New Food Guidelines 2015-2020 and What's Being Said About Them

Burns Park School lunch, October 1, 2015.
Our local elementary school. See this post.

"Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia M. Burwell and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack today released updated nutritional guidelines that encourage Americans to adopt a series of science-based recommendations to improve how they eat to reduce obesity and prevent chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans is the nation's trusted resource for evidence-based nutrition recommendations and serves to provide the general public, as well as policy makers and health professionals with the information they need to help the public make informed choices about their diets at home, school, work and in their communities."

Thus began a press release from the Department of Agriculture on January 7, 2016.

The most dramatic suggestion from these new guidelines is a 10% limit on the quantity of added sugar that one should consume. They could have just said "avoid drinking too many sweetened beverages," but the soda industry and others have a say-so in how they present their guidelines. They also suggested less "animal protein" for men and teenage boys. They could have said "eat less meat" but the cattle industry and others have a lot of influence. So much politics!

"Shift to healthier food and beverage choices" is one of their not particularly controversial suggestions. They did recommend conventional things like eating vegetables, fruit, whole grains. Also, "By removing dietary cholesterol as a 'nutrient of concern for overconsumption,' the guideline authors bowed to research suggesting that foods rich in the fatty substance contribute only marginally to levels of cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream." (Source: "New Dietary Guidelines," Baltimore Sun.)  

These federal guidelines are important because they become legal requirements for federally subsidized school lunch programs and other government-sponsored programs. I'm not qualified to analyze the guidelines professionally, but I have gathered some material about them from various sources --

Marion Nestle, nutrition expert, has a focus on real foods not "nutrients," which she feels doesn't help people develop good eating patterns. She suggests that the guidelines would be simpler and easier to follow if they just said to eat less processed and junk food. From her blog:

"These Dietary Guidelines, like all previous versions, recommend foods when they suggest 'eat more.' But they switch to nutrients whenever they suggest 'eat less.'

• "In the 2015 Dietary Guidelines, saturated fat is a euphemism for meat.
• "Added sugars is a euphemism for sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages.
• "Sodium is a euphemism for processed foods and junk foods."  -- Source: "The 2015 Dietary Guidelines, at long last" by Marion Nestle. 

Michael Pollan agrees about "nutrients" vs. "foods."  In an interview anticipating the release of the guidelines, he says this:

"Don't get lost in the details. It’s very important to keep an eye on the big picture. Eating real food is the most important thing you can do if you’re concerned about your health. The precise amount of various nutrients really is not going to make a difference. Those very specific recommendations are probably most useful to institutions that need to conform their feeding programs to federal standards — like the school lunch program.

"[The recommendations] are also important to the industry, which loves nothing better than to launch another conversation around nutrients because that leads to opportunities for new health claims. For example, if this time around "added sugar" becomes a food category, which it hasn’t been in the past, it’ll be an opportunity for foodmakers to boast about how little added sugar they have in their products. But that won’t turn unhealthy food into healthy food.

"In general, any nutrient-based advice becomes another distraction from the really important project of focusing on food." -- Source: "Michael Pollan on how America got so screwed up about food" by Julia Belluz at Vox.

About the "protein" recommendation, here's some history from a Baltimore Sun Editorial:

"The dietary guidelines released yesterday by the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services mark the ninth time in a row that the meat industry has successfully suppressed scientific findings recommending reduced meat consumption ... .

"Reduced meat consumption was first recommended in 1977 by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs in the 'Dietary Goals for the United States,' a precursor to the Dietary Guidelines. 

"But the meat industry forced the committee to destroy all copies of the report and to remove the offending recommendation from a new edition. 

"That wanton government sell-out to the meat industry has replayed itself with every new edition of the guidelines since then." -- Source: "Our adulterated dietary guidelines"

And from the Los Angeles Times:

"One thing lawmakers did was fund a peer-reviewed study by the National Academy of Medicine of the science behind the dietary guidelines. The added research can only improve the next recommendations, but it's likely to leave unanswered what may be the most important question about the guidelines: Why don't more people follow them?" -- Source: "Feds serve up more dietary guidelines for Americans to ignore," Editorial in the Los Angeles Times.  

Hello, Jeanie!

