Birds, Bees, and Seeds

The seed is larkspur—delphinium peregrinum—not a seed to eat, but it’s definitely struts its stuff. Photo from News.papadakis.net

         Your parents told you about the birds and the bees, but they may have forgotten to mention the seeds. The sex life of plants may not have seemed as necessary or compelling.  Actually it’s way more kinky with its self-fertilization, mating with relatives, etc. But whatever the means, the result is an embryo; that is, a tiny plant bundled up with a protective coating and small survival pack, called a seed. This new life capsule represents a mother lode of nutrition, so if you are serious about the impact of foods on your body, you may want to include seeds in your smoothies.

When we want seed power, we think of the super six: chia, flaxseed, pumpkin, sesame, sunflower, and hemp. And if we were the ancients or even Americans from the 1980s, we would have to travel the world to get some of them. The native horticulturists of the Americas would develop three: chia, sunflower seed, and pumpkin seed (also known as pepitas). The sesame seeds would arrive from the Middle East and Asia, and hemp seeds could be found all over Europe and Asia [1]. The flaxseed would come from India and the eastern Mediterranean [2]. Even now, not all of these seeds are easily procured, and some of them are quite expensive, but they are nutritional gold, and you don’t have to buy the more rare and the most expensive to get the nourishment, and you can use them by the tablespoon, not the cup.

We have five criteria when selecting among the seeds: availability and cost, caloric load, nutrition, taste, and a catchall category to handle special considerations.

Availability and Cost:

             We lump availability and cost together in the chart that follows.  Living in Seattle near the University of Washington, we can shoulder our backpacks and walk or trek to all of these places. And if all else fails, we can summon up the Amazon genie and have UPS deliver it to our doorstep.

	Whole Foods[3]	Trader Joe	PCC Co-op	QFC[4]	Amazon
Chia	$9.99	n/a	$11.90	n/a	$13.50
Flaxseed	$1.99	n/a	$1.72	$1.50/lb	$7.98/$2.00
Hempseed	$10.99	n/a	$15.98	n/a	$14.16
Pumpkinseed	$4.99	n/a	$4.51	$5.99/lb	$11.04
Sesame seed	$2.99	n/a	$3.27	$3.49/lb	$4.99
Sunflower	$2.99	n/a	$2.61	$1.49/lb	$8.87

          With cost and availability as factors, flaxseed and sunflower seeds are clearly winners.

Caloric Load

	Calories per two tablespoons
Chia	138
Flaxseed	112
Hempseed	110
Pumpkinseed	90
Sesame seed	103
Sunflower	102

          As a point of comparison, two tablespoons of sugar, butter, and cream are 92, 102, and 204 respectively.  Seed deliver a calorie hit; they  generally contain more calories than the equivalent amount of sugar and cream, but fewer calories than butter. If you are mother nature putting together a survival pack, you don’t stint on the energy ration.

Taste and Texture

          With smoothies, the seeds are a not huge taste or texture presence. Nor are they like their brawny cousins, the nuts, richly, almost decadently, flavored. They don’t even give off exotic aromas.  As flavors and textures, seeds come in on tiptoe, mainly.  If they announce their presence in a distinctive manner, it may be because they have been salted and roasted or gone rancid. Ground fine in smoothies, they lose much of their crunch, and, except for chia, they add a subtle thickening.  Chia thickening is not subtle.  The seed bulks up, becomes almost gelatinous when placed in water for half an hour before mixing because it can hold nine times its weight in water. Too much chia can make the smoothie a liquid goop, but in moderate amounts it adds a luscious bubbliness. Partnered with plain yogurt, chia has the texture of soft ice cream, and the taste of something in Black Beauty’s feedbag. In short, seeds do not add a huge “yum” factor.  Forced to find descriptors, “eau d’ cardboard” or “hint of saddle leather and oak barrel,” or “tincture of tin” might suffice,

          So if seeds are high in calories, somewhat less than ambrosial, and a bit pricey to boot, why bother? Three words:  nutrition, nutrition, nutrition.

Part 2:  Nutrition and special considerations

1. Jefferson used hemp paper for drafting the Declaration of Independence, and hemp fibers were part of Columbus’s sails.
2. Charlemagne and Gandhi would maintain that it was the basis national health.
3. All the Wholefood products, except hemp, were purchased in the bulk buy section. Packaged versions were available, but they were more expensive as were the versions that were roasted and salted.
4. If I bought the sesame seeds in a spice bottle at the Q, the cost was 7.59 for 2.5 oz or nearly $49.00 per pound. If I purchased the sunflower seeds roasted and salt, the cost went up over $3.00 to $4.69 a pound.

