FOOD IS LIFE, FOOD IS ALIVE

"Food is life, Food is alive" - The Kenyan Food Biochemist

Food is life. It is fact. All organisms need food.

Plants are able to make food by utilizing the energy from the sun. E.coli can live on glucose only. This amazing bacteria is able to meet all its energy requirements and synthesize all molecules it needs for life from glucose. Homo sapiens sapiens lack the cellular processes to synthesize all life molecules from glucose so we depend heavily on our environment for food. We must eat adequate and balanced amounts of both carbohydrates (glucose), proteins (amino acids) and vegetables (minerals and vitamins).

Food is alive. This is also a fact but it may not be obvious to everyone though.

There are two levels in which food is alive: intrinsic,  which denotes that the source is inside the food and where enzymes are involved; and extrinsic, which denotes that the source is coming from an outside factor and usually involves bacteria.

The intrinsic source of life can be seen clearly when a potato after being peeled is left out in the open. A set of enzymes called monooxygenases are able to use atmospheric oxygen  and via an oxidation reaction convert pigments in potatoes to the darker pigment melanin, the pigment that is found in the human skin. To prevent this from happening, potatoes are kept under water after being peeled to eliminate oxygen. It is a practice that has been done for so long in all kitchens.

The extrinsic source of life is easier to define. It is the reason that most households have refrigerators. The low temperatures prevent, but do not kill bacteria, thereby slowing food from going bad.
Yought is good for you because it contains live bacteria called Lactobacillus that helps to lower the population of other harmful bacteria in the gut.

In conclusion, food is important and a necessity for life.

KENYAN EPIC SANDWICH

Its good to let go and go crazy once in a while. This is what this sandwich is all about. It is pure madness and bliss. Its the Kenyan manwich!!

I know what your thinking....you want to make it. You need to make it

Its six slices of bread. Wholemeal family bread so that its healthy!? Its as pointless as diet coke but all good. Its time to build the manwich. (Note...this is a cheap sandwich and improvements can be made to it)

• At the bottom there  is a fried egg with my own twist. I fried it and sprinkled  dry oregano, dry basil, black pepper in addition to salt while cooking it. Its layered on the bottom bread and sprinkled with parmesan cheese.
• Next comes another slice of bread and on top there is beef brawn and sliced tomatoes. The alternative to the brawn would be to use pastrami (I love this meat) or polony. I hate vegetables so tomatoes is as far as I go. A lettuce can be added.
• Next slice of bread and on top we use either hot sauce, garlic tomato sauce or jam to vary the degree of sweetness. Top it off with crisps. Blue label from Nakumatt are excellent. Go for the steak flavour. (Disclaimer: Crisps contain a lot of sodium so watch your intake. Leave the crisps to reduce the sodium intake for the health conscious)
• Do the same for the other side then combine to build the Kenyan manwich. Enjoy!!

TOAST YOUR BREAD

In Kenya we don't have such a bread culture traditionally. The closest we come to traditional bread is chapati which arrived via the Indian ocean. This can be attributed to the fact that wheat, rye and other bread making cereals are exotic species in Sub-Saharan Africa. Europeans on the other hand have a deep culture when it comes to bread. Breads include croissants, brioche (French) etc.

Still in Kenya, the bread we have is mass produced loaves of bread. Depending on the region, the local names differ. In Nakuru where I grew up we had toasti. Other local breads include Elliots, Broadways, Festive bread and my all time favorite is Supa Loaf among others. Again depends on the region.

I made a grilled cheese-egg sandwich for lunch and I remembered why it's essential to toast your bread. Many a times special equipment may be an impediment to making something as easy as this. One would think that i need a high class grill or toaster to do this but not necessarily. The chapati pan works so well and I cannot imagine a Kenyan household without one (unless your a bachelor that cant cook).

Bread contains a lot of starch (carbohydrates). Starch is a complex polymer of D-glucose molecules (connected by alpha 1-4 linkage). Because of this, digestion of starch requires a lot of enzyme production which means more use of energy.

Toasting your bread reduces this long polymer into a shorter polymer called dextrin. This carbohydrate as compared to starch is easier to digest so that means that less energy is required. For this reason toast bread is good for you as compared to normal bread and if you don't like it then at least I recommended it for convalescents (individuals recovering from illness)

STICKY RICE

It wouldn't be fair not to talk about food in my blogs. It has the word food in it!!