Finally, after years of blogging acquaintance and dozens if not hundreds of blog comments and Facebook exchanges, Jeanie from The Marmelade Gypsy blog and I have met! We are totally compatible and talked nonstop over brunch at Cafe Zola in downtown Ann Arbor. Subjects ranged from Paris (a favorite place for both of us), watching TV (loving the Great British Baking show, hating Comcast, worrying about the bandwidth auction of PBS stations, and having to work all those darn remotes), birds and cats (Jeanie's cat Lizzie thinks she is omnipotent at calling birds into her yard for Lizzie to watch from the window), and a little about politics which we agree on pretty much.

Jeanie is on her way to a cake-baking workshop at Zingerman's bakehouse. I am looking forward to what she'll be blogging about her experience there and about the cakes she'll be baking. And I'm looking forward to the next time we meet. We've both made a resolution every year that we'll finally meet in person. So good to finish a resolution on January 8, isn't it?

My spinach crepe and coffee -- Jeanie had a mushroom crepe and a pot of tea.
The photo in which we both appeared was excessively back-lit so I'm not using it.

Some Really Bad Meals

Agatha Christie's mysteries, which I've been rereading recently, are filled with references to meals. Sometimes she's specific about scones or steaks or tea sandwiches or breakfast kippers. Sometimes she just mentions that in the course of an investigation a meal is eaten at one or another of the upper-class mansions, middle-class homes, or hotel tea rooms that her characters and detectives frequent. Meals often mark the passage of time, day by day.

The Murder at the Vicarage, the mystery tale where Miss Jane Marple makes her first appearance, centers around life in the modest Vicarage occupied by the narrator, the village Vicar. Miss Marple, who lives next door to the Vicar, fits a stereotype that Christie summarizes: "There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands."(Kindle Locations 509-510).

The Vicar's wife Griselda, much younger than he, feels that she cannot afford the expense of a competent servant, so she employs Mary, a careless and inexperienced young woman. The food that Mary cooks is terrible. The second paragraph of the entire novel, for example begins with the Vicar's complaint: "I had just finished carving some boiled beef (remarkably tough by the way)..."(Locations 144-145).

Conversation at the table continues, and "Mary, who is in service at the Vicarage as a stepping-stone to better things and higher wages, merely said in a loud, businesslike voice, ‘Greens’, and thrust a cracked dish at him [a guest] in a truculent manner." And then: "Mary, setting the greens on the table with a bang, proceeded to thrust a dish of singularly moist and unpleasant dumplings under my nose. I said, ‘No, thank you,’ and she deposited the dish with a clatter on the table and left the room." (Locations 148-152)

For dessert, Mary presented "a partially cooked rice pudding. I made a mild protest, but Griselda said that the Japanese always ate half-cooked rice and had marvellous brains in consequence." (Locations 190-191). Another dessert at a later meal in the novel: "Mary’s blancmange ... is so frightfully depressing. It’s like something out of a mortuary.’ (Locations 3096-3097).

Another meal follows not long afterwards: "The menu was ambitious in conception, and Mary seemed to have taken a perverse pleasure in seeing how best she could alternate undercooking and overcooking. Some oysters which Griselda had ordered, and which would seem to be beyond the reach of incompetence, we were, unfortunately, not able to sample as we had nothing in the house to open them with – an omission which was discovered only when the moment for eating them arrived." (Locations 474-477).

Griselda continues to insist that her own efforts are futile, she can't change Mary and doesn't want to replace her explaining: "But as long as Mary can’t cook and has those awful manners – well, we’re safe, nobody else would have her.’" (Locations 1175-1176).

In contrast, the village public dining room is preferred by a potential guest; it had quite acceptable food: "The Blue Boar gives you a first-rate meal of the joint and two-vegetable type." (Location 1576).

What people expect when they think about
Agatha Christie meals: tea and sandwiches!
See "A street food feast, takeaway 
picnic hampers and a spread 
inspired by Agatha Christie"

Christie always manages to surprise readers, including of course her very clever plots and the way the the perpetrators are almost always unexpected. In The Murder at the Vicarage, she also transforms the frequent stereotype of a wife who can't manage the servants and who makes her husband unhappy with his food on a regular basis. You would think Griselda's incompetence would predict that their marriage is doomed. Not so in this case! The 20 year difference in age between the Vicar and his Griselda and her inability to manage the house doesn't have this effect at all: at the end of the book, after identification of the murderer who left a body in their study -- their marriage is stronger than ever, and she is promising to do better at household management by buying how-to books.

