LOW VITAMIN D LINKED TO DISEASE IN TWO BIG STUDIES (ISSUE 124)

by Diane Gold

NOTE FROM PUBLISHER

A version of this article appeared in The New York Times. Asterisks mark changes from original article.

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By Anahad O’Connor

New research has found that lower vitamin D levels were associated with illness, but didn’t show whether they were a cause.

People with low vitamin D levels are more likely to die from cancer and heart disease and to suffer from other illnesses, scientists reported in two large studies published on Tuesday.
The new research suggests strongly that blood levels of vitamin D are a good barometer of overall health. But it does not resolve the question of whether low levels are a cause of disease or simply an indicator of behaviors that contribute to poor health, like a sedentary lifestyle, smoking and a diet heavy in processed and unhealthful foods.

Nicknamed the sunshine nutrient, vitamin D is produced in the body when the skin is exposed to sunlight….* And blood levels of it can be lowered by smoking, obesity and inflammation.

Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium and is an important part of the immune system. Receptors for the vitamin and related enzymes are found throughout cells and tissues of the body, suggesting it may be vital to many physiological functions, said Dr. Oscar H. Franco, a professor of preventive medicine at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and an author of one of the new studies, which appeared in the journal BMJ [April 1, 2014.]*

“It has effects at the genetic level, and it affects cardiovascular health and bone health,” he said. “There are different hypotheses for the factors that vitamin D regulates, from genes to inflammation. That’s the reason vitamin D seems so promising.”

The two studies were meta-analyses that included data on more than a million people. They included observational findings on the relationship between disease and blood levels of vitamin D. The researchers also reviewed evidence from randomized controlled trials — the gold standard in scientific research — that assessed whether taking vitamin D daily was beneficial.

Dr. Franco and his co-authors — a team of scientists at Harvard, Oxford and other universities — found persuasive evidence that vitamin D protects against major diseases. Adults with lower levels of the vitamin in their systems had a 35 percent increased risk of death from heart disease, 14 percent greater likelihood of death from cancer, and a greater mortality risk overall.

When the researchers looked at supplement use, they found no benefit to taking vitamin D2. But middle-aged and older adults who took another form, vitamin D3 …* produced in response to sunlight — had an 11 percent reduction in mortality from all causes, compared to adults who did not. In the United States and Europe, it is estimated that more than two-thirds of the population is deficient in vitamin D. In their paper, Dr. Franco and his colleagues calculated that roughly 13 percent of all deaths in the United States, and 9 percent in Europe, could be attributed to low vitamin D levels.

“We are talking about a large part of the population being affected by this,” he said. “Vitamin D could be a good route to prevent mortality from cardiovascular disease and other causes of mortality.”

In the second study, also published in BMJ, a team of researchers at Stanford and several universities in Europe presented a more nuanced view of vitamin D.

They concluded there was “suggestive evidence” that high vitamin D levels protect against diabetes, stroke, hypertension and a host of other illnesses. But they also said there was no “highly convincing” evidence that vitamin D pills affected any of the outcomes they examined.

“Based on what we found, we cannot recommend widespread supplementation,” said Evropi Theodoratou, an author of the study and research fellow at the Center for Population Health Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. The second study also looked at bone health. While Vitamin D had long been believed to help prevent osteoporosis fractures from falls, clinical trials in recent years have challenged the idea. The study also found no evidence to support that assumption.

“Vitamin D might not be as essential as previously thought in maintaining bone mineral density,” Dr. Theodoratou and her colleagues wrote.

Dr. Theodoratou was not alone in suggesting people hold off on taking vitamin D supplements for now. Even though Dr. Franco found them to be beneficial, he said that more research was needed to show what levels are best. Instead of taking pills, people could improve their vitamin D levels with an adequate diet and 30 minutes of sunlight twice a week, he said.

“The most important factors in obtaining vitamin D are going out and doing some exercise and following a healthy diet,” he added.

And in an editorial that accompanied the studies in BMJ, Paul Welsh and Dr. Naveed Sattar of the British Heart Foundation’s Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Center pointed out that previous research “extolled the virtues of antioxidant vitamins only for major trials of vitamins E and C and beta carotene to show null, or even some harmful, effects of supplementation.”

They said vitamin D pills should not be recommended widely until clinical trials that are underway shed more light on the benefits and potential side effects.

But Duffy MacKay, a spokesman for the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a supplement industry trade group, said that vitamin D is not easily obtained through food alone, and noted that exposure to sunlight has its dangers.

