The Olive Oil Hunter, Author at Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil

Olive Oil Hunter News #254

Posted on March 6, 2026March 11, 2026 by The Olive Oil Hunter

Chicken Involtini Recipe, Spotlight on Chicken, A Better Approach to Losing Weight, and Why Workout Plans Go Awry

Want to elevate your next chicken dinner? Chicken involtini, or little bundles, is the delicious answer. Stuffed with spinach and cheese, it ticks all the boxes for flavor. This issue of the newsletter also serves up two studies—one on better ways to get help for losing weight and the other on how to rethink exercise for a better chance at sticking with a plan.

Chicken Involtini

Chicken Involtini
These stuffed boneless chicken breasts are browned on the stovetop and then baked in the oven in an olive oil, lemon, and butter sauce. Enjoy on its own or over pasta.
Ingredients
- 7 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided use
- 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 12 ounces fresh baby spinach
- 1 teaspoon salt, divided use
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided use
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 4 skinless boneless chicken breasts, about 2 pounds in total
- 8-ounce block Emmenthaler or provolone cheese, sliced into 8 sticks
- 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
- 1-1/2 cups homemade or store-bought low-sodium chicken stock
- Juice of half a lemon
- 2 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
- 1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
Directions

Step 1

Heat a large oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add 3 tablespoons olive oil and the garlic. Cook the garlic until it becomes translucent, then add the spinach in bunches. As each bunch wilts, add the next. When completely wilted and tender, transfer to a colander and set the skillet aside. Let the spinach cool for 5 minutes, then squeeze with your hands to remove any excess liquid. Transfer to a large glass bowl and toss with 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, and the red pepper flakes.

Step 2

Slice each breast horizontally to make eight cutlets. One at a time, place each cutlet between two sheets of parchment paper set on a cutting board, and use a kitchen mallet to pound it to about 1/4” thickness. Season each cutlet with the remaining salt and pepper.

Step 3

Top each cutlet with a layer of spinach, then place a stick of cheese in the center. Starting at the narrow end, roll up each cutlet and secure with a wooden skewer or toothpicks to keep the roll closed.

Step 4

Preheat your oven to 375°F. Put the flour in a pie plate and place it next to your stovetop. Wipe out the skillet and reheat it. When hot, add 4 tablespoons olive oil. Roll each bundle in the flour, shake off any excess, and add to the pan, seam side down. Brown on all sides, turning with heat-safe tongs. Deglaze the skillet with the stock, then add the lemon juice and butter. Place the skillet in the oven for 20 minutes or until an instant read thermometer placed in the chicken shows 160°F.

Step 5

Very carefully take the pan out of the oven. If you’d like a thicker sauce, plate the chicken and return the skillet to the stovetop. Bring to a boil and cook down for about 5 minutes. To serve, remove the skewers or toothpicks, drizzle on some sauce, and sprinkle on the parsley.
Yields 4 servings

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Chicken Breasts

Looking for a lean protein source? A 3-ounce serving of cooked skinless chicken breast delivers between 26 and 30 grams of protein for about 140 calories. You’ll also get B vitamins, particularly niacin and B6, and selenium, an essential trace mineral critical for supporting metabolism, among other functions.

Quick Kitchen Nugget

Pounding Chicken

Pounded cutlets cook quickly and evenly because they have a uniform thickness. What’s more, pounding provides a bigger surface for stuffing which also makes rolling them up easier. It’s important to use a surface that can be easily and thoroughly cleaned, even though you’ll be pounding the chicken between sheets of parchment paper.

A meat mallet is a great tool; the flat side can be used on chicken and pork cutlets, and the side with the little spikes helps tenderize tougher cuts of beef. However, you can also make do with a heavy pan or even a rolling pin. Make sure to rotate the cutlet so you apply the force uniformly and not just to one or two spots. Start with moderate force and increase only if necessary to get an even thickness.

For Your Best Health

A Better Approach to Losing Weight

For a long time, endocrinologist Leigh Perreault, MD, felt uneasy about how weight management was handled in routine medical care. Too often, patients were sent home with vague advice to eat better and exercise more, even when that clearly was not enough.

