Eat Out Eat Well

Too Few Veggies — You’re Not Alone!

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Despite a couple of years of public health initiatives, an explosion in farmers markets, bagged salads, and a White House garden, Americans still don’t eat enough vegetables.

Only 23% of meals include a vegetable (fries don’t count but lettuce on a burger does) and only 17% of dinners prepared at home include a salad (down from 22% in 1994).  Salads ordered as a main course at either lunch or dinner in restaurants dropped to 5% (10% in 1989).

Only 26% of America’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day (not including French fries) according to a study recently released by the CDC, way short of the government’s health objectives set a decade ago, and less than half of what public health officials had hoped.

2010 Dietary Guidelines

The just released 2010 Dietary Guidelines (yes, 2010 released in 2011) recommends that as part of a healthy eating pattern we should increase the amount of vegetables and fruit we eat.

That means filling half your plate with fruit and vegetables.  They should be colorful and include a variety of dark green, red, and orange veggies, including beans and peas.

Give Me A Reason I Should Eat More Veggies

Vegetable haters might ask, “Why should I”? There are some really good reasons:

  • They’re low in calories
  • They’re rich in the nutrients we often lack (folate, magnesium, dietary fiber, Vitamins A, C, and K)
  • They may help prevent some chronic diseases
  • They’re linked to lower risks for heart attacks, strokes, and some kinds of cancers.

Why We Don’t Eat Them

Just telling people to eat more vegetables obviously isn’t working. People know veggies are good for you but lots of us don’t want to admit that we don’t eat them or even like them.

Honestly, veggies can be a lot of work. How often do you get home, open your fridge, look at the veggies (if they’re in there) and just admit you’re too tired to cook them?  Cooking fresh stuff does require time and a commitment. And, unfortunately, poorly cooked vegetables can taste terrible – and, especially for out of season or organic, can be costly.  We basically want low cost, tasty, and convenient.

What To Do

  • Change your mindset.  Eating vegetables needs to become a habit – the go to, the default, instead of chips, or cookies, or fries.
  • Think visually:  make one half of your plate a color palate of vegetables.
  • Don’t be intimidated by them.  Learn about them and how to cook them.
  • Experiment with ways to make them taste good (hold off on gobs of butter, cheese, and cream, however, or you’re somewhat defeating your total healthy diet purpose). Try cooking with herbs, broth, and big flavor producers like onions, garlic, and peppers.
  • Check out the way the food industry is making vegetables easier:  fresh cut up vegetables ready to cook; already prepared vegetables to take-out; washed and bagged salad varieties; frozen vegetables ready to pop into the microwave.
  • Expose children’s palates to vegetables.  Make them the norm.  Students who gardened in Berkeley’s “edible schoolyard” program ate one and a half more servings of fruits and vegetables a day than kids who weren’t in the program.
  • Work to make vegetables more affordable and available.  Support farmers’ markets (some markets allow food stamps to be used), rooftop and urban gardens. Get fresh veggies into schools.
  • Plant your own garden or just a pot on the stoop or windowsill.
  • Do what you can to make vegetables an easy choice.

Is Your Wheat Bread Whole Grain?

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Confused?  You’re not alone.  “How do I tell if it’s whole grain?” is a question I get asked all of the time. Whole grains are the place we really fall short.  According to the government’s new dietary guidelines, the average American is getting, on average, only about 15% of the amount that we need.

According to the FDA, whole grains are “cereal grains that consist of the intact and unrefined, ground, cracked or flaked fruit of the grains whose principal components — the starchy endosperm, germ and bran — are present in the same relative proportions as they exist in the intact grain.” Examples include barley, buckwheat, bulgur, corn, millet, rice, rye, oats, sorghum, wheat and wild rice.

Got that???  In other words, whole grains are intact grains: they haven’t had their bran and germ removed through the milling process. This makes them good sources of fiber and keeps the naturally occurring vitamins and minerals from being removed.

What Is Refined Grain and Flour?

Refined grains have been processed to remove the bran and germ.  Flour made from refined grains produces baked goods with a softer texture and a longer shelf life.  But fiber, iron, vitamins, and minerals have also been removed during the milling process.

White flour, which is made from a refined grain, has had both the bran and germ removed. To make it enriched flour, which you find quite frequently, nutrients are added back in to make up for the ones lost in processing.  The amount of nutrients are regulated by the FDA.  Because flour is enriched does not mean that it is whole grain.

How To Tell If Your Bread Is Whole Grain

  • Always check the ingredients label, not just the front of the package
  • Look for the word “whole” as in “whole grain,” “whole meal,” or “100% whole wheat”
  • Check that whole grains are included in the first items in the ingredient list
  • Aim for products with at least 3 grams of dietary fiber per serving
  • Descriptive words like stone-ground, multi-grain, 100% wheat, or added bran don’t necessarily mean whole grain

Obesity Spreads Through Social Ties

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Take a good look around you – at your family and friends.  Do the bulk of them seem to be overflowing their chairs?

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (N Engl J Med 2007;357:370-9)  seems to indicate that if you’re struggling with your weight, there is a good chance that your friends and family are, too.

