In Pictures: New Sweets from Chateraise Japan for Easter and Spring

Salmon Cutlets with Dill Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil + extra, for the grill
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 salmon cutlets, about 8 ounces each
1 bunch asparagus, to serve

Dill Hollandaise Sauce

1/3 cup white wine vinegar
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup water
4 large egg yolks
3/4 cup butter, melted
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill

Method

1. Combine the oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper in a ceramic dish. Add the salmon cutlets, turning them in the mixture to coat. Let marinate for 4 hours.
2. Make the Dill Hollandaise Sauce: Mix the vinegar, pepper, and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer until only 1 tablespoon of the liquid is left.
3. Combine the egg yolks and vinegar mixture in a food processor and process for 1 minute.
4. With the motor still running, gradually add the hot melted butter and process until thick.
5. Add the lemon juice and dill and season with salt and pepper. Keep warm.
6. Lightly oil and heat a grill pan or preheat a broiler (grill).
7. Grill the salmon cutlets until cooked through, 2-3 minutes each side.
8. Blanch the asparagus in salted boiling water until just tender, 2-3 minutes. Drain well.
9. Serve the salmon hot with the sauce and asparagus on the side.

Makes 4 servings.

Source: Modern Mediterranean Cooking

Video: Would You Eat a Muffin Made of Earthworms?

Muffins, lollipops, pasta, and sliced bread: A Latvian food scientist is the latest pushing the idea of insects as a sustainable food source onto global dinner plates. This time it’s wriggly earthworms. Megan Revell reports.

Watch video at Reuters (1:53 minutes) . . . . .

Study: Using Technology During Mealtime May Decrease Food Intake

Sharita Forrest wrote . . . . . . . . .

Being distracted by technology during mealtime may decrease the amount of food a person eats, nutrition scientists suggest in a new study.

When 119 young adults consumed a meal while playing a simple computer game for 15 minutes, they ate significantly less than when they ate the same meal without distractions, said lead author Carli A. Liguori.

Liguori conducted the research while earning a master’s degree in food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The findings were published recently in the Journal of Nutrition.

Participants’ food consumption was evaluated on two occasions – one day when they played the game while eating and another day when they ate without distractions.

The game, called Rapid Visual Information Processing, tests users’ visual sustained attention and working memory, and has been used extensively by researchers in evaluating people for problems such as Alzheimer’s disease and attention deficit disorder.

The game randomly flashes a series of digits on the computer screen at the rate of one per second. Participants were instructed to hit the space bar on the keyboard whenever they saw three consecutive odd numbers.

“It’s fairly simple but distracting enough that you have to really be watching it to make sure that you don’t miss a number and are mentally keeping track,” Liguori said. “That was a big question for us going into this – how do you ensure that the participant is distracted? And the RVIP was a good solution for that.”

The participants, who had fasted for 10 hours before each visit, were told to consume as many as they wanted of 10 miniature quiches while they were either playing the game or eating quietly without distractions for 15 minutes.

The food was weighed and counted before and after it was given to each person.

After a 30-minute rest period, participants completed an exit survey that asked them to recall how many quiches they had been given and the number they had consumed. They also rated how much they enjoyed the meal as well as their feelings of hunger and fullness.

In keeping with prior research, Liguori hypothesized that when people ate while using the computer game, they would not only consume more food but would have a poorer memory of what they ate and enjoy it less.

Instead, she found that participants ate less when they were distracted by the computer game. Moreover, participants’ meal memory – their ability to recall how much they had been served and eaten – was less accurate when they were distracted than when they ate quietly without the game.

However, participants’ consumption on their second visit was affected by which activity they had performed during their initial visit. The people who engaged in distracted eating on their first visit ate significantly less than their counterparts who did not experience the distracted-eating condition until their second visit.

Moreover, when participants who engaged in distracted eating on their first visit were served the quiches on their next visit, “they behaved as if they were encountering the food for the first time, as evidenced by a lower rate of consumption similar to that of those who began” with the nondistracted meal, according to the study.

