Low Vitamin D: Cause or Result of Disease?

Don Matesz at Primal Wisdom put up a post a few days ago that I think is worth reading. It follows an e-mail discussion between us concerning a paper on magnesium restriction in rats (executive summary: moderate Mg restriction reduces the hormone form of vitamin D by half and promotes osteoporosis). In his post, Don cites several papers showing that vitamin D metabolism is influenced by more than just vitamin D intake from the diet and synthesis in the skin.

Celiac disease patients have low 25(OH)D3, the circulating storage form of vitamin D, which spontaneously corrects on a gluten-free diet. There are numerous suggestions in the medical literature that overweight and sickness cause low vitamin D, potentially confounding the interpretation of studies that find lower levels of illness among people with low vitamin D levels.

Don't get me wrong, I still think vitamin D is important in preventing disease. But it does lead me to question the idea that we should force down huge doses of supplemental vitamin D to get our 25(OH)D3 up to 60, 70 or even 80 ng/mL. When the dosage of supplemental D goes beyond what a tan Caucasian could conceivably make on a day at the beach (4,000 IU?), that's when I start becoming skeptical. Check out Don's post for more.

Top Ten Links of the Week: 3/26/10 – 4/1/10

Sweet readers, hope y’all enjoyed Leigh’s April Fools joke from yesterday. Just to confirm: her 19-year vegetarian streak is still going strong. Not even bacon can break her resolve. God knows I’ve tried.

Have a wonderful, jellybean-filled Easter weekend, and we'll see you back here Monday. In the meantime, the links!

1) MSN Smart Spending: Store- vs. name-brand cereal - What kids think
Guest poster Len Penzo rounded up the neighborhood kids for a six-cereal taste test. Name brands win by a small margin, but generics put up a good fight. And? The price difference is enough to endorse generics. Off to find some Tiny Frosted Wheat Squares!

2) Jezebel: Jennifer Hudson’s Pitch Perfect Weight Watchers Campaign
Oh, wow. This is nothing but win: the Oscar winner is pitching for WW these days, and nowhere in either of her TV spots does she mention the actual amount of weight she’s lost. Both ads focus entirely on feeling healthier and setting a good example. And I am telling you, I like it. And YOU, and YOU, and YOU, you’re gonna love it (too).

3) Urlesque: The Best Peep Dioramas of All Time
Yo, other sites. I’m really happy for you, and Imma let you finish the rest of your posts, but Urlesque has some of the best peep dioramas of all time! Seriously! They’re really cute! Peep “Up” will just about kill you.

4) To Your Brain, Bacon And Chocolate Are Sort Of Like Cocaine
No surprise: Rats ate crappy food. Rats became obese.
Surprise: Rats’ brain wiring changed in the process, making more food necessary to maintain the same rush. Later, rats ignored electric shock to get to their stashes. Now, people are not rats, but you could extrapolate some pretty stunning conclusions from this.

5) Slashfood: Seafood Buyers Get Scammed
Yikes! Think twice about buying fish from a supermarket, sweet readers. Many are including water weight in their official measures, meaning y’all “may be paying up to $23 a pound for ice.” Mmm … tilapiapops.

6) Casual Kitchen: Eight Myths About Vegetarians and Vegetarian Food
Dan goes mythbusting. And while nothing explodes or is dropped from a tall building, his conclusions are nonetheless informative, riveting, and pro-vegetarianism. It ain’t just for Deadheads anymore.

7) New York Times: Bill on School Lunch is Scaled Back; Abuse of School Lunch Isn’t
Parents, heed the call! It was gonna happen: with all these food reforms, the school cafeteria has finally, justifiably come under fire. This post is a nice summary of the issues at hand, and should be perused if your kids don’t pack their lunches.

8) Neatorama: Shove a Stick Up … Your Food?
This post proves the, uh, long unproven: you can slam ANY food on a stick, up to and including: meatballs, pie, bacon, tempura octopus, and scorpions. That last word is not a misprint.

9) The Simple Dollar: Low-Calorie Food and Long Term Costs
Preach, brother.

