Rats on Junk Food

If diet composition causes hyperphagia, we should be able to see it in animals. I just came across a great study from the lab of Dr. Neil Stickland that explored this in rats. They took two groups of pregnant rats and fed them two different diets ad libitum, meaning the rats could eat as much as they wanted. Here's what the diets looked like:

The animals were fed two types of diet throughout the study. They were fed either RM3 rodent chow alone ad libitum (SDS Ltd, Betchworth, Surrey, UK) or with a junk food diet, also known as cafeteria diet, which consisted of eight different types of palatable foods, purchased from a British supermarket. The palatable food included biscuits, marshmallows, cheese, jam doughnuts, chocolate chip muffins, butter flapjacks, potato crisps and caramel/chocolate bars.

It's important to note that the junk food-fed rats had access to rat chow as well. Now here's where it gets interesting. Rats with access to junk food in addition to rat chow ate 56% more calories than the chow-only group! Here's what they had to say about it:

These results clearly show that pregnant rats, given ad libitum access to junk food, exhibited hyperphagia characterised by a marked preference for foods rich in fat, sucrose and salt at the expense of protein-rich foods, when compared with rats that only had access to rodent chow. Although the body mass of dams was comparable among all groups at the start of the experiment, the increased energy intake in the junk food group throughout gestation was accompanied by an increase in body mass at G20 [gestational day 20] with the junk food-fed dams being 13 % heavier than those fed chow alone.

Hmm, this is remarkably reminiscent of what's happening to a certain group of humans in North America right now: give them access to food made mostly of refined grains, sugar, and industrially processed vegetable oil. They will prefer it to healthier food, to the point of overeating. The junk food then drives hyperphagia by interfering with the body's feedback loops that normally keep feeding behaviors and body fat within the optimal range. These data support the hypothesis that metabolic damage is the cause of, not the result of, "super-sized" food portions and other similar cultural phenomena.

The rest of the paper is interesting as well. Pups born to mothers who ate junk food while pregnant and lactating had a greater tendency to eat junk than pups born to mothers who ate rat chow during the same period. This underscores the idea that poor nutrition can set a child up for a lifetime of problems.

More about → Rats on Junk Food

Corkscrew Bun

So today I was browsing all of the new hair blogs out there. Quite frankly, I am in a hair styling rut. So I was looking to all of my fellow cohorts to inspire me. Voila! I happened upon this post by Babes in Hairland...hence todays hairstyle.

Little Miss is going to the amusement park today and we needed to get her hair off her neck. So we did her style and then twisted the final braid into a bun. No sweating for the park.

More about → Corkscrew Bun

Hyperphagia

One of the things I didn't mention in the last post is that Americans are eating more calories than ever before. According to Centers for Disease Control NHANES data, in 2000, men ate about 160 more calories per day, and women ate about 340 more than in 1971. That's a change of 7% and 22%, respectively. The extra calories come almost exclusively from refined grains, with the largest single contribution coming from white wheat flour (correction: the largest single contribution comes from corn sweeteners, followed by white wheat flour).

Some people will see those data and decide the increase in calories is the explanation for the expanding American waistline. I don't think that's incorrect, but I do think it misses the point. The relevant question is "why are we eating more calories now than we were in 1971?"

We weren't exactly starving in 1971. And average energy expenditure, if anything, has actually increased. So why are we eating more? I believe that our increased food intake, or hyperphagia, is the result of metabolic disturbances, rather than the cause of them.

Humans, like all animals, have a sophisticated system of hormones and brain regions whose function is to maintain a proper energy balance. Part of the system's job is to keep fat mass at an appropriate level. With a properly functioning system, feedback loops inhibit hunger once fat mass has reached a certain level, and also increase resting metabolic rate to burn excess calories. If the system is working properly, it's very difficult to gain weight. There have been a number of overfeeding studies in which subjects have consumed huge amounts of excess calories. Some people gain weight, many don't.

The fact that fat mass is hormonally regulated can be easily seen in other mammals. When was the last time you saw a fat squirrel in the springtime? When was the last time you saw a thin squirrel in the fall? These events are regulated by hormones. A squirrel in captivity will put on weight in the fall, even if its daily food intake is not changed.

A key hormone in this process is leptin. Leptin levels are proportional to fat mass, and serve to inhibit hunger and eating behaviors. Under normal conditions, the more fat tissue a person has, the more leptin they will produce, and the less they will eat until the fat mass has reached the body's preferred 'set-point'. The problem is that overweight Westerners are almost invariably leptin-resistant, meaning their body doesn't respond to the signal to stop eating!

