Hate salad or veggies? Just keep eating them. Here’s how our tastebuds adapt to what we eat
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Do you hate salad? It’s OK if you do, there are plenty of foods in the world, and lots of different ways to prepare them.
But given almost all of us don’t eat enough vegetables, even though most of us (81%) know eating more vegetables is a simple way to improve our health, you might want to try.
If this idea makes you miserable, fear not, with time and a little effort you can make friends with salad.
Why don’t I like salads?
It’s an unfortunate quirk of evolution that vegetables are so good for us but they aren’t all immediately tasty to all of us. We have evolved to enjoy the sweet or umami (savoury) taste of higher energy foods, because starvation is a more immediate risk than long-term health.
Vegetables aren’t particularly high energy but they are jam-packed with dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals, and health-promoting compounds called bioactives.
Those bioactives are part of the reason vegetables taste bitter. Plant bioactives, also called phytonutrients, are made by plants to protect themselves against environmental stress and predators. The very things that make plant foods bitter, are the things that make them good for us.
Unfortunately, bitter taste evolved to protect us from poisons, and possibly from over-eating one single plant food. So in a way, plant foods can taste like poison.
For some of us, this bitter sensing is particularly acute, and for others it isn’t so bad. This is partly due to our genes. Humans have at least 25 different receptors that detect bitterness, and we each have our own genetic combinations. So some people really, really taste some bitter compounds while others can barely detect them.
This means we don’t all have the same starting point when it comes to interacting with salads and veggies. So be patient with yourself. But the steps toward learning to like salads and veggies are the same regardless of your starting point.
It takes time
We can train our tastes because our genes and our receptors aren’t the end of the story. Repeat exposures to bitter foods can help us adapt over time. Repeat exposures help our brain learn that bitter vegetables aren’t posions.
And as we change what we eat, the enzymes and other proteins in our saliva change too. This changes how different compounds in food are broken down and detected by our taste buds. How exactly this works isn’t clear, but it’s similar to other behavioural cognitive training.
Add masking ingredients
The good news is we can use lots of great strategies to mask the bitterness of vegetables, and this positively reinforces our taste training.
Salt and fat can reduce the perception of bitterness, so adding seasoning and dressing can help make salads taste better instantly. You are probably thinking, “but don’t we need to reduce our salt and fat intake?” – yes, but you will get more nutritional bang-for-buck by reducing those in discretionary foods like cakes, biscuits, chips and desserts, not by trying to avoid them with your vegetables.
Adding heat with chillies or pepper can also help by acting as a decoy to the bitterness. Adding fruits to salads adds sweetness and juiciness, this can help improve the overall flavour and texture balance, increasing enjoyment.
Pairing foods you are learning to like with foods you already like can also help.
The options for salads are almost endless, if you don’t like the standard garden salad you were raised on, that’s OK, keep experimenting.
Experimenting with texture (for example chopping vegetables smaller or chunkier) can also help in finding your salad loves.
Challenge your biases
Challenging your biases can also help the salad situation. A phenomenon called the “unhealthy-tasty intuition” makes us assume tasty foods aren’t good for us, and that healthy foods will taste bad. Shaking that assumption off can help you enjoy your vegetables more.
When researchers labelled vegetables with taste-focused labels, priming subjects for an enjoyable taste, they were more likely to enjoy them compared to when they were told how healthy they were.
The bottom line
Vegetables are good for us, but we need to be patient and kind with ourselves when we start trying to eat more.
Try working with biology and brain, and not against them.
And hold back from judging yourself or other people if they don’t like the salads you do. We are all on a different point of our taste-training journey.
Emma Beckett, Senior Lecturer (Food Science and Human Nutrition), School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Hearty Healthy Ukrainian Borscht
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In the West, borscht is often thought of as Russian, but it is Ukrainian in origin and popular throughout much of Eastern Europe, with many local variations. Today’s borscht is a vegetarian (and vegan, depending on your choice of cooking fat) borscht from Kyiv, and it’s especially good for the gut, heart, and blood sugars.
You will need
- 1 quart vegetable stock; ideally you made this yourself from vegetable offcuts you kept in the freezer, but failing that, your supermarket should have low-sodium stock cubes
- 4 large beets, peeled and cut into matchsticks
- 1 can white beans (cannellini beans are ideal), drained and rinsed
- 1 cup sauerkraut
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 1 green bell pepper, roughly chopped
- 1 large russet potato, peeled and cut into large chunks
- 3 small carrots, tops removed and cut into large chunks
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- ½ bulb garlic, finely chopped
- 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 bunch fresh dill, chopped. If you cannot get fresh, substitute with parsley (1 bunch fresh, chopped, or 1 tbsp dried). Do not use dried dill; it won’t work.
