Juicy peaches and tender olive oil-based vanilla cake make the perfect summertime sweet treat. Feel free to get as artful as you’d like with the peach arrangement, but there’s no need to peel them.
Ingredients
For the peaches:
4 medium peaches (more if needed)
1/2 lemon
1/4 cup brown sugar
For the batter:
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
1-1/2 cups cake flour
1/2 cup white or golden whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup Greek yogurt
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
2 teaspoons vanilla
For serving:
Vanilla ice cream or fresh whipped cream (optional)
Directions
Step 1
Halve the peaches and slice each half into thin wedges. Place in a large bowl and squeeze on the juice from the lemon half, then toss with the brown sugar.
Step 2
Preheat your oven to 350°F. Lightly brush the bottom and sides of a 9″ springform pan with olive oil, line with parchment paper, and lightly brush the parchment with olive oil. Starting from the outer rim, arrange the peaches in concentric circles on the bottom of the pan; set aside.
Step 3
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
Step 4
Beat the eggs and sugar until thick and light yellow in color (if you have a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment for all the mixing). Slowly add the 3/4 cup olive oil, yogurt, ricotta, and vanilla. On the lowest speed, add the flour mixture and beat only until incorporated, scraping down the bowl as needed.
Step 5
Carefully pour the batter over the peaches and use an offset spatula to smooth the top. Bake for about 60 minutes, until the cake is golden and firm to the touch and the blade of a sharp knife inserted in the center comes out clean (start testing after about 45 minutes). Let cool on a rack for 15 minutes, then carefully run an offset spatula around the pan ring, then take off the ring. Place a 10″ or 12″ serving dish over the cake and invert it. Lift off the pan bottom and gently peel away the parchment. Serve warm or at room temperature with ice cream or cold with whipped cream if desired.
Burrata and Stone Fruit Salad Recipe, Spotlight on Plums, Storing Stone Fruit, Is Black Coffee the Secret to a Longer Life, and Matching Workouts to Your Personality
’Tis the season … for stone fruit, that is. Nature’s bounty of plums, apricots, and peaches is at its height in late summer, and a composed salad is a fantastic way to enjoy them—no cooking required! Love your morning joe? I’m sharing new insights into its health benefits and why, in order to reap benefits from exercise, it’s so important to focus on activities you truly enjoy.
This dish is delicious any time of day—from breakfast to dessert. I love to mix different varieties of the same fruit, such as yellow, red, and purple plums, and white and yellow peaches, but most important is to buy local for the sweetest, freshest fruits.
Ingredients
For the dressing:
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons honey, preferably a variety local to your area
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar of Modena
For the salad:
2 plums
2 peaches
4 apricots
1/4 lemon
1 fresh burrata
Fresh thyme, oregano, or basil leaves
Black pepper
Directions
Step 1
Make the dressing by whisking together the oil, honey, and balsamic; set aside.
Step 2
For the salad, halve the fruit, remove the pits (the “stones”), and slice into wedges. Place in a large bowl and squeeze on the juice from the lemon.
Step 3
To compose the salad, cut the burrata in half and center a half on each of two plates. Arrange the fruit around the cheese and drizzle with the dressing. Top with fresh herbs and a few twists of black pepper from your grinder.
Yields 2 servings
Healthy Ingredient Spotlight
Plums
Rich in antioxidants thanks to their high flavonoid content, plums deserve a place on your fruit list, and with dozens of varieties available, you can have fun hunting for the ones you like best. Of course, the deeper the color—which comes from its anthocyanins, a type of flavonoid—the more benefits you’ll reap. Plums are anti-inflammatory, have a respectable amount of fiber, and may even help keep blood sugar levels on an even keel. Eating dried plums, AKA prunes, has been linked to better bone health, too. Just avoid those with added sugar and limit quantities since they’re high in calories.
Quick Kitchen Nugget
Storing Stone Fruit
Peaches, plums, and apricots can be stored at room temperature until ripe. If you’re not yet ready to eat them, move them to the fridge—that buys you a few days, though they may not taste as sweet. An ideal vessel is an empty egg carton (paper, not plastic or foam) because it offers cushioning to avoid bruising and moisture absorption to avoid mold.
