0:02 [music] Who are you and where are you [music] going? What do you want? Hello and welcome to Jiggers's Place. I'm your host, Kevin Bemel, and I'm here every other Thursday at 5:00 p. p.m. Pacific time to have a cocktail and a smoo as we say. You're saying, Kevin, you you look a little casual today. Yes, I'm I'm wearing my uh I don't know, it's kind of a Letterman's jacket, bomber
0:38 jacket, you know, here, but I I still have a tie, right? Um this is from 11T, my uh at least current favorite clothing store, and it really is my favorite clothing store. They make beautiful um garments. They're all handmade, designed in Milan. Um, and if you're in the Los Angeles area, um, 11T is on is in Beverly Hills on Brighton and go see my friend Emily and she will take great care of you. Um, this was an unpaid sponsor. So, [laughter] um, but yeah, so anyway, just it was a
1:14 long night last night, late night networking meeting, and so I was feeling a little tired and casual today. So, uh, today's jiggers's place, we're going to talk about healthy eating. Now, you may say to yourself, wait a minute, cocktails, healthy eating. That's all right. I want to bridge that gap for you. Um, and it, you know, in honor of that, we are going to make an extra healthy cocktail that I call the balanced plate. Um, it was, uh, in designed with the help of my assistant, uh, chat GPT as as you all know. Um although I will say that um I've been
1:50 having a wonderful time this week um programming or getting chat GPT really to program itself to do all kinds of regular tasks that are just sort of administrative stuff. I think uh so far I'm going to I've saved myself probably about three or four hours of work per week and uh you know going to keep keep doing that. So, uh, um, this cocktail is called the Balanced Plate, and it is a vodka cocktail. I'm going to be using 44 North vodka. This is an Idaho potato
2:25 vodka, um, made with Rocky Mountain uh, spring water. It's quite good. You can see the bottle's all frosty cuz I keep it in my freezer. And then we're going to be using some fresh grapefruit juice, which I've squeezed here. Some fresh lemon juice, which I previously squeezed, and some fresh um cucumber juice. And then I've got I I couldn't find fresh basil leaves, so I'm going to cheat and use some dry ones. It's probably not going to be exactly the same thing, but you know what? Do you what can you do? I've got some sparkling water here. And then I've got my garnish cucumber wheel and some uh grapefruit
3:02 peel. The grapefruit, by the way, come from the tree in my backyard. They're they're actually quite good. All right, so we're going to start out with an ounce of vodka. That is, if I can get the bottle open because it's all frozen. Okay, let's let's use a towel here. There we go. Okay, a little bit more. It's always good to have bar towels close by. They're very handy. Okay, my hand off. And there we go. Okay, here
3:37 we go. And we're going to use just an ounce of vodka. So, this is a this is a fairly uh light cocktail in in terms of alcohol content, which goes with our show's theme. Okay, so we've got vodka. I uh I pre-measured the grapefruit juice. So, we've got an ounce of grapefruit juice. There's There's ice in the um uh Oh, you know, I'm supposed to slap
4:13 some uh basil and and put the basil leaves in first. So, I'm going to sort of sprinkle a little basil in there. Hopefully, that'll do its thing. Okay. And then 3/4 of an ounce, I think, of Yeah. of lemon juice. So, we'll measure this out here. There we go. And a half an ounce of the um cucumber juice.
4:48 And it explains how to make cucumber juice um in the recipes. If you're not on my email list, if you subscribe to my email list, you'll get the cocktail recipes um each uh in the morning before each jig. So, we're going to just shake it a little bit. It says to shake it lightly. So, we're not not going to do it too much. Not as much as we would normally do. We don't really need to dilute it too much cuz vodka has no flavor to bring out and the other uh all the juices already have their flavor. Okay.
5:23 Um, and uh, if you do get my emails and you're following the recipe, it called for honey syrup. I left that out. I wanted to make this a savory cocktail. So, we're going to pour this here. And it's going to look a little bit different cuz there's going to be some um some bits of basil. And then we're going to top it off with some soda water. Little spark. Give it a sparkle. And I've got a uh some grapefruit peel,
5:58 which I'm just going to kind of drop in there. And I'm going to garnish it with a thin um wedge or thin slice of uh cucumber. Yeah, it looks nice, huh? So, you can see the glass. This is a eyeball glass here. Okay, here we go. Ah, very nice and refreshing. Okay, I'll see you over on the couch.
