Results tagged “healthy bones” from Mostly Eating
In the snowy weeks at the start of the year there were a couple of days when I couldn’t get to work and I had the opportunity to really immerse myself in some reading. Springing off from Elaine’s excellent collection of links on How to build & maintain healthy bones on a plant-based diet I spent a happy couple of days reading up on bone health and found inspiration very close to home.In Oxford (where I live and work) there is an ongoing research study called EPIC, the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. EPIC is an impressive undertaking; it has been running since 1993 and has followed the diets of 65,000 Oxford residents since then, watching and waiting to see which patterns emerge between the food we eat and our health. Because Oxford has such a lot of vegetarian folk, the study has provided excellent opportunities to look at the pros and cons of being vegetarian and vegan.
Are vegan diets (by definition dairy-free) good or bad for your bones is one such conundrum the researchers hope to answer. So far in the EPIC group, the meat eaters, fish eaters and vegetarians all seem to have about the same overall risk of having a fractured bone. The vegans in the group however had about a third more fractures than those other groups. It’s a deceptive result this one though, and the true picture only emerged after the statisticians had a closer look at the numbers. Those vegans who had enough calcium in their diet were no more likely to have a fracture than those following other styles of diet. It seems it’s not a vegan diet that is bad for your bones at all, just a badly balanced vegan diet without enough calcium in it.
The best recipes have a balance to them; salt and sweet, hot and sour. And if you’re lucky they have that something extra too, maybe a hint of the fifth taste, umami.This sauce is inspired by Bill Granger’s recipe for Braised Lamb Shanks in his book, Holiday. Bill’s recipe is deep and spicy and incredibly moreish, but not the kind of meal I like to make for healthy, everyday eating. How to keep the flavour without the lamb, and as I promised last week provide a boost for your bones? I’ve taken this deconstructionist approach to recipes before and know that tofu works as the perfect foil to a sauce that is ‘the main event’.
There are still reasonable amounts of added fat in this tofu version, included to carry the flavours of the spices, but the fat is a healthier oil predominant in monounsaturated fats rather than the heavy, saturated fat from the lamb. Some of the umami-driven moreishness of the original dish came from the meat but also from the tomatoes and soy sauce which I've kept in, in fact the vegetable and taste of the dish has been oooomphed up considerably with extra tomatoes and onion. I’ve added a third umami element too, dark and sticky molasses (did you know that MSG is made from fermented molasses? I didn't know this before but I'm guessing there’s some taste connection there).
Tofu is a favourite of mine to recommend to my osteoporosis patients. Not every brand of tofu is calcium rich but those that are tend to be really rich in calcium. 100g of a tofu made using calcium sulphate contains around 510 mg of calcium; about twice the calcium you would get from a glass of milk. To put this into more context, the UK recommended daily intake of calcium for adults is 700mg while Australia and US recommend that we have 1000mg. I suspect it’s us Brits that are a bit behind, but a serving would provide at least half of what you need in a day.
1 in 2 is the number of women over the age of 50 who will break a bone because of poor bone health. i.e if you’re a woman and you are reading this, there’s a 50% of chance of this happening to you. The figures for men aren’t much different at one in five. I mention this because bone health isn’t something many of us think about all that much. We’re often too busy concentrating on how to ward off those diseases that feel like they must be the biggest risks to our health and quality of life. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, those kinds of worries.
The good news
- Around 80% of your risk of having a fracture due to osteoporosis is genetic and you can't do much about it. But the other 20% is yours to play with through diet, weight bearing exercise, and watching what you smoke and drink.
- Osteoporosis is very treatable and because of this the fractures it causes are very preventable, provided that the problem is discovered in time.
- Screening for osteoporosis is on the up and there are some really user-friendly new treatments in the pipeline for those who need them.
- Contrary to what some of the newspapers say, osteoporosis doesn’t kill you.
Thanks to the National osteoporosis society for their figures.
Moo Moos is an immensely popular milkshake joint in Oxford’s historic covered market. Their milkshake repertoire is astounding; if it’s sweet, they can turn it into a milkshake. You should see their menu, which goes all the way through the confectionary lexicon from Snickers, Kit Kat and Cream Egg milkshakes to the more biscuity Jammy Dodger and Oreo versions. The mind boggles at some of the suggestions; lemon drizzle cake milkshake anyone? The milkshakes aren’t really my thing; the real draw for me is the fruit smoothies or more specifically, the peach and raspberry smoothie. In the absence of any figs on my fig tree this year I’ve made myself busy perfecting my own take Moo Moos' peach and raspberry smoothie. It turns out that making a thick, frozen yogurt style smoothie is a cinch; just put the yogurt in the freezer for an hour before you want your drink (I know, what took me so long to figure that one out). My version uses nectarines instead of peaches (good peaches are hard to come by in the UK) which are still a match made in heaven for raspberries. A drop of orange flower water adds a lovely floral scent and somehow makes the smoothie feel like more of a grown-up drink.
