Why Quality Beats Quantity for Weight Loss

I've been saying for almost two decades that the key to weight loss is bringing the body into balance. And the key to balance is food quality. 

Now, new research from Stanford Prevention Research Center and published in last week's edition of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) found that people who cut back on sugar, "refined grains" and "highly processed foods" and who didn't worry about calories or portion size, lost significant amounts of weight. The study was conducted on more than 600 people. 

In other words, researchers concluded that quality, not quantity, is what counts for losing weight. 

The study was a pretty blunt instrument for revealing the importance of food quality. They started with overweight subjects, then cut down on major kinds of low-quality foods -- for example, sugary soda type drinks, which are among the lowest quality foods you can consume. 

For decades, the Diet Industrial Complex has erroneously equated calories with weight loss -- the idea is that if you eat more calories than you "burn," then you gain weight, and that being overweight is the result of eating too many calories (as if the spectacularly complex biochemistry of metabolism were comparable to filling up the car with gas).

In recent years, other research has contracted this assumption. We've found that compromised gut microbes affect body weight. The amount of sleep you get affects body weight. Stress causes weight gain. People who drink diet beverages gain more weight than those who drink the sugary kind. All these clues suggest that body weight is not a simple matter of calories-in, calories-burned. 

Healthy newborn babies enter the world with a complete set of self-regulating systems designed to keep everything in balance. Our bodies brilliantly maintain balance in body temperature, blood water levels, blood pH, blood pressure, blood salt levels, sleep and the elimination of wastes. The human body is magnificent at simultaneously maintaining balance of hundreds of sub-systems throughout life. 

Optimal weight is another thing the human body is great at balancing. Our taste and olfactory senses are programmed to enjoy foods that keep us healthy. The hunger-satiety cycle tells us when to eat and when to stop. 

If we gain weight, it doesn't mean we're not effectively counting calories. It means our body's system for maintaining healthy weight has been broken.

So what broke it? 

The short answer is that our food did. The longer answer is our industrial food system, environment and lifestyle conspired to knock our bodies out of balance. 

Let's start with what's wrong with our food. 

Far too much of the food we eat has been ultra-processed. Stripped of nutrients, modified beyond recognition, sterilized, and augmented with non-food chemicals, our food isn't fit for human consumption. 

Most processed food is too soft. Simple carbs like sugar and white flour-baked goods, processed oils, fatty meats -- too much of our food is eaten and digested too quickly and easily. While most dietary advice focuses on the biochemistry of foods (fats, carbs, protein), researchers have demonstrated the importance of biophysics. You'll gain more weight with soft food than rougher food (whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, etc.) even if the calories are the same. 

Processed industrial food is also unhealthy for our gut flora. While some of the food we eat goes straight into our bloodstreams, other foods and food components are eaten by the trillions of microbes that live in our digestive tracts, and our bodies are then nourished by the flora. Foods that our gut microbes eat are called prebiotics. The best sources of prebiotics include whole-grain wheat and barley, berries, specific raw fruits and vegetables, flax, garlic and other foods. 

When we're born, our guts are sterile. We acquire the hundreds of species of microbes necessary for optimum health from our food and the environment. Simply eating organic strawberries, fresh salad, organic whole grain bread or eating raw-milk cheese supplies the kind of gut microbes we need for optimal health. But these aren't the kinds of foods that most people eat. Canned, bottled and most packaged food is sterile to keep it from decomposing. Our bodies were never designed to eat so much sterile food. 

Even fermented foods, which were traditionally used to improve the nutritional quality and flavor of and preserve food, as well as supply our gut microbes with vital reinforcements, are now sold in a sterile form. For example, olives, sauerkraut, pickles and others are sterilized for mass production and distribution. Milk is usually sterilized through pasteurization before being sold for drinking, or being made into cheese or yogurt. 

