Ground meat treats: Zucchini and onion meatloaf

A cousin of the meatball (), the meatloaf is a traditional German dish. The recipe below is for a meal that feeds 4-8 people. The ground beef used has little fat, and thus a relatively low omega-6 content. Most of the fat comes from the 1 lb of ground grass-fed lamb in the recipe, which has a higher omega-3 to omega-6 ratio than the regular (i.e., non-grass-fed) ground beef. The egg acts as a binder. Leave the potato out if you want to decrease the carbohydrate content; it does not add much (nutrient numbers are provided at the end of the post).

- Prepare some dry seasoning powder by mixing salt, parsley flakes, garlic powder, chili powder, and a small amount of cayenne pepper.
- Grate one zucchini squash and one peeled potato. Cut half an onion into small pieces of similar size.
- Mix 2 lb of very lean ground beef (96/4) with 1 lb of ground grass-fed lamb.
- Add the dry seasoning, zucchini, potato, onion and a whole egg to the ground meat mix.
- Vigorously mix by hand until you get a homogeneous look.
- Place the mix into a buttered casserole dish with the shape of a loaf.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Bake the meatloaf for about 1 hour and a half.

It is a good idea to place the casserole dish within a tray, as in the photo above. The meatloaf will give off some of its juices as it bakes, which may overflow from the casserole dish and make a mess in your oven. Below is a slice of meatloaf served with a side of vegetables. The green spots in the meatloaf are the baked zucchini squash pieces.

A thick slice like the one on the photo above will have about 52 g of protein, 15 g of fat, and 6 g of carbohydrates (mostly from the potato). That'll be about 1/5 of the whole meatloaf; the slice will weigh a little less then 1/2 lb (approximately 200 g). The fat will be primairly saturated and monounsaturated (both healthy), with a good balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fats. The slice of meatloaf will also be a good source of vitamins B12 and B6, niacin, zinc, selenium, and phosphorus.

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So boys, what should you do when you get cold?

Over the next few weeks I will be working with British Gas as one of their Smart Mums ambassadors, thinking about the significance of energy conservation this winter.

This project comes hot on the heels of the energyshare campaign, where I saw the hard work of communities who are trying to create energy from renewable sources.  With all the complexities of such a project, it's a far cry from the simplicity of flicking a switch in our homes to immediately emblazen rooms in light or to turn up the heat.

With the festive season being one of the coldest times of the year and now the boys are off school, it's been a good time to have a chat with them about how we can save energy over the holidays.

I caught them by surprise, this Sunday, just as my youngest came home from swimming and my eldest was about to embark on a Pokemon Fest at the computer, wearing just a short sleeved top  - his choice - brrrrr.  The house was not particularly warm that day.

"What should you do if you get cold?" I asked.

A simple question.

"Turn up the radiators!" shouted one.

"Dive under a blanket!" called the other.

The first was just being a frivolous tease.  He knows we have a permanent choice of blankets in our living room, which are always put to good use whenever we're sat around watching television, or using the laptop.  Aside from the technology, it takes us right back to an era when central heating wasn't available. I'm snuggling under one, whilst writing this post.

Of course, being just seven and ten, when the boys are not sat around, they're tearing around the house, using their own energy to keep warm.

It's just a shame I can't harness that and divert it back into the National Grid.

Or the sound of their laughter too, just like in Monsters Inc.

We're actually pretty good at managing the heating and putting on extra layers.  However, our particular downfall is leaving the lights on, especially in the children's rooms, when they are rushing around to get to school.  It's always the bedside lights that are a pain to remember to turn off.

So he who laughed about turning up the radiators has now got his nose to the grindstone, designing mini-posters to remind him and his brother to turn off the lights!

And if that doesn't work, as a back-up plan I'm busy gathering together a load of pennies as a financial incentive, so that each time they remember to turn them off, they will physically be able to visualise the saving too.

The problem with that last strategy is that I can see them turning on the lights especially to turn them off again.

Best not tell them about that one yet then!


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This is a sponsored post for the British Gas, Smart Mums project. More posts  are also available at the BritMums Smart Mums Blog.

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Protein powders before fasted weight training? Here is a more natural and cheaper alternative

The idea that protein powders should be consumed prior to weight training has been around for a while, and is very popular among bodybuilders. Something like 10 grams or so of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) is frequently recommended. More recently, with the increase in popularity of intermittent fasting, it has been strongly recommended prior to “fasted weight training”. The quotation marks here are because, obviously, if you are consuming anything that contains calories prior to weight training, the weight training is NOT being done in a fasted state.