There are many, many other ingredients that you can add to smoothies to get you out of a smoothie rut:
Good things to add to smoothies that don’t add calories
- I’m all for a bit of floral honey to pep up lacklustre fruit but spices such as nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and vanilla extract can all create an illusion of sweetness without adding calories
- Orange flower water and rosewater give a decadent floral scent, as in today's recipe and my fig and rosewater smoothie
- A squeeze of lemon or lime juice can really make those fruit flavours pop
- Kathryn from Limes and Lycopene intriguingly suggests a slosh of cold herbal tea such as peppermint or rooibos
- For a touch of warmth and spice add grated ginger or even a touch of fresh chilli. I suspect lemongrass would be good too, but it is probably best put through the juicer rather than the blender.
- Unsweetened pumpkin puree is useful as very low calorie thickener
- Garden herbs such as mint, basil and lemon verbena all add welcome freshness
- sprinkled on to breakfast cereal
- in a steaming hot crumble with custard
- scattered through salads
- au naturel, with a dollop of yogurt and few chopped nuts
- whizzed up into delicious smoothies
Smoothies versus Juices
We have a decent juicer and also one of those multi-purpose blender kits that include a tall, open-topped beaker specifically intended for making smoothies. Using the juicer involves discarding large quantities of fruit pulp and takes around fifteen minutes fiddly cleaning after use. The blender keeps all of that fruity goodness (including the parts that contain the fibre), takes two minutes to fling together and all of the messy parts can be slung straight into the dishwasher. Juice is high enough in natural sugar and acid to give your teeth a hard time; a yogurt-based smoothie contains calcium to temper the tooth eroding effect. For me the blended smoothie wins hands down for convenience and health.
Healthy bones
According to wikipedia, a “smoothie is a blended, chilled, sweet beverage made from fresh fruit. In addition to fruit, many smoothies include crushed ice, frozen fruit, or frozen yogurt”. I just never make a smoothie without yogurt, or at least a splash of milk. Here’s why; if, like me, you are not a big milk drinker then managing 700mg of calcium every day is a big job. And if you are a teenager or breastfeeding then your body needs even more calcium than this. Not all of your dairy needs to be from calcium by any means, but even so, fitting in 700mg every day can feel a bit daunting. Not to mention monotonous; it’s easy to get stuck in a rut of a glass of milk, pot of fruit yogurt and cheese sandwich. Adding a few tablespoons of yogurt into a smoothie is an easy way to variety to how you consume this quarter of your day’s calcium. Thick, luscious yogurt also seems to become a bit less of a necessity when it is all blended up with summer fruits - plain (no added sugar), low fat yogurt works is perfectly OK in a smoothie.
Soy yogurt is just fine
Some people prefer soy yogurt and soy milk for ethical reasons and a few specific nutritional benefits (including being lower in saturated fat than cow's milk yogurt). These work just fine as a smoothie ingredient, but if you are looking out for your bones then make sure that you read the label carefully. In many countries (including the UK) organic products are not allowed to be fortified with additional vitamins and minerals.
Because soy beans are not naturally high in calcium, unfortified organic soy milk and soy yogurts are not a good source of calcium.
(My yogurt eating alternates between calcium-fortified soy yogurt and naturally high in calcium organic natural yogurt.)
Spiced chilli hot chocolate is an idea as old as well, hot chocolate! The earliest traces of hot chocolate, found in Mayan tombs in Guatamala dating back to 460 A.D, had been made from a paste ground from cocoa seeds mixed with cornmeal and chillis. I like this spicy hot chocolate as an occasional mid afternoon pick me up when I am struggling to concentrate on something complicated – there’s definitely something in the research from Nottingham University showing that a cocoa rich drink can improve blood flow to the brain. Chilli is also well known for improving blood flow all over your body so this would be equally welcome to warm you up after a bracing winter walk outside.
Sadly chocolate is not the health food that some clever marketing people would like us to believe (or that we would like to believe perhaps?), but for an occasional sweet treat a mug of hot spicy drinking chocolate is not such a bad thing. Two tips to keep it on the healthy side; first, use good quality plain chocolate rather than a sweetened milk chocolate or chocolate powder and second, use semi-skimmed or skimmed milk to keep this on the low fat side. All chocolate is high in sugar and fat (dark chocolate just has a little bit less fat and a little bit more sugar) and so the health gain in choosing dark (plain chocolate) is not really about fat but is because dark chocolate contains more cocoa solids, usually around the 70%. It is the cocoa solids in chocolate that have been associated with having heart health benefits and that contain valuable anti-oxidants.
If you've ever heard nutritionists talking about sugary and sweet foods being empty calories they mean that these foods provide calories but bugger all else of nutritional usefulness. Happily this hot chocolate is well away from being empty calories with those 70% cocoa solids and a good helping of bone healthy calcium in the milk. If you don’t drink cows milk just go for whatever alternative you normally use but try to choose one that has been fortified with calcium.
And now to the all important third tip - for a super enjoyable, guilt-free beverage experience make your drink from tasty fairly traded dark chocolate! Rachel who makes and bakes many lovely things over at Rkhooks is gathering together all of our best chocolate recipes to promote the chocolate campaign from Stop the Traffik. The chocolate campaign is there to draw attention to the shocking practice of using trafficked child slave labour to harvest cocoa beans on the Cote D'Ivoire. The chocolate campaign web site has some information about where to buy your traffik-free chocolate from but essentially for a chocolate to be awarded Fairtrade status it must be guaranteed not to have involved any trafficked labour in its production so you can just look out for fairtrade chocolate.
