Chocolate is alternately portrayed as a sinful delight – damaging to your health and your waistline – or as a food with health benefits. So which is it? According to the Mayo Clinic website, a trusted health authority in the United States: “flavanols in cocoa beans have antioxidant effects that reduce cell damage implicated in heart disease. Flavanols also help lower blood pressure and improve vascular function”

So there is something positive in the treat we love. But before we can answer the question, “Is chocolate friend or delicious foe?” we have to ask ourselves which chocolate we’re talking about. To do so, let’s take a short historical look.

Chocolate was first enjoyed as a drink by Mayan and Aztec cultures thousands of years ago, but the beverage they revered as magical was bitter pure chocolate. The Europeans adopted it, added a little honey or cane sugar, and it became a hit.

By 1868, Cadbury found a way to process it into a solid bar. Without many additives, it likely had many of the nutritious qualities that those ancient civilizations valued. However today’s Cadbury Dairy Milk has a lot of added ingredients, even though some of its bars may be certified as Fair Trade. It’s just full of other stuff.

Unwanted things in chocolate

Milk Chocolate (sugar; milk; eggs; chocolate; cocoa butter)

Lactose; soy lecithin;

PGPR, emulsifier; natural and artificial flavor.

What are these extra ingredients in chocolate?

PGPR (Polyglycerol Polyricinoleate) is an emulsifier and a cheap replacement for cocoa butter.

Soy lecithin, like any other soy product, is probably made from genetically modified soy.

Natural and artificial flavor – this could be anything. Unhealthy ingredients hide anonymously under these labels.

So while chocolate itself may have health giving properties, there are three problems with many of the products found in the marketplace today.

1. The percentage of chocolate may be quite low (nowhere near what the Mayans and Aztec were drinking). Look for the highest percentage.

2. Some of the additives may be harmful to your health.

3. Much of the chocolate on the market contains so much sugar that it negates whatever benefit you gain from the chocolate itself.

In Israel, for instance, the chocolate market has improved dramatically over the last twenty years. It’s now easy to find chocolate with 70 percent or 85% to 100% cocoa in supermarkets. Some brands contain no soy lecithin or other questionable ingredients. I would recommend these for health-conscious people.

Brands we tried recently and love and which can be ordered online include ChocoSoul from Toronto which we ate plenty of this past summer.

Think fair trade and organic too

In addition, many top quality chocolate shops now line the streets of main cities in Israel, and I imagine the same is true in other Middle East cities which likely both imports and give home to small chocolatiers. Ask them about their ingredients or follow your taste buds: The best tasting chocolate is made with the purest ingredients.

Other brands of chocolate are available in health food stores. Many have the advantage of being organic and some of them labeled fair trade. Child slavery and other abuses are ongoing problems in the chocolate trade and should be taken into consideration when making your purchase.

The only way to identify chocolate that does not involve child slavery is to either buy one specifically labeled as such, or one that is on the Fairtrade International list.

Fair Trade Chocolate We Like:

Alter Eco sells organic chocolate that regenerates ecosystems, empowers farmers, and reverses climate change.

GiddyYo is crafting organic, plant-based, dark chocolate, coffee, superfoods and bodycare.

Belvas –  the first organic chocolate factory in Europe and Belvas was named “Europe’s greenest micro-business” by the European Commission (EMAS award).

Camino is a Canadian brand of fair trade and organic food products, owned by La Siembra Co-operative, based in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. Established in 1999, La Siembra Co-operative became the first registered importers of Fairtrade Certified cocoa and sugar in North America and today works with 25 producer co-ops, supporting more than 47,500 family farmers in 14 countries.

Chocolove is a chocolate manufacturer with headquarters and a manufacturing facility in Boulder, Colorado, founded in 1995 by entrepreneur Timothy Moley. The company produces all-natural and organic chocolate bars. Chocolove imports chocolate and cocoa butter from Belgium to produce its chocolate.

ChocoSol is rooted in Toronto’s St. Clair West neighbourhood of Regal Heights, where the team turns cacao into stone-ground dark chocolate, develops their growing Chocosoil project on the rooftop garden, and hosts behind-the-scenes tours and events in their Cacao Commons.

Have a favorite brand to share? Add to the list by submitting in comments or email us chocolate@greenprophet,com

Why is September 13th World Chocolate Day?

World Chocolate Day is a yearly celebration that pays homage to one of the world’s most beloved treats: chocolate. This special date is celebrated every September 13th and is steeped in history, tradition, and, of course, lots of chocolate.

The idea started in 1995 when International Chocolate Day was established in France and this day changed to September 13th, the birthday of Roald Dahl, the children’s book author who wrote the iconic novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

Check out these other posts on fair trade:
Fair Trade Sweets on Valentines Day
Feasting on Fair Trade This Ramadan
The Little Fair Trade Shop Shows Masdar its Big Heart

The post Chocolate lovers guide to green chocolate appeared first on Green Prophet.