(Source: Ecopaper.com)

Most of the evidence available suggests that intermittent fasting is generally healthy. In fact, being able to fast for 16 hours or more, particularly without craving sweet foods, is actually a sign of a healthy glucose metabolism; which may complicate a cause-and-effect analysis between intermittent fasting and general health. The opposite, craving sweet foods every few hours, is generally a bad sign.

One key aspect of intermittent fasting that needs to be highlighted is that it is also arguably a form of liberation ().

Now, doing weight training in the fasted state may or may not lead to muscle loss. It probably doesn’t, even after a 24-hour fast, for those who fast and replenish their glycogen stores on a regular basis ().

However, weight training in a fasted state frequently induces an exaggerated epinephrine-norepinephrine (i.e., adrenaline-noradrenaline) response, likely due to depletion of liver glycogen beyond a certain threshold (the threshold varies for different people). The same is true for prolonged or particularly intense weight training sessions, even if they are not done in the fasted state. The body wants to crank up consumption of fat and ketones, so that liver glycogen is spared to ensure that it can provide the brain with its glucose needs.

Exaggerated epinephrine-norepinephrine responses tend to cause a few sensations that are not very pleasant. One of the first noticeable ones is orthostatic hypotension; i.e., feeling dizzy when going from a sitting to a standing position. Other related feelings are light-headedness, and a “pins and needles” sensation in the limbs (typically the arms and hands). Many believe that they are having a heart attack whey they have this “pins and needles” sensation, which can progress to a stage that makes it impossible to continue exercising.

Breaking the fast prior to weight training with dietary fat or carbohydrates is problematic, because those nutrients tend to blunt the dramatic rise in growth hormone that is typically experienced in response to weight training (). This is not good because the growth hormone response is probably one of the main reasons why weight training can be so healthy ().

Dietary protein, however, does not seem to significantly blunt the growth hormone response to weight training; even though it doesn't seem to increase it either (). Dietary protein seems to also suppress the exaggerated epinephrine-norepinephrine response to fasted weight training. And, on top of all that, it appears to suppress muscle loss, which may well be due to a moderate increase in circulating insulin ().

So everything points at the possibility that the ingestion of some protein, without carbohydrates or fat, is a good idea prior to fasted weight training. Not too much protein though, because insulin beyond a certain threshold is also likely to suppress the growth hormone response.

Does the protein have to be in the form of a protein powder? No.

Supplements are made from food, and this is true of protein powders as well. If you hard-boil a couple of large eggs, and eat only the whites prior to weight training, you will be getting about 8-10 grams of one of the highest quality protein "supplements" you can possibly get. Included are BCAAs. You will get a few extra nutrients with that too, but virtually no fat or carbohydrates.

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Finding your sweet spot for muscle gain with HCE

In order to achieve muscle gain, one has to repeatedly hit the “supercompensation” window, which is a fleeting period of time occurring at some point in the muscle recovery phase after an intense anaerobic exercise session. The figure below, from Vladimir Zatsiorsky’s and William Kraemer’s outstanding book Science and Practice of Strength Training () provides an illustration of the supercompensation idea. Supercompensation is covered in more detail in a previous post ().

Trying to hit the supercompensation window is a common denominator among HealthCorrelator for Excel (HCE) users who employ the software () to maximize muscle gain. (That is, among those who know and subscribe to the theory of supercompensation.) This post outlines what I believe is a good way of doing that while avoiding some pitfalls. The data used in the example that follows has been created by me, and is based on a real case. I disguised the data, simplified it, added error etc. to make the underlying method relatively easy to understand, and so that the data cannot be traced back to its “real case” user (for privacy).

Let us assume that John Doe is an intermediate weight training practitioner. That is, he has already gone through the beginning stage where most gains come from neural adaptation. For him, new gains in strength are a reflection of gains in muscle mass. The table below summarizes the data John obtained when he decided to vary the following variables in order to see what effects they have on his ability to increase the weight with which he conducted the deadlift () in successive exercise sessions:
    - Number of rest days in between exercise sessions (“Days of rest”).
    - The amount of weight he used in each deadlift session (“Deadlift weight”).
    - The amount of weight he was able to add to the bar each session (“Delta weight”).
    - The number of deadlift sets and reps (“Deadlift sets” and “Deadlift reps”, respectively).
    - The total exercise volume in each session (“Deadlift volume”). This was calculated as follows: “Deadlift weight” x “Deadlift sets” x “Deadlift reps”.

