Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club
Alzheimers Page 5

The Olive Oil Hunter News #47

Posted on by The Olive Oil Hunter

Garden Pasta alla Hermes Recipe, Spotlight on Gluten-Free Pasta, Benefits of Green Foods and Canned Tomatoes, Plus Boosting Your Brain

The tomato purée we used in this recipe is called passata and you can find it at larger supermarkets or online. In a pinch, you can use high-quality canned crushed tomatoes like the San Marzano variety. If you have a bounty of fresh tomatoes from your garden or farmers’ market, as a variation chop them and add to the pan along with the other vegetables, omitting the jarred sauce. I love it in all these ways!

GARDEN PASTA ALLA HERMES

  • GARDEN PASTA ALLA HERMES WITH TOMATOES Garden Pasta Alla Hermes

    My Merry Band of Tasters and I were treated to this recipe at the Di Mercurio family’s farm in Italy after an olive harvest, and master miller Duccio Morozzo and I liked it so much we decided to recreate it back in his Roman kitchen.

    Ingredients

    • 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
    • 1/2 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and diced
    • 1/2 small eggplant, stemmed, peeled, and diced
    • 1/2 small zucchini, stemmed and diced
    • 1 small red onion, peeled and diced
    • Coarse sea salt
    • 8 ounces dry rigatoni
    • 3 cups tomato purée or crushed tomatoes
    • Parmigiano-Reggiano for serving
    • Crushed red pepper flakes for serving
    • Basil leaves for garnish

    Directions

    Step 1

    Pour the 1/4 cup of olive oil into a cold saucepan. Add the bell pepper, eggplant, zucchini, onion, and a pinch or two of salt. Sauté the vegetables until they’re soft and cooked through, 10 to 12 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta, and cook until al dente according to the package directions.

    Step 2

    Stir the tomato purée into the vegetables and simmer over medium-low heat for 5 minutes.

    Step 3

    Purée the sauce with a stick blender until it’s fairly smooth. Season with additional salt, if desired. Drain the rigatoni and add to the sauce. Gently stir to combine. Transfer to a warmed shallow bowl and serve with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, red pepper flakes, and extra olive oil for drizzling. Garnish with basil as desired.

    Yields 4 lunch or 2 dinner servings.

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight: Gluten-Free Pastas with tomatoes

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Gluten-Free Pastas Get Creative ​

You don’t have to be on a gluten-free diet to reap the benefits of vegetable- and legume-based pastas. You’ll not only skip the refined flour, but also get a nutrient boost depending on the type you choose, and some are made from a single ingredient—no fillers or other additives. Yellow pea pasta, introduced last year by Zenb, delivers 17 grams of protein and 11 grams of fiber in a three-ounce serving. Black soy bean pasta from O the Only Bean has 25 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber in just two ounces. There are also pastas made from chickpeas and other lentils, cauliflower, and cassava, a vegetable that has a wheat-like taste.

Healthy Kitchen Tip: Canned Tomatoes ​

Healthy Kitchen Nugget

Canned Goodness ​

Canned tomatoes are one of the most versatile foods to keep in your pantry, and I always have a selection on hand. Tomato purée is great for making smooth sauces, while crushed tomatoes will give your dishes more texture. Whole peeled tomatoes are excellent for slow-cooked sauces, especially meat-based ones. Diced tomatoes are perfect for a fast salsa or when you want to add more texture to a cooked dish—no cutting required and they hold their shape. And, of course, don’t forget tomato paste for adding sweet richness and concentrated taste.

For Your Best Health: Go-To “Green” Foods like tomatoes

For Your Best Health

Go-To “Green” Foods

A landmark study from University of Michigan researchers, published in the journal Nature Food, has ranked more than 5,800 foods by how much they negatively or positively impact both our health and the environment. The researchers used a new epidemiology-based nutritional index, the Health Nutritional Index, or HENI, which they developed in collaboration with nutritionist Victor Fulgoni III from Nutrition Impact LLC. HENI calculates the net beneficial or detrimental health burden of a serving of food in terms of minutes of healthy life. To create their rankings, they also factored in 15 dietary risk factors and disease burden estimates and nutrition profiles of foods from the What We Eat in America database of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Foods with positive scores add healthy minutes of life, while foods with negative scores are linked to outcomes that can be detrimental to health. As just one example, eating a hot dog could cost you 36 minutes of healthy life, but eating a serving of nuts instead could help you gain 26 minutes of healthy time alive.