Most Agatha Christie food followers mention the usual delicacies: English teas, Devon cream, Sunday roasts, Christmas puddings, fine old port, or the sweets and cocoa loved by Hercule Poirot. I was delighted to find such contrasting -- and negative -- food descriptions in The Murder at the Vicarage.

To see all my posts about Agatha Christie, including my current 2016 binge, click here.

Miss Marple played by Joan Hickson

Nut Cutlet? Nut Roast?

"Two chops set before three people are productive of embarrassment," writes the narrator of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, an Agatha Christie classic. "But Caroline is seldom daunted for long. With magnificent mendacity, she explained to Poirot that although James laughed at her for doing so, she adhered strictly to a vegetarian diet. She descanted ecstatically on the delights of nut cutlets (which I am quite sure she has never tasted) and ate a Welsh rarebit with gusto and frequent cutting remarks as to the dangers of 'flesh' foods." (p. 191)

Christie displays a tut-tut attitude towards nut cutlets and other vegetarian food. Such items were part of a health-food fad in the 1920s when this book takes place. When they want to enjoy themselves, her characters lean more towards a nice steak, such as the one at a lunch offered to a potential suitor in The Mystery of the Blue Train. And by the way, Caroline didn't fool Poirot, he could tell she was no vegetarian, but just making an excuse for the lack of an extra portion of meat for the unexpected lunch guest.

Nuts cutlets instead of veal chops? Vegetarians have been doing this for over a century. A nut cutlet recipe appears in the George Bernard Shaw Vegetarian Cookbook, based on this very famous vegetarian advocate's supposed favorite foods and published in the 1980s (adaptation here). The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook by Fania Lewando, recently translated from the original 1938 Yiddish edition, includes an entire selection of vegetarian cutlets, including nut cutlets made from ground walnuts, semolina porridge, breadcrumbs, eggs and butter. I think some of the vegan hamburger-like items in the freezer case at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's are the current equivalent of these older and less appealingly-named versions. These are the closest thing I've ever eaten to nut cutlets, I suspect.

The nut roast is currently more popular than nut cutlets, but the recipes are similar, and in my experience, both items are much more favored by the English and Australians than by Americans, even American vegans or vegetarians. Nut roasts are flavored to compliment the traditional side dishes for Sunday dinner or for Christmas dinner, allowing vegetarians or vegans, especially in England, to feel like part of the mainstream, I guess. For example, a nut roast photo appeared recently in the Christmas Dinner blog post of Johanna at Green Gourmet Giraffe from Australia; it was "served with roast potatoes, pumpkin and carrots, peas, cauliflower cheese and cranberry sauce."

My sole nut roast experience was a Sunday dinner at the Green Man restaurant in the small town of Grantchester, near Cambridge, England sometime in the 1990s (before Grantchester became a TV show). We were spending six weeks or so in Cambridge, and rode our bicycles along the Isis river to get there, remembering the famous people associated with the area such as Rupert Brooke, Bertrand Russell, and the brothers of Virginia Woolf. I quite liked the nut roast, which I think included small bits of carrot as well as cheese, so it was vegetarian, not vegan. I'd never heard of such a thing before, and I'm not that unfamiliar with American vegetarian options. It appeared on their online Christmas Dinner menu this year.

This photo from the Green Man website shows bicycles parked outside.
Unfortunately I can't find any of my own photos of Grantchester.

According to Felicity Cloake at the Guardian:

"If there's such a thing as pariah food – a recipe shunned by mainstream menus, mocked to near extinction and consigned to niche hinterlands for evermore – then the nut roast, a dish whose very name has become a watchword for sawdusty disappointment, is surely a strong contender. One of the darlings of the early vegetarian movement (particularly in its even sadder form, the cutlet), it was on the menu at John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium [sic], and has since become the default Sunday option for vegetarians – and a default source of derision for everyone else." (How to cook the perfect nut roast, December 14, 2011)

Google Images of "Nut Roast." Note frequent presence of brussels sprouts, indicating that they might be British.

Cooking with Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie in her kitchen -- from Crèmes & châtiments

Once long ago I read almost all of the Agatha Christie books that were then in print. I've decided to revisit some of them, and I began yesterday, the first day of the year, with The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the very first book in which Hercule Poirot appeared. The events in the book take place approximately 100 years ago, during the First World War, and the publication date is 1920. Now I'm reading The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928), and plan to read more.

Amazingly, Christie's prose seems absolutely modern. Styles is a totally readable book about a grand household that reminds me of Downton Abbey (probably not a coincidence, since Christie invented a lot of the conventions for depicting this social class in popular literature). I'll be following up my Christie reading when I've read a few more.

