Dear Dr. Gourmet,
Q: I am very worried about my father’s health. He eats a hamburger, french fries and Coke almost every day and he rarely eats any vegetables. He has incredibly high cholesterol and blood pressure, type II diabetes, liver and kidney problems and an alleged potassium deficiency that occasionally causes his legs to not be able to support his weight.
He claims that all of his health issues are hereditary and not influenced by his diet. I do not believe that.
What evidence can I use to convince him that his diet is unhealthy and is likely contributing to his health problems?
A: Well, I’d like to think that you’ve come to the right place.
Your father could not be more wrong about health issues being only hereditary. There is clearly a factor of how our family history can and does affect our health but this can certainly be overcome by eating healthy and maintaining a reasonable weight. The best place for you to get started….
Q: My husband went on Coumadin this week and one of the doctors told him, “NO cranberries.” When we read how low the vitamin K is in cranberries, we questioned this.
The nurse researched it for us and was told that cranberries kill some type of bacteria in your body and that the bacteria affecst the Coumadin. Is this correct?
A: Well, my standard answer for this has been to send folks to an article written for the Dr. Gourmet website back in 2006.
After reading your email I decided it was time to revisit this. There wasn’t good science about the issue of an interaction between cranberry juice and Coumadin (warfarin). The good news is that we now have pretty good evidence that it’s OK to drink cranberry juice.
Q: My family and I picked some wild mushrooms (what in our area, Northern MI are called beefsteak mushrooms or false morels) and are wondering how safe they are to eat? Some say not at all, others say if you cook them correctly. So my question is how would I prepare and cook them to be safe?
A: You do have to be very, very careful if you are going to eat wild mushrooms. Some, like the morels that I used to get in Virginia, are easy to know whether they are safe or not. There are a number of resources for you.