They also classified food choices according to three color zones: green, yellow, and red. Green represents foods we should eat more of and that have low environmental impacts, with nuts, fruits, field-grown vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and environmentally raised seafood topping the list. As many other health studies have found, processed meats top their list of red foods, which also includes many red meats as well as seafood raised and/or harvested using unhealthy practices. In terms of the big picture, they found that substituting 10% of daily calories from red foods with the aforementioned green foods could reduce your dietary carbon footprint by one-third and let you gain 48 minutes of healthy minutes per day.

As with most food decisions, the researchers advise making balanced choices because nutritionally beneficial foods might not always generate the lowest environmental impacts, and vice versa. You can read a summary of the study at Futurity.org.

Fitness Flash: More Brain Boosts ​

Fitness Flash

More Brain Boosts ​

Building on the link between better cognitive function and engaging in mentally stimulating activities, physical exercise, and positive social interactions, researchers have found that one form of social interaction in particular—having someone in your life who you can count on to listen to you when you need to talk—can improve what’s called cognitive resilience. This is a measure of the brain’s ability to function better than it should in view of one’s physical aging. The new study, published in JAMA Network Open, found that people with “listener availability” had higher total cerebral volume, which is associated with greater cognitive resilience.

“We think of cognitive resilience as a buffer to the effects of brain aging and disease,” said lead researcher Joel Salinas, MD, assistant professor of neurology at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine and a member of the neurology department’s Center for Cognitive Neurology. “This study adds to growing evidence that people can take steps, either for themselves or the people they care about most, to increase the odds they’ll slow down cognitive aging or prevent the development of symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease—something that is all the more important given that we still don’t have a cure for the disease.”

Dr. Salinas added that while Alzheimer’s usually affects older people, the results of this study show those under 65 would benefit from this form of social support. For every unit of decline in brain volume, individuals in their 40s and 50s with low listener availability had a cognitive age that was four years older than those with high listener availability. “These four years can be incredibly precious. Too often we think about how to protect our brain health when we’re much older, after we’ve already lost a lot of time decades before to build and sustain brain-healthy habits,” he explained. “But today, right now, you can ask yourself if you truly have someone available to listen to you in a supportive way, and ask your loved ones the same. Taking that simple action sets the process in motion for you to ultimately have better odds of long-term brain health and the best quality of life you can have.”

Get More Recipes In Your Inbox!

The Olive Oil Hunter News #46

Posted on by The Olive Oil Hunter

Argentinian Skirt Steak Recipe, Spotlight on Red Pepper Flakes, Grilling with Flavored Wood Chips, Fresh Pressed Olive Oil and Brain Function

I love a sauce that tastes like I spent hours making it but that comes together in a matter of seconds! Chimichurri fits the bill. And if you don’t have the needed herbs and peppers growing in your garden or in pots on your deck, they’re in abundant supply at markets this time of year. Plus read below for more information on the benefits of fresh pressed olive oil and improved brain function!

ARGENTINEAN SKIRT STEAK WITH CHIMICHURRI

Grilled meat with herbaceous chimichurri sauce is a South American staple, popular in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Substitute flank steak or hanger steak if you can’t find skirt steak.

  • Argentinian Skirt Steak Recipe Argentinian Skirt Steak With Chimichurri

    Grilled meat with herbaceous chimichurri sauce is a South American staple, popular in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Substitute flank steak or hanger steak if you can’t find skirt steak.

