How to Use a Knife, Fork, and Spoon

From CuisineNet Digest. It includes:

The Zig Zag Method
By American custom, which was brought about partly by the late introduction of the fork into the culture, all three utensils are intended for use primarily with the right hand, which is the more capable hand for most people. This leads to some complicated maneuvering when foods, such as meat, require the use of knife and fork to obtain a bite of manageable size. When this is the case, the fork is held in the left hand, turned so that the tines point downward, the better to hold the meat in place while the right hand operates the knife. After a bite-sized piece has been cut, the diner sets the knife down on the plate and transfers the fork to the right hand, so that it can be used to carry the newly cut morsel to the mouth. Emily Post calls this the “zig-zag” style.

European Style
The European, or “Continental,” style of using knife and fork is somewhat more efficient, and its practice is also common in the United States, where left-handed children are no longer forced to learn to wield a fork with their right hands. According to this method, the fork is held continuously in the left hand and used for eating. When food must be cut, the fork is used exactly as in the American style, except that once the bite has been separated from the whole, it is conveyed directly to the mouth on the downward-facing fork. Regardless of which style is used to operate fork and knife, it is important never to cut more than one or two bites at one time.

How about this?

In Europe it is permitted to use the knife or a small bit of bread to ease a stubborn item onto the fork.

Or this?

Essentially, used flatware must never be allowed to touch the surface of the table, where it might dirty the cloth. It is not proper to allow even the clean handle of a knife or fork to rest on the cloth while the other end lies on the plate.

Coffee is good for you line of the day

“[R]esearchers found that a typical serving of coffee contains more antioxidants than typical servings of grape juice, blueberries, raspberries and oranges.”

From an article in The New York Times and first posted here two years ago.

12,000-calorie-a-day diet

Here’s [Michael] Phelps’s typical menu. (No, he doesn’t choose among these options. He eats them all, according to the [New York] Post.)

Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.

Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.

Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.

WSJ Health Blog

Sorting Out Coffee’s Contradictions

Jane Brody sums up what’s known about coffee. Seems to me if one were to dunk broccoli into one’s coffee, you could live about forever.

Drinks containing usual doses of caffeine are hydrating and, like water, contribute to the body’s daily water needs.

. . .

“Contrary to common belief,” concluded cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, there is “little evidence that coffee and/or caffeine in typical dosages increases the risk” of heart attack, sudden death or abnormal heart rhythms.

. . .

But in a study of 155,000 nurses, women who drank coffee with or without caffeine for a decade were no more likely to develop hypertension than noncoffee drinkers. However, a higher risk of hypertension was found from drinking colas. A Johns Hopkins study that followed more than 1,000 men for 33 years found that coffee drinking played little overall role in the development of hypertension.

. . .

Recent disease-related findings can only add to coffee’s popularity. A review of 13 studies found that people who drank caffeinated coffee, but not decaf, had a 30 percent lower risk of Parkinson’s disease.

Another review found that compared with noncoffee drinkers, people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, had a 28 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. This benefit probably comes from coffee’s antioxidants and chlorogenic acid.

Best broccoli line of the day, so far

“Eating broccoli could reverse the damage caused by diabetes to heart blood vessels, research suggests.

BBC NEWS

I’m beginning to think there might be something to this

This week Dr. Ronald Heberman — director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and UPMC Cancer Center — released a memo warning staff and faculty of health risks that may be connected with cell phone use. In May researchers from UCLA and Denmark analyzing data from a vast 13,000 person study reported cell phone use in pregnancy seriously elevated the risk of behavioral problems and diagnoses. In March an award-winning UK neurosurgeon warned that the impact of brain cancer associated with mobile phones may be more dangerous than asbestos and smoking. In January a study sponsored by the cell phone industry itself found cell phone radiation delays and reduces sleep and causes headaches and confusion. Last October, the journal Occupational Environmental Medicine published findings that people who have had the phones for a decade or more are twice as likely to get a malignant tumour on the side of the brain where they hold the handset.

Firedoglake has much more about your brain on cell phones.

Stop and drink the coffee

This item was first posted here two years ago today, but as the topic came up in conversation during the delightful afternoon I spent yesterday with Debby, official baby sister of NewMexiKen, I’ll post it again. The source was Yahoo! News but the original link has gone inactive.

(HealthDay News) — Your morning cup of java may be one of the healthiest beverages in your diet, as more studies show the health benefits of coffee.

