nasty & divisive - America's next superfood

It's polarizing. It fuels passion. You like it or you hate it. There is no middle ground. If the President nominated it for his cabinet, its confirmation hearing would last a minimum of 6 weeks. Maybe it's time to take another look at cottage cheese.

Time sensitive knowledge that you can drop this week.

Here's a short list of notable Presidents & their favorite foods:

1. Barrack Obama: nachos & chili

2. George W. Bush: cheeseburger pizza

3. Bill Clinton: jalapeno cheeseburgers

4. George H. Bush: pork rinds with tabasco

5. Ronald Reagan: jelly beans

6. Jimmy Carter: grits

7. Richard Nixon: cottage cheese & ketchup

8. JFK: Boston clam chowder

9. FDR: grilled cheese (And that's why he served longer than any other President! Also FDR was kind of a culinary gangster. He once served the king and the queen of Brexit yum dogs. Yum dogs are hotdogs wrapped in bacon. I'm vegetarian, but I applaud that move!)

1o. Abraham Lincoln: gingerbread cookies

11. James A. Garfield & William Henry Harrison: squirrel

12. Thomas Jefferson: waffles (As our foreign minister to France, TJ visited Holland & fell in love with waffles and macaroni & cheese. He returned to the United States with 4 waffle presses. It's not a stretch to say that Jefferson is the American father of the Dutch waffle.)

13. John Adams: a tankyard (about a pint?) of hard cider every day

What's so super about superfoods?

First & foremost superfoods must taste good. There are far too many superfoods. Focus only on the ones that titillate your taste buds. Here's the tasty test. Superfoods are delicious all by themselves. They don't need to be enhanced. They don't need a partner. Peanut butter don't need no jelly. It's a crying shame, but any food that is too sugary, too salty or too fatty doesn't make the superfoods list. When you think superfoods, the first word that comes to mind is nutritious.

Third superfoods can be found in almost any supermarket. Where am I supposed to find Adzuki beans? Fourth superfoods are relatively cheap. Fifth & absolutely essential superfoods are super fast requiring zero to minimal preparation time. Calories are not a part of the superfood criteria because I want nuts, avocados & other high calorie super healthy foods on my team every day of the week.

There is nothing cheesy about cottage cheese.

Cottage cheese has been around since the 1800's. Folk back then used whatever milk was left in the "cottage" to make cottage cheese. This is how cottage cheese became America's favorite bastardized cheese. I have this picture of 19th century people washing down their cottage cheese with moonshine. There's a fierce historical debate as to whether Miss Muffet was eating cottage cheese: "Little Miss Muffet, Sat on her tuffet, Eating her curds and whey."

It's all about the protein.

Cottage cheese consists of 2 proteins: casein & whey. Casein is the curdled part. Whey is the runny stuff. Your body digests casein slowly providing you a long steady release of energy. You stay sated. You stick to your nutrition plan. Whey is digested faster. You get a more immediate release of energy. This comes in handy after a workout.

You need to replace water, carbs & protein after a strenuous workout. 1 cup of cottage cheese packs a huge protein punch. Depending on how much fat the cottage cheese contains, you get around 30 grams of protein! That's more than Greek yogurt. Even better 1 cup of cottage cheese contains around a paltry 150 calories. Finally cottage cheese has lots of calcium, potassium, magnesium & vitamin b12. It doesn't contain too much sugar or salt too.

I don't know why it took me so long to get on board the cottage cheese supernova, but I'm super happy that I took the plunge. My zero fat cottage cheese screams "please!" every time I open my refrigerator. Thanks for reading & cross your fingers.