    Ingredients

    For the chimichurri:

    • 1 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, stemmed
    • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
    • 3 to 4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
    • 1 tablespoon fresh or teaspoon dried oregano
    • 1 fresh jalapeño, stemmed and seeded, or 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
    • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
    • 3 to 4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
    • 3 to 4 tablespoons water
    • Kosher salt to taste
    • Freshly ground black pepper to taste

    For the Steak:

    • 2 pounds trimmed skirt steak
    • More kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

    Directions

    Make the chimichurri:

    Place the parsley, cilantro, garlic, oregano, and the jalapeño or red pepper flakes in a food processor and finely chop, running the machine in short bursts. With the motor running, add the olive oil in a thin stream, followed by 3 tablespoons of the vinegar and 3 tablespoons of water. Taste the chimichurri, adding another tablespoon of vinegar to make it tarter, if desired. If necessary, add another tablespoon of water to thin the chimichurri to a pourable consistency. Season with salt and pepper to taste; it should be highly seasoned. Set aside for up to 2 hours.

    Preheat your grill to medium-high. Season the skirt steak on both sides with salt and pepper. Grill for 3 to 5 minutes per side, depending on its thickness (medium-rare is best). Let it rest for 2 to 3 minutes, then thinly slice the meat on a diagonal. Arrange on a platter and serve with the chimichurri sauce.

    Yields 4 to 6 servings

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight: Red Pepper Flakes

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Red Pepper Flakes

Crushed red pepper flakes are a great, quick way to add a little heat to any dish, and there’s probably a generic jar of it on your spice shelf. It’s typically made from cayenne peppers and includes some seeds for extra zing, but it’s just as easy to make your own using whatever type of dried peppers you like best. Pulse one or two stemmed peppers with their seeds in a coffee bean grinder—be careful not to pulverize them—and then transfer them to a spice jar with large holes in the sifter fitment (that’s the technical name of the plastic piece that snaps over the jar).

Have fresh peppers from your garden? Dry them in your oven or dehydrator or tie them up and allow them to air-dry upside down, and then grind them. Just as you do when chopping peppers, wear gloves when transferring peppers from grinder to jar to keep the capsaicin from getting on your fingertips, which could burn your eyes if you touch them.

Healthy Kitchen Tip: Grilling with Flavored Wood Chips

Healthy Kitchen Nugget

Customize Grilling Flavor with Wood Chips ​

Chips made from fruit tree woods, like apple, peach, and pear, as well as alder, provide a mild flavor, great for chicken and seafood. Hickory, oak, pecan, and maple give meat a bolder flavor, and mesquite adds the strongest flavor of all. Experiment with various wood chips, but unless you’re getting the wood straight from your own tree, buy packets of chips designed for a grill or smoker.

If you use a gas grill, you can still get wonderful smoky flavor: Use a smoker box loaded with wood chips or simply make a DIY aluminum foil pouch filled with chips. Place the smoker box as directed in your grill instructions (some suggest putting it on the grill grate, others below it). Once the chips begin smoking, move the box/pouch to the cooler side of the grill before cooking your food.

For Your Best Health: Olive Oil and Brain Function

For Your Best Health

Olive Oil Helps Counter Cognitive Impairment

A study published late last year in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease highlighted the potential of extra virgin olive oil to improve brain function in older adults with a condition called amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment, or aMCI, characterized by memory loss and the inability to do very complex activities of daily living, and considered an early warning sign of Alzheimer’s. For the first-of-its-kind research, scientists from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Greek Association of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders compared the effects of high-phenolic early-harvest extra virgin olive oil (HP-EH-EVOO) to moderate phenolic, or MP-EVOO, and to the Mediterranean diet (MeDi) to see how well the HP-EH-EVOO worked as a therapeutic compound (there is currently no treatment for aMCI). Called the MICOIL study, it built on prior research that found EVOO can protect cognitive function.

