How cookbook author Rebecca Katz translates science to the plate + giveaway of The Healthy Mind Cookbook
Rebecca Katz is a nutrition scientist, a chef, and the author of five essential cookbooks including (with Mat Edelson) The Healthy Mind Cookbook: Big-Flavor Recipes to Enhance Brain Function, Mood, Memory, and Mental Clarity. Rebecca has been helping people cook and eat for optimal health ever since the day she quit her corporate job and enrolled in culinary school at the age of 37. She coined the term “culinary translator” to describe what she does: translate nutritional science to the plate. Flavor is her primary tool, along with what she calls “the power of yum.”
Yum indeed. When I first met Rebecca at the Food as Medicine conference in 2014, she was dishing up the most beautiful and delicious food I had ever experienced at a conference. I have been cooking out of all of her cookbooks for years — the recipes are approachable, packed with nutrient density, gorgeous to behold, and a joy to share. I stockpiled copies of The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen in my medical office to give to countless friends and patients faced with a cancer diagnosis. And I recommend The Healthy Mind Cookbook to all of my Brain Works cooking students. I subscribe to her wonderful and inspiring website for weekly doses of her special brand of YUM, her delightful sense of humor, and her great recipes. I guess you could say I am a fan (insert blushing smiley face emoji;)
Cookbook giveaway! Rebecca and I are giving away a copy of The Healthy Mind Cookbook to one lucky Brain Works Kitchen reader! Contest details at the end of the post.
Rebecca and I caught up on Skype not long ago to discuss everything from cooking techniques to her favorite brain healthy ingredients to why we both skip breakfast. And she’s sharing one of her most popular recipes: Roasted Ginger Salmon with Pomegranate Olive Mint Salsa.
AF: How did you merge your love of food and health?
RK: I was working in corporate America and was burnt out. I ended up taking a life sabbatical to Italy and just fell in love with food, how the Mediterranean lifestyle embraced food in such a non-fussy way. I spent a year and cooked, found my mentor in Florence, and became her culinary slave.
When I came back I was very influenced by Ann Marie Colban’s book Food and Healing about the connection between food and health. I decided at 37 that I was going to go to her culinary school, the Natural Institute for Culinary Arts in Manhattan. I started to look at food as something that deeply nourishes us from the medical point of view but also has all of these health benefits. To learn how to really implement those into everyday cooking for people who were dealing with chronic illnesses or wanting better health and vitality.
AF: You’ve been writing about how to use food as medicine for years and were the first to use “cancer” and “cooking” in the same sentence. How was this message received initially and how has it changed today?
RK: My real entrée to “food as medicine” after my training was in the world of cancer. I started cooking at Commonweal health care program in Bolinas, CA. Nobody was looking at that world – the world of someone who is going through cancer treatment and the obstacles they were facing. It was uncharted territory. But I found so much fulfillment and challenge in trying to address these needs.
One of the biggest challenges was how to navigate taste and flavor.
It’s really about what I call the power of yum—where great taste and great nutrition have to sit side by side.
They have to sit joyfully together. You cannot have healthy food that does not pack big flavor and taste. The more you pack it with flavor and taste 1) people are going to eat it, and 2) every time you pack it with all those goodies you’re adding even more nutrient density to the food.
AF: Your first book was about eating after cancer: One Bite at a Time.
RK: When One Bite at a Time came out they didn’t even have a category for health and wellness for books. Now I look back and I think —wow, what a seed that was.
AF: Then you wrote The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen in 2007…
RK: People were like — you’re going to write a book that has cancer in the title that’s a cookbook? I went back and got my masters of science in health and nutrition education. I was starting to see more science and was working with all these doctors at the Food as Medicine program and I wanted to really super understand. That’s where that phrase the “culinary translator” came from: I realized how important it was to translate my knowledge of science to the plate. At the end of the day, you’ve got to stand behind the stove.
