Day 55 – Making Healthy Food Even Healthier

“”I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded: dead”

~ Woody Allen

198.2 lbs.

If you read yesterday’s post you now know how to torture carrots to be even better for you. But what about other foods?

I’m not going to start a gazillion-part series of articles on this, but I did stumble across some information on making one of my favorite foods even better for you: sushi.

lightsabers make lousy chopsticks

First off, when it comes to heart friendly diets, the Asian diets kick western diet’s butt. I’m talking full on sumo crush or kung-fu smackdown. Of course, now McDonalds and other Western eating habits are being eaten over there… so it looks like when it comes to diets, it’s survival of the fattest.

Depressing.

However, when it comes to Japanese cuisine, sushi is one of their successful exports and it will accelerate your quest for a healthier diet faster than a Prius with a stuck gas pedal.

I love the stuff. And no, sushi doesn’t mean “raw fish”. Sushi actually refers to the rice (“sushi” meaning “bitter rice”, since it’s cooked with rice vinegar). Sushi can be served with vegetarian content or with seafood, which is where the sashimi, or raw fish, comes in. But if you haven’t tried it, don’t knock it. I find those who go on about “raw fish” being “gross” are those who enjoy sucking down triple-decker cheeseburgers, so as far as I’m concerned their judgment is suspect.

The most common sushi are:

• nigiri (those rectangles of rice with fish or other topping on top)
• futomaki (round rolls with nori, or seaweed, around the outside, then rice, then the seafood or veggie center)
• temaki (a.k.a. hand rolls – cones of nori with rice and seafood or veggies)

Japanese people in Japan, eating a traditional diet, have a far lower incidence of heart disease than Japanese people in the US. Part of that is because the traditional Japanese diet is so seafood intensive; a Japanese male has up to 3 times the omega-3 fatty acid levels in his bloodstream than his US counterpart. And part of that is how the food is actually prepared.

When I go out for sushi, I like the tempura too. But as with anything deep-fried one has to keep that in moderation. Just like the fact that sushi is often eaten with fingers, there’s another nugget of info many Westerners don’t know about it; by request, you can make sushi even healthier.

In North America sushi is usually served as white rice with a seafood topping. But in Japan it’s often served as haigamai or kinmemai rice. The partially-milled types of rice still have many of the vitamins and nutrients that gets stripped off of white rice during processing. You know what they say about rice – strippers can be exciting now and then, but the wholesome ones are better for you in the long run. At least I think that’s about rice.

Lurking in our bloodstream is a nasty little creep called angiotensin II. This malicious protein narrows blood vessels, raises blood pressure and ages your arteries – all of which forces your heart to work harder and can cause heart attacks, strokes, memory loss, wrinkles, poor orgasms and impotence. Like I said… nasty.

But haigamai and kenmemai have a secret weapon hidden below their husky brown skin: subaleurone. Subaleurone nukes angiotensin II like the Enola Gay nuked – you know what? Let’s just say subaleurone is good at getting rid of angiotensin II.

So when next you order sushi, as for it with haigamai or kenmemai rice. You’ll impress any pretentious foodies present, but you’ll also be doing your heart a favour.