Monday, July 16, 2007
A Healthy Cocktail.....
At the same time, a new generation of liquor brands built around herbal extracts and antioxidant-rich ingredients like green tea, pomegranate and the Brazilian açaí berry (the current “it” fruit) have hit the market. Sugary cosmopolitans, apple martinis and mojitos have started to look as dated as “Sex and the City” reruns. A more contemporary alternative would be a drink like Vitamin Dj, mixed from freshly juiced organic carrots, Granny Smith apple juice, elderflower liqueur and vodka, which was introduced a few weeks ago at the Midtown restaurant Django.
“Everybody seems to be getting healthy,” said Mark Murphy, the executive chef at Ditch Plains, a surfer-inspired restaurant in the West Village. Or at least healthier. Mr. Murphy recently created a line of cocktails mixing vodka with low-calorie, sugar- and aspartame-free airforce Nutrisoda-brand sodas — each containing a day’s dose of vitamins C, E, B6, and B12 — as a more health-conscious variation on the Red Bull and vodka.
The healthful-cocktail concept received an imprint of credibility in April, when researchers at the United States Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with Thai colleagues, reported that adding alcohol to strawberries and blackberries increased their antioxidant capacity (although alcohol still causes some cell damage, some scientists cautioned). While skeptics could validly point out that trying to mix a Theragran’s worth of vitamins into a tumbler of 80 proof makes no more sense than ordering a Diet Coke with a supersize burger and fries, nutritionists do not necessarily scoff at the idea. Wahida Karmally, the director of nutrition at the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at the Columbia University Medical Center, said that the sugar in a traditional margarita, loaded with syrupy triple sec, “is just empty calories.”
“If people are trying to make a syrupy drink,” she said, “they might want to purée kiwi fruit, which will give you the syrupy flavor, but also give you nutrients as well as fiber. Kiwi is packed with vitamin C.”
Read more!
“Everybody seems to be getting healthy,” said Mark Murphy, the executive chef at Ditch Plains, a surfer-inspired restaurant in the West Village. Or at least healthier. Mr. Murphy recently created a line of cocktails mixing vodka with low-calorie, sugar- and aspartame-free airforce Nutrisoda-brand sodas — each containing a day’s dose of vitamins C, E, B6, and B12 — as a more health-conscious variation on the Red Bull and vodka.
The healthful-cocktail concept received an imprint of credibility in April, when researchers at the United States Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with Thai colleagues, reported that adding alcohol to strawberries and blackberries increased their antioxidant capacity (although alcohol still causes some cell damage, some scientists cautioned). While skeptics could validly point out that trying to mix a Theragran’s worth of vitamins into a tumbler of 80 proof makes no more sense than ordering a Diet Coke with a supersize burger and fries, nutritionists do not necessarily scoff at the idea. Wahida Karmally, the director of nutrition at the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at the Columbia University Medical Center, said that the sugar in a traditional margarita, loaded with syrupy triple sec, “is just empty calories.”
“If people are trying to make a syrupy drink,” she said, “they might want to purée kiwi fruit, which will give you the syrupy flavor, but also give you nutrients as well as fiber. Kiwi is packed with vitamin C.”
Read more!
Labels: alcohol, cocktails, health food
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