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Ketogenic Diet: Principle and Disadvantages of the No-carb Diet

The ketogenic diet reduces body weight and increases well-being, say advocates. Is that true, or is no-carb just a fad?

Ketogenic diet: the principle of the diet

If the body does not get enough sugar from food, it has to produce a substitute: ketones. The ketogenic diet eliminates carbohydrates almost entirely to keep blood sugar levels low and boost ketone production.

This can be helpful when losing weight, because in this state the body does not release as much insulin, which replenishes the fat stores. Therefore, the ketogenic diet should lead to rapid and sustainable weight loss. In addition, less insulin in the blood also leads to fewer food cravings.

Alternatives to the ketogenic diet

The ketogenic diet is an extreme form of the low-carb diet. But there are many other variants of such diets.

The Paleo diet, for example, is related to the ketogenic diet. The so-called Stone Age diet mainly consists of fruit, vegetables, nuts, meat and fish.
The Atkins diet is also a low-carb diet – carbohydrates are almost completely avoided here. To compensate for this, one should take vitamin and mineral supplements.
The Glyx diet only allows carbohydrates that are slowly broken down by the body. This is to keep the blood sugar level stable.

Health pros and cons of a ketogenic diet

Medical studies mention the benefits of the ketogenic diet in childhood epilepsy. Alzheimer’s patients should also benefit from the diet. But there are also risks associated with the change in diet. Especially in the first few weeks you have to reckon with temporary side effects. According to a study by Australian scientists, these often resemble symptoms of a cold or flu, such as:

headache
nausea
Fatigue
dizziness
irregular heartbeat
In addition, the no-carb diet could overload the kidneys and increase the risk of cardiovascular disease because you eat more animal protein and saturated fat. So there are several reasons why you should not change your diet too lightly.

No-carb diets often pollute the environment

On a ketogenic diet, you often consume a lot of meat and other animal products. This puts a strain on the climate and the environment. If you decide to go on a no-carb diet, you should definitely make sure that all products are organic and regional. This is especially true for meat, fish and eggs.

A ketogenic diet can be bad for the climate

According to the DGE, eating carbohydrates is not related to various diseases such as diabetes, obesity or cancer. On the other hand, a no-carb diet may be suitable for losing weight. On the other hand, the ketogenic diet also poses health risks. In addition, the many animal products pollute the environment significantly more than, for example, a vegetarian or vegan diet.

If you absolutely want to follow such a diet, it doesn’t have to be the extreme ketogenic diet. To get you started on an environmentally friendly, low-carbohydrate diet, we reveal delicious low-carb recipes made from regional ingredients.

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Food

Refined Oil: You Should Know These Advantages and Disadvantages

In the trade, a distinction is made between refined and native oils. But what exactly are refined oils? Here’s a little about their pros and cons.

Manufacturing makes the difference

Refined and native oils differ in their production: Native oils are gently cold-pressed. This means that they are manufactured at low temperatures and without the use of chemicals. Due to the gentle processing, many healthy ingredients are retained, such as vitamins and unsaturated fatty acids.

Refined oils, on the other hand, are extracted under the influence of heat and chemicals.
The oil is hot pressed.
Solvents such as hexane or light petroleum are used during extraction.
This method is used to extract more oil than cold pressing. However, refined oils are not unhealthy or toxic because of this: the chemical residues are then removed from the oil. The oil is heated up to 240°C for several hours for cleaning. This process is called refining.

This means that there are no longer any unwanted chemical substances in the oil. However, the oil also loses vitamins, unsaturated fatty acids and taste. This means that the oil is not unhealthy or harmful, but it is also not as healthy as native oils. However, refined oils also have advantages in their use.

Pros and cons of refined oil

Advantages are:
Refined oil is more heat resistant. Only use refined oils for hot frying. They are also better suited for cooking. When native oils are heated too much, smoke and pollutants are formed. So for this purpose, refined oils are healthier than virgin oils.
Refined oils are cheaper to produce than virgin oils. Accordingly, they also cost less in the store.
The more heavily treated oils tend to be more tasteless. This can be an advantage for cooking if you don’t want the oil to taste too bad.
Due to the strong treatment, refined oils have a longer shelf life than native oils.
Disadvantages are:
The hot pressing and long heating takes more energy.
Refined oil contains fewer valuable ingredients than virgin oil, such as vitamins and unsaturated fatty acids.
The fact that refined oils are less flavorful can also be a disadvantage. In salads, the taste of native oil is quite appropriate.
Harmful trans-fatty acids can be produced during deodorization, a sub-process of refining.
In general, refined oils are not inherently unhealthy. For some purposes such as cooking and frying, they are very well suited because of their heat resistance. Depending on the purpose for which you want to use the oil, you should choose the right oil.

