Review: IONUTRITION Meal Delivery Service

Even though I joke about how nobody reads my blog, and how I have even fewer readers than Robb Wolf’s podcast has listeners (“Six listeners can’t be wrong!”), I think the time has come for me to acknowledge that there are, in fact, a few of you out there who actually read what I write. (Woohoo!) Even though my following is teeny tiny and itty bitty, apparently it is large enough that I now receive free stuff from companies who would like me to review their products. (And authors who would like me to help publicize their books.)

I hope by now you trust me to give you my honest assessment of things. Also, please note I have no affiliate relationships whatsoever with these companies or individuals. I make exactly zero profit if you happen to buy any of their wares. (If that should ever not be the case, I will say so.) The only things I make a couple cents off of are if you happen to buy stuff from places where I do have affiliate links, such as Amazon, Netrition, or Vital Choice. (And, of course, my Alzheimer’s book.)

Ooookay!

Now that all that’s out of the way, I would like to introduce you to IONUTRITION. IONUTRITION (which I’ll just call “ION” from here on out) is a meal prep & delivery service specializing in gluten-free, dairy-free, mostly organic real food. They have low-ish carb options, a Paleo plan, and more.

Book Review: The Ketogenic Cookbook

As promised last time, here it is, a review of the recently released, hot-off-the-press, new cookbook by the Livin’ la Vida Low Carb man, himself, Jimmy Moore, and wildly successful low-carb & keto diet coach, Maria Emmerich.

If you’ve become bored with your same-old, go-to, low-carb and ketogenic meal repertoire, and are looking to rekindle your passion for this way of eating, this book is for you. If you can’t stomach the thought of another plate of eggs & bacon for breakfast (that is, if you’re a breakfast eater at all), or if you think you’ll scream if you have to choke down another bunless cheeseburger, consider this book to be the inspiration you’ve been waiting for. (Although, if you ask me, bacon, eggs, and bunless burgers never get old!)

The book is called The Ketogenic Cookbook: Nutritious Low-Carb, High-Fat Paleo Meals to Heal Your Body.

Taste Test: Primal Mayo

I have never made any secret of the fact that I’m not perfect when it comes to diet. In fact, with regard to eating not-so-nutritious things, I have a fair bit of experience. Most of the time, though, I do pretty well. If not by my own standards, then at least compared to the average soda-swilling, bagel-munching guy or gal on the street. I’ve been at this low-carb real food “thing” long enough that I’ve never found myself at a restaurant or dinner at a friend’s home and felt like there was nothing I could eat. I’ve learned to make my own no-sugar or lower carb versions of certain foods, and learned to make appropriate substitutions when necessary.

One thing I haven’t been able to replicate in a wholesome version is mayonnaise. Being pretty much just oil, eggs, vinegar, and maybe some salt and lemon juice, mayo is about as low carb as it gets. The problem with mayo isn’t the carb content; it’s the type of oil typically used in commercial brands. I’m not ashamed to say I’m a Hellmann’s gal. (That’s Best Foods to those of you west of the Rockies.) When Ina Garten, one of my favorite Food Network “celebuchefs” uses mayonnaise, she always says “Use a good mayonnaise,” and even though the network isn’t allowed to show the brand label on the front of the jar, you can clearly tell it’s Hellmann’s.

I have tried other brands. I’ve tried Duke’s, Kraft, and the store brands from Safeway, Giant, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods. I’ve tried mayo made with canola oil (gasp!). None of them even came close. A couple of those were okay; others were downright dreadful. I never bothered trying the olive oil mayonnaises. If you look at the labels, you’ll see that while they do contain a little olive oil, so the manufacturer can write OLIVE OIL in big letters on the front of the jar, they are still predominantly soybean oil. (Thanks to our generous tax subsidies, soy is super cheap for food manufacturers to use in their products.)

I’ve even tried making it from scratch a time or two. Let’s just say the results made me want to reach for the Hellmann’s even more. And frankly, considering my lack of dietary sainthood—and lack of desire to attain it—while I generally advise against consumption of large amounts of soy oil, if mayonnaise and the occasional blue cheese salad dressing are pretty much my only sources of it, I’m comfortable with that. (Let me pause while the gasps of horror subside and the whooshing sound in the wake of the purists getting up to leave quiets down.)