He said he agreed with Dr. Franco that more research was needed to identify “an optimal dose and duration” of vitamin D.

“But there is enough positive research currently to indicate that people should be supplementing with vitamin D for a variety of positive health outcomes,” he added.

CONCLUSION FROM PUBLISHER

Although there are many studies with conflicting opinions about vitamin D levels and disease or supplementation and absorption, we must be open enough to change our minds when we get new information. This goes for all topics.

We can hear the debate and decide for ourselves whether the studies we hear about were stringent enough, had enough participants, were controlled by pharmaceutical industry purpose and measured what they set out to measure. This will lead us to better understanding of vitamin D and how it affects our health.

ACTION STEP

Spend some active time outside where it is bright. If you’re not used to the sun, take it slowly. 10 minutes several times a week is a great beginning amount of time. Sunscreen is known to block vitamin D absorption, so 5 minutes at a time works if you are very fair skinned.

This article has been edited. You can see the original at The New York Times Wellness Blog, Anahad O’Connor, April 1, 2014.

Anahad O’Connor is a staff writer for The New York Times as well as an author and avid investigative journalist. See more about him on our Experts page.

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DIANE GOLD, PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She always enjoys new information about science and the science of nutrition. She says,

“Be diligent in your search for eating well. How we treat our bodies matters. Read a lot so that the mind stays open to varying opinions. Believe many, rather than following the first thing you hear. Discuss what you read and share the knowledge you have. Enjoy it when the information changes.”

TIMING OF MEALS AFFECTS WEIGHT LOSS (ISSUE 65)

By Anahad O’Connor, Comments And Action Steps By Diane Gold

In The New England Journal of Medicine last week, a prominent researcher noted that much of the conventional wisdom about weight loss has little basis in science. But his article did not address one oft-asked question: Is your waistline affected by when you eat, or is a calorie always just a calorie whenever you eat it?

To seasoned dieters, the claim that eating late can spell trouble is nothing new. But the idea has lacked evidence from credible human studies. Most of the research to date has shown that eating late is linked to weight gain, but late eaters also tend to consume more calories over all.

In a new study, published in The International Journal of Obesity, researchers at Harvard and elsewhere followed 420 overweight men and women in Spain in a 20-week weight loss program.

The subjects were split into two groups. Each followed a similar diet, got equivalent amounts of sleep, and had similar caloric intakes and expenditures. They also showed no differences in two hormones that play a key role in appetite, leptin and ghrelin.

But there was a critical difference in the timing of their main meal of the day, which in this case, because of the Mediterranean setting, was lunch. In both groups, the meal comprised about 40 percent of their daily calories. But one group consistently ate it before 3 p.m. daily, while the other did so after 3 p.m.

By the end of the study, despite similar caloric intakes, the late eaters had lost significantly less weight. They also showed lower insulin sensitivity, which increases the risk of diabetes.

Weight loss strategies, the authors wrote, should focus not just on calories and nutrients, “but also the timing of food.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

The timing of your meals may not be everything when it comes to weight loss, but it does appear to play a role.

Link to original article is below.

COMMENTS AND ACTION STEPS

by Diane Gold

For about 3 years now, almost as long as I have been a vegan, I have chosen to finish my meals by 6 pm on purpose. On the rare occasion that I find myself eating evening dinner in company, I eat an additional meal of salad with no dressing. Or, if I can get away with it, I have a hot water, one of my favorite drinks.

When I traveled to a different time zone to see family, I ate in that time zone, 3 hours later, but, you guessed it. I went to bed 3 hours later, or more. And the 6 p.m. curfew was tough for the rest of the group (although they were quite accommodating), which is why so many people don’t even attempt the task.

So, why did I decide to do it?

There were many times I experienced what it feels like to wake up the morning after drinking alcohol. In contrast and most of the time, I have experienced waking up feeling crystal clear, powerful, joyful and healthy. Once I decided to rid myself of drinking alcohol at all, I woke up lucid every morning. This got me to thinking.

But how alert would I be, I asked myself, if I could increase the period of time between my last meal and drink (except for hydrating water or green tea because the quercetin in it is a great anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer enzyme)?

So I decided to complete my last meal by 6 p.m. every night to see how I felt.
Oh, my. I felt great, and I continue to feel great using this eating schedule I recommend highly. It’s not for everyone, but here are a few facts that may contribute to why it makes sense:

1) As Anahad’s article mentions, there is scientific proof that shows that weight loss is directly related to eating earlier.