For Your Best Health
Is Black Coffee the Secret to a Longer Life?
Coffee might be doing more than fueling your morning routine—it could be extending your life. But here’s the catch: The benefits drop when sugar and saturated fats like cream are added in excess.
In a new observational study, published online in The Journal of Nutrition, researchers from the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University found that having one to two cups of caffeinated coffee per day was linked to a lower risk of death from all causes and death from cardiovascular disease, but that the benefits dropped depending on what was added to it.
Black coffee and coffee with low levels of added sugar and saturated fat were associated with a 14% lower risk of all-cause mortality as compared to no coffee consumption. The same link was not observed for coffee with high amounts of added sugar and saturated fat.
“Coffee is among the most-consumed beverages in the world and, with nearly half of American adults reporting drinking at least one cup per day, it’s important for us to know what it might mean for health,” said Fang Fang Zhang, PhD, senior author of the study and the Neely Family Professor at the Friedman School. “The health benefits of coffee might be attributable to its bioactive compounds, but our results suggest that the addition of sugar and saturated fat may reduce the mortality benefits.”
The study analyzed data from nine consecutive cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2018, linked to National Death Index Mortality Data. The study included a nationally representative sample of 46,000 adults aged 20 years and older who completed valid first-day 24-hour dietary recalls. Coffee consumption was categorized by type (caffeinated or decaffeinated), sugar, and saturated fat content. Mortality outcomes included all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Low added sugar (from granulated sugar, honey, and syrup) was defined as under 5% of the Daily Value, which is 2.5 grams per 8-ounce cup or approximately half a teaspoon of sugar. Low saturated fat (from milk, cream, and half-and-half) was defined as 5% of the Daily Value, or 1 gram per 8-ounce cup or the equivalent of 5 tablespoons of 2% milk, 1 tablespoon of light cream, or 1 tablespoon of half-and-half.
In the study, consumption of at least one cup per day was associated with a 16% lower risk of all-cause mortality. At two to three cups per day, the link rose to 17%. Consumption beyond three cups per day was not associated with additional reductions, and the link between coffee and a lower risk of death by cardiovascular disease weakened when coffee consumption was more than three cups per day. No significant associations were seen between coffee consumption and cancer mortality.
“Few studies have examined how coffee additives could impact the link between coffee consumption and mortality risk, and our study is among the first to quantify how much sweetener and saturated fat are being added,” said first author Bingjie Zhou, a recent PhD graduate from the nutrition epidemiology and data science program at the Friedman School. “Our results align with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which recommend limiting added sugar and saturated fat.”
Limitations of the study include the fact that self-reported recall data is subject to measurement error due to day-to-day variations in food intake. The lack of significant associations between decaffeinated coffee and all-cause mortality could be due to low consumption among the population studied.
Fitness Flash
Matching Workouts to Your Personality
According to researchers at University College London (UCL), the key to sticking with and reaping the rewards of exercise over the long term, like boosting fitness and slashing stress, may be as simple as doing activities you enjoy and that align with your personality.
Previous research showed that the personalities of people who engage in different types of organized sport tend to vary. But what was less clear was how personality affects the types of exercise people actually enjoy doing. The new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, explored whether individual personality traits corresponded to the enjoyment of different types of exercise, whether participants completed a prescribed exercise program, and the subsequent impact on their fitness levels.
Flaminia Ronca, PhD, associate professor at the UCL Institute of Sport, Exercise, and Health, and first author of the study, said, “We know that the global population is becoming increasingly sedentary. You often hear about people trying to become more active but struggling to make lasting changes. In this study, we wanted to understand how personality can influence this to support the development of effective interventions for changes in health behavior. We found some clear links between personality traits and the type of exercise the participants enjoyed most, which I think is important because we could potentially use this knowledge to tailor physical activity recommendations to the individual and hopefully help them to become and remain more active.”
For the study, the team assessed 132 volunteers from the general public with a range of fitness levels and backgrounds, who were assigned either to an 8-week cycling and strength training program (the intervention group) or to a resting control group. There were three weekly cycling sessions that varied in intensity: a 60-minute light ride at an easy pace, a 30-minute threshold ride at a moderate but sustainable effort, or high-intensity interval training (HIIT) where the level of exertion varied.
