Are smoothies healthy? | Restaurants' mental health crisis | Recipe: Tropical Italian Ice
Issue No. 5
Heads up: Starting next week Sunshine + Microbes will appear in your inbox every Thursday.
While your difficult uncle might not buy what 97% of the scientific community is selling, it’s a pleasant reminder that a majority of Americans accept that climate change is real and caused by humans. But a majority of Americans agreeing about something doesn’t mean the government is going to do bunk about it. Corporate interests have a bit more sway in D.C. than We the People. So if the folks in charge refuse to take action, where does that leave us?
When thinking about what I can personally do to fight climate change, I can’t help but ask myself, does it even matter? On a planet of almost 8 billion people, with the future looking real dire, what’s the point of one person becoming a vegan or starting a compost pile? Can all the do-gooders in the world make up for the actions (or inaction) of one multi-national agricultural conglomerate?
If I’m going to keep my brain from tailspinning into nihilism, I have to believe that my choices can make a difference — that systems and patterns are built on individual actions, and that we all have the ability to collectively move society forward.
When it comes to how we eat, there are concrete ways to take up our knife and fork and do our part. This year the New York Times published an in-depth, interactive piece exploring how the food system affects climate change. The article included a lot of excellent suggestions for achievable actions we can take. You should read it.
Governmental and corporate actions have significantly more influence than individuals. Changing personal behavior won’t solve the problem of climate change, but it just might spur the cultural transformation needed to tackle this issue. Finding a balance is key for me. Doing something that can positively impact our impending doom, even in a small way, feels really good. At the same time, remembering that my actions are a microscopic piece of the puzzle helps me not freak out about trying to do the right thing all the time.
Every day, I try and take at least one concrete action that I can feel good about. I’ll ride my bike to the store instead of driving. I’ll save my veggie scraps in the freezer and turn them into stock instead of tossing them in the trash. If I’m feeling extra inspired I’ll call up my congressman and leave him a sassy message about supporting the climate dividend act.
Taking an action, no matter how small, is a great way to keep hope alive in the face of a scary, uncertain future.
love,
Jackie
Mailbag Question: Are smoothies healthy?
I got a Vitamix, loving the motor — drinking beans and cukes and whatever I pick mixed with seasonal fruit. I know about fiber and eat lots of whole foods, but is a veggie smoothie comparably healthy? -Toni G
Thank you Toni for opening our first mailbag!
Before we get into smoothies, let’s discuss their sorority girl sister- juice. As it turns out, drinking juice is not a particularly healthy choice. Juicing removes all of the solids from the plant, and the solids are where the fiber lives. Fiber is really important! It helps our bodies absorb nutrients and slows down the absorption of sugar to a healthier rate. Without the fiber, eating fruit would be like eating a piece of cake — a sugar bomb. That’s basically what juice is. On top of that, drinking fruit instead of eating it likely means consuming a lot more of it, and therefore a lot more sugar. When liquified, it’s easy to drink an apple, two carrots, and five oranges. Try eating all that in one sitting.
With a smoothie, you’re blending up the whole plant, so the fiber stays put. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The mechanical act of blending shreds the plant’s insoluble fiber — the part that slows sugar absorption — rendering it useless. The soluble fiber — the part that keeps you regular — remains functional. In that sense, drinking a smoothie is half as good as eating the same serving of fruits or veggies, but still better than juicing.
Even with smoothies, sugar remains a scourge. If you’re just blending up beans and spinach and a cucumber, that’s cool (although eww). But most people prefer to add fruit or honey, and the sugar can add up fast.
Still, smoothies contain all of the vitamins and nutrients found in plants, plus those soluble fibers, and they’re a great way to pack in lots of leafy greens. Just be careful not to load them up with too much sugar and don’t puree every meal into a smoothie. With that in mind, I say godspeed Toni and enjoy those garden drinks.
Do you have a nutrition question, cooking query or any comments for Sunshine + Microbes? Send thoughts to our mailbag at sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com.
What’s Stewing in the Food World?
🍽️The restaurant industry’s mental health crisis
The food and drink industry is rife with disturbing labor practices (tip restaurant workers well please! … and fight to end tipping and raise the minimum wage) and that’s not good for employees’ mental wellbeing.
Surveys from the nonprofit Mental Health America (MHA) show that a host of factors contribute to significant mental health issues within the restaurant industry: from long hours to job insecurity to sexual harassment and substance abuse.
As The Outline notes, that means some of the traits that make the American restaurant industry what it is — shouting matches in the kitchen, gossiping about coworkers at the service station, late-night tequila shots in the middle of the week with the person you gossiped about because there’s no one else who’ll drink with you — often facilitate an environment that correlates to mental health issues for many workers.
