Kumquats! The Super-Freaky Superfood You Should Seriously Consider Checking Out

So I recently fell in love with the bizarre fruit known as the kumquat.  It's intensely tasty, plus it's nutritious and low cal.  It's sort of like eating little marmalade bullets, sweet and sour and bitter all at once, but with no jammy guilt or anything.

Yet kumquats must have really crappy social skills! Or the poor fruit hasn't figured out it needs some PR and marketing help.  Because even though I've always been vaguely aware they existed, I hadn't ever actually tried one until this year.

Kumquats are hard to find in stores, even in season. I finally scored some at a farmers market after a friend turned me on to them, approximately 50 years after I first heard of them.  (It didn't help that all these years I had them confused with loquats, which as kids we used to steal off neighbors' fruit trees and called them kumquats. But loquats are an entirely different fruit. Loquats are yellow and smooth-skinned and not citrusy, and have a big-ass seed in the middle. They are tasty too, if you have a nearby tree to steal from).

So, what's so awesome about kumquats anyway?

Revenge of the Green Smoothie

Photo: Wootang01

Warning: this post contains mostly smoothie-related whining. However, if you hang in there, there is a bit of Actual Health Research at the end.

So I've written before about one of my favorite healthy beverages, the smoothie. And the way I used to make them, they were so pretty! They were either a mellow orangey-yellow (mango or peach); or a perky pink (strawberry or raspberry); or quite frequently, a jaunty purple (blueberry).

Then, like the rest of the health blog world, I discovered the Green Smoothie.

Oh joy! Full vegetable credit in a fruity, tasty drink! And it was still very pretty. My favorite recipe: a couple of cups of raw spinach, a cup of nonfat milk, a little yogurt, some sweetener, some frozen banana, the juice of a lime (which tastes "green" but in a good way), and voila! Tasty, lovely to look at, and it has a vegetable in it, hooray! I quickly became addicted.

But then one day I peeked into my freezer and saw the lonely bags of forgotten blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries staring up at me. They looked so sad and abandoned!

Oh dear.

I think of myself as someone who eats a lot of berries, blueberries in particular. They're so damn healthy, right? But I realized that it had been ages since I'd gotten around to having blueberries. I was no longer an actual healthy blueberry eater, just a blueberry poseur. How could I write blog posts exhorting others to eat blueberries to fight cancer and improve memory and fight belly fat, but not bother to do it very often myself?

Intending to remedy this terrible lapse, I threw some blueberries in my next smoothie, along with all the other ingredients. And sure enough, it tasted great!

The problem: it looked like some sort of toxic industrial sludge. Certainly not like a fruity beverage someone would drink on purpose. The hideous brownish gray color just screamed: "Don't drink this, it's gonna make you barf!"

Whoops. I'd forgotten those kindergarten lessons about primary colors: mix them all together and you get a big mess. It slipped my mind that Green=Blue + Yellow, and that Purple (the actual color of blueberries, despite the name) contains Red as well as Blue. Thus if you mix Purple and Green, you are combining Blue + Red + Yellow and that equals: Yecchhh.

So here's the dilemma: I now feel like it's a "waste" of a smoothie if I don't get vegetable credit, since I can so easily add spinach and not really taste it. But if I want to return to blueberries, strawberries, or raspberries, I'm gonna have to learn to like a grayish brown beverage that scares the bejeesus out of me in the morning. What to do?

And yes, I fully understand that this is a ridiculous problem, especially in a world where people are starving and dying of awful diseases etc. I swear I will not be trying to set up a Save the Pretty Smoothie Foundation to fund research into this distressing aesthetic problem and asking you to contribute. But I did wonder, since the Green Smoothie movement seems to be sweeping the health blog world, what other folks are doing about red and purple produce problem. Is there some secret that allows Green and Purple to live together in harmony in a smoothie glass? Or is always gonna get ugly when they show up in a blender together?

"My antioxidants are way better than yours!"
"Says who? You suck!"
Pascal Vuylsteker

In Other Beverage News Oh, and I did promise some health research, didn't I? And it's even kind of related, at least if you are like me and use milk in your smoothies.