“There was a moment I put my face in my hands and thought, ‘What am I doing?’ I would write a lot of prescriptions for patients’ diabetes, their blood pressure, their lipids, and all these other conditions,” said Dr. Perreault, a professor of endocrinology, metabolism, and diabetes at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine who practices in Westminster, Colorado, alongside primary care physicians. But she realized that many of those medications addressed symptoms rather than the root problem. “None of these people want to be on these medications, and I thought if I could just help them with their weight, many of these health concerns would probably go away,” she said. That realization set the stage for a new approach that could soon reshape how weight care would be addressed in primary care.

Dr.Perreault and her colleagues created PATHWEIGH, a structured process that helps people and their primary care teams focus directly on weight management. The program introduces dedicated clinic visits where providers can concentrate specifically on weight-related care instead of squeezing it into a standard appointment.

With funding from the National Institutes of Health, PATHWEIGH was rolled out across UCHealth’s 56 primary care clinics throughout Colorado to evaluate its impact. The pilot included 274,182 patients, making it one of the largest randomized trials ever conducted in this area. Results published in Nature Medicine showed that the program reduced population weight gain by 0.58 kg (about one and a quarter pounds) over 18 months and shifted the overall trend from steady gain to weight loss. Experts estimate that rising obesity rates are driven by an average population weight gain of about 0.50 kg or roughly a half pound every year. Stopping that increase and turning it into even modest weight loss could make a meaningful difference in slowing the obesity epidemic. “While it’s not a significant difference on an individual patient level, it’s a huge deal on a population and public health level,” Dr. Perreault said.

The program also made patients more likely to get help for weight issues. Participation increased the chances of receiving weight-related care by 23%. Most of that care involved lifestyle counseling, but prescriptions for anti-obesity medications doubled during the intervention. Unlike many one-size-fits-all weight-loss programs, PATHWEIGH allows treatment to be customized to each patient. It also reduces the discomfort that often surrounds conversations about weight in medical settings.

“With PATHWEIGH, we showed that we absolutely eliminated population weight gain across all of our primary care, which had never been done previously,” Dr. Perreault said. “If you think about weight loss medicine or surgery or a weight loss program, those are all vehicles to weight loss. We built a highway that we could put all the vehicles on, so there’s actually a process for people to receive weight-related care if they want it.

Dr. Perreault said the program’s success has opened the door to wider adoption. Plans are underway to expand PATHWEIGH beyond Colorado. The Obesity Association, which is developing its first standards of care for obesity, is highlighting the program as a recommended care process. Five health systems across seven states are also considering PATHWEIGH as its creators work toward licensing the model.

Fitness Flash

Why Workout Plans Go Awry

You know you should exercise, so you make a solid plan to do it, but then, in the decisive moment, you opt out. And then you choose to forgo your planned daily exercise again and again. Why? It could be related to what scientists call all-or-nothing thinking.

“Most people are tired and overwhelmed, so in the moment of decision, the immediate costs of exercising feel much bigger than the benefits, making it a low-value choice,” said University of Michigan behavioral scientist Michelle Segar, PhD. “This makes doing ‘nothing’ a prudent choice and desirable exit strategy. Decisions to not exercise are often made outside of awareness—so people are likely unaware that choosing to forgo their exercise plans could be related to having an all-or-nothing mindset.”

She suggests that all-or-nothing thinking is caused by a deeply embedded mindset that leads many people to abandon their exercise plans. “Exercise-related all-or-nothing thinking occurs when a specific exercise plan becomes unworkable,” Dr. Segar explained. “At this moment, when people cannot perfectly adhere to their plan—the ‘all’—they choose not to exercise at all rather than modify the plan.”

While all-or-nothing thinking has been studied in relation to eating and weight, this is the first in-depth research to investigate this phenomenon with exercise, Dr. Segar said. She and her colleagues Jen Taber, John Updegraff, and Alexis McGhee-Dinvaut, all of Kent State University, conducted four focus groups among 27 adults—ages 19 to 79—who tried to exercise but couldn’t stick with it. The study, published in BMC Public Health, uncovered four components that collectively make up an all-or-nothing mindset:

Having rigid, idealized criteria for exercising. For most participants, their “all” constituted rigid standards that had to be met to exercise “right.” They typically say to themselves, “If I do something for under 15 minutes, I feel like I didn’t even exercise. Even if it were dead-out sprints, it just doesn’t factor into my head like I did anything.”
Seeking excuses for not exercising. This component reflects participants actively trying to avoid their intended exercise. They said that exercising the right way took a lot of effort, saying, “It’s hard,” “It hurts,” and “It doesn’t feel good to do.”
Believing exercise was expendable compared to their daily priorities. Participants said things like “When your routine ends up getting crowded with the things that have to be done or should be done, [exercising] is an easy thing to push to the side.”
Being baffled about why they could not stick with exercise. Participants were unable to reconcile their current inactivity even though they could recall having had previous positive experiences exercising, saying things such as “I don’t understand why I don’t exercise. … I’m an educated woman… why can’t I even make a dent in it?”

“The all-or-nothing mindset creates high costs for exercising,” said Dr. Segar. Here’s her advice to overcome it:

Don’t be a prisoner to your exercise past. Know that negative exercise experiences in your past can demotivate you now. Acknowledge that fact and then move forward in more positive and realistic ways.
Don’t blame yourself for not sticking with exercise. Our culture has taught us an exercise formula that sets up most people to fail.
Choose “good enough” over “perfect.” Nothing has to be perfect, including exercise.

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Chicken Involtini

Posted on March 5, 2026March 11, 2026 by The Olive Oil Hunter

These stuffed boneless chicken breasts are browned on the stovetop and then baked in the oven in an olive oil, lemon, and butter sauce. Enjoy on its own or over pasta.

Ingredients

7 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided use

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

12 ounces fresh baby spinach

1 teaspoon salt, divided use

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided use

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

4 skinless boneless chicken breasts, about 2 pounds in total

8-ounce block Emmenthaler or provolone cheese, sliced into 8 sticks

1/3 cup whole wheat flour

1-1/2 cups homemade or store-bought low-sodium chicken stock

Juice of half a lemon

2 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces

1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

Directions

Step 1

Heat a large oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add 3 tablespoons olive oil and the garlic. Cook the garlic until it becomes translucent, then add the spinach in bunches. As each bunch wilts, add the next. When completely wilted and tender, transfer to a colander and set the skillet aside. Let the spinach cool for 5 minutes, then squeeze with your hands to remove any excess liquid. Transfer to a large glass bowl and toss with 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, and the red pepper flakes.

Step 2

Slice each breast horizontally to make eight cutlets. One at a time, place each cutlet between two sheets of parchment paper set on a cutting board, and use a kitchen mallet to pound it to about 1/4” thickness. Season each cutlet with the remaining salt and pepper.

Step 3

Top each cutlet with a layer of spinach, then place a stick of cheese in the center. Starting at the narrow end, roll up each cutlet and secure with a wooden skewer or toothpicks to keep the roll closed.

Step 4

Preheat your oven to 375°F. Put the flour in a pie plate and place it next to your stovetop. Wipe out the skillet and reheat it. When hot, add 4 tablespoons olive oil. Roll each bundle in the flour, shake off any excess, and add to the pan, seam side down. Brown on all sides, turning with heat-safe tongs. Deglaze the skillet with the stock, then add the lemon juice and butter. Place the skillet in the oven for 20 minutes or until an instant read thermometer placed in the chicken shows 160°F.

Step 5

Very carefully take the pan out of the oven. If you’d like a thicker sauce, plate the chicken and return the skillet to the stovetop. Bring to a boil and cook down for about 5 minutes. To serve, remove the skewers or toothpicks, drizzle on some sauce, and sprinkle on the parsley.

Yields 4 servings

Olive Oil Hunter News #253

Posted on February 27, 2026March 6, 2026 by The Olive Oil Hunter

Baked Ziti Recipe, Spotlight on Whole Wheat Pasta, Understanding al Dente, How the Nose Fends Off Colds and Fighting Age-Related Muscle Loss

When it comes to comfort food, few dishes can top baked ziti, with its luscious sauce and melted cheeses. And it doesn’t take much effort for all that reward! I’m sharing interesting research that may explain why some people are more prone to colds than others as well as a reminder about maintaining muscle as we age.

