Six Bean Salad Recipe, Spotlight on Gigantes and Green Beans, Guilt-Free Chocolate, plus Exercise and Your Appetite

Getting ready for a BBQ but at a loss for an exciting side? My take on the perennial fan-favorite three bean salad takes it to the next level—and it can all be done ahead of time. With over 400 varieties of beans to choose from, you can change up the ingredients every time you make it. Just for fun, I’m also including new research on the possible health benefits of enjoying chocolate (yes, moderation is still key!) and, on a more serious note, how your exercise routine is a great strategy to rein in your appetite.

Six Bean Salad

• Six Bean Salad

  This twist on a traditional three bean salad really moves the needle for flavor—double the beans, double the taste. For color, texture, and nutrients, I love adding green (string) beans to the mix—from long beans to slim French haricots verts, there are many fresh options available now. For the legumes in this recipe, canned beans are great for convenience—just rinse and drain them before adding them to your mixing bowl. If you want to prepare your own ingredients by using dried beans, you can soak and cook most of the varieties together. The exceptions to this strategy are the chickpeas (because they have a much shorter cooking time) and the black beans (because they could tint the white beans).

  Ingredients

  For the vinaigrette:

  • 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar 
  • 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt, plus more to taste
  • 1/2 garlic clove, peeled and minced 
  • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • Freshly ground black pepper to taste

  For the salad:

  • 1/2 pound green beans, trimmed and steamed
  • 1 cup cooked gigante or cannellini beans
  • 1 cup cooked red kidney beans
  • 1 cup cooked black beans
  • 1 cup cooked chickpeas
  • 1 cup cooked lima beans

  Directions

  Step 1

  In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the vinegar, mustard, honey, salt, garlic, and pepper flakes. Gradually whisk in the olive oil until the dressing is emulsified. Season to taste with black pepper and more salt if desired. Set aside.

  Step 2

  In a very large bowl, gently toss all the beans together and then pour on the vinaigrette. Toss again and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes to help the flavors meld before refrigerating. 

  Yields 12 servings

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Get to Know Gigantes

Gigante beans are huge white beans, up to an inch long, with great toothy appeal. They serve up a bounty of nutrients, including fiber and 8 grams of protein per cup. Popular in Greek cooking, they’re great on their own when marinated in vinaigrette or puréed with garlic, rosemary, and lemon zest for a delicious dip. Find them online at Amazon and Rancho Gordo (ranchogordo.com), where they’re called royal corona beans.

Quick Kitchen Nugget

Steaming Green Beans

An inexpensive metal steamer basket makes quick work of prepping green beans (and many other veggies). Simply fill a pot with a couple of inches of water (the water should not come over the basket bottom), bring it to a boil, and place the basket in the pot. Add your green beans, cover, and let steam over medium heat for 5-7 minutes.

For Your Best Health

Chocolate without Guilt

We’ve long known that the antioxidants in cocoa powder are what give chocolate their nutrient-rich appeal…and that the sugar in chocolate candy can often outweigh the benefits. That’s why dark chocolate, since it has less sugar, is considered the better bar option. We also know that no one food equates to better health and longer life. All that being said, it was good to read about research findings on chocolate from the long-term Women’s Health Initiative study. 

The study, “Chocolate Consumption in Relation to All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in Women,” published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, followed 84,709 postmenopausal women who were free of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer when they enrolled (between 1993 and 1998). They were followed through March 2018. During this time, 25,388 passed away, including 7,069 deaths from CVD; 7,030 deaths from cancer; and 3,279 deaths from dementia. When the researchers compared women who ate varying amounts of chocolate weekly with those who ate no chocolate or less than one serving per week, they found a modest inverse association of chocolate consumption with mortality from all causes, CVD, or dementia, specifically for moderate chocolate consumption of one to three servings a week (eating chocolate had no effect on cancer rates). Both from a taste and a health point of view, enjoying a few ounces of chocolate over the course of a week is a guilt-free pleasure.