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Cooking Tips

Parboiled Rice: Specifics and its Advantages and Disadvantages

Parboiled rice is considered a healthy alternative to white rice. But what exactly is parboiled rice? How is it made and what are its pros and cons?

How is parboiled rice different from white rice?

Parboiled rice and white rice are both derived from unpolished brown rice. Brown rice may also be known to you by the names whole grain rice or brown rice. White and parboiled rice differ from brown rice in that they are hulled before sale.

However, the majority of the vitamins and minerals of the rice grain are found in the silver skin of the husk. To ensure that these are not lost when the rice is peeled, the German-British inventor Erich Huzenlaub developed the parboiling process at the beginning of the 20th century.

In the parboiling process, the still raw and unpeeled rice is soaked. The vitamins and minerals are then pressed from the husk into the rice grain with the help of steam under high pressure. The rice is then dried and, like white rice, peeled and polished.

The parboiling process turns the rice slightly yellowish. In addition, the starch contained in the rice grains gelatinizes, making the parboiled rice grainier and less sticky than white rice.

What Are the Benefits of Parboiled Rice?

Parboiled rice is considered to be more nutritionally valuable than white rice because about 80 percent of the vitamins and minerals contained in the silver skin are pressed into the interior of the rice grain during the parboiling process.

In addition, parboiled rice is easier to handle than white rice. You don’t need to wash or soak it before cooking. In addition, parboiled rice forgives too long a cooking time or too much water. Parboiled rice makes it easy to cook fluffy rice with a good bite and without much effort.

In addition, the parboiling process can upgrade low-quality rice. For example, the parboiling process is increasingly being used in African countries in order to be able to sell the inferior rice production there. African consumers often prefer rice imported from abroad because it has fewer breakages and does not stick as much when cooked. The parboiling process gelatinizes the starch grains in the rice, which means that the individual rice grains no longer clump together.

Disadvantages of Parboiled Rice

Only brown rice contains 100 percent of the nutrients in the rice grain. From a nutritional point of view, you should always choose brown rice over parboiled rice. Another benefit of brown rice is the fiber in the husk it contains, which is peeled away in parboiled rice.

In addition, the rice aroma changes as a result of the parboiling process. American researchers discovered that the typical slightly nutty taste is due to the gelatinization of the starch granules during the parboiling process. The more aggressively the vitamins and minerals were pressed into the interior of the rice grain, the more the test persons perceived the typical taste of parboiled rice. Whether you see this as an advantage or disadvantage depends on your personal taste.

You should not prepare creamy dishes such as rice pudding or risotto with parboiled rice, as the starch contained in the grain of rice has already gelatinized and can no longer escape into the cooking water. Parboiled rice also takes longer to cook than white rice.

In the parboiling process, high water vapor pressure must be generated in order to force the nutrients into the rice grain. Therefore, the method consumes a lot of energy. White and brown rice are more environmentally friendly from an ecological point of view.

Tip: For the sake of the environment, always choose rice grown in Europe over rice grown in Southeast Asia. Shorter transport routes protect the environment. Also make sure that your rice comes from a certified organic farm. This is because they do not use any synthetic pesticides during cultivation.

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Food

Hirschhorn Salt: Composition, Uses and Disadvantages

Deer horn salt may be familiar to you from Christmas baking. Here we tell you how to use the leavening agent and what risks it entails.

What is deer horn salt?

Hirschhorn salt is a leavening agent that makes your cookie or gingerbread dough fluffy. It is a food additive that must be labeled with the number E503 in finished products. Hirschhorn salt is a chemical leavening agent, which also includes, for example, baking powder, potash, and baking soda.

Hirschhorn salt is a mixture of the ammonium salts ammonium bicarbonate, ammonium carbonate and ammonium carbamate. If you heat staghorn salt in the oven, the ammonium salts decompose into the gases ammonia and carbon dioxide. Some of these gases remain in the pastry dough, creating small air bubbles and loosening the dough.

Hirschhorn salt owes its somewhat curious name to its traditional origin. It was originally obtained from deer antlers. Deer antlers are particularly rich in nitrogen, the basic structure of ammonium salts. Nowadays there is a chemical process instead, in which ammonium chloride, calcium carbonate and charcoal are heated together.

Since deer horn salt does not contain any animal ingredients, it is suitable for vegan diets.

Where can you use deer horn salt?

Deer horn salt is particularly popular at Christmas time, as baked goods made with deer horn salt have a very long shelf life. It is particularly suitable for flat pastries that should expand more in width than in height.