(Although I realize most people don't use milk in green smoothies, at least if you google "green smoothie recipes." Perhaps because raw food vegans are the source of a lot of collections of green smoothie recipes?)

Anyway, so a study just came out linking milk-drinking and longevity. And the summary is short on details, but it doesn't look as though they were looking at nonfat or lowfat milk in particular. Which seems kinda weird, given all the stuff we hear about saturated fats. (I go for nonfat myself). The only risk milk seemed to increase was prostate cancer, while it lowered the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

And then that milk study led me to another one listed nearby from a couple years ago that said drinking milk helps you gain muscle and lose fat. Which sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

I know lots of folks steer clear of milk because of digestive issues or because of a vegan diet or whatever. But being lazy, I find milk to be a quick easy source of calcium and protein, and I drink a lot of it. So I have to confess I didn't have a lot of incentive to go chase down the particulars of the research and argue with them. But other actual scientists with access to the full study might have more helpful things to say about it.

So does anyone else struggle with foods that are good for you but look funny? Or have any magic solutions to my Green + Red = Brown problem?

Berry Good News

Remember how last week I was bummed because a new study said cooked broccoli delivers only one tenth the awesome antioxidant goodness that raw broccoli does? And I was all mopey because I hate raw broccoli?

Well, the Nutrition Gods must have heard my whining and felt sorry for me, because shortly thereafter they sent me new research saying: stuff I'm already eating is good for me in ways I didn't know about! Hooray! That's my very favorite kind of research.


So what was the good news about berries?

Whoops! Broccoli Digression

But wait--before I get to the berries, here's an update on the raw broccoli situation. As it happened, there was a happy ending.

Those of you who read the blog regularly know that I am Certified Crackpot when it comes to antioxidants and other micronutrients. I harbor the delusion that if I eat a large variety of these things I will never, ever die. So after hearing that the kind of broccoli I liked was lame and would not make me live forever, I was distraught.

But help arrived!

In the comment section to the raw broccoli post, DragonMama (who also goes by Naomi) suggested that I try "broccoli slaw." I hadn't even heard of it, but sure enough, I went to the "we're going to charge you up the wazoo 'cause it's already washed and chopped" section of the produce department, and there was a big 'ol bag of the stuff.

I confess I was skeptical. Broccoli slaw is presumably made from broccoli. How could it not taste vile?

But it doesn't!

Sure, it took a little dressing to make it tasty (which could have theoretically been a healthy home-made dressing with no sugar and only good fats; let's just pretend it was, shall we?) Anyway, I mixed a little dressing in and it worked! Now if I can remember to keep a package of this stuff handy, I can live to be 1,000 without having to choke down any nasty little raw broccoli florets. Thanks, Dragonmama!

All right, that's enough about the damn broccoli.


Berries Don't Have to Be Blue


So we already know berries are good for us in general sorts of ways, but it's always nice to hear the specifics. And the New York Times has great things to say recently about berries as cancer-fighters.

Now I always thought blueberries were supposed to be cancer-fighters, but it turns out while they may be awesome for your memory, other berries are more potent cancer-fighters. In particular, black raspberries seem to be where it's at. And the kinds of cancers they seem good at preventing are oral, esophageal and colon cancers.

One problem: what the hell is a black raspberry? I like raspberries; I like blackberries; I'm guessing I'd like a black raspberries too but I can't say I've ever met one. There's nothing like reading a study that says: oh you must eat this wonderful fruit that is so good for you and isn't available anywhere you shop!

However, there are other berries that scientists seem to think are promising in the anti-cancer department, like red raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and elderberries. And it appears from rat studies that "a concentrated powder of black raspberry anthocyanins" worked just as well for slowing tumor growth in rodents as the real berries did. Rats who got whole berries or anthocyanin powder developed 50 percent fewer esophageal tumors compared to untreated rats.

The article conceded that berries can be expensive. It's rare that an article in the New York Times ever goes to the grocery store and finds out the price of things it tells you to eat, so kudos to this one for admitting that berries are pricey. Oh, and apparently you also need to eat a hundred thousand tons a pound of berries a day to get as much as the rats did in the study.

