If you reduce the sodium content of cookies you bake (or talk someone into baking for you), they won't explode. I have data! We'll get back to this.
There seems to be debate these days about almost everything we thought we knew about nutrition and health. There is the argument that sugar, and more specifically fructose, is toxic and the one thing fundamentally wrong with the modern diet -- and there are opposing views, mine among them.
There is the argument that excess sodium may be the single most important liability of modern eating, accounting for some 150,000 deaths a year -- and opposing arguments. There are the time-honored arguments for the importance of the calorie, and arguments that calories don't really count.
I maintain, however, through all the sound and fury, much of which signifies nothing more than a theory du jour, that we are NOT clueless about the basic care and feeding of Homo sapiens. The basic pattern of healthful eating is very well-established, and convincingly evidence-based. And the health benefits attached to such a pattern are profound.
That pattern -- foods close to nature, minimally processed, mostly plants -- is inextricably associated with less sugar intake, less sodium intake, and lower calorie intake. So however important each of these trees is or isn't, they are an important part of the forest.
Getting there from here would be a good thing, but it's clearly something most Americans can't figure out how to do. The fact that it's so hard is not by accident -- the food industry has done all it can to keep you lost in the dark woods of a profitable status quo.
Part of what the industry has done is to propagate an arms race -- with your taste buds. Human taste buds are predisposed to like sweet -- so putting sugar in food is apt to make people like it. Now imagine, though, that your competitor's product is outselling yours because it has just a bit more sugar -- what are you to do? Increase your own sugar content.
See where this can lead? More sugar means sweeter; sweeter means tastier; tastier means more sales. As manufacturers compete in this area, taste buds start acclimating to more, and more, and more sugar. The more they get, they more they want. And so we wind up with ever more sugar in our food partly because... We're asking for it! We're asking for it because our taste buds are desensitized to sugar the more they get, and need ever more to register satisfaction.
This same scenario applies to salt -- and other properties of foods, too, such as creaminess. The more we get, the more we tend to want. The more we want, the more we get.
Personally, I remain convinced that excess sugar, sodium, and calories are harmful for most if not all of us. But whatever your point of view about sucrose, fructose, or salt, we should be able to agree on this: Whatever blocks our path to a basic, healthful dietary pattern is bad.
Well, sugar and salt do exactly that. Because if your taste buds have acclimated to high levels of both, you will simply prefer more highly processed foods, and reject the simple, unadulterated flavors of simple foods close to nature. You will NOT eat "food, not too much, mostly plants," because you won't like doing that! And you, and perhaps your family, will miss out on the enormous health benefits associated with doing so, which is a terrible shame -- because healthy people have more fun.
But this is all fixable. Taste buds can be rehabilitated. They are, in fact, very malleable little fellas: When they can't be with a food they love, they can quite readily learn to love the food they're with. Particularly if the food they're now with is familiar overall, but just a bit better for you. I maintain: We can love foods that loves us back.
The food industry arms race -- the race to make and sell products we can't resist -- has resulted in some very odd formulations. Breakfast cereals routinely are more concentrated sources of added salt than items in the salty snack aisle. Pasta sauces and salad dressings are frequently more concentrated sources of added sugar than desserts. And we're supposed to be ok with this?
Apparently we are. Every recipe for home-baked cookies, for instance, includes added salt. Have you ever thought to ask -- why do cookies need salt? Do I LIKE salty cookies?
My wife and I did ask, some years ago while working on one of our books. We made the obvious inference: If you don't put salt in home-baked cookies, they presumably explode. But we are both scientists -- my wife has a Ph.D. in neuroscience -- so we decided to test our hypothesis.
Well, my wife did, really -- I mostly watched. We are both scientists, but only my wife knows how to bake! She grew up in Southern France, and learning at her mother's and aunt's knee, is a whiz in the kitchen. But I think my "ra, ra, go Catherine!" was crucial.
In any event, we took the salt in cookie recipes down, and out -- and the cookies did not explode. The shelf life didn't seem to change much either, although admittedly, cookies don't tend to sit around too long! But no obvious liabilities with texture, survival time, or tendency to detonate were discerned.
We really noticed only one thing: Suddenly, the cookies were too sweet. We had not altered the sugar content at all -- but now they were too sweet. The reason is that salt can mask the taste of sugar, and vice versa. Less salt competing for taste buds' attention meant the sugar was more discernible.
So we did the obvious thing: We took down the sugar content, too. And with the sodium reduced, we found the cookies tasted plenty sweet enough with half the sugar they had at the start. We've been eating variations on the theme of these cookies ever since. Much less sodium, much less sugar, and still delicious. Go figure!
The real message of the non-exploding cookie epiphany is, of course, how it can be generalized. There are commercial products that aren't supposed to be salty -- like breakfast cereals -- with a lot of added salt. But there are others without that salt. Choose those lower-salt versions, and you are not just reducing salt in your diet -- you are helping your taste buds be more sensitive to salt. Doing so helps them help you to prefer, and get to, a more wholesome diet overall.
Ditto for the sugar in places like pasta sauce. I call this "stealth sugar" because it may make you eat more, but you don't even realize it's there. Cut down on stealth sugar, and you can make your taste buds more sensitive to sugar -- getting to satisfaction with less -- before ever touching dessert. Before long, you will prefer your desserts less sweet, too.