ACTION STEP

Figure out a way to finish eating before 6 p.m. If you want to or have to socialize after that time (this will inevitably end up in eating), plan ahead that you will only eat raw greens in a salad with a little olive oil and lemon juice or a plate of steamed leafy greens with a drop of olive oil and lemon juice.

2) Gravity helps digestion. When we are lying down (for sleep), we lose this benefit. Did you ever eat late and feel your food up high in your digestive tract when you were in bed? I have, but not recently.

ACTION STEP

Consciously decide to pay attention to the food in the stomach. Enjoy how it feels while you are upright, and notice when it seems to have gone down. This could be 3 or 4 hours after eating.

3) Our greatest risk of heart attack is in the early hours of the morning, according to Robert Manfredini of University of Ferrara, Italy, in a Time article, July 22, 2008. Because digestion utilizes blood and oxygen that would normally be employed by the heart  and because respiration is reduced when we sleep; eating a large meal at night can divert too much of the body’s resources to digestion during the most vulnerable time in our daily cycle of physical processes. (Information from Ed in South Carolina, moderator of Paleohacks.com).

ACTION STEP

Now that we have spelled out some of the biological implications, really decide to finish eating at 6 pm. If there are family factors in the way, like children’s extra-curricular activities don’t finish until 7 p.m. or all family members aren’t home until 8 p.m.; start the routine of finishing by 6 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday or whatever days the family has “off.”

There are always excuses not to, so just do it! You and your family are worth it.

4) When we are not using our body’s resources for sleep-time digestion, we have a more restful sleep. Otherwise, our quality of sleep may be hindered (Jason Bellows, Stop And Breathe, Mar. 15, 2011).

ACTION STEP

The better we sleep, the more productive we will be the following day and the several days after that.  The more we will be able to handle stress, and the more able we will be to follow a great eating plan to maximize our weight loss (gain) goals.

5) It feels good to lie down without the weight of recently eaten food in our GI tract. It’s 10 pm (4 hours since my last meal), and I’m already feeling that the food has digested. (This is not true, of course, since it takes a good 6-8 hours to pass through the stomach and small intestine, and then another 41-43 hours (as opposed to 27-29 hours in men) to go through the rest of the process, according to Michael F. Picco, Mayo Clinic GI, M.D.)

ACTION STEP

Enjoy how great it is to lie down without food feeling high in our digestive system. Eating early is a good way to prepare for sleep.

CONCLUSION

The idea of timing of meals affecting our weight loss and our health verifies an action we, humans, have been acting on for many years. Happily, there is proof in study form. Yes, we were correct, but now it is documented by researchers at Harvard et al.
Although the studies didn’t address the fact that when we eat later, there have been more hours in our day in which to eat; it is logical that, in reducing the waking hours we permit ourselves to eat, we automatically reduce our intake. This leads to weight loss.

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ANAHAD O’CONNOR, AUTHOR

Anahad has been writing for the Science Section of the New York Times since 2003. He is passionate about investigative science and wellness reporting. He is one of our panelists whose full bio you will find in the Experts section.

The original article appeared on February 4, 2013 at this link:

DIANE GOLD, CO-AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition.

She is extremely excited to hear that her eating schedule was validated by a current scientific study . She says,

“There are so many weight loss misconceptions. It is exciting that I am using a technique that can be matched to scientific study and statistics. We know that eating earlier in our day feels better. Now we know that it promotes weight loss.

“Putting a time limit on food ingestion also creates the habit of learning to wait, which is something that dieters have to learn anyway. The self-imposed time restriction is a great way to learn it, and it makes it easier to cope with weight loss and weight maintenance after that.”

FITNESS BY INFLUENCE: HOW TO MOTIVATE AT HOME FITNESS BY EXAMPLE (ISSUE 26)

by Diane Gold

Everybody’s talking about fitness, motivation, abs, fruits and veggies, muscle tone. We see videos and photos of models who are size 2s and, if they are very tall, 4s. So where does that leave girls who are size 18 on their thinnest day?

At home, whether we realize it or not, we learn from the habits of our family. When our mom does no physical exercise, we don’t criticize her for it (although it never hurts to talk about it); we probably think,

“Oh, she’s not working out because she is getting older.”

When exercise is not done by one of our main role models, our mom, we are being taught that it is not important. In this day and age, we know it is necessary for health. The truth, obvious by looking around at all the senior sports programs and the 50-year-olds who look 35, is that fitness becomes more important with age. And by being an example of fitness and health, we have big influence over our daughters. We always need to be sensitive to our daughters and don’t want to boast or swagger if our daughters are struggling with weight and exercise. That is why the below actions use relatively easy action steps.

