Set for summer

Toronto interior designer, blogger and TV design expert Michelle Mawby believes Canadian summers are too short not to make the most of them while you can. She has a host of suggestions for blurring the boundary between indoors and out now that the weather is warm.

Bringing the Indoors Out

Outdoor entertaining has moved beyond melamine plates and plastic glasses to become as elegant as dining indoors. Ditch the patio furniture and buy an elegant dining room table (new or tag sale; it’s up to you), and weatherproof it with a coat of transparent epoxy or marine paint. (Ms. Mawby protects her “repurposed” Chippendale-style table with a sturdy cover, and leaves it out all winter.) You can buy quite elegant outdoor serving pieces and linens to set your table, but there’s no reason you can’t use good (or even everyday) china, crystal and napkins for meals in the garden — after all, the Victorians did.

Great lighting helps to create an inviting setting for summer evenings. Install accent lights in trees, and place solar or electric-powered lights along the garden path for a soft glow. For the table, use hurricane lamps or attractive votive candleholders; one company, Kichler, makes outdoor LED table lamps that are as attractive as anything you’d use inside. Or hang classic paper lanterns — Pier One sells plastic ones with built-in LEDs that look like the real thing, but are much less fragile.

Strings of LED lights aren’t just for Christmas. You can get all kinds of novelty (or elegant) shapes, ranging from dragonflies to chili peppers, that provide a nostalgic, summery glow. Or just use regular Christmas-style strings of white or cream lights, festooned along the fence or in your shrubs; or if you have enough, wrap them around the trunks of your garden trees, like restaurants do.

For seating, director’s chairs can be dressed up at relatively low cost by replacing the standard canvas seats and backs with sturdy, summer-patterned outdoor fabrics. There are amazing outdoor fabrics nowadays from high-end houses like Robert Allen, Lee Jofa and Schumacher. (Ms. Mawby is so enamoured of one pattern, by fashion designer Trina Turk, she’s bought it in several colourways and is thinking of using it indoors as well.) Along with florals, awning stripes and other summer staples, opulent alternatives such as paisleys and medallions add a contemporary, elegant look.

Renew tired outdoor furniture with a new coat of paint and new (or reupholstered) cushions. Metal furniture can be painted or sprayed with rust paint in a choice of bright colours; wicker furniture can be spray-painted, or painted with a brush. Other types of wood furniture, such as teak, can be cleaned and rejuvenated with tung oil.
If you are blessed with a back porch, give it a cabana feeling with curtains on three sides, hung on rods attached under the eaves of the porch; have them made to measure by a drapery company, buy ready-mades from a home store, or sew them up yourself out of heavy cotton or linen.

Bringing the Outdoors In

Just as outdoor living is becoming more elegant, make the most of summer living by bringing the outdoor feeling inside. Summer is a time to lighten and brighten, Ms. Mawby says, so look for every way you can to make your rooms look clear, clean and uncluttered.

That might mean starting by going through your home and “editing” accessories and bric-a-brac. “Too much is too much,” she laughs. For example, instead of a piano covered with framed photographs, remove all but one or two, or replace them with a vase of fresh flowers (protect the surface of the piano with an artfully draped shawl or length of summer fabric, if you like). Replace heavy accessories with displays of natural objects such as seashells, coral, pinecones or a beautiful piece of driftwood.

Put away heavy rugs and replace with light, summer-weight ones, or leave your floors bare, if they are beautiful. If you have a combination of heavy draperies and sheers on your windows, take down the outer draperies and leave the sheers in place to let in the sun. Replace woolen pillows and throws with lightweight cotton ones in light or bright colours.

“Scent is a great way to stimulate the senses and add atmosphere,” she says. “I have a lampe-Berger in every room (an air purifier invented in Paris in the 1900s that uses a simple chemical process to scent and clean the air); it’s a lovely old-fashioned remedy that still works.” Alternatively, fill your rooms with fresh-cut flowers or scented candles.

