Second wind for older flies - special food source can ward off memory problems

Why do spring cleaning when it's warm and you get all sweaty cleaning dirt and grime, when you can do winter cleaning right before the holidays?

Every year MOH and I prepare for our trip up North by turning our apartment inside out and doing a thorough clean. Sure we clean up every now and then, but a real good scrub down is few and far between. Things that we accumulated over the year are either removed or packed away, depending on if it's still useful. Sometimes we forget about how much dust, dirt, and junk piles up, but when the home is clean, a fog feels like it's been lifted. You can breathe a little easier, maneuver through the rooms faster, and find things easier.

Our bodies also do "winter cleaning" regularly. Through a process called autophagy, proteins or cell parts that are non-functional, defective, or not needed anymore, are removed with the help of our disposal center part of cells called the lysosome. This process is very important for regulating efficient cellular processing and often becomes defective with age and several aging disorders like Alzheimer's. Ineffective autophagy results in a massive accumulation of junk proteins hanging around the cell, gradually piling up and impeding cellular function.

Structure of spermidine, a polyamine. Polyamines contain two or more amine groups (NH2) 

Recently, scientists have discovered a food source that has the ability to slow aging memory deficits in flies by upregulating autophagy processes. In this study, scientists wanted to look at the role between a compound called polyamines and age, since polyamines have been found to be downregulated with age. Using an olfactory memory test, flies were taught to associate a particular odor as being predictive of an electric shock. When old aged flies were given a type of polyamine (spermidine), scientists found that their learning was enhanced. In addition, the extra polyamine source enhanced production of more polyamines and was able to improve memory through increasing autophagy processes in this aged group - these flies had less junk proteins lying around as a result of efficient clean up . Weirdly enough, this boost in memory was only seen in the aged flies, as the younger flies showed no improvement in memory.*

While the verdict is still out on how effective polyamines are for warding age-related cellular problems and memory loss in humans, it certainly gives some incentive to try to incorporate more foods into our diet that are high in polyamines.  Luckily, our options for sources of polyamines are quite varied and tasty! The polyamine used in this study can be found heavily in foods such as aged cheese, mushrooms, soy, legumes, and corn.

Brown criminis stuffed with goat cheese (photo courtesy of Stacy from wikimedia)

Just my luck too - this week at the Farmer's Market, MOH and I stumbled across a goat cheese stand called Soledad Goats that doubles as an animal sanctuary and cheese farm. The cute little stand had a mix up of different goat cheese spreads and an olive oil herb mix with fresh goat cheese tossed into a cute little mason jar.

Delicious mix of cheese and herbs - my new thing to put on salads

This mix goes great on a salad (especially topped with some balsamic and black pepper), but can also be a great cooking oil source.

Hope everyone's ready for the holidays - have a great time eating and spending time with family and loved ones!

Until next time, happy eating all!


References:
Gupta et al., 2013. Restoring polyamines protects from age-induced memory impairment in an autophagy-dependent manner. Nature Neuroscience.

* Age-related memory loss was tested using aversive olfactory memory test, where flies learned to associate a particular odor as predictive of an aversive stimulus. Aged flies that were given spermidine showed improved performance in the aversive olfactory task compared to their control counterparts. Scientists discovered that spermidine enhanced autophagy in aged flies by looking at an autophagy protein marker  Atg8a. Furthermore, the enhancement in learning was shown to be dependent on autophagy, as autophagy defective mutant flies showed no improvement in memory after spermidine administration.

Spread the cheer - eggplant tagine dip

One thing I love about the holidays is the food! Such good food within a short time span. It's great on our tummies, not so great on those pants, that dress, that suit.

I really like seeing all the variety of appetizers, entrees, and desserts that people bring. People come together for the holidays and you get to try new foods, experience wonderful flavors, and share different cultures. Oftentimes I leave an event usually asking at least recipe for me to try later at home.

Something new that I recently tried was a rendition of an eggplant tagine, a Moroccan stew. Tagine is a traditional stew named after the cooking equipment that the dish is normally prepared with.

Tagines lined up in a row (photo courtesy of K. Rogers)

Tagines can be made with a variety of different ingredients, such as different meats, vegetables, or even fruits, slow cooked and simmered with a combination of different spices like curry, cumin, and saffron. The final product culminates into this aromatic dish that can be eaten with rice, pasta, or even, as I experienced it, as a dip.

Vegetable tagine (photo courtesy of Turajski)

Festive vegetarian eggplant tagine!

My first experience having a tagine was at a potluck for an end-of-quarter celebration for a mentoring pilot program happening at my university. The flavor profile is a little bit of sweet, savory, and spicy. There's a great kick at the end that comes from a little bit of cayenne.

There's a great amount of versatility with a tagine. In essence, it's just a stew of your favorite things (whether it's really well-seasoned meat, in season produce, or just an assortment of blazing spices).

Here's my rendition of the eggplant tagine (recipe from M. Diaz, who was so kind as to share with me his wonderful recipe!). You'll find that the recipe is very flexible - you can add or omit anything you don't want. I think that next time, I might add some zucchini squash and celery. Also, the dish is super festive looking and not difficult to make!

