Citrus Pork Rib Roast with Roasted Fennel Recipe, Spotlight on Fennel, How to Marinate Safely, Diversify Proteins for Better Health and Resistance Training for Better Sleep
Springtime celebrations demand a dramatic dish, and a pork rib roast fits the bill. This recipe is a great introduction to fennel for those who have been shying away from this versatile veg. You’ll also read about two pieces of interesting health research, important to anyone who wants to fend off high blood pressure (a top heart health risk) and sleep better (not getting enough is a risk to the heart, brain, and overall well-being).
Citrus Pork Rib Roast with Roasted Fennel
Healthy Ingredient Spotlight
Get familiar with fennel
For the uninitiated, fennel can look intimidating, but its licorice scent and taste add a lot of appeal to dishes, from soups to seafood—you’ll be pleasantly surprised even if you’re not a fan of black licorice candy.
This member of the carrot family hails from the Mediterranean region but is used, both raw and cooked, in cuisines far and wide. Raw fennel adds crunch to salads, much like celery, when the bulb is quartered and thinly sliced or chopped, depending on the recipe. The feathery fronds at the top of the vegetable can be chopped much like dill and used in many of the same ways, from a garnish to a flavoring. Some people find that the stalks are too fibrous to eat raw, but they soften when cooked—cooking also makes fennel’s licorice flavor milder.
Healthy Kitchen Nugget
Marinating safely
Marinating food, especially overnight, is a great way to infuse it with flavor. But think “safety first,” according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. When possible, marinate in glass, covering the container fully with plastic wrap, or use disposable food-safe sealable plastic bags. Don’t use a metal container because the acid in a marinade can interact with metal. Refrigerate the marinating food on the bottom shelf of your fridge. If a recipe calls for the marinade liquid to be used as a baste,you mustboil it first to kill bacteria. Even better is to reserve some of the marinade separately or to make a small additional batch for this purpose.
For Your Best Health
Pick a variety of proteins
Eating a balanced diet and including protein from a variety of sources may help lower the risk of high blood pressure, according to research published in Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association (AHA).
In its 2021 dietary guidance to improve heart health, the AHA recommended eating one to two servings, or 5.5 ounces, of protein daily from healthy sources—plants, seafood, low-fat or fat-free dairy products, and, if desired, lean cuts and unprocessed forms of meat or poultry. The new research looked at the link between specific proteins and new cases of high blood pressure among 12,000 participants whose diet records were analyzed over a six-year period.
Participants were given scores based on the number of different sources of protein they ate: whole grains, refined grains, processed red meat, unprocessed red meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and legumes. One point was given for each protein source, with a top score of 8. The researchers then compared new cases of hypertension to the scores. In contrast to participants with the lowest score (less than 2), those with a score of 4 or higher had a 66 percent lower risk of developing high blood pressure.
But there can also be too much of a good thing, especially when it comes to processed meat. When the researchers divided the total quantity of protein eaten into five levels (or quintiles) from least to most intake, people who ate the least amount of total protein and those who ate the most protein had the greatest high blood pressure risk.
“The heart health message is that consuming a balanced diet with proteins from various different sources, rather than focusing on a single source of dietary protein, may help to prevent the development of high blood pressure,” says study author Xianhui Qin, MD.
Fitness Flash
Resistance training for better sleep
Having sleep trouble? Strength training to the rescue! Research done at Iowa State University found that study participants who did 60 minutes of resistance exercise three times a week for a year slept longer and fell asleep faster than participants who did aerobic-only workouts or a combination of aerobic and resistance exercises for 30 minutes each. The resistance exercise regimen consisted of three sets of 12 exercises that targeted all the major muscle groups and included bicep curls, crunches, leg extensions, and triceps dips.
Among participants who were not getting at least seven hours of sleep at the start of the study, sleep duration increased by an average of 40 minutes in the resistance exercise-only group compared to an average increase of 18 minutes in the other groups. People in the resistance exercise-only group also reported falling asleep an average of three minutes faster at the end of the 12 months; there wasn’t any notable change in this regard in the other groups.
“While there’s no definitive answer as to why humans sleep, one theory is that sleep provides the body an opportunity to restore different systems,” says lead author Angelique Brellenthin, PhD, assistant professor of kinesiology at Iowa State. “Because resistance exercise is a powerful stimulus that causes stress to the muscle tissue, that stimulus may send a stronger signal to the brain that this person needs to sleep and to sleep deeply to repair, restore, and adapt the muscle tissue for the next time they need it. Our study shows resistance exercise goes above and beyond the benefits you would see from other types of exercise in terms of sleep quality. If people are concerned about their sleep and have a limited amount of time to exercise, they may want to consider prioritizing resistance workouts.”
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