Consider moving your artwork around; you’ll find that even a painting you’ve owned and loved for years takes on a surprising new look when you hang it in a different setting. Simply rearranging your furniture to take advantage of morning sun or afternoon breezes can have the same effect.

Finally, it’s a great time to spruce up the front of your house. Change the arrangements in your urns or planters to summery flowers such as petunias (modern varieties will keep blooming profusely until frost), bright geraniums or thick, healthy-looking ferns. Buy a few hanging planters from the garden or grocery store, to provide a welcome burst of colour, and sometimes fragrance, for visitors. Consider painting your front door a fresh new colour as well; that’s one of those home-improvement jobs that, for about one long summer’s afternoon worth of effort, make a huge difference to the look of your home.

Challenging the acai berry

If you keep even a half-hearted eye on nutrition these days, no doubt you have heard the buzz about acai berries. Pronounced a-sigh-EE, this Brazilian fruit is often touted as one of the so-called superfoods of our time. But, as we learned in last week’s column on goji berries, the hype surrounding these exotic foods doesn’t always match the evidence. So, in the interests of fairness, let’s take a look at the buzz versus the bottom line for this popular berry.

The hype

Acai berries reached the North American market in the mid-2000’s amid a flurry of claims that its juice, as well as extracts made from the berry, were helpful for weight loss, detoxification and overall health. Before long, the berry had made its way to Oprah and Dr. Oz, with abundant claims surrounding its antioxidant capacities. A star, it would seem, had been born.

As a result of the hype, acai products also started showing up in numerous ads, mostly online, purporting that supplements containing acai extract could be used to support dramatic weight loss. So-called “free” trials of acai pills turned sour for many consumers, however, leading the U.S.-based Better Business Bureau to issue a warning regarding online companies selling acai for weight-loss purposes.

The evidence

Much of acai’s claims have surrounded its supposedly high anti-oxidant content. As the theory goes, our daily exposure to pollutants, chemicals, or just plain age, induces oxidative damage to our cells, leaving us older and sicker over time. According to the prevailing wisdom, this oxidative damage can be reversed, or at least held at bay, by consuming foods rich in anti-oxidants. The downstream effects could include cancer protection, cardiovascular health, or anti-aging benefits. While the concept of anti-oxidants has been around for ages, the truth is that we don’t actually know for sure that anti-oxidants help fight disease. While food sources of anti-oxidants seem beneficial to our health — possibly for reasons more complex than just anti-oxidants, the research on anti-oxidant supplements (which includes the likes of vitamin E, vitamin C and selenium) simply has not panned out.

Enter acai, which claims to be antioxidant-rich, as measured using something called the oxygen radical absorbance capacity, or ORAC, score. In theory, ORAC allows one food to be compared directly against another, with the assumption being that the food with the highest ORAC would have the greatest potential to fight disease. In reality, there is little evidence to link ORAC scores with actual health measures or disease risk. Moreover, in a study of various fruit juices published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, UCLA-based researchers found that, when it came various measures of anti-oxidant status, including ORAC, acai juice actually fell somewhere in the middle, ahead of cranberry, orange, and apple juices, but behind pomegranate juice, concord grape juice, and yes — even red wine.

The reality

According a handful of studies — mostly industry-funded — acai juice has shown some potential when it comes to preventing oxidative damage to cholesterol and other lipids, which may have downstream benefits for heart disease risk. Otherwise, the rest of the data is either from rodent studies, or is indirect enough (i.e. anti-oxidant levels in the bloodstream) that it can only be loosely tied to health or disease risk.

The bottom line

What to make of all of the acai believers who claim to have seen their health change for the better after drinking a few hundred dollars worth of the juice per month? It’s likely that you are seeing a combination of a few real health benefits, along with the power of self-healing. Based on what we know for now, acai does have potential health benefits, but we don’t have reason to believe these benefits are any more profound than the numerous other fruits and vegetables on the market — at a fraction of the cost.

Jennifer Sygo is a dietitian in private practice at Cleveland Clinic Canada, which offers executive physicals and personal health care management in Toronto.
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