Participants’ benchmark fitness levels were assessed at the beginning of the program. Strength was tested using press-ups, performing a plank to failure, and countermovement jumps (jumping again immediately after landing). This was followed by a low-intensity cycling session for 30 minutes, then a cycling test to measure peak oxygen capacity (V̇O2 max test) after a short rest.
The team also assessed participants’ perceived stress levels on a scale of 1 to 10, as well as their personality traits using the Big 5 model, a common personality test in the field of sport and exercise psychology that groups people according to whether their dominant trait is extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, or openness. During the exercise program, participants were asked to rate their enjoyment of each exercise session.
Their fitness level was tested again once the program had been completed. Of the 132 starters, 86 people completed the intervention and all of these participants got fitter and stronger regardless of personality. While not all personality traits had a link to exercise enjoyment, several connections were uncovered by the study:
Extroverts tended to particularly enjoy high-intensity exercise, such as HIIT and a fitness test of maximum-intensity cycling.
Those with a strong neuroticism trait engaged well with the exercise intervention but preferred bursts of intensity rather than prolonged intensity. They also preferred not being monitored, such as not having their heart rate recorded while undertaking the program, suggesting that these individuals might appreciate being given space for independence and privacy when engaging in exercise.
Those who were conscientious tended to have a well-rounded fitness level, meaning that they tended to score more highly on aerobic fitness as well as core strength, and were generally more physically active. However, conscientiousness didn’t predict higher enjoyment of a specific form of exercise. The authors said this might be because conscientious individuals tend to be driven by the health-related outcomes of engaging in physical activity rather than enjoyment, suggesting that adherence to the program may be less about enjoyment than because it was good for them.
At the beginning of the study, the stress levels of the intervention group and the control group were similar. However, the only group to experience a significant reduction in stress levels after exercising were those who scored highly in the neuroticism trait. “This suggests that there may be particular benefits in stress reduction for those with this trait,” said Professor Paul Burgess, PhD, professor of cognitive neuroscience and an author of the study.
The researchers concluded that the most important thing people can do to improve their activity levels is to find something that they enjoy, which will make it more likely that they’ll stick with it.
This dish is delicious any time of day—from breakfast to dessert. I love to mix different varieties of the same fruit, such as yellow, red, and purple plums, and white and yellow peaches, but most important is to buy local for the sweetest, freshest fruits.
Ingredients
For the dressing:
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons honey, preferably a variety local to your area
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar of Modena
For the salad:
2 plums
2 peaches
4 apricots
1/4 lemon
1 fresh burrata
Fresh thyme, oregano, or basil leaves
Black pepper
Directions
Step 1
Make the dressing by whisking together the oil, honey, and balsamic; set aside.
Step 2
For the salad, halve the fruit, remove the pits (the “stones”), and slice into wedges. Place in a large bowl and squeeze on the juice from the lemon.
Step 3
To compose the salad, cut the burrata in half and center a half on each of two plates. Arrange the fruit around the cheese and drizzle with the dressing. Top with fresh herbs and a few twists of black pepper from your grinder.
Chinese Eggplant with Tangy Garlic Sauce Recipe, Spotlight on Chinese Eggplant, Does Cheese Fuel Nightmares, plus Maximizing the Mood Benefits of Exercise
Eating your veggies is more fun when you tingle your tastebuds with new sensations. If you’ve never tried Chinese eggplant, you’ll be surprised at how versatile it is. It takes on the flavors of the other ingredients in a recipe, making it a wonderful vehicle for the sweet and tangy Asian sauce I’m sharing. An interesting study at the Université de Montréal found a connection between being lactose intolerant and having nightmares—it’s a real eye-opener! And when it comes to exercise, certain factors can have a big impact on how much your mood benefits from working out.