Using data collected over 22 years from a “densely interconnected social network” of 12,067 people who took part in the Framingham Heart Study, the researchers found identifiable clusters of obese people, determined by a body mass index ≥30, present in the study’s network at all times.  The clusters and the risk of obesity extended to three degrees of separation.

Here’s what they found:

  • A person’s chance of becoming obese increases by 57% if he or she has a friend who becomes obese. In a mutual friendship, the person’s risk of obesity increases by 171% if the friend becomes obese.
  • Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling becomes obese the chance that the other becoming obese increases by 40%.  This is more prevalent among siblings of the same sex (55%) than among siblings of the opposite sex (27%).  Among brothers, the chance of becoming obese increases by 44% if a brother becomes obese, and among sisters there’s a 67% increased risk if a sister becomes obese. Obesity in a sibling of the opposite sex doesn’t seem to affect the obesity risk of the other one.
  • Among married couples, when one spouse is obese the other is 37% more likely to become obese. Husbands and wives appear to affect each other similarly (44% and 37%, respectively).
  • Neighbors in the immediate geographic location don’t seem to have an effect on a person’s obesity.
  • Pairs of friends and siblings of the same sex seem to have more influence on the weight gain of each other than pairs of friends and siblings of the opposite sex. In same sex friendships, the probability of obesity in one person increases by 71% if the friend becomes obese.  For friends of the opposite sex there’s no significant association.  In same sex friendships, a man has a 100% increased chance of becoming obese if his male friend becomes obese.  For female friends, the spread of obesity is a non-statistically significant 38%.

As the researchers conclude, “obesity appears to spread through social ties.” Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Love Eggs? Worried About Cholesterol? Some News!

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Cholesterol. We all have it in our bodies. It’s used to form cell membranes, some hormones, and for other functions. But, too high a level in your blood can be a major risk factor for coronary heart disease.

You get cholesterol in two ways. Your body (mainly your liver) usually makes about 1,000 milligrams a day. You also get it by eating certain foods that contain cholesterol. Animal foods — especially egg yolks, meat, poultry, shellfish, and whole and reduced fat dairy products — contain it. Plant foods don’t.

Your body can usually make all the cholesterol it needs so it’s not necessary to eat it (the liver helps remove some of the excess). Still, the average American man consumes about 337 milligrams of cholesterol daily; the average woman, 217 milligrams.

The American Heart Association recommends limiting your average daily cholesterol intake to less than 300 milligrams; less than 200 milligrams If you have heart disease.

Eggs Used To Be Cholesterol No-Nos

New nutrition data from the USDA’s research service shows that eggs are lower in cholesterol than when they were last analyzed in 2002. The average amount of cholesterol in one large egg is 185 mg, or 14 % less. Vitamin D levels have increased 64% with a large egg containing 41 International Units (IU). Some things have stayed the same:  each large egg is 70 calories and has 6 grams of protein, or 12% of the Recommended Daily Value (RDA).

You can keep within the cholesterol guidelines even eating an egg a day, especially if you choose other low cholesterol foods. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest that eating one whole egg per day does not result in increased blood cholesterol levels but they, too, recommend consuming, on average, less than 300 mg of cholesterol per day.

Why The Change In The Incredible Edible Egg?

Researchers are speculating that it is probably because of changes in the hens’ feed. Hens are now being fed a high quality, nutritionally balanced diet of mostly corn, soybean meal, vitamins and minerals. Research is being done to check this out.

You should start seeing revised nutrition information on egg cartons soon.

Use By, Sell By, Expires By: What Do These Actually Mean?

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You might be used to looking for expiration dates on dairy produces, eggs, and meat.  But it seems like just about everything in the supermarket is now stamped with some kind of date.

I tend not to like food that wiggles but others in my family get their own selection of Technicolor wiggle food, so I checked a Jello container lurking in my fridge for some kind of date.  There it was:  Expires by ___.  Whoops – been in the fridge a little too long – or has it?

What Do The Dates Mean?

According to Weill Cornell’s Food & Fitness Advisor (2/2011), the descriptive terms refer more to the quality than the safety of the food.

  • Sell by date:  how long a store can sell a product
  • Best if used by date:  when the food should be eaten by for the best quality or flavor
  • Use by date:  the last date to use the product for it to be at its peak quality (a lot of food is still safe to eat after this date)
  • Expiration date:  There’s no absolute date that guarantees a food is safe before the stamped date – or that the food is playing house to harmful bacteria after the listed date.

Common Sense, Eyes, Nose, And Mouth

If you want to decrease your risk of a food borne disease from food gone “bad,”  use common sense, and your senses: sight, taste, and smell.

  • Look at it.  If you open a container and there’s black or blue green mold even though it doesn’t expire for three weeks – get rid of it.
  • Smell it.  If it stinks, you might think about doing the same (foods that are supposed to stink – like certain cheeses – require observation other than through the nose!).
  • Taste it.  If it’s supposed to be okay but tastes foul, toss it.  How many times have you poured milk from a not yet expired container only to have it come out in clumps.  Or, worse yet, tasted not yet expired milk only to gag and spit?

Bottom line:  Use the dates as guides both when shopping and consuming, but use your judgment, too.  If you question the safety of the food, toss it.

“When in doubt, throw it out!”  Good advice for any food:  store bought, take-out, or prepared at home.