6:49 All right, that is refreshing. It's It's still unseasonably hot here in Los Angeles. It's supposed to start cooling down, I think, on Saturday, so that'll be nice. Um, but in my house I have air conditioning, thank God. And uh, so it's nice and comfortable. Got my sphere. So, here we are for another Jiggers's
7:24 place. It's October. The year is already threequarters over. The fall Jewish holidays are over. Now we're heading into Halloween and Thanksgiving and then on into the Christmas season and New Year. It's my favorite time of the year. I will say it's a really nice mixing of flavors and and it tastes healthy. So, [snorts] so, you know, there's a lot of talk I
7:59 think um recently about eating healthy. [clears throat] It reminds me of when I was uh a pre-teen and teen in the 1970s. My mom um who had always been into uh you know healthy eating and healthy living in general, got on kind of a health food kick uh with things like granola that was very uh popular then. Um but she used to make uh zucchini bread which was kind of a cake. The zucchini made it super moist. She made this. It was really like a chocolate
8:35 zucchini uh cake. Oh my gosh, it was so good because it was so moist. Um and my sisters and I had to cook dinner. We sort of took turns cooking dinner because my mother worked um after my parents got divorced. And you know, we always had to cook something uh healthy. you know, a salad, vegetables, some usually chicken or something like that, maybe some ground meat, some meatloaf. Um, and and that's just how it was. You know, we didn't eat out at restaurants, um, except for on very special
9:10 occasions, like if it was our birthday or, you know, something like that. Um, we, you know, we ate at home and there wasn't a lot of, uh, uh, highly processed foods available. Probably the most highly processed food we ate on a regular basis was cereal. And in general, we we weren't allowed to have what my mom called snacking cereals, which were, you know, sugary cereals like um, Froot Loops and Sugar Pops and such. Um, except for on Saturday mornings. So, um,
9:47 you know, as a kid, I would get up Saturday mornings, the cartoon shows would be on, and so I was allowed to have, uh, you know, Captain Crunch and those ilk on Saturday morning, but not for the rest of the week. The rest of the week, it had to be, you know, something that was pretty healthy. Typically, Cheerios that we were we were big on Cheerios. Um, I remember one uh morning as as a boy when we were living in Overland Park, Kansas. And uh I I got up I I was the f I was almost always the first one up in my family. I was and I
10:23 was hungry. So I went to make myself some cereal. I had Captain Crunch and I went to the refrigerator and there was no plain milk. There was only chocolate milk. So I made, you know, Captain Crunch with chocolate milk. Now I thought it was perfectly fine. My mother was appalled, you know, as moms are want to be. Uh, but you know, as as a gosh, at that time I would have been, let's see, that would have been maybe 1967. I was seven years old or thereabouts, you know, what's wrong with cereal and chocolate milk when you're that age,
10:58 right? Um but uh so but you know in general um we were uh raised to to eat healthy. Um and and I you know I'm I'm I'm glad about that because it it's you know carried on as a lifelong habit. Now having said that you know we weren't forbidden to have candy or cookies. Um espe you know we we you know I went trick-or-treating on Halloween. I'd get my bag and I'd bring it home and I'd separate out, you know, the good stuff, the little miniature candy bars from the bad stuff, the hard candies. You know, I'd gave all the, you know, card candies
11:35 to my parents and whatever. Um, but uh uh you know, it wasn't a regular part of of our diet. Although we did have dessert, you know, but it was usually some kind of homebaked cake uh or maybe some homebaked cookies once in a while. uh you know the the Pillsbury cookies, the slice and bake or whatever. So um but uh you know that that's that's I think that was probably pretty typical uh in the 1960s and 70s and and even into the 1980s. So I think it's much more um it's much harder today um to eat
12:10 healthy. First of all, there's been a lot of things said about eating healthy that have turned out to be incorrect. Um, and I think we don't uh cook at home as often as people used to. So many more people are single. So, um, you know, they t I know a number of friends who, you know, order delivery, you know, a lot of nights or at least used to until they realized how expensive that was. And it's not that restaurant food is necessarily bad, although a lot of fast food is not particularly good. uh but
12:46 it's also very expensive and so um with the you know maja movement um going on now or becoming more prominent now um I think there's an opportunity for us to rethink our eating habits just so refreshing. So, um I think it can get really complicated and it shouldn't be. So, I think there's there's basically