Book Review - Extra Virginity

Olive oil has a bit of a unique place in nutrition science. It’s one of the only single foods all the warring factions agree is good for us: Paleos, vegans, vegetarians, low-carbers -- we've all got a bottle of it in the kitchen. It’s lower in saturated fatty acids than most animal fats, which pleases the veg-heads (and the ignoramuses who think saturated fat is “bad” for us), and it’s loaded with monounsaturated fatty acids, which seems to please everyone else—doctors, nutritionists, chefs, and newspaper journalists who think they know anything about biochemistry. Olive oil has been anointed (pun intended) with the magical powers to do just about everything from preventing heart disease to making your salad delicious. (The latter, I agree with; the former, I don’t think we can say for sure. Prevent heart disease, maybe, maybe not. But biochemically and physiologically speaking, it’s sure less likely to cause cardiovascular problems than, say, soybean and cottonseed oils.)

I love reading about the science of nutrition, but I also love reading about cooking, culinary culture, and, if I’m especially enamored with something, individual ingredients. Since olive oil figures heavily into my diet—and probably yours, too—when I heard there was a book called Extra Virginity, which covers some of the historical, cultural, gastronomic, and economic significance of this palate- and health-pleasing oil, I got my keister to the bookstore to get a copy. And with a subtitle like, “The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil,” I knew I’d be in for some serious eye-opening.

Book Review: The Big Fat Surprise

“It would be hard to imagine a greater set of unintended consequences than those resulting from the vast, uncontrolled experiment that the United States and the entire Western world have undergone by adopting a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet over the past half-century.” (p.333)

“Measured just by death and disease, and not including the millions of lives derailed by excess weight and obesity, it’s very possible that the course of nutrition advice over the past sixty years has taken an unparalleled toll on human history.” (p.330)

“It now appears that since 1961, the entire American population has…been subjected to a mass experiment, and the results have clearly been a failure.” (p.330)

  

Since the earliest days of this blog (back when I had just three readers, as opposed to the five I have now), I have been talking about dietary fat. Specifically, I have been trying to shed some light on the chemistry of fats and oils, so that we, as buyers, home cooks, and maybe most important—eaters—of these things, can make informed choices.

More than just fats and oils overall, I have been trying to provide a little non-scary education regarding saturated fats, in particular, because while we have been generally advised to follow a diet that’s low in total fat from all sources, saturated fats, specifically, have been targeted as being especially detrimental to good health.

Book Review: Gaining Ground

Courage.

Grit.

Determination.

Indefatigability.

Inventiveness.

Relentless pursuit of a goal.

Ironclad physical and psychological fortitude.

The strength of an ox and an iron will.

If you think I’m listing qualities you’d want in an Armed Forces Special Ops team, hang onto your hat, because who I’m actually describing is a farmer. Add to this list a deep and abiding sense of humor—or a willingness to let the world force one upon you—and I am describing one particular farmer—one I have the honor of knowing personally, and even had the privilege of working for a while back. (More on that in a bit.) His name is Forrest Pritchard, he is owner and Farmer-in-Chief at Smith Meadows, in Berryville, VA, and he wrote a book called Gaining Ground: A Story of Farmers’ Markets, Local Food, and Saving the Family Farm.

Forrest was an English major who graduated from college with the same dream many of my fellow English majors have when we’re twenty-two and still un-jaded: that Simon and Schuster, Random House, or Penguin Books will come calling with a 5-figure advance for our first novel, because even though we are completely unknown—total no-name beginners—they have that much faith in us, and they just know the rest of the world will hang on our every word. 

Well, things didn’t quite work out for me that way (yet), and they didn’t work out that way for Forrest. But considering Forrest already has one successful book on his hands, and is working on a second, he is proof that dreams can come true; sometimes they just take a little longer than we’d like.

Book Review: Health Food Junkies

Note: I do not plan to have this blog become nothing but recipes, book reviews, and food label takedowns. I am still (slowly but surely) working on the project I've been mentioning for a while, and I'm also still figuring out where to go next in my "real" posts -- the ones that dive deeper into physiology and biochemistry. I don't want to parrot what a hundred other people out there are already covering, so what's a gal to do? Man, this niche-finding is harder than it sounds! Anyway, I will be getting back to more educational posts soon, but in the meantime, rather than have total blog silence, I hope nobody minds that I keep posting things like this. So here goes...

I expected to not like this book. I expected to be angry and disappointed throughout. I mean, come on, the book’s subtitle is Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating. So before I even started, I wondered how the author, Steven Bratman, MD, would define “obsession” and “healthful eating.” Would he call me “obsessed with healthful eating” if he went out to breakfast with me and I ordered a western omelet (hold the toast), instead of a stack of pancakes dripping with syrup, washed down with a 20oz orange juice? Would he call me “obsessed” if I were at a restaurant and instead of taking a piece of bread from the complimentary basket, I helped myself to a pat of butter? Is that being “obsessed,” or is it simply me recognizing that my body doesn’t do so well on lots of sugar and starch? 

