years, the daily assaults to our lungs and blood vessels can be measured – and last for several hours – every time we light up or eat a fatty meal.”