Someone’s got to stand behind the stove to turn that science into yum.
AF: And talking science doesn’t always make people’s mouths water. So there’s a real art to that.
RK: There is. And it’s like you can say, gosh you should be eating more fiber. But what if I said to you could crack open a creamy lovely avocado and spritz some lime juice on it with some salt, mush it up with the back of your fork and make avocado toast or add that creaminess into something else, like a guacamole, and you would be getting more fiber that a half a cup of bran.
You have to try to seduce people. That’s one thing about the Mediterraneans—there’s a seduction about the food there because it’s such an important part of their culture. That Med diet keeps coming up over and over again because it’s a lifestyle. It’s a way of being. They are not thinking about science. They are just taking that olive oil, the elixir of the gods, and drizzling it on everything.
AF: And it happens to be the perfect conduit for all those phytonutrients.
RK: Those phytonutrients are more available to us when they are drizzled with really good healthy oil. There’s absolutely nothing new. All we’re doing is going back in time and showing people what has been done in the past.
We’re really channeling the wisdom of our elders.
As cooks and educators there are opportunities to make inroads that make people feel empowered and not freaked out. It’s not ever about what you can’t have. It’s about really helping people see what you can have.
AF: If you had to pick 5 ingredients from your culinary pharmacy to help prevent Alzheimer’s what would you pick?
RK: Off the top of my head, this is the “paint your plate green” mode. I would pick all the green vegetables: the dark leafy greens, the broccoli, the arugula, the kale, any of those cruciferous vegetables. I’m just lumping them all together. The herb I would pick is mint because there are so many incredible phytonutrients in mint, and there’s a tremendous amount of study in cognitive health with mint. And then I’m going to lump the fats in—avocado, olive oil, those really good nutrient dense fats. And turmeric.
AF: Has the MIND diet study changed the way you think about food and brain health?
{Read about the MIND diet study here: The Science Behind Preventing Alzheimer’s in the Brain Works Kitchen, and here: MIND diet describes 10 brain healthy food groups.}
RK: When I look at the MIND diet in comparison to what I’ve been studying over the years, it is not very sophisticated. It’s nothing that we don’t already know. I’ve had the privilege of working with a doctor—Dr. Dale Bredesen—who has a remarkable Alzheimer’s protocol that is food-based and supplement and lifestyle-based, so I’m waiting to see. But I feel like it’s touching the surface but it does not go deep enough.
{Read more about Dr. Bredesen’s MEND protocol here.}
AF: Do you think the MIND diet has been dumbed down for the average American diet?
RK: Yes! The thing I love about it is it started the conversation. It brought the awareness of food and the brain and the connection. I love the fact that we are even talking about food and the mind so I appreciate what’s going on.
AF: Let’s talk about cooking techniques. What are some of your favorite ways to coax flavor out of whole foods while keeping them nutrient dense?
RK: Soup is my wheelhouse. Every cook has a thing they are most passionate about and for me it’s soup. The thing that’s so great about soup, whether it’s for brain health or any kind of health: There are so many ways you can pack in nutrient density. You can get ginger, garlic, and greens. You can create nourishing healing broths. All of these things melt in the pot. You can get this heady healing broth as your base. Already that in and of itself is incredibly healing. You’ve got something amazing to start with, and then you can build another layer on top. You can get so many of those great rich foods in your soup. It’s like culinary alchemy at its best.
And then there’s something that’s so digestible and absorbable, and that’s where soup can kickstart a body that is suffering a little bit. Where those cells really need to absorb those nutrients.
{Rebecca’s book Clean Soups is a must-have for every novice and experienced cook.}
AF: I make your Magic Mineral Broth and use it as the base for so many dishes. Don’t you love how bone broth has become trendy?
