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Still, No Magic Bullets

Fitness supplements are big business, billion-dollar big and it got that way by promising to make you bigger, stronger and faster but of course that begs the question, do they work? The answer is a a qualified, “maybe”:

Doctors and nutritionists say that people who eat a normal diet generally don’t need nutritional supplements, even if they exercise vigorously. But among the subset of people who already eat healthfully and want to bulk up in the gym, some supplements, when taken in sensible doses, can provide a lift.

We are pretty clear on our pro-food stance, as in: eat food, not pills but we are also open-minded and this article in particular gave some credence to certain types of supplements. If you take your excercise seriously, the story is worth a full read.You can read the whole story over at the NY Times.

Posted by: Dan

No such thing as a natural athlete

If you’re a fan of professional sports, it can be easy to look at the athletes on the field and assume that it all comes too easily for them. Sure, all of the pros running around on our TV screens were born with physical gifts that distinguish them from the great, unwashed Us. On the other hand, genetics only gets you so far, take the example of formerly portly Phillies slugger, Ryan Howard:

Howard was getting fat. Not just a wee plump, either. Between the long 2008 season and the celebrations for Philadelphia’s championship, Howard was carrying around 275 pounds on his 6-foot-4 frame. He knew the history of fat hitters, too. Mo Vaughn and Cecil Fielder and countless others faded in their early 30s, waistlines expanding and hitting zones contracting. Howard turns 30 in November. He refused to peter out like the others. So Ryan Howard, the one legitimate threat to the single-season home run record, the man who hit 200 faster than anyone in history, did something drastic.

The drastic step that Howard took was to take control of his eating habits.

He ate organic for the first time. He cut out fat. He feasted on lean meats and whole grains. He ate chicken covered with an almond crust instead of bread.

You can read the whole story @ Yahoo Sports. And then go check out this video of Ryan Howard getting a tour of the White House garden from Chef Sam Kass.

Posted by: Dan

2012

There certainly is a lot of hullabaloo about the upcoming year 2012. Movies, television documentaries, and the Internet seem to have a fascination with the year because that’s when the Mayan calendar ends…and so does civilization, as we know it!

Earthquakes, meteors, giant murderous poodles—it’s all rather unclear exactly what will happen, but it has a lot of people freaking out. Me? I’m not worried. Our calendar ends every year and usually the worst thing that happens is a New Year’s hangover.

 Super famous calendar aside, the ancient Mayans introduced the world to many foods we eat every day, like tomatoes and corn.  Not only were they great astronomers and mathematicians, they were also masters of agriculture. Some of my favorite foods—chocolate, vanilla, and avocado—all owe a tip of the hat to those old Yucatáns.

 Anyways, 2012…don’t buy into the fear mongering.  Instead of fretting about the future and doubtful catastrophes, I suggest you make a nice cup of cocoa (thanks again, Mayans!), and think nice thoughts.

And, stop worrying about killer poodles.  It’s not going to happen.

10 Maya foods that changed the world’s eating habits

Posted By: Kelly K.

Is the milk still good?

Back when I was a young man, my refrigerator was the nightmare of mothers and epidemiologists everywhere. I kept food until it turned moldy, smelled bad, or started to move. Now, I’m a lot better about tossing old fruit and vegetables.  I know carrots taste better when they’re fresh, oranges are juicier, and celery crunchier. Still, I need help when it came to knowing when some food was past its prime and that’s where StillTasty comes in.

StillTasty gives me the recommended storage length for thousands of foods and beverages. It tells me how to identify when a fruit or vegetable is ripe, how long its good, and how to store it to maximize its freshness. It’s also got a FAQ section where I learned I should never eat the pizza that’s been lying on the coffee table all night long, no matter how tempting.  Dang.

StillTasty – Save Money, Eat Better, Help The Environment

Posted by: Kelly K.

The All-Pro Diet

If you are a fan of pro football, you know Tony Gonzales is arguably the best Tight End of all time but what you probably did not know is that he credits a plant-based diet for his continued success at an age when most pro athletes begin thinking of retirement. While Gonzales is not a vegetarian he is scrupulous about what he eats and makes sure to get most of his calories from plants:

“It’s clean eating, from a 100% grass-fed source,” says Gonzalez, obtained in April from the Kansas City Chiefs for a second-round pick.

 

“You have to put good stuff in your body. Everybody should, but especially athletes. We’re high-performance machines. You wouldn’t put regular gas in a race car. Jimmie Johnson is going to put the high-octane, good stuff in there. It’s the same thing for football players. You’d be surprised by how many players don’t do it. But I’ve seen the results.”

And at 6′ 5″ and 243 lbs, Gonzales puts to rest the myth that one can only maintain muscle mass with a diet heavy in animal protein. Gonzales’ story is a good reminder that eating right is about striking a balance and finding a diet you can live with year round, You can read the rest of the story, here.

