Guest Author - Jill Valente

This past week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Rob Endelman, a former Wall Street trader turned cooking instructor. Not only is Rob filled with great recipes and culinary advice, he has amazing opinions on food and the food industry and how to really live and eat healthy. Rob explained to me that Wall Street was never his passion but that he always loved to cook and had an interest in health and nutrition. Finally after a 10 year career on Wall Street he enrolled at the Institute of Culinary Education. Upon graduation and finishing his internship at a four-star restaurant in Manhattan, he rented a 20x20 patch of land in East Hampton at EECO Farm (East End Community Organic Farm) and learned all about the growing process. He spent the summer of 2004 farming, cooking and sharing his knowledge with friends which led to the the birth of Cook with Class. Cook with Class brings gourmet cooking into people's homes in New York City and the New York metropolitan area through hands-on instruction in a fun, social and laid-back environment. Although the cooking lessons have remained the same over the past few years his view of how he approaches them has certainly changed. He can teach anyone to saute but the real learning is about nutrition. Here are some of the things I learned from Chef Rob…

• Ignore nutrition labels and pay attention to the list of ingredients. If you don’t recognize something or can’t pronounce it, you shouldn’t be eating it.
• Eat grass-fed beef and foods. Conventionally raised cattle are raised on corn because it makes them grown bigger faster. But their bodies and four-chambered stomach are designed to eat grasses, not grains. Often the grain-based diet causes physical problems for the cattle so the farmer also feeds them antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. These antibiotics are then in the butter, cheese, milk and meat that we eat.
• Eat naturally raised chickens that are raised without antibiotics, growth hormones and eat an all-natural and all vegetable diet. Bell and Evans and Murray’s Chickens are two great examples of naturally raised chickens.
• In these tough economic times, paying extra for organic fruits and vegetables or grass-fed beef may be at the bottom of the list but if you look at it in the long run you may feel differently. Paying a little extra for meat and cheese that is not pumped full of hormones that can make you sick saves on your overall health. Not getting sick reduces the amount of days missed at work and trips to the doctor therefore eating right is a form of preventative medicine. Also, processed foods are what cost the most in the grocery store so put down that bag of chips and box of crackers and pay $1.50 extra for butter that is natural and good for you.
• Don’t be fooled by marketing. Snapple is not “made from the best stuff on earth” unless you consider high-fructose corn syrup to be good for you. “Light” or “reduced fat” are not always the best choices because they are swapping out real ingrediants for chemicals and preservatives.
• Most importantly we recognize that no one is going to make all these changes at once but if little by little we can all start reducing the amount of hormones, antibiotics, preservatives and chemicals that we ingest, the better our health will be.

Please check out Rob’s website and blog for more information!

http://www.cookwithclass.net/
http://www.thedelicioustruth.blogspot.com/