Study participants were divided among three groups: Group 1 received 50 mL (about 3 tablespoons) of HP-EH-EVOO every day, Group 2 received the same amount of MP-EVOO, and Group 3 was simply told to follow a Mediterranean diet. Also, they were tested for a genetic predisposition to APOEɛ4, a protein linked to the development of Alzheimer’s. After 12 months, Group 1 had better follow-up performance compared to Group 2 and Group 3 in almost all cognitive domains. Group 2 had significant improvement compared to Group 3 in two important cognitive tests. What’s more, there was a significant difference in the level of APOEɛ4 in Group 1 and Group 2 versus Group 3.

The scientists concluded that long-term HP-EH-EVOO or MP-EVOO was associated with significant improvement in cognitive function compared to the Mediterranean diet alone. This isn’t to say that the diet isn’t helpful—dozens of studies have shown it supports many areas of health, including the heart. But, as the researchers point out, it’s not a single prescribed diet, but rather a general food-based eating pattern that varies by local and cultural differences throughout the Mediterranean region. Having 50 m/L of high-phenol EVOO olive oil daily could help further its known benefits.

Fitness Flash Icon

Fitness Flash

Getting Dirty Is Healthy ​

We’re learning more and more about the benefits of outdoor training. As certified health coach and entrepreneur Preston Blackburn wrote in The Power of Dirt: The Benefits of Outdoor Exercise for the American Council on Exercise, “a good old-fashioned messy, muddy, dirty workout can bring benefits beyond the obvious physical ones by improving cognition and reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.”

Getting sweaty and dirty through sports is fun, as any kid who’s played on a field in the rain and rolled around in the mud knows. As adults, Blackburn wrote, these opportunities are few and far between, and we tend to shy away from them even if they do come along, but that’s a mistake. Benefits of the great outdoors start with the gut microbiome-enhancing, immune-system boosting power of actual dirt and extend to the regions of the brain involved in mood and mental acuity. Add in the known vitamin D boost of being outdoors and the calming effects of green spaces, and you have more than enough reasons to get out your old soccer ball and organize a pickup game with friends in the nearest park. Read Blackburn’s entire post here.

Get More Recipes In Your Inbox!

The Olive Oil Hunter News #44

Posted on by The Olive Oil Hunter

Peruvian Purple Potato Salad Recipe, Spotlight on Potatoes, The Other “Utility” Knife and Spiritual Fitness for Brain Boosts and Protecting Your Skin

This week’s Olive Oil Hunter Newsletter delivers the goods with a delicious and surprising twist using richly colored Peruvian purple potatoes. And their beauty is more than skin deep!

Note: Specialty potatoes are often available online if they’re not at your local market. And if you can’t find purple ones, you can substitute any brightly colored variety.

PERUVIAN PURPLE POTATO SALAD

  • PERUVIAN PURPLE POTATO SALAD Peruvian Purple Potato Salad

    The beauty of these potatoes is more than skin deep—they’re rich in antioxidants. Leave on the skins for maximum nutritional benefits. 

    Ingredients

    • 2 pounds Peruvian purple potatoes, scrubbed 
    • 3 tablespoons Pear Balsamic Vinegar
    • 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste 
    • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, plus more to taste
    • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
    • 1/2 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and roughly chopped
    • 1/4 cup red onion, peeled and diced
    • 1 jalapeño pepper, stemmed, seeded, and finely diced (optional) 
    • 1/2 yellow or orange bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and diced
    • 3 tablespoons each chopped fresh cilantro, parsley, and chives 

    Directions

    Step 1

    Boil the potatoes in salted water until just tender—20 minutes or so, depending on their size, but don’t overcook. Drain, let cool slightly, and quarter them. Transfer to a large bowl. 

    Step 2

    In a small bowl, combine the vinegar, mustard, salt, and black pepper. Slowly whisk in the olive oil until the mixture emulsifies. Pour the vinaigrette evenly over the potatoes while they’re still warm. Gently fold in the olives, onion, jalapeño (if using), bell pepper, and herbs. Season to taste with more salt and black pepper. 

