Master Cleanse; Michael Pollan's Manifesto; Diet Inventions

Guest Interview

The Market Report ()

Greens are at their peak right now. Laura Avery speaks with Paul Thurston of organic McGrath Family Farm in Camarillo. They've got seven different kinds of greens including Italian rapini, sweet red spinach, rainbow chard, red frills mustard, and pea tendrils (which are the tops of the pea plant before they form the pea.)

All greens can be prepared by removing the stems, chopping them coarsely and sautéeing them in a pot with olive oil, garlic and red pepper until wilted and soft. Add chicken broth to braise them if you like.

Host Evan Kleiman offers an idea for cooking rapini, which has a nutty broccoli, slightly bitter flavor. She sautes the greens in a pan with olive oil and garlic. Once wilted she adds sausage and cooks the meat until done. Then she adds this mixture with a good melting cheese to the top of Trader Joe's pizza dough and bakes the pizza. You can also add this cooked mixture to orecchiette pasta for a popular Italian dish. The sausage and greens mixture also makes a great panini sandwich.

Music break: Generique by Philippe Sarde

Guest Interview

Extreme Diet Inventions ()

Fad Diet founder Tom Nardone discovers unusual and bizarre diet inventions that have received US patents. Nardone's also created other quirky websites, including Gingerbread Ghetto, showing the silly, yet dark side of gingerbread houses, and Extreme Pumpkins, depicting zany pumpkin carvings.

Music break: Music for Staring a Ceilings by El Ten Eleven

Guest Interview

Das Food ()

Celebrated journalist Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, declares his manifesto in his book, In Defense of Food. He discusses the consumption of edible food-like substances, the American Paradox, chronic diseases linked to diet, and how to eat, literally. His creed: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Music break: Couic Ah! by Francois Rolland

Guest Interview

Master Cleanse ()

In his book, Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days, author Peter Glickman advocates the "master cleanse." Stanley Burroughs created this lemonade diet in 1941 as an alternative way to detoxify the body. It's a fasting regimen that foregoes solid foods for only lemon juice, maple syrup, water and cayenne pepper, followed by a laxative tea each evening. Glickman coaches people through the master cleanse program on his website.

However, Glickman and Burroughs have their share of critics. One of them is Dr. Ed Zimney who debunks the master cleanse as a master scam, arguing that the diet is a laxative regimen that results in starvation. Zinney, who is the medical director of HealthTalk, explains the nutritional value of the diet and how the body naturally detoxifies.

Music break: Motain' by Irving Ashby

Guest Interview

The Writing Diet ()

Artist Julia Cameron recommends using creativity to lose weight in her book, The Writing Diet. She discusses examining your relationship with food through journaling and suggests four questions to ask yourself before eating. Cameron is a writer, poet, and playwright and is the author of the bestselling The Artist's Way.

Music break: Swingle Beat by Ambros Seelos

Guest Interview

Discovering America Eats ()

Writer Laura Shapiro unearths the Works Progress Administration's 1937 foodways project, America Eats, which was abandoned because of political events. She chronicles editor Katherine Kellocks' passionate pursuit of ordinary Americans' accounts of eating and celebrating. Part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal plan and created in 1935, the WPA employed millions of people during the Great Depression. Shapiro recently wrote an article about America Eats in the January edition of Saveur magazine.

Music break: The Little Matador by Champs

Guest Interview

Red Wine Hangover Device ()

Professor Richard Mathies designs the red wine hangover device. A drop of wine is placed in the prototype, currently the size of a small briefcase, which determines the amine levels in five minutes. He discusses possible causes of the red wine headache and the various amines levels in alcoholic beverages. Mathies teaches chemistry and is the director of the Center for Analytical Biotechnology at the University of California at Berkeley. To read more about this research, visit the American Chemical Society's Journal of Analytical Chemistry.