What I want to concentrate on today is an Agatha Christie cookbook titled Crèmes & châtiments: Recettes délicieuses et criminelles d'Agatha Christie. The meaning of the title, which is a better pun in French than in English: Creams and Punishments: Recipes both delicious and Criminal from Agatha Christie by Anne Martinetti and François Rivière, first published in France in 2005. Though this book is entirely in French, every page quotes one of Christie's books. Needless to say, she's highly popular there, and all her books have long ago been translated.

My copy of the book -- the 2010 edition.

As far as I've been able to determine, this is the only actual Agatha Christie cookbook available now. I don't know of any that are out of print, though who knows if there was ever such a cookbook? Occasional recipes have appeared such as this very recent one: "Food in books: crystallised ginger from The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding by Agatha Christie." But I don't know of any other full-scale cookbooks.

This situation is totally surprising as Christie describes food at appropriate intervals throughout her vast collection of detective fiction, and food also appears in most of the film and TV treatments of her stories. The French identity of this book makes some sense, as Hercule Poirot is a partisan of French cooking. Here's an amusing example from The Blue Train: Hercule Poirot's valet suggested that he wear a particular "brown lounge suit." Poirot replied, "There is a grease spot on the waistcoat... a morceau of filet de sole à la Jeannette alighted there when I was lunching at the Ritz last Tuesday." If you have read the books or seen the films you know that Poirot was fussy about both his food and his clothing. Crèmes & châtiments doesn't have this particular dish, but does offer a few elegant-sounding fish recipes and several desserts and pastries that the detective would have enjoyed. And by the way, Poirot's excellent valet had removed the spot, enabling him to wear the suit.

"Tartines gratinées au chester" -- open-face sandwiches with cheese melted in wine.
This was the only recipe in the book for which I had the ingredients today; I improvised the salad with chutney, as many
of the recipes do call for chutney. I admit it wasn't spectacularly different from ordinary cheese toasts!

Well, it's a new year, and I'm planning lots of food reading and kitchen experiments. More pictures and recipes from Crèmes & châtiments are to come!

New Year's Eve Parties

We had a lovely New Year's Eve, beginning with our neighbors' annual Pizza and PJs party which goes "from 6 PM until bedtime." That is, the bedtime of all the little (and growing) kids who come to the party in PJs. I didn't take photos there this year, but we enjoyed seeing our neighbors including a few new faces.

Next party: Carol's annual music and food extravaganza. It's 50 miles away, so we haven't made it in the last few years, but the weather is kind this year, and the timing of the two parties dovetails nicely.

Carol and Pauline played piano 2-hands.
A violin-cello-piano trio also performed.

Music-themed names for food ... my favorite is
the pâté.

Again, Happy New Year to all!

Here's to 2016...

Memorable Meals of 2015

It's about time to celebrate the New Year, and to think about the old year. Here are some favorite meals I had in 2015, all documented in earlier blog posts --

January: Jack's 95th Birthday Dinner at an Italian restaurant in Boynton Beach, Fla.

January: Oysters at Aqua Grill, New York

February: Gatsby's Tavern, Alexandria, VA.
George Washington ate here -- see photo behind Len's head.

March: Tiramisu at Villa Mozart, Fairfax, VA, celebrating our anniversary.

April: Sparky's in Hatch NM for a Green Chili Cheeseburger.

May: Spike's Bar and Grill, Grayling, MI, with our friends Phyllis and Ed who joined us in the

search for the Kirtland's Warbler

June: reindeer barbecue on our cruise to Svalbart on the National Geographic Explorer

July: Miriam enjoying her sandwich at the Coffee Shack, Captain Cook, HI. And my Eggs Benedict with fresh tuna.

August: Delicious fish at Merriman's in Waimea, also on the Big Island of Hawaii.

September: Shrimp raised in an indoor shrimp farm in Indiana, and
cooked at Elaine and Larry's house in West Lafayette.

October: Cape May Scallops at Lobster House, Cape May, NJ

November: Thanksgiving Dinner in Fairfax, VA

December: Celebrating Chanukkah with Elaine and Larry in West Lafayette.

December: So many favorites! We had latkes in Ann Arbor and Indiana,
Bavarian sausage and potato salad for Christmas Eve, and
Polish Christmas Dinner. Here's the sausage!

