Nutrition Frenzy

I am obsessed with breasts.

No, you dirty girl, not obsessed with looking at them (although I admit to checking out my own for updates on southward sliding).

No, I am obsessed with how nutrition can help keep our breasts HEALTHY.

Taking Boobs Personally

Several years ago my tough-as-nails mom had a bilateral mastectomy. Mom has always been a pretty health-conscious person. Maybe she did hit the brownies a little hard once in a while, but all in all she leads a healthful lifestyle - never smoked, doesn’t drink (one glass of chardonnay and she tips over), plenty of fruit, veggies and she plays tennis like a 65-year old Maria Sharapova.

Mom also takes pride in the fresh-squeezed glass of grapefruit juice she enjoys every morning.

Anyhow, ever since mom’s battle with breast cancer I’ve been vigilant about keeping up on the latest news on breast cancer prevention and treatment.

The Newest News

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“You: On A Diet,” by Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz offers cutting-edge information about the biological reasons we gain weight, and the secret to losing it and keeping it off for good. In “You: On A Diet”, Roizen and Oz-ster list five commonly found ingredients that we should ALWAYS avoid:

These food pitfalls bear repeating, and repeating and repeating. So, over the next few days I’ll tell you ways to avoid these bad guys and how to make substitutions so that you don’t mourn their passing out of your diet.

Let’s start with this one:

DO NOT EAT FOODS CONTAINING HYDROGENTATED OR PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED OILS (TRANS FATS)

I KEEP FORGETTING, WHAT ARE HYDROGENATED & PARTIALLY HYDROGENTED OILS?

Hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils (aka Trans Fats) are unnatural forms of oil, created by manufacturers.

When oils are heated and hydrogen bubbles are passed through it, the fatty acids become denser. If you fully hydrogenate an oil it becomes solid at room temperature. If you stop part-way, you create a partially hydrogenated oil, which has a consistency like margarine.

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You: On A Diet, Dr. Michael Roizen

The other night I went to dinner at a very elegant establishment. I was psyched for a beautifully prepared fish dinner (anything prepared by someone other than me is always beautiful as far as I’m concerned).

Enlightened consumer that I am, I inquired as to whether the broiled salmon entrée was wild or farmed. The rest of the exchange with my waitress went like this:

WAITRESS WITH A BLANK LOOK: “Wild or what???”

PAIN IN-THE-ASS CUSTOMER: “The fish . . . Any idea where it came from?”

PATIENT WAITRESS WITH JUSTIFIED HINT OF ANNOYANCE: “ Well, it came from the kitchen, but I’ll run and ask the chef.”

Five minutes later:

WAITRESS WHO NOW HATES MY GUTS: “Ma’m, all of our salmon is freshly farmed!”

EXCEEDINGLY RUDE CUSTOMER: “What the hell does freshly farmed mean ???” “Oh, just forget it, I’ll have the chicken.”

Honestly, I didn’t intend to be a nightmare customer, and I certainly don’t mean to demean wait-staff. I mean, how could I expect her to know the difference between types of salmon when confusion is perpetuated by marketing with labels like “Atlantic”, “Ocean-Raised,” “Farm-Raised” and what I guess is the newly coined, “Freshly-Farmed.”

Bottom line - what you want to eat is called “Wild Alaskan Salmon”, all other terms are almost always synonymous with “farmed”.

What’s the diff?, you ask.

Farmed salmon looks the same as Wild and it’s less expensive. Just cook ‘er up and don’t worry about it, right? But in order to be sure you are eating the type of fish that offers the most health benefits it’s important to understand a very real difference does exist between Wild Alaskan and Farmed Salmon.

World renowned health experts like Dr. Nicholas Perricone, Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Mercola all highly recommend Wild Alaskan Salmon for a variety of reasons.

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fish dinner, salmon, Dr. Nicholas Perricone, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Mercola