All that sterile food, plus the consumption of fatty, sugary junk food, is decimating the natural balance of healthy gut microbes, causing all kinds of havoc, including on our bodily systems for maintaining healthy weight. Researchers have recently discovered that junk food and processed food diets damage gut bacteria in a way that leads to unnatural weight gain. In other words, you'll gain more weight on a diet that harms gut bacteria than you will on a healthy diet, even if calories are the same. 

Food-borne, environmental and household chemicals, a lack of sleep, drugs, inadequate sunshine and Vitamin D and not enough exercise all prime your body for weight gain beyond what mere calories in, calories burned would predict. And, in fact, the vast majority of people in industrialized countries are damaging their bodies not with some but all these factors. 

The whole process of counting calories is an act of self-delusion. First, the difference between perfect weight and morbid obesity over a period of a few decades is less than 50 calories per day. Nobody can "count calories" with that level of precision. You can't know how many calories you really need. You can't know how many calories you're "burning." And you can't know how many calories are in the food you eat. 

Counting calories is a futile guessing game that doesn't get at the root of the problem. 

The problem is that people are trying to replace a functioning body weight balancing system with blind guesses about how many calories they're eating and burning. 

The solution is to fix your broken body, and allow it to naturally maintain a healthy weight for you. 

The way to fix your body is to fix your diet, get plenty of sleep, exercise outdoors every day and avoid all the toxic chemicals you can. And this is what the Spartan Diet shows you how to do. 

Fermented Foods Fight Flu

New research found that fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi help fight flu. 

A new study by Korea University, the World Institute of Kimchi, and Daesang Corporation found that laboratory rats injected with the flu virus and fed daily lactic acid bacteria had a 100% survival rate with no side effects. 

The research team has applied for two patents based on the research, and intend to develop and market "functional foods." 

We recommend plenty of fermented vegetable foods in your diet, foods like sauerkraut, kimchi and fermented hot sauce, which are Spartan Diet staples and which you can make at home. 

Spartan Vin Brulé

Vin Brule is the Italian Style of making mulled wine, which I made to celebrate Mike's new book, Gastronomad: The Art of Living Everywhere and Eating Everything!

During our travels in the Veneto region of Italy recently, a dear friend shared her wonderful recipe of vin brulé, which I liked way better than the mulled wine I’ve sampled and even made myself in the United States. In Italy, vin brulé is heated over open fire, but the stove works fine! My friend adds her own twist to the traditional recipe by adding prunes. I decided to adapt it for the Spartan Diet and use dates to partly sweeten it with as well as local raw honey at the end instead of sugar.

Organic Ingredients:

3 bottles of organic red wine (cabernet or zinfandel or any other -- preferably without added sulfites)
12 whole star anise
12 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
2 teaspoon ground Ceylon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 whole vanilla bean pod
6 pitted prunes cut in half (no seed)
3 cubed apples (honeycrisp or fuji apples)
2 Red blood oranges (or any type of orange such as navel or valencia)
2 Meyer lemons
6 Medjool dates (seeds removed)
2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice (16 oz)
3/4 cup honey (6 oz)

The Spartan Diet method:

1. In a large non-reactive heavy bottom pot (stainless steel or enameled cast iron, for example), pour all the wine and add the star anise, cloves, cinnamon sticks, ground cinnamon and ground allspice. Begin to gently simmer over low heat covered with lid.

2. With a small paring knife, slit open one side of the vanilla bean pod lengthwise from end to end. Use the pointy sharp of the knife to open the bean lengthwise and then use a dinner knife or teaspoon to slide open the entire bean pod while scraping off and collecting the tiny seeds. Add to the wine along with the remainder of the bean pod.

3. Cut prunes (without seeds) in half and add them to the wine.

4. Chop apples into one-inch cubes (seeds removed) and add to the wine.

5. Sliced off top and bottom ends of the oranges and lemons and cut them into thin slices crosswise (removing all seeds). Add the orange and lemon wheels with skin to the wine mixture.

