Environmental Nutrition

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Subscribers Only Debroah Madison Broadway (Bantam Doubleday Dell) 1540 Broadway New York, NY 10036 1997, 752 pp., $40.00, hardcover This is the most comprehensive book on vegetarian cooking we've seen. Six years in the making, it contains 1,400 recipes and is brimming with tips and illustrations. It's easy to see why it won the James Beard award for best cook-book of the year. Inside the weighty tome are 20 extensive chapters from "Becoming a Cook"

Tgreen: A Cup of Tea in a Pill?

Subscribers Only The Buzz: If drinking green tea isn't your cup of tea, what about Tëgreen 97, a concentrated green tea extract in capsule form? Its manufacturer, Pharmanex Inc., claims the supplement "prevents cell damage from pollution, stress and toxins" and "blocks the formation of toxic compounds." It attributes all this to powerful antioxidants called polyphenols. The Basics: Tëgreen capsules are standardized to contain a minimum of 97% polyphenols, of which at least 65% are

Research Roundup

Subscribers Only Being overweight may trigger asthma. Though doctors have long assumed asthma leads to obesity by limiting physical activity, Harvard researchers now believe it may be the other way around, at least some of the time. In a study of almost 90,000 female nurses, age 27 to 44, those who were more than 35% overweight were three times more likely to develop asthma over a four-year period those of ideal

Plastics and Microwaves Aren't Always a Good Combination

Subscribers Only Q. Does it matter what I use for reheating leftovers in the microwave? A. Yes. Some plastic containers like margarine tubs and some plastic wraps may soften and melt. This isn't caused by the microwaves themselves, but by the heat of the food. Any contact between hot food and plastic can be a problem. And the hotter the food, the bigger the problem. Fatty foods like ground beef, gravies or cheese, and sugary

Nature's Stress-Buster, Kava, Calms Nerves

Subscribers Only Hillary Clinton did it. Queen Elizabeth did it. Even Pope John Paul II did it. During visits to the South Pacific, they each sampled a brew made from kava (Piper methysticum), a shrub in the black pepper family. Kava (also called kava-kava) has been used for centuries by South Pacific islanders in formal ceremonies and social gatherings. Traditionally, the dried root was chewed to a pulp, then mixed with coconut milk or water

How You Can Outsmart Margarine Marketing Claims

Subscribers Only The supermarket dairy case is brimming with margarine choices these days. Some boast "no trans fats" or "non-hydrogenated." Some are even bolder, calling themselves "smart," or in one case claiming "improves cholesterol ratio." And some are unusual, such as the newest entry that brags "made with yogurt." Do any of these modified "margarines" live up to their claims? EN checked them out. Avoiding a Trans Wreck. Trans fats result when vegetable oils are

Fresh Fruit Finds That Pack a Punch

Subscribers Only All fruits are good for you, but are they all equally good? Not quite, says Paul A. Lachance, Ph.D., professor of nutrition and food science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Some tropical fruits, in particular, are clear nutritional winners. Lachance analyzed 31 popular fruits for eight vitamins and minerals—vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folate, vitamin C, calcium and iron. Lachance's Top 10 Fruits 1. Guava 6.

Finding Natural Ways To Minimize The Side Effects of Menopause

Subscribers Only As they face 50, women feel forced to deal with a difficult choice: An increased risk of breast cancer versus the possibility of several years of night sweats, hot flashes, memory problems, depression, weight gain, palpitations, anxiety, insomnia or incontinence, followed by an increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease. The differing consequences hinge on whether a woman takes hormone replacement therapy (HRT), the standard solution to boost declining levels of estrogen and

Diet Touted in Sugar Busters! Bestseller Busted by EN

Subscribers Only Q. Can the diet in the book Sugar Busters! help me lose weight? A. sure, initially. But as with any fad diet, the results are not likely to last. A bestseller around the country and the talk of New Orleans where restaurants are serving up Sugar Busters! specials, this book offers nothing more than carbohydrate-bashing in disguise. Similar diets recur every few years. In the '70's, the Atkins Diet popularized the low-carb, high-protein

Can A Multi Offer One-Stop Shopping For Vitamins And Minerals?

Subscribers Only Arming yourself with an arsenal of individual vitamin and mineral supplements is fashionable. It may even be good for your health. Surely, it would be simpler and less confusing to take just one full-service supplement daily. But is a multivitamin/multimineral the wisest course? And can it really meet all your needs? EN investigates. Taking a daily "multi" is reasonable for most Americans, especially as they get older, says Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., of Tufts

A New Peril of Yo-Yoing

Subscribers Only Pick a reasonable weight and stick to it to help ward off certain cancers. So suggests a 10-year study from the University of Southern California. It compared people with cancer of the colon or rectum to people without cancer and identified three weight-related factors linked to the cancers: Obesity. People with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or greater were about twice as likely to develop colon or rectal cancer, compared