Salmon Bowl Recipe (Made Simple), Spotlight on Sesame Seeds, Thawing Frozen Fish, Why Wild Seafood is Best, and Counting Your Biological Age

Americans still don’t eat enough fish, and the challenge of finding quality fresh seafood is one of the reasons. My DIY salmon bowl recipe is a great way to get the goodness of salmon plus as many veggies as you’d like to include. Read on to see why frozen is actually preferred—unless of course you live near a fishing dock! Then find out about advances in measuring biological aging, a metric that makes your chronological age less important.

Salmon Bowl Made Simple

• Salmon Bowl Made Simple

  Poke bowls are still very popular, but it’s not always easy to buy the sushi-grade tuna needed to make your own. This variation includes sautéed chunks of salmon instead of ahi. The technique is also great if you like tuna but prefer it cooked. I’ve suggested many veggies to fill up your bowl, but have fun choosing other ingredients—be guided by what’s most fresh at your market.

  Ingredients

  For the fish:

  • 1 pound skinless salmon fillet, wild caught if possible
  • 1 tablespoon regular or reduced-sodium soy sauce 
  • 1 tablespoon sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided use

  For the spicy mayo:

  • 1/4 cup best-quality mayonnaise
  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon sriracha, or to taste

  For the spicy bowls:

  • 3 cups cooked quinoa or brown or white rice
  • 1 large cucumber, diced
  • 3 scallions, trimmed and sliced into small pieces on the diagonal
  • 1 cup shelled edamame 
  • 2 large avocados, cubed or cut into thin slices
  • 2 tablespoons black or white sesame seeds or a mix
  • Optional: red onion rings, sliced tomatoes, shredded carrots, chopped red cabbage, enoki mushrooms, and other fresh veggies of your choice

  Directions

  Step 1

  Using a sharp knife, cut the salmon into 1-inch chunks. Add to a glass bowl with the soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Toss well and set aside for 30 minutes.

  Step 2

  Make the spicy mayo: In a small bowl, whisk the mayonnaise and the olive oil until well blended, then mix in the sriracha; set aside.

  Step 3

  Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. When hot, add the rest of the olive oil and the salmon chunks. Sear on all sides, using tongs to turn the pieces. When cooked through, remove the pan from the heat.

  Step 4

  Assemble the ingredients in four deep bowls: Center equal amounts of the cooked grains, then top with the vegetables and then the salmon chunks. Use a fork to drizzle on the spicy mayo, then sprinkle with the sesame seeds.

  Makes 4 servings

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Black and White Sesame Seeds

Sesame seeds are more than a colorful and crunchy garnish—they can be pressed to make the Asian staple sesame oil, both the plain and toasted varieties, and whipped into the Middle Eastern treats tahini and halvah. Importantly, these little seeds pack a big punch when it comes to nutrients, so consider sprinkling them on more than poke bowls and sushi rolls.

Sesame seeds are rich in fat; protein; minerals like iron, calcium, copper, potassium, and manganese; vitamins like A and E and B vitamins; and fiber. Among their phytochemicals are lignans, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Because more of these nutrients, including their lignans, are in the hull, always choose unhulled sesame seeds. Black ones almost always come with the hull intact, but you’ll have to look carefully to find unhulled white ones. 

Black and white sesame seeds have some taste differences, with the black ones being slightly crunchier and more bitter. I like to mix the two because this creates visual appeal and different taste sensations.

Quick Kitchen Nugget

Thawing Frozen Fish 

Fish that’s caught in faraway waters and flash-frozen at sea often retains more of its nutrients and flavor—you’ll often see the words “previously frozen” on thawed fish at markets, a potential good sign. If you’re buying fish still frozen, make sure it’s frozen solid when you purchase it. Let it thaw overnight in the fridge, not on a countertop, to preserve that freshness—defrosting it in a cold fridge also helps inhibit the growth of any harmful bacteria. To do it properly, take it out of its packaging and put it on a plate or tray lined with a few sheets of paper towels or on a rack over the plate with paper towels. Just before cooking, rinse under cold water and pat dry. 

For Your Best Health

Seafood: Why “Wild” Wins Hands Down

Research done at the University of Cambridge in the UK offers more insight into why farmed salmon isn’t as nutritious as wild salmon or other wild-caught fish, like mackerel, anchovies, and herring—even though these same varieties are often used in farmed salmon feeds. These oily fish contain essential nutrients including calcium, B12, and omega-3s, but they don’t transfer over in the same amounts when fed to farmed salmon.

