Eat Big Before Turkey Day - and other healthy tips for Thanksgiving

Tips for a Healthy Thanksgiving. Heard Them All, Have You?

A Google search of "Healthy Thanksgiving Tips" will pull up roughly 144,000,000 results in a matter of 0.17 seconds. It's safe to say there's a hellova lot out there for making Turkey Day both satisfying and slimming. But those tips are all the same; seriously, go look at them: Ease off the butter; skip the stuffing; rethink going for thirds; each glass of wine is an extra 100 calories... Makes you less and less thankful the more you read about it. So, here are some tips for a healthy Thanksgiving that you won't find on the first page of Google (hey, no one reads past the first page anyway. True story.) and that won't have you holding off on that next glass of wine. (What the hell kind of advice was that anyway, Health Living!) 

No Wheat No Worries

"What does gluten-free mean?"
"It means it's good for you."

Above: Probably the most incorrect statement you'll ever hear whilst wandering through Whole Foods. Gluten Free has transformed from dietary necessity to public paradigm. Gluten-free diets are a necessity and relief for those suffering from celiac disease, something comedian Kelly Maclean would call "a rich, white-person problem." Funny, but statistically accurate. As most of the monetary wealth in America is owned by the top 1%, only "about 1% of Americans have celiac disease," explains WebMD. Incidentally, because of the expanding social indifference between "gluten free" and "healthy" most purchasers of gluten-free products don't and won't have a sensitivity to wheat. "Unless people are very careful," Dr. Peter Green, director of Columbia University's Celiac Disease Center told WebMD, who told me, "a gluten-free diet can lack vitamins, minerals, and fiber." 

Essentially, unless toast gives you diarrhea, anemia, bone pains, and the severe rash known as dermatitis herpetiformis, abstaining from wheat products is not healthy, because, even though gluten isn't healthy for you in and of itself, whole grain products that contain gluten are rich in proteins, minerals, and B-Vitimens. But mainly, if you're gluten free for no good reason, you can't drink beer.

But if you are a sufferer of celiac disease, you still have options. Awareness over the disease has incited a call to action for brewers big and small, far and wide. While some gluten-free beers can hardly be considered beer – let alone palatable – some breweries are taking this pop-pandemic seriously. And for good reason. No one should have to eschew from brew, by choice or by chance. I recently tried Dogfish Head's Tweason'ale, and was pleasantly surprised. Here's what I have to say:

Image courtesy of lefthandhorrors.com

Wheat-beer color, sans the wheat! A sweet aroma, followed by distinct strawberry and honey tastes. Full up-front flavor that finishes nicely. Does a good job of hiding its gluten-freeness. A stiff 6%, difficult to quaff but easy to enjoy – if you don't mind a little (but not over-powering) sweetness in your beer. Regardless, quite nice on a sunny day. 

So, unlike Red Bridge, Budweiser's pathetic excuse for a GF beer (yes, I understand singling out any one variety by Bud and calling it bad is an oxymoron), Dogfish Head's is quite palatable. But, it definitely differs from your typical strong ale, which was the brewers' intent. "While there are a few well-made examples that mirror traditional beer styles, there arent [sic] any off-centered offerings," explains Sam Calagione, the brewery's founder. This was my first GF beer, and if you're likewise looking to explore, New Planet, Bards, and Lakefront Brewery's New Grist would each be a fine starting line. 

15 Funny, Witty, Sad GMO Cartoons

There's something to be said for saying it with sketch. In honor of No-To-GMO Month (October), here are fourteen politically poignant cartoons about Genetically Modified Organisms and the hands that spin the wheel. 

This one's just plain sad.

OMGMO

Jeremy Seifert's documentary, GMO OMG, explores just WTF is in the food we eat.

To say that the debate over GMOs is hot right now is putting it lightly. It's scalding. Touch it with a whisper and someone's going to get burned. Unless you don't so much as skim magazine headlines in the checkout line or watch TV, or unless your Twitter feed is down, or your Facebook has been so ingeniously hacked that all politically unstable content is somehow totally blocked (which means your "social" life consists of Instagram food-porn, viral videos of adorable animals doing adorable things really adorably, and some dude you met once with the uncontrollable desire to tell the world that he's "just chillin with some ramen noodles watching my fav shows #Liveisgreat.") then you've undoubtably heard of GMOs, Genetically Modified Organisms. You may even know what they are, maybe even why they are bad for you. Wait, are they bad for you? Well, scientifically, we're not even sure.

Fructose-Glucose Gullible

ZOIKS! Scooby! It's not a ghost, it's High-Fructose!

Despite its geo-political proximity to the Florida, as well as its economical dependancy on U.S. imports, and an ever-adopting of American culture, The Bahamas' exposure to the outside world is not exclusively American. Our history ties us to Britain, Europe, and Africa; Brazilian and Chinese immigrants are on the rise; and our children return from studies abroad in countries such as Canada. But, our exposure to American news and media leaves Bahamians subject to American food/health jargon, which can compromise our health, because nutritional labelling is so varying.

We're all aware (or should be) of the hazards of High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Those who read nutrition labels know to steer clear of it; but High-Fructose Corn Syrup by any other name -- is still High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Next time you're in Super Value or Fresh Market buying jellies and jams, err away from those containing Glucose-Fructose Syrup: the British alias to the infamous High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Canadian products will label it Glucose/Fructose Syrup. Different name, same bad stuff.

Courtesy of Wikipedia 

For The Betterment of Beer: The Best Beer Inventions (Besides, of course, Beer)

From beer cans with built-in shotgunning tabs on the side to those ridiculous funnel hats "that guy" dons at sports games, beer has kicked opened numerous doors to cheeky inventors since Ancient Egypt. And, while I'd stake my taste for 2XIPAs that Pharaoh never buckled up a beer belt, there have been at least a handful of inventions that have been for the beer-good, inventions that don't focus on consumption, ergonomics (who the hell needs an ergonomic beer can? Screw you, Miller Lite), or air-flow (that's you, Coors!). The best beer inventions either benefit the beer itself, benefit the social aspect of drinking beer, or benefit both. With that in mind, I've opined my favorite of the best recent beer inventions, though, deciding my personal favorites was nothing if not difficult, with hours of schizophrenic self-debate, choosing whether to include the revolutionary Hop Cannon, or the Dogfish Head-Sierra Nevada collab IPA pint glass, or a UK design team's Fight-Friendly beer glass (though benefitting man-kind, let's face it, pub brawls are as British as pubs themselves). So, with no further adieu, the best beer inventions: (plus, honorable mentions and inventions that should never have been):

Audio-Adderall, Ambiance and the New Ergonomic

If you can read Romanian, check out http://where-the-strength-lies.blogspot.com, from where I snagged this decadent picture. If you can't read Romanian, have Google Translate read it for you. 

"I swear they put crack in it!"

Was there ever a more frequently uttered statement than that as the Starbucks Virus pervaded throughout the continent over the last decade? Probably not. Did Starbucks really put crack cocaine in its coffee? Probably not. (Though, I wouldn't put it past Big Business... I mean, Coca-Cola thought it was a good idea, only eliminating trace amounts of cocaine from its secret recipe in 1929. True, by 1904 it was only 1/400 of a grain of cocaine per ounce of pop... I digress...) But maybe Starbucks is putting it in the airwaves; maybe that's why people go there so often. An abstract thought? Indeed. But, abstractions are the brain children of creativity. And a new product harnesses the findings of a University of Illinois study linking moderate noise levels to efficient creativity; moderate noise levels such as the those environing you in a popular coffee shop, per se.