Two cups a day of coffee may promote heart health, decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, and reduce leg pain related to exercise in many people, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Researchers have also been investigating the possibility that coffee could protect against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The beverage is one of the richest sources of antioxidants in the American diet.

The USDA says the levels and benefits of antioxidants seem to be equal in both caffeinated and non-caffeinated coffees. However, watch your intake of cream and sugar, as well as mixed coffee drinks that may be high in calories and sugar.

July 23rd ought to be national holiday

On July 23, 1904, according to some accounts, Charles E. Menches conceived the idea of filling a pastry cone with two scoops of ice-cream and thereby invented the ice-cream cone. He is one of several claimants to that honor: Ernest Hamwi, Abe Doumar, Albert and Nick Kabbaz, Arnold Fornachou, and David Avayou all have been touted as the inventor(s) of the first edible cone. Interestingly, these individuals have in common the fact that they all made or sold confections at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known as the St. Louis World’s Fair. It is from the time of the Fair that the edible “cornucopia,” a cone made from a rolled waffle, vaulted into popularity in the United States.

Library of Congress

Why don’t you take a walk?

“Walk Score ranks 2,508 neighborhoods in the largest 40 U.S. cities to help you find a walkable place to live.”

America’s Most Walkable Neighborhoods

138 Walkers’ Paradises

Albuquerque ranked 21st among cities — Albuquerque’s Most Walkable Neighborhoods

One Hundred Push Ups

Push ups are one of the basic and most common exercises for the human body. Push ups are not only great for your chest, but do a tremendous job of defining your abs, triceps, shoulders and torso.

Push ups can be performed no matter where you are, and best of all, they are completely free - no expensive equipment or annual gym fees required! If you’re looking to develop a great chest and shoulders, you could do much worse than follow along with the hundred push ups plan. Your core strength will also go through the roof too!

one hundred push ups

Ask me in two weeks how I’m doin’.  Until then, nevermind.

Well, yeah, considering the alternative

“Contrary to popular belief, recent research suggests that older and wiser may also mean older and happier.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog citing studies.

Don’t eat the peppers

In its latest update on the Salmonella outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control today confirmed that the investigation has uncovered a second suspect: jalapeños.

“The accumulated data from all investigations indicate that jalapeño peppers caused some illnesses but that they do not explain all illnesses,” the agency said in a statement. Tomatoes, however, remained under investigation along with serrano peppers and fresh cilantro.

The Lede

John, NewMexiKen’s official younger brother, became very ill while visiting Albuquerque several weeks back. He now thinks his may have been one of the early cases of Salmonella. He didn’t get medical attention and recovered nicely, but it wasn’t pretty for a couple of days.

“[S]tay away from fresh salsa, guacamole and pico de gallo if [you] wish to reduce the risk of infection, says the CDC.

How Many of You Expect to Die?

“How many of you expect to die?” she asked.

The audience fell silent, laughed nervously and only then, looking one to the other, slowly raised their hands.

“Would you prefer to be old when it happens?” she then asked.

This time the response was swift and sure, given the alternative.

Then Dr. Lynn, who describes herself as an “old person in training,” offered three options to the room. Who would choose cancer as the way to go? Just a few. Chronic heart failure, or emphysema? A few more.

“So all the rest of you are up for frailty and dementia?” Dr. Lynn asked.

The New Old Age blog

According to Dr. Lynn, cancer takes about 20% of seniors, peaking around age 65; heart and lung failure, about 25% peaking around age 75; and old age about 40%, peaking around age 85.

Life’s a bitch, then you die.

Cokehead

“Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? It’s because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was redundant.”

What Happens To Your Body If You Drink A Coke Right Now?

Link via dangerousmeta!

The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.

The 11 Best Foods You Arent Eating

Among them, cinnamon, prunes and turmeric.

The Itch

If you have a brain, and I believe most readers of this blog do, you may want to read an article in this week’s New Yorker by Atul Gawande.

The article begins by describing the symptoms of a patient, M, who had a phantom itch. Ultimately her scratching became so severe that, “She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.”

There are nerves specifically that convey itch, but after describing them Gawande goes on to discuss the larger phenomenon of phantom itches and phantom pain — the reader who starts to scratch while reading The New Yorker article about itching, the amputee who still feels his arm. Possibly these are, the medical professor suggests, perceptions of the brain and not, as has been long thought, neurological misfires. The brain is far more a part of our perception than we generally think.