“It really seemed to matter whether they were in that distracted-eating group first,” said Liguori, a visiting faculty member in health and physical activity at the University of Pittsburgh. “Something about being distracted on their initial visit really seemed to change the amount they consumed during the nondistracted meal. There may be a potent carryover effect between the mechanism of distraction and the novelty of the food served.”

The results suggest that there may be a difference between distracted eating and mindless eating. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, Liguori said they may be distinctly different behaviors with nuances that need to be explored.

Mindless eating may occur when we eat without intending to do so, Liguori said. For example, we grab a handful of candy from the jar at the office as we walk by or start snacking on chips because they happen to be sitting in front of us.

Conversely, distracted eating may occur when we engage in a secondary activity such as watching TV or answering emails while we are deliberately eating – for example, when we’re eating dinner, she said.

Although prior research indicated that people eat more when distracted, Liguori said the differing results in her study may have been associated with examining within-person differences – having the individuals participate in both the distracted and the nondistracted eating conditions, rather than comparing individuals’ behavior to that of peers.

Or, she said, her findings could have been influenced by factors such as the type of distraction that was used, the type of food served or by using college students as the study population, limiting the diversity in participants’ age, race, food preferences and motivation to regulate their consumption.

Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Traffic Noise Might Increase Diabetes, Blood Pressure Risks

Navigating through congested road traffic is enough to make even the most laid-back people lose their cool. As it turns out, just the sound of road noise may increase the risk of developing high blood pressure and diabetes.

That was the finding of researchers who conducted a study of more than 1 million long-term Toronto residents between ages 35 and 100 over a 15-year period.

They found the risk of developing diabetes or high blood pressure increased as people were chronically exposed to elevated traffic-related noise. For each 10-decibel increase in average traffic noise, there was an 8% increase in new cases of diabetes and a 2% increase in new cases of high blood pressure.

The risks remained heightened even after adjusting for exposure to air pollution and socioeconomic factors, and the link was stronger in women and younger people.

“This may have something to do with people’s sensitivity to noise exposure,” said the study’s senior author Hong Chen, a research scientist with Health Canada and an adjunct scientist with the research institute ICES in Ontario. “For example, age-related hearing loss may play a role, as typically it is more difficult for relatively older individuals to detect noise.”

Chen said noise exposure can instigate multiple stress responses, increasing the level of so-called stress hormones. Repeated exposure over time may contribute to metabolic problems and insulin resistance.

The study, published Monday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, is part of a growing body of research about the possible negative health impacts of traffic noise.

A 2013 study of Danish people also found each 10-decibel increase in road traffic noise was associated with an increased risk in diabetes.

And in 2017, researchers reported a link between exposure to road, rail and airplane noise and severe hypertension diagnoses that led to heart disease.

These findings are important for a variety of reasons, said Dr. Richard C. Becker, a professor of medicine and director of the University of Cincinnati Heart, Lung & Vascular Institute. He was not involved in the new study.

Becker pointed out that people all around the world are increasingly living in urban areas.

Indeed, according to the United Nations, the world’s urban population rose from 751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018. Today more than half of people worldwide live in urban areas, a figure the U.N. projects will rise to 68% by 2055.

“This information can inform building codes, city planning, road surface reflection, ground absorption and a variety of things that will minimize exposure to road traffic noise,” Becker said.

He suggested people should be aware of the noise levels when looking for a place to live, and those living in a noisy area minimize their exposure by installing double-paned windows, adding sound-deadening insulation or using earplugs or noise-canceling headphones.

People don’t even have to be aware of the noise for it to impact their health, Becker said, pointing out that people who sleep through loud sirens and other urban noises can still experience a stress response.

“It could be that critical parts of the sleep cycle are disturbed or that there are subcortical reflexes to something that the brain is interpreting as potentially harmful,” he said.

Chen said additional research is needed to clarify the health effects of noise, particularly when coupled with air pollution, and to better understand the effectiveness of noise mitigation measures in a real-world setting.

“Public health efforts to reduce the exposure of noise to residents may foster a quality residential noise environment, thereby contributing to better health and well-being and a healthier city overall,” Chen said.

Source: American Heart Association

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