Cutting Sugar Consumption Helps Keep Extra Weight Off

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Adults who upped their intake of sugary foods or drank sugar-sweetened drinks gained about a pound a year, a study found.

Adults who upped their intake of sugary foods or drank sugar-sweetened drinks gained about a pound a year, a study found.

How evil is sugar? That's long been a hard question for researchers to answer. Most of the studies about sugar's health effects to date have been too small, too short-term, or too poorly designed to nail it one way or another.

But a new mega-study on sugar and weight tries to fill that void. Researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand looked at more than 15,000 of studies on sugar and obesity at the request of the World Health Organization, which is updating its guidelines on sugar intake. Most were disqualified because they followed people for less than two months, or asked participants to diet, exercise, or undergo medical treatments at the same time.

The 68 studies that made the cut together confirmed that adults who upped their intake of sugary foods or drank sugar-sweetened drinks gained 1.6 pounds a year, while people who cut back on sugar lost about the same amount. The results were reported in the British Medical Journal.

"What's emerged most clearly is that sugar in the form of water, sodas, fruit drinks, energy drinks, is especially problematic," says Walter Willett, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and author of an editorial that accompanies the new study. He thinks that's because it's easier to eat than drink. "It's almost impossible to eat 17 teaspoons of sugar, but it's very easy to drink at 20-ounce soda with 17 teaspoons of sugar."

The weight gain seen in the BMJ review is probably just due to the energy in sugar, the researchers say, not because of any uniquely bad effects of fructose or sucrose. Those two sugars are vilified by the "sugar is toxic" school, which blames them for most health ills.

Scientists say it's only very recently that they've started to get a grasp on the connection between sugar, obesity, and the risk of chronic disease. This is after decades of claims that sugar causes a host of ills, including tooth decay, cancer, hyperactivity, gout, and diabetes and plenty of pushback from sugar-producing countries and the food industry.

"Sugars" as defined by the New Zealanders included sweetened beverages, fruit juice, jam, cookies and candy, desserts, and plain old sugar.The study didn't quantify how much more sugar each person who gained or lost weight was eating, which isn't much help in figuring out how much is too much. But the study authors say the findings confirm that the World Health Organization guideline of keeping sugar intake at 10 percent or below is justified.

It's also impossible to say how much cutting back sugar would reduce obesity, the New Zealanders say, because sugar's not the only factor. A quick glance at today's "Xtreme Eating 2013" hall of shame from the Center for Science in the Public Interest makes that clear. Winners include Smoothie King's Peanut Power Plus Grape Smoothie, with 1,460 calories and 22 teaspoons of added sugar. But there's also the Bistro Shrimp Pasta from the Cheesecake Factory, which at 3,120 calories and 89 grams of saturated fat, will meet your energy needs for an entire week.

Willett agrees that it's not just about the sugar. "A totally narrow focus on sugar is just too limiting," he tells The Salt. "We really need to focus on carbohydrate quality, and not on sugar alone." Willett is a longtime proponent of the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes whole grains, fruits and vegetables, fish, and vegetable oil.

Still, refined sugar remains a tempting target.

In 2003, the WHO recommended that people keep their added sugar consumption below 10 percent of daily calories, a number that sparked a barrage of criticism from the food industry. Americans typically average 15 percent, while the American Heart Association recommends just 5 percent of discretionary calories, equal to 150 calories a day for a man, or 100 for a woman.

The Coca-Cola company joined the fray this week, with two new ads that it says will "help society beat one of the most serious, complex issues of this generation obesity." One, which debuts today on American Idol, "makes it perfectly clear right up front that a can of Coca-Cola has 140 calories," the global beverage giant's blog proclaims.

You could take that as helpful advice on an easy way to cut back on added sugar. Or you could take that as an invitation to indulge. Big beverage companies have been moving to selling lower-sugar options, as NPR's Dan Charles reported last month, but a big chunk of their income still comes from selling sugar water.

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Breweries Must Share 'Budweiser' Name, British Court Rules

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A glass of Czech Budweiser beer is seen at the the Budejovicky Budvar brewery in southern Bohemia. Britain's highest court has ruled that the "Budweiser" name must be shared by two companies.

A glass of Czech Budweiser beer is seen at the the Budejovicky Budvar brewery in southern Bohemia. Britain's highest court has ruled that the "Budweiser" name must be shared by two companies.