Bittman's Smoothie Enhanced

Mark Bittman has a new monthly column at NYTimes called The Flexitarian.  One of the recipes that he promotes is a Vanilla-Fruit Smoothie.  Using our app SmoothieRx, we analyzed the nutrition of his smoothie (shared by 2).  

Bittman's Smoothie for 2

Here's an enhanced Bittman Smoothie, adding 1/2 cup kale and 2 tablespoons sunflower seeds per person. 

Bittman Smoothie with Kale & Sunflower Seeds Added.

Adding two ingredients (kale & sunflower seeds) enhances nutrition such that now 15 of 18 nutrients exceed 25% of the daily need versus only 6 of 18 for the unenhanced smoothie.  Calories increase from 323 to 442 in the enhanced smoothie.  Our app SmoothieRx allows you to create many variations of fruit-vegetable smoothies for a quick, healthy breakfast or lunch.

Retooling the Bad Boy of Smoothies

www.prestigeluxuryrentals.com

        In the last article we took a classic to the home kitchen, Smoothie King’s Peanut Butter plus Grape, and tinkered with it, modifying it with a handful of greens to make it more nutritious. But this was only the beginning of what we could do to take something that was nutritionally solid and make it more powerful and nutritionally dynamic.  Here is another way we could, to continue the engine metaphor, make it high octane.  We could switch out the milk to plain, unsweetened, non-fat yogurt with live cultures.* The yogurt adds smooth texture and creaminess; it will bump the calories up more than milk because it is denser, but the density contains more of just about everything, particularly Calcium and B vitamins.

       So if you exchange yogurt for milk, you capture a creamy texture and coating that is dense and smooth and adds glide factor and suspension as it navigates the contours of your mouth and throat.  Floating through your mouth, it is decidedly pleasant, and it is going to be equally beneficial for your “engine.”  Here are some benefits that result directly from the fermentation process:

• Yogurt is easier to digest than milk because it is already been partially digested by bacteria that break down the lactose, which some people can’t digest well. This mean less “engine” noise, cranking issues, and  “back firings.”  The bacteria in the active-cultures makes the bacteria that line the gut healthier and ready to fend off bad bacteria.  With good gut flora, the intestine is less likely to “leak” or have cells run amok resulting in diagnosis like colorectal cancer. This limited warrantee gets written because bacteria take carcinogenic “sludge” agents and convert them into something less toxic and propel them down and out the “tail pipe.”  Having lots of fibers that are found in whole fruits and vegetables (key ingredients of smoothies) also speeds the transit time and reduces the exposure to carcinogenic agents.

• The calcium in the yogurt aids in this process by discouraging the excess build up of intestinal cells called polyps.  Here Calcium acts as a deposit control additive. But to be absorbed properly in the gut, Calcium requires Vitamin D, so you might want to consume Vitamin D fortified products or sip your smoothie in direct sun, but don’t dawdle. This stimulates the skin to start a process that involve the kidneys and the liver and produces a Vitamin D precursor.  (And you thought automobile mechanics was complicated.)

        The simple trade off—yogurt* for milk—is a big gain.  You could own a super slick, hybrid model of the latest Ferrari called LeFerrai, a sculpted wonder with a limited edition of 499 models and top speed of 217.4 mph for a mere $1.3 million.  But even the pleasure of that would fade, if your own body crashes.

*Again this is plain yogurt with live cultures; yogurt that has not been tarted up with sugars, plain or hidden in fruits or behind fancy names.  There are more than fifty names for products that behave like sugar; that is, they spike the insulin levels in your blood, leaving you vulnerable in the short run to food cravings and in the long run to diabetes. Their names include barley malt, beet sugar, honey, cane-juice crystals, carob syrup, corn syrup, lactose, sorbital, maltodextrin, fructose, dextrose, etc. Anyone who’s been around cars at all knows one way to really muck up the engine is to put sugar in it. There is a work around, thank goodness, for human innards; whole fruits and vegetables packaged with fiber slow down absorption and lessen the destructive powers of sugar.