With that said, we are going to go over 3 simple non-earth shattering ways that can jump start fitness by example. They require no huge sacrifices, are best implemented together and are common sense ways we can add to our lives without much effort on our part or the part of our daughters.

EXERCISE: ROUND THE BLOCK WALK

As a mom, we can tell our daughter that we want to hear about her day, but that we are starting a new fitness program that requires walking around the block 1 time. We can say we’d like to hear about her day while we are doing that walk. If she is under 10, we can probably say,

“We’re going for a 1 walk around the block.”

If she’s between 10 and 13, we might say it a different way but can usually get it to happen.

If she’s over 13, we may have some resistance. We can keep asking her for 31 days straight to see whether, one day, she says yes. While she is saying no, we have to go out and do the walk. It’s not a marathon, remember. It’s only a block. If it’s a country road with no block divisions, approximate the distance.  This whole time, she will see that we are going out and doing 1 block only. This way, she will know she can do it and will grab motivation from our perseverance.

If medical issues preclude this activity, we can spend the same amount of time inside moving and talking with our daughter.  If psychological issues make our daughter say no because it is too far, we can make adjustments.

When she says yes and our daughter agrees to walk, we need to be observant. When we see that our daughter is slowing down and does not want to continue, don’t continue so that we get our work out in. Remember this particular activity is for our daughters with the added benefit of helping ourselves.

We can do a little coaching to see whether we can get her to walk a little more. The next time, she might get further before she says she’s had it. The time after that, she might go all the way. If she won’t budge, we can talk while heading back home.

MOTIVATION: FITNESS ACCESSORY

How often do our daughters want to buy something for themselves? When our daughters are carrying extra weight, they might not be interested in new clothing because they may not like how it looks on them. In the coming weeks, we will have a world renowned fashion expert talk about the clothing she has created because we are all beautiful.

In the meantime, let’s go to the sports store with our daughters. An alternative, depending upon where we live, would be to go to a wholesale or department store. On the way to the store, to build anticipation and to quench curiosity, we can say we wanted to get an accessory for ourselves and wanted our daughter’s opinion. Then, when we walk over to sweat bands, sun visors, wrist bands, anything that does not require trying on over the body, there will be no threat to our daughters.

Asking for our daughter’s opinion makes them important, and they will probably want to help with our workout. Don’t be surprised if requests to try on clothing come up. Depending upon the family budget, this might encouraged, even though this buying trip’s purpose is to get a colorful, new accessory for the walk. Sometimes, wanting to wear the accessory will be enough to get our daughters to say yes to everything.

IMPORTANT CALORIES: VEGETABLE JUICING

A simple food preparation is juicing, not a new concept, and one where there has never been a negative word about its benefit. In any diet, adding a little juice to the day is a healthy way to get vitamins, minerals, nutrients. If there is a lot of resistance to vegetable juice, mix it with apple.

I remember going to brunch the morning after a family celebration. The hotel buffet was serving wheatgrass shots – but they were half apple juice. One of the main reasons to drink wheatgrass juice is to utilize the live nutrients which work best on an empty stomach and without another ingredient. I had never heard of diva wheatgrass juice, which, of course, thwarts much of the mission. But, better to have diluted wheatgrass juice than none at all.

OK, I’m not suggesting wheatgrass juice as a first juice with daughter, although I do recommend it to everyone. I am suggesting gentle juicing, which is the juicing of items whose taste we already know and enjoy. Adding juicing to our kitchen teaches our daughters healthy food preparation.

Did you know that as a result of eating raw foods such as juicing, our tongue receptors become more sensitive? This is a good thing and can train us to recognize food additives and chemical substitutes.

Here’s a recipe for rhythmic carrot-orange juice (rhythmic because it has a beet). To begin, start with once a week, 4 ounces for ourselves and 2 ounces for our daughters. This should begin at the same convenient time every week. We must keep at it so that our daughters see consistent, healthy eating habits. Our persistence will be effective whether our daughters watch or partake. And it will be healthy for us in the process.

Rhythmic Carrot-Orange Juice (with a Beet) by Anahad O’Connor and Dave Lieberman’s 10 Things book. The number of units of the raw ingredient is dependent upon the size of each unit.
2 2/3 ounces of carrot juice

2 ounces of beet juice

1 1/3 ounces of fresh orange juice

Stir the juices together and serve.