Leptin resistance leads to hyperphagia, overweight and the metabolic syndrome (a common cluster of symptoms that implies profound metabolic disturbance). It typically precedes insulin resistance during the downward slide towards metabolic syndrome.

I suspect that wheat, sugar and perhaps other processed foods cause hyperphagia. I believe hyperphagia is at least partially secondary to a disturbed metabolism. There's something about industrial foods that reached a critical mass in the mid-70s. The shift in diet sent us into a tailspin of excessive eating and unprecedented weight gain.

More about → Hyperphagia

Zig-zag puffy braid

Using the concepts in the lattice ponytails and the puffy braids we did this style.

Part the hair into a half ponytail at the crown and secure the ponytail with an elastic on either the right or the left side.

Part another ponytail beneath it and pull the ponytail to the opposite side of your original ponytail. Pull the first ponytail into the second.

Repeat until you have reached the bottom of the hair. Depending on how long your daughters hair is decides how many ponytails you can put in. Her hair is fairly short, so I did four.
Six would be absolutely darling!

More about → Zig-zag puffy braid

SMALL BATCH BAKING: MINI CHOCOLATE CAKE

mini chocolate cake: big on flavour and fun; but small in scale, effort and fuss

Did'ja ever have a hankering for chocolate cake but didn't want to make the whole recipe 'cause you know you'd end up having to eat the whole dang thing all by yourself?

ya ya ya. I know. Ordinarily, having to eat a whole friggin' cake would be great in most circumstances, but this is reality. I don't want to be buying bigger pants and I don't want to be wearing spandex Lululemon yoga pants forever.

don't dicker with any piping tips. just slather on the buttercream and hide the bumps with sprinkles!
I've had my Small-Batch Baking book for a while now. I had purchased it for $11.59 at Costco a few years ago. I have made quite a few of the recipes...some with good success and a few flops. In general, I find the cakes to be on the dense side because the ingredients are so miniscule you can't take a standing electric mixer to it. Pretty much all the recipes require you to do all the mixing by hand, which isn't so bad a proposition because the work isn't heavy.

Of the recipes I've tried so far, some of the cake recipes yielded a really dense (almost biscuit-like) crumb and others are like their full-scale counterparts. I really liked the flavour in the coconut cake recipe, but it was so dense it was indeed like eating a biscuit. My favourite recipe thus far is the Chocolate Cake recipe. The frosting I tried was not a resounding success. I found the Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting too sour and rich. It had a fudgy texture though. So, I used my tried and true buttercream frosting and made sure it was pink because it was Bebe who requested the cake.
I know. She just had a huge birthday Castle Cake recently, but this girl's all about the frosting and the decorations. I knew if I made a mini cake, and decorated it with her favourite sprinkles, she'd be happy as a clam and we'd save mommy from having to bust out of her britches. That, and though it looks like I bake a lot, my kids and hubby don't really eat much of any of it. Stomach doesn't touch the stuff and only Bebe has a small kiddie-sized chunk of any sweets I make. Guess who ends up eating it all if I don't think fast and pass it along to family & friends?

For this cake, a stellar opposite of the Ariel Underwater Castle Cake, I did not expend energy finessing the buttercream; nor did I attempt to cover it in ganache (unappreciated in the under-13 set). All I did was go for what I know: sprinkles are the key to kiddie happiness.

This much I've figured out in the 5 years I've been a mom! Pretty impressive, huh? Kids don't care about the density of the crumb, the thinness and evenness of the layers, or even flavour. It's all about the decorations. In fact, if you're observant at a kiddie party, you'll notice this huge buildup to the singing of the birthday song, the blowing of the candle and the fighting over the cake-topper. The birthday kid getting the cake-topper is the climax, I believe. Then, after the first slice has been served, the kids vamoose and go play. Sometimes a few kids will lick the frosting off the cake, but in general most of the cake is left to sit idly on the paper Disney plates as the moms and dads wearily scrape the mangled cake slices into their own mouths.

