Recently in Food Category

I was grumpy this morning as I rooted through my kitchen cabinets, irritated with myself for running out of green tea, when I located a small bag of Kukicha twigs I'd relegated to secondary tea status. I fixed a cup and yum--this is a tea no one should neglect! It's nuttier than a green or white tea, and much less astringent. Whereas you might imagine a green tea whispering "Eeek" in your ear, Kukicha twig utters a far more relaxed "Ahhh."

This site says that Kukicha twig tea "was popularized in the U.S. and Europe in the 1960s by George Ohsawa, the founder of modern macrobiotics. Mr. Ohsawa considered Kukicha to be the perfect complementary beverage for a grain-based or mostly vegetarian diet, due to its alkaline qualities." It apparently has the ability to neutralize both acids and alkalines in food. Look for it in your health food store. Here it is in tea bag form.

Veganlunchbox.com got me interested in these wonderful bento box lunchboxes to use for my kids' school/camp lunches. Now Rachel Ray is into them too!

They seem to foster a healthier dining approach since they can safely (and attractively) contain moist fruits and rice dishes within their different segments. Plus, you don't need to use plastic sandwich bags any more and that's good for the environment.

This article describes an emerging trend to expand, rethink, and green up the ritual of keeping kosher. Many observant Jews have always been proponents of eating consciously, so it's exciting to hear about old rituals being made new.

"...for many people, the primary daily impact of rising environmental consciousness is on the food they eat. They want it to be produced locally, sustainably, organically and humanely. Increasingly, religious people view this as a religious obligation, not just a matter of good health or ethics. The trend is advancing particularly fast among Jews, who have a long tradition of investing food with religious meaning."

Here's a website called "The Jew and the Carrot." It's a project of Hazon, and its editors wish to raise the quality of discussion about contemporary food issues in the Jewish community, convey a "sense of importance and joy around food," and challenge readers to think deeply about their own food choices.

The July-August Utne Reader publishes four articles on soy, attacking the hot subject from different angles. Starhawk, aaugh, I don't want to shake your faith or heavy soy habits, but, really, take another look. None of these articles make me want to eat much more than my trusty bowls of miso. Soy milk manufacturers must be calling emergency staff meetings, the assessments of it are so negative! Here's the lead piece by Mary Vance, reprinted from Terrain. And here's an excerpt from Vance's interview on soy with clinical nutritionist Kaayla Daniel:

What health problems do you see in your practice that can be traced back to overconsumption of soy?

I work mostly with midlife women, and they're likely to eat a lot of soy and drink a lot of soy milk. They're taking soy isoflavone supplements because they've heard that it's going to help them through menopause. A lot of these women are very intelligent and educated, and, unfortunately, they get this idea that if a little of something might be good, then they should do a lot of it. They start gaining weight, feeling fatigued; they get lethargic and depressed, and when they go to a regular doctor, they're told "Well, what do you expect, you're getting old," and that this is typical of menopause. In fact, the symptoms are almost entirely coming from that change in their diet, which had to do with soy.

Here's another view of soy from an article James Nestor wrote this last year for the San Francisco Chronicle. He quotes Marion Nestle, author of the marvelous book "What to Eat," and calls her a "decidedly moderate voice in the nutrition wars, either a soy lobbyist or detractor."

"I think overall the research on soy is really uncompelling," Nestle says. "What the data shows is that if there is harm from soy, it is very small; and if there are benefits, they are also very small. That means the data revolves around zero. And the FDA health claim was on soy ...I think it was way out of line. Foods aren't medicines!"

"People don't have to eat soy if they don't want to!" Nestle says. "To figure you have to eat it for any reason makes no sense to me at all -- nobody needs to eat this stuff to be healthy."

Read the whole article. To my mind, more research and clarity is needed on the value of infant soy formula.

Nutrition powerhouses Sally Fallon and Mary Enig (the authors of "Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats") write passionately about the "dark side of America's favorite health food"--SOY--in the July/August edition of Well Being...