Baked Ziti

Baked Ziti
This delectable dish starts with a rich yet quick tomato sauce. You can substitute a 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes with their juice for the fresh tomatoes but add it after the tomato paste.
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the baking dish and drizzling
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped
- 1 pound tomatoes, any type, coarsely chopped
- One 6-ounce can tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, plus more to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 pound ziti
- 16 ounces ricotta cheese
- 12 ounces mozzarella, thinly sliced
- 1/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Directions

Step 1

Brush a 13-inch by 9-inch baking dish with olive oil; set aside.

Step 2

Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat. When hot, add the 3 tablespoons olive oil and garlic and sauté for 3 minutes, then add the tomatoes. Cook, stirring constantly, until the tomatoes become soft, then push them to the outsides of the pan. Add the tomato paste and cook it until it becomes fragrant and darkens in color, about 5 minutes. Mix the paste with the tomatoes and garlic, then press with a masher to release all of the tomatoes’ juices. Stir in the sugar, salt, and both peppers and continue cooking for 10 minutes.

Step 3

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350°F. Cook the ziti according to the package directions until al dente, then drain.

Step 4

Off the heat, stir the ricotta into the sauce, then fold in the pasta. Transfer the mixture to the baking dish. Top with overlapping slices of mozzarella, then sprinkle on the grated cheese.

Step 5

Bake for 25 minutes, until the cheeses are bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.
Yields 8 servings

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Whole Wheat Pasta

To add more nutrients and fiber to your ziti, opt for whole wheat pasta. It’s made from the entire wheat kernel—bran, germ, and endosperm—and retains its vitamins and minerals. While it takes a bit longer to cook, follow package directions to be sure it’s al dente.

Quick Kitchen Nugget

Understanding al Dente

Al dente literally means to the tooth—firm when bitten yet not hard or raw tasting. Most Italian cooks boil pasta to this stage regardless of the recipe. Americans tend to like their pasta more tender. But when it will be twice cooked, as with ziti, lasagna, and stuffed shells, it needs to be al dente before it goes into the oven or else it will be too soft.

If your pasta box doesn’t list al dente cooking time, test a piece about 2 minutes sooner than the general directions and see whether it has a bit of bite. If it’s too firm, check it again in a minute.

For Your Best Health

How the Nose Fends Off Colds

When rhinovirus, the most common cause of the common cold, enters the nasal passages, the cells lining the nose immediately begin working together to fight the infection. These cells activate a wide range of antiviral defenses designed to limit the virus and stop it from spreading. In a study published in the journal Cell Press Blue, researchers show that this early response plays a key role in whether a person becomes sick and how severe their symptoms become. The findings suggest that the body’s reaction to rhinovirus often matters more than the virus itself.

“As the number one cause of common colds and a major cause of breathing problems in people with asthma and other chronic lung conditions, rhinoviruses are very important in human health,” said senior author Ellen Foxman, MD, PhD, of the Yale School of Medicine. “This research allowed us to peer into the human nasal lining and see what is happening during rhinovirus infections at both the cellular and molecular levels.”

To closely observe how nasal cells respond to infection, the research team built a lab-grown model of human nasal tissue with multiple cell types found in the human airway, including mucus-producing cells and cells with cilia, the tiny hairlike structures that help move mucus and trapped particles out of the lungs. “This model reflects the responses of the human body much more accurately than the conventional cell lines used for virology research,” Dr. Foxman said.

Using this model, the researchers were able to monitor how thousands of individual cells respond together during infection. They also examined what happened when the cellular sensors responsible for detecting rhinovirus were blocked. These experiments revealed a powerful defense system coordinated by interferons, which are proteins that interfere with viral entry and replication.

When nasal cells detect rhinovirus, they release interferons that activate antiviral defenses not only in infected cells but also in nearby healthy cells. This coordinated response makes it difficult for the virus to reproduce and spread. If interferon activity begins quickly, the infection can be contained early. When the researchers blocked this response, the virus spread rapidly, infecting many more cells and causing significant damage. In some cases, the infected organoids did not survive.

“Our experiments show how critical and effective a rapid interferon response is in controlling rhinovirus infection, even without any cells of the immune system present,” said first author Bao Wang, PhD, of the Yale School of Medicine.

