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Food for Health

Kimchi is popular in New England as well as Korea

Thu, 01/15/2015 - 11:02am
By
Cynthia Hochswender

It would seem that there is no escaping kimchi, the ubiquitous and fragrant Korean specialty food. And I’m not just saying it’s ubiquitous in Korea (where it’s apparently eaten at three meals a day); it also seems to be inescapable even here in New England. Whoever still thinks of this as a Yankee pot roast and white bread region is wrong. 

I am not a big fan of kimchi. I think it’s smelly and kind of, well, red. 

How to safely store your Thanksgiving leftovers

Wed, 11/26/2014 - 10:37am
By
Cynthia Hochswender
cynthiah@lakevillejournal.com

Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow but sometime real soon you’re going to be thinking hard about how to store your Thanksgiving meal leftovers. 

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Good for what ails your tummy

Wed, 11/26/2014 - 10:35am
By
Cynthia Hochswender
cynthiah@lakevillejournal.com

All pronouncements about foods and their relative levels of being good for you or not good for you should be taken with a grain of (figurative) salt. 

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Have a smoking good time with warming foods

Thu, 10/30/2014 - 9:41am
By
Cynthia Hochswender

It’s cold and damp outside and time to eat foods that make you feel warm. Cocoa, obviously, is a good choice. Iced tea and lemonade, obviously bad choices. Ice cream? No.

Lentils? Yes, especially if you eat them when they are warm (as opposed to cold, on a salad, which is also very yummy but not particularly warming).

All warm foods, obviously, are warming (hello). Lentils are doubly warming, however; they are also included in the list of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s warming foods (I think it has something to do with the qi or air flow in your body).

Whatever the color, eggplants have their virtues

Thu, 10/02/2014 - 9:55am
By
Cynthia Hochswender

In a way, it doesn’t matter that there are so many types of eggplant, and that so many of them are so beautiful. Once they’ve been cooked, they lose their looks, especially if you are making classic eggplant dishes (caponata, ratatouille, parmigiana, pizza). 

Carrots won’t give you super vision

Thu, 09/18/2014 - 9:42am
By
Cynthia Hochswender
cythiah@lakevillejournal.com

It never ends, the revision of our favorite food myths. Now it turns out that carrots aren’t actually very good for your eyesight. Bugs Bunny, where are you? Will we learn next that spinach doesn’t give us super-strength equal to that of Popeye the Sailor Man?

Chickpeas can help boost brainpower

Thu, 09/11/2014 - 12:28pm
By
Cynthia Hochswender
cythiah@lakevillejournal.com

This week’s health page is devoted to the chef/cookbook author Paula Wolfert, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and is using cooking, recipes and food to help keep her brain stable and strong; and who is now an unofficial spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Association.

Don’t let them fool you, breakfast still counts!

Thu, 09/04/2014 - 3:45pm
By
Cynthia Hochswender
cythiah@lakevillejournal.com

This is one of those common-sense moments. If you picked up the Sunday New York Times recently and read the story in the magazine about breakfast, you might have come away with the impression that eating breakfast isn’t as important as everyone says it is.

The part of the study that is cited in the magazine article relates only to one question: Does skipping breakfast lead to obesity?

The answer is a fairly resounding, “We don’t know but it’s possible.”

Tasty enough to feel like a splurge

Thu, 08/14/2014 - 9:37am
By
Sophia Kaufman

I’ve heard there are scientific reasons why everything that tastes good is bad for you. It all boils down to economics: Companies that produce junk food are actually designing their products to be addictive so that consumers will buy and eat them.

So in an attempt to foil Corporate America, I’ve been trying to find the exception — a food that tastes good enough to be addictive and yet is also healthy.

Behold, the avocado.

The avocado is a fruit (its seed is inside) that falls within a category colloquially known as “super foods” due to its many and varied health benefits.

Ode to a peach, summer’s great delight

Thu, 08/07/2014 - 9:33am
By
Sam Bradway

In my childhood, I knew a man from Georgia. He was tall — taller than tall — and wide. His voice boomed, in a syrupy southern drawl: “It ain’t summer until there’s peach juice running down your arm.”

I was already convinced. Of all the summer fruits, peaches are the lightest, the sweetest and the most fragrant. They are one of the few fruits that may be truly described as “floral.”

When they’re good, that is.

As much as I love the fruit, peaches are fickle products, and I was never lenient. When I was younger, I used to rank my peaches on a scale of 1 to 10.