Archive for May, 2010

Natural chemicals found in onions and garlic that may protect against cancer

Onions & Garlic

Bioflavonoids are complex compounds found in many plants, especially citrus fruit. They are closely linked to vitamin C and enhance its effects. They are often trumpeted for their antioxidant effects, and because they inhibit histamine release are thought beneficial for inflammatory or allergic conditions.

There are several hundred different kinds of bioflavonoid, many of which have been recognized for particular health benefits. The rutin in buckwheat, for instance, is thought to be good for hemorrhoids and hypertension. The anthocyanidins in berries are thought to be powerful antioxidants. One of the most interesting is quercetin, which is found predominantly in onions and garlic. Quercetin is thought to inhibit the growth of cancer cells, especially breast cancer and leukemia. It’s also thought to help in healing wounds and preventing cataracts.

SOURCE: 101 Facts You Should Know About Food, John Farndon

Why Are the Oils Liquid and the Fats Solid?

Oils and fats

Oils are liquid if they melt below ambient temperatures, and fats are solid if they do not melt at ambient temperatures.  At the usual room temperatures in the United States, lamb tallow is one of the hardest fats, butter is a soft fat, chicken fat is almost liquid, lard can be a hard fat or a soft fat depending on what kind of a diet the animals ate, palm oil is a soft fat, and olive oil is a liquid. Canola, corn, cottonseed, peanut, safflower, soybean, or sunflower oils are very liquid and they have not been partially hydrogenated. Thus the natural fats range from very hard fats to very soft fats to viscous oils to liquid oils.

Whether these food lipids are called fats or oils sometimes depends on the ambient temperature where they originate. Palm Oil and Olive Oil are fruit oils, and Coconut Oil is from a fruit, which is also a seed; they are liquids at the ambient temperature where they are produced. Palm kernel oil is a seed oil that is liquid in the tropics. Some of the oils like olive oil are very solid when they are stored in the refrigerator. Some like palm oil are separated into several semi-solid forms for use in foods. Figure 1.4 shows what these fats and oils look like at different temperatures.

Figure 1.4:Melting Characteristics of Oil

The practice of calling animal fats “saturated” is not only misleading, it is just plain wrong. For example, beef fat is 54 percent unsaturated, lard is 60 percent unsaturated, and chicken fat is about 70 percent unsaturated. This makes these animal fats “less than half” saturated. Therefore, they really should be called unsaturated fats. In fact, none of the naturally occurring fats and oils is made up of only all saturated or all unsaturated fatty acids; rather they are mixtures of different amounts of various fatty acids.

SOURCE:  Know Your Fats : The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol; Mary G. Enig, PhD

The Five Major Taste of Food

Taste of Food

The taste of a food is a combination of five major tastes—salt, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. It is complex and hard to describe completely. Sweet and salt tastes are detected primarily on the tip of the tongue, and so they are detected quickly, whereas bitter tastes are detected mainly by taste buds at the back of the tongue. It takes longer to perceive a bitter taste and it lingers in the mouth; thus, bitter foods are often described as having an aftertaste. Sour tastes are mainly detected by the taste buds along the side of the tongue.

Sugars, alcohols, aldehydes, and certain amino acids taste sweet to varying degrees. Acids (such as vinegar, lemon juice, and the many organic acids present in fruits) contribute the sour taste, saltiness is due to salts, including sodium chloride, and bitter tastes are due to alkaloids such as caffeine, theobromine, quinine, and other bitter compounds.

Umami is a taste that recently has been added to the other four. It is a savory taste given by ingredients such as monosodium glutamate (MSG) and other flavor enhancers. The umami taste is significant in Japanese foods and in snack foods such as taco-flavored chips.