Debunking the Bunk - Coffee

So the common wisdom about coffee seems to be that it's bad for you. Especially if you drink it in large quantities (I've heard tales of people drinking 8 pots a day, or of a girl working in a coffee shop who was admitted to the hospital for heart palpitations after drinking 10 espressos or so).

So not the best idea to drink 10 shots of espresso in a short time. Moderation is key.

But now, the common wisdom about coffee seems to be shifting (at least among scientists who've studied coffee's effect). Coffee's bad reputation seems to be more image than substance. In the past, coffee has been linked to anything from breast cancer to pancreatic cancer to heart disease. One hypothesis for the supposed bad effect of coffee (from this book) is that coffee often went hand in hand with cigarette smoking, and that it was the smoking that truly caused the health problems.

So now we're supposed to just on the coffee bandwagon? What's the deal?

A study cited in Science Daily says that women who drink 2-3 cups of caffeinated coffee a day decrease their chance of death from heart disease by 25%, and decrease their chance of death by cancer or heart disease by 18%. People drinking decaf coffee also had a lower rate of death than those not drinking coffee. Men had neither a higher nor lower risk associated with coffee.

Another study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (mentioned in this Senior Health article) says that regular coffee drinking of up to 6 cups a day has no negative effect for either men or women.

The Bad Stuff

1. Caffeine can have negative effects ranging from an increase in anxiety, withdrawal headaches, irritability, shakiness, and insomnia.

2. Drinking espresso, French press, or other coffee that doesn't drip through a paper filter can increase your cholesterol by a few points.

3. Drinking a lot of coffee may increase your risk for developing osteoporosis or breaking a bone.

4. Not so yummy flavors, such as blueberry (I swear, one day at work when someone was brewing blueberry coffee, I had no idea what the smell was and I really honestly though that someone had forgotten to take out the trash).

5. If you already have heart disease? No dice. Coffee can increase your risk of heart attack or stroke.

The Good Stuff

1. Lower chance of developing kidney stones, gallstones, Parkinson's, colon cancer, or type 2 diabetes.

2. Less chance that you'll voluntarily depart this earthly coil - coffee (and other caffeinated beverages) often act like mild anti-depressants. Two studies showed that suicides are as much as 50% lower among coffee drinkers.

3. Lower rates of heart disease for women.

4. Yummy flavors such as hazelnut, mocha, pumpkin.

5. Coffee may be one of our highest sources of antioxidants, but whether that's because we drink a boatload of coffee, or that we don't eat enough other antioxidant food isn't specified. Coffee came out ahead of tea, chocolate or fruit on the antioxidant-o-meter. The next highest sources of antioxidants were black tea, bananas, dried beans (do people eat dried beans and do they have the same antioxidant level well cooked?), corn, red wine, lager beer (go flip cup!), apples, tomatoes, and potatoes.

However, the docs don't recommend adding coffee to your diet for health reasons. Because while coffee does have a lot of antioxidants, the other healthy food antioxidant sources (such as fruit and veggies) offer more in terms of total nutrition. And if you're like me and have to add a good deal of milk and sugar to coffee to make it palatable, well that pretty much negates the health benefit, right? Now I want some decaf anyway...

Debunking the Bunk - Coconut

Coconut was one of the Big Evils when I was growing up. High in sat fat, bad for cholesterol, one of those foods that just wasn't worth it. It helped that I've never liked coconut, so it was one of those "bad" foods that I never missed. Something about the texture of it just doesn't sit right with me.

The Bad Stuff
And this post isn't to totally debunk coconut as bad, because it's never going to be one of those antioxidant superfoods we keep hearing about. It is high in saturated fat (one two-ounce piece contains more than 13g, two thirds the recommended daily limit) and delivers a higher sat-fat punch than butter, lard or margarine. Coconut oil also substantially elevates LDL (bad) cholesterol.

Given all this, you're probably asking right about now how coconut made it into my Debunking the Bunk series, right?

The Not-So-Bad Stuff
Well, it turns out that coconut isn't as bad as we thought it was. Sure, it's got sat fat, and it will raise your LDL if you eat too much of it. However, companies are now researching using coconut oil in place of the all nasty partially hydrogenated (trans fat) oils (shout out to my mother for being thoroughly ahead of the curve and teaching me at a very early age that partially hydrogenated was bad, before any of us had even heard the words "trans fat"). And the reason they're looking to use coconut oil is that while it does raise LDL, it also significantly raises HDL (good) cholesterol, whereas trans fats raise LDL and lower HDL. (Source)

The Good Stuff
So I read up on the good side of coconut at this obviously biased very helpful site. They claim that coconut is used by those with thyroid issues to increase body metabolism and for others to lose weight (wait, saturated fat helps us lose weight? Yippee!!). It's also used for soaps and they claim it's one of the healthiest products you can put on your skin (unless, of course, you're going to go out and fry in the sun in it). The claim is that the past studies done on coconut were done on hydrogenated coconut oil, which is altered from its original form (the source listed in the not-so-bad section makes no mention of what kind of oil was studied).