The images in our mind are extraordinarily rich. We can tell if something is liquid or solid, heavy or light, dead or alive. But the information we work from is poor—a distorted, two-dimensional transmission with entire spots missing. So the mind fills in most of the picture. You can get a sense of this from brain-anatomy studies. If visual sensations were primarily received rather than constructed by the brain, you’d expect that most of the fibres going to the brain’s primary visual cortex would come from the retina. Instead, scientists have found that only twenty per cent do; eighty per cent come downward from regions of the brain governing functions like memory. Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety per cent memory and less than ten per cent sensory nerve signals.

Maybe there is nothing wrong with the engine. Maybe sometimes it’s just the dashboard sensor that’s broken.

[P]erhaps many patients whom doctors treat as having a nerve injury or a disease have, instead, what might be called sensor syndromes. When your car’s dashboard warning light keeps telling you that there is an engine failure, but the mechanics can’t find anything wrong, the sensor itself may be the problem. This is no less true for human beings. Our sensations of pain, itch, nausea, and fatigue are normally protective. Unmoored from physical reality, however, they can become a nightmare: M., with her intractable itching, and H., with his constellation of strange symptoms—but perhaps also the hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone who suffer from conditions like chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, chronic pelvic pain, tinnitus, temporomandibular joint disorder, or repetitive strain injury, where, typically, no amount of imaging, nerve testing, or surgery manages to uncover an anatomical explanation. Doctors have persisted in treating these conditions as nerve or tissue problems—engine failures, as it were. We get under the hood and remove this, replace that, snip some wires. Yet still the sensor keeps going off.

So we get frustrated. “There’s nothing wrong,” we’ll insist. And, the next thing you know, we’re treating the driver instead of the problem. …

Fascinating.

Yes, We Will Have No Bananas

This is excerpted from an essay on today’s New York Times Op-Ed page. I recommend you read the entire article.

This has happened before. Our great-grandparents grew up eating not the Cavendish but the Gros Michel banana, a variety that everyone agreed was tastier. But starting in the early 1900s, banana plantations were invaded by a fungus called Panama disease and vanished one by one. Forest would be cleared for new banana fields, and healthy fruit would grow there for a while, but eventually succumb.

By 1960, the Gros Michel was essentially extinct and the banana industry nearly bankrupt. It was saved at the last minute by the Cavendish, a Chinese variety that had been considered something close to junk: inferior in taste, easy to bruise (and therefore hard to ship) and too small to appeal to consumers. But it did resist the blight.

Over the past decade, however, a new, more virulent strain of Panama disease has begun to spread across the world, and this time the Cavendish is not immune. The fungus is expected to reach Latin America in 5 to 10 years, maybe 20. The big banana companies have been slow to finance efforts to find either a cure for the fungus or a banana that resists it. Nor has enough been done to aid efforts to diversify the world’s banana crop by preserving little-known varieties of the fruit that grow in Africa and Asia.

Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em

As the Democratic primaries revealed, Barack Obama is having a hard time winning the support of blue-collar voters.

So here’s a piece of strategic advice for the candidate: Lose the Nicorette. Light up instead.

Consider these statistics, culled from studies of smoking patterns. Americans who make between $24,000 and $36,000 a year smoke at twice the rate of those earning $90,000 or more. The same applies to Americans with a high-school education rather than a college degree. Rural Americans smoke more than city-dwellers. As for race, there’s a close correlation between states with high rates of white smokers and those where Mr. Obama polled worst in the primaries. Leading the pack of smoking states are Kentucky and West Virginia; industrial states like Ohio aren’t far behind.

Bottom line: small-towners in the Rust Belt and Appalachia don’t cling to guns and religion so much as they do cigarettes.

Tony Horwitz

There’s more.

I’m going to live forever

“Coffee drinkers, rejoice. While you might be using it for a ‘pick-me-up,’ coffee may also be extending your life.”

WebMD

“Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan, researchers say in a new report that is likely to give impetus to the rapidly growing search for longevity drugs.”

New York Times

Yuck!

I was glancing down the page and read about Ah-Dee’s Belly again.

It occurs to me that I too got some medicine flavored with Hershey’s syrup as a little kid and — this is true —I haven’t liked chocolate milk or chocolate ice cream since. I’ll eat an occasional Hershey’s candy bar and Hershey’s kisses, but I don’t like chocolate sundaes or chocolate shakes or dark chocolate cake or dark chocolate frosting or chocolate pudding.

Maybe my memory is wrong or maybe it’s just a coincidence, but is Aidan still drinking chocolate milk?

(Chocolate milk is a superior energy drink by the way — as if I’d know.)