13:24 four uh issues that we should examine um in our diets. One is adequacy, the next is balance, the next is moderation, and the last one is uh diversity. So if we if we think of those four A, B, M, D, um, adequacy, balance, moderation, and diversity, uh, then, you know, we'll we'll we'll be eating pretty healthy. So um, adequacy really gets
13:59 down to are we eating enough calories, right? So depending on our size, the level of activity in our lives, we need a certain uh caloric intake in general uh and um are we also getting adequate vitamins and minerals? Are we getting adequate uh proteins, fats, carbohydrates? Right? Um, I'm going to talk about fats and carbohydrates uh in in a in a couple minutes because I think there's some uh
14:34 misnomers about them. Um, are we eating with moderation? So, you know, do we just sort of sit down and and uh, you know, pig out, so to speak, and, you know, without uh self-control? [snorts] Um, especially for the things that that aren't healthy or aren't as healthy. Are we being moderate about them? And then uh finally diversity. Are we eating a range of foods? You know, even if we're eating, you know, a lot of fruits and vegetables, do they are they is it the same one all the time or are we eating a range of uh fruits and
15:10 vegetables, right? Like uh like cucumber. Okay. So, um I think it's important to stop being very judgmental about our diets and just settle down to incremental improvement. That that's how I've typically worked and I think over the years that has uh served me well. So
15:46 what are the things of which we should eat more? Well, for sure fruits and vegetables. [snorts] There's no question that our overall diet should be centered around fruits and vegetables and in particular vegetables. Fruit is not bad, but fruit is is high in sugar. So, you know, if you have type two diabetes, for example, fruit can, you know, probably is not healthy, especially fruits like berries, which are very, very high in
16:21 sugar content. My friend Andrew [snorts] loves blueberries, but he can't eat them, unfortunately. So, um, you know, the WH, for example, recommends 400 grams daily for people over the age of 10. I think you know rather than looking at it you know so strictly in terms of weight or whatever volume the I think the idea is is to eat a range of vegetables every day and eat different categories and different colors of
16:56 vegetables right so eat some carrots which generally are orange or yellow or maybe purple eat some peppers which can be red, green, orange, yellow. Eat some radishes, which are red. Eat some celery, which is green. Eat some lettuce, which can be anything from very light, you know, pale almost pale green to very deep sort of purplish, you know, almost brownish color. Although, if it's brown, it's probably spoiled. uh you know, eat
17:31 um I mean, I know these aren't so popular, but they're very healthy things like uh broccoli, um Brussels sprouts, asparagus. Um I I can tell you as a child, I [snorts] didn't like any of those. Um but I developed a taste for them um as I got older. And uh uh now I probably shouldn't tell this story because I don't want to embarrass the person with whom it's connected, but um you know our our our tastes change um as we uh as we get older. Um and uh you know uh when I
18:11 was you know a boy of uh you know five or six um I I didn't like girls. I was afraid of them. I was I was painfully shy. Um but you know when I became a teenager um my attitude toward girls changed you know lo and behold right so uh you know our our our tastes our our perspectives change as we grow and so just because we didn't like a particular vegetable when we were uh when we were children uh doesn't mean that we'll we'll still detest them you know as adults. Um I I hated tomatoes as a
18:48 children now. I love them. It's one of my favorite things to get from a the farmers market to which I go. Um the um there's one booth there. Um the the young woman who runs it, I call her Yankee girl because she's a Yankee fan. She calls me Mets guy because I'm a Mets fan. Um and she sells the best tomatoes week after week and we always have just a great conversation. So, uh, you know, try different things. I mean, I I never thought I would eat okra of all of all things, but, uh, lightly
19:25 sauteed okra. Pickled okra is delicious. Um, you know, beans as well. I mean, I always like reffried beans. You know, what's not to like? But, you know, I never liked limema beans until my friend Rosanna, may may her soul uh, you know, be remembered for me for a blessing and a memory. Uh, she made these limema beans. Uh, I mean, I I never tasted anything so good in my life. I don't even know really how she made them. I know there was some butter in them. I mean, they were just the most
20:01 delicious thing. You know, one of my fondest fondest memories of Rosanna is me telling her I I I hate limema beans. She's like, you haven't had my limema beans. and uh she made them uh for for me and uh oh my gosh, they were just fantastic. Rosanna was just an amazing uh cook. There's there's no doubt about it. Um as well as an amazing uh human being, the funniest person uh you know who probably probably who ever lived. Um and an amazing amazing singing voice.