Personally, I think we eat too much sugar, salt, the wrong kinds of fat, and calories, and I think all of this counts. But regardless of your position on the competing dietary theories du jour, the benefits of a wholesome diet overall are a forest we should all be able to see through these trees. Getting rid of stealth additions of sugar and salt to innumerable foods, and rehabilitating your taste buds, is an important strategy for getting out of these dark woods -- to the luminous health benefits beyond.
Our homegrown data suggest it can readily be done, we can love food that loves us back, and there will be very few injuries related to exploding cookies along the way.
-fin
Dr. David L. Katz; www.davidkatzmd.com
www.turnthetidefoundation.org
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The way he writes short sentences really gives "punch" to what he's saying and just carries the person on to the next one.
Anyway, re-training taste buds makes so much sense. I've spent years dieting---usually something like Weight Watchers---but rarely stuck completely to any of them.
However, I did find over time that I was learning to really like the taste of good, healthy food versus junk. Took me a few years to realize that was happening. (I was an either/or eater----ate really poorly or ate really healthy).
A "for instance" is that I went for about 15 yrs no longer able to eat fried chicken after years of "dieting" where I only ate broiled, skinless, white-meat chicken.
(A few yrs ago, I tried some KFC chicken----and started occasionally having fried chicken again. : )
my insurance charges $420.oo EXTRA a year for insurance if I have a high BMI.
In the year 2014 it will be as such for EVERYONE who wants insurance--- WHICH SHALL BE required by law.
Guess we'd better get USED to being healthy. It can cost up to $660 year EXTRA for insurance if 4-5 things are found wrong during the "MUST HAVE" free exam~! The FREE EXAM is given BEORE insurance can be granted to you (with charge~!) that MUST be bought!
High blood pressure, high cholesterol, high BMI, smoking or being a diabetic will COST YOU~! I got 2 pages of info from my blood work and PAID $420. a year for being FAT. GET HEALTHY NOW.... 2014 is COMING SOON FOR ALL.
Or if you can figure out the root of the craving, then instead of eating a pan of mac & cheese, something healthier could be substituted. Or have a bit of mac & cheese with a big salad or something.
Anyway I agree, it takes work to change eating habits, and most people don't do it out of laziness. If people worked on being more mindful overall, I think better eating habits would follow.
I tend to shy away from overly sweet sauces myself, but I can see where they can be quite tempting. I guess my Italian cousins would tend to agree with Karl, though - they're always shocked to see Americans putting sugar in spaghetti sauce! While I don't agree with everything in this article, I would agree with the author that one of our main nutritional problems in this country is our apparent need to put sugar in EVERYTHING.
Not too sure about the salt thing, though - I've read plenty of studies that have found no conclusive proof that sodium restriction is necessary for people who do not suffer from hypertension, but then I'm no expert on this.
And while cookies are supposed to be for a treat, it's nice to make cookies we can eat *more* of when we get cookies. I'm a total cookie monster! LOL!
I do think sugar is probably addictive but wheat is likely, as well. And the combination of the two may be worse.
This might explain why baked goods, combinations of sugar and wheat, are so darned delicious. I'm not addicted to sugar and I can only eat so much plain bread, even french bread, but throw the two together and make a sugar cookie and I'll eat 15 of them.
I put on 30 pounds in college only eating baked goods...
Also, you need to make friends with quinoa cakes. I have a bad sweet tooth when it comes to baked goods and you can make some really tasty cakes with quinoa, eliminating the wheat and adding tons of protein! My husband likes to puree the quinoa after cooking it to make a cake that is closer in texture to a wheat cake, but it's still dense. I added coconut oil to it once (in addition to the listed ingredients) and it came out almost the same texture as a wheat cake. So yeah, explore some recipes and shock your friends with your gluten free 'health' cakes.
This obviously isn't the case. For some reason, the hormonal regulation of our fat tissue and appetites has stopped working. Why?
Likely, the consistently high blood glucose/insulin levels experienced from consuming high levels of sugar and wheat, both of which happen to be in baked goods, may be driving fat deposition, block leptin, and generate the paradoxical fattening-while-starving condition of insulin/leptin resistance. Plus potentially morphine-like effects of certain foods or combinations of food on the brain (sugar and gliadin, in wheat, affecting dopamene receptors maybe)...
Therefore, excess calories don't explain the addictive nature of food or why we have an obesity epidemic. Again, there was plenty of food available 50 years ago for everyone to get fat easily if they wanted to simply "overeat." But there wasn't an obesity epidemic.
Incremental steps, as with the cookies, can work fine for some people. Others may need more help with the cravings for salt and sugar.
I worked at a health spa where people did a 3 week program. They ate a "health building diet" - just fruits, veggies, nuts, beans, grains" (no added salt or sugar, meat, fish, eggs or even dairy) for a week, then a "purifying diet" - only fruit, veggies, a few soaked almonds, teas and juices for a week, then back to the "health building" for a week.
Within 3 weeks, almost everyone had lost their cravings for excess salt and sugar, and as other posters here have mentioned, just a small amount of a desert, often just some fruit, would be very satisfying.