By analyzing the flow of nutrients from the edible species of wild fish used as feed, which also included sprat and blue whiting, to the farmed salmon they were fed to, scientists found that farmed salmon production leads to an overall loss of essential dietary nutrients. Quantities of calcium were over five times higher in wild feed fish fillets than in farmed salmon fillets; iodine was four times higher; and iron, omega-3s, vitamin B12, and vitamin A were over 1.5 times higher. Wild feed species and farmed salmon did have comparable quantities of vitamin D. Zinc and selenium were actually higher in the farmed salmon than in the wild feed species due to other salmon feed ingredients—a real mark of progress in the salmon sector, said the researchers.

Another interesting point is that you can get key nutrients, including omega-3 fatty acids, which are known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke, in smaller portion sizes of wild fish than in farmed Atlantic salmon. 

“What we’re seeing is that most species of wild fish used as feed have a similar or greater density and range of micronutrients than farmed salmon fillets,” said lead author David Willer, PhD, of the zoology department at Cambridge. “While still enjoying eating salmon and supporting sustainable growth in the sector, people should consider eating a greater and wider variety of wild fish species like sardines, mackerel, and anchovies, to get more essential nutrients straight to their plate.” He goes on to say that eating more wild feed species directly could benefit our health while also reducing aquaculture demand for finite marine resources.

“Marine fisheries are important local and global food systems, but large catches are being diverted toward farm feeds. Prioritizing nutritious seafood for people can help improve both diets and ocean sustainability,” said senior author James Robinson, PhD, of Lancaster University, also in the UK.

Fitness Flash

Forget the Calendar: What Counts Is Your Biological Age

University of Pittsburgh researchers have uncovered blood-based markers that allow them to predict a person’s biological age—how fast a person’s cells and organs age regardless of their birthdate. The new research, published in Aging Cell, points to pathways and compounds that may underlie biological age, shedding light on why people age differently and suggesting novel targets for interventions that could slow aging and increase health span, the length of time a person is healthy.

“Age is more than just a number,” said senior author Aditi Gurkar, PhD, assistant professor of geriatric medicine at Pitt’s School of Medicine and member of the Aging Institute, a joint venture of Pitt and UPMC. “Imagine two people aged 65: One rides a bike to work and goes skiing on the weekends, and the other can’t climb a flight of stairs. They have the same chronological age, but very different biological ages. Why do these two people age differently? This question drives my research.”

To answer it, Dr. Gurkar and her team compared 196 older adults whom they classified as either healthy or rapid agers by how easily they completed simple walking challenges. Because walking ability is a holistic measure of cardiovascular fitness, physical strength, and neurological health, other studies have shown that it’s the single best predictor of hospitalization, disability, functional decline, and death in older adults. Healthy agers were 75 years or older and could ascend a flight of stairs or walk for 15 minutes without resting, and the rapid agers, who were 65 to 75 years old, had to rest during these challenges.

According to Dr. Gurkar, this study is unique because the rapid agers were chronologically younger than the healthy agers, allowing the researchers to home in on markers of biological, not chronological, aging, unlike other studies that have compared young adults with older people.

To define a molecular fingerprint of biological aging in blood samples from participants, they performed metabolomics, the analysis of metabolites, or molecules that are produced by chemical pathways in the body, with blood samples from the two groups.

“Other studies have looked at genetics to measure biological aging, but genes are very static: the genes you’re born with are the genes you die with,” said Dr. Gurkar. “We chose to look at metabolites because they are dynamic: They change in real time to reflect our current health and how we feel, and we have the power to influence them through our lifestyles, diet, and environment.” Healthy and rapid agers showed clear differences in their metabolomes, indicating that metabolites in the blood could reflect biological age.

Dr. Gurkar and her team next identified 25 metabolites that they termed the Healthy Aging Metabolic (HAM) Index. They found that the HAM Index was better than other commonly used aging metrics, such as the frailty index, gait speed, and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test, at distinguishing healthy and rapid agers. To validate their new index, the researchers analyzed a separate cohort of older adults from a Wisconsin-based study. The HAM Index correctly predicted whether individuals could walk outside for 10 minutes without stopping with accuracy of about 68%.

“We took a very different cohort of people from a different geographical region, and we saw the same metabolites were associated with biological aging,” said Dr. Gurkar. “This gives us confidence that the HAM Index can truly predict who is a healthy ager versus a rapid ager.”

