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Judy in Ags

Aug 29, 2006, 7:07 AM

Post #26 of 43 (2016 views)

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Re: [esperanza] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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I'm sure you must be correct, because someone must buy and use all those veggies, but the Mexican I know personally (quite a few) don't eat very many.

esperanza

Aug 29, 2006, 7:46 AM

Post #27 of 43 (2007 views)

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Re: [Ed and Fran] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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Mexican preparation of vegetables isn't usually about side dishes of green beans or peas or cauliflower, and it usually isn't about salads, either.

But consider a few examples: both cocido and caldo de pollo, staples of the comida table, are loaded with calabacita, apio, elote, papa, cebolla, chayote and zanahoria. Sopa de arroz is often steamed with chícharos, elote, and zanahoria. Tortitas are made from coliflor, papa, and calabacita. Champiñones are eaten as tortitas, as a guisado, or stuffed into quesadillas. Chopped mixed vegetables are sold by the kilo to be added to the soup pot or served as a guisado. Chiles poblano are stuffed with anything handy and served every day by the thousands. Acelgas and verdolagas are eaten as additions to soups (espinazo con verdolagas and sopa de acelgas come immediately to mind). Flor de calabaza is chopped, stuffed, stuffed into quesadillas or cooked in soups. Nopalitos are ubiquitous, either roasted as whole paddles or cut into strips as salad. Garbanzos, habas, and lentejas make their appearance in a variety of fashions, including salads.

If your suegra doesn't prepare some or all of these vegetable dishes, I'll eat my hat. And my hat is most definitely not a vegetable.

http://www.mexicocooks.typepad.com

carlw

Aug 29, 2006, 7:58 AM

Post #28 of 43 (2000 views)

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Re: [DoDi2] 'Latino Paradox' It is the WORK!!

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Another very obvious difference is the height of NOB-raised teenagers compared to their siblings and cousins raised in Mexico. It is often a startling difference when visiting in Mexico with friends and you see the teenagers from both sides together and there is often a 1/2 foot difference between those of the same age. Maybe due to the NOB high protein diet?

Ed and Fran

Aug 29, 2006, 9:03 AM

Post #29 of 43 (1984 views)

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Re: [esperanza] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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If your suegra doesn't prepare some or all of these vegetable dishes, I'll eat my hat. And my hat is most definitely not a vegetable.

¿Would you like that with salsa verde or salsa roja?

But consider a few examples: both cocido and caldo de pollo, staples of the comida table, are loaded with calabacita, apio, elote, papa, cebolla, chayote and zanahoria. Sopa de arroz is often steamed with chícharos, elote, and zanahoria. Tortitas are made from coliflor, papa, and calabacita. Champiñones are eaten as tortitas, as a guisado, or stuffed into quesadillas. Chopped mixed vegetables are sold by the kilo to be added to the soup pot or served as a guisado. Chiles poblano are stuffed with anything handy and served every day by the thousands. Acelgas and verdolagas are eaten as additions to soups (espinazo con verdolagas and sopa de acelgas come immediately to mind). Flor de calabaza is chopped, stuffed, stuffed into quesadillas or cooked in soups. Nopalitos are ubiquitous, either roasted as whole paddles or cut into strips as salad. Garbanzos, habas, and lentejas make their appearance in a variety of fashions, including salads.

I don't doubt for a minute that many do cook these dishes, but they're not "staples of the comida table" here. I don't ever remember my suegra buying, or using, champiñones, flor de calabaza, coliflor, broccoli, apio or nopalitos. Chopped mixed vegetables by the kilo for soup, no thank you. Garbanzos, habas, lentejas..... not that I've seen. Here it's frijol negro, frijol negro, and maybe on Sunday some frijol negro. Fran and her mother's idea of stuffed chiles is stuffed jalapeños. Fran had no idea of stuffing chile poblanos until I introduced her to the dish. She makes them now, but not my suegra.

Like I say, it's just one data point. Maybe my in-laws are the only family in Mexico who don't eat a lot of vegetables.

Regards

Ed

esperanza

Aug 29, 2006, 10:34 AM

Post #30 of 43 (1937 views)

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Re: [Ed and Fran] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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Salsa ranchera retepicante, please.