(Often, to get one ounce of carrot juice, 2 carrots would be used. Let us know how many you needed.)

CONCLUSION

The beautiful thing about leading by example is what a profound but subtle effect it can have. When we set up a way to work together with our daughters on activities that are not too demanding, we will get our daughter’s thinking. At least, our daughters will know that we care about them.

As mentioned earlier, it is very important not to compete by showing off the progress we have made, unless our daughters are working right alongside of us and succeeding, too. We want to encourage, not discourage. The purpose of these small actions is for our daughters, even though the exercise and the juice will serve us well.

It’s sometimes difficult to see how difficult it might be for our daughters to move, motivate, act on their own behalf. If we invite exercise, create motivation and do family juicing with love, our daughters will be exposed to positive influence that could happily impact their fitness.

FEEDBACK

Please leave your comments below. We value them. You can also converse with us on Twitter @warriorsoweight.
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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Moms For Healthy Daughters, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music and stress expert and a dedicated mom. She believes we are role models to our children throughout our lives. She says, “Hopefully, we are showing our true side to our daughter when we influence her, and we remember that we can always learn from our daughters.”

The Avocado Story And Fat Can Be Good (Issue 11)

by Anahad O’Connor and Dave Lieberman

(Anahad) Most of us have been programmed for years to think that cutting back on fat in every shape and form is the shortest path to better health. But the science could not be any clearer. Focus on the right kind of fat, and you’re likely to lose weight, protect your ticker, and lower your risk of all sorts of diseases. Scientists have known this is the case since at least the 1940s, when out of the devastation of World War II came one of the most crucial nutritional discoveries of the last century.

The setting was post-war Europe, southern Greece. In 1947, the Rockefeller Foundation sent researchers and humanitarian aid workers to the palm-dappled island of Crete, a land steeped in ancient history. Previously a paradise, the island had been left in near ruins after a brutal invasion and occupation by German and Italian forces. When the Rockefeller researchers arrived, they were sure they’d find rampant malnutrition. Compared to Americans, the Cretans ate like peasants. Wartime dinner tables were bereft of dairy, and protein was scarce. Instead the locals ate mostly bread, nuts, legumes, some fruits and vegetables and ample amounts of fat, some from fish and animals and a lot of it from olive oil.

But the diseases that the researchers were sure they’d find among the Cretans were nonexistent. Cardiovascular disease, cancer and other ills were almost unheard of, and life expectancy was high.

That was in stark contrast to what scientists found when they examined six other countries, especially one much further north, Finland. Physically, the Finns could not have been more different from the people of Crete. They were loggers and farmers, standing tall, strong, and rugged. Malnutrition was not a concern. Like the Cretans, the Finns ate plenty of fat, most of it from meat, milk, and their national condiment, butter. They also had cholesterol levels that were similar to what was seen in Crete. But unlike the Cretans, the Finns had extraordinary rates of heart disease, the highest in the world. Sharp chest pains were as much a part of reaching midlife in Finland as a fiftieth birthday, except that the chest pains came first. Many Finnish children knew their grandparents only from pictures.

Some researchers thought the difference was genetics, or perhaps Crete’s balmy climate. But that theory was quickly disputed. Cretans who migrated to other countries, including tropical ones like Brazil, suffered the same rates of heart disease and cancer as their new countrymen. Speculation soon turned to tobacco. The Finns were known to like their cigarettes. But later studies showed that even in rural areas of Crete where the locals smoked frequently, drank heavily, and had other coronary risk factors, cardiovascular disease was low. Like a Doberman standing sentry over its turf, something in the Cretan diet was fiercely cardio-protective.

We know from more recent studies that the Finns were torturing themselves with the principal fat in their diet, saturated fat, while their Cretan counterparts were reaping huge rewards from the type of fat they were eating, monounsaturated fat.

The benefits of monounsaturated fat cannot be overstated. The medical literature on what it can do for you is enormous. It lowers bad cholesterol, raises the good kind, reduces inflammation, and prevents heart disease. Compared with the artery-gumming effects of saturated fat, it acts like arterial drain cleaner, keeping blood vessels clear and reducing harmful deposits. That’s the kind of fat anyone could love.