Ingredients:
-  Olive oil for brushing
- 1 chinese eggplant (I think any eggplant would work), diced
- 1 24 oz can of stewed tomatoes (I chose the fire roasted and seasoned with garlic flavor)
- 1 red onion, chopped
- 1 yellow onion, chopped
- 4 garlic cloves
- 2 tablespoons of honey to start
- 1 lime
- Spices of your choice (cumin is a huge staple for most tagines, but I didn't have any on hand, so I used Trader Joes' 21 seasoning salute, cayenne, paprika, garlic salt, and onion powder)

Protocol:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degree F
2. Slightly grease a baking sheet with olive oil
3. Place eggplant and garlic cloves in baking sheet and bake until slightly cooked (should be roughly 15 minutes) - once garlic slightly roasted, cut into smaller pieces for stew
4. While waiting, make the stew - throw in stewed tomatoes (can be done from scratch, too), onions and let simmer slowly
5. After eggplant and garlic done, toss in and stir slowly
6. After simmering for about 5 minutes, slowly add in honey until it fully dissolves (if your honey is super thick, try to heat it up slowly in another bowl). Once honey dissolved, add in spices of your choice and taste every so often until you like the taste
7. Finish off with a squeeze of lime - it will enhance the flavors further
8. Once happy with the taste, let it cool and you can serve with either rice, chips, couscous, or even pasta (I used brown rice sesame crackers)
9. Tagine will taste good several days after - in fact, the flavors are deeper if you let it sit in the fridge for a few hours!

You'll find that the flavors of this dish are slightly sweet and acidic - perfect for a dip... or even breakfast (I brought some to work today and ate it by 10AM....)

Quinoa "meatball" spaghetti pasta - postrun meal

Today, I rounded off my 600 miles for the year.

About a year and a half ago, I was hitting a rough patch in grad school. Experiments weren't working. Days didn't feel productive. The manuscript was nowhere near done. My overall mood and self-esteem was at an all time low. I needed an outlet, anything. Grad school can sometimes feel too abstract to feel like real accomplishments are done. There are also too few milestones to rejoice and celebrate.

So I decided to make concrete goals, just to feel more accomplished, and boost my overall mood. Goals that weren't so far away, like the idea of graduating, etc. I decided to run 300 miles less than half a year. When the new year rolled around, I met the goal and decided to up the challenge and do 600 miles in one year. Tonight, I ran the last stretch!

For 2015, I'm going to try for 700 and slowly make my way up - we'll see how far I get.

What better way to celebrate this little achievement? Gorge on pasta and yogurt.

Post-run eating should always include a good source of protein. Your body needs more protein to make up for all the hard effort your body has endured and helps boost recovery time for your body to heal itself and prep for the next activity.

One of my favorite protein loaded dishes is quinoa "meatballs." The meatballs are made with a combination of quinoa, mushrooms, garlic, onions, basil, and some parmesan. Simply bake these bad boys up in the oven and serve on top of your pasta of choice. They're a nice change from your usual meatballs, and in some ways, I prefer these "meatballs" to the original (bad episode of food poisoning, another story, another time).

The prep for these balls is super simple - you'll notice that my instructions are eye-balling, but that just means that it's open for your favorite substitutions!

I think the one thing to worry about is getting your quinoa to be just the right texture. I have found that if you give a little more water initially in the cooking, the quinoa ends up slightly mushier, which makes for a great binding agent for your meatball.

If you have just regular cooked quinoa, you can use an egg for a binding agent.

I personally like red sauce, but I like to make my sauce thick with lots of vegetables (I used eggplant, zucchini, onions, mushrooms and garlic). The end result reminds me of a red ratatouille-esque sauce that you can put on top of pasta or even a bed of greens for a low carb choice.

Perfect way to start my week off!

Have a great week everyone! Until next time, happy eating!

Ingredients:
For quinoa:
- 1 cup quinoa
- 1 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 onion finely chopped
- 6 mushrooms finely chopped (the onion and mushroom amount is equivalent here, but you can adjust)
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 1/4 cup basil chopped
- Parmesan cheese

For pasta sauce:
- Any pasta sauce of your choice (or even homemade if you're so inclined!)
- 1 onion coarsely chopped
- 1 zucchini chopped
- 1 eggplant chopped
- 3 garlic cloves chopped
- Pack of mushrooms chopped (~10 mushrooms?)
*I also like to use celery, tomatoes, or broccoli sometimes too

Protocol:
1. Soak quinoa with water (I like to do overnight, but a couple hours is OK)
2. Boil quinoa with water over low heat once water initially boils - should take about 20 minutes
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
4. Once quinoa cooked, add in onions, mushrooms, garlic, basil and stir to evenly mix
5. Sprinkle parmesan amount of your choice and mix
6. Line baking pan and form little meatballs from your quinoa mix (I like to use a ice cream scooper or cookie scooper to just make it go faster)
7. Bake quinoa until browned, roughly 30-40 minutes - should appear crisp
8. While waiting for quinoa, make pasta sauce (or use sauce of your choice). If you're making the sauce that I have listed, it's simply adding in vegetables as soon as the stock red sauce is boiling!
9. Stir and cook vegetables and when done, lower heat until quinoa balls ready
10. Once quinoa balls cooked, either place into red sauce, or eat separately!