I was thinking about this a little more and realized while I do like M&Ms, I always avoided the brown M&Ms thinking they were more chocolaty (though they aren’t, of course). I’d blame the psychological impact of the chocolate flavored medicine for sure for that one, except I also now remember resisting the medicine because it had chocolate and I already didn’t like chocolate. I could probably justify a couple of years therapy over this. I wonder if Dr. Melfi is accepting new patients.

Pretty good line of the day

“Lately, however, there always seems to be at least one food-safety crisis in the headlines — tainted spinach, poisonous peanut butter and, currently, the attack of the killer tomatoes.”

Paul Krugman

Best food line of the day

“You can’t eat tomatoes because they’re tainted with deadly salmonella. Yeah, now listen to this. First, of course, we went through tainted lettuce. Now, tainted tomatoes. Who would have thought that the healthiest part of a B.L.T. would be the bacon?”

David Letterman

Wake up and smell the coffee

What if merely waking up and smelling coffee powers up your brain, without ever taking a sip? Most people drink coffee for its taste and its caffeine jolt, but the smell may bring its own benefits.

New research is shedding light on how drinking and smelling coffee might affect genes and proteins in the brain.

WebMD

New Deli Choice

“A chance encounter in Israel between vets and a giraffe has led to a rabbinical ruling that the African animal is kosher.”

Telegraph

What are the best drink swaps?

A study from the University of North Carolina found that we consume 450 calories a day from beverages, nearly twice as many as 30 years ago! This increase amounts to an extra 23 pounds a year that we’re forced to work off—or carry around with us.

There’s good news and bad news when it comes to liquid calories. The bad news is they are the most difficult calories for us to gauge, because we have none of the greasy, cheesy visual cues we get when we go face-to-face with a plate of loaded nachos or a triple cheeseburger. The good news is that they are the easiest calories to cut from your diet.

Men’s Health

There’s an accompanying list. For example, Beck’s Premier Light has 64 calories, Bud Light 110. Honest Tea Green Dragon Tea has 60, Arizona Iced Tea 200. A Long Island Iced Tea has 700 calories.

Omnivore’s Dilemma

NewMexiKen has finished Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and highly recommends it to anyone interested in food. It was one of The New York Times 10 best books of the year in 2006.

This isn’t a cook book or a health book. It’s well-done journalism, reporting facts, history and trends, while profiling various people and places. The omnivore’s dilemma is that because humans can eat almost anything, we are easily confused (and manipulated). Pollan thinks we need to be better educated about the source of our foods so that we can make more informed choices. He sets out to increase his (and the reader’s) awareness about what we eat and where it comes from. He does so without grossing you out or trying to convert you (well, maybe a little). Pollan is not a vegetarian or animal rights absolutist.

[Pollan] embarks on four separate eating adventures, each of which starts at the very beginning — in the soil from which the raw materials of his dinners will emerge — and ends with a cooked, finished meal.

These meals are, in order, a McDonald’s repast consumed by Pollan with his wife and son in their car as it vrooms up a California freeway; a “Big Organic” meal of ingredients purchased at the upmarket chain Whole Foods; a beyond-organic chicken dinner whose main course and side dishes come from a wondrously self-sustaining Virginia farm that uses no pesticides, antibiotics or synthetic fertilizers; and a “hunter-gatherer” feast consisting almost entirely of ingredients that Pollan has shot dead or foraged himself.

The New York Times Book Review.

Here’s a lengthy adaptation from the final (but perhaps least interesting) section of the book — The Modern Hunter-Gatherer.

What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t?

Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.”

Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.

NYTimes.com

35 bottles of wine on the wall, 35 bottles of wine

First, the Good News:

“Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan, researchers say in a new report that is likely to give impetus to the rapidly growing search for longevity drugs.”

Now, the Great News:

“The Wisconsin scientists used a dose on mice equivalent to just 35 bottles a day. But red wine contains many other resveratrol-like compounds that may also be beneficial. Taking these into account, as well as mice’s higher metabolic rate, a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine ’starts getting close’ to the amount of resveratrol they found effective, Dr. Weindruch said.”

The New York Times

I’m doomed

Three years ago today NewMexiKen reported that I’d learned that stress can cause your brain to shrink.

I found that depressing.

Then I learned that depression can cause your brain to shrink.

I found that stressful.

Best advice line of the day, so far

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, quoted in The Last Bite an article asking, “Is the world’s food system collapsing?”

Bipolar on Bipolar

Tuesday:

Many people who have been told by their doctors that they have bipolar disorder don’t really have it.