Balance may be a good thing, but experts say that when it comes to your fat intake, you definitely want the scales to tip heavily in favor of monounsaturated fat. Ask most people where they can find them, however, and beyond a mention of olive or canola oil, you’re almost guaranteed a blank stare. So consider yourself a Rockefeller scientist, on the verge of another great discovery. One of nature’s most abundant and perhaps surprising sources of monounsaturated gold is a food that plays almost no role in the average person’s diet: avocados. If the only time you eat them is in guacamole on Super Bowl Sunday, you’re making a huge mistake, like limiting green veggies to St. Paddy’s Day.

It’s time to make some room in your culinary repertoire.

Ounce for ounce, avocados have more fat than virtually any other fruit, which is why most people typically avoid them, busting them out in the kitchen only a couple times a year for football or Cinco de Mayo.

Avocados collect dust on supermarket shelves the rest of the year, making only brief appearances in California rolls and burritos, as we fill our plates with foods that are nutritionally inferior.
Avocados may be high in fat, but the bulk of it is monounsaturated; and, like all plant foods, they contain no cholesterol. In fact, with their extremely high levels of fiber, about 30 percent of the recommended daily amount in a single cup (the most of any fruit); they actually work to lower your cholesterol.

But it gets better. Half an avocado has only 150 calories. That’s less than a small tier of [fast food] fries (230 calories), and amazingly, it’s even less than a single serving of most [creamy] salad dressings (170 to 190 calories), which also come loaded with sodium and both trans and saturated fats. Why dump that on a perfectly healthy salad when you can top it off instead with the best fat possible in the form of a few slices of avocado?

If every American made that decision, our health and nutritional landscape would look a lot different. According to a joint report by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, as many as a hundred thousand cardiac deaths in the United States could be prevented every year if people replaced the bad fats in their diet, particularly trans fats, with monounsaturated fat and its similarly healthy sidekick, non-hydrogenated polyunsaturated fat.

Then there’s potassium, the blood-pressure-reducing mineral that bananas are famous for. Bananas are a wonderful food, but avocados contain about 60 % more potassium. Like carrots in a candy store, avocados rarely get their due.

Consider avocados something of a culinary triple threat: tasty, versatile, and an excellent stand-in for other fats. As a health reporter who’s been through the studies and examined the science, I was sold a long time ago. But for all my good intentions, every time I experimented with avocados I would find myself right back in the same place: looking for … chips.

I just couldn’t seem to break out of the guacamole rut.

So I turned to Dave, who had dabbled only occasionally with avocados but quickly came around when he discovered their nutritional profile. In fact, he said, he had wanted to put them to good use all along.

(Dave) When I lived in Los Angeles, I thought I had entered an avocado Nirvana, because I had a big, beautiful avocado tree growing right on my deck. It was heavy with fat, green avocados. But I wasn’t the only one who had designs on them. Like clockwork, every time the avocados were ready to pick, I’d walk out onto the deck to find that every last one of them was gone, save for a few sad casualties left on the porch that were riddled with little tooth marks. That’s when I discovered I had squirrels. So much for my avocado heaven! That is, until now. Anahad finally gave me another good reason to dream up a bunch of ways to use avocado.

I’ve always loved avocados, but it wasn’t until I finally got around to experimenting with them that I realized just how truly versatile they are. Like most Americans, I’ve been pretty narrow in my avocado repertoire, sticking to salads, sandwiches, and dips. But …there’s a wide range of uses for avocado, from serving it hot in stews and soups to making it the starting point for delicious smoothies and desserts.

Preparing avocado in a sweet way was the most eye-opening part of this exploration for me. But in many parts of the world, particularly in South America and South Asia, enjoying avocado as a dessert with nothing more than some sugar …is de rigueur.

Treating avocado as a luscious dessert makes sense, considering its velvety richness. This heart-healthy fat content and mild flavor is exactly what makes avocado such a versatile ingredient. …With endless uses, avocado has everything you need to make it a staple at lunch, dinner and dessert.

Publisher’s Note:
It always seemed to me that avocados tasted so rich so that we would eat them and get full of good, healthy fat so that we could curb our appetites from the fullness we felt.

FEEDBACK
Please leave your comments below so others can share what you think.
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ANAHAD O’CONNOR

Anahad has been writing for the Science Section at the New York Times. He is passionate about investigative science and fitness reporting. He is one of our panelists whose full bio you will find in the Experts section. Check our Resources Tab to purchase The 10 Things You Need To Eat.

DAVE LIEBERMAN

Through watching his father cook, Dave started his relationship with food. He went from hosting a campus cooking show at Yale to hosting shows for the Food Network and authoring several books. He works as a personal chef in New York, NY.

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