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Sourdough Bread Has Most Benefits

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Not all bread is created equal. The type of toast you eat for breakfast can affect how your body responds to lunch, a University of Guelph researcher has discovered.

Prof. Terry Graham studied four types of breads to determine which had the most positive health effects when it comes to carbohydrate metabolism, blood sugar and insulin levels.

“There’s an urban myth that if you want to lose weight, you shouldn’t eat bread,” said the human health and nutritional sciences professor. “But the truth is, bread is one of our biggest sources of grains and has a number of healthy benefits. With this study we wanted to find out which breads are better so that we can optimize the benefits by combining them into one type of bread.”

Using white, whole wheat, whole wheat with barley and sourdough white breads, Graham and a team of researchers examined how subjects responded just hours after eating the bread for breakfast and again just hours after eating a standard lunch.

The subjects, who were overweight and ranged between 50 and 60 years of age, showed the most positive body responses after eating sourdough white bread, and those positive responses remained even after eating a second meal that didn’t include bread.

“With the sourdough, the subjects’ blood sugar levels were lower for a similar rise in blood insulin,” said Graham, whose findings are to be published in the British Journal of Nutrition. “What was even more interesting was that this positive effect remained during their second meal and lasted even hours after. This shows that what you have for breakfast influences how your body will respond to lunch.”

He said it’s likely that the fermentation of the sourdough changes the nature of the starches in the bread, creating a more beneficial bread.

And while sourdough came out on top, the whole wheat varieties used in the study came out on bottom – even below white bread.

The whole wheat breads caused blood sugar levels to spike, and these high levels lasted well after lunch.

Graham said the less positive blood responses sparked by the whole wheat are likely due to the fact that the milling process involved in making the whole wheat bread used in the study is similar to that used for white bread. This is not the case with all whole wheat or whole grain breads, he added.

“The parts of the grain like wheat germ and bran that have the health benefits are taken out to create white flour and then partially added back in to make whole wheat. Based on the findings of this study, as well as a followup study using whole grain rather than whole wheat, we are learning that the best way to get these nutrients is through a whole grain bread, not whole wheat.”

Funded by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the results of this study have led Graham and a team of researchers to continue studying the healthy benefits of sourdough bread and whole grain.

In collaboration with Scarborough bakery Stonemill Bakehouse, they have developed a whole grain sourdough bread and are currently testing the long-term health benefits of the bread on subjects. They are comparing the results to the subjects’ responses to a standard white bread.

Source: www.uoguelph.ca

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How The Ancient Romans Made MSG

Friday, April 15th, 2011

Monosodium glutamate is a food additive that enhances flavor. Although it’s frowned upon today, the ancient Romans loved it and ate it with almost every meal.

There’s been some debate over what exactly monosodium glutamate does to people. Some people say it gives them severe headaches, numbness, weakness, and even heart palpitations. Scientists could confirm that it does give some people short-lived reactions, but no tests showed that it had long-term health effects. Some say that it’s an addictive substance which causes people to crave it repeatedly if they try it too often. Others say it’s just a flavor enhancer, and people crave it because it makes things taste better.

The chemical is listed as ‘safe’ by the FDA, although they do require it to be clearly listed as an additive in any food product that uses it. It’s most often found in canned soups and vegetables. Modern MSG is manufactured using genetically engineered bacteria. They take in nutrients and excrete glutamic acid. The acid is concentrated, and sodium is added to make the final product.

The process sounds very modern, but MSG has been around for a very long time. It was a common food additive during the time of ancient Rome, added to almost all Roman dishes. The Romans had a lot of technology for their time, but they couldn’t genetically engineer bacteria. So how did they come up with MSG? Believe it or not, they used an even more disgusting process than bacteria excretions. The Romans had a fish paste called garum that they exported everywhere. They made it by filling pots with alternating layers of fish – or just fish guts – and salt and letting those pots lie out in the sun for a while.

As the mixture lay out in the sun, the stomach acids for the fish ate through their bodies. They eventually broke down the entire fish, turning the whole thing into a dark brown oily goo. When protein is broken down, the amino acid chains in the protein are freed up. One of these acid chains contains glutamic acid, which meets up with sodium from the salt and forms MSG. The Romans were such fans of the flavor enhancer that they even put it in sweets like custard. They also died off in droves, so anyone who wishes to recreate garum Roman-style — don’t do it. Try organizing gladiator-style games in the back yard as a safer alternative.

Source: io9.com

*Research has shown that, while large doses of MSG given without food may elicit more symptoms than a placebo in individuals who believe that they react adversely to MSG, the frequency of the responses was low and the responses reported were inconsistent, not reproducible, and not observed when MSG was given with food.

No statistical association has been demonstrated under controlled conditions, even in studies with people convinced that they are sensitive to it.

Adequately controlling for experimental bias includes a double-blind placebo-controlled (DBPC) experimental design and the application in capsules because of the strong and unique after-taste of glutamates.