RK: I collect antiquarian cookbooks and I have a book called Cookery Illustration and Household Management written in 1906. What do you feed someone when they are sick? You feed them broth. When the whole bone broth craze started, I was like — oh my gosh — everything old is new again. These are just the basic tenets of healing. Our ancestors knew what to do to heal. It humbles everything. It just kills me how these things become trendy. The thing I do like is that it makes it more accessible. Let’s say you have elderly men in your cooking classes — they can assemble. That sometimes is most achievable if you are dealing with people who have MCI {mild cognitive impairment} or someone who is younger with Alzheimer’s in their family and can be proactive. Sometimes it’s about empowering people to become assemblers.
AF: Before we leave techniques I want to ask you about heating up oils. Are you concerned about cooking with olive oil? At a certain point does it break down into unhealthy components?
RK: This is my favorite question to answer.
So, here’s the trick about cooking with olive oil: The best thing people can do is heat the pan first. If you heat the pan first then you’re not heating the olive oil.
The pan gets hot; you put the olive oil in, and see that shimmer. As soon as you put an ingredient in that pan, the smoke point drops quite a bit. Olive oil is fabulous for sautéing. And it really takes a lot of heat to crank it up. So honestly unless you are using a restaurant stove that’s got so many BTU’s or you’re really looking to put a hard sear on a piece of meat or fish, I really do not see any issues about cooking with olive oil at all.
And the olive oil that has a lot of polyphenols is going to be a very peppery oil; you’re going to feel it in the back of your throat. And that’s the kind of olive oil that you want to drink. It’s the kind of olive oil you want to drizzle all over your food and that bowl of chicken soup.
AF: Now let’s switch gears and talk about the science behind the ketogenic diet for prevention of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Studies show that periodic fasting, for 12 to 14 hours, actually helps with neurogenesis, repair, and clearance of free radicals. What do you think of all that?
RK: I think that there is merit in variations to the ketogenic diet but what I don’t like is all these cookbooks on ketogenics that focus on bacon and butter. It’s really irresponsible. I’m not concerned so much about the Bulletproof Coffee as I am concerned about the cookbook authors who are not really looking at the science of ketogenics.
The ketogenic diet: It’s not about eating bacon and butter.
If you look back to what the ketogenic diet was, it was developed for children with epilepsy and you couldn’t eat any carbohydrates (and that included vegetables), so it was very strict. One size does not fit all. Everyone’s Alzheimer’s or dementia is very different and bio-individual; the introduction of good healthy fats and keeping those vegetables on the plate is super important.
I’m a big fan {of periodic fasting}; this is the work of Dale Bredesen, again. I have never been one of those people who eat breakfast. Breakfast is just not my thing. And I always thought, oh my God, breakfast is the most important meal of the day until I started talking to a lot of docs about fasting. If you don’t eat three hours before you sleep and you can let yourself go that full 12 hours before your next meal, the janitors can get in there and do their cleanup. You’re putting yourself in a natural state of ketosis when you are fasting.
AF: It’s so interesting. I’m also not a breakfast eater so I feel slightly vindicated as I read this research. But as a writer do you feel more alert in the mornings before you’ve eaten?
RK: I do better with a cup of black coffee.
AF: Same. I have a cup of black coffee and I can work for 4 hours and then it’s probably been 12 hours since my last meal. I don’t think everyone’s brains work the same, obviously, but it’s very interesting.
RK: Isn’t that funny you and I would have the same experience and I felt that same way too, totally vindicated. I have been doing this for so long because that’s the way my body wants to operate. And I don’t get hungry until about 10.
AF: And then it’s like an alarm goes off and I need to make: avocado toast!
RK: Yeah and then I’m ready. And I’ve also noticed that the older I get, because now I’m 55, I don’t want to eat my last meal of the day at 8:00.
AF: Rebecca, let’s talk about the impending epidemic of Alzheimer’s because the bubble of baby boomers are entering older age groups in unprecedented numbers.
RK: Right, particularly among women.