The study also uncovered additional responses that occur when viral replication increases. Under these conditions, rhinovirus can activate a separate sensing system that leads both infected and uninfected cells to produce large amounts of mucus and inflammatory signals. This reaction can contribute to airway inflammation and breathing difficulties in the lungs. According to the researchers, these pathways may offer useful targets for treatments aimed at reducing harmful symptoms while supporting effective antiviral defenses.

“Our study advances the paradigm that the body’s responses to a virus, rather than the properties inherent to the virus itself, are hugely important in determining whether or not a virus will cause illness and how severe the illness will be,” Dr. Foxman said. “Targeting defense mechanisms is an exciting avenue for novel therapeutics.”

Fitness Flash

Fighting Age-Related Muscle Loss

A new study in mice is giving scientists fresh clues about why our muscles lose strength as we get older and why exercise remains one of the most reliable ways to fight it.Researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School found that a gene regulator called DEAF1 seems to push a key muscle-maintenance system into overdrive as we age. When we’re young, the system known as mTORC1 helps build and repair muscle. But later in life, it can get stuck in high gear and begin to damage muscle cells instead.

“The mTORC1 pathway is essential for muscle growth yet becomes chronically overactive in aging—a paradox that has made it challenging to pinpoint what drives this dysregulation,” said the study’s senior author Hong-Wen Tang, PhD, an assistant professor in the Cancer and Stem Cell Program at Duke-NUS and Singapore General Hospital.

Until now, scientists didn’t know what caused this shift. “Identifying DEAF1 fills an important gap in understanding how age-related stress signals become hardwired into a persistent anabolic state that ultimately harms muscle cells,” Dr. Tang said.

The study suggests DEAF1 essentially hits the gas on a system already running too fast. By pushing mTORC1 into overdrive, DEAF1 causes muscles to make too many proteins, fail to clear damaged ones, and gradually weaken.

One of the most surprising findings: Exercise reverses this process by lowering DEAF1 levels. That means in addition to building muscle, physical activity helps reset the core cellular pathways that keep muscles healthy. “It was a striking discovery,” said Dr. Tang. “It shows that exercise doesn’t just fix damage; it targets the switch that causes muscle aging in the first place.”

Scientists didn’t just look at whether exercise keeps muscles strong—they wanted to know how it does it. They put aging mice through endurance workouts, including an exhausting treadmill run. For comparison, another group of older mice stayed sedentary. After the workouts, the exercising mice showed big drops in mTORC1, the overactive pathway linked to muscle loss and function known as sarcopenia.

Researchers found that exercise lowers DEAF1 through a well-known set of longevity genes called FOXO. When activated during exercise, FOXO suppresses DEAF1—lifting the foot off the gas pedal—and helps mTORC1 return to normal. Their work highlights a new biological pathway—the FOXO-DEAF1-mTORC1 axis—that helps explain why muscles weaken with age and why exercise remains such a powerful antidote to age-related decline.

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Baked Ziti

Posted on February 26, 2026February 24, 2026 by The Olive Oil Hunter

This delectable dish starts with a rich yet quick tomato sauce. You can substitute a 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes with their juice for the fresh tomatoes but add it after the tomato paste.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the baking dish and drizzling
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 pound tomatoes, any type, coarsely chopped
One 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pound ziti
16 ounces ricotta cheese
12 ounces mozzarella, thinly sliced
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Directions

Step 1

Brush a 13-inch by 9-inch baking dish with olive oil; set aside.

Step 2

Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat. When hot, add the 3 tablespoons olive oil and garlic and sauté for 3 minutes, then add the tomatoes. Cook, stirring constantly, until the tomatoes become soft, then push them to the outsides of the pan. Add the tomato paste and cook it until it becomes fragrant and darkens in color, about 5 minutes. Mix the paste with the tomatoes and garlic, then press with a masher to release all of the tomatoes’ juices. Stir in the sugar, salt, and both peppers and continue cooking for 10 minutes.

Step 3

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350°F. Cook the ziti according to the package directions until al dente, then drain.

Step 4

Off the heat, stir the ricotta into the sauce, then fold in the pasta. Transfer the mixture to the baking dish. Top with overlapping slices of mozzarella, then sprinkle on the grated cheese.

Step 5

Bake for 25 minutes, until the cheeses are bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Yields 8 servings