- A little fat for cooking; this one’s a tricky and personal decision. Butter is traditional, but would make this recipe impossible to cook without going over the recommended limit for saturated fat. Avocado oil is healthy, relatively neutral in taste, and has a high smoke point, though that latter shouldn’t be necessary here if you are attentive with the stirring. Extra virgin olive oil is also a healthy choice, but not as neutral in flavor and does have a lower smoke point. Coconut oil has arguably too strong a taste and a low smoke point. Seed oils are very heart-unhealthy. All in all, avocado oil is a respectable choice from all angles except tradition.
- On standby: a little vinegar (your preference what kind)
Salt is conspicuous by its absence, but there should be enough already from the other ingredients, especially the sauerkraut.
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Heat some oil in a large sauté pan (cast iron is perfect if you have it), add the onion and pepper, and stir until the onion is becoming soft.
2) Add the carrots and beets and stir until they are becoming soft. If you need to add a little more oil, that’s fine.
3) Add the tomato paste, and stir in well.
4) Add a little (about ½ cup) of the vegetable stock and stir in well until you get a consistent texture with the tomato paste.
5) Add the sauerkraut and the rest of the broth, and cook for about 20 minutes.
6) Add the potatoes and cook for another 10 minutes.
7) Add the beans and cook for another 5 minutes.
8) Add the garlic, black pepper, and herbs. Check that everything is cooked (poke a chunk of potato with a fork) and that the seasoning is to your liking. The taste should be moderately sour from the sauerkraut; if it is sweet, you can stir in a little vinegar now to correct that.
9) Serve! Ukrainian borscht is most often served hot (unlike Lithuanian borscht, which is almost always served cold), but if the weather’s warm, it can certainly be enjoyed cold too:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure
- No, Beetroot Isn’t Vegetable Viagra. But Here’s What It Can Do
- The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal
Take care!
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Complex PTSD – by Pete Walker
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We’ve written before about Complex PTSD, but there’s a lot more to be said than we can fit into an article or two.
Pete Walker, a licensed marriage and family therapist, does an excellent job and pulls no punches, starting from the book’s dedication and carrying the hard-hitting seriousness all the way through to the Appendices.
To this end, it absolutely may not be an easy book to read at times (emotionally speaking), especially if you have C-PTSD. On the other hand, you may also find it a very validating 300-odd pages of “Yes, he is telling my life story in words, now this makes sense!”
That said, it’s mostly not an anecdotes-based book and nor is it just a feelsy ride; it’s also a textbook and a how-to manual. It’s a textbook of how and why things come about the way they do, and a manual of how to effectively manage C-PTSD, and find peace. There’s no silver bullet here, but there is a very comprehensive guide, and chapters full of tools to use (and no, not the same CBT things you’ve probably read a hundred times, this is C-PTSD-specific stuff).
Bottom line: this is the C-PTSD book; if you buy only one book on the topic, make it this one.
Click here to check out Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving, and indeed thrive!
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Women’s Strength Training Anatomy – by Frédéric Delavier
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Fitness guides for women tend to differ from fitness guides for men, in the wrong ways:
“Do some squats and jumping jacks, and here’s a exercise for your abs; you too can look like our model here”
In those other books we are left wonder: where’s the underlying information? Where are the explanations that aren’t condescending? Where, dare we ask, is the understanding that a woman might ever lift something heavier than a baby?
Delavier, in contrast, delivers. With 130 pages of detailed anatomical diagrams for all kinds of exercises to genuinely craft your body the way you want it for you. Bigger here, smaller there, functional strength, you decide.
And rest assured: no, you won’t end up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger unless you not only eat like him, but also have his genes (and possibly his, uh, “supplement” regime).
What you will get though, is a deep understanding of how to tailor your exercise routine to actually deliver the personalized and specific results that you want.
Pick Up Today’s Book on Amazon!
Not looking for a feminine figure? You may like the same author’s book for men:
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Infections, Heart Failure, & More
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Some health news to round off the week:
The Infection That Leads To Heart Failure
It’s long been held that, for example, flossing reduces heart disease risk, with the hypothesis being that if plaque bacteria enter the blood stream, well, that’s an even worse place for plaque bacteria to be. Now, with much more data, attention has turned to
- actual infections, and
- actual heart failure
Way to up the ante! And, it holds true regardless of what kind of infection. So, you might think that a UTI, for example, is surely “downstream” and should not affect the heart, but it does. Because of this, researchers currently believe that it is not the infection itself, so much as the body’s inflammation response to infection, that leads to the heart failure. Which is reasonable, because, for example, atherosclerosis is made mostly not of cholesterol itself, but rather mostly of dead immune cells that got stuck in the cholesterol.
