Beauty Health for Life

The Disease Management Care Blog cant believe its only a week until Thanksgiving.  One more reminder of how time flies is this holiday themed Cavalcade that is hosted by Nancy Germond at the Insurance Writer Blog.  Enoy!

When you really start cooking for yourself, the best part (beyond the actual eating) is amassing a collection of foods you never thought you’d try, much less learn to love. My kitchen is filled with flavor right now, ranging from vinegars, spices, herbs, and oils to starches, baking supplies, and preserves. I couldn’t have imagined this in college, when my pantry consisted of ketchup and five boxes of Kix.

However, there is a dark side to the glorious assembly.

Filling the nooks and crannies of my shelves, between the grand boxes of lasagna noodles and flasks of sesame oil, are a billion little bags of atypical, mostly-used edibles. Currently, they consist of:

• 1/2 cup Arborio rice
• 1/3 cup dried cranberries
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 3/4 vanilla bean
• 7 vials of food coloring (3 primary, 4 neon)
• 3 half-full jars of honey
• 8 pistachios
• 12 unshelled peanuts
• 1 small jar chocolate sauce (from 2008)
• 1 frozen bag yellow tomato slices
• 6 coffee samples
• 1/2 box superfine sugar
• 2/3 huge bag masa harina
• 4 to 6 drops peppermint extract
• 1 cup evaporated milk
• 1/2 cup fat free sour cream (I can never tell when it goes bad.)
• Red curry paste from before I was born (or thereabouts)
• 1 jar organic tahini, minus 2 tablespoons
• 1 canister Crystal Lite pink lemonade
• More tea than any 15 people need (Note: I don’t drink tea.)
• So many capers. SO. MANY. CAPERS.

The capers, tahini, evaporated milk, and various odds and ends will eventually be turned into a recipe. Other items (and I’m looking at you, chocolate sauce from the beginning of time) will probably suck up space until we move.

Consequently, I love dishes that can eliminate two or three strange elements. Banana Oatmeal Muffins is just such a recipe. Sure, it’s easy, delicious, and makes for an excellent on-the-go breakfast, but you can also throw in just about anything to jazz it up. (Note: except the capers. That would be bad.)

Have a half a bag of oat flour? It goes in here. Two about-to-go-bad bananas? Gone. A few Craisins? Plop ‘em in the bowl. Pistachios, peanuts, honey – even that jar of chocolate sauce wouldn’t be out of place. (Er, maybe.) Your taste buds are your only limits.

So, to end this post, a toast: Here’s to all those little weird things clogging up your cabinets. May they fill your muffins as much as your heart. (Or something.)

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If you like this recipe, you might also dig:

• Blueberry Muffins
• Chai-Spiced Apple Oatmeal Bread
• Grilled Bananas and Chocolate

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Banana Oatmeal Muffins
Makes 12 muffins.
Adapted from Half-Baked Baker.


1 1/4 cup rolled oats (I used Quaker Old-Fashioned – Kris)
1/2 cup fat-free sour cream
1/2 cup skim milk
1 1/2 cups oat flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large ripe bananas, mashed
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup raisins
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

NOTE: If you do not have oat flour on hand (which I don’t), simply whirl 2 cups rolled oats in a food processor until they reach a flour-like consistency. This will create about 1 1/2 cups oat flour.

1) Preheat oven to 400°F.

2) In a large bowl, stir oats, sour cream, and milk together until combined. Set aside for 10 minutes.

3) In a medium bowl, whisk together oat flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside.

4) In a small bowl, mix raisins and all-purpose flour. Set aside.

5) To the oat/sour cream mixture, add brown sugar, vegetable oil, bananas, egg, and vanilla extract. Stir to combine. Add oat flour mixture. Stir until just moistened. Add raisins. Stir until incorporated.

6) Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with cooking spray (or use muffin cups). Evenly distribute batter among cups. Bake 18-20 minutes, until muffins are golden brown and they pass the toothpick test. Remove from oven and cool in pan for 5 minutes. Flip muffins out of pan. Enjoy warm or let cool completely.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, and Price Per Serving
226 calories, 8.3 g fat, 3 g fiber, $0.33