The word "Budweiser" will continue to mean two different things in Britain, where the brand name has been a bone of contention for more than a decade. The U.K. Supreme Court has ruled against Anheuser-Busch InBev's request to stop Czech brewery Budvar from selling beer under the Budweiser name.

Budvar is much smaller than its AB-Inbev-owned rival. And while Anheuser-Busch was first to seek to trademark the Budweiser name in Britian, the Czech company entered the British market one year ahead of the then-St. Louis-based brewer, according to Reuters.

Tuesday's ruling is being seen as the end of one battle among many. It comes more than two years after a European Union ruling that quashed AB-InBev's attempt to to register the Budweiser name as its trademark an attempt that was contested by Budvar.

"Currently there are about 40 trademark dispute cases pending in different jurisdictions and some 70 procedural issues up for consideration around the world," Budvar says on its website. The company cites recent victories in Japan, South Korea, Greece, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and New Zealand.

Those venues expose the ambitious growth strategies of both companies, which for decades operated under a form of detente, agreeing to confine themselves to certain geographic regions when they sold beer under the "Budweiser" name.

On its British website, Budvar calls itself "The Original." While its home city of Ceske Budejovice (or, in German, Budweis) first began producing beer 500 years before the founding of the United States, the Budvar brewery wasn't founded until 1895 19 years after the Budweiser name was chosen for a new beer being made in St. Louis.

We must also note that Budweiser's corporate roots aren't as American as they once were. It is now owned by global giant AB InBev, which is headquartered in Belgium.

According to the AP, Budvar reported record exports for 2012, sending "657,000 hectoliters (17.36 million gallons) of beer to 58 countries last year, the best result in 117 years."

That number pales next to Budweiser's sales figures, which nearly hit 400 million hectoliters worldwide in 2011, Reuters says.

Despite their dispute over an essential brand name, Budweiser and Budvar reached an agreement in 2007 that named Anheuser-Busch as the U.S. importer of Budvar's beer.

In Britain, AB InBev has used the Budweiser name to sponsor high-profile sporting events in recent months, from NFL games to soccer. Budweiser was also the official beer of the London 2012 Summer Olympics.

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The Expense Of Staying A Nation Of 'Soul Foods Junkies'

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As a new documentary shows, a plate of soul foods is loaded with concerns about history, identity and health.

As a new documentary exhibits, a plate of soul food is loaded with questions about historical past, identity and wellness.

You are what you consume, the old saying goes. But if you change what you consume, are you fundamentally shifting who you are?

That question underlies considerably of the new documentary Soul Foods Junkies, premiering Monday night on PBS' Independent Lens series. Director Byron Hurt's extremely personalized, often humorous film explores how classic Southern comfort fare became entwined with African-American identity. And it asks whether or not this food, usually loaded with salt, body fat and sugar, is performing its consumers more harm than fantastic.

The film was inspired by Hurt's father, Jackie Hurt, who lost his battle with pancreatic cancer in 2007. He was overweight and in poor wellness.

What is soul meals ? Hurt asks all through the film. The answers he receives are enlightening: dinner, conversation, family, a mother's cooking, dreams, adore. View a trailer.

"When he became sick, I started off to examine his connection to meals," Hurt tells NPR's Michel Martin, "and it was soul meals he grew up with and loved so substantially."

It is a adore affair with deep roots in the African-American community. As the film recounts, soul food was survival food in the black South. Dishes had been inspired by a will need to make do with what slaves could access: greens they grew themselves, leftover meat components like pig ears and feet, and low-cost foods like rice and yams loaded with calories to fuel a field slave's get the job done. Some of these recipes had origins in Africa. (Gumbo, we find out, was the West African word for "okra.")

And during the civil rights era, it was soul food purveyors like Ms. Peaches of Peaches Restaurant in Jackson, Miss., who fed demonstrators and aided maintain the movement going at no modest risk to themselves. "Black girls have completed so much to sustain us as a local community and as a culture," Harm says. "Ms. Peaches is 1 example of a female who utilised her culinary capabilities and her courage to assist feed the civil rights movement."

But even at that time, when locations like Sylvia's in Harlem had been bringing soul meals to a wider audience, some in the African-American community have been raising questions about soul food's toll on health. Nation of Islam leaders denounced soul foods as "slave foods," even though comedian Dick Gregory, who became a vegetarian in the '60s, termed it "death foods."