I expected this book to be a diatribe against anyone who asks questions of restaurant wait staff, or who asks for substitutions of double green vegetables in lieu of potatoes or pasta. Was I going to sit through 200+ pages of this doctor railing against people who eat Paleo, Primal, gluten-free, low-carb, or who are simply concerned with the sources of their food? If so, it was gonna be a bumpy ride.

Book Review: The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance

Volek and Phinney. Good ol’ Jeff and Steve. I don’t know them, personally, but sometimes I refer to them by their first names in my head, because I’ve read enough of their work that I feel like I do. If you’ve never heard the names Jeff Volek and Steve Phinney, let me ask you one question: just how big is the rock sugar-and corn-syrup covered mass of bread you’ve been living under? I say this because these two men are among the most influential and prolific researchers in the world of low carbohydrate nutrition, and if you have no idea who they are, I can only assume you’re still eating Frosted Flakes for breakfast (with skim milk, of course, because we all know the fat will kill you).

Don’t believe me? Do a little PubMedding and you’ll get the idea. (Yes, I just turned PubMed into a verb. Hey, if people can do it with “Google,” then surely I can do it with PubMed. Here are the results for Jeff Volek and here are the ones for Steve Phinney. These guys ain’t no slouches.)

These two partners in crime awesomeness are the dynamic duo behind the book, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living (which I will refer to as “Living”). Along with Dr. Eric Westman, they also authored The New Atkins for a New You. So yeah, these guys know their stuff.

May I Recommend...

Haven’t posted anything since the last week of May. Show of hands: who missed me? (*Crickets.* As I suspected…) But just in case you think I’ve been sitting on my duff doing nothing in my blogging absence, the truth is, I’ve been staring at the wall for hours, pondering my life hard at work on a super-special project I will tell you about when the time is right. (And no, that is not a marketing ploy to get you to buy something when it debuts, because, frankly, I am a total and complete moron when it comes to whoring out selling stuff and making a living at this.) So anyway, it might be a little bit before I hit my blogging stride again, but for now, I wanted to give you a couple of cheese suggestions, ‘cuz hey, who doesn’t want to try some awesome new cheeses?

Book Review: Food Politics

Here I go with my book learnin’ again! I reviewed Dr. Marion Nestle’s Food Politics for the spring 2014 issue of Wise Traditions, the journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation. You can read it here, or feel free to hop on over to their site and read it there. (I recommend staying here, though. I think they edited it a tiny bit. Plus, their site doesn't have the nifty links I’ve included.)

Before we get into it, let me just say that I am probably the only person on the planet who’s read this book for fun. (Well, maybe not for fun, but not for school, either. Let’s chalk it up to personal education.) This book is probably required reading in many university nutrition and dietetics programs. I’m glad I wasn’t forced to read it, because that would have made this dense tome that much more of a struggle to get through. It was difficult enough doing it for my own reasons. That being said, it was educational. I learned a lot about the devious back-door deals that are what ultimately drive the U.S. government's national dietary recommendations. (I assure you, they have almost nothing to do with actual human physiology and biochemistry.) And I also learned that even the most impressively-credentialed professional (i.e., the author of this book) can completely ignore scientific facts in favor of the political games and sweeping generalizations she claims to abhor.

If my review hadn’t been intended for the WAPF journal, there would have been lots of sarcasm and possibly a few swear words scattered throughout it. Where the book is good, it’s great, but where it’s bad, it sucks the big one. Frankly, at times I just wanted to shove Dr. Nestle’s face in a biochem textbook. (Note: she has no relation to the mega-huge food corporation of the same spelling. Her name rhymes with trestle, like train trestle, not like the Crunch candy bar or Toll House cookies.)

And with that, on with the show!

Book Review: Anatomy of an Illness

“A hospital is no place for a person who is seriously ill.”

You’ve got to be intrigued by a book with a line like that!

Or these:

 “Perhaps the hospital’s most serious failure was in the area of nutrition…No wonder the 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health made the melancholy observation that a great failure of medical schools is that they pay so little attention to the science of nutrition.”

Sound like a good read? You don’t know the half of it.

