Today's Recipe
If you don't know what to serve for dinner tonight ...
Combine this tasty lentil dish with rice for a hearty vegetarian
meal to add to your Healthiest Way of Eating. It will provide you with a
complete protein as well many other health-promoting nutrients.
Indian-Style Lentils
Prep and Cook Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 medium size onion, diced
- 1 TBS vegetable broth
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup canned diced tomatoes
- 2 cups or 1 15-oz can (BPA free) lentils
- 1 cup frozen spinach
Directions:
- Dice onions and mince garlic and let sit for at least 5 minutes to bring out their health-promoting properties.
- Healthy sauté onion in 1 TBS broth for 3 minutes.
- Add garlic, ginger, turmeric, salt, tomatoes and lentils.
- Simmer covered for 5-7 minutes.
- Add 1 cup frozen spinach and continue simmering for 2 more minutes.
Serves 2
Serve over brown rice.
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Indian-Style Lentils
In-Depth Nutritional Profile for
Indian-Style Lentils
Healthy Food Tip
How does the nutrition analysis of regular green tea compare with decaffeinated green tea?
In general, decaffeinated green tea is simply a more processed
form of the green tea that has not been decaffeinated. Like all foods,
green tea will have its nutrient content reduced as it becomes more and
more processed. It would be very rare for a processed food to contain
the same amount of nutrients, or more nutrients, than a processed food.
(The only exceptions would be artificially fortified or enriched foods
that have had vitamins or other nutrients deliberately added back during
the manufacturing process.)
All green teas undergo some processing since some form of heat is
necessary to stop the oxidation processes that occur naturally with
freshly picked tea leaves. However, this processing can be very minimal
and can leave the vast majority of nutrients intact.
Decaffeination of green tea is not quite as simple. There are three basic ways in which caffeine gets removed from tea leaves.
In one method, compressed carbon dioxide (CO2) is combined with
water to create a solution that will draw caffeine (and other
substances) out from the leaves. Once the tea leaves have been soaked in
this solution, they are removed, and the solution can then be passed
through an activated carbon filter to remove the caffeine. The tea
leaves can then be re-immersed in the solution so that some of the lost
flavoring components can be restored. This method of green tea
decaffeination is sometimes called the effervescence or CO2 method.
A second approach is to soak the leaves in water for an extended
period of time to allow for the release of caffeine (and other
substances) from the leaves, then to remove the leaves and add a
chemical solvent like ethyl acetate to the caffeine-containing water.
Once this solvent has extracted the caffeine, the tea leaves can be
re-immersed in the water to allow the natural flavors (and other
factors) to be restored.
A third approach is to use hot water alone as an agent for
removing caffeine from the tea leaves. Approximately three minutes of
boiling is sufficient to reduce the caffeine content of green tea leaves
by about 80-85%.
The second method of decaffeination is definitely one I do not
recommend since the tea leaves are returned to water that has trace (or
higher) residues of ethyl acetate. Even though ethyl acetate can be a
naturally occurring substance (it's present in several common fruits,
for example), it's also a known toxin in high doses and at these high
doses is known to disrupt activity in the liver, respiratory system, and
central nervous system. The other two approaches—effervescence using
CO2 or hot water alone—seem like lower risk approaches to me.
There is no question that some nutrients are lost from green tea
in any decaffeination process. I've only seen two published studies in
this area, however. I have been impressed by one very recent research
study that showed very little loss (about 5%) of certain key
phytonutrients (called catechins) from hot-water-decaffeinated green tea
leaves. It's important to note, however, that this study involved fresh
tea leaves that had been neither dried nor rolled. The researchers
themselves pointed out that far more catechins were lost in the case of
dried or dried/rolled tea leaves. Still, it's encouraging that at least
in this one particular case, a decaffeination process could result in so
little damage to these components.
These research results pointed in the same general direction as
an animal study I found that showed significant skin protection from
nutrients in water-decaffeinated green tea. In comparison with
non-processed green tea, water-decaffeinated green tea lost about 16%
effectiveness in protecting the skin cells of mice. I am uncomfortable
trying to draw any conclusions about human consumption of decaf green
tea from a single study on mice. But once again, it is encouraging to
see results that point in the same general direction as the
phytonutrient loss study that I described earlier.
For individuals sensitive to caffeine, or individuals simply
choosing to follow a caffeine-free diet, water-decaffeinated green tea
or effervescence-decaffeinated green tea makes good sense to me. There
is definitely a nutrient loss that occurs in the decaffeination process,
but the degree of loss seems like a good trade-off for individuals who
need or choose to avoid caffeine.
References:
Lianga H, Liang Y, Donga J, et al. Decaffeination of fresh green
tea leaf (Camellia sinensis) by hot water treatment. Food Chemistry.
2007;101(4)4:1451-1456.
Wang ZY, Huang MT, Lou YR, et al. Inhibitory effects of black
tea, green tea, decaffeinated black tea, and decaffeinated green tea on
ultraviolet B light-induced skin carcinogenesis in 7,12-dimethylbenzanthracene-initiated SKH-1 mice. Cancer Res. 1994 Jul 1;54(13):3428-35.
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