I particularly love the sauce for the eggplant—try it on chicken, pork, and Asian noodles, too.A common misconception is that olive oil is too flavorful for Asian cooking, but that myth was dispelled some time ago by Melissa Wong, a great friend of the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club and a consummate foodie. You’ll read more about Melissa in the Pressing Report that comes with our next quarterly shipment of olive oils—she’s the force behind one of my amazing Australian selections. If you’re not currently a member of the Club, please click here to join now, so you don’t miss my sumptuous trio of Oz oils in September.
Ingredients
For the sauce:
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1-1/2 teaspoons finely minced garlic
1 teaspoon finely minced ginger
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon dried red chili flakes, more to taste
2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
For the eggplant:
2 small purple or white Chinese eggplant (about 8 ounces), sliced into 1/2-inch discs
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon minced ginger
2 scallions, thinly sliced
Directions
Step 1
Make the sauce: In a small dish, dissolve the cornstarch in 1 tablespoon water; set aside. Heat a saucepan over medium heat. When hot, add the olive oil, garlic, and ginger, and cook until the aromatics soften. Add in the rice wine vinegar, sugar, water, chili flakes, and soy sauce. Bring it to a boil, stirring constantly. Add in the cornstarch mixture and cook for 1 to 2 minutes more until the sauce thickens. Remove from the heat.
Step 2
Make the eggplant: To extract excess water, place the eggplant discs in a colander set over a bowl and toss with the salt. After 15 minutes, rinse with cold water, then pat dry with paper towels.
Step 3
Heat a large skillet or flat-bottom wok. Coat the eggplant discs with the cornstarch. When the pan is hot, add the olive oil, garlic, and ginger and cook until the aromatics soften (don’t let them burn). Add the eggplant in a single layer and cook undisturbed for 5 minutes, then flip and continue cooking until brown on both sides.
Step 4
Transfer the eggplant to a serving bowl and top with 1/2 cup sauce; serve the rest separately.
Yields 4 servings
Healthy Ingredient Spotlight
Chinese Eggplant
If you don’t think you like eggplant, give this long, thin variety a try. Chinese eggplants cook up quickly and have a milder taste than the traditional, bulbous variety because they have far fewer seeds. Traditionally deep-purple hued, they’re also available in white and striped versions. There’s no need to peel them, and they can be sliced in a variety of ways, making them a versatile addition to stir-fries and other recipes.
Quick Kitchen Nugget
Prepping Eggplant
Like many other vegetables, including mushrooms, Chinese eggplant can easily absorb oil during stovetop cooking, so make sure your pan is hot before you get started. Sweating them to reduce their moisture content and giving them a light coating of cornstarch, as described in the above recipe, will keep them from turning soggy. When roasting, just lightly brush the eggplant pieces with olive oil before placing in the oven.
For Your Best Health
Does Cheese Fuel Nightmares?
Although folk beliefs have long held that what you eat affects how you sleep, there’s very little evidence to prove or disprove them. To investigate, researchers from the Université de Montréal in Canada surveyed 1,082 students at MacEwan University about sleep time and quality, dreams and nightmares, and any perceived association between different kinds of dreams and different foods. They also asked about participants’ mental and physical health and their relationship with food.
About a third of respondents reported regular nightmares. Women were more likely to remember their dreams and to report poor sleep and nightmares, and nearly twice as likely as men to report a food intolerance or allergy. About 40% of participants said that they thought eating late at night or specific foods affected their sleep, and roughly 25% thought particular foods could make their sleep worse. People who ate less healthily were more likely to have negative dreams and less likely to remember dreams.
Most participants who blamed their bad sleep on food thought that sweets, spicy foods, or dairy were responsible. Only a comparatively small proportion—5.5% of respondents—felt that what they ate affected the tone of their dreams, but many of these people said they thought sweets or dairy made their dreams more disturbing or bizarre.
When the authors compared reports of food intolerances to reports of bad dreams and poor sleep, they found that lactose intolerance in particular was associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, nightmares, and low sleep quality. It’s possible that eating dairy activates gastrointestinal disturbance and the resulting discomfort affects people’s dreams and the quality of their rest.
