Soy Recipe: Hearty Miso Soup MealWritten by Dr. Donald A. Miller
One of highlights of a meal at a good Japanese restaurant is miso soup. This is usually clear, often with chopped green onions, diced tofu, oriental dried mushroom slices, and delicate spices.For home use, several brands of dehydrated miso soup are available in oriental and health-food stores. But a better way is to make your own, customized to your taste. Here is one of my recipes, which makes a complete meal. This soup is not clear. Ingredients per person: * two cups water * angel hair pasta, about a half inch circle's worth * fresh miso paste, from health-food store or similar, about a rounded tablespoonful * one of following enhancements -- -- about half cup of diced or crushed firm tofu -- one or two whipped eggs -- tofu with one egg *optional: green spice mix, fresh ground black pepper, diced onions or garlic, and tablespoon of a good soy sauce These quantities were determined by trial and error. Vary to suit your own tastes. The only negative about this recipe is that boiling miso can kill healthful fermentation culture. If you have a food blender, you can pulverize miso in some water, to add after pasta is cooked. Otherwise, proceed as follows.
| | Fat Magnets, Chitosan, and SoapWritten by Dr. Donald A. Miller
I recently chanced upon a web ad for chitosan, claimed to be a "Fat Magnet", which would let one eat fatty foods and lose weight. Looked like another magic pill. So I turned to my handy Google.Com search engine for information.Chitosan is processed from chitin, mostly obtained from crushed shellfish shells, crab shells, and similar. Chitosan is a polymer with structure similar to cellulose. It has applications in industry, such as to hold catalysts. The national governments of both Britain and USA have taken legal actions against makers and sellers of chitosan as a diet supplement, because claims that fat absorption can be blocked by ingesting chitosan have been tested and proven false. Yet many internet sites are still selling this snake- oil medicine. I wonder why that is. Don't good guys win and make bad guys go away? One of diet sales sites told me that chitosan is an extract of crushed shellfish shells, and can ionically attract "negatively charged fat like a magnet". For starters, mechanism of magnets does not involve ions or charge attraction. An example does come to mind in which ions interact with fats, namely making and use of soaps. Again, let's turn to handy Google.Com search engine. Soap was discovered at least four thousand years ago, and many times in many places since then. Soap was not always used to clean, sometimes soft form being used to treat open wounds, or as a hair dressing, for two examples. One way for soap to form is for fat drippings from a cooking fire to combine with water and alkali existing in wood ashes. This alkali is hydroxide of sodium and potassium. One legend says that rain water falling on fire altars used for animal sacrifice to gods caused soap to form and flow into streams that were then discovered to be good for cleaning clothes. A molecule of soap consists of a molecule of fatty acid (carbon and hydrogen atoms) chemically combined with an atom of sodium or potassium, with some other atoms, such as oxygen, tied in. The chemical process involves exchange of electrons among parts, said parts being identifiable as positive and negative ions. Soft fats tend to make softer soaps than solid fats. Potassium makes softer soaps than sodium.
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