Visited Penang over the weekend for a short break. The last time I remember visiting Penang was before my schooling age. That was ages ago! Anyway, had been hearing from people that Penang is a food paradise, so I made this trip a makan trip – simply eat and eat and eat! Yippie!!
Before going to the airport on Saturday’s morning, I took a bowl of prawn mee and a glass of iced white coffee as my breakfast. That was around 8:30 AM. Then before departing from the airport, I was hungry again and went to McDonald’s for a Sausage McMuffin with Egg set meal. That was around 10 AM. Reached Penang at around 12 noon, and I was hungry again! There wasn’t much to eat at the airport, as I saw only Kenny Rogers. Thinking of savouring for Penang foods rather than fast food, I just held my hunger back.
A friend came to pick us up later, and we went directly to the hotel to check in first before going to makan. The traffic in Penang was HORRIBLE! From the Penang airport to our hotel, Holiday Inn Resort, in Batu Ferringhi, it took us nearly two hours! I nearly fainted inside the car as I was so hungry. My blood sugar must have reached its record-low ever for years. As we needed to check in before 3 PM, we couldn’t stop for food but to continue driving. Saw a KFC inside a “castle” along the way, and I was so tempted to ask the Penang friend to pull over for me to get a bite, gee gee gee!
After checking in, we drove right away to Georgetown for foods! Went to somewhere called the 7th Street, and the place was full of foods! Hooray! The Penang friend introduced us to the foods, but I asked him just to buy anything that is edible. After a few minutes, we had got duck koay teow soup, pasembor, fried don’t-know-what-what, deep fried peanut wrapped with skin made from glutinous rice flour, Nyonya kueh, and many other foods on the table. The duck koay teow soup was good, something that I don’t see in KL. The pasembor (see picture below) was tasty too, although I didn’t know what I was eating actually. It looked like rojak with different ingredients and sauce. The fried don’t-know-what-what (see picture below) was made from some kind of flour. It was semi-transparent and soft. Quite nice and special. The deep fried peanut wrapped with skin made from glutinous rice flour, or I call it as deep fried “Loh Mai Chi,” was good too as I don’t see it in KL. In KL, we can only find the non-deep fried version. This one was unique. The best was the Nyonya kueh, especially the glutinous rice kueh with kaya. Simply mouthwatering and irresistible! I even bought some for supper for the night. Maybe I was too hungry, overall, I found the foods great!
Pasembor
Fried Don't-Know-What-What
Deep Fried "Loh Mai Chi"
The next trip was to look for cendol. My Penang friend wasn’t sure which stall to bring us to. Then I remember reading about Penang cendol at Alvin Looi’s blog, so I gave him a call and he guided us to Penang Road for the very famous cendol. There were two stalls there, situated directly opposite of each other. We went to the one located next to the Chinese coffee shop, as we saw more people patronized it. As there were no tables and chairs provided, we stood by the road side for the cendol. Honestly speaking, I didn’t find the cendol any special. It was just, well, normal. In fact, I found that some cendol sold by Mamak in KL taste much better, especially when they put in more gula Melaka. We finished this dessert in less than 10 minutes. During the stay, I saw no one patronized the opposite stall. So pitiful!
It was already late afternoon when we went back to the hotel. There was a daily night market at Batu Ferringhi, and it is just within the doorstep of the hotel. Walked around and found that they sell mainly imitated goods like bags, clothes, accessories, perfumes, and so on. It reminded me of Patpong in Bangkok, but only on a smaller scale. The most popular stalls are those that sell DVD. People had to queue up in order to pick the titles that they wanted. At only RM5 per DVD, and buy-10-free-1 offer, you will understand why tourists are crazy about it.