    Yields 4 to 6 servings

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight: Americans and Potatoes

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Potatoes Get More Colorful

Americans don’t get enough fruits and vegetables, except when it comes to our beloved potatoes—we each eat about one pound every week! Potatoes are considered starchy because they’re calorie-dense, but a medium-sized potato, skin on, still delivers on nutrition: 35% of a day’s vitamin C needs, 30% of vitamin B6, and 25% of potassium, plus 4 grams of fiber and 5 of protein. Most of those nutrients are in the skin, so keep it on, even when making mashed.

Potatoes have been getting more and more colorful, and each color is a sign of its antioxidant content, just as it is for berries. Beyond Yukon golds and red-skinned potatoes, purple varieties are becoming easier to find. Even the US Agricultural Research Service got into the act by creating Huckleberry Gold, with a purple jacket, a fine-textured yellow flesh, and a significantly higher level of antioxidants than those Yukons.

As with pasta, it’s what you put on your potato that counts. Cleveland Clinic registered dietitian Andrea Dunn suggests: “Try a drizzle of olive oil with chives instead of sour cream, butter, and salt.”

Healthy Kitchen Tip: Grapefruit Knife

Healthy Kitchen Nugget

The Other “Utility” Knife

Think of it as the unsung hero in your utensil drawer (chances are, it’s hidden somewhere in the back). The grapefruit knife, often the same length as a dinner knife, is unique because both edges are serrated and the blade itself is curved. This makes it not only ideal to cut out the sections of a citrus half (oranges and lemons as well as grapefruit), but also to stem peppers, from jalapeños to bells, and even strawberries, with a neat edge. It’s especially handy when you want to keep a pepper intact for stuffing, since you can maneuver the blade around the inside to cut away the ribs. If you don’t already have one, a grapefruit knife is just a few dollars, and you can find many options online.

For Your Best Health: Brain Health and Alzheimer’s disease

For Your Best Health

Spiritual Fitness for Brain Boosts

According to researchers Dharma Singh Khalsa, MD, of the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation in Tucson, and Andrew B. Newberg, MD, of the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, “spiritual fitness,” a new concept in medicine that centers on psychological and spiritual well-being, may reduce multiple risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Spiritual fitness weaves together basic, psychological, and spiritual well-being, which is often practiced independent of religion. Drs. Khalsa and Newberg analyzed existing research for their review, “Spiritual Fitness: A New Dimension in Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention,” published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, and found positive connections between spiritual fitness and brain health. Psychological well-being includes having a purpose in life, and according to one study, people who feel this strongly are 2.4 times more likely to remain free of AD than people who don’t. In another study, having a purpose in life was linked to better cognitive function as people age.

Because stress, with its physical, psychological, and emotional effects, may elevate AD risk, stress management is important to help reduce it. Drs. Khalsa and Newberg highlighted a practice called Kirtan Kriya, a 12-minute singing meditation that involves four sounds, breathing, and repetitive finger movements. It not only helps improve sleep, decrease depression, increase well-being, and improve mood, but also may increase blood flow to areas of the brain involved in cognition and emotional regulation. Practiced long-term, it may increase grey matter volume and decrease ventricular size to help slow brain aging.

“Mitigating the extensive negative biochemical effects of stress with meditation practices, in tandem with the creation of heightened levels of spiritual fitness, may help lower the risk of AD. Small shifts in one’s daily routine can make all the difference in AD prevention,” Dr. Khalsa and Dr. Newberg conclude.

You can read the entire report here.

Fitness Flash: Sunscreen for Longterm Health

Fitness Flash

Avoiding Another Kind of Injury

You know all about warming up and stretching before exercise to avoid injury, but you might not realize the risk that the sun poses, especially on hot, sunny days, and not only in terms of dehydration. Your skin is especially vulnerable to sunburn when you’re active outdoors, especially when you forget the sunscreen. In addition to being a risk factor for skin cancer, sunburn affects thermoregulation and the dissipation of excessive heat—that also makes it a risk factor for heat-related illnesses, according to Frank Perna, EdD, PhD, of the National Institutes of Health, and David Conroy, PhD, of the Penn State Cancer Institute, writing for the American College of Sports Medicine. Even though sweating plays the vital role of cooling you off, it also shortens the time it takes UV exposure to cause a sunburn.