Book Review: Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes

Hey there! Welcome to the first of what will be many reviews of books related to nutrition, food, and health. Heaven knows there should be plenty to go around, considering the minute I finish the last page of one, I’m reaching for another to get started on. I’ve been reading these kinds of books for about nine years now, so there’s a lot of great titles lined up on my bookshelf. Some were published fairly recently, some go way back. In the interest of keeping things current, though, I’ll start with one I just finished. Over time, I hope to revisit and review some of the ones I read a while ago, ‘cuz there are some serious oldies but goodies in the pile.

Today’s menu:  Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It, by Gary Taubes.  For the sake of simplicity, I’ll call it WWGF.

A Tale of Two Ketchups

If one of your new year’s resolutions was to find recipes for homemade ketchup, go ahead and check it off the list! (You’re welcome.) As someone who used to consume a ridiculous amount of this delicious condiment, I wanted to find a version I could make myself. One that didn’t contain high fructose corn syrup. (Is HFCS the root of all evil? No…and yes. More on this some other time.) Actually, in the amounts I used to eat it, ketchup wasn’t so much a condiment as a food group unto itself. As in, not “do I want some ketchup with my eggs,” but “do I want some eggs with my ketchup.” (Ask anyone who’s ever had breakfast at a diner with me. That beautiful glass bottle of Heinz better have been full when I sat down or there’d be trouble.) Don’t believe me? The best way for me to convince you of my love for ketchup would be my ownership of the best T-shirt in the history of clothing for humankind:

I will wear this until it is so threadbare that it can no longer
be classified as "fabric."

Recipe Review: Butternut Sage Soup

Contrary to what you might have surmised based on the last few weeks of activity (or lack thereof) on my blog, it is not my intent to only post once a week, and only write about fats. (Not that I don’t love me some writing about fats…)

As proof, I offer today’s recipe review, the first in what will be many—unless  I get lazy  my budding nutrition practice takes off so spectacularly that I can’t find a spare few minutes to cook up something great and write about it. (And if I’m not finding great things to cook, how good a nutritionist can I be, anyway?) I plan to share recipes of my own creation as well as recipes I find in cookbooks, on websites, and wherever else I might get good food ideas these days. (Beamed directly into my brain from a satellite? Ever since I finally gave in and started using my Bluetooth, I’m convinced this is mere moments away.)

WHAT I THINK WEDNESDAY

Welcome to What I Think Wednesdays – a series in which I review all sorts of things related to food, health, and nutrition. I don’t promise to post a new review every Wednesday, but when I do have an opinion of something to share, I’ll put it out there on a Wednesday.

Today marks the series debut. I’m starting simply, but over time I plan to include reviews of books, podcasts, documentaries, food products, and kitchen gadgets. Have something specific you’d like me to take a look at? Shoot me an email at TuitNutrition@gmail.com.

Now, on to what I think:

This week’s subject: LARA BARS

Lara Bars are a pleasant oasis hiding in the vast desert of bars loaded with hydrogenated oils (the fancy term for trans fats), soy protein, artificial sweeteners, and other chemically engineered ingredients mashed together and masquerading as health food. In my opinion, the single best thing Lara Bars have going for them is that you can absolutely pronounce, understand, and identify every ingredient in them. Every ingredient. No wacky surprises, nothing you’ve never heard of, and nothing you wouldn’t be able to identify if you saw it sitting by itself on a supermarket shelf. Hydrolyzed soy protein? Nope. Fractionated cottonseed oil? Nope. Pecans? Yep. Raisins? Yep. Seriously, reading the (very short) labels on a Lara Bar is like sucking in a huge, refreshing breath of fresh air after stepping outside from a hot, stuffy room.

That being said, they’re not an ideal snack for everyone. There are good things and not-so-good things about them. Let’s take a closer look:

THE PLUSES  +

They contain REAL FOOD

They’re delicious

They contain healthy fats

They’re convenient

THE MINUSES   -

They’re pricey

They’re sugar-heavy

  

Going through these points one by one…

The pluses:

• They contain real food. If you click here and then click on any of the flavors, you’ll be able to see all the ingredients—things like cashews, dates, walnuts, coconut, cinnamon, cocoa powder, apples, cherries, almonds, and ginger. Nothing hiding behind deceptive labeling laws here.
• These things are yummy. No doubt about it. I’ve tried most of them, and while they’ve all been good, some are outrageously good, and others are…well, meh. My personal favorites? Tropical fruit tart, coconut cream pie, ginger snap, apple pie, and peanut butter & jelly. (I would say cinnamon roll, but it looks like they discontinued that one. Boo!) I really (really) wanted to love blueberry muffin and carrot cake, but to be honest, I think they had a kind of chemically taste. They weren’t bad, but there are better ones. The chocolate/”jocalat” varieties are pretty darn good, too, and make a decent substitution when you’re craving something sweet and chocolatey but are trying to avoid traditional candy bars that contain things like PGPR, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial colors.
• Healthy fats – ah yes, no soybean, cottonseed, corn, canola, or other modern oils that require ridiculous amounts of processing to be nice and clear and odorless in their pristine plastic bottles on the supermarket shelf. Just extra virgin coconut oil (one of the most sublime and health-promoting substances you could possibly ingest) and the naturally occurring fats in the nuts. Can I get a hallelujah?!
• Convenience—they’re tiny and fit easily into a purse, briefcase, gym bag, or desk drawer. Keep a stash of ‘em at home and all you have to do is grab one and be on your way.