There were Eden Seafood Restaurant and The Ship nearby Holiday Inn, but we went to the food court within the night bazaar for our dinner. Ordered char koay teow, prawn mee and deep fried Hainamese spring roll. The char koay teow looked very good and promising when it arrived (see the picture below and you’ll know why). But once ate it, it tasted so plain. The prawn mee looked nothing special when it arrived (Oh, no picture!), but it did taste very prawn-ly, ha ha!! The deep fried Hainamese spring roll was a big let down. I saw many people ordering it when I passed through the stall, so I ordered one too (luckily I ordered only one piece). At RM3 per roll, I was expecting something great. But it turned out that it was, well, just a spring roll. A very expensive spring roll indeed. Just your normal spring roll but in deep fried version. At RM3, I felt being conned!
A new study from Israel shows us once again that dieting without exercise does not work. The participants took off only 6 to 10 pounds in two years. No matter what diet they were on, most regained some of the weight they lost in the early months by the end of the study (NEJM, July 17, 2008). It didn't make any difference whether the overweight person was on a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet, or diet that stresses fruits, vegetables, whole grains beans, seeds, nuts and seafood. However, their small weight loss did result in improved cholesterol and blood pressure readings.
If we really want to lose weight for good, we have to exercise. Appetite is controlled in a part of our brain called hypothalamus. If we try to lose weight just by eating less food, our hypothalamus makes us miserable when we see tasty food and know that we shouldn't eat it. If we exercise, we will eat more, but we will not increase our intake of food to equal the extra calories that we burn when we exercise. After we have been exercising for a few months, our muscles will be stronger, we will feel and sleep better and we can actually start to enjoy our new activity. Then we are set for a life-long pattern of burning up the calories that we take in.
Apparently, there is a chemical reaction occurs between our blood and the foods that we eat. This reaction is part of our genetic inheritance. This reaction is caused by a factor called Lectins. Lectins, abundant and diverse proteins found in foods, have agglutinating properties that affect our blood. So when we eat a food containing protein lectins that are incompatible with our blood type antigen, the lectins target an organ or bodily system and begin to agglutinate blood cells in that area. Different lectins target different organs and body system.
Fortunately, most lectins found in the diet are not quite so life threatening, although they can cause a variety of other problems, especially if they are specific to a particular blood type. For the most part, our immune systems protect us from lectins. Ninety-five percent of the lectins we absorb from our typical diets are sloughed off by the body. But at least five percent of the lectins we eat are filtered into the bloodstream and different reactions in different organs.
Our blood group diet is the restoration of our natural genetic rhythm. Our blood group diet works because we are able to follow a clear, logical, scientifically researched plan based on your cellular profile. Next, we will look into what foods should we eat according to our individual blood group.
Blood group comes from the heredity of foods and their genes, and it’s closely related to the immune system of human body. According to medical statistical researches, many diseases are closely tight up with blood group. Blood group is inherited and represents contributions from both parents. In general, we inherit from either that of the father or the mother (such as group A, group O or group B), or the combination of both parents (such as group AB). If the father is of group A and mother is of group B, then the child can be that of group A, group B or group AB. He or she is also possible to take group O.
A little story here: Long time ago, human beings were herbivores or vegetarians, having the blood group that eats vegetables and fruits – group A. Their blood tends to be more alkaline. They are generally conservative, calm, and good at controlling themselves. Then there was a flood. People lost their land and were unable to eat vegetables and fruits. So, they moved uphill and started to hunt for animals. Meats made their blood to become acidic. To accommodate to the new environment, their blood group changed from group A to group O, the blood group that eats meat. People of blood group O have more acidic blood, and are generally crude, straightforward, easy to get angry and active.
After the flood, human beings brought the tamed animals back to the flat land and fed them there. They also started cultivation, started to exchange goods and trade for businesses. This enabled them to have the opportunity to taste variety of foods, and thus their diet became more balanced. Their blood group changed to group B, a more neutral blood. People of blood group B are generally more amiable, suave and friendly.
As people started to travel from one place to another for business trading, blood groups A, O and B started to mix through marriage. A new blood group AB was created as a result. Blood group AB is very unstable, as it can be converted back to A, B or O at their following generation. As such, people of blood group AB are generally having unstable moods and characteristics. They can be calm at one time but suddenly turn to become furious. They are sometimes amiable but self-centered.
