Gleanings of the Week Ending February 2, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Masterful Textured Oil Paintings of Ships at Sea - from Polish Artist Justyna Kopania

Health and Environment: A Closer Look at Plastics - trying to balance risks and rewards

The Whirlpool Galaxy

Morning Glory Muffins - nutrition rich - to start the day

Population Density in the US from 1790-2000 - from Stanford University’s Spatial History Project.

Simon Beck Snow Art - this post is almost a year old…but I only found it recently

Test for Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals Gets Global Seal of Approval - both the international Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and the US Government ….good that they are agreed on how to test for the chemicals

Silhouettes and Moonrise in Real Time - video of a moon rise from a New Zealand mountain top

Archaic Native Americans Built Massive Louisiana Mound in Less Than 90 Days - At Poverty Point…the largest mound was built between rains; the hunter gatherers must have been a lot more organized - and in larger numbers - that previously thought

Romantic Textured Paintings of Couples Walking Together - just in time for Valentine’s Day

Gluten Lite Diet

One of the ideas I’ve been applying to my diet this year is to reduce gluten. My goal is not to be ‘gluten free’ but to dramatically reduce the amount of gluten by  

• Almost eliminating packaged wheat bread and crackers
• When I bake - replacing half or more of the wheat flour with teff or buckwheat. This does not always work but the more highly flavored the recipe is, the more likely I will still enjoy it. Pumpkin or spice muffins and pancakes are my favorites.
• Replacing pasta with grains that do not include grain - like brown rice or quinoa or amaranth
• Replacing packaged breakfast cereals with oatmeal or quinoa or a mixed grain that does not include wheat.
  

I tried some gluten free pasta (it was made with corn instead of wheat). The flavor was fine but I decided that the other grains had more nutritional value and served the same role in my meal as the pasta. And it appealed to me to migrate to the less processed grains.

The results have been reasonably good so far. I’ve been staying on course toward my goal to take off some weight. An added benefit seems to be improved digestion of other foods that previously caused me some issues (beans and broccoli/cauliflower); it could be purely circumstantial but I am enjoying those foods more than I have in years.

Low Sodium Diet Journey - Part 5

How hard is it to consume 2 grams or less of sodium per day? I started out thinking it would be difficult when a low sodium diet was recommended for one of my family members but it has been easier than I anticipated. This is the fifth post in a series that documents our family’s ‘learning experience.’ 

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Mixes and packaged foods are generally high in sodium so ‘homemade’ becomes the best choice for some things. This post walks through how to calculate the sodium in something as ordinary as homemade cornbread muffins with the idea in mind that a few modifications might make a lot of difference. Start with ingredients listed for the recipe and look up how much sodium is in each using your favorite nutritional information site (mine favorite is http://nutritiondata.self.com/) or checking the package of the ingredient.

Ingredient	mg of sodium
1 1/4 cups flour	3
3/4 yellow corn meal	11
3 tablespoons sugar	0
4 1/2 teaspoon baking powder	1980
1 teaspoon salt	2325
1 egg	400
2/3 cup milk	97
1/3 cup olive oil	1
	4817

This recipe makes 9 servings so the total per serving would be 536 mg of sodium which is a bit high.

Substituting a no-salt seasoning blend for the salt would subtract 2325 mg from the total and result in a 277 mg serving.

It might be worthwhile to look at a no sodium baking powder as well (one available via Amazon has gotten good reviews). With the sodium from the baking powder and salt gone - the serving would be down to 57 mg which would easily fit into a low sodium meal.

So - it is possible to do some quick calculations to determine how much sodium will result in a homemade muffin. Another possibility it to find a cookbook or web site that already has low sodium recipes. http://www.lowsodiumcooking.com/free/Cornbread.htm is one I found.

Previous Low Sodium Diet Journey posts are here.