20:36 But I digress. Um so eat lots of fruits and especially vegetables. just pick things of different colors. Um, preferably local produce. Um, so it doesn't have to travel a long distance. I go to a farmers market almost every Sunday. I like to be able to get my produce directly from the growers and I can ask them questions about it. I know it's fresh. Fresh produce just tastes different than the produce that one buys in the grocery store. So, but look, I recognize not everybody can do that. Not
21:11 everybody has that. available. Um, but you know, and it's not to say that the produce in supermarkets is bad. It's just it's just not as fresh as what you would get at a at a farmers market. Um, next, whole grains. So, this was my mom's thing when we were little kids. We of course ate, you know, Wonderbread, white bread, right? Bleached flour, you know, with seven vitamins and minerals or whatever, whatever it was. Um, and then in the early 70s she heard about whole wheat bread and we started getting uh that's what she started serving us.
21:47 And at first, you know, I didn't like it. It first of all was harder to chew. It it tasted funny. But what it did is it tasted like bread. Um, and now I love bread like that. Just just bread that really has substance to it. I I just I really don't care for um you know just sort of plain bleached flour bread. My favorite is sourdough which is even better than u you know bread made from processed yeast. Um but but whole grain. So if you're going to eat bread, eat
22:22 whole grain bread. um eat um oats, uh rice, barley, um you know, and in their sort of, you know, natural state. Um they're they're really delicious. Um they have much more nutrition in them because you're getting the husk as well as the inner part. Um so you get um uh you know, more fiber in your diet. Um and you get more flavor. they're just much more flavorful. So, um uh you know,
22:57 whenever I eat those kind of carbohydrate um uh type foods, I I look for whole grain varieties. Okay. And then legumes, nuts, and seeds. Again, um very healthy. Um especially things like walnuts. Um uh um uh pecans uh even peanuts are actually very you know very healthy, high in um protein. So nuts and legumes in general
23:32 are high in protein. Lentils are delicious. Just don't overcook them the way I tend to do. Um um and um e even even seeds. Now, seed oils in general are not so good, but the seeds themselves, things like uh chia, um I have flax seed that I'll add to salads and things sometimes. Um again, all of those can be very very healthy, especially if they're essentially uh unprocessed or very lightly processed.
24:10 Okay. [snorts] And then quality protein. So, um, [snorts] look, if you're a vegan or a vegetarian, you're not eating animal protein. I get it. Um, I don't eat, um, very much, uh, meat and poultry. Um, I do eat fish. Um, if you are going to eat meat like beef and poultry, freerange grass-fed beef is much healthier than, you know, the the the sort of more highly processed beef
24:48 um that you would typically get um in the, you know, in the store meat shop. And same with poultry, freerange poultry, where they've eaten things like worms and such. I know it doesn't sound so appetizing, but um that type of poultry is much healthier. Um it typically doesn't have uh a lot of or or any autobio autobiotics, antibiotics um in the feed or in the in the animals themselves. And um and so those are much healthier. As far as f fish are concerned, um, uh, wild caught fish is
25:26 best. Um, and especially smaller fish, which tend to have lower concentrations of mercury. I know most people don't like these, but um, sardines, especially, you know, if you can find them fresh, they're fantastic. They are hard to find fresh. Um, here in LA, we're we're blessed with a lot of fish outlets, so we you can find them. But canned sardines are actually a wonderful um source of protein. You can get them packed in olive oil. Olive oil is a a great oil. A lot of
26:01 omegas and that sort of thing in it. And um they're delicious. Now, again, when I was a kid, didn't like them. Um developed a taste for them as an adult. And interesting um my my daughter who's a pretty picky eater, she developed a taste for sardines when she was very young and is um you know maintained that. Uh so you know good for her. Um and there are you can get sardines that are packed with kind of tomato flavors or with peppers so they're a little spicy. There's all kinds of um even, you
26:37 know, gourmet high-end uh canned sardines nowadays. They they can be expensive, $10, $20 a tin, which which is very expensive. Um I've had some of them. They are, you know, over the top fantastic. Um so those kind of quality proteins are are what you want to include uh in in your diet. So um instead of focusing on you know what should I stop eating really focus on those things that I just mentioned the things you should be eating. So fruits
27:13 and vegetables especially vegetables whole grains um nuts uh legumes and seeds and quality proteins. Okay, so I mentioned I was going to talk about carbohydrates and fats. They're they both have been villainized for quite some time uh much to the detriment of I think our health. Um especially fats. There was this whole you know non-fat lowfat thing that went on in the 90s and into the 2000s.