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Filmmaker Byron Hurt's documentary was inspired in aspect by the death of his father. He's shown with his mom, Frances Hurt (center), and sister, Taundra Harm.

Filmmaker Byron Hurt's documentary was inspired in element by the death of his father. He's shown with his mother, Frances Harm (center), and sister, Taundra Harm.

Hurt himself revamped his diet following a dalliance with Nation of Islam teachings. His rejection of pork, he recalls, hit his father difficult.

" Possibly he felt like that was me rejecting him, me rejecting black culture, me rejecting the food that he loved, you know?" he says in the film.

These days, plenty of individuals from vegan chef Bryant Terry to nutrition nonprofits like Oldways are producing much more overall health - conscious interpretations of traditional soul meals recipes. The PBS site provides up its own healthy takes on seven soul foods favorites.

But as Hurt notes, it would be overly simplistic to blame soul food for the rampant charges of obesity and diabetes in the African-American local community.

"We also have to shell out attention to more substantial concerns affecting our neighborhood : rapid food and processed food," he says.

"It is true that poor and working -class households who reside in communities that do not have access to very good supermarkets don't have access to good, top quality, healthful meals," he says. "And a lot of these poor supermarkets can be very easily observed in communities of colour. And that is a challenge."

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Film explores African-Americans' unhealthy 'soul food' habit Nation/World; CBS News; Politics; CBS ... doctors, activists and consumers for his new film "Soul Food Junkies," filmmaker Byron Hurt concluded that ... "My father went from being young and ... PBS to air documentary exploring the pleasures and perils of black ... Education Nation; Living. ... Read the rest of this story and see the trailer for Soul Food Junkies on EURWeb. Next Story: Film Soul Food Junkies Examines African American Cuisine and ... They understood the relationship of developing a Black nation and the ... As a woman in Soul Food Junkies put ... I realized that not being involved ... Soul Food Junkies - Photos and Press Kit - ITVS Byron Hurts Provocative Soul Food Junkies to ... Although hes been able to improve his diet and stay ... Minister Abdul Hafeez Muhammad of the Nation of ... Soul Food Junkies - 7:00 P.m. January 9 - Missouri History Museum ... Soul Food Junkies explores the significance and consequences of ... Here in Missouri we're accustomed to being considered a bellwether state ... Browse Voice Nation. Film explores love/hate relationship with soul food In the new documentary Soul Food Junkies, filmmaker Byron Hurt examines soul ... Nation of Islam Student Minister Abdul Hafeez ... Click Here Stay Connected! New York Times Runs Story on Soul Food Junkies! In Soul Food Junkies ... All over the nation, ... Economically we can save money on food expenses by planting some of our own food. Opinion: Sylvia's, like soul food, feels like home In America ... Its this memory of comfort," said activist Michaela Angela Davis during an interview in my documentary Soul Food Junkies. ... Despite soul food being ... Community Cinema: Soul Food Junkies San Diego Reader Soul Food Junkies explores the history and social significance of soul food to black cultural identity and its ... Cost: Free; Facebook; Twitter; ... STAY IN TOUCH; Alerts; Video Vault: Are You A Soul Food Junkie? New Doc Explores Food And ... Soul Food Junkies 2012 Trailer from Byron Hurt on Vimeo. Listen. ... Otherwise, you risk your comment not being approved. Foul language is discouraged.

Monsanto Lawyer Suggests New Standard For Suing Farmers

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To spray or not to spray? That may be the question on which Monsanto's arguments against farmers hangs.

To spray or not to spray? That may be the question on which Monsanto's arguments against farmers hangs.

For years, the biotech giant Monsanto has provoked outrage among its critics for suing farmers who save and replant seeds from the company's patented Roundup Ready crops, such as soybeans and canola.

Some of that outrage is based on a decade-old case in Canada, in which a court ruled that a farmer, Percy Schmeiser, violated Monsanto's patents by planting canola that he "knew or ought to have known" contained Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene. Schmeiser argued that he didn't want the gene in his fields, and that it had become incorporated into his canola via wind-blown pollen.

Monsanto won that case, but the company might have been better off losing because the victory has been a public relations disaster. Around the world, many people now believe, mistakenly, that Monsanto is suing farmers for growing patented seeds that wandered into their fields without the farmers' knowledge and against their will.

So it caught our attention last week when a lawyer representing Monsanto in federal court seemed to admit that suing Schmeiser had been a mistake that the company would not repeat.