I have made sticky rice many times. I personally love it. It is more feeling and dense but am guessing that is only psychological. Many of us are experts at making sticky rice even though we would prefer it to be grainy and separated but the outcome is usually bad. 

One easy trick on how NOT to make sticky rice is simple. Wash the rice!! Professional chefs wash rice up to 7 times. This is so as to remove the starch. Completion of removal of starch from the rice is indicated by clear running water coming from the other end of the sieve.

So NEVER wash rice 

• in stagnant water
• with hot water

In a sieve pass water through the rice until the resulting water is clear. That will ensure that all the startch is removed and the resulting rice (while keeping the ratio of water:rice at 2:1 cups) will be grainy and separated like everyone loves it. ITS THAT SIMPLE.

 

BREAKFAST

Its that time in the morning and personally I rush to the kitchen to eat something because I am hungry. Depending on your habits and work load others choose to ignore this important start for the day.

Breakfast is the first meal taken in the morning after a night of rest. The meaning of breakfast is simple. "It is breaking the fast"

Yes we all do fast. I am not referring to the religious fasting where you go for days or even months without food and water in order to seek the face of the Lord, no not that kind of fasting.From a scientific perspective, fasting occurs when we go without eating for a short period (around 8 hours to 3 days)

During this time the blood glucose level is regulated by the liver (metabolic city/hub of the body) so that it remains within acceptable range for other sugar hungry organs (such as the brain) to be keep functioning. Therefore after sleeping for the recommended 8 hours, it is important to replenish the glucose levels and have breakfast.

SLIM CHICKS WHO EAT A LOT

This is a phenomenon that simply surprises many girls who are trying to diet. There is always that one friend who eats more than you but will forever have a flat tummy. She will never go to the gym or work out and she is a couch potato in your eyes. If you decided to live her lifestyle for just one week, you will start noticing your waistline becoming bigger.

The easiest excuse is to say....

 "She is lucky that she has good METABOLISM!!" She eat like that and where does all that food go? We will never know"

Before we attribute it all to metabolism we need to know what it is. Metabolism is the sum of all the chemical reactions within a living organism (includes both the energy generating [catabolism] and biosynthetic [anabolic] reactions)

When we eat food, its broken down in the gastrointestinal tract through a process called digestion, absorbed and then used to generate energy in our cells. Our cells use chemical energy (getting a little bit into Physics)

In conclusion, an individuals metabolism may be a contributing factor to how shapely they look but its not the only determinant. Genetic disposition, age, sex, nutritional balance, hormones and a host of other factors play a role. So don't lose hope and keep running on that treadmill.

   

YOU HAVE JUNK

"Give a dog a bad name and kill it" a well known English saying. It underlines man's tendency to assuage his guilt by resorting to projection as a comforting psychological defense mechanism. (Hamza M,2000)

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) codes for proteins, proteins make who you are. In the profession, DNA (inside) is called the genotype and what is seen on the outside (made of proteins) is called the phenotype. This is a simplistic version of the central dogma of biology (DNA transcribed to RNA which is translated to proteins)

Seeing how complex the human body is, its acceptable to think that the whole of our DNA is responsible for coding and ultimately the functioning of our body and our phenotype. That isn't the case. Less than 10% of the Human DNA is functional i.e is responsible for coding and production of functional proteins. Work done at the University of Oxford gives an average of 8.2%. Here is the study.

The rest of the non coding DNA is what is called JUNK DNA. Over 90% of the human genome is composed of junk DNA. The DNA may have arised over the course of evolution. As I mentioned earlier, "Give a dog a bad name and kill it." That may have been the motivation for giving the non functional DNA "JUNK"

As of now, as the science community we don't understand the purpose of all this DNA but it's clear that we cannot live without it. After all, we use only 20% of our brain. I would like to see someone who will say that we don't need the 80% so lets remove it.

Citations

JUNK DNA article

Hamza Mustafa Njozi, Mwembechai Killings and the Political Future of Tanzania (2000), Globalink Publications, 1st Edition.