Fitness Flash

Exercise and Your Appetite

Scientists say that how much we eat is influenced by systems in the brain that are sensitive to changes in our body and the food environment we are in. Studies have shown that single bouts of exercise, such as running, can temporarily suppress appetite. However, the extent to which exercise impacts how likely we are to eat is not fully understood.

Researchers from the UK’s Loughborough University, University of Bristol, University of Nottingham, and the University of Leicester, and Waseda University in Japan recently investigated the impact that running had on blood flow in the brain and how this influenced brain activity in relation to appetite. Exercise-induced blood flow changes in the brain captured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); these scans help scientists evaluate what is happening in the brain by detecting small changes in blood flow.

For this study, published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, 23 men underwent fMRI scans before and after 60 minutes of running or rest. During the scan, they were asked to look at three types of images ranging from low-energy dense foods such as fruits and vegetables to high-energy dense foods such as chocolate, as well as nonfood items such as furniture.

Researchers found that the bout of exercise suppressed how hungry participants said they felt although it increased the reactivity of multiple parts of their brain to food cues. Using a different type of fMRI, the study team also detected changes in blood flow in the brain after exercise, although these changes did not appear to influence the food cue reactivity signals. (Food cue reactivity is the way our body responds to food both physically and psychologically—to the sight or smell of food, for example. Food cue reactivity can have an impact on our appetite and how much we end up eating.)

Alice Thackray, PhD, a senior research associate in exercise metabolism from Loughborough’s School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences and lead author for the study, said, “Our findings confirm individuals feel less hungry during and immediately after an exercise session and provide some insights into the short-term influence of exercise on brain appetite responses. Although additional research is needed to determine the implications of these findings, we know the brain plays an important role in the control of appetite and food intake…This study is part of an exciting collaboration that we plan to develop further as we continue to explore how exercise and appetite interact, including the influence on central (brain) responses.”

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No-Muss, No-Fuss Chocolate Donut Recipe, Spotlight on Cocoa Powder, The Kitchen Essential Donut Pan, Benefits of Spectating Sports, and the Best Time to Burn Fat

One of the aspects of the Mediterranean diet I love the most is that it’s very forgiving. Stick with the healthful basics most of the time, and you can indulge every now and then, guilt free. Donuts are a weak spot for many of us, but commercial ones are loaded with additives, and even freshly made ones can taste greasy if they’ve soaked up too much oil. These baked donuts are not only delicious, but also simple to make, no artificial ingredients added.

Another thing I love about the Mediterranean diet is that it’s a lifestyle that embraces social activities, which are important for your mental and overall health. A new study found that being part of the convivial atmosphere at sporting events is a great social activity for boosting well-being. Finally, if one of the reasons you exercise is to burn fat, you’ll be interested in experimental research that found morning exercise might do it more efficiently than working out at other times of the day.

No-Muss, No-Fuss Chocolate Donuts

• No-Muss, No-Fuss Chocolate Donuts

  Forget deep frying and waiting for a yeasted dough to rise—these chocolate treats are ready in just a few minutes. Enjoy as is, with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar, or with this simple yet rich chocolate glaze.

  Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 
  • 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa 
  • 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 6 tablespoons Greek yogurt
  • 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

  Optional glaze:

  • 6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil

  Directions

  Step 1

  Preheat your oven to 350°F. Lightly coat two 6-cavity donut pans with olive oil. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, espresso powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. 

  Step 2

  In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs until frothy, then add the sugar and whisk until incorporated. Whisk in the yogurt, olive oil, milk, and vanilla. Fold in the dry ingredients. 

  Step 3

  Use a large spoon or a pastry bag fitted with a large plain tip to fill the donut pans. Bake for 10 minutes or until springy to the touch. Allow to cool in the pans, and then glaze if desired.

  Step 4

  For the glaze, place 5 ounces of the chocolate in a small, microwave-safe glass bowl and melt at 50 percent power for 3 minutes; repeat if needed until the chocolate is almost fully melted. Add the last ounce of chocolate and let sit on the counter for 2 minutes to cool down; then stir until smooth. Stir in the olive oil until fully blended. Dip the top of each donut into the chocolate and then place on a cookie sheet to firm up.