Revisiting the Bad Boy of Smoothies: Smoothie King’s Peanut Butter Plus Grape

cltampa.com

      Smoothie King has come in for a spate of bad publicity lately because of its Peanut Butter Plus Grape.  Being a smoothie lover, I decided to investigate.  It seems that if we slurp down the 40-oz version (its largest), we have siphoned in five cups of liquid goo. (The average stomach holds eight cups.)  This bad boy equals 1460 calories, or as the calorie police like to tsk, 20 Reese’s Peanut Buttercups.   It represents about half the caloric need of a full-grown man and has 3.5 days' worth of sugar, 6.5 days’  if the naturally occurring sugar in the grape juice is considered.

        But of course, we don’t have to order the 40-oz. We could order the 32-oz. serving.  It would be easier on the pocketbook and the inseams. With the 32-oz, the calorie load is 1095, less than half the daily allotment of calories and four days of sugar.  With the 20-oz smoothie, the caloric load is 730, and, if shared with someone, the total is 365.   So by forgoing the sweeteners and sharing smoothie, the calorie hit is 265.  High fives: we are in skinny land.  With portion control and self-control we have two tall, but not grande, orders.

        But I wondered what if I do more than reduce portions and cut out the sweeteners? What if I try to improve the product by bringing it home and recreating it in the kitchen?  Which is what I must do because I don’t have a Smoothie King within a 200-mile radius. Roger has posted a best-guess recipe on the Internet.  He claims his replica is “really tasty, not unlike peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches.”  

Roger’s Peanut Butter Plus Grape

• ¼ cup non-fat milk
• ⅛  cup  peanut butter?
• ¼ cup grape juice
• 1 banana
• ¼ cup (1 scoop) vanilla whey protein powder
• 1 T. turbinado
• 1 T. honey
• 6-8 ice cubes

       That sounds good. I remember loving Smucker’s Goober’s Peanut Butter and Jelly so much that I  would stand in front of the refrigerator and spoon it straight from the jar. This I did knowing full well that Smucker stood for  “mmmmm” and “sucker.” But I learned to pass it by as I went down the aisle that also contained marshmallow cream and pre-made chocolate frostings. These are toppers that in the best of all possible worlds would be main course options, but they lead to a rendezvous with a dark stranger named Metabolic Syndrome and his attacks of stabbing needles and insulin-filled syringes. I resisted the "yummies," mostly because I had children in tow, and their presence meant that I should act the model grownup. I knew that if that jar was at home on the shelf, a moment would come, probably after someone spilled milk on a scrubbed floor or had a temper tantrum because his superman cape was in the wash that I would seek solace in a “little spoonful.”

        I made and we tasted Roger’s home-made version—”Peanut Butter plus Grape.” It sat heavily and grandly in our stomachs. We had less appetite for the usual accompaniments to our smoothie-centered, somewhat Spartan lunch. We chose to forego adding peanut butter to whole-wheat crackers or celery sticks.  And instead of having the usual--two glasses smoothie, we were satiated by one.  

        Here is a nutritional profile of the Smoothie King home version as measured by  our app SmoothieRx,  that takes into account the 18 nutrients that Americans are most deficient in.  

       The calorie count was 593 for one serving size including the sugar and honey and 477 without them.  With those calories we met nearly 50 percent of our needs for Vitamins B2, B6, and B12.  We got 20% or more of our daily requirement for Protein, Fiber, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Zinc, Vitamin B1, Niacin, E, and Choline, and ten percent Potassium, Folate, and Vitamin C.  If we added a half cup of kale, a mere 17 calorie addition, Vitamin A would rise above 30 percent, C would soar to 50, and K would be off the charts at 200.  If we add a half cup of spinach, which is more palatable for most people, we only added 3 calories and the Vitamin K measure goes through the roof, while the E, Folate, and the Vitamin A nudged up just a bit.

      Our point is that a stop at the Smoothie King is not a disaster; there is a lot of nutrition in one of their smoothies*, but it’s best to hold back on the volume and say no to the sugar.  And an even better alternative is to make it at home and add a handful of greens, kale and collards, if you can tolerate them.  They don’t dance on the taste buds like sugar, but they are high octane fuel for your body.    

*Note:  Their calorie count to us seems remarkably conservative; we are not sure of their computations.