Calculations
NOTE: My oat flour calculations are for food-processed oatmeal, as described in the note above.
1 1/4 cup rolled oats (Quaker Old-Fashioned): 375 calories, 7.5 g fat, 10 g fiber, $0.34
1/2 cup fat-free sour cream: 120 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g fiber, $0.89
1/2 cup skim milk: 45 calories, 0.4 g fat, 0 g fiber, $0.12
1 1/2 cups oat flour: 600 calories, 12 g fat, 16 g fiber, $0.54
1/2 tsp cinnamon: 3 calories, 0 g fat, 0.6 g fiber, $0.01
1/2 tsp nutmeg: 6 calories, 0.4 g fat, 0.2 g fiber, $0.03
1/2 tsp salt: negligible calories, fat, and fiber, $0.01
2 tsp baking powder: 5 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g fiber, $0.07
1 tsp baking soda: negligible calories, fat, and fiber, $0.01
1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed: 344 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g fiber, $0.29
1/3 cup vegetable oil: 646 calories, 73.1 g fat, 0 g fiber, $0.48
2 large ripe bananas, mashed: 242 calories, 0.8 g fat, 7.1 g fiber, $0.46
1 large egg, lightly beaten: 74 calories, 5 g fat, 0 g fiber, $0.21
1 teaspoon vanilla extract: 12 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g fiber, $0.05
1/2 cup raisins: 217 calories, 0.4 g fat, 2.7 g fiber, $0.44
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour: 27 calories, 0.1 g fat, 0.2 g fiber, $0.01
TOTAL: 2716 calories, 99.7 g fat, 36.8 g fiber, $3.96
PER SERVING (TOTAL/12): 226 calories, 8.3 g fat, 3 g fiber, $0.33

Frequent, regular consumption has strongest effect and is linked to more aggressive disease

Regular consumption of deep-fried foods such as French fries, fried chicken and doughnuts is associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer, and the effect appears to be slightly stronger with regard to more aggressive forms of the disease, according to a study by investigators at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Corresponding author Janet L. Stanford, Ph.D., and colleagues Marni Stott-Miller, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow and Marian Neuhouser, Ph.D., all of the Hutchinson Center’s Public Health Sciences Division, have published their findings online in The Prostate.

While previous studies have suggested that eating foods made with high-heat cooking methods, such as grilled meats, may increase the risk of prostate cancer, this is the first study to examine the addition of deep frying to the equation.

From French fries to doughnuts: Eating more than once a week may raise risk

Specifically, Stanford, co-director of the Hutchinson Center’s Program in Prostate Cancer Research, and colleagues found that men who reported eating French fries, fried chicken, fried fish and/or doughnuts at least once a week were at an increased risk of prostate cancer as compared to men who said they ate such foods less than once a month.

In particular, men who ate one or more of these foods at least weekly had an increased risk of prostate cancer that ranged from 30 to 37 percent. Weekly consumption of these foods was associated also with a slightly greater risk of more aggressive prostate cancer. The researchers controlled for factors such as age, race, family history of prostate cancer, body-mass index and PSA screening history when calculating the association between eating deep-fried foods and prostate cancer risk.

“The link between prostate cancer and select deep-fried foods appeared to be limited to the highest level of consumption – defined in our study as more than once a week – which suggests that regular consumption of deep-fried foods confers particular risk for developing prostate cancer,” Stanford said.

Deep frying may trigger formation of carcinogens in food

Possible mechanisms behind the increased cancer risk, Stanford hypothesizes, include the fact that when oil is heated to temperatures suitable for deep frying, potentially carcinogenic compounds can form in the fried food. They include acrylamide (found in carbohydrate-rich foods such as French fries), heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (chemicals formed when meat is cooked at high temperatures), aldehyde (an organic compound found in perfume) and acrolein (a chemical found in herbicides). These toxic compounds are increased with re-use of oil and increased length of frying time.

Foods cooked with high heat also contain high levels of advanced glycation endproducts, or AGEs, which have been associated with chronic inflammation and oxidative stress. Deep-fried foods are among the highest in AGE content. A chicken breast deep fried for 20 minutes contains more than nine times the amount of AGEs as a chicken breast boiled for an hour, for example.

For the study, Stanford and colleagues analyzed data from two prior population-based case-control studies involving a total of 1,549 men diagnosed with prostate cancer and 1,492 age-matched healthy controls. The men were Caucasian and African-American Seattle-area residents and ranged in age from 35 to 74 years. Participants were asked to fill out a dietary questionnaire about their usual food intake, including specific deep-fried foods.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to look at the association between intake of deep-fried food and risk of prostate cancer,” Stanford said. However, deep-fried foods have previously been linked to cancers of the breast, lung, pancreas, head and neck, and esophagus.

Because deep-fried foods are primarily eaten outside the home, it is possible that the link between these foods and prostate cancer risk may be a sign of high consumption of fast foods in general, the authors wrote, citing the dramatic increase in fast-food restaurants and fast-food consumption in the U.S. in the past several decades.