6. In a blender, blend dates (with seeds removed) with the freshly squeezed orange juice. Blend until it has a smooth consistency and stir into wine mixture. Continue to simmer over low heat for 20 to 30 minutes covered with lid and making sure it never boils (there is no fun in the alcohol evaporating, I tell you). Set timer.

7. After timer goes off, stir in honey. Taste for sweetness and add more honey if more sweetness is desired. 

8. Remove from heat or turn heat to the very lowest setting to maintain warmth (keep it covered with lid). Serve hot (without the cooked spices) in heat resistant glasses. Be sure to include some of the delicious warm wine soaked apples chunks and a fresh orange wheel garnish to make it pretty. Enjoy!

Variations:
With fresh ginger: add one inch of washed fresh ginger root sliced in thick slices at the beginning along with the spices.

With pears: replace one apple with one large Bosc pear chopped into cubes.

With Buddha's hand citrus fruit: replace one orange with slices of the delightful citrus.

Note: Feel free to add another bottle red wine to reuse the delicious mixture and make more vin brulé. You may need to add more honey but the leftover spices will still work. And it can also be made with white wine.

The Spartan Diet Newsletter is back!

Happy holidays!

After a long hiatus, I'm bringing the Spartan Diet newsletter back! I’m also super excited to share that the Spartan Diet book will be published in 2018, finally! A true labor of love of ten years in the making. (But who’s counting?)

I’m looking forward to 2018. How about you? 

Every year is a new opportunity for self-improvement, for self re-invention. It's a chance to adopt better habits, learn new things and re-embrace the good ideas that have gone by the wayside. 

As cliché as it sounds, a new year is a great time for introspection, reflection and action. It’s a moment to think about how we can eat better, feel better, be more productive and see how we might rise to the challenge of becoming our best self. 

What’s your diet been like in 2017? How much are you exercising? What’s keeping you awake at night? How are you cultivating joy? How are the relationships in your life going? How are you nourishing your body and soul? What are your goals for 2018? 

If you follow me online, you know that my husband and I are nomadic. We usually live abroad to explore the world's culinary traditions. Sadly, the industrialization of food has gone deep and wide almost all over the world. 

It’s disheartening to see how diabetes, obesity and other lifestyle related illnesses keep spreading worldwide as other countries "catch up" to the American fast food, chain restaurant mindset. 

I confess that it's hard to stay on the Spartan Diet when we travel. Our lifestyle makes it tricky. 

We want to try all the local foods. That's a big part of what makes living abroad exciting. 

Many of foods are simply not available now in non-industrialized form. For example, a local dish might have traditionally been made with ancient grains, olive oil and honey, but today is made with modern wheat, palm oil and corn syrup. It looks like the real thing, but it's not. 

We're lucky enough to make friends and get invited over for meals or drinks. Of course, we happily accept and enjoy whatever is offered to us with gratitude. It's simply an incidental fact that much of these foods aren't necessarily healthy. 

When we were in Georgia (the country) recently, we tried all kinds of foods and beverages we had never seen in our lives. Some were healthy and some not at all. Ditto for Morocco. The novelty of it all is alluring and in those circumstances our policy is to eat as locals do.

We also get so excited by the food culture in France, for example, that we end up eating lots of bread and cheese -- and drinking a bit too much wine. When we’re in Italy, we, of course, eat way too much handmade pasta and pizza and fried foods -- and, again, too much wine. And we love it all!

In 2017, I launched a new business called The Gastronomad Experiences inspired by our own lifestyle, which we call gastronomad living. We live like nomads in different places around the world. The first of these agrarian foodie travel retreats, The Barcelona Experience, in September, was the hugely successful and joyful for us. And, according to our guests, unforgettable and epic! (If you’d like to learn more about The Gastronomad Experiences, or better still, join us for one of them, the next is in Northern Italy, just one hour from Venice! And it’s going to be the foodie adventure of a lifetime!)