Posted by: Dan

Back in the Saddle

Well, it has been far too long since our last posting here but fittingly, we return with more pearls of wisdom from our favorite food writer, Michal Pollan. Pollan is back with another unique insight into America’s peculiar food culture. Pivoting off the release of the new movie, “Julie & Julia” Pollan offers up his take on the state of cooking in America’s kitchen. And it looks like we should qualify that as  “cooking:”

I spent an enlightening if somewhat depressing hour on the phone with a veteran food-marketing researcher, Harry Balzer, who explained that “people call things ‘cooking’ today that would roll their grandmother in her grave — heating up a can of soup or microwaving a frozen pizza.” Balzer has been studying American eating habits since 1978; the NPD Group, the firm he works for, collects data from a pool of 2,000 food diaries to track American eating habits. Years ago Balzer noticed that the definition of cooking held by his respondents had grown so broad as to be meaningless, so the firm tightened up the meaning of “to cook” at least slightly to capture what was really going on in American kitchens. To cook from scratch, they decreed, means to prepare a main dish that requires some degree of “assembly of elements.” So microwaving a pizza doesn’t count as cooking, though washing a head of lettuce and pouring bottled dressing over it does. Under this dispensation, you’re also cooking when you spread mayonnaise on a slice of bread and pile on some cold cuts or a hamburger patty. (Currently the most popular meal in America, at both lunch and dinner, is a sandwich; the No. 1 accompanying beverage is a soda.)

It’s an interesting article and it picks up on many themes familiar to Pollan readers including the creeping normalization of processed foods in American food culture and our outright alienation from the act of cooking. Read the whole story, here.

Posted by: Dan

Green Solutions: Low-Tech Edition

Wasted food is just about the saddest thing we come across in the food industry. At best, this waste finds its way to the compost bin, at worst, it goes out in the garbage. One restauranteur in Utah seems to have hit upon a better solution:

Sean Wharton, owner of The Gateway Grill in Kamas, has an interesting way of dealing with food waste: He gives excess food his customers didn’t pig out on to his pigs.

“I think it’s my effort to give back to society and be more of a producer than a consumer,” Wharton said.

We applaud Sean Wharton for his creative thinking and we welcome the opportunity to post a cute piggie picture:

AWWWW!!!

Posted By: Dan

Giants Ace Matt Cain Visits the POH Kitchen!

Some of you may have heard the buzz that there was a Matt Cain sighting at Project Open Hand last week.  For those of you that are not sports fanatics, Matt is a starting pitcher for the San Francisco Giants.  

As the spokesperson for our upcoming Plate to Plate 5K event in August, he came in to film a TV commercial for Plate to Plate.  He spent most of his time in the kitchen and on the mid-day line.  His first scene took place peeling carrots with Plate to Plate’s two new interns Kari Scheidt and Sarah Hedayati. After reciting some lines for the commercial, Matt, and soon-to-be wife Chelsea, took to the line to help package our hot meals for the afternoon.

It was great to host both Matt & Chelsea at POH. They were so friendly and interested in Project Open Hand’s mission. They weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and see what it was like to volunteer here.

For those of you that got to meet and/or be filmed volunteering with Matt, congratulations on your 15 minutes of fame!  For those of you that missed it, keep an eye out for this exciting commercial to be aired on Comcast Sports Net.

Posted By: Sarah

Blackout!

  In this modern world, a sudden loss of electricity can really throw us for a loop. In a high-volume food service operation like Open Hand, a power outage has the potential to be catastrophic when you consider how much of our day-to-day operation relies on electricity. We were reminded of this the other day when a transformer vault – I don’t pretend to know what that is – suddenly exploded. Without warning, all power to the building went out on an otherwise quiet Friday morning and if you wandered out onto Polk Street and looked north, you would have seen flames and black smoke shooting up from a manhole (some awesome pics, here).

Meanwhile, back at POH, staff and volunteers were busy making plans to pack meals by hand. A hand-crimping meal-lidder was located so that meals could be packed in foil containers and volunteers gathered to work under the feeble glow of emergency lights. No one complained, they simply put their heads down and got the job done.

Down in the Distribution department, Tim C. and the gang were busy patching together route sheets – a job usually accomplished with computers and printers – cutting and pasting together the guides that volunteers would use to deliver meals to clients. And in a final bit of adventure, appropriate given the days events, drivers managed to outfox a particularly unhelpful meter maid who had blocked access to our street. Defying the meter maids “orders” drivers made an end run to the garage, returning all vehicles to storage before anyone could stop them!

It was a crazy day for all and a challenging day for many and yet, the meals went out, as they always do, with love. We salute our dedicated staff and volunteers who went above and beyond the call for the sake of our mission.

Posted by: Dan

Sweet Stuff

When I was a kid we weren’t allowed to have sugar because it was going to “rot your teeth,” “have you bouncing off the walls,” or “ruin your appetite.”

“Sugar’s” come a long way since then.  Mostly it’s come in the form of high fructose corn syrup which I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, probably because it’s in the media and my level of awareness has been raised http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/high-fructose-corn-syrup.htm , but also because there’s a 3 year old in my house and I look at labels a lot more than I used to. 

This stuff is everywhere!  Especially in things that kids most like to consume, like Ketchup, the favorite condiment of just about everyone under the age of 12.   We try to stay away from the overly process convenience foods where the high fructose corn syrup and other scary ingredients usually hide, but convenience is attractive because we have busy lives and things that take five minutes to cook…well, they take 5 minutes to cook, but that’s sort of another post.

Sugar’s not so bad when you make the choice to eat it, it’s when they sneak it in there and don’t go out of the way to tell you, that’s when it feels like a mean game.  And don’t we have enough to worry about already just keeping little people fed in general?

We’ve been working hard to keep the processed, sugary food out of our kitchen.  A major way we’ve done that at home is signing on with Community Supported Agriculture CSA http://www.localharvest.org/csa/ , we get a box of locally grown organic fruits and veggies delivered once a week at about the same price we’d pay at the store.  We always have a fresh alternative in the house now.   There’s still a box chicken nuggets there, too.  Real change happens slowly, but it does happen.

And if you’re curious about just how much corn may be hidden in your diet, here’s a great documentary http://www.kingcorn.net/

Posted by: Jessica