Not only blood group affects our characteristics and personalities, it also determines what we should eat in order to stay healthy, for we will get sick if we eat wrongly. We should consider diet that matches our blood group.
As we all know, in order to maintain a healthy and strong immune system, we have to strive to provide our body with balanced and sufficient nutrition such as carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, water and so on. However, each and every nutrient has different impact to our body. Some people might need more carbohydrate while others need lesser to maintain better health.
For instance, some people might need substantially more protein but lesser fat in their diet. However, in order to maintain so-called balanced diet and nutritional intake, these people eat everything. As such, their bodies are now lacking of sufficient protein and are thus unable to produce adequate immune cells. On the other hand, the excess intake of fat makes the immune cells to react slower in their bodies.
Excessive intake of a particular nutrient might improve the health of certain type of people. But in contrary, it might affect the health of other type of people. That is, every one of us has our very personal nutritional requirements. The so-called balanced nutrition should be taken according to individual body’s needs, rather than identical to everybody.
To maintain better health and have stronger immune system, there is this practice proclaiming that we need to eat according to our individual blood group, or blood type.
What do you normally drink when you have sore throat? Try Honey Lemon Juice if you haven’t tried so.
Why? Honey has soothing, healing and anti-microbial properties that will bring quicker relief to the throat. Lemons contain a substantial amount of Vitamin C that speeds up the healing process and also help to cut mucus.
How to make it? Mix a teaspoon of honey into a glass of warm water. Add at least two (2) teaspoons of lemon juice and mix it thoroughly. Drink once daily until sore throat is cured.
Tip: Do not use boiling hot water as it will destroy some of the properties of the honey.
After knowing the evildoing of trans fats, some people asked me if it’s alright to continue eating, say fast food, but on occasional basis. For example, instead of once or more weekly, now change to once every fortnightly or monthly.
Do you drive a car? Do you know what runs a car? Yes, car runs on petrol. When fuel level in a car is low, we drive the car to the petrol station to fill in petrol, so that the fuel level is up again and we can continue driving the car. Do we fill the car with liquid other than petrol?
Imagine this: Every time when we pump petrol to the car, we mix the petrol with one small cup of plain water, or coffee, or tea, or coke, can the car still run? Yes, it can, at first. Continuing to mix the petrol with plain water (or any other liquid) once in awhile thereafter, do you think the car will break down one day because of what we fill it up with?
Now, have you got the answer to the question at the beginning of this post?
When car breaks down or koyak, we can change to a new one. And this time, we’ll never feed it with other stuff except with petrol. But can we change a new body when our body breaks down and let everything restarts again?
Since margarine is so bad, why was it being developed in the first place? Well, scientists didn’t think so at the very beginning. Over 100 years ago, the Americans had started to realize that eating animal fats such as cream, lard and butter could clog the arteries, thus should switch to consuming vegetable oils instead. But Americans liked to have toast with butter or potato with cream spread on top, and vegetable oils that were in liquid form made it difficult for them. To cater for this need, food manufacturers brought corn oils, soybean oil, sunflower seed oils and other vegetable oils to the laboratory for processing. By using the hydrogenating process, food manufacturers were able to convert liquid vegetable oils to solid form under room temperature. And by adding in artificial colouring and flavouring, the taste of this butter substitute has become as good as the original butter.
The food manufacturers initially thought that this butter substitute would have gotten rid of all the bad stuff found in animal fats. However, recent researches discovered that this man-made butter substitute, or margarine, has problems far worse than animal fats themselves. No doubt those animal fats do have their problems, but so long as we consume more vegetable and fruits, coupled that with regular exercises, these problems can be overcome. On the other hand, as margarine is developed through process of hydrogenation, the fat has turned to become trans fat that our body is unable to metabolize (as like the nature cannot decompose plastic materials). It is like planting a time bomb inside our body, thus it is worse than animal fat like butter.Due to the awareness and unpopularity of trans fats, the Americans have started to reduce trans fats in their diet as much as they can. For example, McDonald’s in the USA has claimed to stop using hydrogenated shortening (trans fats) in their products. But is McDonald’s in Malaysia also doing the same? And what about other products that contain trans fats, such like crackers, potato chips, cookies, popcorns, cakes and breads that some of us eat daily?