AF: Yes, 2/3 of women are afflicted with Alzheimer’s and 2/3 of the caregivers are women. How do you see the next 25 years? Do you think we will actually be able to turn the tide on the epidemic by increasing awareness about the power of food and lifestyle?
RK: Yes, because we have baby boomers who are really receptive and highly motivated. We saw this with food and cancer — nobody wanted to talk about food and cancer and now it’s an integral part of the conversation. It’s going to be the same thing; it’s going to be patient-driven.
AF: The patients have to get behind it.
RK: Right, and they push it. The other thing I think is going to happen is that we are now starting to understand that these things are happening in our brains 20-30 years before they actually occur. Our generation is watching people that are dealing with it and they’re going to say: I’m not going to go down that road.
AF: Like our friends are doing with their parents right now.
RK: Right. I’m going to choose a different path. I’ve seen a lot of that. And so I think that Alzheimer’s is just like we talked about with cancer, you used to talk about cancer like in a whisper. My father passed away with dementia, and we didn’t know whether it was Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia because there was no MRI imaging and the only way you were going to find out was through an autopsy. But I went through it, I saw what was happening.
There’s nothing I feel that can motivate someone more than being a caregiver and seeing what happens.
And, oh, by the way, we couldn’t even really say anything about my father because people would look at that like…
AF: It was a stigma.
RK: Right. So the more we get that out there, the more people are talking about it, the more we are getting that information out into the world, the more empowerment we are giving people through food and good sleep and exercise, I think we are going to see a shift.
I am very confident we will see a shift. It’s not going to happen as a magic bullet, but nothing is.
I also think that, again, if you’ll look at Dr. Bredesen’s work you’ll see that Alzheimer’s manifests itself in many different ways. There are people who have a more inflammatory response to Alzheimer’s and people that have a more hormonal response. Some are more sensitive to the environment and mold and things like that. The more we start understanding that I think the more proactive people can get about the environments in which they live and making some choices that will make a huge difference. I feel positive about it because I think the only way is up.
AF: Well put. Rebecca, my last question is about you. I know you just came out with a second edition of The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen, and I can’t tell you how many copies of the first edition I’ve given to patients and friends over the years. You released an online series of cooking classes that I’m really excited about for my clients since many of them are learning to cook. So what’s next for you? You’re teaching, you’re traveling, and you’re doing Healing Kitchens and Food as Medicine courses. The Instant Pot e-book, which I love because I just got an Instant Pot.
RK: Yes, bringing books to life online, giving people the tools to be able to cook is a big thing. Getting these courses out into the world is a big thing. I’m probably going to be working on another book and I’m very interested in how cooking can do two things: that the actual getting in the kitchen and cooking can help us unwind and deal with the stress of the day, and then how the foods that we eat can help mitigate stress. So I’m now very interested in this notion of how food fits into that hamster wheel that we’re all on. We’re in the stress of our everyday lives and how do we get off. And people can get off at different points. Some people meditate, some people exercise, some people dive into a book, sit in front of the television, you know, there are all different ways. But how does the kitchen factor in? How can that be a place you know? So looking at the process of cooking and actually the product of cooking and where do those intersect.
AF: I’ve been told by so many patients over the years: “I don’t have time to cook, I don’t have time to eat like that, I don’t have time to come home and come into the kitchen.” I could tell them how I think they should eat or I can’t give them that love of it. So your book could do that.
RK: Yes! I’m hoping if I could just crack the door so that people can be maybe inspired and again maybe they become assemblers.
AF: And that’s easier to do nowadays too because if you live in a decent place with a good market you can assemble great food.
RK: I think there are lots of ways to get in. And I also feel, to your point, I think that people are motivated to feel better when they are really stressed out. I think everybody’s trying to find a way off the highway even if it’s only once a week.
AF: Maybe it’s a meal kit.
RK: Maybe it’s a meal kit! The other thing I am doing is I am creating more time in my life for my art. I am a painter so I’m exploring the whole junction between my culinary arts and my fine arts. I’m doing a lot more studying and learning new things in my art world to create balance in my life.