Using an artificial intelligence model that can predict potential drivers of biological traits, the team identified three main metabolites that were most likely to promote healthy aging or drive rapid aging. In future research, they plan to delve into how these metabolites and molecular pathways that produce them contribute to biological aging and explore interventions that could slow this process. Dr. Gurkar is also planning more research to evaluate how the metabolome of younger people shifts over time. Eventually, she hopes to develop a blood test that could estimate biological age in young adults or predict those who might go on to develop diseases of aging.

“While it’s great that we can predict biological aging in older adults, what would be even more exciting is a blood test that, for example, can tell someone who’s 35 that they have a biological age more like a 45-year-old,” Dr. Gurkar said. “That person could then think about changing aspects of their lifestyle early—whether that’s improving their sleep, diet or exercise regimen—to hopefully reverse their biological age. Today, in medicine, we tend to wait for a problem to occur before we treat it. But aging doesn’t work that way—it’s about prevention. I think the future of medicine is going to be about knowing early on how someone is aging and developing personalized interventions to delay disease and extend health span.”

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Iced Blueberry Scones Recipe, Spotlight on Blueberries and Bench Scrapers, Managing Depression with Scents, and Resistance Training for Anxiety

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, first established in 1949 to increase our understanding of the vital role mental health plays in overall health and well-being and to celebrate recovery from mental illness. With all the stresses of daily living we face today, addressing mental health has never been as important. So, in addition to my recipe for scones, I’m including two different advances in mental health care that could impact how depression and anxiety are managed.

Iced Blueberry Scones

• Iced Blueberry Scones

  If you’ve ever had a store-bought scone, chances are it was dry and crumbly. My recipe is flaky yet still tender, thanks to the olive oil in the pastry flour dough. A light icing drizzle balances out the tartness of blueberries. 

  Ingredients

  For the Scones:

  • 2 cups pastry flour, plus more for the cookie sheet and shaping the dough
  • 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour 
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 2/3 cup half-and-half
  • 1 extra-large egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla 
  • 1 cup fresh blueberries, rinsed and patted dry

  For the Glaze:

  • 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
  • 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

  Directions

  Step 1

  Preheat your oven to 400°F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and sprinkle it liberally with flour.

  Step 2

  Place the 2-1/4 cups flour (pastry and whole wheat), sugar, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl and whisk to combine. In a separate bowl, thoroughly whisk the olive oil, half-and-half, egg, and vanilla. Using a large spatula, fold in the blueberries and then the flour mixture. Be careful not to overmix, which can cause too much gluten development and a dense scone.

  Step 3

  Turn the dough out onto the parchment paper. Heavily flour your hands and use them to pat the dough into a 12-by-8-inch rectangle (do not use a rolling pin). If the dough is extremely wet, sprinkle on a tablespoon of additional flour. Use a bench scraper to help even out the edges, cut the dough into 12 triangles or squares, and then move the pieces as needed to leave about two inches between them.

  Step 4

  While the scones are cooling, mix the confectioner’s sugar and lemon juice, thinning if needed with 1 tablespoon of water. Use a spoon to drizzle on the icing in a crisscross pattern.

  Step 5

  Serve warm or at room temperature. Store any leftovers in the fridge.

  Yields 12 scones

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Frozen Blueberries

Blueberries are more than delicious—they’re at the top of many healthiest-foods lists because of their amazing nutrients. Along with vitamins C and K and the mineral manganese, they’re rich in anthocyanins, which give them their blue-purple color and protect cells from damaging molecules called free radicals. Their soluble fiber helps lower blood sugar, manage blood pressure, and sweep out cholesterol, which, in turn, can lower the risk for heart disease. 

Spring is the start of blueberry season, but when fresh ones aren’t available, frozen ones make a great stand-in (it’s also smart to freeze fresh berries you grow or buy throughout the summer so that you’ll have them for next fall and winter). Bakers are often disappointed by the bleeding frozen berries can cause, creating streaks of purple or even green in the finished baked goods. This doesn’t affect taste, but here’s a quick hack to avoid it: Just before adding them to your batter, rinse the frozen berries well in cold water and then thoroughly pat them dry between layers of paper towels. Quickly fold them into the batter using just a few strokes. Keep in mind that you are rinsing away some of the berries’ healthful anthocyanins, so if the streaks don’t bother you, simply pat defrosted berries with paper towels before adding them to the batter to avoid adding excess moisture.