John’s ability to increase the weight with which he conducted the deadlift in each session is measured as “Delta weight”. That was his main variable of interest. This may not look like an ideal choice at first glance, as arguably “Deadlift volume” is a better measure of total effort and thus actual muscle gain. The reality is that this does not matter much in his case, because: John had long rest periods within sets, of around 5 minutes; and he made sure to increase the weight in each successive session as soon as he felt he could, and by as much as he could, thus never doing more than 24 reps. If you think that the number of reps employed by John is too high, take a look at a post in which I talk about Doug Miller and his ideas on weight training ().

Below are three figures, with outputs from HCE: a table showing the coefficients of association between “Delta weight” and the other variables, and two graphs showing the variation of “Delta weight” against “Deadlift volume” and “Days of rest”. As you can see, nothing seems to be influencing “Delta weight” strongly enough to reach the 0.6 level that I recommend as the threshold for a “real effect” to be used in HCE analyses. There are two possibilities here: it is what it looks it is, that is, none of the variables influence “Delta weight”; or there are effects, but they do not show up in the associations table (as associations equal to or greater than 0.6) because of nonlinearity.

The graph of “Delta weight” against “Deadlift volume” is all over the place, suggesting a lack of association. This is true for the other variables as well, except “Days of rest”; the last graph above. That graph, of “Delta weight” against “Days of rest”, suggests the existence of a nonlinear association with the shape of an inverted J curve. This type of association is fairly common. In this case, it seems that “Delta weight” is maximized in the 6-7 range of “Days of rest”. Still, even varying things almost randomly, John achieved a solid gain over the time period. That was a 33 percent gain from the baseline “Deadlift weight”, a gain calculated as: (285-215)/215.

HCE, unlike WarpPLS (), does not take nonlinear relationships into consideration in the estimation of coefficients of association. In order to discover nonlinear associations, users have to inspect the graphs generated by HCE, as John did. Based on his inspection, John decided to changes things a bit, now working out on the right side of the J curve, with 6 or more “Days of rest”. That was difficult for John at first, as he was addicted to exercising at a much higher frequency; but after a while he became a “minimalist”, even trying very long rest periods.

Below are four figures. The first is a table summarizing the data John obtained for his second trial. The other three are outputs from HCE, analogous to those obtained in the first trial: a table showing the coefficients of association between “Delta weight” and the other variables, two graphs (side-by-side) showing “Delta weight” against “Deadlift sets” and “Deadlift reps”, and one graph of “Delta weight” against “Days of rest”. As you can see, “Days of rest” now influences “Delta weight” very strongly. The corresponding association is a very high -0.981! The negative sign means that “Delta weight” decreases as “Days of rest” increase. This does NOT mean that rest is not important; remember, John is now operating on the right side of the J curve, with 6 or more “Days of rest”.

The last graph above suggests that taking 12 or more “Days of rest” shifted things toward the end of the supercompensation window, in fact placing John almost outside of that window at 13 “Days of rest”. Even so, there was no loss of strength, and thus probably no muscle loss. Loss of strength would be suggested by a negative “Delta weight”, which did not occur (the “Delta weight” went down to zero, at 13 “Days of rest”). The two graphs shown side-by-side suggest that 2 “Deadlift sets” seem to work just as well for John as 3 or 4, and that “Deadlift reps” in the 18-24 range also work well for John.

In this second trial, John achieved a better gain over a similar time period than in the first trial. That was a 36 percent gain from the baseline “Deadlift weight”, a gain calculated as: (355-260)/260. John started with a lower baseline than in the end of the first trial period, probably due to detraining, but achieved a final “Deadlift weight” that was likely very close to his maximum potential (at the reps used). Because of this, the 36 percent gain in the period is a lot more impressive than it looks, as it happened toward the end of a saturation curve (e.g., the far right end of a logarithmic curve).

One important thing to keep in mind is that if an HCE user identifies a nonlinear relationship of the J-curve type by inspecting the graphs like John did, in further analyses the focus should be on the right or left side of the curve by either: splitting the dataset into two, and running a separate analysis for each new dataset; or running a new trial, now sticking with a range of variation on the right or left side of the curve, as John did. The reason is that nonlinear relationships tend to distort the linear coefficients calculated by HCE, hiding a real relationship between two variables.

