A couple of weeks ago I attended a lecture sponsored by CBC and the UBC Faculty of Land and Food Science. The evening, titled Hamburger Helpless, started out with some wonderful appies, and glasses of UBC Alumni wine (did you know there was such a thing?). While we nibbled, we watched Gerry Kasten demonstrate an easy-to-make meal of Chicken Parmesan Strips.

The evening was hosted by CBC host Mark (The Voice) Forsyth and featured three guest speakers Gerry Kasten, Gwen Chapman and chef/cookbook store owner Barbara-Jo McIntosh.

It was an entertaining and inspiring evening that, I suppose, reinforced my basic belief that home-cooked meals are important, not just nutritionally, but also for keeping children and their parents connected.

Gerry Kasten spoke about what he called the “dumbing down” of cooking and the myth that we don’t have enough time to make home-cooked meals. “Anything you cook will have less fat, sugar and salt than any commercially prepared food,” he said. Kasten believes that cooking is quality time that brings us pleasure. He pointed out that many of us have happy memories of shared moments surrounding food.

Researcher Gwen Chapman shared some interesting findings. In her study of cooking habits, she found that evening meals are actually the norm. She attributes the belief that most of us don’t cook evening meals is advertising that tells us so. If we believe we don’t have time to cook and that no one else does, we are more likely to cruise the pre-prepared meal aisle at the supermarket.

The panel offered some great suggestions that can help get meals on the table:

• have a meal plan for the week
• share the load – kids can help and teens like the idea of being in charge of a meal – don’t be judgemental – they often know how to include all the food groups
• accept help with grace and gratitude
• start kids in the kitchen at a young age

Other interesting tips that came up:

• when you’re shopping, check the ingredients list – the shorter, the better
• don’t buy it if it’s advertised (Have you ever seen broccoli advertised?)

Barbara-Jo McIntosh was kind enough to provide the entire audience with a copy of her book Tin Fish Gourmet. It was almost like being on Oprah!

For more information about the great work being done by the Registered Dietitians of Fraser Health Authority’s Health Promotion and Prevention department, check out EatTogether.net.

On another note, I’ve found a couple of new sites that I will add to my blog roll:

Environmental Health News - published by Environmental Health Sciences. They send out a daily environmental newsletter, Above the Fold.

Remedey Quarterly: find out about home-made cures for upset stomachs, hangovers, headaches and more.

Oh and, inspired by Gwen Chapman’s work in which families photographed their meals, I thought I’d post a little picture of tonight’s dinner – bubbling in the pot before it was served.

The colour pink is synonymous with the fight against breast cancer and it seems that association is pretty tempting for wily marketers. I first noticed the preponderance of pink in a running magazine I received. It featured a whole section of pink cancer-fighting  jog-bras, socks, and moisture-wicking tees.

With so many organizations seeking our contributions, it’s difficult to know who is making the best use of our dollars.

An organization called Think Before You Pink has put together a list of questions to ask before you donate.

Charity Navigator is also a good resource when you’re thinking about donating to a charity. It provides all kinds of information about the charity,  rates it, and shows how many of their dollars go to administrative expenses.

This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and it’s good news that the prognosis for this cancer that has taken so many of the people we love is getting so much more hopeful. According to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, the 5-year survival rate of women diagnosed with breast cancer is 87%. That’s really great, but 100% would be better.

Daily I wage a battle to keep my stuff from controlling me. I’ve come to the conclusion that I cannot keep a  tidy desk, I simply cannot. I can keep a pretty tidy desk if I try really hard. In light of my struggles, I thought I’d post this little podcast from Scientific American, “What Our Stuff Says About Us.”

It’s always good to have work. This week I have lots of it. So instead of a new entry, I will post a link to the article about figs that I wrote for edible Vancouver.

Lately I’ve become involved with Slow Food Vancouver. One of the goals of Slow Food is to foster a healthy, sustainable and local food supply. With events such as the Slow Food Cycle Tours of Chilliwack and Agassiz we hope to connect our BC farmers and urban dwellers. The hope is that by fostering this connection consumers will buy locally produced food and keep our farm industries healthy. It’s important – for global warming and for our own food security – but more on that another time.

Earlier this month I attended an agricultural tour of Agassiz. It’s a yearly event that showcases different farming operations in the Kent region. The farming community there is vibrant and it was such a privilege to visit the farms. Here are a few pictures:

Coffee beans, roasted and unroasted, at Back Porch Coffee Roasters and Farm

Van Peridon Greenhouse - home of hostas, astilbes, bleeding hearts and ornamental grasses

Limbert Mountain Barn

Mountain Ash Farms - growers of tropical anthuriums in a multitude of colours

The view of Mt. Cheam from Suplesse Dairy Farm

It seems that every other person I know is sick with a bad cold and the rest are either getting one or just getting over one. I have to confess to feeling pretty horrible at the moment, which makes me wonder if I have H1N1. So far, judging by the info posted on the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention  (CDC), I’m not in any danger.