Quick Kitchen Nugget

The Value of a Bench Scraper

This lightweight tool, designed to help you move dough when working on a countertop or “bench,” does more than its name indicates. Press the side against your dough to even its sides—this may eliminate the need for trimming the edges. Use the edge of the scraper to cut dough into scones, biscuits, bar cookies, or crackers. Also, the flat side works like a metal spatula to transfer dough pieces to your baking sheet. Available at most housewares stores and online, a good stainless steel bench scraper runs $10-$15.

For Your Best Health

Managing Depression: Using Scents to Unlock Memories 

A study done by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center social workers and published in JAMA Network Open has found that scents are more effective than words at calling up a memory of a specific event. Scents could even be used to help people experiencing depression get out of negative thought cycles and rewire thought patterns, aiding faster and smoother healing.

Early in her career, Kymberly Young, PhD, a neuroscience researcher who studies autobiographical memories, realized that engaging the amygdala, the part of the brain that not only controls the fight-or-flight response but also directs attention and focus to important events, helps with memory recall. 

She also knew of extensive evidence that people with depression have a hard time recalling specific autobiographical memories and that, in healthy individuals, odors trigger memories that feel vivid and real, likely because they directly engage the amygdala through nerve connections from the olfactory bulb.

“It was surprising to me that nobody thought to look at memory recall in depressed individuals using odor cues before,” said Dr. Young, senior author of the study and associate professor of psychiatry at Pitt. So, she decided to test whether engaging the amygdala could help depressed individuals access their memories more effectively. 

Rather than start with brain scanner tests, she decided to go low tech, presenting study participants with a series of opaque glass vials containing potent familiar scents including everything from oranges and ground coffee to shoe polish and even Vicks VapoRub.

After asking participants to smell a vial, Dr. Young asked them to recall a specific memory, good or bad. She was surprised to discover that memory recall was stronger in depressed individuals who received odor cues as opposed to word cues. Also, those who received odor cues were more likely to recall a memory of a specific event (for example, that they went to a coffee shop the previous Friday) than general memories (that they have been to coffee shops before). Memories spurred by odors were also a lot more vivid and felt more immersive. Even though Dr. Young did not direct participants to specifically recall positive memories, her results found that positive memories were more likely to be recalled.

Dr. Young will soon start more technologically advanced studies using a brain scanner, but she is excited about the progress already made. “If we improve memory, we can improve problem-solving, emotion regulation, and other functional problems that depressed individuals often experience,” she said.

Fitness Flash

Resistance Training for Anxiety

Researchers Matthew P. Herring, PhD, of the University of Limerick (UL) in Ireland, and Jacob D. Meyer, PhD, of Iowa State University (ISU), recently published an article in the journal Trends in Molecular Medicine to review evidence supporting the positive effects that resistance exercise training can have on anxiety and depression.  

“There is a critical need for confirmatory, definitive trials that adequately address limitations [of existing research], but the limited evidence available to us provides initial support for the beneficial effects of resistance exercise training on these mental health outcomes, including increased insulin-like growth factor 1, cerebrovascular adaptations, and potential neural adaptations influenced by controlled breathing inherent to resistance exercise,” explained Dr. Herring, associate professor in the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre, Health Research Institute, and department of physical education and sport sciences within the faculty of education and health sciences at UL, and a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine. 

“Notwithstanding the limitations of the limited number of studies to date, there is exciting evidence, particularly from our previous and ongoing research of the available studies, that suggests that resistance exercise training may be an accessible alternative therapy to improve anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depressive symptoms and disorders are prevalent and debilitating public health burdens for which successful treatment is limited,” Dr. Herring said. “A more exciting aspect is that there is substantial promise in investigating the unknown mechanisms that may underlie these benefits to move us closer to maximizing benefits and to optimizing the prescription of resistance exercise via precision medicine approaches.” 

“The current research provides a foundation for testing if resistance training can be a key behavioral treatment approach for depression and anxiety,” said Dr. Meyer, an expert on the neurobiological effects of exercise on depression and director of ISU’s Wellbeing and Exercise Laboratory, focused on understanding how exercise and sedentary activities are related to mental health and well-being. “As resistance training likely works through both shared and distinct mechanisms to achieve its positive mood effects compared to aerobic exercise, it has the potential to be used in conjunction with aerobic exercise or as a stand-alone therapy for these debilitating conditions. Our research will use the platform established by current research as a springboard to comprehensively evaluate these potential benefits of resistance exercise in clinical populations while also identifying who would be the most likely to benefit from resistance exercise.”

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