10) BlogHer: 10 Tips to Help Reduce the Psychological Toll of Childhood Obesity
Depression and being bullied are pretty common among overweight kids. If you know a victim, employing these caring, thoughtful strategies might ease the burden.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Chow: April Fool’s Headlines

No links here, but Chow’s 4/1 headlines had to be mentioned. A few prime examples:
Knife Skills for All Ages – Little Fingers, Big Blades
Make Your Own Partially Hydrogenated Trans Fat
Man Feels Emasculated by Brie
Guy Fieri Wins Peabody
10 Ways to Go Green That Don't Involve Personal Sacrifice

Culinate: Chicken Soup, Eight Ways
Noodles got you down? There’s life in variety. (And more noodles.)

Jezebel: The First and Last Time We Will Acknowledge Kitchenistas
Some of my more fashionable fellow New Yorkers are turning their cabinets into shoe racks. Gag me with a freakin’ Manolo.

The Kitchn: Pulled Pork Shoulder – Ways to Use it All Week Long
Slow cook it once, pull from it Monday through Friday.

Lifehacker: Consider Maple Syrup as a Healthier Sweetener
It comes from trees! It’s practically a vegetable! Well, maybe not, but it could be a healthy alternative to high fructose corn slop.

NY Daily News: Corporate Accountability International poll shows Ronald McDonald contributes to obesity epidemic
One woman claimed, "He is a deep-fried Joe Camel for the 21st century.” Did not mention, “completely terrifying.”

Scordo: The Scordo Pasta Challenge – Vincenzo Eats His Way Through Every Known Pasta Shape
In which the author attempts to eat all 158 (scratch that - 310) kinds of pasta before 2014. Genius or insanity? Only time and the search for pagliaioni will tell.

Serious Eats: Kitchen Hack - Use Your Toaster to Heat Taco Shells
This is brilliant. What else can you stick in there? (Note: not forks.)

AND ALSO

Snippet & Ink Inspiration Boards
Um ... so, I'm, uh, getting married this year, and I, uh, spent about 47 hours browsing this cavalcade of awesome. Ladies, you will not be disappointed. You either, dudes.

Thank you so much for visiting Cheap Healthy Good! (We appreciate it muchly). If you’d like to further support CHG, subscribe to our RSS feed! Or become a Facebook friend! Or check out our Twitter! Or buy something inexpensive, yet fulfilling via that Amazon store (on the left)! Bookmarking sites and links are nice, too. Viva la France!

Veggie Might: UNCLE! You Win, Fried Chicken.

Penned by the effervescent Leigh, Veggie Might is a weekly Thursday column about the wide world of Vegetarianism.

Y’all, it’s been a crazy week. Kris and I had our names in proverbial lights, and I had a crisis of faith like none I could have ever expected. After reading all your amazing comments from last week’s VM column, I realized something that I thought I’d long suppressed.

I miss fried chicken.

As long-time readers have gleaned, I come from a Midwestern mom and a Southern dad and lived equally in both places before moving to the Big City. Family lore goes, the first thing my dad taught my mom to cook after they married was Great-Grandma Fisher’s Southern fried chicken. Sunday after church, Mom would fry up a batch of flour-dredged goodness with sides of rice and gravy, green beans, and corn—in the summer, the veggies were fresh from a neighbor’s garden.

Fried chicken holds all those memories of golden childhood that, as of this weekend, I just couldn’t resist any longer. But I said to myself, Leigh, if you’re going to jump, you gotta go off the high dive.

Let me reassure you that I didn’t abandon all my values over the weekend. My move to the move to meat was going to be the right way. Sonny, my local butcher, was sure surprised to see me darken his door on Saturday. I pass his shop every day while walking my dog, and we always wave and exchange pleasantries, but in 14 years, I’ve never been in his shop.

I took a deep breath and asked Sonny for a locally and humanely raised chicken. The smell of freshly cut steaks and chops filled my nostrils. I was transported back to my youth, shopping at Farmer Brown’s with my mother and siblings. Sonny was thrilled to oblige my request and asked about my dog, who he calls Pee-Wee, though that’s not his name.