Consider these smart precautions:

  • Protect your skin with a variety of approaches—sunscreen, protective clothing, and working out in shady conditions and/or avoiding peak UV times.
  • Apply sunscreen regularly, and don’t be skimpy with it. “Some dermatologists recommend higher SPF sunscreen for athletes because of sweat effects on photosensitivity and the common finding that most people only apply about half the recommended amount of sunscreen,” write Drs. Perna and Conroy. For less mess and to be sure it’s properly absorbed, apply it before going outside. The CDC recommends using a broadband sunscreen with SPF of 15 or greater and reapplying it every 80 minutes or every time you towel off. Carry sunscreen with you even if you don’t have specific plans for outdoor exercise—you never know when someone will toss a Frisbee your way at the park.
  • Choose exercise apparel with a UPF rating to shield skin. Add a hat to protect your scalp. And remember to wear sunglasses with UV protective lenses—sunlight can accelerate cataracts.

Get More Recipes In Your Inbox!

The Olive Oil Hunter News #43

Posted on by The Olive Oil Hunter

Grilled Halloumi Over Salad Recipe, Spotlight on Cheeses That Can Take the Heat, When to Wash Veggies and The Link Between Exercise and Sleep

Who doesn’t love a gooey grilled-cheese sandwich? But what can you do when you want cheesy goodness without the bread? The delicious answer is cheese varieties that hold their shape under heat.

GRILLED HALLOUMI OVER SALAD

  • GRILLED HALLOUMI OVER SALAD Grilled Halloumi Over Salad

    I’m a huge fan of halloumi, a brined goat’s milk cheese from Cyprus. Because it has a high melting point, this firm, somewhat salty cheese can be grilled directly on the grate. You can skewer chunks along with your favorite veggies or simply grill slices and serve them with the refreshing seasonal salad in this recipe.

    Ingredients

    • 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
    • 1 tablespoon best-quality red wine vinegar 
    • 1 teaspoon fresh oregano, chopped, or 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano 
    • Kosher salt to taste
    • Freshly ground black pepper to taste
    • 8 ounces cherry tomatoes, halved 
    • 1 cucumber, diced
    • One head romaine lettuce, washed, dried, and torn 
    • 12 brined Kalamata olives, drained, pitted, and halved 
    • 1/2 cup loosely packed flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
    • 12 ounces of halloumi, cut crosswise into 1/3-inch-thick slices 
    • 4 tablespoons Greek yogurt (optional)

    Directions

    Step 1

    Make the salad: In a bowl, whisk together 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, the red wine vinegar, oregano, salt, and pepper. Add the tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, olives, and parsley. Toss gently to coat the vegetables with the dressing and divide evenly on four plates.

    Step 2

    Pour the rest of the olive oil onto a rimmed sheet pan and gently coat both sides of each cheese slice. On a medium-hot grill, grill the cheese for 1 to 2 minutes per side, turning with tongs or a thin-bladed spatula. (Work in batches if necessary.) 

    Step 3

    Top each salad plate with equal amounts of the grilled cheese and add a dollop of yogurt, if desired. Serve immediately. 

    Yields 4 servings.

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight: Americans and Potatoes

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

More Cheeses That Can Take the Heat

Halloumi isn’t the only fresh, semi-firm cheese that can be cooked without melting. Another great one is paneer, the cheese used in Indian cuisine, most famously the creamy spinach dish saag paneer. It’s readily available at many markets, not just specialty shops. And from frigid Finland comes leipäjuusto, popular there at breakfast, according to the experts at the magazine Culture: The Word on Cheese. These cheeses will soften when grilled, but they won’t break down and melt thanks to their low acid content. That’s also the reason you may hear a squeaking sound as you bite into them!