My husband, Mike Elgan, my favorite journalist and writer, recently published his first book called Gastronomad: The Art of Living Everywhere and Eating Everything. It’s an amazing life-changing read and it also makes a great gift for foodies and travelers -- anyone really. There is also a Kindle version!

In the meantime, I’m picturing a rewarding 2018 for myself. I have big goals! One of the things that I’m looking forward to is finishing the Spartan Diet book. 

So here are my goals for 2018, which I’m sharing right here so you can hold me accountable.

• Follow the Spartan Diet healthy lifestyle principles 100%
• Publish the Spartan Diet Book by fall of 2018
• Share more recipes on the Spartan Diet blog
• Host at least three Gastronomad Experiences in 2018
• Disconnect from social media except to post once a day and express gratitude to people who support us on social media

I think I’m ready, no, I’m eager to get started and take 2018 by its horns, so to speak. Are you ready for 2018? Are you ready for transformation? 
 

Why pomegranates are so important to The Spartan Diet

The healthiest diet includes a plentiful variety of fresh, whole fruits.

The reductionist, food-as-a-wonder-drug mentality would seek out juice or concentrates of the “superfood” fruits — goji berries, and so on. 

Focusing on the totality of diet and lifestyle is more important to health than a fixation on specific superfoods as cure-alls. 

In general, however, it’s important to get plenty of dark-skinned or dark-juice fruits in the diet, including grapes, blueberries, black cherries, black plums and cranberries. Those dark skins are loaded with health-providing antioxidants. 

That advice is simple enough. But left out of the equation is one fruit that merits a special place in the Spartan Diet: The pomegranate. 

Pomegranates should be included into an extremely varied diet because they offer a very high concentration of antioxidants, vitamin C and other vitamins. 

One fact we’ve noticed about the nexus between food, history and health is that, without exception, the foods that have been in the human diet the longest and which are still part of our diet tend to be the healthiest. These super ancient but still consumed foods include raw honey, olive oil and, yes, pomegranates. 

(The pomegranate goes back so far that it may have been the fruit referred to in the biblical story of Adam and Eve as the “apple.”) 

The trouble is that Americans are a little unsure about what to do about pomegranates. But that’s no reason to avoid them. 

Instead of easy-to-eat fruits like bananas and oranges, which you simply peel and eat, pomegranates are hard to open, and filled with seeds, each of which is surrounded by a small “container” of juice. 

Years ago, there was a craze in pomegranate juice because UCLA scientists proclaimed that pomegranate juice was the healthiest of all juices. A great number of health-minded people went out and bought off-the-shelf pomegranate juice as the latest life-extending elixir. 

We reject this mindset on three grounds: 

1. As is often the case, foods are discussed as "drugs" that help fight various diseases and other health problems. In fact, it's not natural, ancient foods that cure or prevent diseases, but the absence of those foods that cause disease and other health problems. Our bodies expect and need them in order to function properly.

2. Why juice? The Spartan Diet calls for drinking only water and fermented beverages and not drinking juice. The healthiest and best and most Spartan way to consume pomegranates and all fruits is to eat them whole and raw. Organic is best. What's funny is that the researchers arbitrarily focused on juice -- a product made from the fruit rather than the fruit itself -- then warned people not to drink too much juice because of its concentrated amounts of sugar and high calories. And they don't warn against "dead foods" (fruit or juice in cans or bottles) or praise "live" foods, such as fresh fruits. 

3. They focus on the anti-oxidant part of the fruit, and ignore the many other qualities, including vitamins, fiber and the rest. Again, it's not a drug. It's a food, which should be eaten for all its health benefits, not just the ones scientists have decided are the important ones. 

The way to consume pomegranates is to cut them open and eat the seeds in their entirety. Here’s how to cut open a pomegranate.

You can also sprinkle them on yogurt. 

It doesn’t matter. The important thing is to include pomegranates in your diet, and eat the seeds whole, raw and fresh.