AF: That’s wonderful and that’s exactly what we all should be doing for our brains — tapping into whatever creative side we have. And stimulating that part of our brain more and not less as we get older.
RK: Yes, because here’s the thing—when we’re learning new things on that creative side, it just opens us up so many more possibilities. So, for example, I’ve gone back to drawing class and it’s amazing how 2 hours of drawing something using the right side of the brain can totally set me up differently for the rest of the day. And again, whatever it is, whether it’s jewelry making or whatever people’s wheelhouse, picking up an instrument.
Learning anything new or stretching your brain in any way is, well, talk about neuroplasticity!
AF: It’s that concept of building cognitive reserve.
RK: Yes, that’s what I’m doing right now, building more cognitive reserve.
AF: As if you needed any Rebecca. Well, I can’t thank you enough for being my first guest on Brain Works Kitchen. And for offering a copy of The Healthy Mind Cookbook to Brain Works Kitchen readers. And for this amazing recipe for Ginger Roasted Salmon with Pomegranate Olive Mint Salsa. I have made this dish many times with my Brain Works students, and it is a keeper. Thank you!
Be sure to check out Rebecca’s website: www.rebeccakatz.com and subscribe for weekly YUM, informative posts and amazing recipes.
Read more about Dr. Bredesen’s work on reversal of cognitive decline here.
The Health Mind Cookbook giveaway
Contest Rules:
- This contest is open now through June 18, 2017 at midnight, MST.
- You must live in the United States to be eligible to win.
- The winner will be announced June 21, 2017.
- To enter, leave a comment below with your favorite tip for living a brain healthy lifestyle. It could be a favorite food, a daily habit that is good for the brain, or an activity that builds cognitive reserve. Comments may also be left @BrainWorksKitchen Instagram and Facebook posts featuring the contest.
- Be sure to leave an email address so I can contact you if you win.
- The winner will be chosen via Random Number Generator.
- Good luck! I hope you win a copy of The Healthy Mind Cookbook! My copy is heavily used and lovingly dog-eared and splattered.
Photos used with permission, courtesy of Rebecca Katz. (Thanks Rebecca!)
Prep Time | 10 minutes |
Cook Time | 15 minutes |
Passive Time | 20 minutes to marinate |
Servings |
people
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- 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
- zest of 1 orange
- zest of 1 lemon
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon finely minced fresh ginger
- pinch cayenne pepper
- 4 6-ounce salmon fillets pinbones removed
- sea salt
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 cup pomegranate olive mint salsa Recipe follows
Ingredients
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- In a small bowl or glass measuring cup, whisk together the orange juice, lime juice, lemon juice, orange zest, lemon zest, olive oil, ginger, and cayenne.
- Place the salmon in a baking dish and season each piece with a pinch of salt.
- Pour half of the marinade over the salmon and turn to coat well. Cover the baking dish and marinate in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Remove the salmon from the refrigerator, uncover, and add 2 tablespoons of water to the dish. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets, just until tender and opaque and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of the fillet registers 120°F.
- While the salmon is cooking, combine the reserved marinade and the mustard in a small saucepan over medium heat and simmer until the liquid is reduced by half.
- Pour the reduction over the fillets. Spoon 1/4 cup of the relish on top of each fillet, and serve immediately.
Pomegranate Olive Mint Salsa by Rebecca Katz
1 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup finely chopped mint
1/2 cup kalamata or green olives, chopped
1/2 cup finely chopped fennel
1/4 cup pomegranate seeds
1/4 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
2 scallions, minced
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Sea salt
Put the parsley, mint, olives, fennel, pomegranate seeds, walnuts, scallions, olive oil, 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, black pepper, and a pinch of salt in a bowl and stir gently to combine. For optimal flavor, cover and let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving. Taste; you may want to add another squeeze of lemon or a pinch of salt.
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