Healthy Living
Rodale News
Want to be on the healthy cutting edge when it comes to cuisine? Take a cue from these culinary trends.
Healthy Trends Take Center Stage
Vegetable desserts, breakfast for dinner, and pine needles on your plate: According to the Institute of Food Technologists and the hospitality and restaurant consultants Andrew Freeman & Co., they're all coming your way in 2012. And while most food trends are best forgotten—fried chicken patties and grilled cheese sandwiches as sandwich-bread replacements? Really?—these are actually healthy, and most of them can even be transported back to your own kitchen. Intrigued? Keep reading!
Vegetable Desserts
The Trend: Parsnip cake is the new carrot cake. Creative chefs are cramming an extra serving or two of your daily veggies into savory, vegetable-based desserts like goat cheese with celery and celery sorbet. "Vegetables in desserts were fairly common in early American history, and also in poor economic times," says Danielle Pruett from Portland, Oregon’s Clyde Common. A lot of vegetables possess sweet and spicy notes that make the transition onto the dessert plate rather simple, she says.
Why It's Healthy: There's not much that's unhealthy about another serving of vegetables at dessert. Just watch for veggie cakes made from refined flours or other concoctions loaded with sugar, like carrot soufflé. But do give the trend a shot. Studies show that a variety of taste sensations, for instance tangy cheese with a sweet veggie like carrots or celery, better satisfy your appetite than a single dominant ingredient, such as sugar.
Breakfast for Dinner
The Trend: Who doesn’t love breakfast? It’s the ultimate comfort meal, and now breakfast dishes are infiltrating lunch, dinner and late-night menus as restaurants place savory breakfast items center stage at all times of the day, whether it’s egg dishes or French toast topped with cheese or tomato jam. Another fluffy breakfast staple playing a starring role: Waffles. As they pop up on lunch and dinner menus, waffles are being used in lots of ways, such as foundations for savory dishes, bread substitutes in sandwiches, and bases for decadent desserts.
Why It's Healthy: Considering that most restaurant breakfasts are the caloric equivalent of a triple cheeseburger, this trend could be exactly the opposite. On the other hand, organic, pastured eggs are chock-full of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A and beta-carotene (more so than conventional eggs), so adding more of them to your diet can only be a good thing. And you can make a healthier waffle at home than anything you'd find eating out. Make an easy weeknight dinner out of an open-faced waffles with ham and egg sandwiches, pictured here.
"Flexitarian"-ism
The Trend: A University of Chicago study published a few years ago claimed that adopting a vegan diet was of greater benefit to the planet than driving a Prius, due to the environmental impact of meat and dairy production. Few people are willing to go that far for environmental reasons, but a growing number of people are willing to go halfway, whether for planetary survival or their own health. The number of "weekday vegetarians" or "flexitarians"—people who eat mostly vegetarian diets but still eat meat from time to time—is growing, and food manufacturers are responding by creating new lines of meat-eater-friendly (but still meatless) foods, sans tofu. Now, black beans, chickpeas, and even pea protein for people with soy and wheat allergies are popping up in veggie burgers, burritos, and pizza crusts.
Why It's Healthy: Black beans and other veggie ingredients are full of healthy carbohydrates and are more then enough to meat your daily protein requirements, without the risk of early death, vision loss, and other heart problems associated with red and processed meats. Just watch out for the salt in faux-meat products, which can often be highly processed and packed with sodium. And if you do dare to try tofu, opt for organic, which is free of the genetically modified soy found in nonorganic brands and is also free of hexane, a carcinogenic byproduct found in highly processed tofu. Homemade veggie burgers made from beans will save you from salt overload while still providing tons of protein, fiber, and antioxidants. Try these tasty black bean burgers or make a hearty version using chickpeas.