But truly, I think your suegra is in the minority.

http://www.mexicocooks.typepad.com

Mark Landes

Aug 29, 2006, 10:48 AM

Post #31 of 43 (1928 views)

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Re: [caldwelld] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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Flavorings are not fattening although as chemicals that the body may not recognize residuals may be stored in fatty tissues. Chemistry is wonderful but cannot match the synergy of real food. Take an apple e.g. --there are 12,144 (food) elements known so far in an apple -- an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Along comes chemistry and Voila a vitamin pill with 10-25 manufactured, isolated, elements --not quite the same synergy. Frozen foods may retain nutrients. Canned foods may contain zero nutrients depending on the food (you can cook tomatoes all you want and the lycopene is retained). A can of string beans would taste like rubber without chemistry and salt. For good health none of the following can be lacking --adequate nutrition, family/community bonds, physical activity, emotional/spiritual attention, good luck/DNA. The author of Fast Food Nation already had a job with Atlantic Monthly. I appreciate the effort he put in to research how some basic American food groups (french fries, hamburgers, beef, milk..) are managed, prepared and sold by the fast food industry to we and our children. It did become a NY Times bestseller. Stay positive and curious, Mark
Mark

esperanza

Aug 29, 2006, 11:22 AM

Post #32 of 43 (1915 views)

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Re: [Mark Landes] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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'Processed' means just that--processed. It doesn't mean 'evil'.

The difference between a tomato picked from the vine and a tomato from a can is the process the tomato goes through to get into the can. There are processes that significantly change the nutritional value of food, or (as Mark said) add chemicals to the food that may in and of themselves be unhealthy for the human body.

http://www.mexicocooks.typepad.com

wendy devlin

Aug 29, 2006, 1:02 PM

Post #33 of 43 (1898 views)

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Re: [esperanza] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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Some does...some doesn't cook lots of vegetables.

After reading, Zarela's Martinez's cook-book, 'Food from my Heart', I looked forward to every invitation to a home-cooked Mexican meal.

(Especially I enjoyed Zarela's description of growing up on her parent's ranch and later on, going to school in Guadalajara.)

Gazooks! All Mexican food is not created equal!
The sublime, to the out-right awful.

So for Ed, un cuentito from a parallel universe:)

Last week, I asked a friend at our weekend Farmers' Market where I have a booth, if he was available again to be a judge at the Exhibitions for the upcoming Fall Fair. He said last year, he judged pickles.

At the time of the judging before the Fair opens, the name of the exhibitor is hidden.

He found the pickle in one of the jars so vile, he could barely eat the amount required for judging.

Curious, he went back to the table of pickles when the Fair opened.

The names were displayed along with the scores and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd and honorary ribbons.

The jar of horrible pickles? His sister-in-law's.

esperanza

Aug 29, 2006, 1:15 PM

Post #34 of 43 (1893 views)

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Re: [wendy devlin] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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Wendy, you are so right. Not every Mexican (viz Ed's suegra) is an outstanding cook. But oh my...when we're good, we're really good.

http://www.mexicocooks.typepad.com

wendy devlin

Aug 29, 2006, 2:14 PM

Post #35 of 43 (1877 views)

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Re: [esperanza] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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Daughter dearest, is on her way to being a good Mexican cook.

However, it seems she spent too much time on the eijido.

If you don't use...you lose.

Zarela's cook-book.
At least I know who's book-case to look in:)

arbon

Aug 29, 2006, 2:27 PM

Post #36 of 43 (1876 views)

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Re: [wendy devlin] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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As you well know Wendy I'm from the English school of cooking, where if you can still recognize what a vegetable was, it has not been cooked to perfection, and has not yet released all it's flavour and soul to the gravy.

There are only a few fresh vegetables worth cooking, considering the cost of fire wood, and they are in order of importance.

Potatoes, Onions, and Mushrooms.

Tomatoes (Brandy wine) are a fruit and should never be cooked, just eaten where they grow, but if some find their way into the house I will cut them into segments with white pepper and 1000 Island salad dressing applied.

I think Mexicans have the right idea and treat Maize and beans as food, any way who does think of Maize and beans as vegetables?

As for the food value in green vegetables,............. I get that benefit from goat and rabbit meat.
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caldwelld

Aug 29, 2006, 2:51 PM

Post #37 of 43 (1871 views)

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Re: [Mark Landes] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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Well thank you for the chemistry lesson and the advice about staying positive and curious. Those remarks may change my life.

As one who spent over 30 years in the ag and food biz one thing I learned is that we (the Royal one, particularly including the medical class) have still a great deal to learn about human nutrition. I wasn’t knocking Schlosser’s main premise in Fast Food Nation but merely pointing out the obvious – he is not a nutritionist and is in the business of selling books.

