Not like anybody needs another excuse to quaff a few, but yet more research is appearing showing a correlation between moderate drinking and good health. Folks familiar with the Mediterranean Diet will not be surprised by this, nor anyone who has been paying attention to health articles, tv shows, or other publicity.

On MSNBC: “Want to live longer? Toss back a few cocktails”

According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol — up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women — reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent, the team reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Now, this does not mean everybody should start drinking four drinks a day. One person’s “moderate” is another’s “excessive.” Instead:

“Little amounts, preferably during meals, this appears to be the right way (to drink alcohol),” said Dr. Giovanni de Gaetano of Catholic University, another author on the study. “This is another feature of the Mediterranean diet, where alcohol, wine above all, is the ideal partner of a dinner or lunch, but that’s all: the rest of the day must be absolutely alcohol-free.”

Ah, there it is again — a mention of the Mediterranean Diet. But do you really suppose the good Dr. de Gaetano speaks like this in real life…

“The message carried by scientific studies like ours is simple,” Dr. de Gaetano continued. “Alcohol can be a respectful guest on our table, but it is good just when it goes with a healthy lifestyle, where moderation leads us toward a consumption inspired by quality not by quantity.”

So have a glass of wine or pint of beer with dinner — it does a body good. ;)

“Cheese” by Thomas Hawk

It’s the cheese

I’m beginning to think California is to the nation’s agriculture as China is to US manufacturing. ;) And whether or not the cows here are truly “Happy Cows,” they are definitely out-producing the ones shivering back in Wisconsin, doncha know. California cows surpassed the Badger State’s bovines in sheer milk production back in 1993, and now (thanks to them) we are on our way to overtaking our colder brethren in another key dairy area: cheese.

AP: California on track to dethrone Wisconsin as cheese capital.

Last year, California turned out 2.14 billion pounds of cheese - nearly a quarter of the nation’s supply. The total marked a huge increase from 1985, when the state had only about 7 percent of the national market.

The growth has put California within striking distance of the 2.4 billion pounds produced every year in Wisconsin, the state that bills itself as “America’s Dairyland.”

Wisconsin’s share of the growing national cheese market has fallen from more than a third in 1985 to just over a quarter last year.

Nancy Fletcher, a spokeswoman for the California Milk Advisory Board, said it’s hard to predict exactly when California will overtake Wisconsin, but the production trends make it just a matter of time.

Of course, it’s not just about the numbers, as any Cheesehead will be quick to point out. Which is why the artisanal production in California is impressive as well.

Small cheese-makers, meanwhile, have caught the attention of gastronomes while producing about 10 percent of California’s output.

Marin French Cheese Co. in Petaluma took a gold medal for its Triple Creme Brie at the 2005 World Cheese Awards in London, making it the first non-European cheese producer to take top honors in the category.

Another gold medal at those awards went to Modesto’s Fiscalini Cheese Co. for its San Joaquin Gold, which began as a failed attempt to make fontina.

We’ve got the wine, and now we’ve got the cheese. Can beer be far behind? ;)

My Wine of the Week is selected on the basis of “bang for the buck.” I taste 100-200 wines each month hoping that I’ll find at least a few that offer good, every day value. My weekly picks are loosely based around a $12 ceiling, and must be readily available.

I’m still researching and pondering the ins and outs of the Mediterranean Diet. One of the handiest visual representations I’ve found is at Oldways (in PDF or JPG format) which gives—much like the more-familiar, government-issue food pyramid—a sense of the proportions of various food types. Laying it out in a list instead, we come up with:

Daily

in order of decreasing proportion

• Bread, Pasta, Rice, Couscous, Polenta, Other Whole Grains, and Potatoes
• Fruits
• Beans, Legumes, and Nuts
• Vegetables
• Olive Oil and Other Plant Oils
• Cheese & Yogurt

also important

• Daily Physical Activity
• 6-8 glasses of water
• Wine in moderation

Weekly

• Fish
• Poultry
• Eggs
• Sweets

Monthly

• Red Meat

What does this actually look like?

That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Americans I think are programmed to expect meat, whether poultry, pork, or beef, at every meal (witness the old “meat and potatoes” cliché), unless the meal is “light” or skipped altogether. So there’s a kind of reprogramming that needs to take place when it comes to those weekly items.

To wrap my head around it, I started thinking of those four as individual “meals”, or at least the first three items, leaving out the sweets for now. So, one meal with fish as a main course, one with chicken or turkey, and one with eggs. If those were dinner entrees, say, that would leave four other dinners with non-meat entrees (assuming this wasn’t one of the weeks with red meat).

Proportions

But then I came to realize this particular chart didn’t mean itself to be taken the way I was looking at it. The proportions were the thing being measured, not the individual items themselves.

So it’s not a bad thing to have either poultry or fish a couple of times a week, or to use smaller portions of those items per meal, incorporated into other dishes. And it’s not “red meat once per month,” but that much red meat in that proportion, relative to the rest of the pyramid, during a month’s time. That makes much more sense to me now.

Protein

What this does leave is finding other good sources of protein, and there are plenty to be had in the “Daily” list. Plenty of fat, as well, but not necessarily the unhealthful kind.

Menus

What this also means is that I need to keep looking for visualizations of the diet, but perhaps by coming up with a week’s worth of daily menus, or maybe even a fortnight’s worth that could be mixed and matched randomly for the second half of the month.

More to come.

“I enjoy cooking with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food I’m cooking.”

— Julia Child