The lawyer for Monsanto, Seth Waxman, was being questioned by Judge William Bryson, from the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit. In the case, a group of mostly organic farmers had hauled Monsanto into court, claiming that they are being damaged by the possibility that Monsanto might sue them. Bryson wanted to know what actions would convince Monsanto to sue a farmer, and Waxman came up with this:

"In the real world, Judge Bryson, the cases Monsanto brings are cases in which it has come to learn that the farmer is not purchasing any Roundup Ready seed, but is spraying his fields with Roundup, and the plants are surviving. If the farmer were not spraying, by definition he wouldn't be taking advantage of Monsanto's technology."

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A farmer holding Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybean seeds at his family farm in Bunceton, Mo.

A farmer holding Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybean seeds at his family farm in Bunceton, Mo.

Under Waxman's common-sense standard, Monsanto wouldn't have brought its case against Schmeiser. That's because in that case, the company did not produce any evidence that Schmeiser was taking advantage of Monsanto's technology by spraying his crop with Roundup.

We called several lawyers to see whether Waxman's statement in court had any legal standing and would prevent any Schmeiser-style lawsuits in the future. They tell us that Monsanto isn't bound by Waxman's words, because he's just a hired lawyer thinking on his feet in a courtroom, not a company executive.

The judges in this case, however, might conceivably take up this point in their eventual decision. If they follow Waxman's lead and write, for instance, that farmers don't infringe Monsanto's patents unless they are "taking advantage" of those genes and getting some benefit from them, it would be more significant. But Daniel Ravicher, who argued the case against Monsanto for the group of organic farmers, says even such an opinion wouldn't completely change the legal landscape, because other judges, in other courts, still could disagree.

Meanwhile, the battle continues. The U.S. Supreme Court is about to take up another high-profile Monsanto seed case involving patent infringement. Oral arguments are scheduled for February 19.

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Sandwich Monday: Country -Fried Bacon

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This essentially exists.

This really exists.

There are people who say "just simply because you can doesn't suggest you need to," and there are people who try out to react to that, but they can't, due to the fact their mouths are full of deep-fried bacon.

Robert, his daughter Talia, and I went to Weiner And Nonetheless Champion, a restaurant just north of Chicago, to try out some.

Talia: It's like they asked themselves "how do you make bacon additional unhealthy?" and then they did it.

Ian: It was this, or sharpen it into very little bacon blades and get started stabbin'.

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A search within.

A look inside.

The Country -Fried Bacon isn't the only intense meals on the menu. There is a burger with 9 patties and 11 slices of cheese known as "The 911." If you want, I am sure they will even fry up the menu itself for you and serve it with a side of mayonnaise.

Robert: It's clever how they mask this unhealthy bacon with this wholesome, deep-fried batter.

Talia: Oh, appear, there's wellbeing meals on the menu: deep-fried lettuce!

Ian: If they are prepared to do a tomato, also, I'd enjoy a DFB-DFL-DFT. With a Diet Coke.

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Robert's daughter Talia inspects the merchandise.

Robert's daughter Talia inspects the merchandise.

Robert: This restaurant is the place New Year's Resolutions go to die.

Ian: They really ought to put the calorie count up on the menu but making use of Scientific Notation is so difficult.

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Robert's heart has the same expression on its encounter.

Robert's heart has the similar expression on its encounter.

Robert: Just what country does nation -fried bacon come from? Obesia?

Ian: "Batter The Bacon" is the new "Gild The Lily."

[The verdict: entirely disgusting and definitely tasty. I would have imagined it was unattainable to include anything at all to bacon, but they've performed it.]

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Women With A Berry-Snacking Habit May Have Healthier Hearts

Regular consumption of blueberries, such as these found at Butler's Orchard in Maryland, may prevent heart attacks in middle-aged women.

When it comes to supernutritious foods, the blueberry has long had a health halo floating over it.

Going back to Colonial times when Native Americans and English settlers ground up blueberries and added them to porridge, in both dried and fresh forms, there have been hints of health-promoting effects.

In recent years, regular consumption of berries has been linked to better brain health and a decreased risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Now, a new study published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation suggests eating three servings per week of blueberries and strawberries helps cut the risk of heart attacks among some women.