To help fight those deeply ingrained stereotypes and to get the industry workers to talk more openly about depression, anxiety and substance abuse, several counseling and mental health programs have started advocating for better care for restaurant employees. A year after the death by suicide of celebrity chef, TV presenter and writer Anthony Bourdain the issues within the industry have been pushed into greater focus.
Fresh Links
Our favorite food and environment reads from around the internet. Give’em a click 👇
🌎How climate change is becoming a deadly part of white nationalism | Gizmodo
Ecofascism has appeared as a common thread in the manifesto of mass shooters in the U.S. The nasty ideology doesn’t deny climate change, but instead uses the destruction of the environment as a motive for anti-immigrant beliefs. The El Paso shooter, who targeted Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in an attack that killed 22 people in a Walmart near the border, believed in getting rid of people to make the U.S. way of life “more sustainable.”
Earther, an environmental blog on the tech site Gizmodo, interviewed Betsy Hartmann, professor emeritus at Hampshire College, on the connections between white nationalism and environmentalism or as she calls it the “greening of hate.”
Read the full interview here.
🇵🇪How Peru’s Inka Cola triumphed over Coke | Atlas Obscura
A fun food and drink history on the time the ubiquitous beverage of choice in Perú went head-to-head with Coca-Cola and won. Coke saturates the market in just about every country in the world but not this Andean nation. The “impossibly sugary” drink dominates the market from local eateries to fast food chains. Atlas Obscura gives a brief history of how Inka Cola pulled it off by appealing to nationalism (despite the fact that the company was started by a British family in Lima in 1911).
Read the full story here.
🌴The Coconut Cult | Stuff You Should Know podcast
Stuff You Should Know feels like listening to the most fascinating parts of a Wikipedia entry. Here the podcasts’ two hosts dig into a far-out (albeit not popular nor successful) sect that required followers to subsist exclusively on the coconut. Are there threads between this late 19th Century clan and current kooky/perilous Wellness scams like Goop? Maybe, maybe not. Nevertheless, it’s an engaging short story.
RECIPE: Tropical Fruit Granita (alcohol, optional)
While August in South Florida is too hot to grow staple crops like lettuce and tomatoes, this is prime time for tropical fruit harvests. I have a fridge overflowing with mangoes, starfruit, jackfruit, dragonfruit, guava, sapodilla, and bananas — all grown under 30 miles away. Pretty cool!
Since going outside right now feels like being swallowed up in somebody’s armpit, I have been turning the abundance of tropical fruit into icy treats. I am fortunate to have inherited a shmancy ice cream maker at work, but for something texturally different, I love a granita.
A granita is like a fancy slushy or Italian ice. They’re super easy to make and satisfying in the sweltering summer heat. This week I made a granita with jackfruit, guava, and kombucha and another with mango, key lime, maple, and bourbon.
Ingredients:
Around 4 cups of chopped fruit
2-3 tablespoons sweetener (sugar, honey, maple syrup, whatevs)
3-4 tablespoons acidic liquid (lemon juice, kombucha, balsamic vinegar, etc)
Pinch of salt
FOR ADULTS 😉: A couple tablespoons of booze (rum, bourbon, champagne, etc), if that’s your thing
Step-by-step
Stick a small pan or bowl in the freezer until it’s nice and cold.
Blend up all of your ingredients and taste. The mixture should taste fairly sweet with a noticeable zing of acid (the sweeter it is, the smoother the texture). Feel free to play around with the quantities, keeping in mind how sweet the fruit is. For example, a mango granita will need less added sugar than one made with apples. If the puree seems chunky or you want to get rid of seeds, pass the mixture through a mesh sieve — stirring with a spoon and pushing it through — so all that’s left is a smooth puree.
Pour mixture into the cold pan and return it to the freezer. After one hour, give the whole thing a good stir. Keeping it in the freezer, stirring every 30 minutes for another 2 hours. The texture should be icy but not chunky. Store in an airtight container in the freezer.
A Peek Inside Jackie’s kitchen
The unique, interminable U.S. presidential election cycle means following every move of the candidates for months and months and even more months. That means last weekend the media joined Iowa State Fairgoers to watch Democratic candidates give their stump speeches and indulge in every kind of fried food (Vegan candidates Cory Booker and Tulsi Gabbard chowed down on a fried PB&J and fried avocados, respectively) several months before the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucus.
As the field starts to narrow, Sunshine + Microbes might use this space to evaluate candidate’s food policies, which touches everything from immigration to climate change. But for now, here’s future presidential also-ran Bill de Blasio posing awkwardly with a corn dog — plus other photos of White House wannabes devouring their favorite fair fare.
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is the current Chef-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. and co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a freelance reporter based in Colombia. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes others scraps to each issue.