“Nightmares are worse for lactose-intolerant people who suffer severe gastrointestinal symptoms and whose sleep is disrupted,” said Tore Nielsen, PhD, lead author of the article, which was published in Frontiers in Psychology. “This makes sense, because we know that other bodily sensations can affect dreaming. Nightmares can be very disruptive, especially if they occur often, because they tend to awaken people from sleep in a dysphoric state. They might also produce sleep avoidance behaviors. Both symptoms can rob you of restful sleep. These new findings imply that changing eating habits for people with some food sensitivities could alleviate nightmares. They could also explain why people so often blame dairy for bad dreams …We are routinely asked whether food affects dreaming, especially by journalists on food-centric holidays,” said Dr. Nielsen. “Now we have some answers.”
Besides the robust link between lactose intolerance and nightmares, however, it’s not clear how the relationship between sleep and diet works. It’s possible that people sleep less well because they eat less well, but it’s also possible that people don’t eat well because they don’t sleep well, or that another factor influences both sleep and diet. Further research will be needed to confirm these links and identify the underlying mechanisms. In the meantime, the researchers suggest that simple diet tweaks, especially ditching late-night cheese, could turn scary sleep into sweet rest.
Fitness Flash
Maximizing the Mood Benefits of Exercise
Movement helps your mood, but it’s not one-size-fits-all. Researchers have known that exercising for fun, with friends, or in enjoyable settings brings greater mental health benefits than simply moving for chores or obligations. But a recent study done at the University of Georgia suggests that it’s not just physical movement that affects mental health. Their findings emphasize that context—who you’re with, why you’re exercising, and even the weather—can make or break the mood-boosting effects and may be more important than the actual amount of exercise you get.
“Historically, physical activity research has focused on how long someone exercises for or how many calories were burned,” said Patrick O’Connor, PhD, co-author of the study and a professor in the Mary Frances Early College of Education’s department of kinesiology. “The ‘dose’ of exercise has been the dominant way researchers have tried to understand how physical activity might influence mental health, while often ignoring whether those minutes were spent exercising with a friend or as part of a game.”
While research shows that leisure-time physical activity, like going for a run, taking a yoga class, or biking for fun, correlates with better mental health outcomes, these benefits may vary significantly depending on the environment and circumstances surrounding the activity, according to the researchers. They reviewed three types of studies: large-scale epidemiological studies that examined health patterns in populations, randomized controlled trials where some groups received exercise treatments and others did not, and a much smaller but growing set of investigations into “contextual factors.” For instance, multiple studies have found that people who engage in regular leisure-time physical activity tend to report lower levels of depression and anxiety. But it’s less clear for other forms of activity like cleaning the house or working for a lawn care company. Where the evidence is thinnest but potentially most important is in understanding contextual factors.
Context may matter as much as the intensity or amount of physical activity. “For example, if a soccer player runs down the field and kicks the game-winning ball, their mental health is fantastic,” Dr. O’Connor said. “In contrast, if you do the exact same exercise but miss the goal and people are blaming you, you likely feel very differently. Anecdotes such as these show how context matters even when people are performing a similar exercise dose.” In other words, the same physical activity can feel very different depending on who the activity was done with, as well as where, when, and how.
Context can range from peer dynamics and instructor style to external conditions like weather or time of day. “If you’re outside and it’s hot, and you’re having to walk to work, that’s part of the context,” he said. “Or if you go and take a group exercise class—some instructors you really like, and some you don’t. So, that’s also part of the context. If we’re trying to help people’s mental health with exercise, then not only do we need to think about the dose and the mode, we also need to ask: What is the context?”
Numerous randomized controlled trials have shown that adopting regular exercise routines boosted mental health, especially for people with mental health disorders. However, these studies were typically based on small, short-term, and homogenous samples, so the results likely aren’t generalizable to larger, more diverse groups. “The average effects on mental health are small across all the randomized controlled studies of exercise, and that’s partly because most of the studies focused on people who were not depressed or anxious—you do get bigger effects in those studies,” explained Dr. O’Connor. “We’re communicating to scientists that larger and longer-term controlled studies are needed to make a compelling case whether exercise does, or does not, truly impact mental health.”
For Dr. O’Connor, the takeaway is already clear: It’s not just movement that matters. It’s the meaning, the setting, and the experience surrounding the activity that determines the impact of exercise on mental health.