Naturally Leavened Bread Pudding with Homemade Caramel Sauce!

Modern wheat is not part of the Spartan Diet, nor are unsoaked or unfermented grains. That makes finding bread in stores or bakeries that meet this criteria can be difficult.

Desserts are part of the Spartan Diet as long as they are made with real, whole-food organic ingredients that are made with Spartan Diet-quality ingredients. 

In this case, my bread pudding atypical. It’s made with naturally leavened bread, pastured eggs and raw pastured milk, homemade vanilla, ceylon cinnamon and raw honey. I also used raw panela for the caramel sauce, which is a true raw sugar with all its minerals.

Mike is the expert on bread baking. I use his leftover homemade bread in my bread pudding (so nothing goes to waste). 

You don’t have to make everything from scratch. But everything you consume should be equivalent to homemade (without emulsifiers, fillers or preservatives) as if you would have made it yourself from scratch. 

Small farms and local artisans increasingly produce high quality foods and ingredients, available especially at Farmer’s Markets. Even Whole Foods Markets often carry food made locally and in small batches with organic ingredients and without additives. 

Mike and I just love making everything from scratch. We find it gratifying. From making our own cured olives, sauerkraut, cheeses, yogurt, vanilla, spices, broths and bread to making even our own kombucha, pickled veggies, kefir, hot sauce and vinegars, we enjoy making it all. 

Mike uses ancient grains for his bread, and grinds it himself. We like emmer and Einkorn but also spelt. Flour from ancient grains is nothing like modern wheat, which gives all grains a bad rap. Modern wheat was hybridized to be high in gluten, which makes it easy for processing and manufacturing wheat products. It’s designed to be a good product for manufacturing purposes and profitability not as something healthful to eat.

But even modern wheat can be made far healthier when fermented. Unfortunately, store-bought bread is rarely fermented, even when it's marketed as "sourdough." 

Mike makes our bread with highly fermented dough. Fermentation not only transforms the dough for incredibly good flavor and texture for both crust and crumb, but removes gluten and phytic acid, improves the bioavailability of the protein and broadly improves its overall health profile. 

The bottom line is that yeast-leavened bread is bad for you; Naturally leavened bread good for you, especially if it does not contain modern wheat.

Grains have to be fermented (or soaked or both) to make them nutritiously viable, which is why naturally fermented bread with wild yeast from the air is not only better for you but heavenly to eat and enjoy with a piece of real cheese or grass fed cultured homemade butter!

The World's Greatest Athlete Loves Spartan Muesli

In a cover story for Vogue magazine, American decathlete and two-time Olympic champion, Ashton Eaton, professed his love for Spartan Muesli, a menu item at Santa Barbara's Backyard Bowls right out of the Spartan Diet. 

In fact I developed the item for Backyard Bowls years ago while consulting for the company. (The chain has four locations -- three in or near Santa Barbara and one in Los Angeles.) If you ever get a chance to visit, their entire menu is fantastic -- and fantastically healthy. 

The mention came about when Eaton was playfully arguing with supermodel Gigi Hadid during a Vogue cover shoot about which Backyard Bowls item was their favorite (with Eaton favoring the Spartan Muesli and Hadid arguing in favor of Berry bowl with peanut butter). 

Eaton holds the world record in both the decathlon and indoor heptathlon. 

So there you have it. The world's greatest athlete loves an item from the World's Healthiest Diet. Makes sense! 

The meaning of raw, cultured, grass fed, freshly churned butter.

Any idea what "real" cultured butter really is?

If you happen to live in Europe, you can easily buy really delicious and truly cultured butter. Lucky you.

But if you live in the U.S., you're out of luck unless you happen to live in one of the states that allow raw milk products. And even then, it's hard to come by and you have to be prepared to pay hefty prices, as it should be. You get what you pay for, right?