How can you tell if a food is probiotic and good for your guts? Green Prophet gives a general guide.

You may know all about the ecosystem of a pond or a woodland, but have you stopped to think about the ecosystem of your own gut? Sandor Katz did and wrote a whole book on fermented food. Your digestive tract is home to trillions of organisms. For good health, we need to maintain a proper balance between those that are beneficial and those that are harmful.

How do you know if your gut “ecosystem” is in optimal condition?

Well if you:

• were born to parents with good gut flora
• were born in a vaginal birth
• had been exclusively breastfed for the first months of your life
• have eaten primarily nutritious, toxin-free food
• have seldom taken antibiotics, only when needed, and never for long periods of time

…then there’s a good chance your gut ecosystem is in balance.

Unfortunately, this describes practically no one in modern society (even if you like the Paleo Diet) which means we could all use a little help from our microbial friends. That’s where fermented foods come in.

What are some examples of fermented foods?

Before the advent of refrigeration, pickling was a much-needed way to save freshly harvested vegetables. Every country has its favorite pickled veggies – and the best source of information about local pickles is usually a grandmother. Some Middle Eastern favorites include pickled beets, pickled lemons, and dill pickles.

Before milk started to be routinely pasteurized, all dairy food had beneficial bacteria. Even today, some probiotic dairy foods are available. You can read here about natural, Slow Cheese in Europe. Many condiments also started their careers as fermented foods. One example is ketchup.

Closer to home, bright yellow “amba” – a mango sauce popular in Iraq and Israel and often drizzled on falafel – is another. Even soft drinks, such as ginger ale, which certainly aren’t healthy today, used to be healthy drinks brimming with beneficial bacteria.

How can you tell if it is probiotic?

Unfortunately, most, if not all, canned and bottled fermented foods you find in the supermarket are pasteurized. With nothing living in them, they can be stored for long periods. This is great for the manufacturer and retailer; but it means that these foods won’t help your gut ecosystem. These foods are technically “dead”.

Pickled vegetables (and fruit), will be probiotic if they are:

1. pickled without vinegar or oil.
2. unpasteurized.

What about yoghurt or kefir?

The modern process for making yogurt creates some confusion. The kind of yogurt found on your supermarket shelf is made from pasteurized milk; however probiotic bacteria are added to the milk to turn it into yogurt.

If it isn’t pasteurized a second time, it’ll have beneficial bacteria and will be labeled “bio”. Note that the fresher it is, the greater the quantity of more beneficial acidophilus and other bacteria it will carry.

Store-bought labane cheese, the soft sour cheese that Bedouin like to make, may be pasteurized and therefore not probiotic, but it’s easy to make your own labane from bio yogurt.

Fermented foods not only taste wonderful, they’re also wonderfully healthy. They even look attractive pickling in their jars. Once they’re ready, they keep in the fridge for months. They’re a wonderful addition to any meal.

Read more on fermenting:
Sandor “Sandorkraut” Katz’s Wild Fermentation, a Review
How to Make Pickled Lemons
How to Make Sourdough Bread

The post Fermented Foods Can Heal Your Gut appeared first on Green Prophet.

Eggs have been slandered, persecuted, and vilified for the last 50 years. However, in spite of their bad rap, eggs are a highly nourishing, inexpensive, and easily digested food with dozens of uses in the kitchen. Additionally, they’re an important source of protein for vegetarians. Since most of the nutrients (and flavor) is found in the yolk, the idea of an egg-white omelette has always struck us as absurd. The idea seems even more misguided when you compare the vitamin content of a raw egg white to a raw egg yolk to 100 gm. of egg substitute (100 gm. is more than one serving).

The mineral content paints a similar picture:

The numbers speak for themselves. It’s important to note that most of the nutrients found in egg substitutes are artificially added. Added fortifications may not be as readily absorbed by the body as those that are naturally occurring.

Egg yolks are clearly powerhouses of nutrition. That said, we wanted to discover what conventional wisdom says about their consumption.

Well, eggs aren’t vilified to the extent they were ten or twenty years ago, yet much of the advice is along these lines: “Chicken eggs are high in cholesterol, and a diet high in cholesterol can contribute to high blood cholesterol levels…. One large egg has about 213 mg of cholesterol — all of which is found in the yolk. Therefore, if you eat an egg on a given day, it’s important to limit other sources of cholesterol for the rest of that day…. If you like eggs but don’t want the extra cholesterol, use only the egg whites. Egg whites contain no cholesterol. You may also use cholesterol-free egg substitutes, which are made with egg whites.” Mayo Clinic  Emphasis added.