Hirschhorn salt is therefore best suited for:
Gingerbread
shortcrust pastry
Spekulatius
Springerle
honey cake
American
However, you should never use deer horn salt for high cakes. On the one hand, the dough rises less with deer horn salt, and on the other hand, a larger amount of ammonia remains in tall doughs. Ammonia smells unpleasantly pungent and can cause symptoms of poisoning in the body. In flat doughs, on the other hand, the ammonia is almost completely expelled in the oven.

As a general rule, one gram of deer horn salt per 100 grams of flour is enough to loosen the dough.

What are the disadvantages of deer horn salt?

A major problem with staghorn salt is that it promotes the formation of the probably carcinogenic substance acrylamide. Acrylamide is formed at high temperatures in the oven as part of the Maillard reaction, in which sugar and proteins gelatinize together. Basically, the darker the baked goods, the higher their acrylamide content. You should therefore only bake your pastries until they are golden brown and not too dark.

Baking soda is an alternative to deer horn salt. The disadvantage of baking soda, however, is that, unlike staghorn salt, it has a slightly bitter taste of its own. Hirschhorn salt, on the other hand, gives baked goods a characteristic flavor that many find pleasant.

You don’t have to do without deer horn salt for your Christmas cookies. Avoid breathing in the ammonia-laden air created in the oven. Also, avoid baking your cookies dark brown. Then you are on the safe side.

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Food

Prickly Pear Seed Oil: Application, Effect and Disadvantages

Prickly pear seed oil is said to ensure beautiful skin and even lower blood sugar. But what about the promises? And what about the environmental balance of the oil?

Prickly pear seed oil is obtained from the seeds of the cactus species Opuntia ficus-indica. The plant originally comes from Mexico. It is very popular in South American cuisine: the so-called “nopales”, the cactus leaves, are traditionally served by Mexicans with various dishes such as vegetable pans and tacos. The cactus fruit itself is also edible – in English it is known as “prickly pear”. Their juice is considered a “superfood” in Mexico

There are two ways of extracting the oil from the prickly pear seeds: maceration (softening) or cold pressing. With cold-pressed prickly pear seed oil, the ingredients remain in large quantities.

Prickly pear seed oil and its ingredients

Prickly pear seed oil is rich in various healthy nutrients. It consists of 88 percent fatty acids such as omega-6 and omega-9.

Omega-6 (linoleic acid): This unsaturated fatty acid is the main component of prickly pear seed oil. It is essential for your body’s immune response.
Omega-9 (oleic acid): Oleic acid is said to have a positive effect on brain function and the cardiovascular system. Some studies suggest that the acid may help prevent breast cancer. It is not only contained in prickly pear seed oil, but also in olive oil, for example.
Prickly pear seed oil is also rich in tocopherols, which belong to the vitamin E group. Tocopherols are antioxidants and protect the body’s cells from free radicals

Prickly Pear Seed Oil: Effect on your health and beauty

Prickly pear seed oil is famous for having a positive effect on the human body, both internally and externally.

Topical use: Take two drops of the oil and either apply it to your skin without any additives or mix it with your daily skin cream for extra dry skin. Despite its rich fatty acid content, prickly pear seed oil is non-comedogenic—so it won’t clog pores. The oil is suitable for daily use.
Internal use: You can also use the prickly pear seed oil for culinary purposes and mix a few drops into your salad dressing, for example. The oil has a light fruity note. However, you should not heat it: it can lose its valuable ingredients.
Researchers have already been able to demonstrate some of the health-promoting effects that prickly pear oil is said to have – including, for example, its antioxidant effect. Other effects, on the other hand, have not yet been sufficiently proven:

Sun protection and anti-aging:
Anti-inflammatory: the so-called
Prevents cancer: As part of a study, scientists treated induced tumor cells from nude mice with prickly pear extract. They found that the tumor cells died more often as a result. The exact reason for this and whether prickly pear seed oil has the same effect on people has not yet been clearly established.

Prickly pear seed oil: What you should look out for when buying

If you want to buy prickly pear seed oil, you should always make sure that it is the cold-pressed version. Since the oil has to be made from a large quantity of fruit, it is particularly valuable and expensive. So if you come across a surprisingly cheap offer, it may be a chemically extracted product. This not only lacks important ingredients, it can even contain harmful substances. So make sure that it is not contaminated with so-called “hexane”. An organic seal is also important – this way you can also ensure the ecological quality of the oil.

But you should also keep an eye on the environmental balance of prickly pear seed oil: The biggest problem is the long transport routes. Globally, Mexico grows the most prickly pears. The second largest producer, on the other hand, is Italy (Sicily). It is therefore possible to buy prickly pear seed oil from the EU.

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