"We showed for the first time that a regular intake of substances that are naturally present in red-, blue-colored fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of a heart attack by about 32 percent in young and middle-aged women [ages mid-40s to 60]," compared with women who ate berries once a month or less, says study author Aedin Cassidy of the University of East Anglia. The researchers found other fruits such as apples and pears were not associated with a decreased risk.

To study the relationship between berry consumption and heart disease, Cassidy and her collaborators at the Harvard School of Public Health analyzed findings from the Nurses Health Study 2 which includes more than 90,000 nurses in the U.S. Periodically over the past 18 years the nurses have reported details about their diets and lifestyles to researchers. At the same time, researchers have monitored the nurses' health to see which diseases they go on to develop, or not.

It's certainly not a perfect way to detect how certain foods may influence health, but it identifies important associations. Cassidy says the association between berry consumption and heart disease was strengthened when she and her collaborators controlled for other reasons that could have explained the finding.

"Even when we adjusted for things like fat intake, fiber intake, medication use, or body size, and for example, exercise, we still got these strong reductions in risk," Cassidy says.

So what's in blueberries that makes them so good for us? Researchers have pinpointed a class of plant compounds known as anthocyanins. These compounds give the red and blue color to everything from berries to eggplants to cherries. And when you eat a steady diet of them, they seem to have a number of positive health effects.

"They have effects on blood pressure in animal models," says Cassidy. And in lab experiments they're shown to exert anti-inflammatory effects, as well as help modulate nitroc oxide in the body, which could help arteries stay more elastic and flexible.

All of these effects could be beneficial, explains Robert Eckel, a preventive cardiologist at the University of Colorado. But he says it's important to point out that the women in this study weren't prime candidates for heart attacks anyway.

"Having a heart attack when you're a woman between ages of 45 and 60 is distinctly unusual," says Eckel.

Would the protective effect hold up for older women? Eckel says it's not clear.

"But nonetheless, for the first time I think we have some evidence that the intake of theses anthocyanins may have a protective effect."

So, go ahead. Load up on berries. And if they're out of season, like now, studies show frozen berries have similar levels of beneficial compounds.

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Cross-Culture Cilantro Sauce And Other Secrets Of 'Gran Cocina Latina'

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Presilla's Ecuadorian Spicy Onion and Tamarillo Salsa, made right in David Greene's kitchen.

Presilla's Ecuadorian Spicy Onion and Tamarillo Salsa, made right in David Greene's kitchen.

Chef and culinary historian Maricel Presilla owns two restaurants and has written many cookbooks. But her newest book, Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America, is her attempt to give fans a heaping helping of the many cultures she blends into her world.

"It's my whole life," she tells Morning Edition host David Greene. "There are recipes there of my childhood, things that I remember my family, my aunts doing. But also things that I learned as I started to travel Latin America."

Greene recently invited Presilla into his kitchen to whip up a batch of yuca fries with cilantro sauce, a dish served in many Cuban restaurants. The fries are authentic, but the now-common sauce isn't, Presilla says. "It's my recipe," she told Greene, created while she was a consultant for Victor's Cafe in the 1980s in New York and Miami.

Inspired by an Indian cilantro chutney, she created an aioli with garlic and cilantro to accompany yuca fries on the restaurant menu. "Everybody who tries that thinks it is a traditional Cuban recipe when, in reality, Cubans don't like cilantro that much," she says.

You don't often get yuca fries without the green stuff on the side these days at least not in the U.S.

As the pair prepared Presilla's famous sauce, Greene asked her about the value of sitting while cooking, something she calls the "Zen of the Latin kitchen."

Gran Cocina Latina

The Food of Latin America

by Maricel E. Presilla

Hardcover, 901 pages purchase

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Presilla says chores like making tamales or grating coconut don't require standing up. "So you can sit down. You can even lie down in a hammock." (We'd like to see that one!)

She writes in her book that this Zen comes in part from the time when the floor was the chief work space for cooks, but it can also be "a realistic way of coping with the time-consuming demands of artisanal Latin cuisines." That leisurely way of cooking can even be seen in some restaurants. Presilla visited one in Cartagena, Colombia, and found the female cooks sitting at a large table and chatting as they grated coconut.

But she does stand while she chops onions "because we're doing something with a knife."

She and Greene also work on a recipe she discovered in Ecuador, a spicy onion and tamarillo salsa that is call aj, or "pepper," in the town of Cuenca. The dish calls for sliced onions, but when Presilla was visiting a friend's mother, a woman well-versed in traditional Cuenca food, she discovered she was doing it wrong.

