Who knew?

We went to see Angie & Matthew in Tlaquepaque in the afternoon yesterday. We saw more of their hotel. It is really nice. It is also very close to the shopping area. The latter is several blocks long with one of the streets closed to cars with pedestrian traffic only. There is also a big public square. We spent a couple of hours looking through the shops. There is beautiful stuff, although a bit more expensive than some shops in Mexico. We went to a restaurant recommended in a guide book they had. It was very good and the menu was very different and Mexican. For example, I had chicken with a sauce that included chocolate and peppers; it was an Indian (Mexican) recipe. Of course, chocolate by itself is not sweet and this sauce was not. It had a bit of pepper in it but not really hot. It was also served with 2 large slices of banana grilled. Very interesting and delicious. In the evening after we came back to Ajijic, Matt sent us an email saying that they not only had a big thunderstorm, but also lots of hail in Tlaquepaque. We saw a bit of far off lightning, but no rain or thunderstorm in Ajijic! We are only 40-50 kms, but there are mountains between us and Guadalajara. Actually, the last few days, when it has rained, it has been at night and before noon, the clouds are cleared away; we have sunny days.

At LCS every week the organic gardening group puts on an event. A couple of weeks ago, Barb went and there was an entire session on doing salads. This afternoon, it was a BBC video about food and dieting which included information on the latest research. There were some surprising findings. For example, they proved that eating lots of dairy products inhibit the absorption of fats, in fact about 50% less! It seems to be the calcium and especially effective when using low or none fat dairy. Another fact is that drinking water before a meal does nothing to reduce how much people eat and may in fact cause people to eat more because the water leaves the stomach so fast that people do not feel full. On the other hand, if given the exact same amount of food and water, but this time it is blended together into a soup, people go at least an hour longer before feeling hungry. In this form, the water stays in the stomach and people feel fuller. The session next week is going to be all about the many different kinds of peppers and how to use them.

In the discussion after the video, the leader (she is a Canadian and one of the forces setting up and operating the organic farm near Jocotepec) brought up the argument that coconut oil is in fact good for people and that the rap against tropical oils, like coconut and palm oil, were not based on science and the propaganda campaign to discourage use of these products was largely at the behest of soy bean and other vegetable oil producers in the US to reduce the competition. She said to check it out on the internet and I spent a couple of hours; it seems that she is correct. I did a Google search of ‘coconut oil’ and there are a lot of sites and articles. It is very interesting and makes one rethink one’s entire approach to one’s diet. The science on what constitutes a heart-healthy diet is very complicated and much of the ‘facts’ that we have been handed are not supported by research, but are based on unsubstantiated theories.