Guzzle & Nosh

pizza at 800 Degrees

Can pizza be the cure to cancer? According to a new study by researchers at Long Island University, the herb oregano, a key ingredient in most pizza sauces, can potentially be used to treat prostate cancer.

"We know that oregano possesses antibacterial as well as anti-inflammatory properties, but its effects on cancer cells really elevate the spice to the level of a super-spice like turmeric," said Dr. Supriya Bavadekar, assistant professor of pharmacology.

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Ryan Robert Miller/Salad For Dinner

Chicken and Orange Salad with Beets

Those low-fat, low-carb, low-trend-whatever cookbooks will likely always have a market. But another positive trickle-down effect of the current farmers market and backyard gardening era has been the really great "healthful" cookbooks we've been seeing recently, Hero Food: How Cooking With Delicious Things Can Make Us Feel Better by New York chef Seamus Mullen and Salad for Dinner by Jeanne Kelley among them (Disclosure: Kelley is an occasional contributor to this blog).

Even "healthful" is an unfortunate word here, as these are simply really great cookbooks that happen to be free of the current trendy candied bacon and short rib meatloaf restaurant excesses. No health book calorie counts, either. Funny, five years ago, publishers would have simply called them great "farmers market-driven" cookbooks, leaving the Hero Food references (Mullen changed his diet after learning he had rheumatoid arthritis) and Salad for Dinner cookbook titles off the table (Kelley is quick to blush and note her publisher chose the title; for her, this was a realistic catalog of what she likes to cook for dinner from her backyard garden).

Good thing it's the recipes we're really after in both books.

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JJ Virgin, right, on Freaky Eaters

JJ Virgin (shortened due to the unfortunate pronunciation of Julie while living in Japan) is smarter than you. She's a member of Mensa, and she seems to have an addiction to academia. After graduating from UCLA, she went on to graduate school for biomechanics, then sports medicine, then took doctorate-level courses in exercise physiology, nutrition and aging at USC. All in all she's taken more than 40 post-graduate courses that have culminated to make her an expert in weight loss and physical health.

So what kind of career does all this education lead to? Television, of course. Virgin is the co-star of TLC's Freaky Eaters, in which she helps people break their addictions to bizarre foods. She also recently appeared on an episode of Fat Chef and, in May, will appear on an as-yet-unnamed Discovery Fit & Health program.

In addition, Virgin is an author and public speaker and, lucky for us, a private tutor. She believes most Americans don't know food as well as they think they do, and that many of us are making a lot of mistakes when it comes to nutrition. In a sit-down with her, we learned that we're idiots for the granola bar and soy latte we had for breakfast, but that red wine should be part of our weight-loss regime. Plus a few other surprising yet handy bits of food knowledge.* Turn the page for the list.

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Brinker International

Maggiano's chef

For those of us who are sensitive or allergic to certain foods, eating out can sometimes feel more like a trek through a minefield than a relaxing dining experience.

Thankfully, certain restaurant chains with local presence are taking steps to make dining out safer for those with food allergies, which is a step in the right direction considering the myriad of potential pitfalls for contamination and the very grave consequences for falling into one.

If you're one of the 12 million people in the United States with a food allergy, you know what we're talking about. It's not just worrying about ordering a safe dish -- it's also stressing over things like: Did the cook use the same gloves and tools to prepare all the meals, putting you at risk for cross-contamination? Was this salad made from scratch, or did someone just pick the nuts off of an already assembled salad? Does the kitchen staff understand that even a spec of an allergen can make you really sick?

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Emilie Hardman

Sugar

We hope everyone knows by now that sugar is bad for you. But just how bad? Is it merely empty calories we have to spend an extra hour at the gym to sweat off? Apparently, no. A research team from the University of California, San Francisco, says it's so bad it should listed as a toxic substance.

While they don't suggest banning it, they do think people aren't aware of how hazardous it is, and steps should be taken to restrict sales and availability in much the same way we do with alcohol and tobacco. Their thought is that by increasing the public's awareness of the dangers of excessive sugar consumption through these measures, we can "actually increase people's choices by making foods that aren't loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get."

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D. Solomon

strawberry magic milk straw

Just when you thought nothing could be as simple and plain (or boring) as unflavored milk, Magic Milk Straws come along. While the magic is debatable, we can imagine that the straws enchant calcium-conscious parents and their kids. Stuffed with tiny candy-like pieces in pink, brown and white, the straws look cool and almost futuristic. (Imagine Dippin' Dots, but smaller, and encased in a narrow tube.) The flavors -- strawberry, cocoa, vanilla, banana, orange cream, berry, cookies-and-cream plus others -- ease milk's ho-hum quality. The point isn't to flavor the entire glass, only your sips through the straw. As you drink, the little pieces gradually dissolve into the milk, until the straw's empty.

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The White House

The First Lady at the White House garden

As part of her "Let's Move!" nationwide health campaign for fitness and healthier food, First Lady Michelle Obama will be making a stop in Inglewood today -- the second day of her two-day visit to Los Angeles. She'll speak to supporters at a future site for a Northgate Gonzalez Market.

The "Let's Move!" campaign provides California with a $264 million FreshWorks Fund to help finance grocery businesses in areas underserved by traditional supermarkets.
She'll speak on the progress of the market and the importance in food development projects like it in underprivileged communities.

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Anjuli Ayer

Cocoa is a source of phytochemical compounds that have potential health benefits.

If we didn't know better, we'd swear this study was funded by a syndicate of chocolate producers, but we don't like to look too skeptically at research that reinforces our notions of how the world should be.

A recent study on rats has for the first time confirmed that flavonoids such as those found in cocoa can potentially have a protective effect against colon cancer. Headed by scientists from the Institute of Food Science and Technology and Nutrition (ICTAN), the study was recently published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research.

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Guzzle & Nosh

Christmas cookies: delicious but dangerous when unbaked.

In the midst of the Christmas cookie season, it's important to remember one thing: Don't eat unbaked cookie dough. That's the upshot of a recent report published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

After a 2009 multistate outbreak of E. coli was traced to ready-to-bake commercial prepackaged cookie dough, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a closer look at the stuff. They reached two key conclusions: 1) manufacturers should consider reformulating their cookie doughs to make them safe as ready-to-eat products and 2) consumers need to know about the risks of consuming unbaked goods.

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Guzzle & Nosh

A shot of the menu at Palsaik

Pork is good for you, full of life-preserving nutrients and vitamins, didn't you know? We recently spotted this list of pork belly's health benefits on the menu at Palsaik Samgyeopsal, a Koreatown sam-gyeopsal house. That'd be a restaurant specializing in Korean-style pork belly cooked on a griddle. Here, it's prepared eight different ways and served in a rainbow array with greens, raw garlic, kimchi and an assortment of pickled vegetables.

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