Sena bought some Wagyu beef the other day at Walmart. It was $8 for 4 ounces. I know I said you could entice Bigfoot to shovel snow for you by giving it Wagyu beef—but I was just kidding.
But I’m not kidding when I tell you that Wagyu beef is available in Iowa. Now, Walmart probably gets its Wagyu beef from somewhere other than Iowa, but there are about 40 registered Wagyu operations in Iowa and even in Iowa City. Wagyu originated in Japan but there is such a thing as American Wagyu.
Normally when I hear that meat is heavily “marbled” I think it’s unhealthy. But according to the National Institute of Health, Wagyu makes for healthy eating partly because it has monounsaturated fats which makes it healthier for your heart.
The producers locally here have a bull named Oh-No and I guess he’s named after the cows who moo Oh-No whenever he gets a glint in his eye because I guess Oh-No needs doesn’t need any Nugenix Total-T. He produces perfect offspring just like himself every time.
So, if you’re looking for the great American Wagyu, look no further than Iowa City.
Sena got some black garlic, which many people are enthusiastic about and call a superfood. There is a very long Wikipedia article with over 180 references about its beneficial health effects. The authors are very enthusiastic about it. Like many superfoods, it has a lot of support from many people.
There’s a slew of claims about what black garlic can do for you, from supporting immunity to preventing cancers and dementia.
There are some caveats. It can thin your blood, so those already taking anticoagulants should use caution about eating a lot of it.
Ahmed T, Wang CK. Black Garlic and Its Bioactive Compounds on Human Health Diseases: A Review. Molecules. 2021 Aug 19;26(16):5028. doi: 10.3390/molecules26165028. PMID: 34443625; PMCID: PMC8401630.
It’s been used for hundreds of years in Asia although it sounds like a brand-new food. It’s fermented over several weeks, which gives it the dark color.
It’s black and the taste is on the sweet side. If you just found it on the sidewalk, you’d step around it because it looks like animal poop. It has a gummy bear texture.
I didn’t see any testimonials mentioning how black garlic does in preventing vampire attacks.
Sena recently got her bottle of Super Beets with Grape Seed Extract delivered the other day. They are capsules and the label enthusiastically advertises that they are “non-GMO” and will enable the average human to leap tall buildings in a single bound within just minutes of swallowing a total of 9,000 capsules (3 caps per serving and 90 servings per bottle). Just kidding. Sena will take only one capsule a day for now.
They are made and marketed by HumanN and they prominently display important information on the bottle:
“These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”
Just so you know, the FDA doesn’t approve dietary supplements for safety or effectiveness, although they recently put together a review of scientific data on Cannabis for the HHS which may lead to the DEA changing the schedule of marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III along with the scientific conclusion that certain formulations of the product may enable the user to leap tall buildings in a single bound—or least feel like he can. Just kidding.
Wait till you see the data on their new product, Chupacabra Chewables. The chews are shaped like little chupacabras and mutilated chickens. Just kidding, they don’t make anything like that, and even if they did, you can be sure it would be non-GMO.
Even though the FDA does not approve dietary supplements (or disapprove of marijuana apparently), that non-GMO detail is something the FDA does have an opinion about. They say on their Agricultural Biotechnology web page that “GMO foods are as healthful and safe to eat as their non-GMO counterparts.”
I searched the internet for studies on super beets and grape seed extract and it turns out there has been some research published about them. There was a meta-analysis in 2017 in which the results that beet juice has blood pressure lowering effects:
Bahadoran Z, Mirmiran P, Kabir A, Azizi F, Ghasemi A. The Nitrate-Independent Blood Pressure-Lowering Effect of Beetroot Juice: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Adv Nutr. 2017 Nov 15;8(6):830-838. doi: 10.3945/an.117.016717. Erratum in: Adv Nutr. 2018 May 1;9(3):274. PMID: 29141968; PMCID: PMC5683004.
And there was a randomized, placebo-controlled study also published in 2017 (a good year for supplement studies evidently) showing that grape seed extract modulated blood pressure. It also relieved perceived stress:
Schön C, Allegrini P, Engelhart-Jentzsch K, Riva A, Petrangolini G. Grape Seed Extract Positively Modulates Blood Pressure and Perceived Stress: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study in Healthy Volunteers. Nutrients. 2021 Feb 17;13(2):654. doi: 10.3390/nu13020654. PMID: 33671310; PMCID: PMC7922661.
I’m going to pass for now on the beet and grape seed extract caps. I can already leap tall buildings in a single bound.
I’ve been pretty serious the last few blogs. Let’s lighten up and talk about butter. Is it bad for your health?
Not necessarily, according to a WebMD article. In fact, butter has health benefits:
It’s rich in nutrients like calcium and vitamin E
It may help lower your chances of cancer
It could slow down age-related macular degeneration
If you swab it all over you it’ll make you so slippery extraterrestrials will have trouble abducting you
There are risks, of course, including the risk of heart disease because butter has a lot of calories and saturated fat.