Oh, I think we still need to eat this plastic stuff for sometimes…
For the past few decades, due to the influence of the western diet, we take bread and butter as breakfast. Subsequently, people starting to say that butter is not good, so we switch to margarine instead. Developed as a butter substitute, as margarine is made with vegetable oils, people consider anything that is plant or vegetable-based is better. Over prolonged period of time, this has created a lot of health problems such as high blood pressures, high cholesterol, heart attack, stroke, allergies, reduced body immunity, obesity and so on.
Margarine is not any healthier than cream and butter. Developed over 100 years ago, margarine is made by hydrogenating edible vegetable oil (adding hydrogen to vegetable oil so to make it in solid form at room temperature and has longer shelf life), and thus making it to contain Trans Fatty Acids, or Trans Fats. As we learnt from The plastic fats: Trans Fats, trans fats are almost non-existent in the natural world, and our human body simply cannot decompose them naturally. Consuming trans fats is like consuming plastic itself, we should thus avoid it as much as we can. However, there are still many people out there mistake trans fats as good stuff. And like going for an all-you-can-eat buffet meal, they simply eat as much as they can. Sadly to say, they actually don’t know they are eating ‘plastic’ (trans fats).
Hydrogenated vegetable oil is the worst oil that we can take. If we have allergies, cardiovascular and other diseases, we must stop eating trans fats, or at least avoid consuming much. Even if we are healthy now, we should also learn to reduce the consumption of trans fats. Otherwise, our health will deteriorate overtime.
Maybe some of us are unaware of this fact, that consuming trans fats is almost like eating plastic, or swallowing chewing gum. This is because trans fats, plastic and chewing gum are all man-made products, and they are non-existent on earth. They are nearly non-biodegradable too. How come we don’t eat plastic or chewing gum but consume trans fats on the other hand?
Take a look at this video excerpt, at the bottom of this paragraph, from a documentary titled “Super Size Me,” where they carried an experiment to see how the McDonald's foods stay after 10 weeks. They purchased some McDonald’s burgers and fries, and regular burger and fries from the street, put them all inside transparent glass containers individually, and see how long the food would take to decompose. As the experiment goes on, we can see that all the buns and meats have got rotted overtime, but the fries still stay fresh looking, as if they were just being bought on the day itself. Even molds and bacteria don’t want to eat the trans fats that are covering the fries (trans fats prolong the shelf life of the fries), so why do we human beings eat them? After taking trans fats into our body, how does our body metabolize them normally? Not only trans fats can be used as source of fat, it’s also now being used as food preservative!
So, what types of foods contain trans fats?
Spreads, such as margarine and shortening;
Fast food, such as fries, fried chicken, burgers, pies, pizzas;
Frozen food, such as frozen pies, pot pies, waffles, pizzas;
Baked goods, such as doughnuts, cookies, cakes, pastries;
Chips;
Crackers;
Popcorns;
Breakfast cereals;
Energy bars;
Candy
In a nutshell: Trans fats or hydrogenated fats are artificial. They are worse than saturated fat and our bodies don’t know what to do with them. They have a double negative effect on cholesterol as they increase LDL (bad cholesterol) and decrease HDL (good cholesterol). Remember, LDL clogs our arteries while HDL helps to clear them. Can we eliminate trans fats entirely from our diet? Probably not. Instead, our goal is to have as little trans fat in our diet as possible. Happy eating!
Visited Penang over the weekend for a short break. The last time I remember visiting Penang was before my schooling age. That was ages ago! Anyway, had been hearing from people that Penang is a food paradise, so I made this trip a makan trip – simply eat and eat and eat! Yippie!!
Pasembor
Fried Don't-Know-What-What
Char koay teow
Deep fried Hainamese spring roll