Whole eggs beat unnatural Eggbeaters

Eggbeaters is an egg substitute popular in the United States. Let’s look at its ingredient list:

Egg Whites, Less than 1%: Natural Flavor, Color (Includes Beta Carotene), Spices, Salt, Onion Powder, Vegetable Gums (Xanthan Gum, Guar Gum), Maltodextrin. Vitamins and Minerals: Calcium Sulfate, Iron (Ferric Phosphate), Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol Acetate), Zinc Sulfate, Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin), Vitamin B1 (Thiamine Mononitrate), Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine Hydrochloride), Folic Acid, Biotin, Vitamin D3

Replacing a fresh egg, a healthy food valued the world over for thousands of years, with a factory-manufactured egg substitute, comprised of 20 ingredients seems like dietary folly.

The concept that dietary cholesterol raises cholesterol levels in the body, which in turn causes heart disease – the lipid hypothesis – is one that more and more people are calling into question. If eating fat, which everyone did freely until a few decades ago, caused heart disease, then why is heart disease virtually unheard of in traditional cultures where they eat enormous quantities of fat? Traditional Inuit (Eskimos) eat massive amounts of fat – 75% of their diet – and enjoy much better heart health than their Inuit counterparts who have adopted modern diets high in carbohydrates and low in fat.

Are you still shying away from whole eggs?

Some egg recipes to inspire you:
Saudi Arabian Spiced Eggs
Parsley, Dill, and Coriander Herb Omelet
Shakshuka: Tunisian Eggs Poached in Tomato Sauce

The post Whole Eggs, the Whole Story on Vitamins appeared first on Green Prophet.

When my friend Elia consulted her doctor complaining of debilitating pain in some of her joints, she was surprised to hear him suggest tahini (or tahina) paste rather than prescribing a pill. He explained that this cure came to us through the writings of Maimonides (Rambam), the 12^th century Torah scholar, philosopher from Spain. Happy to add a few tablespoons of the sesame seed paste to her diet, she experienced a significant reduction in pain three weeks later. But joint pain isn’t the only reason to eat tahini. It has been a delicious staple of the Middle Eastern kitchen for centuries.

Go for the hull?

Tahini paste is made from either hulled or unhulled sesame seeds (whole sesame seeds). There are a number of reasons to prefer the hulled variety.

• Tahini paste made from hulled sesame seeds is traditional in the Middle East.
• The unhulled variety has a strong, dominant taste, which makes it less suitable in certain recipes.
• While it’s true that the hull does have more nutrients, such as calcium, it also has very high levels of phytic acid – an anti-nutrient that impedes the absorption of those minerals.

My suggestion – for both health reasons and for superior taste – buy tahini paste from hulled seeds, preferably prepared in the traditional mechanical method and not chemically processed.

Even when buying the hulled variety, sesame seeds are high in minerals, particularly calcium. This makes it an important food for those not consuming dairy. It’s chock full of amino acids, copper, tryptophan, B vitamins, and other goodies. In addition it also contains sesamin and sesamolin, two antioxidant substances said to be beneficial for the liver and blood pressure levels.

Tahini paste is a thick sauce, almost like peanut butter. The oil will rise over time to the top, so it should be stirred well before use. Tahini sauce is simple to make from paste, and much tastier than the prepared varieties you might find in the supermarket.

Basic Tahini Sauce

½ cup stirred tahini sauce

2 cloves good-quality crushed garlic

¼ cup lemon juice

½ tsp. salt

¼ cup water

Method

Place all ingredients in a deep bowl and mix with an immersion blender or a whisk. After you taste the results, add a little more of any of the ingredients to make it just to your liking, or extra water to get it to the consistency you prefer.

You might want to add one of the following:

* chopped fresh parsley

* chopped fresh coriander

* ½ teaspoon cumin

The sauce keeps in the fridge for about a week. It’s great with meat dishes, especially lamb, as a salad dressing, and, of course, as an accompaniment for falafel.

Try using tahini in some of these recipes:

Eggplant Tahini Sauce

Tehina Cookies

Baba Ganoush

Image via fotoosvanrobin

Moses ben-Maimon, called Maimonides is also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn (موسى بن ميمون) in Arabic, or Rambam (רמב”ם – Hebrew acronym for “Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon”)

The post Tahini Fuels the Countries that Fuel the World! appeared first on Green Prophet.

In my native Canada, green herbs like parsley and dill are an afterthought; a sprig garnishes a dish, some chopped herbs are sprinkled on a soup. But here in the Middle East herbs take center stage. Parsley and coriander (or cilantro as it’s often called) are special favorites. And I love using them in a quick local version of the omelet, made with fresh organic, free-range eggs. Or eggs raised at home if you farm for eggs, like Karin does in Jaffa.

