Monthly Archives: October 2014

Keeping Mushrooms Fresh

If you buy bulk mushrooms that you don’t intend to use in a day or two, I have a solution for you to help maintain their freshness. If you use the plastic bags provided in the produce department, after a few days you’ll find your mushrooms have a slimy feel to their caps and may even find them peeling as they stick to the inner bag. If you use the paper bags provided in some stores, your mushrooms will dry out and become crusty.

Then I discovered that placing your paper bagged mushrooms in the plastic bag (double lined bag) provided the optimal environment to keep them fresh a lot longer. The bag would absorb the moisture from the mushrooms, becoming slightly damp, and keep the internal humidity just right.

This should help you get a few more days out of your mushrooms, which is a good thing.

Walnuts and Omega-3s

Walnuts are high in polyunsaturated fats (66%, 24% monounsaturated and 10% saturated) and are considered a good source for Omega-3 fatty acids. The problem is they are higher in Omega-6 fatty acids. Both are essential fatty acids you need to include as part of a healthy diet. The problem lies in that the average North American diet contains way too much Omega-6 and this can lead to chronic health problems because Omega-6 fatty acids are inflammatory, which have a negative long term effect on your system, and need the Omega-3 fatty acids, which are anti inflammatory, to balance them out. The average diet contains a ratio of 20:1 Omega 6 to 3 where the ideal ratio should be 4:1, or in an ideal world, 1:1. So what gives with walnuts? The ratio of Omega-6 to 3 is 4:1, so in my view the Omega-3 is cancelled out by the high Omega-6 count. While walnuts provide other health benefits, if you’re looking to improve your Omega-3 intake, your better choice would be milled flax or flax oil, which are almost exclusively Omega-3, and fish and fish oil supplements.