The site also has an interesting discussion about the effectiveness of face masks along with advice for when they should be used (scroll way down).  According to the CDC, masks are not recommended for those of us not working in a health care setting.

Way back when I was in nursing school (in the 80s) they told us those little paper masks are only good for stopping infectious agents for about 30 seconds. After that, moisture from your breath wets the mask, creating a freeway for microbes to wick their way cross the barrier (this phenomenon is called capillary action). So there you are, wearing your mask, thinking you’re all protected, but you probably aren’t. 

During the avian flu scare, many hospital workers were custom-fitted with special masks believed to provide effective protection. This may be the case again for health care workers caring for H1N1 sufferers.

If you think you may be suffering from our virus-du-jour, check out this CDC page for what to do if you get sick.

Also, The Mayo Clinic has some good recommendations for how to avoid getting the flu.

In the mean time, those of us who are suffering from a terrible cold can do our best to keep away from others by staying at  home and reading that pile of books we were planning to get to sometime, or posting on our normally neglected blogs.

Last week I was privileged to be in the audience at the SFU Centre for Dialogue for the SFU President’s Forum: Stepping up the Response to the AIDS Pandemic in Lesotho. The Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Lesotho Pakalitha Bethuel Mosisili delivered a thoughtful talk about the profound challenge his country has faced dealing with AIDS.

According to Prime Minister Mosisili, life expectancy in his country for men is 39 years and for women it is 44 years. There are 110,000 orphans in his country.

 The economic impact of AIDS has been devastating as the disease has affected predominantly those in their most productive years. The Losotho health care system is under a huge burden, further stressed because of the drain of health care workers to other countries. Those who have stayed are overwhelmed and burned out.

Lesotho faces even more challenges:

• The unprecedented number of orphans, a huge strain on extended families in which the elderly are left to care for large numbers of children (sometimes as many as 15)
• The stigma associated with the disease inhibits people from getting tested.
• The tradition in which parents do not speak to their children about sex
• The challenge to health care services – many people face at least a 2-hour walk to the nearest clinic – especially challenging for expectant women
• The difficulty of obtaining pediatric formulations of antiretrovirals for treatment of AIDS
• The high incidence of TB that occurs concurrently with AIDS in many sufferers
• The challenge of working with aid organizations who sometimes have an agenda of their own

 Despite these challenges Lesotho has made positive steps in prevention and treatment of the disease.

• Implementing the Know Your Status campaign that encourages people to get tested and offers HIV counselling and treatment at a community level. Prime Minister Mosisili led by example when he stepped up and was personally tested for HIV.
• Instituting a policy to test all expectant mothers. Prime Minister Mosisili seemed to think this was was an extreme step, but I’m pretty sure we in Canada also routinely test expectant mothers for HIV. (I know I was.) Testing pregnant women is extremely important since it has a positive effect on infant survival.
• Establishing a Pediatric Centre of Excellence in the capital of Lesotho
• Establishing a National AIDS Commission to coordinate prevention and treatment efforts
• Emphasizing the ABC Model of HIV prevention: Abstinence, Being faithful, Condom use

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there is evidence that circumcision significantly reduces the risk of contracting HIV in men. This is one strategy, that while effective, has been difficult to institute in Lesotho because there is a taboo against discussing it.

It is evident that Lesotho is labouring under an immense  task of dealing with AIDS and HIV in the country. It is also evident that the country is rising to the challenge.

When asked to recommend ways Canadians can help the situation in Lesotho, Prime Minister Mosisili answered wisely, “That’s not for me to tell you.”

It’s up to Canadians to decide.

Raised in a European household, I had stuff  at home that seemed strange to my anglo friends, like the light green ceramic Melita coffee filter and pot. I loved the way the glass filter holder wedged into the tiny pot – making  just enough for one person. When the coffee was made, you could remove the filter attachment and pop on the ceramic lid – so cute. To add to the coffee mystique, my mother would often heat up a bowl of milk for me, and add just a little coffee for flavour. There I was…hooked.

Coffee is my friend. Big pots of coffee kept me company through nights of studying. (Though nowadays a tanker full of coffee wouldn’t keep me awake all night.) Coffee is the excuse I use to meet friends. Coffee keeps me company while I work. Coffee gets me going before a run.