In her book, Presilla writes that she had been slivering the onion finely but was told "they should be good and thick, a style popularized in Cuenca by a woman who owned a successful shop called La Gorda de los Sandwiches," which translates as "the fat woman of the sandwiches."

To write her encyclopedic tome, Presilla traveled across Latin America. "I went looking for housewives and street vendors and just regular home cooks," she tells Greene.

And she found a cuisine that is quickly changing. "There's creativity and there's new classics being created every day," she says. And in the U.S., "all Latin cultures are coming together," she notes. "It's really unavoidable that sooner or later you're going to start learning from your neighbor."

But the differences between cuisines aren't as large as some might assume, Presilla says. "If you look at the sofrito, the cooking sauce that is the foundation of our cooking, well, the woman from Cartagena gets a grater, and she grates the onions. While in Cuba, we chop everything finely. And in Puerto Rico, well, she would put everything in a blender," she says. "But in the end, we all have the same elements of culture."

"If you look at the origin of the majority of these things...you realize that they all go back to medieval Spain," she says. "It's a common DNA."

Recipes adapted from Gran Cocina Latina

Ecuadorian Spicy Onion And Tamarillo Salsa

Ecuadorian highlanders make table sauces and cebiches with the yellow tamarillo, an Andean fruit they call tomate de arbol, or tree tomato. They usually reserve the red variety, which reaches them from Colombia, for dessert.

Makes 4 cups

4 fresh or frozen tamarillos (about 1 pound), preferably yellow

1 large red onion (12 ounces), halved and cut lengthwise into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices

1 tablespoon salt

Juice of 2-3 large limes (about 1/2 cup)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil, preferably extra-virgin olive oil

2 Ecuadorian hot peppers, or serrano or cayenne peppers, seeded, deveined and finely chopped

1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro

Salt to taste

Cut a small cross on the tip of each tamarillo. In a medium saucepan, bring 1 quart water to a boil. Add the tamarillos and cook for one minute for fresh tamarillos, 10 minutes for frozen. Drain. Peel the tamarillos and coarsely mash with a fork. You should have about 1 1/4 cups. Set aside.

Place the onion and salt in a medium bowl. Add tap water to cover, stir and allow the onion to stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally with your hands.

Place the onion in a colander, rinse under cold running water and drain thoroughly. Place in a medium bowl, toss with the lime juice, and let stand for 5 minutes. Stir in the tamarillo pulp, along with the rest of the ingredients. Serve at room temperature.

Yuca Fingers With Cilantro Sauce Presilla

I never imagined that my yuca fries with cilantro sauce would become as popular as they have. The result of my curious exploration of Latin tubers and dipping sauces in the early 1980s, the pairing is now served in Cuban restaurants all over the United States.

Serves 6-8

3 pounds fresh yuca, peeled and cut into 5-inch chunks, or 2 pounds frozen yuca

Corn oil or light olive oil for deep-frying

Salt

Boil the yuca in 3 quarts of water with salt in a 4-quart saucepan. Reduce heat to medium and cook at a gentle boil until soft but not falling apart, about 30 minutes. Drain in a colander and let cool.

Cut the yuca lengthwise into 3- to 5-inch-long fingers about an inch thick, like french fries. Line a baking sheet with waxed paper and arrange the yuca fingers on it in a single layer. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or waxed paper and refrigerate until chilled and firm, preferably overnight. (The yuca can be refrigerated for 2 to 3 days before frying.)

Heat the oil to 350 degrees Fahrenheit in a large saucepan or deep skillet over medium heat. Working in batches, add the yuca fingers a few at a time to the hot oil and turn until lightly golden on all sides. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt. Serve at once with Creamy Cilantro Sauce Presilla (recipe follows).

Creamy Cilantro Sauce Presilla

Yield 2 cups

2 cups mayonnaise

4 garlic cloves, peeled

1/2 cup well-packed cilantro leaves, washed and dried

1 serrano or jalapeno pepper, seeded, deveined and coarsely chopped

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/3 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

Juice of 1 lime (about 2 tablespoons)

Salt to taste

Place the mayonnaise in a blender or food processor. Add the garlic, cilantro, hot pepper, cumin, allspice and oregano. Process until smooth and velvety. Season with the lime juice and salt to taste. (You may need less salt if you use prepared mayonnaise.)

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