Month: April 2013

Experts suggest how you can fortify your child’s meals so that they are wholesome. We are a health-conscious generation and in theory, know the nutritional value of almost every food. But our taste buds are not slaves of the information we’ve gathered. In fact it’s clearly the other way round! Some fruits are just non-seasonal the year round, while some veggies can never make it to the menu. If we don’t like the taste of one, the smell of the other makes us say “eew” (the calcium-rich milk has my vote!). Well, we all may just get to keep our lists of outcasts without having to ever hear the doctor announce the deficiency we invited ourselves. Just grasp the tricks of food fortification.
A pinch of this and a pinch of that!
Fortification is not new to Indian cuisine. Our spices are a storehouse of vitamins and other nutrients, informs nutritionist Naini Setalvad. Think of an ailment, and our good old turmeric’s ready to fight. She reminds us of its anti-septic, antihistamine and even cancer fighting properties. And indeed, the yellow power is rich in tonnes of nutrients – dietary fiber, vitamin C, vitamin B6, niacin, manganese, iron, potassium, magnesium, omega 3 fatty acids, omega 6 fatty acids and phytosterols.

Sow the seeds for a healthy heart
Cardiologist Dr Dhanashri Chonkar prescribes sunflower seeds, flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds to ensure that bad cholesterol doesn’t come knocking. These seeds contain good monounsaturated fats that help keep cholesterol levels low and also lower blood pressure. While in the Western countries these seeds often land on buns and bakes, she suggests that we can incorporate them in our chutneys. “In fact, the traditional Maharashtrian diet serves interesting chutneys made from these seeds with bakhri.”

Substitute nutrition

While for the non-vegetarians, fish serves as a great source of the very important omega 3 essential fatty acids not produced by our body, those not into seafood can include in their meals flaxseeds, says Setalvad. “And to ensure that your family’s diet in rich in calcium, mix oats and barley to the flour,” she suggests. For sulphur, onions are very good, woch the Indian cooking uses almost be default. For a dose of zinc, she counts the other seeds already suggested by Dr Chonkar.
Fortifying desserts
Nutritionist Namita Jain says honey makes for the perfect topping sauce thanks to glucose, B complex, C vitamins and some antioxidants. What’s more, honey is always welcome to our taste buds, and works well practically with all the desserts says, Chef Arindam Bahel. More concerned with the taste aspect, he suggests marrying honey with cream, nuts and even chocolates.

For the kids
It’s the kids who are the most fussy, agree all mothers worried about ensuring that their little ones receive a balanced diet. Paediatrician Dr Deepa Bhandarkar shares some sneaking tips for them, “Mix jaggery in dal.
It’s a rich source of iron.” She also says that if kids don’t like vegetables, prepare a blending and knead the dough in that liquid. “Like this you can sneak in their requirements of vitamin A and B, she says. And according to her, allow them to indulge in bhel. If made with chana, peanuts and sprouts, it’s not really junk food.”

Researchers at Georgia State University have found a potential new strategy for developing new drugs to control inflammation without serious side effects. Jian-Dong Li, director of Georgia State’s Center for Inflammation, Immunity and Infection, and his team discovered that blocking a certain pathway involved in the biological process of inflammation will suppress it. Inhibiting a molecule called phosphodiesterase 4B, or PDE4B, suppresses inflammation by affecting a key gene called CLYD, a gene that serves as a brake on inflammation. Li explained the process of overactive inflammation using a “police” analogy. When a pathogen – such as bacteria or viruses — infects a patient, he said, it triggers an “alarm” to which the “police” of immune system respond.

In turn, it triggers neutrophil attractant called cytokines to respond, leading to inflammation that serves to help rid the body of the pathogen. But if inflammation isn’t stopped, tissue damage can result. The pathways during the response are termed “positive,” like a gas pedal on a car, and “negative,” like a brake, with the process in the positive pathway going down the line from the pathogen to inflammation, and negative going the other direction.

PDE4B is involved in controlling the negative pathway. Many researchers have been focusing on developing anti-inflammatory agents by stopping the positive pathway, but the discovery by Li and his colleagues gives scientists a new route to stop inflammation using safer or even existing drugs proven to be nontoxic as they have found that accelerating the negative pathway will reduce inflammation.

There is a need for better drugs to control inflammation, because current treatments come with serious side effects, Li said. Steroids are commonly used, but cannot be used over the long-term, as they suppress the immune system.

Researchers from Fox Chase Cancer Center have found that omega-3 fatty acids and their metabolite products slow or stop the growth in the number of triple-negative breast cancer cells more effectively than cells from luminal types of the disease. The omega-3s worked against all types of cancerous cells, but the effect was observed to be stronger in triple-negative cell lines, reducing proliferation by as much as 90 per cent.

Omega-3 fatty acids are found in oily fish like sardines and salmon, and also in oils derived from plants like hemp and flax. Previous studies suggest these compounds can negatively affect critical mechanisms in cancer cells, namely those responsible for proliferation and for apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

Lead author on the study Thomas J. Pogash, a scientific technician in the Fox Chase Cancer Center lab of Jose Russo, MD, said that the new work underscores the important role common compounds found in food may play in keeping cancer at bay. “When you compare a western diet to a mediterranean diet, which has more omega-3s, you see less cancer in the mediterranean diet. They eat much more fish,” Pogash said.

Afresh flower arrangement never fails to lift your spirits. It adds colour to your house, filling it with positivity and energy. But what measures can one take to make all this last longer? As laymen, we are aware of certain measures such as adding a spoonful of sugar or an aspirin for the nourishment of the flowers or using a water spray to keep them looking bright. But, the process of making fresh flowers stay fresh starts right from its selection process. Be careful while taking your pick as these flowers are expensive compared to their artificial counterparts. Ideally, one should look for the ones that look youthful and not matured.

The tell-tale signs of the latter would be drooping petals with a yellowish or brownish tinge at the corners. Fresh ones shall always have petals that are firm and are just beginning to bloom. The vase or the container in which the flowers are to be kept should be clean.

They should be free from any leftover mucous from the earlier arrangements. Light is the source of life. Hence, it is advisable to keep flowers in a place where there is enough light coming in. This surely does not mean that you expose them to direct sunlight, as that will only make them shrink. Just make sure they aren’t put away in some dark corner of a room, and expose air them once in a while.

An important thing to remember is that one should not keep flower arrangements atop devices that heat up such as a television, a refrigerator or an oven. This can cause the flowers to lose excess water and wither away quickly. Sharing some tips, florist Munira Taherbhoy says, “It is important to keep a constant watch that the stems do not catch any fungus. The trick to achieve that is by removing the leaves that are below the waterline. They are the main cause of promoting the growth of fungicausing bacteria. It also helps to retain the freshness of these flowers, as the leaves soak up a lot of water resulting in less water being transported to the other parts.” Taherbhoy also suggests a daily change of water in the container.

Some other tried and tested ways are adding a mixture of a pinch of salt and baking soda or adding a copper element to the water. Also, ready pouches of medicine are available in the market. They keep these colourful creations of nature smiling.