Healthy Kitchen Tip: Grapefruit Knife

Healthy Kitchen Nugget

When Exactly to Wash Veggies

While most concern over food contamination centers on raw meat, vegetables as well as fruits can have organisms you want to keep out of the kitchen. Here are some tips from the FDA and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension to stay safe.

Start by choosing produce that isn’t bruised or damaged. If shopping for precut foods, like fruit chunks or bags of lettuce, make sure they’ve been kept refrigerated or on ice at the store, and get them into the fridge as soon as you get home. If a food gets marred before you’ve had a chance to use it, cut off the affected areas before preparing or eating it.

There are also steps to take with freshly harvested produce, whether from your own garden or a farmers’ market. Washing off produce can help reduce microorganisms. There’s no need to use soap or a special produce wash—just gently rub the produce while holding it under plain running water. Do make sure the water is no more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the food, or else any pathogens could get drawn in through the stem (if there is one). Because excess water can lead to faster molding or rotting, be sure to thoroughly dry your produce with clean paper towels before storing it in the fridge. To store produce without washing it first, shake, rub, or brush off any garden dirt with either a clean, soft brush or a clean, dry paper towel before you bring it inside if possible. Then place the produce in a plastic bag or container to prevent any risk of contamination to other foods in your fridge. For a list of which produce should be washed and which produce should be wiped clean, check out this resource page from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.

Always rinse produce right before you peel or cut it so that any dirt and bacteria aren’t picked up by your knife and transferred back onto the fruit or vegetable or elsewhere in your kitchen.

For Your Best Health: Brain Health

For Your Best Health

The Mediterranean Diet: Brain Booster

One of the reasons I’m such a proponent of olive oil is the key role it plays in the fabulously healthy Mediterranean diet, known for its heart health benefits. A recent study published in the journal Neurology advances the theory that it protects brain health too. The researchers found that, among a group of 500 seniors, those who ate an unhealthy diet had higher levels of amyloid and tau proteins, which have been linked to Alzheimer’s, in their cerebrospinal fluid, and that they performed worse in memory tests than those who regularly ate a Mediterranean-like diet. “There was also a significant positive correlation between a closer adherence to a Mediterranean-like diet and a higher volume of the hippocampus. The hippocampus is an area of the brain that is considered the control center of memory. It shrinks early and severely in Alzheimer’s disease,” explained Tommaso Ballarini, PhD, lead author of the study. “It is possible that the Mediterranean diet protects the brain from protein deposits and brain atrophy that can cause memory loss and dementia.” The researchers will continue their work by reexamining the same study participants in four to five years.

In the meantime, this delicious way of eating isn’t complicated. According to the Mayo Clinic, while there is no single definition of the Mediterranean diet, it is typically high in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds, and olive oil. Here’s an easy way to adopt it:

  • Daily: vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats
  • Weekly: fish, poultry, beans and eggs with moderate portions of dairy
  • Limited: red meat
Fitness Flash: The Link Between Exercise and Sleep

Fitness Flash

The Link Between Exercise and Sleep

There are many factors that contribute to good health, with getting enough exercise and getting good quality sleep among them. We know that, separately, physical inactivity and poor sleep are linked to a greater risk of death from causes such as heart disease and cancer. New research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine now shows that exercise and sleep may be more linked to each other than we thought. Scientists looked at the exercise and sleep patterns of more than 380,000 middle-aged adults over an 11-year period and how different combinations affected their health. Not surprisingly, compared with those with a high physical activity level and healthy sleep combination, those at the other extreme—no moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and poor sleep—were most at risk for heart disease, stroke, and cancer. However, the findings also showed that getting the recommended 150 minutes of exercise a week could mitigate the risks posed by poor sleep, prompting the researchers to suggest that there’s a certain synergy between the two activities. This was an observational study that relied on self-reported data so cause and effect can’t be established, but it does give the idea that you should meet physical activity goals as you work on getting better sleep. Other lifestyle habits that helped participants achieve better sleep levels were being thinner, eating more fruits and vegetables, spending less time sitting each day, not smoking, and limiting alcohol.

Get More Recipes In Your Inbox!