27:48 it it turned out to be terrible because people replaced fats tend to make us feel satiated, feel like we're full. And so when fats were taken out of our diet, people ate a lot more. It's part of what has led to such such a huge increase in people being overweight and even obese. So um as well there are lots of nutrients in fats. So what really matters is what fats we're eating, right? So we want to have um quality
28:24 fats. So we you know we want to have the fats that come from uh whole grains, from um you know good good dairy products um like yogurt, from avocados, from uh fish um um olives. Um, these are all from nuts. Um, these are all healthy fats and they're they really are good for us. They also will make us feel sated and full so we're not so we're less likely to overeat. Um, with
29:00 carbohydrates again there there's been this whole thing of, you know, anti-carbohydrate uh campaigns. Look, fruits and vegetables are carbohydrates and they are healthy. They're a good thing to eat. What we don't want to eat is highly processed carbohydrates. That's why we should focus on whole grains and fruits and vegetables. Even even if the fruits and vegetables are cooked, that's fine. Uh but um you know what we don't want to be eating are, you know, a lot of candy or a lot of highly processed sugary
29:36 foods, sugar sweetened beverages, things like Coke. I don't well I don't want to pick on any brand things like cola you know soda pop that sort of thing. Now am I saying you should never ever have soda pop? No, of course not. Um you know once in a while it's it's fine. Especially as a treat. Uh so the um the there's a lady who works at the po post office uh that that I use in in Beverly Hills. She is just she's just the most wonderful person. She's always upbeat. Shal says,
30:12 "Come on, love. It's your turn." You know, that kind of thing. And um so I one day I was there and I saw she had a bottle of Mexican Coca-Cola, which is Coca-Cola made with sugar as opposed to corn syrup. And I mentioned it, she says, "Oh, I love it as a treat once in a while." So, you know, uh, every once in a while I'll go and pick one up at the drugstore on the corner down the street from the post office and bring her one just, you know, just to say, you know, kind of thank you, uh, for always, um, being so nice and helping me out, you know. um she doesn't drink it every day, you know, she's she's a very slim
30:49 woman, you know, um and uh you know, it's a treat or Thank you. You know, perfectly fine, but it's something to be drinking every day or look, there was a time in my life when I would think nothing of drinking, you know, half a liter of Coke in a sitting. Well, uh, diet Coke, you know, um, not not a good thing, whether it's diet or not diet. You know, soda is just not a great thing to drink on a regular basis. Oops, there goes my coaster. Okay. Um
31:25 so um the the kind of carbohydrates that come from the foods that [snorts] I mentioned before those are the ones we want to eat. Okay. So when you know healthy eating goes wrong when we start vilifying whole categories of foods right so fats can be fine carbohydrates can be fine it's it's focusing on which ones we should eat and then you know we won't eat the other ones okay next the next vilification is so-called processed foods now I think
32:01 there's somewhat of a misnomer going on Because, you know, if you come to my house and I cook some uh pasta um and toss it with some uh fresh minced garlic and some um some of the fantastic uh extra virgin olive oil that I get from the farmers market. I'm serving you processed food, but the pasta I get comes from Italy. It's it's very wellmade, very nutritious.