This is a very simplified example. Most serious bodybuilders will measure variations in a number of variables at the same time, for a number of different exercise types and formats, and for longer periods. That is, their “HealthData” sheet in HCE will be a lot more complex. They will also have multiple instances of HCE running on their computer. HCE is a collection of sheets and code that can be copied, and saved with different names. The default is “HCE_1_0.xls” or “HCE_1_0.xlsm”, depending on which version you are using. Each new instance of HCE may contain a different dataset for analysis, stored in the “HealthData” sheet.

It is strongly recommended that you keep your data in a separate set of sheets, as a backup. That is, do not store all your data in the “HealthData” sheets in different HCE instances. Also, when you copy your data into the “HealthData” sheet in HCE, copy only the values and formats, and NOT the formulas. If you copy the formulas, you may end up having some problems, as some of the cells in the “HealthData” sheet will not be storing values. I also recommend storing values for other types variables, particularly perception-based variables.

Examples of perception-based variables are: “Perceived stress”, “Perceived delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)”, and “Perceived non-DOMS pain”. These can be answered on Likert-type scales, such as scales going from 1 (very strongly disagree) to 7 (very strongly agree) in response to self-prepared question-statements like “I feel stressed out” (for “Perceived stress”). If you find that a variable like “Perceived non-DOMS pain” is associated with working out at a particular volume range, that may help you avoid serious injury in the future, as non-DOMS pain is not a very good sign (). You also may find that working out in the volume range that is associated with non-DOMS pain adds nothing in terms of muscle gain.

Generally speaking, I think that many people will find out that their sweet spot for muscle gain involves less frequent exercise at lower volumes than they think. Still, each individual is unique; there is no one quite like John. The relationship between “Delta weight” and “Days of rest” varies from person to person based on age; older folks generally require more rest. It also varies based on whether the person is dieting or not; less food intake leads to longer recovery periods. Women will probably see visible lower-body muscle gain, but very little visible upper-body muscle gain (in the absence of steroid use), even as they experience upper-body strength gains. Other variables of interest for both men and women may be body weight, body fat percentage, and perceived muscle tone.

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"No More Socks for Christmas" says Suffolk Circle

Members of Southwark Circle in London.  Suffolk Circle members will be marching with similar banners, 11.30am, Wednesday 14th December, The arc, Bury St Edmunds.

As a little girl, I used to love helping my mother wrap the Christmas presents.  It was one of my favourite things to do... until I got bored.  And I would get bored.  There were always too many presents and they were always the same, with the long monotony of socks, ties, handkerchiefs or bubble bath.  Sometimes there would be bath salts, just to break the routine.

As I carefully wrapped the presents, which would then be dutifully distributed to all the older members of our family in time for Christmas day, I couldn't help but think how awful Christmas Day must be for old people if every year they opened a pile of socks.  It would be like The Day of The Triffids, except with socks. Surely they already had enough socks or if they didn't they were old enough and sensible enough to buy their own.

Some of those 'old' people were only in their forties.

I'm now 43. a ripe old age to be caught in the firing line for chance gifts that belong to the older generation.

"The joy is in the giving, not the receiving" we hear all across the land at Christmas time.

Indeed it is and as a society we get hooked into the joy of giving presents as tokens of our love and kindness, our appreciation and our warmth towards others.  Yet, very often giving is purely duty-bound and an automatic process that ends up with a national pile of unwanted gifts.

"I really don't know what to get Uncle Jim," I heard a lady say last week, as I walked past her and her friend in Bury St Edmunds.  "He never likes what I get but I've got to get him something because it's bloody Christmas!"

It sounded like Uncle Jim's joy would definitely not be in 'the receiving'.  And as for the lady concerned, there was certainly no joy in the act of 'giving' either.  It sounded more like she was desperate for some pain relief!

So thank goodness the world is coming to its senses, at least in Bury St Edmunds, where under the auspices of social enterprise Suffolk Circle, a Flashmob & protest march is taking place this Wednesday to encourage people to think twice about what they buy for older friends and relatives this Christmas.  

Suffolk Circle members will gather in the Arc shopping centre at 11.30am, bringing unwanted gifts from last year.  They will march with banners to Suffolk Circle HQ, where the gifts will be donated to the Gatehouse, a West Suffolk charity dedicated to helping those in material and emotional need.