There, on the spot, emboldened by adventure, I asked Sonny if he had any pork skin he could sell me. I remembered my dad talking about a Paula Deen episode in which she made her own pork rinds, and I figured I’d make my own too. He wrapped up a couple of pounds along with my two-pound fryer.

Back home with my quarry, I set to making my nostalgic dreams come true. This quest called for a spirit guide, so I called my dad. He was so happy to hear I was coming back to the omni fold I thought he might cry, even if I wasn’t planning to make Grandma Fisher’s recipe exactly.

Years ago, during the height of the Atkins diet craze, I read about Pork-Rind-Coated Fried Chicken. The recipe made the rounds on the Weight Watchers’ vegetarian messageboards, and we all had a good laugh about the “healthiness” of dredging chicken in egg and fried pig skins before a dunk in boiling oil.

Well, healthy or not, it’s unbelievably delicious and the perfect recipe to bring myself out of vegetarianism—or meat retirement as I’ve started calling it.

My Charming Dinner Guest was surprised to smell fried chicken coming from my apartment when he arrived for dinner, but happily joined me for heaping plates of pork-rind fried chicken with all the Angel family sides.

My apartment smelled just like I the Sundays I remember. Biting into the crunchy skin (still the best part!), I let the juice run down my chin—just once—before I grabbed a napkin. The deep-fried experience was everything I dreamed it would be, and, I dare say, it was worth giving up 19 years of vegetarianism for the pleasure.

You win, fried chicken.

Pork Rind Crusted Fried Chicken
Serves 4
Note: My picture wasn't the greatest, so this is provided by Ms. Paula Deen herself.

2 lb fryer chicken, cut into pieces
2 cups pork rinds
2–3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 cups vegetable oil

1) Rinse and pat dry chicken pieces.

2) Beat eggs in a wide, shallow bowl. Crush pork rinds and spread on a baking sheet or large platter.

3) Dip each chicken piece in egg and dredge through pork rinds until completely coated. Set aside until all pieces are coated.

4) Heat oil in a large cast iron skillet.

5) Carefully lower a few chicken pieces into hot oil. On each side, cover and cook over medium high heat for 5–7 minutes, then remove the lid and cook for 10 minutes. When both sides are cooked, give each side another 2–3 minutes to brown the crust. Repeat until all the chicken is cooked.

6) Drain excess oil on paper towels.

7) Make gravy with the drippings and serve with rice, green beans, corn, and, for dessert, a big ol’ Southern-fried APRIL FOOL! Mmmwah!

(American Chicken Room photo courtesy of Flickr member Badger 23.)

Roommate Living: Your Food, Kitchen, and Sanity

Since freshman year of college, I’ve had approximately 15,000 roommates. Some are still my best friends, favorite people, and life partners. Others smoked crazy things too late at night. One remains the only unrelated adult I’ve ever yelled at. (Surprise! It was over the dishes.)

Whether you’re fresh out of university or shacking up with your significant other for the first time, living with other people has multitudinous benefits. It can save everyone involved a ton of cash. It can be a social opportunity, cultural experience, and culinary education. It can keep you from being plain lonely.

But if you’re not careful, it can also be a terrifying descent into a cohabitational hell, in which anger and discomfort become facts of everyday life. Living with the dishes guy? Was kind of like that.

The center of roommate karma is inevitably the kitchen. Maintain a zen-like equilibrium there, and your time together will be peaceful and harmonious. Forget to buy paper towels for the third week in a row, and you could find a severed goldfish head on your pillow.

That’s why it’s important to discuss food, money, and galley-related issues up front. It puts you on the same page, sets a precedent for the future, and prevents misunderstanding down the line. So, be open with your wants and needs. Ask plenty of questions. And remember the two most important things about living with anyone new:

• Don’t be afraid to speak up. If your roommate isn’t doing her dishes and/or owes you money for olive oil, tell her. You can assert yourself and still be considered a nice person.
• Don’t be a jerk. You’re sharing this room with others, and should always take their feelings into consideration. Play nice, do your part, and don’t make fun of Bob’s vegan macaroni and cheese.

