TRYTHISDISH

by Kim Beavers, MS, RDN, CDCES Registered Dietitian Nutritionist,

Slow Cooker Salmon

A slow cooker is a perfect solution to “poaching” salmon in a no-fail sort of way. This is not your typical slow cooker recipe since it only needs to cook 2 hours or less, but the slow cooker does the work while you do whatever else you want to do. Note the leftovers are excellent on salads the following day.

Ingredients

• 4 slices medium onion (about 1/3-inch thick)

• 2 large stalks celery, each stalk cut into 4 pieces

• 1 pound salmon (skin on), cut into 4 equal pieces

• 2 teaspoon Jane’s Krazy

Mixed-Up salt

• 1 lemon, sliced thin

• 1-½ cups unsalted vegetables broth

• 3 tablespoons dry sherry (optional; alternatively use 1/4 to 1/3 cup of white wine)

• Water as needed to reach the top of the salmon

Directions

Begin by lining the slow cooker with aluminum foil.

This will make it easier to lift the delicate fish out of the slow cooker later. First, place half of the onion and celery into the slow cooker on top of the aluminum foil. Then season the salmon with salt blend and layer two salmon pieces onto the veggies, and top with 2 lemon slices. Repeat the layers once more (onion and celery on top of the lemon, then seasoned salmon, and lemon slices).

Next add the broth and sherry. Add water until the liquid reaches almost to the top of the top salmon fillet (not over the fish but just to the top).

Turn the slow cooker on low for 1 ½ to 2 hours.

Check the salmon at the 1 ½ hour mark until you know how your slow cooker cooks this fish, the goal is to gently cook but not overcook the salmon. The fish is done when it is no longer translucent, but has turned opaque or has reached 145 degrees on a food thermometer.

Yield: 4 Servings

Nutrition Breakdown: Calories 120, Fat 4g (0.5g saturated fat, 2g monounsaturated fat, 300mg Omega-3 fatty acids), Cholesterol 55mg, Sodium 190mg, Carbohydrate 1g, Fiber 0g, Protein 21g, Potassium 421mg, Phosphorus 209mg.

Percent Daily Value: 10% Vitamin C, 2% Iron, 2% Calcium, 0% Vitamin A

Carbohydrate Choice: 0 Carbohydrates

Diabetes Exchange Values: 3

Lean Meats

Omega-3 in 3.5 ounces salmon: about 2100mg

Kim’s note: This type of slow cooker recipe serves each of us differently depending on the “season” of your life. For me as a busy mom of active children it means I can load the slow cooker --- drop kiddo 1 off at practice, help kiddo 2 with homework, pick up kiddo 1 and dinner is mostly ready—hurray!

Inspired by: Sharon Palmer, RD at www.sharonpalmer.com

Stan, a Facebook friend from Augusta, asks:

“A health-conscious friend of mine eats a handful of boiled kale or spinach six times a day. He says it provides nitric oxide that increases blood flow, lowers blood pressure and more. True?”

Thanks for the question, Stan. Emerging evidence does implicate the nitric oxide (NO) molecule as one of many factors that may reduce a person’s cardiovascular risk. In fact, it may be one of the reasons why fruits and veggies, which are rich sources of NO, are important in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease (heart attacks, strokes, and peripheral vascular disease). As your friend says, NO is thought to increase the diameter of blood vessels and thus improve blood flow. As an interesting aside, Viagra (sildenafil citrate) is thought to work by increasing NO production and improving blood flow to the penis, thereby enhancing erections.

Having said that, there are several problems with your friend’s dietary approach. First, it is way too premature based on the present data, to run with the NO hypothesis. One group of people presently jumping on the NO bandwagon are athletes, under the premature idea that manipulating NO will increase athletic performance. It has yet to be proven.

Secondly, the dietary approach of searching for molecules to eat, rather than foods, is naïve. It is your overall life, your overall di etary habits and your daily nutritional choices that are the most im portant. There is simply not a lot of research right now to support all the claims being made about NO.

It is always intrigu ing that some people’s idea of good nutrition is to fixate on a molecule that sounds important, seems to somehow make sense to them, and they simply run with it. I refer to people like this as “armchair nutritionists.” You cannot simply sit in an armchair, read some random articles and use these as a nutritional call-toaction. Armchair nutritionists are usually very adept at finding “this study” or “that study” to support their ideas. This is referred to as “cherry-picking” the data. The fact is that you can find information these days to support almost any way of thinking. Thankfully, this is not how nutrition science works. A good rule is to be at the cutting edge of science, right behind the data, not in front of or ahead of it.

The reason your friend boils his spinach is because spinach has elevated levels of oxalic acid, which can interfere with the absorption of calcium and iron. Oxalic acid is broken down by boiling. The downside is that boiling spinach also leaches out soluble vitamins, such as Vitamin C and other soluble nutrients.

Should you worry about oxalic acid in the spinach you eat? If you are eating spinach now and then as part of a varied diet, it is not a problem. The time when oxalic acid becomes a big problem is when you eat lots and lots of spinach every day, like Popeye. Your friend is overdoing spinach, so that is an issue for him. If you eat a wide variety of foods in a healthy manner, then spinach is simply a nutritious food to eat, either raw, in salads, or cooked. One favorite meal of ours is to throw in some raw spinach and diced red pepper when making mushroom

pasta. It adds lots of nutrients

Focusing on one other issue related to your question, it is not possible to directly measure NO in body fluids. That means there is no direct way of determining if, in fact, you have increased your NO levels. However, we can measure nitrite and nitrate in body fluids, which are the metabolic end products of NO in the body. The problem here is that the measurement of nitrites and nitrates is fraught with difficulty. It is questionable how the results of nitrite or nitrate testing relate to the original blood NO concentrations.

What is the “No-Nonsense Nutrition” advice for today?

It should not be necessary to state something so obvious, but eat food, not molecules. Based on the present data, if you want to reduce cardiovascular risk, get your blood lipids measured, stay physically active, be within a reasonable body mass index (BMI), and follow the Mediterranean or DASH way of eating. Most importantly, if you do all these things and your cardiovascular risk is still high, follow the advice of your physician and take cholesterol-lowering medications such as statins. Statins have much more data behind them and are much more researched than the NO hypothesis.

Have a question about food, diet or nutrition? Post or private message your question on Facebook (www.Facebook.com/ AskDrKarp) or email your question to askdrkarp@gmail.com If your question is chosen for a column, your name will be changed to insure your privacy. Warren B. Karp, Ph.D., D.M.D., is Professor Emeritus at Augusta University. He has served as Director of the Nutrition Consult Service at the Dental College of Georgia and is past Vice Chair of the Columbia County Board of Health. You can find out more about Dr. Karp and the download site for the public domain eBook, Nutrition for Smarties, at www.wbkarp.com Dr. Karp obtains no funding for writing his columns, articles, or books, and has no financial or other interests in any food, book, nutrition product or company. His interest is only in providing freely available, evidenced-based, scientific nutrition knowledge and education. The information is for educational use only; it is not meant to be used to diagnose, manage or treat any patient or client. Although Dr. Karp is a Professor Emeritus at Augusta University, the views and opinions expressed here are his and his alone and do not reflect the views and opinions of Augusta University or anyone else.

Dr. Karp