I highly recommend doing the Small Batch Baking technique if you feel like having some homemade cake but don't feel like whipping out the KitchenAid. Ordinarily, I like to scale down recipes from recipes I already know I like. Halving is easy, but this particular cake is built for 2 single servings only. That's two mini cakes. The cookbook is great because you don't have to muss with figuring out and writing down the new measurements somewhere. If you really wanted to, you could kick it up and decorate the heck out of these little cakes and make 'em look like their bigger brothers with icing tips, fondant, ganache and fancy sugar work. But today, that would defeat the purpose. The whole cake took me half of Bib's nap-time to make from beginning to end. That's immediate gratification.
I served Bebe a quarter of one cake and she was satisfied and grinning from ear to ear.
it's bigger than a cupcake but smaller than a regular cake--and able to leap tall kiddie appetites in a single bound!
Mini Chocolate Cake
adapted from "Chocolate Birthday Cake" from Debby Maugans Nakos' Small-Batch Baking
[cakebrain's note: I used 2 mini cake tins for this but D.M.N. suggests using cleaned 14 or 14.5 oz cans if you don't have them]

• 1/4 cup plus 2 T all-purpose flour
• 3 T buttermilk
• Yolk of 1 large egg [I used the whole egg]
• 1/2 t pure vanilla extract
• 3 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/8 t baking soda
• 1/8 t salt
• 1/3 cup sugar

1. Place a rack in the centre of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Grease the insides of the cans and lightly dust them with flour, tapping out the excess [I sprayed mine with Pam and lined the bottom with parchment] Place the cans on a baking sheet for easier handling, and set aside.
3. Combine the buttermilk, egg yolk [I used the whole egg, what the heck!] and vanilla in a small bowl, and whisk to mix. Gradually pour the melted butter into the buttermilk mixture, whisking constantly
4. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium-size mixing bowl, and then whisk to blend well. Add the sugar and whisk to combine. Add the buttermilk mixture and whisk just until the dry ingredients are moistened.
5. Spoon the batter into the prepared cans, dividing it evenly between them. Bake the cakes until a toothpick inserted into the centre of one comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.
6. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and transfer the cans to a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes. Then run a thin, sharp knife around the edge of each can and invert them to release the cakes. Turn the cakes upright and let them cool completely on the rack.
7. To frost the cakes, cut each cake in half horizontally. Spread a layer of frosting about 1/2 inch thick on the cut side of one cake half, then stack the other half on top of it. Frost the top and sides of the cake. Repeat with the remaining cake and frosting. Decorate as desired.

More about → SMALL BATCH BAKING: MINI CHOCOLATE CAKE

Media Misinterpretations

The New York Times just published an article called "The Overflowing American Dinner Plate", in which they describe changes in the American diet since 1970, the period during which the obesity rate doubled. Bill Marsh used USDA estimates of food consumption from 1970 to 2006. Predictably, he focuses on fat consumption, and writes that it has increased by 59% in the same time period.

The problem is, we aren't eating any more fat than we were in 1970. The US Centers for Disease Control NHANES surveys show that total fat consumption has remained the same since 1971, and has decreased as a percentage of calories. I've been playing around with the USDA data for months now, and I can tell you that Marsh misinterpreted it in a bad way. Here are the raw data, for anyone who's interested. They're in easy-to-use Excel spreadsheets. I highly recommend poking around them if you're interested.

The reason Marsh was confused by the USDA data is that he confused "added fats" with "total fat".  While total fat intake has remained stable over this time period, added fats have increased by 59%. The increase is almost exclusively due to industrially processed seed oils (butter and lard have decreased). Total fat has remained the same because we now eat low-fat cuts of meat and low-fat dairy products to make up for it!

Another problem with the article is it only shows percent changes in consumption of different foods, rather than absolute amounts. This obscures some really meaningful information. For example, grain consumption is up a whopping 42%. That is the largest single food group change if you exclude the misinterpreted fat data. Corn is up 188%, rice 170%, wheat 21%. But in absolute amounts, the increase in wheat consumption is larger than corn or rice! That's because baseline wheat consumption dwarfed corn and rice. We don't get that information from the data presented in the article, due to the format.

So now that I've deconstructed the data, let's see what the three biggest changes in the American diet from 1970 to 2006 actually are:

• We're eating more grains, especially white wheat flour
  


• We're eating more added sweeteners, especially high-fructose corn syrup


• Animal fats from milk and meat have been replaced by processed seed oils
  

Wheat + sugar + processed vegetable oil = fat and unhealthy. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

More about → Media Misinterpretations

Earl Grey Chiffon Cake

As usual, it is always a difficult task for me to pick up a recipe from my ever-growing to-do list of cakes & bakes. I was thinking of making some Japanese melon pans, but decided against it as it will take up quite a fair bit of time and effort...then I thought maybe I should make a blueberry crumble cake as I just bought another 2 packs of fresh blueberries.