But there’s always the fear that all this coffee is unhealthy. I worry that one day the US Surgeon General will issue a warning that coffee consumption is a known cancer causer – Think of it: warnings on the side of coffee packages. Shunned coffee drinkers huddled outside their workplaces, sipping on their steaming cups of cancer-causing  java.

These days, however, coffee is beginning to seem like a downright healthy choice. For example, a recent study found that coffee seems to lower the risk of stroke.

While I can sit back, for the moment, and not worry about any personal harm from coffee, I can’t ignore that coffee may not be so healthy for our planet. Shade-grown coffee seems to be the least environmentally harmful way to go. Here are a few links about coffee growing and its impact on the environment:

Cheap coffee threatens to wipe out wildlife and ruin farmers, The Independent, April 2003.

 Green Coffee-Growing Practices Buffer Climate-change Impacts, Science Daily, Oct 10, 2008.

Coffee cultivation good for diversity in aggrarian settlements but not in forests, Stokholm University, Feb 20, 2009

If you’d like to read my article about mud, in the January/09 edition of alive magazine, follow this link.

Last week I threaded my way through the shiny glass buildings at UBC to attend, “Behind the Scenes at  Nature,” a seminar by Nicola Jones, Nature’s on-line news editor. Nature is the journal to which scientist bow down and worship. Getting published in this most prestigious of scientific journals means you’ve arrived, you’re part of the scientific elite, you’re in the company of Stephen Hawking.

Well, even if you get rejected, you’re still in the company of Stephen Hawking, since Nature (and a slew of other highly respected scientific journals) rejected his Black Hole Radiation theory at first. According to Nicola Jones, 90 per cent of the scientific papers submitted are rejected.

I never picked up an issue of Nature because I thought it would be filled with high level research that I wouldn’t be able to understand. But Ms. Jones revealed that half of the journal is devoted to news, discussion and even politics as it applies to science. And while Nature is still available in hard copy, Nature on-line has become an ever-expanding nebula of scientific information. You can spend hours and hours on their site, and then you can spend even more time on their blogs. There is also an active on-line discussion forum,  Nature Network.

Ms. Jones also spoke about some of the publishing bloopers that have occurred at Nature. She showed us the September 25, 2008 issue (above) featuring head shots of Barak Obama and John McCain, looking in opposite directions. Then she opened up the magazine to reveal the advertisement on the back cover. On it were head shots of two Labrador retrievers, one chocolate and one yellow – looking in opposite directions – mirroring the two politicians on the cover.

After hearing about all that Nature has to offer, Ms. Jones asked us to break up and brainstorm about new directions for Nature. The only suggestion I could come up with was Nature for Dummies, a publication that translates all that academic scientific language into material the average person could understand. My friend picked up on that idea and suggested each issue could contain a centerfold of a famous scientist – now there’s a new idea.

The era of fat phobia may be coming to an end.  Avoiding it like the plague may, after all, not have been necessary all this time. In an earlier blog, I complained about my friend the dietitian who continued to use butter while the rest of us switched to margarine. It wasn’t until margarine was exposed for its trans-fat transgressions that many of us switched back to butter – in moderation.

Fish and vegetable oils are the new health food because they contain those all important Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s are also found in whole grains, olive oil and garlic and are thought to be the reason behind the healthiness of the Mediterranean Diet.

And this year a new book, aptly titled Fat, by Jennifer McLagan and Leigh Beisch espoused the virtues of fat. A vocal supporter of animal fat, Jennifer McLagan says it contains more flavour, is more stable (doesn’t turn rancid as quickly as vegetable fats), and contains no trans fats. She points to the French, who seem to have a healthier relationship with fat than do we North Americans. She feels it’s because they take time to prepare their own food and sit down with family to eat it. People will flock to purchase this book when they find out it contains recipes for bacon mayonnaise and bacon baklava.

In another interesting look at the upside of dietary fat,  Dr. Jay Wortman of the UBC Faculty of Medicine initiated a study he called “My Big Fat Diet.” Dr Wortman hypothesized that many First Nations people are suffering from obesity and Type II diabetes because they no longer consume their traditional diet which was high in fat and low in carbohydrates. They have adopted, instead, a less healthy diet full of carbohydrates.  In his study 60 First Nations people from the BC village of Alert Bay consumed a diet that was more in-keeping with their traditional food – meat, fish and non-starchy vegetables such as berries and leafy greens. Those in the study not only lost weight, but experienced an improvement in their cholesterol and diabetic problems. (To find out more, go to Dr Wortman’s blog .)

It seems to be common sense that our traditional diet - free of processed and modified ingredients –  shared with family and friends, may be the best way to a healthy, happy life.