You may be surprised to know that in North America, even butter sold as cultured is almost never the real thing. You can thank our federal government for that, along with our broken food system. (Hmm, or are they one and the same?)

Anyway, unless you've been to Europe or live in a state where raw dairy products are legal to sell or you make your own (if you have access to a cow or fresh raw cream) chances are you've never truly tasted the amazing flavors of real raw, cultured, grass fed butter.

I just made a fresh batch of cultured butter. I'm fortunate to get to milk one of the farm's cows where we live. Her name is Mathilda and she's a very sweet Jersey cow.

Right after milking her, I filter the milk and let it rest until the cream rises to the top. (That's what real milk is supposed to do). Then I skim the cream top with a small ladle and put it into a bowl to rest at room temperature until it gets very thick on its own. This is the natural process of fermentation. This step may take half to two days, depending of the weather and the milk itself and how cultured I want the butter.

Once the cream is as cultured as I like it, I taste it to make sure it's sweet and ever so slightly tangy. If for some reason it has gone bad, though it rarely happens, you would know. And this is all about your senses. You can see mold, you can smell the off scent and you can touch the unpleasant sliminess. If none of those signs are present, then just to be sure, you can take a tiny taste to make sure it's tangy instead of bitter.

Then I whip or churn it until it becomes butter. The buttermilk left behind after the fat solids separate leave a white liquid behind. This is the byproduct of the cultured cream turned into butter -- and is what real buttermilk is -- completely different from the stuff sold as "buttermilk" in the stores.

Contrary to popular belief, or what we have forgotten since widespread use of pasteurization (just a little more than one hundred years ago), dairy products made from raw milk are safe to eat. Like anything else when it comes to food, you have to practice good hygiene with the cow and make sure the machine and all the equipment and bottles you use are clean.

It's ironic that all all the incidents of salmonella and e. coli result from meat, chicken, fish, eggs and vegetables. Why, because anything can cause these illnesses, not just raw dairy. The irony is that year after year there are outbreaks of these illnesses and it's always as result of pretty much anything but raw dairy.

So the excuse to pasteurize and homogenize dairy is simply a convenience for the dairy industry. It enables them to produce milk from unhealthy cows in dirty conditions at a massive scale and get away with it. 

For example, since every year there are outbreaks of salmonella and e. coli from meat, poultry and vegetables, what would happen if to prevent those outbreaks the government passed laws requiring that meat, chicken, fish and vegetables were cooked before selling? Well, that sort of what's done to milk. 

By the way, even though we've been programmed to be terrified of raw milk dairy in North America by the government and the dairy industry, what makes raw milk very easy and safe to consume is the culturing process because that helps reduce pathogens. Fermentation is what naturally makes dairy not only safe and delicious to eat but also very nutritious precisely because of the microbes in it, which are so essential for good health. And have been for thousands of years.

It's easy to illustrate this example. If you leave a quart of raw milk and a quart of pasteurized milk on the counter unrefrigerated, in a day or two the raw milk will become a delicious clabber -- and if you strain off the whey, a delicious farmer's cheese. The pasteurized milk becomes horrible, spoiled and illness-inducing. 

The process of fermentation or culturing actually eats away the lactose in the milk while making it teem with beneficial microbes or good bacteria. This is the reason why people who suffer from lactose intolerance can usually eat dairy products made with raw milk and not get sick.

Like most of the food-related health problems we suffer now, but which people didn't suffer from much in the past, the problems with milk are the result of radical industrialization. 

Extreme industrialization transforms entire categories of food into something incompatible with human biology. Then we blame the food generally. Milk -- and for that matter grains, meat and other foods -- are not "bad for you." The industrialized version is bad or you.

Healthy milk starts with a healthy cow raised outside on pasture grass. Then you get the milk and you do I what I describe above.

But how can people not get sick or become lactose intolerant when milk comes from factory farms were cows have no room to move, live miserable lives while being fed toxic and pesticide-laden feed? These cows never even see the sunlight or breathe fresh air and are pumped with nasty hormones to make them produce more milk. These cows often develop horrible infections and cancer tumors and then are given antibiotics.