Parsley
The parsley most commonly available in this region is the flat leaf variety. It doesn’t make as attractive a garnish as the photogenic curly parsley, but it’s much better to cook with. Parsley is full of vitamin K, C, and A, along with good flavonoids and volatile oils. It tastes quite different cooked than fresh. Parsley has also long been known as an effective natural diuretic according to the NIH.

Coriander

Coriander has one of those tastes that you either love or hate. Mentioned in One Thousand and One Night, it is reputed to be an aphrodisiac and good for removing toxic metals from the body. It is also the only herb to have had a (now defunct) website created by its haters.

Dill

While not as widespread in Middle Eastern cuisine as parsley and coriander, dill is popular in Israel, probably because of its use by Eastern European immigrants.

Getting back to the omelet: August is an especially good time to cook with fresh herbs, as it’s their prime season in the Middle East. A great way to enjoy the taste of fresh herbs is in a delectable green herb omelet. These are usually sold at kiosks in industrial areas, where workers break for lunch, but why not make one at home?

Ingredients for herb omelet

2 very finely chopped green onions
A few sprigs each of parsley, dill, and coriander chopped, (discard hard stems)
1/8 tsp. turmeric
2 eggs
1 tbsp. olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Method

1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl.
2. Lightly heat the oil in a frying pan (high heat damages olive oil).
3. Pour the mixture into the pan and let it cook on a low-medium heat until it is firm enough to turn.
4. Flip the omelet and cook until done.
Serve with a fresh salad, such as this Syrian tomato salad

You might enjoy these other egg dishes:
Herbed Baked Eggs on Toast
Shakshuka, Tunisian Eggs Poached in Tomato Sauce
Saudi Arabian Spiced Eggs

Ruth blogs at Ruth’s Real Food

The post Parsley, Dill and Coriander Herb Omelet – For a Week-day Vegetarian appeared first on Green Prophet.

What should humans eat for optimal health? The key word here is optimal. Our bodies are remarkable machines, and we can manage, more or less, on a wide variety of foods. But what foods work with our natural physiology, rather than against it? While many look to the future and modern food technology for guidance, it may be wise to take a historical approach. Homo sapiens (that’s us humans) have been evolving for a couple million years. Agriculture is believed to have originated just 10,000 years ago – a mere blip in evolutionary terms – in the fertile crescent: present day Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. So what did people eat before modern agriculture? Let’s take a look.

Cultivating grains, such as wheat, along with the domestication of animals made it possible for humans to settle down in one location for extended periods of time. This assured food supply led to the development of civilization.

However, the change from hunter-gatherer to farmer came at a price. The average height and lifespan in Paleolithic times was actually greater than it was after the transition to a plant-food diet based mostly on grain, according to beyondveg.

This is a clear indication that our bodies were designed for a diet similar to that of Paleolithic man and woman, not that of their Neolithic, wheat-eating cousins. After all, genetically we’re not really different from our Paleo brothers and sisters.

So what does a modern Paleo diet look like?

1. No Industrial Processed Foods: This is a dietary recommendation that almost everyone – vegetarians, conventional eaters, and Paleo eaters alike – can agree on, (if not actually stick to).

2. Eat fresh fish, eggs, meat, and poultry, especially offal: Organ meat packs more nutrients per gram than just about anything else does. Eat the whole animal. Yes, lamb’s testicles too.

3. Eat plenty of vegetables, plus some fruit and nuts: Paleolithic man didn’t cultivate foods, but made use of what was available. Organic, is of course, best. Until recently, all food was organic.

4. No grains: Especially not wheat. Today’s wheat, after years of hybridization, isn’t the wheat that was first cultivated in the Middle East. White flour has very few nutrients, but whole grain flour, and wheat in particular, is loaded with anti-nutrients like phytic acid. It isn’t a coincidence that many people feel better when they ditch the grains.

5. No dairy… well maybe just a little: On dairy, there is less consensus. Many people living the Paleo lifestyle are happy with at least butter, ghee, (or Moroccan smen), and cream.

For Paleo eaters, how food is produced is as important as what you choose to eat. Try to find eggs laid by pastured hens; organic fruit and veggies; meat, fish, and poultry that is humanely raised and not pumped up on chemicals and antibiotics, and so on.

Watch a video on the Paleo Diet:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCFZoqmKf5M[/youtube]

With our long history of wheat production, North Africa and the Middle East have the world’s highest rates of per capita wheat consumption (links to PDF).

By eating lots of pita, pasta, and bread, and crackers, we may, in fact, be doing significant damage to our digestive systems. It is certainly worth investigating the Paleo lifestyle to see if it can improve your health.

Read more on Paleolithic-type eating:
Eat the Whole Animal: Lamb’s Testicles
Whole Animal Cooking
Making Smen the Old Fashioned Way

Ruth blogs at Ruth’s Real Food
Image via healthhabits.ca

The post 5 Steps for Eating a Paleo Diet appeared first on Green Prophet.