However, a cheerful cancer prevention researcher named Gary D. Stoner, (and I won't make fun of his name, that would be so immature),

(Ok, so I lied)

suggested buying frozen berries, because they are available year round and often are cheaper than fresh berries. Which is great, because as it happens, frozen berries are a key ingredient in Crabby McSlacker's Easiest Smoothie Recipe ever! Also, for you supplement-buying sorts (I rarely go this route, because I'm cheap) there are apparently concentrated berry powders available in health food stores.

"We think for the average American, probably the consumption of three to four helpings of berries every week is a good thing," said Stoner. "We know berries have so many effects on processes related to cancer development. They are one of the food stuffs you probably should consider consuming every day, or at least a few times a week."

And unlike raw broccoli, berries of any color actually taste good!

Don't have any strong feelings about broccoli slaw or berries? Well, how was your weekend? Did you watch the Superbowl?

Your Brain on Blueberries

[By Crabby]

So yet another study has come out saying that blueberries and other phytochemical-rich foods are good for your brain. These superfoods are even supposed to be "effective at reversing age-related deficits in memory."

Hooray! I love hearing that the healthy food I make myself eat all the time is really good for me.

But hey... wait JUST one minute.

I eat tons of blueberries and consume boatloads of other phytochemicals. And I exercise and get Omega 3's and do all that good brain stuff. And how good is my memory?

It's crap!

Well, it's not Alzheimer's time yet, but since I hit my mid-forties, I've definitely noticed an ever-increasing tendency to space things out.

Someone Never Forgets, but it Sure Ain't Crabby

Would it be that much worse if I was subsisting on the average American Big Mac and Coke and Twinkie diet? Would I enter and leave and re-enter and re-leave and re-re-enter and re-re-leave a room ten times, instead of five, before I finally recalled what I the heck I was looking for?

(Note: Apologies to you young folks. This post will seem boring and irrelevant. Check back in a few years when you, too, are wandering all around the house trying to recall where you set down your coffee cup only to discover you're actually still carrying the cup in your hand.)

Growing up, I'd heard that people's memories started to decline as they got older. But I thought they meant older older. Like, 80. I had no idea that stuff started slipping so soon.

Of course, if I'd just admit my memory is starting to go down the toilet, then perhaps I'd develop better coping skills. I'd write lists and learn mnemonics and rehearse things and just generally pay more attention. But instead, I just float around like I'm still 20 and don't really try to remember things. I just assume that important information, once heard, will be recalled.

But sometimes, it isn't recalled. It's just gone-- phhht!

It's not just the important stuff, either. It's all kinds of things you used to know. Have you ever sat with a group of middle aged people watching Jeopardy? You could make a whole new game out of it. Every time someone says something like: "I know that! Damn it, I know I know that!"--you all have to eat a handful of blueberries.

But here's the one that bothers me the most: often, I will think I have forgotten to do something. So, for example, I'll drag my sleepy ass out of bed and stumble downstairs at 3 a.m. because I suddenly realize I didn't remember to feed the cat or lock the door or whatever.

But of course I once I'm down there, I discover I did remember to lock the door and feed the cat--I just have no memory of having done it.

Perhaps there are only so many slots for mundane day-to-day memories, and by your mid-forties, most of these are full. I'm sure if I went to feed the cat one evening and discovered she was standing on her hind legs and had sprouted opposable thumbs and was using the can opener to help herself to our tuna supply--well, I'd remember that.

I hope.

(There are some memory resources here and a lot of products and services out there you can purchase which can help to train your memory. Personally, rather than add yet another set of exercises to my to-do list, I'd rather just forget things and whine about it. Other tips I've seen: get more sleep, magnesium, fish oil, choline, exercise, relaxation, social activity, and sage.)

Is anyone else a bit forgetful sometimes? Any suggestions?

Cranky Fitness Heads into New Territory: Recipes!

Crabby likes to eat but, alas, is awfully lazy when it comes to cooking. So there are never any dang recipes on Cranky Fitness. Good thing that Leah, a good friend of the blog and host of the The Goat's Lunch Pail, wrote this handy guest post to address this serious lack of tasty recipes. Enjoy!

Hmm, the request was for guest posts that, ideally, are fitness-related. Food is related to fitness. This dessert is fat-free, low sugar, and contains healthy things like bananas, dark chocolate, and Schnapps.