To be continued:  Retooling the Smoothie King Smoothie

The Dangerous Allure of Smooth Food

newyorkseriouseats.com

        Smooth food is a slippery slope.  It is one reason why the holes where the prongs of our belt buckles fit make a blackened track of worn punctures as our bellies push past the most recent perforations. This is so is because smooth food is, well, smooth.  It slides, glides, slips, and slithers past our tongue, mouth roof, gullet, and down our throats. It beckons with a wink like a silk nightie.  Meet an edible that doesn’t have to be chewed or chomped on, that doesn’t bite back, never repulses with a piece of bone or gristle, and doesn’t get caught up in the tonsils or require the Heimlich maneuver.  Its texture could be likened to baby food to be sure, but not the not strained green peas of our infancy that we spat back.

        Which brings us to another reason for the smooth food allure.  Its smoothness and sweetness are often the byproducts of a melding of fats and sugars. So that not only does the food require little effort to ingest, it lights up the taste buds like a neon arch at Vegas.  The words in that arch include “luscious” and “nummy,” and signify gastronomic satiety, celebration, and pleasure.

        Smooth food beckons when it speaks to memory. It’s Dairy Queen’s sculpted ice cream soft cones on a sweltering day.  It’s the smooth chocolate mousse layer in a chocolate birthday cake. It’s flan with its eggy custardy sweetness draped with a layer of caramelized sugar syrup, baked in a ramekin, and set on a plate with diced strawberry gemlets.

        The downside of the sculpted swirl ziggurat of soft ice cream is a chemical stew that, besides milk and sugar, contains corn syrup, mono-and diglycerides, artificial flavors, guar gum, calcium sulfate, polysorbates 65 and 80, carrageenam, and magnesium hydroxide.  The upside is that it is mainly air, which cuts down on the calories unless you added the strawberry syrup.

       The chocolate cake that we recently bought celebrated two birthdays that were separated by forty-eight hours, so it had to be exceptional.  It was. Its height was such that it couldn’t be taken home in the conventional bakery box. A second had to be added in a peaked, roof-like structure, so that the cake wouldn’t be damaged. Inside was chocolate decadence with a palisade of thin chocolate bars in heights that rose beyond the drama of the cake itself.  These bars acted as staves to hold the lusciousness of the chocolate cake and chocolate frosting layers in place and were trimmed in a circle whose upper edges sloped like a dangled garter. The sixteen chocolate bars, three layers of cake, and four layers of frosting that made up this extravaganza were bound by a purple ribbon. The top was covered with layer of strawberries and blueberries, a minimalist nod in the direction of nutrition. The chocolate bars with their brittle hardness were a counterpoint to smoothness of the frosting. This cake was immoderation taken to Versailles heights. And its calorie content was equally stratospheric, an estimated at 600 (about a quarter of a day’s caloric allowance for a nutritional return that was mediocre).

        Finally, flan, a custard of milk, eggs, and sugar draped with a caramelized sugar coating, does a glissade down the throat spreading warmth and comfort.  It is a marvel on cold nights and candlelight reflects beguiling in it after a rich meal, camaraderie, and a little wine have beaten back insidious drafts and the bone-chill of winter.

        How to compete with such gustatory triumphs?  One response is to become completely abstemious, denounce them as evil and life-sapping, eat gruel and wear polypropylene underwear that has been dried on a too hot setting making it feel itchy and scratchy like a modern day hair shirt.  (I’ve done this.)  Another is to search for a compromise, something tasty enough, even though somewhat short of being held, swaddled in silk, and suckled.

        There are fruits, tropical mostly, mangoes, bananas, and papayas that are soft and sensual and have a great glide factor as have peaches and apricots and sun-rippened melons like cantaloupes and cassabas.  A quasi-vegetable, the avocado  is equally voluptuous, and even some full-fledged vegetables like sweet potatoes and squash which when roasted with olive oil can be remarkable sensual. Yogurt, if you can tolerate milk products, always adds a smooth texture, and seeds and nuts can be ground with a coffee grinder so they are barely discernible. Chia seeds can be pre-soaked  and contribute a remarkably gelatinous quality which is nutritious unlike tapioca.  In the following weeks, we will be exploring smoothies for ingredients like these that cater to the sensuous palate.

Next blog:  analysis of the recent Smoothie King Take Down

Best Nuts and Seeds for a Smoothie?

image from rawfoodrecipes.com

Nuts and seeds are great sources of minerals, B-vitamins and vitamin E for smoothies. This graph shows the nutrient contribution of some nut-seed combinations. Our favorite is sunflower seeds and flaxseeds (blue triangles). See the SmoothieRx data below. Sunflower seeds-peanuts is also a strong combination (yellow circles).

Graph from SmoothieRx app for a 25-year old male.