32:38 Um, garlic is a great vegetable, lots of good nutrients in it. And olive oil is one of the healthiest oils um we can eat. It is it is it is healthy and it's of the healthy oils. It's one of the best, right? But it's processed. So the issue is not processed foods. Cooking steaming vegetables is processing the vegetables. But indeed um in some cases uh cooked vegetables are healthier than raw vegetables. So for example cooking mushrooms and tomatoes brings out
33:13 nutrients that otherwise the body would be less likely to absorb if those foods are eaten raw. Right? So the issue is not processed foods, it's highly or ultrarocessed foods. And that's really what what we need to be aware of. So, um, my, uh, my my trainer, uh, Tate and I talk about this, um, from, you know, you know, kind of periodically. If I'm going to buy any kind of packaged food, what I do is I turn and I look at
33:48 the ingredients list, and if it's long, almost for sure, I'm not going to buy it. uh because it's got all kinds of stuff in it that is just it's just not, you know, a valuable thing to eat. Um if it has a shorter list, I'll read the shorter list and if it has things in it that I have trouble pronouncing, then again, I'm probably not going to buy it. Now, I say probably because, you know, candidly, there are some things that I buy that have ingredients in them that I
34:23 can't read. you know, um, you know, once in a while, uh, I will have, you know, Oreo cookies because they're just so good. But normally I will have, uh, Walker's shortbread cookies. And that's because Walker's shortbread cookies have got uh four ingredients. Flour, sugar, butter, and I think it's I want to say baking powder. I could be I could be wrong on the fourth ingredient, but there's there's four ingredients in them,
35:00 you know. So, you could say, well, that they're still highly processed. Well, okay. Yeah, I I mean I'm I'm not going to argue the point even though I'm having a cocktail. Uh but you know, as a as as you know, compared to Oreos, um you know, much simpler ingredients, much more simply made. So, you know, to have a Walker shortbread cookie once in a while. I mean, they're so delicious. Um and uh you know, they come little little doggies, little Scotty doggies. They're so cute, right? So, you know, once in a while if I'm going to have a cookie, typically it will be uh walkers because
35:36 the the ingredients list is very short and simple. [snorts] So, uh you know, the best way to I think avoid uh highly processed foods or ultrarocessed foods is to look at just those things. I used to eat a lot of the sort of meat substitutes. Um, you know, the the sort of, you know, faux hamburger or the faux sausages. Unfortunately, while they're made from soybeans, and soybeans in general are pretty healthy,
36:11 they're very highly processed. And so, I stopped eating that stuff. Um, and I substituted fish for it. um healthy fish um in general uh you know in order to eat a healthier diet. Look, I I I I'll admit I I really like them. First of all, they're very high in salt and salt makes things taste better because it stimulates our our taste buds. Uh but you know, it's just it's just not a great thing to eat. Uh once in a great great while I may have something like
36:46 that. Um, but I used to have it, you know, several times a week and and and not anymore. So, um, the question to ask is how close is this food to the ingredients of which it's composed? So, the closer it is, the less the processing. The farther away it is, the higher the processing. And if you don't know what something was, you know, in its original state, then, you know, almost for sure you're eating a highly or ultra processed food, right?
37:21 So, um, you know, processed foods can be fine. Frozen vegetables, you know, fine. Uh, you know, um, I loved, um, canned pineapple. I I get it. The one that's packed in its own juices. Um, it's processed. I mean, it, you know, fresh pineapple is better, but it's, even here in California, it's hard to find, um, good fresh pineapple. Um, and a lot of times I'll buy one and I'll think it's fine and then by I'll cut into it and it's it's not very good.