In the end, I decided to give another try on making a chiffon cake since I failed miserably during my recent attempt on a mango version. I could only blame it on my unstable oven temperature. The temperature of the oven dropped by at least 20 degC when the cake was in the oven for less than 5 mins. Even if I were to turn up the temperature setting to 200degC, the temperature would not bulge. As a result, the cake was baked at 150 degC. Even though it did rise and expand, but upon unmolding, the top of the cake caved in :'((


I had better luck this time with this Early Grey Chiffon cake. The recipe is original meant for a Japanese green tea chiffon. I replaced it with Earl Grey as I have been looking for a similar recipe that will suit my small chiffon pan.

The steps involved in the making of this cake is similar to other chiffon cake recipes. To ensure a very stable oven temperature, I preheated the oven 20mins earlier. By the time the cake was ready to bake, the thermometer registered a temperature of 190degC, once I popped in the cake, the temperature started to drop...it went down to 170degC, just the right temperature! I left the cake to bake for 50mins, I don't understand why this recipe calls for baking the cake for such a long time as compared to others, which usually would take about 30-35mins. When the cake was in the oven for about 35mins, I couldn't help but to open the oven door to slip in an aluminium foil to tent the top, although it was only slightly browned. This caused the oven temperature to drop by another 5 degC.


Fortunately, the cake rose beautifully in the oven, it almost reached the tip of the tube...however, towards the end of the baking time, it started to shrink and upon cooling, it was slightly under the rim.


I was very pleased when the cake was unmolded...unlike my previous attempts...there were no obvious big holes on the surface of the cake. The sides were also baked to a nice golden hue :)


If you like Earl Grey tea, I bet you will like this cake too. The fragrance from the Earl Grey was so prominent that it was as if I had a cup of hot Earl Grey tea by my side. I must say this is by far the best chiffon cake I have made...not in terms of flavour, but rather, the texture of the cake was very good. The cake was light, soft and yet 'springy'(I'm not sure whether this is the correct term to describe it though!). To me, this recipe is certainly a keeper. On the other hand, both my kids didn't like the cake at all...the younger one tried his very best, and yet he could hardly finish one small slice of it, he told me that I shouldn't have used 'pepper' to make the cake, lolz!



Earl Grey Chiffon Cake

Ingredients
(makes one 18cm cake)

A:
1 tablespoon Earl Grey tea powder (about 3 satchels)
100g cake flour
1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
40g caster sugar
50ml vegetable oil
75ml water

B:
3 egg whites
40g caster sugar


Method:

1. Sieve flour, baking powder and salt together, set aside.
2. Separate egg yolks/whites and bring to room temperature. (It is easier to separate eggs when they are cold.)
3. Place egg yolks in a mixing bowl, add in sugar, in 3 separate additions and with a manual whisk, whisk till the mixture becomes sticky and turn pale.
4. Drizzle in the oil, whisking at the same time till the mixture is well combined. Repeat the same with the water. Sieve over the flour mixture and whisk until flour mixture is fully incorporated into the batter. Add in the earl grey powder and mix well.
5. In a clean, dry mixing bowl, beat egg whites with an electric mixer until mixture becomes frothy and foamy. Gradually beat in the sugar and beat on high speed until just before stiff peaks form* (after note: after several attempts at baking chiffon cakes, I learned that the whites should be beaten until just before stiff peaks form).
6. Add the beaten egg white into the egg yolk batter in 3 separate additions, each time folding gently with a spatula until just blended.
7. Pour batter into a 18cm (7 inch) tube pan (do not grease the pan). Tap the pan lightly on a table top to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter.
8. Bake in pre-heated oven at 170 degC for 45 ~ 50mins or until the cake surface turns golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
9. Remove from the oven and invert the pan immediately. Let cool completely before unmould. To remove the cake from the pan, run a thin-bladed knife around the inside of the pan and the center core. Release the cake and run the knife along the base of the pan to remove the cake.

Recipe source: 好想为你亲手做出美味的甜点! 检见崎聡美著

Note: you may replace Earl Grey tea with other tea of your choice, like matcha or green tea. If the tea leaves are coarse, use a mortar and pestle or a grinder to grind it till fine and powdery.

More about → Earl Grey Chiffon Cake