With those ideas in the back of your head, the ensuing discussion should be easy. For reference, here are a few good areas to touch on, along with a ton of pertinent questions.

1) FOOD

First and foremost, you and your roommate(s) have to feed yourselves using actual food. Broaching the edibles topic could set the tone for the rest of your talk, not to mention the rest of your lease. Tread carefully, be thorough and kind, and ask:

• Will you share food? Will you share everything or just staples? Which staples?
• Will you share cooking responsibilities? How will you split the job?
• When will you cook? Should you set up a schedule? What meals will you eat at home?
• Does anyone have dietary restrictions, allergies, or ethical issues?
• Will any food be off limits? (ex: If there’s a peanut allergy in the house, it could be best to avoid ‘em altogether.)

2) EQUIPMENT

Once you have food, you need ways to serve it. Your requirements could vary wildly, based on your diet and/or affinity for cooking. Plan ahead, use this checklist for guidance, and ask:

• What kitchen equipment do you already own? Is it in good shape?
• What do you need to buy? Where should you buy it?
• Do you have any doubles (ex: two toasters)? Do you need the extra? If not, what can you do with it?
• Who will keep new purchases (microwave, blender, etc.) if/when you move out?
• Is there room to fit everything? (See: Storage.)

3) MONEY

Here comes the hard part. Beyond rent, you’ll probably spend most of your apartment-apportioned cash on food and kitchen supplies. Splitting the bills can be tricky, and payment itself even harder. Stay positive and ask:

• How will pay for the food you buy jointly? Will you split the bills or alternate months?
• How will you pay for the kitchen necessities (tin foil, dish soap, paper towels, etc.)? What falls under that umbrella term?
• Who will do the actual buying? Will you take turns?
• Will you join a bulk store or CSA? What supermarkets, ethnic markets, and farmer’s markets will you shop at?
• How will you handle coupons, sales, or memberships?
• How will you handle restaurants and take out? Does that go in the budget?

4) STORAGE

Pots, pans, silverware, dishes, and appliances do more than look pretty: they take up space. And when square feet are at a minimum, having a storage strategy is vital. Consider your cabinets and ask:

• Where will you store the food? How about the dishes? And cleaning equipment?
• Will you split storage? Who gets which refrigerator shelf? What about the pantry and freezer?
• Do you have enough room for bulk purchases?
• Is there a way you can easily add extra shelves, cabinets, or pot racks?
• Are you allowed to throw things out without permission, if it looks like it went bad? (Note: This comes up more than you think. It’s like a science experiment in there sometimes.)

5) CLEANING

Though dishes are 90% of the issue, cleaning goes deeper than washing your coffee cup. In every kitchen, there are counters to wipe, floors to mop, and microwaves to liberate of caked spaghetti sauce. If this is left to one person - or worse, not done at all – things will very messy, both dirt-wise and relationship-wise.

• How quickly will you have your dishes done? Will you split the responsibility? How?
• How often will you light clean (counters, sweeping, etc.) the kitchen? Who will take care of this?
• How often will you deep clean (oven, refrigerator, etc.) the kitchen? Who will take care of this?
• Who will take out the garbage? How will you handle recycling?
• Who will take care of repair issues as they come up? Are you handy? Will you be the point person for the landlord?
• Who will keep track of and replace cleaning tools (Lysol, sponges, etc.)?
• Should you create a cleaning schedule?

If you address all of these questions up front and periodically revisit them through the course of your cohabitation, you and your roommates/loved ones can enjoy a sparkling, relatively stress-free household. What’s more, you can apply the concepts to almost every shared room in the house, whether it’s the den or the shed you use to make illegal moonshine.

Readers, what about you? Do you have any roommate rules to follow, especially in the kitchen? How about horror stories? You know we loves us some o’ those guys.