37:56 So, you know, um I think, you know, the idea is to lower the amount of highly processed foods, swap out highly processed for less processed as part of moving toward an ever healthier diet. Okay. Next, the the the current bugaboos, sugar, salt, and portion size. So, I I I don't think there's much dispute that um most of us eat too much sugar. um whether it's things like candy and cakes and cookies and such or
38:31 whether it's sugar we put in our coffee or our breakfast cereal or whatever. Um I don't add sugar to anything. Now when I was a kid, my mom would get fresh strawberries. Um and she would, you know, wash them and haul them and then she would sprinkle powdered sugar on them to make them sweeter. Um I I I don't do those kinds of things uh anymore. Um, I eat the berries just however you know they taste. Although if you're getting them from a farmers market or or even at Trader Joe's now, um, Trader Joe's sells Driscoll uh,
39:07 strawberries and sometimes they're blueberries as well. Um, Driscoll berries come from the county just north of Los Angeles, so they're probably pretty fresh even in a store like Trader Joe's, at least here in LA. Um, I get the organic ones. Um they're delicious. And I one of my favorite desserts is um uh strawberries or blueberries with a little um unwhipped whipping cream. So, you know, whole cream over them. Um berries and cream was was a very popular uh dish, you know, hundred or more years
39:42 ago. That was dessert back then. It's I don't think people eat it that much today, but it's delicious. cream has a certain sweetness to it that pairs very well with berries. So, um you know, whatever sugar you get, get it from fruit. Um I mean, sugar occurs naturally in lots of foods, but primarily in fruit. Um so, just don't add sugar to whatever you're eating, and you'll be a lot better off. Um same with salt. So, one of the problems with highly processed foods is they have very very
40:18 high um salt content. Um now, I know for me, you know, not to sound, you know, too girly, but when I eat heavily uh salt containing foods, I always gain weight because my body is retaining water. Kind of drives me a little bit nuts. Um but I don't I don't I don't like foods that taste super salty in general. I I'm I think I'm fortunate that way. Um, but again, I don't add salt to food. So, um, while while I I have a salt shaker on my table, it's extremely rare that I will use it and
40:54 only if something is just so bland that it's almost unpalatable, right? So, it, you know, again, salt is a naturally occurring mineral in a lot of foods, and I eat those foods based on how they've grown, how, you know, God made them, so to speak. Um, and so, uh, I think in general, I don't have to worry about, um, salt, especially since I don't eat a lot of highly processed foods. Okay. Portion size, I think, is is is the more uh, perhaps, you know, complicated one. And and there's no doubt, especially in restaurants, the portions have gotten
41:31 much larger over the years. And pardon me, part of that has to do with the cost of labor in restaurants has pardon me has increased so much that restaurants have to charge a lot more for the food that they serve. So one of the ways they deal with that is they make larger portions which don't really typically don't take any extra work. So, you know, making a 5 ounce steak and a
42:07 12 ounce steak doesn't really take any more work. It may take a little bit longer to cook, but not much, right? Um, but they can charge people will pay more for the larger portions. The problem is is then we overeat, right? So uh I think we need to you know look at our portion size and look the general rule is eat until you feel full. Once you feel full, stop eating. Right? And if you've had your meal and you're not feeling full, that doesn't mean you have
42:42 to keep eating, right? So, you know, again, I'm trying to give you just some easy to follow uh rules. Um, and portion size. I mean, you can measure stuff out. You know, some people do. There are diets where you have to. I'm not a big fan of of diets like dieting and that's why I'm talking about eating healthy. So, you know, just, you know, take, you know, moderate portions of of of the different things you're going to have at a meal, eat them. You know, if you're still hungry, you know, maybe
43:19 have a little bit more. Um, but, you know, don't overeat, right? Don't stuff yourself. Um, and um, you know, if you're like, I don't know, am I hungry, am I not hungry, maybe air on the side of, h, I'm not hungry, and just don't eat it. So, that's I think that's the easiest way uh to deal with that issue. Um, okay. So, you know, we are at Jiggers's place. I've been sipping my cocktail. You may be thinking, "Okay, Kevin, you know,
43:57 we all know, we've all heard about alcohol and, you know, there's lots of sources that say any alcohol at all is bad." Um, I mean, I've read a lot about that. I I don't think that I mean you you'll also hear people saying that moderate alcohol intake is is okay. So I I I am not a fan of of abstension as
44:33 you might have guessed. Uh so I think you know moderate alcohol intake um is okay. Um obviously uh alcohol abuse is bad. So you know don't don't don't want to be drinking you know five six u portions of alcohol a day or for that matter even you know three or four a day. Um but and and part of the reason is is because there are things in alcohol um that are unhealthy.
