What I'm Excited About #3

It's snowing again, and that's not one of the things I'm excited about this week. Rather, I am excited about...

• A second appearance on a class panel for the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives: A Food Systems Approach to Cooking class. I persuaded my friend and fellow food blogger Charles to take the class this spring, and he's been blogging up a storm. The HFHL institute is also offering a one credit class this fall: Cooking on a Student's Budget.
• The Life-Changing Loaf of Bread. I've made this "bread" four times now, never the same way twice, and never way the recipe suggests (though I do weigh the ingredients). HT to my colleague Jesse Haas for sharing this! I've been eating it for breakfast almost every day for weeks.



Photo by Kim Unertl.

• A moss garden?! Our housemates invited a landscaping friend over to give us ideas about how to make the yard more interesting and less grassy. Staring at a soggy patch of decaying wood chips, I had a brainwave - a moss garden! "You could grow ferns, too," Mr. Landscape added. I have no idea how to make this happen.
• A shift in priorities. I attended a conference of the National Cooperative Grocers Association the other week, and something clicked around Hour 5. I'd been struggling with the feeling that the Hampden Park Co-op board was not the right place for me, that co-ops just weren't my "thing," that I was taking time away from food systems consulting by pouring time into my duties as board chair. But that day, I realized what a boon to my career being on the board actually is. I could will get so much out of my experience by putting my entrepreneurial schemes on hold for a year or two and unabashedly embracing co-op work.

What are you excited about this week?

Nutty Wordy Wednesday

I mentioned in a previous post that my plant-loving friend Amanda helps me think about how the function of a plant part affects its nutrient content. I also put quotes around "nut" in referring to peanut butter, sunflower butter, etc. I know tahini is from sesame seeds and peanuts are legumes, but what makes a nut a botanical nut?

Nuts 2 by Steffen Zahn

The Nut: a one-seeded hard-shelled fruit. Includes chestnuts and hazelnuts; excludes almonds and walnuts (drupes).

The Legume: the fruit of a plant in the Fabaceae family. Includes peanuts, soy, peas, and carob.

The Seed: a small embryonic plant: embryo, nutrient supply, and coat. Angiosperms are enclosed in fruit; gymnosperms are not. Includes cereals, legumes, and nuts.

Seeds are the botanical basket that contain plant protein and oil sources. True nuts are fewer and farther between than I'd imagined. And nutrient profiles are all over the map. For example, chestnuts have an ω-6:ω-3 ratio of 9; hazelnuts, 90. Another - kidney beans sit at 0.6; and garbanzo beans at 26. All the more reason to eat a variety of plant foods!

"Nut" Butters and You

I met Amanda when we both worked in Dr. Chery Smith's Community Nutrition Lab; she as a Ph.D. student, I as a research assistant. To pursue research more up her alley, she switched to the Plant Biological Science program, but we're still friends. In fact, her focus on plants helps me think about how the function of the plant affects its nutritional content. For example, root tubers store nutrients to survive one year to the next, so they will contain a lot of starch for energy.

At a decidedly nutrient-poor and calorie-dense brunch at Bonnie's Cafe this Sunday, Amanda inspired me to consider the relative benefits "nut" butters, specifically sunflower seed butter and peanut butter and their respective omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. We want a low ω-6:ω-3 ratio because ω-6 fatty acids are inflammatory, but Americans tend to consume diets with a high ratio due to low vegetable and fish intake and high seed oil intake.

Not content with a simple comparison of two food items, I pulled together data from six different butters and five parameters, using the USDA's nutrient database as found here. Most desirable numbers are in green, least in red.

Selected nutrient contents of selected "nut" butters

per oz (~1.5 tbsp)	Almond	Cashew	Sunflower	Sesame	Peanut	Soy*
Protein:	4.2g	4.9g	5.5g	4.8g	7.0g	5.3g
Fiber:	1.0g	0.6g	N/A	2.6g	1.7g	2.3g
Calcium:	75.6mg	12.0mg	34.2mg	119mg	12.0mg	~45mg
Iron:	1.0mg	1.4mg	1.4mg	2.5mg	0.5mg	~0.3mg
ω-6/ω-3 ratio:	28:1	48:1	476:1	57:1	181:1	7:1

* Estimated from I. M. Healthy SoyNut Butter's nutrition label.

This chart does not make sunflower butter look very good: negligible fiber, middling calcium, and an atrocious ω-6:ω-3 ratio. Peanut butter takes the lead in protein content, ties cashew butter for last in calcium, and has the second highest ω-6:ω-3 ratio. Sesame seed butter (tahini) does quite well with top scores in fiber, calcium, and iron - too bad it tastes so bitter. 

And the winner in the fatty acid category is... soy. Surprised? What "nut" butter(s) do you eat, and why? And why do I keep putting "nut" in quotes?