Suffolk Circle believes that wasting money on unwanted presents is even madder in the present economic climate.  For me it's all about physical waste too, i.e. the embedded energy and water wastage just to get the thing from the factory, to the shop, to the Christmas tree, only for it to sit in a drawer for 12 months before ending up in a carboot sale, landfill or charity shop

It's not about ingratitude, because actually it really is simply "the thought" that counts and the awareness that an unwanted present puts unnecessary emotional pressure on the benefactor as well as the beneficiary and leaves a trail of material and economic wastage in the process, even if it is just one pair of socks!

Of course it goes without saying that no offence is intended, accidentally or otherwise, towards anyone who really adores getting socks or just simply always needs another pair, whether that be at Christmas or any other time of year. 

And I admit, it really is nice to get a snuggly pair sometimes.
 
Sometimes!

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If you live in Suffolk and would like to take part in the flashmob, please go along on Wednesday 14th December.  11.30am.  Meet opposite the Costa Café, arc shopping Centre, 14 Prospect Row, Bury St Edmunds, IP33 3DG.

Suffolk Circle is a social enterprise whose members can get practical help with life’s little bits and pieces from local Helpers. They can also get out and about, meeting people with similar interests, reconnecting with their community, doing and learning new things. For family members and friends who live further away it’s a great to make sure their loved ones have neighbourly support, as well as a lot of fun, all year round.  Membership costs £15 for six months or £30 for a whole year.

For further details about the Suffolk Circle or Wednesday's march, please contact:
Finbarr Carter, Head of Membership. Tel: 01284 774880, or visit  www.suffolkcircle.org.uk.

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energyshare, Hexham, social media, old friends and me

The last couple of weeks have have been some of the most extraordinary in my blogging life, having spent much of November helping to campaign for public votes to help Hexham River Hydro win energyshare funding of £100,000, WHICH THEY DID ON SATURDAY, so a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who voted.

With the campaigning over, I now want to take some time out to reflect on what has been a very exciting but overwhelming experience in many ways.

When energyshare first got in touch to ask if I'd like to work with them as a blogging champion for one of the shortlisted entries, it sounded like a very exciting prospect.  It was the first time I'd heard of energyshare, but the idea that it was supporting community based energy creation, based on inspiration by River Cottage & Landshare originator Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was a very interesting one indeed.

What I hadn't expected though was the community project that I would be allocated would be one that would involve a 5 hour train trip, up north to Hexham in Northumbria.

Nor had I expected the impact the community would have on me when I arrived there.

And I certainly hadn't prepared myself for the string of coincidences in my life that would surround Hexham either.

Energyshare recognised that they'd given me a community that was very far away from home and gave me the opportunity to support them remotely.  Having read the project details for the Hexham River Hydro scheme, I knew I could blog about them enthusiastically - I love the idea of harnessing power from water -  but I didn't think I could do it with the level of passion that was needed unless I saw it first hand.

The first phone calls I made with Tamsin, then Gillian and then the rest of the the Hexham River Hydro team revealed the first glimpses of their drive and enthusiasm that I was desperate to harness during my proposed visit there.  And I wasn't to be disappointed.

From the moment I stepped off the train and was welcomed by Malcolm, one of the project team members, I knew it was going to be a 24 hour whirlwind of a visit.  During the short walk to the town centre, I'd already gleaned some information about the town's initial commitment to renewable energy, with Malcolm pointing out the solar panels that had been installed on the roof of the sports centre.

Then came the opportunistic video in the stocks outside the town gaol (you'll need to see my video), followed by the very exciting introduction to the team, who were having a project meeting at their hub, at Scott's Cafe in the Forum cinema.

The Hexham River Hydro Project Team

Once calm had been restored, it was a real privilege to settle myself into the meeting and hear the ideas that the team was planning for campaigning to secure as many public votes as possible for their energyshare funding bid.   There were so many ideas that truly reflected the group's energy

That night after pizza, I was "unofficially inaugurated" into the community by taking part in the Hexham Community Choir.  For 50 minutes, the choir suffered my tone-deaf vocals, until Gillian announced why I was in town. Soon after it was off to the pub for some cider and more singing.  It was a real warm welcome to what was an unfamiliar town in an unfamiliar part of the country.

Hexham Community Choir

The real work started the next day.  Well, I say it was work, it was more of an insightful introduction into the team's enthusiasm, knowledge and commitment as well as their vision on how a hydro electricity generator could create funds for social projects around the town.

On location at the site of the river hydro scheme

And everything that I experienced that day was eye-opening, whether it was watching leaping salmon for the very first time in my life, making Christmas cards with the mums who use the community house No. 28, or meeting the teenagers at the Youth Initiative, who are so grateful for their facility and also realise how it's heavily dependent on fund generation.