I invented both these recipes. They’re easy to make and they’ve been tested many times. The recipes originally appeared on my blog in December 2006, but Crabby said we could recycle so that’s what I’m doing.

Crustless Banana Pudding Pie with Chocolate Schnapps Sauce.

This recipe is suited for celiacs. I’m not a true celiac though I am wheat intolerant. I can get away with having a bit of wheat flour, but I chiefly use spelt and other lower gluten flours. I keep rice, tapioca, and potato flours around for when I feel the need to be gluten-free.

You gluten-eaters can substitute white flour in this recipe.
**

Crustless Banana Pudding Pie

Three ripe bananas.

About 1/2 cup of sugar. The sweetness of the bananas lets you cut down on the sugar content.

Three large eggs.

One-quarter cup of rice flour or potato flour (or starch) or tapioca flour (or starch)

¼ tsp of vanilla

½ tsp salt

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp guar gum (omit if using wheat flour)

Mixture may be thinned slightly with non-dairy milk substitute or non-dairy sour cream substitute if lactose intolerant. Milk drinkers can use the real thing.

Blend in a food processor at a vigorous setting. Give it about three minutes so everything is properly mixed. Pour in greased pie plate and bake at 350 for 40 –45 minutes. Depending on the temperament of your oven it could take longer to set. Cool thoroughly and store in refrigerator. This gets better every day.

This is the base recipe. If you like, stir in fruits and/or nuts like frozen raspberries and crushed pecans prior to pouring it in the pie plate.

This is good on its own and even better when topped with a sauce such as chocolate Schnapps sauce.

**

Chocolate Schnapps Sauce

About a cup of brown sugar.

A tbsp or so of water.

One 100g Lindt Extra Fine chocolate bar. Use the 85 per cent cacao variety. Trust me.

Melt the sugar over medium heat and mix in the water. Break Lindt bar and add. Mix as it melts. If mixture is too thick add more water to desired consistency.

Allow mixture to simmer as you stir in a minimum of two tbsp of Schnapps. Use the real stuff for heaven’s sake. Don’t use that infernal abomination peppermint. I used apricot Schnapps during the invention stage and was very pleased with the results. Simmer for about two more minutes stirring occasionally.

Remove from heat. Serve immediately or store in container and refrigerate.

If mixture hardens set container in a warm water bath until it gets runny and then stir vigorously before serving.

Annual Pomegranate

Looking All Wholesome And Innocent...

On a recent trip to the farmer's market Crabby came home with a pomegranate. She ate it in two sittings: once by itself (yumm), and once accompanied by a kiwi (even yummier). Note: we're talking the fruit kind of kiwi; Crabby did not pick up a New Zealander at the farmer's market, even though they do have cute accents and the Lobster happens to out of town. Crabby is not that sort of Crab.

Anyway, the kiwi/pomegranate combination is awesome. Both fruits are sweet and tart in the same kind of way, and the colors look so pretty together. The visual effect is so impressive you may want to take a picture of your little fruit bowl and post it on your blog! But that would mean hunting down your camera and the battery's probably not charged and you're too hungry so whatever. Forget the picture.

Kiwis and Pomegranates are both high in antioxidants. And though research is somewhat preliminary and mostly animal-based, pomegranates are suspected to ward off all kinds of diseases, like prostate cancer and heart disease and diabetes and such.

So why is that probably the last pomegranate that Crabby will consume until next year when she is again tempted?

Because if you commissioned a battalion of engineers to try to design a more sneaky inaccessible fruit they'd be hard-pressed to beat the pomegranate.

The outside is all hard and leathery, so you dig your thumbs in to peel it. Squirt.

The inside is all stuck together and you have to try to pull the little sections. Squirt.

The sections are covered with a thin membrane that tastes terrible and that seems to start coming off but then gets stuck--sort of like when you're peeling a hard boiled egg. You're so close, yet the membrane keeps breaking so you dig little more frantically and... Squirt.

And note: All this Squirting would not be a big deal if this were a lemon or a cantaloupe, but pomegranate juice is dark reddish and it stains!