Moreover, it’s not so much about the acute inflammatory response (which is almost always a good thing, circumstantially), but rather that after cases where an infection managed to take hold, the immune system can then often stay on high alert for many years alter. Long COVID is an obvious recent example of this, but it’s hardly a new phenomenon; see for example post-polio syndrome, and consider how many more such post-infection maladies are likely to exist that never got a name because they flew under the radar or got diagnosed as fibromyalgia or something (fibromyalgia is a common diagnosis doctors give when they acknowledge something’s wrong, and it causes pain and exhaustion, but they don’t know what, and it appears to be stable—so while it can be helpful to put a name to the collection of symptoms, it’s a non-diagnosis diagnosis on the doctors’ part. It’s saying “I diagnose you with hurty tiredness”).
The take-away from all this? Avoid infections, for your heart’s sake, and if you do get an infection, take it seriously even if it’s minor. The safe amount of infection is “no infection”.
Read in full: Study uncovers new link between infections and heart failure
Cold Water Immersion: Hot Or Not?
The evidence is clear for some benefits; for others, not so much:
- It’s great (if you’re already in fair health, and definitely not if you have a heart condition) to improve circulation and stress response
- There may be some benefits to immune function, but however reasonable the hypothesis, actual evidence is thin on the ground
- The oft-hyped mood benefits are a) marginal b) short-lived, with benefits fading after 3 months of regular cold baths/showers/etc
Read in full: The big chill: Is cold-water immersion good for our health?
Related: Ice Baths: To Dip Or Not To Dip?
The Unspoken Trials Of Going To The Gym (While Being A Woman)
Public health decision-makers often think that getting people to go to the gym more is a matter of public information, or perhaps branding. Some who have their thinking heads on might even realize that there may be economic factors for many. But for women, there’s an additional factor—or rather, an additionally prominent factor. The study we’ll link started with this observation (please read it in the voice of your favorite nature documentary narrator):
❝Despite an increase in gym memberships, women are less active than men and little is known about the barriers women face when navigating gym spaces.❞
What then, of these shy, elusive creatures that make up a mere 51% of the world’s population?
A medium-sized (n=279) study of women, of whom 84% being current gym-goers, reported often feeling “judged for their appearance or performance, as well as having to fight for space in the gym and to be taken seriously, while navigating harassment and unsolicited comments from men”
Even gym attire becomes an issue:
❝Aligning with previous literature, women often chose attire based on comfort and functionality. However, their choices were also influenced by comparisons with others or fear of judgement for wearing non-branded attire or looking too put together. Many women also chose gym attire to hide perceived problem areas or avoid appearance concerns, including visible sweat stains.❞
…which main seem silly; you’re at the gym, of course you’re going to sweat, but if you’re the only one with visible sweat stains, then there can be social consequences (bad ones).
Similarly, there’s a “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” when it comes to working out while fat—on the one hand, society conflates fatness with laziness; on the other, it can be extra intimidating to be the only fat person in a gym full of people who look like they’re going to audition for a superhero movie.
❝In the gym, just like in other areas of life, women often feel stuck between being seen as ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’, dealing with judgement about how they look, how they perform, and even how much space they take up. Even though the pressure to be super thin is decreasing, the growing focus on being muscular and athletic is creating new challenges. It is pushing unrealistic standards that can negatively affect women’s body image and overall well-being.❞
Writer’s note: I live a few minutes walk from my nearest gym, and I work out at home instead. This way, if I want to do yoga in my pajamas, I can. If I want to use my treadmill naked and watch my T+A bounce in the mirror, I can. If I want to lift weights in the dress I happened to be wearing, I can. Alas that I can’t swim at home!
Read in full: Women face multiple barriers while exercising in gyms
Related: Body Image Dissatisfaction/Appreciation Across The Ages
Take care!
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Can kimchi really help you lose weight? Hold your pickle. The evidence isn’t looking great
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Fermented foods have become popular in recent years, partly due to their perceived health benefits.
For instance, there is some evidence eating or drinking fermented foods can improve blood glucose control in people with diabetes. They can lower blood lipid (fats) levels and blood pressure in people with diabetes or obesity. Fermented foods can also improve diarrhoea symptoms.
But can they help you lose weight, as a recent study suggests? Let’s look at the evidence.
Remind me, what are fermented foods?
Fermented foods are ones prepared when microbes (bacteria and/or yeast) ferment (or digest) food components to form new foods. Examples include yoghurt, cheese, kefir, kombucha, wine, beer, sauerkraut and kimchi.
As a result of fermentation, the food becomes acidic, extending its shelf life (food-spoilage microbes are less likely to grow under these conditions). This makes fermentation one of the earliest forms of food processing.
Fermentation also leads to new nutrients being made. Beneficial microbes (probiotics) digest nutrients and components in the food to produce new bioactive components (postbiotics). These postbiotics are thought to contribute to the health benefits of the fermented foods, alongside the health benefits of the bacteria themselves.
