E is for Energy

        Energy comes in many forms. The energy to get up and go to work in the morning, the energy used to run the coffee pot, the energy obtained from a dam, fueling our constant need for electricity, even the energy which is seen in the desert night sky when a lightening storm goes racing across a low mesa. Nonetheless, energy is a type of currency seen and used by everyone. It's seen in a growing child, in a pregnant girl, in a marathon runner in their last leg of a race. We need it to grow up, for our bones to lengthen, and for our minds to flourish and expand. Energy is all around us in many forms; mechanical, thermal, electric, electromagnetic, chemical, nuclear, sound and lastly, but not least, a new term we all need to become familiar with and understand, bioenergetics.

      Bioenergetics is a term I recently stumbled upon, but it makes sense. It is a rapidly increaseing field of study and I have been able to break it down in laymen's terms as to make sense of it, for you, and for me as well.
     So, here goes : The human body is a living organism which requires external forces to run it, and those forces are food, water and oxygen. This field of biochemistry's main focus is the body and how it is able to metabolize and utilize these said products. So, if you eat, say, a piece of pie, all the little food molecules are then broken down by the gastrointestinal tract, in fact starting in your mouth. But, this delicious flakey pie and its moist unctuous filling must have a little sugar right? But, here is a better question, what is sugar exactly? Well, table sugar, or the sugar used to sweeten your morning coffee, or in this case, pie filling, is also known as sucrose. Sucrose is made of two molecules, the monosaccharides glucose and fructose, which bond together forming the disaccharide we love and use abundantly. The glucose component of the sugar breaks down into pyruvate, by a process which we know as glycolysis. Glycolysis is one of the pathways which converts sugar to energy, essentially. This energy is to be used in the body, or if not used immediately stored, or used somewhere else in the body in another reaction. But how do we get this energy? What does this energy look like? Well, through a series of reactions, the glycolysis pathway releases high energy compounds. These high energy products released by the action of this pathway are ATP and NADH, also known as the "molecular units of currency". This is just a small fraction of the story....
     Getting dizzy? I know I did when I first began to dissect and disassemble the tangled mess that is human digestion.
     I'm sure it's obvious to you now that there are numerous steps in the process of metabolism. Here, with our pie example, there are hundreds of other reactions which take place to break down the many different food molecules present. The fat from the buttery crust, the carbohydrates from the sweet fruit inside, the protein from the flour used to hold it all together, etc. etc. But lets keep it simple. For now, we eat food, the body breaks it down, which requires enzymes, catalyses, acids, mucus and hormones to work in concert with each other, so that we get the compounds needed to not only run the body but also to break down foods we eat.
    Amazing isn't it? That the energy the body uses to stimulate your muscles, your brain and everything in between, is fueled by those treats and sweets we love so much?
     It's clear that certain foods contain a higher amount of energy per bite, but as I stated in the C post, calories or kilocalories are a unit of energy. Think on this point for a second; think about the foods you eat regularly and think about which foods make you more hungry after you eat them? High sugar ones right? Put the Skittles down, throw out the Coca-cola, yes I know, but, you really need to get rid of the Ben and Jerry's Fish Food Ice Cream, and think. Doesn't it make you question, as you're reaching for that third soda, if you had just eaten something that filled you up, gave you energy, and left you without the distraction of hunger at the end of the day, wouldn't you feel better? Your body will use energy it has stored, instead of the energy eaten! i.e. the loss of pounds! Fabulous. The simple fact is, we need to eat to survive, so choose that energy source wisely. You wouldn't want to put bad fuel in your car, why put it in your body.

I'm going to give you a simple math problem. When I saw this I realized how simple it can be :
   1 Pound = 3,500 calories.
   So, if an individual cut 500 calories out the their diet daily for a week that would mean that....
   500 kcals x 7 days in a week = 3,500 calories, or the loss of 1 pound!

Amazing, right? Just remember, that 1 pound isn't going to be just the muffin tops of the belly fat which we desperately hate. But hey, it is a step in the right direction, and lets try to do it without soda, okay?