45:10 So, alcohol itself um has different um uh chemicals in it that that aren't particularly healthy. Um alcohol, some types of alcohol can have a high sugar content. Um cocktails can also have uh other ingredients in them that aren't particularly healthy. Simple sugar is just sugar and water. It's not particularly healthy. even, you know, honey syrup, which is generally what I use. Um, if you follow the show, you know that. Um, but even fruit juices are not terrific. Um, you know, I I use
45:49 three different fruit juices. Uh, you know, certainly better than, uh, I use fresh squeeze juices, I should say. Certainly better than, you know, processed grapefruit juice or lemon juice. Um, but, um, you know, not as good as the whole fruit. So you're better off eating grapefruit than you are drinking grapefruit juice. Having said that, I dearly love grapefruit juice. And there are just sometimes when there's nothing so thirst quenching as grapefruit juice. So you know in moderation, you know, fruit juices are are fine. And then you have, you know, lures, you may have creams, you may have
46:25 garnishes. Now in this case, my garnish is a a slice of cucumber. So I, you know, no problem there. But you you know you might have you know marishino cherries which are you know basically candy. Um so uh you know should you not drink cocktails or liquor? Well, you know if you don't then maybe don't take it up. Um if you do then I think you know be moderate about it and um uh you know pair it with food and um you know enjoy
47:03 it with other people around um but um certainly don't abuse it and without going into you know the current headlines you know certainly um alcohol abuse leads to a lot of you know potentially horror able um outcomes. So uh I think that um you know there are there are healthier ways to uh consume alcohol and there are less healthier ways. Having said that, you know, beer is not a vegetable, okay?
47:41 Um beer is delicious uh especially on a very hot day. You've been out working hard or whatever, you're sitting by the pool, it's really hot. Um but again just be moderate in your alcohol intake and enjoy it as a special thing but not as a staple. Okay. So uh this is kind of a longer show um than than some have been. So I want us I want to um I want to give you just kind of a wrapup. Uh how do we how do we eat
48:17 healthier? So first of all, we engage in the process. It's not a matter of changing overnight all of our eating habits. That almost for sure is not going to work. Start by changing just one thing. So for example, if you drink a lot of fruit juice, start eating whole fruit sometimes instead of having fruit juice all the time. If you're eat if you like to eat a lot of meat and poultry, uh maybe start once or twice a week eating freerange poultry
48:52 or grass-fed beef instead of the more um highly processed beef you would normally buy. Uh maybe start maybe have a a day or two a week that are you know highly processed foods free or you know absolutely no fast food days you know a couple times a week. Just start there. Pick something that will make your diet healthier today than it was yesterday and just work on that for a while. And
49:27 then when you get that habituated, typically it takes around a month, then maybe pick something else. Okay? Maybe uh you know, if you salt your food, so you know, you go salt-free for you know, a week and see how that goes, right? You may find that when you're you have spent when your pallet gets used to not um tasting so much salt, it will taste other flavors that you actually enjoy. And then in terms of foods that you
50:04 don't like, just pick one and try it and and see if you can develop a taste for it. If you don't like tomatoes, try some tomatoes, but get some really good tomatoes, right? Something that can really uh you know, spark your your taste buds. Um, if you don't like uh broccoli, maybe give it a try. Cauliflower, mushrooms, right? get something really good and make it nicely so it'll it'll be tasty and see what it could be that's maybe different than
50:39 what it was when you were younger. Okay? So, it's incremental improvement, evolution, not revolution, right? And again, focus on those healthy foods, fruits and especially vegetables, whole grains, nuts, uh, uh, legumes and seeds, and high quality proteins. And if you if you do that, then you know, an occasional cocktail, it's it's not going to hurt you. So,
51:14 thanks for joining me here at Jiggers's Place to talk about healthy eating. Hope you found it interesting. If you have questions, comments, drop them in uh the chat. And uh oh, I think I've got a chat here. Oh, yeah. My friend Scott said um pickled herring is good, too. Easy to eat and kept cold in the fridge. Um I do like pickled herring sometimes. I don't like the creamed pickled herring. Um and then he said Ezekiel bread is good. Um uh absolutely. Uh, Ezekiel bread is is delicious. It's made from whole grains.
51:49 Um, and it's also kosher for those of you who keep kosher. So, um, um, so um, Jesse writes, "Tquila." Yeah, I'm not having tequila. I'm having vodka. Um, but uh, you know, I I do like tequila. Um, unfortunately, tequila is also not a fruit or a vegetable, but you know, it does come from agave. So, you know, there there you have it. So, thanks for the comments, uh, gents. Really appreciate it. Hope you enjoyed the show. Look forward to seeing you again here in two weeks at Jiggers's
52:24 Place. And that just leaves me to wish you a wonderful rest of the evening, a wonderful rest of the week, and signing off as I always do. Marie darling, you are my bell. Courage at all times, my friends.