It's been a wonderful year full of delightful meals with friends and family. We had lots of good meals alone at home, as well as many out. Thanks to everyone who shared with us! And Happy New Year to all.

Humboldt's New World, a fascinating book

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf portrays a remarkable and fascinating man. Humboldt was an explorer, a scientist, and a nature writer. Despite his great accomplishments and his acquaintance with the great thinkers of his time, I was quite ignorant about Humboldt. This blog post is only a few notes on what I found interesting, not a full book review, as Wulf's book -- like Humboldt's career -- is very rich and varied.

Humboldt's expedition to South America at the turn of the 19th century was important in a number of ways. I was interested in the supplies that he packed in preparation for one leg of the long trek across a continent little known to Europeans of that time:

"The boat they had acquired in San Fernando de Apure was launched ... on 30 March [1800], heavily loaded with provisions for four weeks -- not enough for the entire expedition, but all they could fit into the vessel. From the Capuchin monks they bought bananas, cassava roots, chickens and cacao as well as the pod-like fruits of the tamarind tree which they were told turned the river water into a refreshing lemonade. The rest of the food they would have to catch -- fish, turtle eggs, birds and other game -- and barter for more with the indigenous tribes with the alcohol they had packed." (p. 64)

During the expedition, Humboldt catalogued a huge number of botanical species. He climbed in the Andes mountains and was the first to describe the climate zones at various altitudes on mountain ranges. He also made anthropological observations and became friends with a variety of people such as Simon Bolivar who would later become a key figure in Latin American history. Later he wrote a number of books based on this travel. He developed remarkable and innovative ways to present scientific information in graphic or visual formats.

Humboldt stood in firm opposition to slavery and expressed a belief that "there were no superior or inferior races. No matter what nationality, color, or religion, all humans came from one root... 'all are alike designed for freedom'" said Humboldt. He visited Thomas Jefferson, then President of the new United States, and argued his case against slavery. Later in life he also held forward-looking political ideas, sometimes in opposition to the reactionary post-French-Revolutionary times when he lived. (p. 108)

Several of the final chapters of The Invention of Nature explain Humboldt's influence on later thinkers: Darwin, Thoreau, John Muir, and others. These chapters were especially effective in illustrating how Humboldt shaped the approach of later nature writers and naturalists, as well as showing his creation of new scientific ideas and his invention of the concept now known as ecology. The existence of America's National Parks, for example, has some roots in Humboldt's new ways to look at the natural world and its variety.

I was particularly amazed at the many geographic features and land and sea creatures named for Alexander von Humboldt. He didn't necessarily discover or describe all of these, nor even travel to their locations. Rather, later scientists and communities named many places and species in his honor.

Some of the creatures named for Alexander von Humboldt: the Humboldt penguin, the
Humboldt squid, and Humboldt's hog-nosed skunk (native to Patagonia).

Some of the global geographic features named for Humboldt: Humboldt Falls in New Zealand, Humboldt peak in Colorado,
the Humboldt (or Peru) current off South America, and Humboldt County, California.

Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, founded by Alexander von
Humboldt's brother Wilhelm in 1810, and named for both brothers.

-- photos from Wikipedia and Humboldt County promotions

"The Buffet is Open... All You Can Eat... and it's free!"

At Kensington Park the little birds eat out of your hand!

"The buffet is open," Alice called to the birds. "All you can eat."
This titmouse listened to her.

This nuthatch was very talkative as it walked down the tree trunk towards Miriam's hand.

Chickadees were the most numerous patrons of the free buffet.

Though Saturday was rather grey, we enjoyed our walk, especially these sandhill cranes beside the path.
We also saw a wild turkey and quite a few woodpeckers.

And a few days ago, Len saw tundra swans...

Polish Christmas Dinner

Fish in aspic, the first of several delicious courses at our friends' house for Christmas Dinner.

Beet borscht with mushroom dumplings.

Bigos -- hunter's stew, made from three meats, cabbage, sauerkraut, and other ingredients.

Our hosts and some of us.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas at the Henry Ford Museum

Note the actual airplane behind the Christmas tree.

Christmas decorations in the model train display.

We visited the Henry Ford Museum on Wednesday.

Christmas Eve at Home

Bavarian tradition: sausages and Bavarian potato salad.

Dessert: Buche de Noel from Zingerman's Bakery with a few raspberries. I had always wanted to try a Buche de Noel.

Star wars Lego!

Merry Christmas, Everyone!