This, by the way, was not a discussion about vitamin pills nor processed foods but rather about an apparent paradox noticed NOB by some medical “experts” regarding the health of American-based Mexicans vis a vis citizens of other races and backgrounds. Some of the “experts” on this forum immediately jumped on the processed food industry and I simply took them to task for doing that. Not because I think processed food is wonderful in every respect but because of the tendency to associate everything that is bad in the world with big business – a knee jerk reaction which I reject. It turned out that when pressed for clear definition of which processed foods were likely the culprits no clear “winners” were identified that could logically account for this paradox. I rested my case but you woiuld not let up.

The LA Times article by the way is a whole jumble of different elements related to the so-called paradox stated for the most part out of context, so it is really difficult to even understand whether this “paradox” even actually still exists or not. That is because the LA Times is in the business of selling articles (much like Schlosser) not nutritional advice.
The funniest part of this whole string, (and I say this simply to demonstrate my positive attitude), is that when Jonna posted it, it appeared to be simply as a point of information. “The paradox”, said the article, “has long baffled experts in the USA”. But did that stop anyone on this forum from offering their “expertise” to those baffled experts up there? No way. First we heard it was all those processed foods that Mexicans living in LA mysteriously avoid. Next it was exercise due to the harder work that group does. Then it was just a temporary aberration related to the time “in-country” so to speak. Then it was food coloring and strawberry milkshakes, and vitamin pills and apples. Then we got on to the fruit and veg in the average Mexican diet whatever that had to do with Mexicans living in the US. Now we are debating whether cooking veg English style is as good as getting ones greens through a rabbit. Can it get any funnier? Or further off topic?
dondon

Ed and Fran

Aug 29, 2006, 3:00 PM

Post #38 of 43 (1864 views)

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Re: [caldwelld] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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Can it get any funnier? Or further off topic?

I dunno... but we can sure try!

Ed

arbon

Aug 29, 2006, 3:24 PM

Post #39 of 43 (1854 views)

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Re: [caldwelld] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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It looks to me that caldwell is saying that there are no experts or paradoxes, just charlatans making money under false pretenses.

But why are there food inspectors, seems so unnecessary now, in the greater scheme of things.
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wendy devlin

Aug 29, 2006, 3:24 PM

Post #40 of 43 (1855 views)

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Re: [Ed and Fran] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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'we try harder', ed, do you work for AVIS...ja! ja!

In the seventies I read a sociology book titled something like, 'Youth in Old Age'.

Today when I googled the title, all I got was hits for Aristotle!

Man, he's really ooooold.

This book, which I've misnamed, was a sociology study of three cultures in the world where people live the longest.

A mountain tribe in Kashmir, the Huntzis(spelling?) you remember, of apricot pit fame. People in the Georgian region of Russia. And a small group of people somehere in the high Andes.

Different altitudes, diets, religious beliefs ETC...but all with statiscally significant portions of their population living past 100...in...get this part...good health.

Once all the variables were weighed in and evaluated, only a few common denominators remained.

The oldest people lived in agricultural societies.
They never stopped 'working' or doing something, valued by their societies.
They walked mostly everywhere, no cars.

And they felt positive about being old...considering the alternative.

jreboll

Aug 29, 2006, 7:46 PM

Post #41 of 43 (1829 views)

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Re: [Ed and Fran] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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I thoroughly enjoyed my three weeks in Michoacan including eating everyday in the mercado and going out to eat often at every restaurant that our friends recommended.
However, as soon as I got back to the states I went straight to Luby's and had a smorgasboard of vegetable salads and vegetable dishes.

arbon

Aug 30, 2006, 2:28 PM

Post #42 of 43 (1788 views)

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Re: [wendy devlin] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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"This book, which I've misnamed, was a sociology study of three cultures in the world where people live the longest.
A mountain tribe in Kashmir, the Huntzis(spelling?) you remember, of apricot pit fame. People in the Georgian region of Russia. And a small group of people somehere in the high Andes."

I think I remember this photo from the book.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mark Landes

Aug 30, 2006, 9:50 PM

Post #43 of 43 (1762 views)

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Re: [caldwelld] 'Latino Paradox' puzzles medical experts

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Was it Cannery Row or Grapes of Wrath--in which Steinbeck has the doctor questioning the Mexican farm worker's kids----What did you have for breakfast (bean and rice)--what did you have for lunch (beans and rice) etc. The doctor was wondering why the kids were so healthy and no cavities. I've been in the ag and food business (consumption end) for many years.
Mark

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