C is for Calories, Cupcakes and Cancer.

How do all of these relate? Who wants to think of something as innocent as a cupcake, with its nemesis, calories, and then something as horrendous as Cancer, in the same 2 second thought?

It is not a far stretch to link the three.

I'll begin with calories, kcals, or kilocalories. Some think they are just a number on the label, or something to fear and something to watch your intake of. But, brass tacks, it is the amount of energy required to raise one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. So thusly, a calorie is energy. Food energy to be exact.

So what is all food made up of? Let's use an example : A harmless cupcake.

Decoratively adorned with creamy white vanilla frosting, and underneath, nestled inside a thin layer of parchment paper, a light fluffy chocolate cake, and it comes in perfectly personalized size. This handheld dessert could very well be the greatest invention and in the same breath our arch enemy. The point is it is made up of every major component of food energy. Carbohydrate, Protein and Fat.

Don't be scared. You knew this would happen eventually. Now, breath deep, and inhale the aroma of freshly baked calories. We need these to survive, to thrive, to conquer and enjoy life. So why are they so wrong? Calories are essential, yes, but if not used correctly and cautiously, can have the same detrimental effects as an atomic bomb to the human body. An average individual can eat thousands upon thousand of calories a day, in fact there are guidelines which outline to do so. The issue is, what kinds of calories are we eating. And more importantly, what are the foods which contain these dirty calories.

So, back to the cupcake.

Once something is baked isn't it our duty to ignore the idea that it could potentially make our favorite pair of jeans a little tighter? Shouldn't we just give ourselves over to the pastry gods and realize that, yes, this cupcake has butter, sugar, eggs, flour and above all things frosting, and it is going to be amazing.  Throw caution to the wind, peel off the paper enveloping the rich decadence that lay in waiting inside, carefully examine the outside edges, turning it in front of you slowly, as if it were the first time you set eyes upon it, questioning where to stop and take that fateful first taste. Pure ecstasy awaits you, sugar crystals dance before you like sparkling snowflakes atop a dark mountain, and then you find it, the perfect bite.

I'm sure you're not thinking about calories right now are you? Neither am I.

My point is, calories as well as cupcakes get a bad rap. Which brings me to Cancer.

A Neoplastic class of diseases plaguing millions upon millions in all corners of the world. No one can really pin point the moment when a malignant cell begins to mutate and cause an uncontrolled growth of similar cells which will then spread, invade, and thusly take over the body via metastasis. Of course there are a variety of pathways which cancer is shown to be caused, and one is by another C word, carcinogens, but we will save that for another time. Cupcakes and calories are obviously not on some kind of cancer causing list, no no no, but they are related to food. Food you eat. Food you put in your body. Food which is what your body runs and revs its engine on, what it is made up of. So, it is not just the first consonant of these three words that intrinsically links them, there is a fourth word that ties it all together, one which I have already mentioned, Cells.

Cells are the building blocks of life. Cells can grow, multiply, divide, replicate DNA, digest sugar into glucose, create by-products for use in the body, synthesize new proteins from amino acids, they can be large like an ostrich egg, or too small to see in a microscope. They make up everything around us and everything that is us. They contain all kinds of organelles with funny names like Golgi Apparatus and Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum.

But I digress.

A Cell, a calorie, a cupcake and cancer all have a connection. That connection is us. You. Without the cell there would be absolutely no humans. Without humans, there would be have never been the invention of the wonderful cupcake. Without cupcakes, cakes, baking in general, there may not be as much stress about the idea of calories. And, this may be a stretch, but, without the stress over the amount of calories in the cupcake which we have baked and frosted so neatly, there may not be cancer.

So how do these all relate? It's not so hard to connect the dots, and really, I'm sure I could strategize all kinds of ways to connect more, but for now, I'll take the safe route out of this one and go bake up a batch of the famous Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Toasted Coconut Frosting; I can hear my cells just aching for them.