What does the evidence say?
A study published last week has provided some preliminary evidence eating kimchi – the popular Korean fermented food – is associated with a lower risk of obesity in some instances. But there were mixed results.
The South Korean study involved 115,726 men and women aged 40-69 who reported how much kimchi they’d eaten over the previous year. The study was funded by the World Institute of Kimchi, which specialises in researching the country’s national dish.
Eating one to three servings of any type of kimchi a day was associated with a lower risk of obesity in men.
Men who ate more than three serves a day of cabbage kimchi (baechu) were less likely to have obesity and abdominal obesity (excess fat deposits around their middle). And women who ate two to three serves a day of baechu were less likely to have obesity and abdominal obesity.
Eating more radish kimchi (kkakdugi) was associated with less abdominal obesity in both men and women.
However, people who ate five or more serves of any type of kimchi weighed more, had a larger waist sizes and were more likely to be obese.
The study had limitations. The authors acknowledged the questionnaire they used may make it difficult to say exactly how much kimchi people actually ate.
The study also relied on people to report past eating habits. This may make it hard for them to accurately recall what they ate.
This study design can also only tell us if something is linked (kimchi and obesity), not if one thing causes another (if kimchi causes weight loss). So it is important to look at experimental studies where researchers make changes to people’s diets then look at the results.
How about evidence from experimental trials?
There have been several experimental studies looking at how much weight people lose after eating various types of fermented foods. Other studies looked at markers or measures of appetite, but not weight loss.
One study showed the stomach of men who drank 1.4 litres of fermented milk during a meal took longer to empty (compared to those who drank the same quantity of whole milk). This is related to feeling fuller for longer, potentially having less appetite for more food.
Another study showed drinking 200 millilitres of kefir (a small glass) reduced participants’ appetite after the meal, but only when the meal contained quickly-digested foods likely to make blood glucose levels rise rapidly. This study did not measure changes in weight.
Kefir, a fermented milk drink, reduced people’s appetite.
Ildi Papp/ShutterstockAnother study looked at Indonesian young women with obesity. Eating tempeh (a fermented soybean product) led to changes in an appetite hormone. But this did not impact their appetite or whether they felt full. Weight was not measured in this study.
A study in South Korea asked people to eat about 70g a day of chungkookjang (fermented soybean). There were improvements in some measures of obesity, including percentage body fat, lean body mass, waist-to-hip ratio and waist circumference in women. However there were no changes in weight for men or women.
A systematic review of all studies that looked at the impact of fermented foods on satiety (feeling full) showed no effect.
What should I do?
The evidence so far is very weak to support or recommend fermented foods for weight loss. These experimental studies have been short in length, and many did not report weight changes.
To date, most of the studies have used different fermented foods, so it is difficult to generalise across them all.
Nevertheless, fermented foods are still useful as part of a healthy, varied and balanced diet, particularly if you enjoy them. They are rich in healthy bacteria, and nutrients.
Are there downsides?
Some fermented foods, such as kimchi and sauerkraut, have added salt. The latest kimchi study said the average amount of kimchi South Koreans eat provides about 490mg of salt a day. For an Australian, this would represent about 50% of the suggested dietary target for optimal health.
Eating too much salt increases your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.
Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Applesauce vs Cranberry Sauce – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing applesauce to cranberry sauce, we picked the applesauce.
Why?
It mostly comes down to the fact that apples are sweeter than cranberries:
In terms of macros, they are both equal on fiber (both languishing at a paltry 1.1g/100g), and/but cranberry sauce has 4x the carbs, of which, more than 3x the sugar. Simply, cranberry sauce recipes invariably have a lot of added sugar, while applesauce recipes don’t need that. So this is a huge relative win for applesauce (we say “relative” because it’s still not great, but cranberry sauce is far worse).
In the category of vitamins, applesauce has more of vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, B9, and C, while cranberry sauce has more of vitamins E, K, and choline. A more moderate win for applesauce this time.
When it comes to minerals, applesauce has more calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium, while cranberry sauce has more iron, manganese, and selenium. Another moderate win for applesauce.
Since we’ve discussed relative amounts rather than actual quantities, it’s worth noting that neither sauce is a good source of vitamins or minerals, and neither are close to just eating the actual fruits. Just, cranberry sauce is the relatively more barren of the two.
While cranberries famously have some UTI-fighting properties, you cannot usefully gain this benefit from a sauce that (with its very high sugar content and minimal fiber) actively feeds the very C. albicans you are likely trying to kill.
All in all, a pitiful show of nutritional inadequacy from these two products today, but one is relatively less bad than the other, and that’s the applesauce.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Enjoy!
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