The Community House, No 28.

And having the opportunity to meet, conservationists, councillors, the mayor, members of Transition Tynedale, students of the local Mencap college and local schools, really cemented how much Hexham Community Partnership worked hard to create a fantastic foundation for such a great community.

Members of the community, including The Mayor, Transition Tynesdale, Hexham Community Partnership and councillors

I really felt honoured to have met so many people during my visit, which is why when it was announced at the live countdown on Saturday that they had won the £100K energyshare funding, I found myself getting quite emotional over the result too and so pleased for the community that I'd championed.

Hexham River Hydro's Gillian Orrell at the energyshare finals. If she was this pleased about winning a vote rush prize, just imagine how it felt to win the £100k funding. It's just a pity my camera battery ran out, so I couldn't capture the scene.

I've now got a funny feeling, that this isn't the end of my relationship with Hexham. Not only because of the lovely welcome and my interest in following the development of the Hexham River Hydro project.

There are a few coincidences that have come about too.

Having uploaded my photos onto Facebook, it quickly emerged that not only does one of my social-media contacts originate for this beautiful town, but one of my favourite soap-makers lives only ten minutes away too, the fabulous Allyson, with whom I've had many a conversation during the last three years.  Even while I was there, I stumbled upon the gallery of the most amazing artist Matt Forster. We'd started following each other on Twitter well before I'd even heard of Hexham.  His work is truly superb and is really worth checking out.  Here's a peek at just one photo I took during my brief visit to his gallery.

By artist  Matt Forster

However the most amazing coincidence of all is the news that Gillian, had received a telephone call from a good friend of hers several days after my visit, to enquire whether it was true that a Karen Cannard had been in town.

It turns out that her friend is none other than a lovely former colleague of mine, who as a young lady used to work for me at a music digitisation company in London, back in the 1990s. After I'd left, she'd spent time travelling overseas. I moved house several times and then relocated to Suffolk. We lost touch, but I'd always wondered what had happened to her.

Now I know and it was an absolute delight to hear Gillian bring me up to speed a whole decade later.

So, I've now got plenty of reasons to visit a place, which until a few weeks ago, I'd actually never even heard of before.

Huge congratulations to Hexham River Hydro for winning the large category on Saturday and thank you for being such fabulous hosts.

I have no doubt we will meet again and I am looking forward to catching up with my old work friend too.

So thank you to energyshare for pairing me up with Hexham. My personal tale is a very unexpected result indeed.

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Want to make coffee less acidic? Add cream to it

The table below is from a 2008 article by Ehlen and colleagues (), showing the amount of erosion caused by various types of beverages, when teeth were exposed to them for 25 h in vitro. Erosion depth is measured in microns. The third row shows the chance probabilities (i.e., P values) associated with the differences in erosion of enamel and root.

As you can see, even diet drinks may cause tooth erosion. That is not to say that if you drink a diet soda occasionally you will destroy your teeth, but regular drinking may be a problem. I discussed this study in a previous post (). After that post was published here some folks asked me about coffee, so I decided to do some research.

Unfortunately coffee by itself can also cause some erosion, primarily because of its acidity. Generally speaking, you want a liquid substance that you are interested in drinking to have a pH as close to 7 as possible, as this pH is neutral (). Tap and mineral water have a pH that is very close to 7. Black coffee seems to have a pH of about 4.8.

Also problematic are drinks containing fermentable carbohydrates, such as sucrose, fructose, glucose, and lactose. These are fermented by acid-producing bacteria. Interestingly, when fermentable carbohydrates are consumed as part of foods that require chewing, such as fruits, acidity is either neutralized or significantly reduced by large amounts of saliva being secreted as a result of the chewing process.

So what to do about coffee?

One possible solution is to add heavy cream to it. A small amount, such as a teaspoon, appears to bring the pH in a cup of coffee to a little over 6. Another advantage of heavy cream is that it has no fermentable carbohydrates; it has no carbohydrates, period. You will have to get over the habit of drinking sweet beverages, including sweet coffee, if you were unfortunate enough to develop that habit (like so many people living in cities today).

It is not easy to find reliable pH values for various foods. I guess dentistry researchers are more interested in ways of repairing damage already done, and there doesn't seem to be much funding available for preventive dentistry research. Some pH testing results from a University of Cincinnati college biology page were available at the time of this writing; they appeared to be reasonably reliable the last time I checked them ().

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