Macha Pan

I love green tea products. Green tea ice-cream, green tea cake, green tea syrup with red beans. But I'm not crazy about green tea. Don't know why.

Anyway, I was thinking to myself this morning: why isn't there a green tea bread? I looked it up on allrecipes.com and there was none. So, to satisfy my desire to see GREEN TEA BREAD, I decided to create my own confection. (I looked it up again and found a green-tea with red-bean filling bun on MamaFami's Spice & Splendor which looks really nice as well.

Here's what I used:
400gms bread flour
280mls water
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp milk powder
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp green tea powder
1.5 tsp yeast
50gm pumpkin seeds (whole, not chopped)
1 tsp black sesame seeds

Putting it all in the breadmaker with a setting for a 1.5lb dark loaf, this is the result after 3h 45mins:
A very light and refreshing chewing experience. Despite the pervasive green-ness of the bread, the macha aroma is more of an uplifting aftertaste than an overpowering trip to Osaka.
The occasional surprise of a crunchy-nutty pumpkin seed, and the grittiness of sesame made the bites interesting. Overall a nice mix of flavors, I must say. I'm glad I didn't use butter. Olive oil gave the bread the twang I wanted and didn't drag it down with a bovine heaviness.

Ethan was the first to sample it and for the first time he said, 'NICE BREAD!' There is no greater gratification than to have your two-year old pronounce that on your experimental baking.

So there it is, Macha Pan, my very first confectionary creation!

Nutritiondata is awesome

I haven't visited nutritiondata.com in ages to my loss or rather (weight) gain. It's really fantastic now. Just clicking around on it I've found these new features which are really useful:

1. My Tracking - which allows me to add up the day's foods and analyse its content
2. My Foods - which saves a catalog of my choice of foods (and they have an exhaustive fully-searchable database)


3. Custom food entries - where I can key in the breakdown of a food item/dish which is not on their database, and then save it as one of 'My Foods' (So, using the Asian Food Database on nutritiondata.sg I can build my own catalog - like in Bak Kut Teh above.)


I've also noticed that they have added in information on glycemic index and inflammatory index on top of their classic nutritious and filling scores. Who ever knew that bananas were pro-inflammatory?

Truly amazing.

Know what you're McStuffing your face with

It's good that McD's has taken the lead in providing full disclosure of caloric and nutrient information of the food they sell. They certainly took the lead in making the world fat, it's time they redeemed themselves! You will also notice the same information on all their boxes and wrappers so it's quite easy to workout what you're putting in your body.

I had a Sausage McMuffin meal this morning which comes with a Hash Brown and coffee. It was 466kcals. Not too bad. Rule of thumb for me is to avoid the coke (go for Diet Coke every time) and the fries and you won't do much damage.

Reducing GI does not boost effects of low-calorie diet

A low-glycaemic index diet may not be any help for obese people trying to lose weight, contrary to growing popular belief, suggests a new study out of the US.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota tested whether reducing the glycaemic index of a diet already low in calories would have any further benefit for a group of obese adults.
But although the new trial confirmed the benefit of lowering glycaemic index on insulin sensitivity, it did not impact the subjects' weight, they write in this month's issue of the Journal of Nutrition (135:2387-91).

Source

I am not surprised with this study since it compares the two diets with an equal caloric intake. What readers may be misled to think is that a low-glycemic diet is no better than a high-glycemic one in trying to lose weight. My own experience is that a low-glycemic intake helped me lose 20kgs in 6 months simply by stabilising my sugar levels and preventing hunger-pang-binging-spells.

PCB linked to sperm damage

PERSISTENT chemicals in the environment may be damaging human sperm, an international team of scientists reports today.

The team found an apparent link between levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the bloodstream of more than 700 men and the degree of damage to the DNA in their sperm. The damage is insufficient to affect fertility, and the results are equivocal because one group of men — Inuit from Greenland — did not show any link even though they carried high levels of PCBs in their blood.

Nevertheless the findings, in Human Reproduction, seem certain to cause concern.

PCBs are ubiquitous in the environment and, like DDT, persist for decades. Originally produced in the 1950s and 1960s, they are synthetic organic chemicals, ranging from oily liquids to waxy solids, used for electrical insulation, as plasticisers in paint, plastics and rubber, as pigments and dyes and for many other purposes.

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

Tocotrienol Protects Against Stroke

PALM Tocotrienol Protects Against Stroke Injury Of Brain
Bernama - Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia

The first evidence that palm tocotrienol, an extract from palm oil may protect against stroke injury of brain, was revealed at the International Palm Oil Congress (PIPOC) by Vitamin E researcher, Professor Chandan K Sen.

He said that neuroprotective (brain health) benefits of palm tocotrienol dietary supplement is a new discovery and links the supplement to more and diverse uses.

Findings from Sen's latest research studies showed that even short term dietary intake of palm tocotrienol is readily absorbed by major organs - the brain, the heart, the lungs and the skin.

Source: BERNAMA

Crossing over to the Dark Side

Nobody needs an excuse to eat chocolate. But if ever you're looking for something to ease the guilt, this is it:

Researchers found eating 100g of dark chocolate each day for 15 days lowered blood pressure in the 15 person-study. The University of L'Aquila team also found the body's ability to metabolise sugar - a problem for people with diabetes - was improved. But eating the same quantities of white chocolate did not have an effect, the researchers said. The team said an antioxidant called flavanol was responsible for the effect because it neutralised potentially cell-damaging substances known as oxygen free radicals, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported.

But, to state the obvious:

Dark chocolate contains antioxidants, but also a lot of fat and calories. People who want to add some chocolate to their diet need to subtract an equivalents amount of calories by cutting back on other foods to avoid weight gain.

And coronary heart disease, I might add.

Source: Pakistan Tribune

Other links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3185363.stm
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/88/99702.htm
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/73/81921.htm

Getting back in shape

I've been eating without thinking and neglecting exercise for a couple of months now. Chomping my way steadily up 3kgs since I dared look at the scales. So, today, I decided I will start counting again and logging my exercise and intake.

Input today: 2240cals! (from a kong-fu chau for dinner, and McD's double cheeseburger for lunch) Bad, bad, bad. I'm going to try to get back to a sub 1500cal day in order to lose 1kg a week.

Just to remind us how much a Double Cheese-burger McValue meal can set you back, these are the figures:


Double Cheeseburger = 480cals


Coke = 210cals


French Fries = 453 cals

Eat that all... 1143cals! Doesn't leave much space for anything else does it?

Anyone who needs an Excel worksheet to calculate his input vs. output plus a chart to boot, contact me and I'll send you one! Join me on the crusade against obesity.

Genes 'decide cholesterol levels'

from BBC Health, 11 July 2005

US scientists say they have pinpointed why some people can eat all the chocolate and chips they want and not increase their cholesterol levels. A study by researchers at the Berkeley National Laboratory of identical twins show it really is all in the genes.

Each pairing - of a keen athlete and a couch potato - were allocated either a high or a low fat diet. In the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the scientists said genes, not exercise, decided the effect.

One more reason to not take responsibility and blame your parents! This study shows some are naturally blessed with cholesterol-resistant genes, but the rest of us will have to be extra careful.. At least until natural selection weeds us out of existence! - YY