What’s SUP on the Dinner Table?
Moroccan Lamb Stew
It’s a craft and investment to a delicious life on and off the plate.
Finding simple methods to get dinner on the table during the workweek is always challenging. However, having the will and skills beforehand is genius, thereby creating your palate preferences.
Stew on this!
As one of the principles of nutritional therapy, we were enjoying a properly prepared, nutrient-dense variety of whole foods is essential to optimizing our five foundations: digestion, sugar handling, crucial fatty acids, minerals, and hydration.
Choosing the right foods for your unique nutritional needs is part of eating healthy, but how you prepare that food also plays a role.
The changing season of darker days and colder nights have us wanting to ‘sup’ on something substantial and nourishing. Preparing soups, braising, and stewing foods are ideal cooking techniques that are the healthiest cooking methods. Stewing is loosely defined as cooking meat, fish, or vegetables in moist heat, a process by which food can simmer in a flavorful liquid. Braising is similar; one pot provides two easy and healthful cooking methods! The significance of soup, stews, and braising provides abundant nutrients, taste, and textures to make any cold winter day a warm culinary adventure. Soup has the most liquid consistency compared to pottages, which are pureed and thick enough to hold onto your spoon. Stew’s texture falls into the middle of not too dense or soupy.
Great! Now we can all say “sop” or “sup”, literally the Germanic root from the word supper, meaning stew.
Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs)
Regarding the nutritional appeal of stewing, Dr. Catherine Shanahan explains in her groundbreaking book Deep Nutrition that slower cooking temperatures help reduce chemical reactions among amino acids, creatines, and sugars, which prevents the production of dangerous compounds that can damage our DNA.
Our modern diets are overwhelmingly heat–processed. Foods exposed to high temperatures, such as grilling, frying, or toasting, tend to be very high in these compounds called Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs). They are harmful compounds formed when protein or fat combines with sugar in the bloodstream. This process is called glycation.
From a culinary perspective, it can be helpful, and we can appreciate the taste, for example, of a warmed, gooey roasted marshmallow glued to a graham cracker. The same happens in our bodies when circulating sugar starts to make our proteins stick together, forming advanced glycated end products.
We consume AGEs when we eat any food exposed to extreme heat, and it can be created inside our body from aging and high blood sugar. Once in the body, research is beginning to understand its adverse effects on our health. By having fewer AGEs circulating in our system, we can prevent diseases like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders.
The autumn season means taking a break from our summer BBQs, so it is the perfect time to start consuming fewer AGEs. You can also reduce your intake of AGEs by using acids, such as lemon juice or vinegar, in your marinades to help decrease AGE formation. If you love Italian food, braised meatballs in tomato sauce are an excellent example of this concept; the acidity in tomatoes further reduces the AGE formations in the braising of meat.