Sena puts butter on everything. She puts butter on butter. She bought a new kind of butter called Dinner Bell Creamery Salted Butter. Sounds like something the devil made, doesn’t it?
On the contrary, you can even learn a thing or two about life from reading the labels on the sticks.
Sena is big on eating healthy, which is a good thing. On the other hand, we don’t necessarily always like the same foods. And there’s the whole issue of what people call superfoods nowadays.
Funny, when I was a kid, I used to just refer to superfoods as “yuck!” There are variant spellings.
I read the Wikipedia entry on superfoods and it essentially says there is officially no such thing.
Take beets—please!
Sena’s big on Beets and Leeks. I’m not a big fan. I’ll eat them, of course. There’s nothing wrong with them that intravenous ipecac and a stomach transplant won’t fix. The drawback is the medical bill.
I don’t think we’ve ever had kale. Does that make the superfood list? I think it’s the same thing as mustard greens, okra, and other building materials similar to shingles.
I tried okra when I was a student at Huston-Tillotson University (then Huston-Tillotson College). I was offered this slightly slimy substance as part of a dinner at the home of my Religion and Philosophy professor and his family. It’s slimy because it contains mucilage, which is (correct me if I’m wrong but I’ll naturally ignore you) also the name of the glue we used in grade school to make valentine cards.
In fact, think of any food you dislike as intensely as any medication or tonic you had to take when you were a kid. That would be classified as a superfood. I had to take a tablespoon of mineral oil a day, which is a substance very much like mucilage.
I found out that millet is marketed as a superfood. That’s funny, because it’s also used as a filling for juggling balls. When you work up an appetite juggling, you can just bust open one of the balls and snack on a handful of bird seed, which is what millet really is.
Actually, superfoods come in handy in case you’re abducted by extraterrestrials. Whenever they look like they’re getting ready to jam some kind of implant up your nose, offer them a juggling ball. Just tell them to keep chewing through the leather shell until they get to that tasty millet center. This will give you time to write down the driving directions to the nearest barbecue joint for them (Jimmy Jack’s Rib Shack in Iowa City for example).
Anytime you need any more expert advice on superfoods, just let me know. I’m not available.
The other day, Sena suggested we have a soup and sandwich dinner. We both had a Braunschweiger sandwich on toasted bread, with onions—and Miracle Whip! Sena suggested the adding the onions and toasting the bread. She also decided to try the Miracle Whip spread. I chose the soup, which was so spicy we needed a drink of lemonade with every bite.
Usually, she prefers mayonnaise to Miracle Whip, so I was floored. In fact, adding onions on toasted bread with the sandwich was delicious! We both liked it.
Braunschweiger is also very nutritious. According to one web article, a single serving has 14 grams of protein, important for muscle growth, repair, and health overall. It also has heart healthy monosaturated fats (good for you), it’s high in Vitamin A which is great for eye health, and has many essential vitamins and minerals.
And is Miracle Whip good or bad for you? It turns out it has half the calories and fat of mayo, so it’s a healthy choice.
Sena actually liked the Braunschweiger with Miracle Whip sandwich. She made sure I put onions on the sandwiches and she liked the way I diced them. In fact, onions are also good for you. They’re low in calories and nutrient rich.
Try to pair it with a soup that it isn’t nuclear grade spicy and doesn’t require a gallon of lemonade to put out the fire.
Older adults can learn more about healthy eating and exercise at the Move Your Way link. Try it. You might like it.
Sena bought a bag of Spicy Sriracha Lentil Chips yesterday. They’re at the center of an extraterrestrial news flash on the web site of the company, The Daily Crave, which sells a lot of healthier snack food items. They’re mainly plant-based.
Apparently, extraterrestrials are known to have a tendency to get addicted to lentils. What proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the website listing for The Daily Crave is directly below the website listing for the Reddit description of the Star Trek: Next Generation episode (S01E19) which details the sale of lentils to aliens. Lentils are a highly addictive drug to extraterrestrials, although they tend to bore me—and a lot of other snackers. Funny, I can’t find anything about it in the Wikipedia entry for that 1988 episode entitled “Coming of Age.” And I didn’t watch it.
Can you beat that? I love science!
The Daily Crave news item (“Crop Circles coincide with missing new snack displays”) on the website differs from what’s on our bag, which has the headline “Missing Snack Displays Blamed on Aliens.”
There’s also a Lentils meme for the Ancient Aliens hair guy, Giorgio Tsoukalos. It’s like almost all of the memes: a picture of him with his wild hair and a weird fake quote. This one has the word “Lentils” on it. What more proof do you need to support government funding of a Lentils Anonymous (LA) program for aliens?
On the other hand, you have to wonder whether dusting a little sriracha on lentil chips would make them taste zestier instead of just making me load them up with chip dip, a substance known to instantaneously transform humans into aliens.
There are also several flavors for Quinoa Chips (pronounced KEEN-wah). Quinoa is also very good for you. Contrary to popular belief, Himalayan Salt Quinoa Chips will not grow hair on your chest, according to many extraterrestrial scientists.
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