  Yields 12 donuts

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Cocoa Powder

Unsweetened cocoa powder is a food lover’s dream: intense chocolate taste—cocoa gives baked goods deeper flavor than chocolate itself—with few calories. Also, ounce for ounce, natural cocoa is the food with the highest flavanol content. 

The cocoa process starts with roasted cocoa bean particles, or nibs. The nibs are turned into chocolate liquor. That liquor is pressed to remove much of the cocoa butter and then ground into powder. This is where most of chocolate’s flavor comes from and explains why white chocolate, made of cocoa butter and sugar, is rather bland. 

Cocoa powder is available in two main forms: natural, with a deeper taste yet lighter color, and Dutch-processed, with a milder taste and darker color (an alkaline ingredient is added to counter natural cocoa’s acidity). It’s often possible to use the two forms interchangeably with only slight differences in taste in the finished dish. However, to account for the acidity of natural cocoa when baking with it, baking soda (with or without baking powder) is typically called for as a leavening agent. If you don’t see it listed in the ingredients in a recipe, add 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda for every 3 tablespoons of natural cocoa powder. Tip: Always sift cocoa into a recipe’s other dry ingredients to get rid of any lumps. 

Quick Kitchen Nugget

Kitchen Essential: The Donut Pan

Nonstick donut pans produce perfect rounds. Inexpensive and easy to clean, a set of two pans will let you cook up a dozen in no time. Find them at housewares stores like Williams-Sonoma or online at Amazon.

For Your Best Health

“Take me out to the ball game…”

We know about the health benefits of participating in sports, but there’s value in being a spectator, too, according to research done at the Anglia Ruskin University School of Psychology and Sport Science in the UK and published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. Researchers found that attending live sporting events results in higher scores of two important measurements of well-being—life satisfaction and a sense of “life being worthwhile”—as well as lower levels of loneliness. (We already know from separate studies that having a high life satisfaction score is linked to better physical health and successful aging.)

Lead author and head of the school Helen Keyes, PhD, said, “Previous research has focused on specific sports or small population samples, such as college students in the United States. Ours is the first study to look at the benefits of attending any sporting event across an adult population…[F]urther research needs to be carried out to see if these benefits are more pronounced for elite level sport or are more closely linked to supporting a specific team. However, we do know that watching live sport of all types provides many opportunities for social interaction and this helps to forge group identity and belonging, which in turn mitigates loneliness and boosts levels of well-being.”

Fitness Flash

A Better Time for Fat Burning?

If one of your exercise goals is to burn off fat, a lab study done at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), might lead you to try morning workouts to see if this helps get the results you want. 

Physical activity at different times of the day can affect the body in different ways, since the biological processes depend on the circadian rhythms of cells. To ascertain how the time of day at which exercise is done affects the burning of fat, the researchers studied the adipose tissue (fat) of mice after a session of high-intensity exercise performed at two points of their daily cycle, an early active phase and an early rest phase (corresponding to a late morning and late evening session, respectively, in people). The researchers studied various markers for fat metabolism and analyzed which genes were active in adipose tissue after exercise.

They found that physical activity at an early active phase increased the expression of genes involved in the breakdown of adipose tissue, thermogenesis (heat production), and mitochondria in the adipose tissue, indicating a higher metabolic rate. These effects were observed only in mice that exercised in the early active phase and were independent of food intake.

“Our results suggest that late morning exercise could be more effective than late evening exercise in terms of boosting the metabolism and the burning of fat, and if this is the case, they could prove of value to people who are overweight,” said Professor Juleen R. Zierath, PhD, of the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery and the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Karolinska Institutet.

Mice and humans share many basic physiological functions, and mice are a well-established model for human physiology and metabolism. However, there are also important differences, such as the fact that mice are nocturnal. “The right timing seems to be important to the body’s energy balance and to improving the health benefits of exercise, but more studies are needed to draw any reliable conclusions about the relevance of our findings to humans,” said Dr. Zierath.

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