In studies, the medical community seems to be on board with the fact that coconut can be a powerful tool to use again immune diseases. Published studies in medical journals (mentioned at a site which conveniently doesn't link to them) list the following as some healthy applications of coconut:

- Kills a variety of fungi, bacteria, and parasites
- Improves absorption of vitamins and minerals
- Reduces certain problems associated with pancreatitis, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, osteoporosis, gallbladder disease, Crohn's disease, ulcers, cancer, periodontal disease, epileptic seizures, kidney disease (and disolves kidney stones), liver disease, psoriasis, and eczema
- Reduces inflammation and aids in tissue repair
- Helps prevent obesity and is lower in fat than other oils
- Softens skin and prevents dryness and cracking, prevents wrinkles and age spots, promotes healthy hair and complexion
- Helps control dandruff
- Does your laundry and pays all your bills

Ok, so that last one was just to see if you were paying attention.

Do I detect a note of cynicism?
Now, thing is, what with this litany of benefits from coconut, you'd think that that's all we'd be hearing about, right? Coconut this, coconut that. It would be the new blueberry, the new pomegranate, the new acai berry. Pardon me if I'm a little skeptical, but seriously, if coconut were all that, wouldn't doctors be prescribing it by the boatload? Our supermarkets would have a whole aisle devoted to coconut. And while it may have the effect as listed above on people, I tend to be skeptical about one kind of food that seems to be able to do absolutely anything. Cancer? Diabetes? Beautiful skin? Hmm.

So I'm debunking the fact that coconut is the evil is was always thought to be (at least, when I was growing up). But I'm not entirely swayed in the other direction. I'll wait it out and see whether all the happy happy coconut joy holds out (hope it does) or whether we should just put the lime in the coconut on special occasions.

Debunking the Bunk - Eggs

So there are foods out there that we were raised "knowing" were bad for you. Based on the nutrition research of the day, some foods at one point in time were thought to have a decidedly negative effect on your health. Among them: eggs, olive oil, coconut, chocolate, cupcakes (ok, that last one was wishful thinking). And now we start to hear more recent research about potentially positive effects of these very same foods. Whether that will be born out by time remains to be seen. However, some of these foods just aren't the evils they were made out to be.

First up: Eggs.

I grew up in the era of the Bad Egg. The Bad Egg was a super injection of bad cholesterol that put plaque layers directly onto your arteries. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Prior to the discovery of cholesterol, eggs were considered "the perfect food, the centerpiece of solid breakfasts, the hearty garnishes atop salads and side dishes" (Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy). After the discovery of cholesterol, eggs became a poor choice for nutrition, and correspondingly, the sales fell.

New studies, however, tell a different tale (this information again cited from above linked book).
Here's what these new studies state:

1. Eggs are low in saturated fat
2. They contain protein, polyunsaturated fat, folic acid, and vitamins B and D
3. Their effect on heart disease can't be predicted based on their cholesterol content

There are two types of people: Responders (R) and Nonresponders (NR). Rs reflect the amount of cholesterol they eat in the amount of cholesterol in their bloodstream. NRs can eat cholesterol with only very small changes in the cholesterol in their bloodstream. And eating eggs has very little effect on LDL (bad cholesterol). No research has shown that eating more eggs translates into a higher chance of heart disease (unless you have diabetes).

For a much less scientific, but much more fun to read, test of the effect of eggs on health (of two Aussie men), go here.

This doesn't mean eat all the eggs you ever wanted, especially if they're doused in butter and cheese and fat. But eggs aren't the evil that I always thought them to be, and I won't feel quite so guilty about having some deviled eggs or some scrambled eggs on the rare occasion when I actually feel like having it.

Just for the sake of balance, I plugged "eggs" and "health" into google, to see whether there were any opposing viewpoints in the first page of hits. And all the top results came back with eggs being nutritious and good for you. So, as with anything, eat them in moderation, use common sense, but don't worry about all those Bad Eggs everyone always warned you about (unless you crack them and they're green and shriveled, then they might be bad in a very different way...)

Feta Garlic-Scape Scramble Eggs
3 eggs, whisked
5-10 garlic scapes (can be found in June-July at farmer's markets)
goat cheese feta (as much as desired)
roasted baby red potatoes (optional)
oil
salt/pepper

I basically made scrambled eggs with what I had leftover in my fridge when I got home from the gym one night. If you're short on time, you might not want to include the potatoes, as they generally take forever and an age to roast. They do add some tasty (if high-glycemic) carbs to the eggs, but if you wanted to go more the whole grain route, you could omit the potatoes and put your eggs on top of some multi-grain toast instead.

Potatoes (easy): chop up potatoes in bite sized pieces and lay out on a roasting pan. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast until soft.

Potatoes (complicated): chop up potatoes in bite sized pieces and lay out on a roasting pan. Sprinkle with a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, chopped parsley, mustard, salt, and pepper. Roast until soft. (I only call this complicated because it requires a cutting board and a little bowl for mixing)

Scrambled eggs preparation: chop up the garlic scapes into bit sized pieces. Saute in a pan with olive/grapeseed oil until fragrant, but not until limp. While these are cooking, wash eggs, then crack and whisk yolks into whites. Add eggs to scapes and cook until softly scrambled. Add potatoes and feta and cook until eggs are firm. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve.

One note about garlic scapes: later in the season (or if they're sitting in your fridge for a while, since they do keep a long time), the scapes can become pretty fibrous. You only want to use the end from the thin tip to the bump (I don't know how else to describe this, but there's a bump about halfway up). The thick end is a lot tougher and stringier to chew.