Chef Shane Jordan is a plant-based chef and environmental practitioner from the UK specializing in creating meals from surplus food and promoting ways to reduce food waste.
Chef Jordan has been described as a “pioneer” for his imaginative use of food waste in restaurants and has written a cookery book entitled “Food Waste Philosophy” detailing his alternative approach.
Promoting sustainability outside the kitchen, he has partnered with a host of UK waste initiatives, including Vegfest UK, FoodCycle, Love Food, Hate Waste and Waste & Resources Action Programme.
Discussion Points:
What is the Food Waste Philosophy?
How Can We Reduce Food Waste?
What is Chef Jordan’s Philosophy on Cooking and Creating?
Every Tuesday from 11am -12pm I host The Health Hub, an interactive, forward thinking talk show on Radio Maria Canada. Call, tweet or email your questions as together we explore health issues that are relevant to you from new and innovative points of view.
If you have a health topic that you would like us to discuss or are a health care specialist who wants to be a guest on our show let us know!
Here is our email. We would love to hear from you! thh@radiomaria.ca
Chef Tom French is a seasoned chef, consultant, and trainer with over 40 years of professional foodservice experience. He is a founding team member of Seattle based FareStart, a nationally recognized model for job training homeless individuals in culinary arts. Chef Toms humanitarian efforts include a salmon recovery project in Kamchatka Russia to benefit abandoned children’s shelters and the Heart of America Bus Tour just after 9/11. The tour fostered community communications by sharing meals at fire stations, mosques, churches, community centers and public forums. Chef Tom served on the City of Seattle’s Health Services Advisory Committee for three years and has been the recipient of the US Mayor’s anti-hunger award. In 2005, he was named one of seven culinary “architects” for Puget Sound by Seattle Magazine noted as a “Chef of Social Conscience”. As Executive Director of Experience Food Project for the past twelve years, he has worked to lead a culture change in school meal programs in the US. He is a member of the School Nutrition Association Chefs Table and served on the White House Chefs Move to Schools National Outreach Committee. He has been a trainer and consultant for the National Food Service Management Institute / USDA. Previous work includes program design, staff training, food education and curriculum for Muckleshoot Tribe, Boys and Girls Clubs, City of Seattle Parks and Recreation, EarthCorp, YMCA and many others. Today, he is responsible for food and nutrition programs at Mary’s Place in Seattle where he has implemented food safety and logistics protocols to serve over 3,000 meals each day at eight Mary’s Place shelter locations and developed innovative pantry box and food education programs to help struggling families stay successfully housed.
DiscussionPoints:
The importance of food beyond its nutrients
Why it is so important to share meals around the dinner table
The importance of teaching children how to eat well
Every Tuesday from 11am -12pm I host The Health Hub, an interactive, forward thinking talk show on Radio Maria Canada. Call, tweet or email your questions as together we explore health issues that are relevant to you from new and innovative points of view.
There are many functions of food within a cancer protocol. A well structured diet helps to strengthen and prepare a cancer patient’s body before surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation. It provides key nutrients for patients going through treatment, helps to lower the risk of infection and it helps to detoxify, strengthen and repair a cancer patient’s body post treatment[1].
But as important as these functions of food are, often missed or overlooked is the function of food to bring joy and joy can be a hard thing to find when you are going through a cancer diagnosis.
The heart of a house is the kitchen. It is where our bodies and our soles are nourished. It is where we succeed in plating a great meal or laugh at a recipe gone wrong. Food brings families and friends to the table and science shows that eating together has great benefits including greater happiness and healthier food choices[2].
Eating meals together offers an opportunity to reconnect to those that are central to our being, to those that give our lives meaning. Food is a part of our history. It is a part of the essence of who we are and where we come from. It evokes memories and makes memories.
Gathering in the kitchen and sitting around the table can bring back life as it was before cancer. And although this may only be for a brief time each day, these moments can invigorate and strengthen a cancer patient enough to help them to move forward when the road ahead can seem so hard.
I have done the schooling, the certifications and I will forever continue to expand my knowledge of Nutrition Oncology to better serve the cancer patients that I work with. But to this day I feel that the greatest thing that I have to offer to cancer patients, their family and friends lies not in my book knowledge but in my personal experience with having had cancer. I cherished moments of normalcy, those times when I was just mom again and not a cancer patient.
Many of those moments were in my kitchen. Not when I was using food as a tool in my protocol but when my food was a meal.
Food preservatives are added to MANY of our food items to give them a longer shelf life. They are added to foods that go bad quickly and are found in all kinds of products in our grocery stores.
It is of interest to note that different types of preservatives work in different ways. Some prevent the growth of bacteria and mold. Others prevent delicate fats from going rancid.
There are many different types of preservatives used. And while the most commonly used ones are “approved,” this doesn’t mean that they are necessarily healthy. Added to this, foods with preservatives tend to be more processed and less-nutritious foods to begin with. Not a good 1-2 punch for cancer prevention.
So let’s learn more about a few common food preservatives.
SALT
Back in the day, before that advent of refrigeration, salt was used to preserve food.
But in today’s day and age, with the advent of refrigeration, salt is not needed for food preservation nearly as much. But our taste buds still seem to crave it on an epic scale. The average American eats over 3,400 mg of sodium per day, well over the recommended 2,300 mg/day. Much of this is because salt is found in many processed foods.
According to Harvard Health:
“… reducing dietary salt (table salt that is only sodium, chloride and iodine) will lower blood pressure, reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke, and save lives.”
So, salt is one of those all-too-common food preservatives that most of us will do better with less of.
Nitrites (nitrates and nitrosamines)
Nitrites are preservatives added to processed meats. They’re not bad in and of themselves, but they do turn into harmful chemicals called nitrosamines. Nitrosamines are carcinogens found in cigarette smoke. Nitrites form nitrosamines when they are cooked at high heat, and sometimes even when exposed to the high acid environment of the stomach.
Nitrites are added to meats to keep the pink-red colour and prevent “browning.” They are found mainly in bacon, ham, sausages and lunch meats.
Of note, processed meats have been linked with colon cancer. Because of the nitrites? Perhaps, but either way, nitrosamines are a confirmed health-buster.
Since nitrosamines (from nitrites) are the bad guys and are formed by cooking nitrites at high heat, what are nitrates?
Nitrates are naturally found in many healthy foods like vegetables. They’re especially high in beets.
Sometimes our enzymes or gut bacteria change these healthy nitrates into nitrites. However, they rarely form nitrosamines.
BHA & BHT
Have you seen BHA & BHT on any packaging? Perhaps on cereal packages or in gum?
“BHA/BHT has been added to the package to help maintain freshness?”
BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) are preservatives. They are antioxidants added to many processed foods. The main way BHA and BHT work is by preventing fats from going rancid. Are they safe? Well, they’re approved for use as a preservative in small doses. However, some studies have shown that they can cause cancer in animals at high doses.
So how do we minimize our exposure to preservatives?
First and foremost this is best accomplished by eating fresh, whole foods. This will ensure that your diet is low in preservatives and loaded with important nutrients to fuel your good health.
Secondly read your labels. Know what you are consuming. Knowledge is power!
Michael Greger, MD FACLM from NutritionFacts.org fills his is quick videos with science backed information on many subject matters.
As he reports in this video, daily low dose aspirin may help prevent some forms of cancer. But there could be gastrointestinal side effects. The solution many be found in food.