(Excellent letter photo from Passive Aggressive Notes.)

~~~

If you like this article, you might also elicit pleasant feelings from:

• Frugal Storage Solutions for the Small Kitchen
• If I Had Known Then: Food and Financial Advice for the College Bound (Also, a Story)
• Weekly Menu Planning for Singles, Couples, and Working People

CHG Best of March 2010

It’s been our BME (Best. Month. Evah.) here at CHG (Cheap Healthy Good), both in terms of traffic (over 450,000 pageviews!) and comments (whee!). Thank you, sweet readers, both old school and new wave. Here’s hoping we can keep the streak alive. (Crap! I mentioned the streak! Somewhere, Joe DiMaggio is tut-tutting me all classy-like.) One more article coming tomorrow, and then it’s on to April.

MARCH RECIPES

Banana Oatmeal Muffins
Broccoli with Roasted Red Peppers
Chickpea Cutlets
Curried Apples and Acorn Squash
Dal with Rice and Ginger
Rice Pudding
Salsa Couscous Chicken OR Moroccan Chicken
Vegetarian Chili
White Bean Dip


MARCH ARTICLES

Remember when we fed the Husband-Elect for $25 that one week? Thems was good times. There’s even a clip of our Early Show appearance here! We ended the whole deal with The $25 Food Project Finale: Recipes, Conclusions, and an Exit Interview

Our greatest bombs were documented in CHG Hall of Shame III: Return of the Breadi.

Leigh asked and answered: HOW Old is that Oatmeal? When to Clean Out the Pantry.

Then, she exclaimed mightily, "I Want to Be a Tofu Butcher!"

There was that two-part series on the Junk Food Tax, starting with Reasonable Public Health Measure or Evidence of a Nanny State? and ending with Reader Ideas, Opinions, and Solutions.

Oh, and hey: Need a Weekly Meal Planner, a Grocery List, or Price Books? We Have 36 of ‘em.

Ask the Internet, was ever-so-lovely, as always. We inquired about the following:

• $25 Grocery List from Scratch?
• CSA Reviews, Ideas, and Experiences?
• Fast Breakfast for Students?
• Food Funny?
• Hominy Recipes?

For more Cheap Healthy Goodness…

1) Have your say!
We love reading creative comments and participating in thought-provoking discussions. There’s even a fabulous Ask the Internet column, where readers can write in with various inquiries and/or offer helpful suggestions. Sweet.

2) Spread the word!
Like us? Link to us! Refer us to a bookmarking site! (We have StumbleUpon and Digg buttons now!) Or just talk us up to your mom. That’s nice, too.

3) Behold our social networking!
Subscribe to our feed, join our Facebook page, or check out our Twitter … thing. They’re super fun ways to kill time, minus the soul-crushing frustration of Bejeweled.

4) Buy from our Amazon Store!
If you click on the Amazon widget (lower left hand corner) and buy anything from Amazon (not just what we’re advertising on CHG), we get a small commission. And that’s always nice.

5) Remember: when a neighborhood kid drops an empty Papa John’s pizza box on your front stoop, it’s within your rights to pelt him with water balloons.
Oh, Brooklyn.

Ask the Internet: Food Funny?

Today’s question is a spinoff of yesterday’s post, and could be a nice diversion on this rainy, April showers kind of day:

Q: What is your favorite food-related comedy?

A: For about a year here on CHG, we had Favorites of the Week, which usually included a song, sketch, or piece of standup based on food. It was super fun to compile, and often yielded genius like:

Jim Gaffigan on Bacon


Monty Python’s “Spam”


Readers, what’s your favorite food comedy? Is it standup, sketch, or improv? Maybe a song? Or a simple quote?

If you have a link, please include! (Extra points for Vimeo and Youtube URLs, as Canadians can’t see Hulu. It’s kind of like their Snuffleupagus.)

Want to ask the interweb a question? Post one in the comment section, or write to Cheaphealthygood@gmail.com. Then, tune in next Tuesday for an answer/several answers from the good people of the World Wide Net

Broccoli with Roasted Red Peppers, Plus: How to Roast a Pepper

Today on Serious Eats: Orange-Cranberry Muffins. Say goodbye to winter citrus with these super easy, seriously portable healthy breakfast treats.

As a dedicated frugalist and aficionado of tree-like vegetables, I’m forever in search of ways to enliven broccoli. There are fewer cheaper, more nutritious foods in the produce aisle, and honestly, it’s tough to pretend you’re a forest giant with blueberries.

Here's one way to jazz it up:



And you can stir fry it, sure. And broccoli goes pretty well in pasta. But otherwise, if you don’t dig the Cruciferae smothered in cheese or doused in lemon, you’re kinda out of luck.

Enter Broccoli with Roasted Red Peppers. A buttery, sweet twist on a usually staid side dish, the recipe takes about ten minutes if you have jarred roasted red peppers handy. If you don’t, roasting your own pepper will add 20 to 30 minutes to the cooking time, and could be well worth the effort.

To those who've never done it before, the process can be somewhat intimidating. Trust: it’s not so bad. Simply follow these exciting rules:

• Preheat your broiler.
• Wash and dry the pepper, taking care to remove any stickers. While delicious raw, roasted stickers possess an unfortunate poison flavor.
• Place the pepper on a small pan and stick it under the broiler. When the skin becomes blackened, use tongs to turn it over.
• When the whole pepper becomes blackened, remove it from the oven, place it in a bowl, and cover the bowl with tin foil or plastic wrap. Walk away and do something awesome for a few minutes. Suggested: Settlers of Catan, knitting, cartwheels.
• Once the pepper is cool enough to handle, peel it, seed it, and use the flesh for your own nefarious purposes.
• Dance.

By the third and fourth time you roast your own pepper, it’s practically a trip to Disneyworld. (Minus the lines!)

Before we get to the recipe itself, two quick notes on the process: First, I made this at my parents house. (Hi, Ma and Pa!) While they have an excellent pantry and fine selection of produce, they’re not Safeway, and rarely carry fresh herbs. Fortunately, a teaspoon of dried substituted quite nicely. Second, nutrition numbers were provided by All Recipes, and are listed below. Only the price calculations are my own.

Sweet readers, how do you make broccoli less boring? If it involves ranch dressing, open flame, or mangoes, I’m all ears.