By the time you're ten minutes into and spattered with juice stains, it's is easy to declare, NO MORE POMEGRANATES EVER, OR AT LEAST NOT FOR A VERY LONG TIME!

(You can buy the juice instead, which may actually be more nutritious anyway--but Crabby detects a yucky musky flavor in the juice which she doesn't in the fruit, so she's learned to ignore those cute little overpriced bottles of pomegranate juice at the store).

So here's one way to deal with opening up a pomegranate.

But Crabby has her own instructions.

1. Take pomegranate in left hand, sharp kitchen knife in right.

2. Rethink; put both down.

3. Take off all your clothes.

4. Take pomegranate in left hand again, sharp kitchen knife in right, and retreat to bathtub.

5. Decide knife is superfluous and set it down nearby.

6. Dig in rip open pomegranate with fingers, greedily biting any exposed sections and covering most of self in dark red juice.

7. Try to calm spouse down when you are discovered in tub with kitchen knife at your side, covered in dark red fluid.

8. Resolve to buy pomegranate juice next time even if you don't like it as much.

Winter fruit is a hard subject to comment on--so Crabby will not be offended if you stray onto other subjects or even other blogs. Just come back eventually, or she will be very sad!

Antioxidant Fruits--It All Gets More Complicated

Like many other health conscious consumers, Crabby tries to pick the healthiest fruits and vegetables she can stand. All things being equal, if she has to eat foods that are not cupcakes or cheeseburgers, Crabby figures she'll go with SuperFoods--those packed with fiber and antioxidants and vitamins and minerals.

Crabby is particularly keen on antioxidants. She is under the impression that if she eats lots and lots of antioxidants, she'll never grow old or infirm and she'll just keep living a happy vigorous life forever! (Please don't break it to her that this is not technically true. She doesn't want to hear it).

Anyway, it seems like every week a new study comes out telling us that we really should be eating a ton of some particular food because it's packed with antioxidants. Like, for example, wild blueberries. Crabby actually reads these studies, and if the food is not vile or obscenely expensive, she dutifully goes out and buys a bunch of it and eats it so that she will never die.

But a new study has just made everything more complicated. Because now scientists are measuring how much of the antioxidants actually end up in your blood plasma, where it can do you some good. And guess what? Some of the most touted, packed-with-antioxidant Superfoods like Wild Blueberries weren't all that awesome at delivering the goods.

Researchers (led by a guy named Ronald Prior, just in case he's Googling himself) investigated how the consumption of different fruits affected plasma antioxidant capacity. Volunteers ate blueberries, cherries, dried plums, dried-plum juice, grapes, kiwis or strawberries. And guess what? The scientists discovered that some antioxidants are easier to absorb and utilize than others.

The chlorogenic acid in plums, for example, did not raise plasma AOC levels in volunteers even though plums have a lot of antioxidants. Likewise wild blueberries helped a little, but they weren't all that great. However, grapes and kiwifruit were awesome!

So what does this mean? Ditch the whole antioxidant quest and go back to cupcakes and cheeseburgers?

Well, no, not so fast. Because even the lame fruits were better than a non-fruit alternative: when volunteers drank a shake made with protein, carbohydrates and fat, their blood antioxidant levels dropped.

So from what Crabby can gather: Keep eating lots of fruits and vegetables. If you're weirdly obsessed by antioxidants and planning to live forever like Crabby is, you may want to keep an eye out for new studies which will come out with a whole different list of Superfoods that actually get more of the good stuff into your body.

Or better yet, let Crabby obsess about it. If the new list includes watermelon and peaches but leaves off broccoli and brussel sprouts, she promises you'll hear about it promptly on Cranky Fitness!

Due to some temporary "technical difficulties" Crabby will be moderating comments for a while. Which means there will be a delay between when you publish your comment and when your comment will actually appear. Don't worry! Your comment will still exist even if you don't see it for a bit. And if you hit the publish button a few times before you realize what's going on, don't worry about that either!

And one more thing--Crabby is still seeking reader suggestions for health related books or products she can put in her "Readers Recommend" Amazon ad. So far, BunnyGirl has supplied a couple of good ones. Anyone else? You can leave your ideas in the comments to this post, or the last one, or any place you want! Crabby will find it.