So say researchers who used a standardized, comprehensive, psychiatric diagnostic interview to evaluate 700 adult psychiatric outpatients.

WebMD

One year ago Wednesday:

There appear to be almost twice as many Americans with bipolar disorder as previously thought, and many are not getting the treatments they need, researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health report.

Once thought of as a single mental illness, bipolar disorder is increasingly recognized as a spectrum disorder, with symptoms ranging from less severe to devastating.

WebMD

Why we like red or green

NewMexiKen found this in a 1992 New Yorker article about chiles and New Mexican cuisine.

According to scientists who have studied the effects of fiery food, a very hot chili sends the nervous system into a state of panic, and the brain reacts by flooding the distressed nerve endings with endorphins, which are the body’s natural painkillers—a sort of friendly morphine. The sudden shot of endorphins is what transforms the pang of hot food into pleasure, and also what makes it considerably more tolerable after the first few bites.

The article, by Jane and Michael Stern, is not available online.

Doggone health nuts

NewMexiKen attended two school events Thursday evening. Both had refreshments. You’re thinking cupcakes and cookies, right? Oh no, with all the food fanatics around now, it’s veggies and fruit and cheese and crackers.

Man, what I would have given for a little frosting.

Try glass

BPA is a component used in making plastic sport water bottles, sippy cups and baby bottles. Concerns have been raised that the chemical could present long-term cancer risk. There is nothing definite.

A quote from “The Wall Street Journal” summarizes the current state of knowledge the best: “Though the evidence isn’t entirely clear, it’s possible that exposure to the chemical during infancy could cause changes in prostate and mammary tissue that raise the risk of change later in life. The latest analysis goes beyond two others from last year, both of which concluded the chemical was safe in low doses.”

There is more investigation under way, but for now BPA in plastic baby bottles is under advisement until more is known. As moms and soon-to-be moms, we want to do what is best for our babies. So what does this report mean in our world? It means you get to go shopping!

There are plastic baby bottles and sippy cups that do not contain BPA. On the Web, they seem a little pricey. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, has announced that it will convert its entire U.S. stock. They currently stock BPA free bottles. Others will do the same.

MayoClinic.com

See, I’m not the only one

This Sonics move can really eat at an NBA writer, too.

“As a longtime NBA traveler, I’d much rather see the SuperSonics in Seattle,” wrote Sam Smith of The Sporting News. “It’s a beautiful city with phenomenal restaurants and culture and a quirky populace that makes you wonder at times if the country tipped in the late 1960s and the hippie movement landed there and stayed. It’s a place unlike any in the U.S.

“Among the best last meals has to be the Copper River salmon available in the late spring.

“It hardly compares with my favorite IHOP in Oklahoma City.”

Sideline Chatter

Bisphenol A Update

Popular plastic water bottles, sippy cups and baby bottles made with a chemical called bisphenol A may be on their way out.

Two big signs in this morning’s papers: Wal-Mart says it’s going to stop selling BPA baby bottles early next year, and the company that makes Nalgene water bottles says it will stop using the chemical as well.

Wall Street Journal

If you need any convincing

Here’s what the tobacco pharmaceutical gun plastic industry spokesman said about the potential harm in their products:

Steven G. Hentges of the American Chemistry Council’s polycarbonate/BPA group said the findings “provide reassurance that consumers can continue to use products made from bisphenol A.”

“The limited evidence for effects in laboratory animals at low doses primarily highlights opportunities for additional research to better understand whether these findings are of any significance to human health,” he said.

Source: Los Angeles Times

A Chile Rant

Jana has A Chile Rant.

“It’s pure and simple and tastes like earth, if earth was delicious and made your sinuses drain in a sweet epiphany of heat.”

Most importantly, it’s chile with an “e” — the plant. That’s what makes New Mexican cuisine different. Chili with an “i” is a stew they make in Texas and Cincinnati (good as it is).

Mexican Diet May Cut Breast Cancer Risk

When it comes to breast cancer, a traditional Mexican diet may serve up an ounce of prevention for a variety of women.

A study involving hundreds of women living in the Four Corners region (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) shows that a diet emphasizing Mexican cheeses, beans, soups, tomato-based sauces, and meat may help lower the risk of breast cancer in both Hispanic and non-Hispanic women.

WebMD

There’s more info. Like most of these kinds of studies, the results are mixed. Still …

The world really does seem to be falling apart

I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.

From an important column by Paul Krugman today. Read it.

I blame Bush.