~~~
If you like this recipe, you’ll surely enjoy:

• Broccoli Cheddar Soup
• Broccoli with Parmesan and Lemon
• Pasta with Broccoli and Chickpeas

~~~

Broccoli with Roasted Red Peppers
Makes 6 servings, 2/3 cup each.
Adapted from All Recipes/Taste of Home.

5 cups broccoli florets, cut small
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup roasted red pepper, diced (or more, if you like)
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley OR 1 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

NOTE: If roasting your own pepper, please use the instructions in the above post. If using jarred peppers, read on.

1) Steam broccoli, either in your microwave or on your stovetop. For stovetop: Fill a small pot with 1 or 2 inches water. Place a steamer basket in pot. Add broccoli to basket. Cover, leaving a crack. Steam 3 to 6 minutes, until broccoli is crisp-tender (not limp).

2) While that’s happening, melt butter in a medium pan over medium heat. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant, 30 to 60 seconds. Add peppers, parsley, salt, and pepper. Warm through. Remove from heat.

3) In a medium bowl, combine broccoli and pepper mixture. Stir to coat. Add more salt or pepper if you like. Enjoy!

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, and Price Per Serving
41 calories, 2 g fat, 1 g fiber, $0.34

Calculations
5 cups broccoli florets, cut small: $1.48 (Broccoli on sale for $0.99/bunch.)
1 clove garlic, minced: $0.04
1 tablespoon butter: $0.08
1/4 cup roasted red pepper, diced: $0.39
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley OR 1 teaspoon dried parsley: $0.01 (dried)
1/2 teaspoon salt: $0.01
1/8 teaspoon pepper: $0.01
TOTAL: $2.02
PER SERVING (TOTAL/6): $0.34