In a study performed by Tarasoff and Kelly (1993) 71 fasting participants were given 5 g of MSG and then administered a standard breakfast. There was only one reaction, and it was to the placebo in a self-identified MSG sensitive individual.

In a different study done by Geha et al. (2000), they tested the reaction of 130 subjects that reported sensitivity to MSG. Multiple DBPC trials were performed and only subjects with at least two symptoms proceeded. Only 2 people out of the whole study responded in all four challenges. Because of this low prevalence, the researchers concluded that the response to MSG was not reproducible

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‘Oldest’ Winery Discovered In Armenian Cave

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

Forget France. It turns out, the real birthplace of wine may be in a cave in Armenia.

An international research team says it has found the world’s oldest winery in a paper published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Archaeological Science.

“It’s the oldest proven case of documented and dedicated wine production, stretching back the horizons of this important development by thousands of years,” said Gregory Areshian, co-director of the excavation and assistant director of the University of California Los Angeles’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

Areshian says that clay pots and vats discovered at a sprawling cave system in southern Armenia near the border with Iran shows signs of an organized effort to press and distill grapes during the Copper Age, about 6,000 years ago.

The roof of the cave had collapsed long ago, sealing in the rudimentary winery and preserving the remnants under an airtight layer of rock and other debris, leading to the remarkable find.

The team, led by Hans Barnard from UCLA, found a simple wine press, vats with residue, remnants of grape vines and seeds, and a small cup that might have been used to sample the goods.

The press and wide shallow vat are similar to foot-stomping type equipment used by people throughout the region even up into the 19th century.

The wine might have tasted similar to modern vintages as well. Botanists examining the find say it was the species Vitis vinifera, the same one used to produce the vast majority of wine today.

Areshian says the wine would be comparable to a modern unfiltered red wine, and may have had a similar taste to a merlot. He says that he would like to make a recreation of the whole press and assembly to make wine using local heritage grape varietals, just to sample it and see what challenges the Bronze-age vintners may have faced.

Before this find, Areshian says, the oldest known winery was in Israel, and dated to 1650 BC.

The find is an important link in the development of wine culture throughout the region, says Dr. Patrick McGovern, a senior research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

It fits with the first evidence of grape domestication a thousand years earlier, and the later widespread wine distribution and consumption across the Caucasus and Mediterranean.

“99% of the wine we drink today stems from that earliest grapevine domestication event that now seems clearly to have taken place in that region,” says McGovern, author of Uncorking the Past, a history of ancient wine-making.

Not much is known about the people who distilled and drank the wine. But the studies authors say it’s clear that it was probably meant for ceremonial purposes, and not for getting drunk on.

Areshian said that recent excavation at the cave has shown that it was once an important cemetery site, and that the production of wine indicated a complex belief system in which the drink was probably incorporated into funeral ceremonies.

Still, McGovern says, growing grains and fruits for producing and drinking alcohol is an important spark that led to trade and development of agriculture in many different cultures.

“This find shows that there was a high degree of agriculture and horticultural skill even back in 4,000 BC,” says Areshian. “Producing this wine would have been high technology of the time incorporating detailed knowledge of watering cycles, pruning the vines, how to deal with pests and the fermentation process itself, which is more complex than brewing beer.”

Source: CNN

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I Drink, Therefor I Am

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

New evidence could strengthen the argument that the Stone Age domestication of cereals—which in turn led to farming and “settled behavior”—was intended for beer, not food. Yes, that’s right: Without beer, there might never have been civilization.

It’s well-known that beer is the best. But it’s not quite as well-known that you potentially owe beer for all of the things you love about civilization, like the iPhone, or not living in a cave. The beer and civilization theory, advanced by some archaeologists for a while now, holds that the rise of agriculture during the Neolithic Period of the Stone Age was a result of people’s thirst for beer, and not because they planned on using grains for food.

Brian Hayden, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada, says that he has more evidence to buttress that theory. For one thing, the archeological finds seem to indicate that cereal composed only a small part of most people’s diets, likely because the plants are a pain in the ass to convert to food. And yet, Hayden points out, there are signs that people went well out of their way to obtain cereal grains. His theory is that the difficulty of processing the grains made them good for feasts, where difficult, expensive and uncommon foods would have been prized (how Hayden has any idea what Neolithic people were thinking or doing or what they would have “prized” is another discussion altogether). He tells LiveScience:

“It’s not that drinking and brewing by itself helped start cultivation, it’s this context of feasts that links beer and the emergence of complex societies,” Hayden said….

“Feasts are essential in traditional societies for creating debts, for creating factions, for creating bonds between people, for creating political power, for creating support networks, and all of this is essential for developing more complex kinds of societies,” Hayden explained. “Feasts are reciprocal – if I invite you to my feast, you have the obligation to invite me to yours. If I give you something like a pig or a pot of beer, you’re obligated to do the same for me or even more.”

So, there you have it: Bringing a six-pack to your friends’ apartments is just about the most civilized thing you can do. Or a pig. Bringing a pig is civilized, too.

Source: Gawker

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