The minuses:

• They’re pricey. This is probably the biggest drawback to this otherwise good choice. Depending on the flavor, they range from about 1.6 to 1.8 ounces. That is tiny, my friends. And they’re usually $1.29 each where I live (northern VA). Occasionally you can catch them on sale for 99 cents, but they usually run about $1.29. For the 1.6oz bars, that works out to $12.90 per pound. Almost thirteen dollars a pound! Yikes! (The 1.8oz flavors come out to $11.47/lb – still a fair chunk of change for such a small morsel of food.) I did some price checking at a few different stores and—no surprise—it’s more economical to buy nuts and dried fruit and either make your own Lara Bars or just eat them as they are: a handful of nuts and a little dried fruit.* (Scroll to the end for details on prices.)
• Shoo-gah! Yes, it’s all “natural” sugar, but so what? Poisonous mushrooms are natural. That doesn’t make them less poisonous. Dried fruit isn’t bad for you, but your intake of it should be guided by your weight and health goals. For example, at 1.7 ounces, the cherry pie flavor packs 30g of carbohydrate. That’s a lot of carbs for such a tiny little bar. For that same 30g, you could eat over a pound of broccoli (almost nine and a half times as much by weight!), and the brocc would net you way more vitamins, minerals, fiber, and—believe it or not—protein! (It would also be fewer calories, but I hate talking calories. I’m just putting it out there for shock value that eating 12.5 times as much broccoli by weight would give you fewer calories than one Lara Bar. [It’s about 1.33 lbs of broccoli to reach 30g of carb, for anyone who wants to check my math.]) Same goes for sweet red peppers and a ton of other vegetables. Dried fruit is a very concentrated source of sugar. If you need a boost during a long bike ride, trail run, or day-long hike, you could do a lot worse than Lara Bars. But if you sit in front of a computer all day long and the most exercise you get is moving a mouse, you just don’t need ‘em. Want something sweet? Stick to whole pieces of fresh fruit.

The verdict:  THUMBS UP—with caveats. If you’re muscular, very active, and handle carbohydrates well, have at ‘em. If, on the other hand, you’re trying to lose body fat, wean yourself off sugar, and/or keep your blood glucose levels or hypoglycemic symptoms in check, these aren’t a great choice for you. Overall, though, I like to recognize when a company puts out a product that’s wholesome. And as for the price, well, they are a business. They’ve got to make a profit, and I respect that. And even if it is really simple and economical to make your own, let’s face it. Now and then, you will find yourself having to grab something. And it’s nice to know there’s something you can feel good about reaching for in a pinch.

*Regarding prices on nuts and dried fruits: All prices are per pound on Aug 29, 2012 in Springfield, VA:

Trader Joe’s:

Walnuts: $7.50     Almonds: $4.99     Cashews: $6.99     Tart cherries: $3.60

Organic raisins: $2.99     Brazil nuts: $6.99     Turkish figs: $5.58    Bing cherries: $6.98

Even at Whole Foods (which some call “Whole Paycheck”), the prices for bulk nuts and dried fruits are much lower than what they charge for Lara Bars:

 Walnuts: $9.99     Pecans: $7.99     Almonds: $4.99     Dates: $6.99

Pineapple: $5.98     Apricots: $4.99     Flame raisins: $3.39    Sour cherries: $3.99

Mom's Organic Market: *Denotes organic

Flame raisins*: $3.59     Dates*: $5.89     Tart cherries: $9.99     Pineapple: $4.59

Shredded coconut*: $3.99     Hazelnuts*: $10.99     Cashews: $9.79    Apricots*: $5.99

So you’d get more bang for your buck buying nuts and dried fruit separately and making your own bars or just eating them as is. Stock up when there’s a sale. Dried fruit lasts a long time—it’s already preserved! And nuts will keep for a while in the fridge or freezer without going rancid. Just keep them away from heat and light.