Crispy Skins
The Trend: Taking their cue from the trend for nose-to-tail eating, chefs are now serving up something that other cultures have been eating for ages: Crispy chicken skin and pork skin (known to most people as fried pork rinds). Once stripped from the bird (or pig) and tossed out with the bones and other undesirable bits, crispy chicken skin is showing up as the main ingredient on tacos and in ethnic appetizers. "Crispy pig skin is common in Italian and Asian cultures, but it’s just recently picking up in the states," says Marco Frattaroli, chef at Bastas Trattoria in Portland, Oregon. "I love crispy pig skin plain, but I also make it Tuscan-style, seasoned with herbs like sage, rosemary, garlic, fennel and coriander."
Why It's Healthy: Once vilified by healthy eaters, chicken skin may not be as unhealthy as once thought. Fifty percent of the fat in chicken skin is heart-healthy monounsaturated fat, and 43 percent of pork skin's fat is unsaturated, most it being oleic acid—the same healthy fat found in olive oil. The key is in the preparation. Deep-fried chicken skins or pork rinds aren't helping anyone, but if the skins are marinated then baked, as most chefs are doing with their skins, they're just as healthy as the meat. If you're not adventurous enough to have chicken-skin tacos, just buy a skin-on piece of meat and enjoy the crispy exterior. For a homey, crispy-skinned chicken you can make at home, try Ardie Rodale’s signature garlic chicken.
Gluten-Free Restaurants
The Trend: "Gluten-free" food, free of wheat, barley and rye gluten, is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the food industry, as food manufacturers respond to the rapid rise in people suffering from celiac disease (gluten intolerance), those with other autoimmune diseases that improve on a gluten-free diet, and people who simply believe that avoiding gluten makes them feel better. Now restaurants are getting into the game. According to a report from the food service consulting firm Technomic, menu items promoted as gluten-free rose 61 percent between 2010 and 2011.
Make It Healthy: Even if you don't want, or need, to go 100-percent gluten-free, cutting back on the amount of wheat you eat, which is called for in gluten-free diets, could be a healthy habit to adopt, says William Davis, MD, preventive cardiologist and author of Wheatbelly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health (Rodale, 2011). "Modern wheat is a geneticist-created artificial plant that is a far genetic distance away from any wheat that ever existed in nature," he says, created by what he calls crude and often bizarre plant breeding techniques. As a result, "it wreaks disaster on the human gastrointestinal tract," leading to inflammatory bowel diseases, joint pain and even a condition recently identified by the Mayo Clinic called gluten encephalopathy, or dementia from wheat.
Specialty Chile Peppers
The Trend: Forget boring jalapenos or canned chipotles. Chefs are opting for Middle-Eastern Aleppo peppers, Spanish pimentos, and Italian Calabrian chiles to spice up their menus. Their complex flavors range from spicy to fruity to smoky—those poblanos you've been using will seem generic by comparison.
Why It's Healthy: You'll get more variety while loading up on a food that's know to help you with everything from losing weight to fighting chronic pain. The magic ingredient is capsaicin, high levels of which exist in all spicy peppers. It interferes with your mind's pain receptors, and therefore acts as a natural painkillers, and it keeps your metabolism in check, preventing you from overeating. Peppers also contain loads of vitamin C and beta-carotene, which help ward off colds and flu.
Trees For Dinner
Expect to see more dishes infused with things like pine needles, Douglas fir, and eucalyptus, the Freeman report states. Once relegated to naturopaths and native herbal teas, chefs are starting to use these "leafy greens" to flavor meats, to infuse in vinegars and butters, and even pureed into soups.
Why It's Healthy: Pine needles reportedly have five times more vitamin C than lemons, and eucalyptus leaves are great for warding off colds. There isn't much science on the nutritional benefits of Douglas fir, but eating an ingredient reminiscent of Christmas trees and the holidays is sure to be a mood lifter. To avoid any toxic fumigants that may have been used on plantation-grown trees, ask the chef whether the needles, leaves or bark used in your dish were wild-harvested.
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