And, of course, all that is passed on the milk they produced. So then the milk is heated to a point that everything bad and good is killed. And it's often homogenized and bleached to make matters worse. Our bodies don't even know how to deal with the dairy when we consume it so we end up with lactose intolerance among a host of other things that can result from consuming these products. I know, it sounds horrible, but that's because it really is horrible.

These are foods literally created to be good products but not good for consumers. In other words, good for lasting in transportation and on store shelves.

This is one of the many reasons that cow dairy and pasteurized and homogenized dairy or foods are not part of the Spartan Diet. But, for now, since we have access to Mathilda, we are making our own fresh and aged cheeses, yogurt, kefir, butter and other dairy products that were always made with clean, raw, pastured milk the old world way.

So what's one to do if one has no way of getting access to raw dairy products from pastured raised cows? Avoid pasteurized dairy like if your life depends on it. 

First persimmons of the season

I enjoyed my first fuyu persimmon of the season just last week. I actually added it as an ingredient in a green leafy salad. Their crunchiness and sweetness balance nicely with the softness of lettuce as well as the tartness of the citrus dressing I made. 

I also love hachiya persimmons, which taste like honey with an intricate hint of mango, nectarine, apricot and honeydew melon. Ancient Greeks called them the "fruit of the gods" or "divine fruit." And they do taste divine.

Like pumpkins, persimmons have a beautiful bright but deep orange color. They're a true berry and are in season from October to December. Many local farmer's markets sell persimmons abundantly during this time. 

Though there used to be hundreds of persimmon varieties, the most common ones sold in the U.S. are the Hachiya and the Fuyu. I enjoy both kinds but the former is my favorite. The Fuyus are usually eaten hard, since they're not astringent. You can cut them into wedges like an apple (with peel and all) but they can also be eaten when they're soft. 

Hachiyas, on the other hand, must be eaten soft. When Hachiyas are hard, it means they’re unripe and therefore astringent. Never try to eat a hard Hachiya. You would be unpleasantly surprised by an extreme feeling of dryness, bitterness and numbness in your mouth because of the high levels of tannins. 

Persimmons are underappreciated in the United States, especially the Fuyu variety. I believe the reason is that they have what you could call a "slimy" and “mushy” texture. People who didn't grow up eating tropical fruit with such characteristics can have a hard time acquiring the taste. 

Hachiyas are usually sold unripe or hard, but they'll eventually ripen (in one to three weeks). If your patience is being tried, place the hard Hachiyas in paper bag with apples or bananas. These release ethylene gas, which speed up the ripening process. They'll get very soft and delicate to handle (like a balloon filled with water). 

Ripe Hachiyas look almost translucent. And when you cut one in half, it will expose the jelly-like flesh, which is very slick -- sort of like custard. Select Hachiyas that have a deep orange color with beautiful glossy skin. The black color patches some may have are just sun spots -- they’re okay to eat. I like to cut them in half crosswise and simply scoop out the inside with a spoon. Hachiyas are great for adding to dressings and baked goods, including cakes and fruit breads. Fully ripe Hachiyas should be stored in the refrigerator or freezer for later use in baking, or for eating frozen like a sorbet. 

Fuyu persimmons have the shape of regular tomatoes and have a golden orange color. The fuyu can be eaten like an apple with its skin, but the calyx or top must be removed. If you like fruit in your salads, fuyus are great for that. I also love them in fruit salads. They really add wonderful sweetness. 

Whether you prefer the fuyus or the hachiyas, these two persimmon varieties each have their own wonderful qualities and unique nutrients to offer. The soft hachiya is lower in calories and higher in vitamin C. But the fuyus offer more potassium, calcium and protein. The moral of the story: Learn to enjoy both of them.

Hachiya persimmons.