Eat Out Eat Well

calorie tips

Let A Baseball Be Your Guide

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It’s awfully hard to gauge how much food you’re putting on your plate – and even more difficult to figure out how much you’re popping into your mouth when you eat directly from a multi-serving bag of food.

Portion size is critical to managing your weight.  One helpful idea is to use commonplace objects as visual guides to “guesstimate” portion sizes.

One Cup Is About The Size Of A Baseball

The suggested serving size for many food items, particularly produce, is a cup. (The suggested portion size for many denser items, like pasta, rice, or ice cream is a half a cup, so two servings – which is what, at least, most of us eat, would equal a cup.)

 A Baseball, Not A Softball

A cup is about the size of a baseball – a baseball, not a softball.  So a cup of cooked greens, a cup of yogurt, a cup of beans, or a cup of cantaloupe should all look like the size of a baseball – but with obviously different calorie counts due to the food’s individual differences in food density and energy (calories).

Here are a few more of the CDC’s examples of one-cup servings:

  • 1 small apple
  • 1 medium grapefruit
  • 1 large orange
  • 1 medium pear
  • 8 large strawberries
  • 1 large bell pepper
  • 1 medium potato
  • 2 large stalks of celery
  • 12 baby carrots or 2 medium carrots
  • 1 large ear of corn

 

Want To Burn More Calories? Stand Up!

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Stand up.

If you can, do it as much as possible.

According to Stand Up (more) & Eat (better), The Cooper Institute’s blog, you burn 33% more calories by standing instead of sitting.

What are you waiting for?

 

 

Is There A Daily Limit For Added Sugar?

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The American Heart Association recommends that not more than half of your daily discretionary calorie allowance come from added sugars.

What’s Daily Discretionary Calorie Allowance?

Daily discretionary calorie allowance means the number of calories you have left to use after you meet your nutrient needs without exceeding your energy needs.

In other words, they are the calories that you can use up eating various foods after you’ve eaten enough to meet your body’s nutrition needs — but not so many that they would contribute to weight gain.

Not More Than Half

Discretionary calories can come from any source of calories (protein, fat, carbohydrates, alcohol).  The American Heart Association recommends that no more than half of your daily discretionary calories come from added sugars.

For most American women that’s no more than 100 calories a day, or about about 6 teaspoons of sugar.   For men, that’s no more than 150 calories a day, or about 9 teaspoons of sugar.

Have You Seen The Term “Added Sugar”? What Does It Mean?

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The sugars that you eat can occur naturally or be added. Natural sugars are found naturally in the food — like fructose in fruit and lactose in milk.  Added sugars are the many kinds of sugar and syrup – including sweeteners like honey, agave, and maple syrup, for example — that are added into food at the table or during the food’s preparation or processing.

Common Sources Of Added Sugars

Some sources are obvious – others require a bit of checking of the ingredients label.  The same food item from different companies may have varying amounts of added sugar.  Here are some examples of foods that usually have added sugar:

  •  Regular soft drinks
  • Sugar; syrups (do you put maple syrup on your pancakes?); and candy
  • Cakes; cookies; pies; donuts; pastries; breakfast and snack bars
  • Fruit drinks like fruitades and fruit punch; sweetened teas, sports drinks, and flavored water
  • Dairy desserts and milk products like ice cream; sweetened yogurt; pudding; and flavored milk
  • Many cereals; toast with jelly/jam; and many breads — both home made “quick breads” and store-bought sliced breads
  • Sweeteners added to coffee, tea, cereal; canned fruit

How Many Teaspoons Of Sugar Are In Raisins?

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Who hasn’t grabbed one of those small red boxes of raisins?  They’re a great portable snack – or are they?

Raisins are dried grapes.  The good news is that raisins are very low in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. They’re about 3.5% dietary fiber and 3% protein by weight.

The bad news is that a large portion of the calories in raisins comes from sugars.  By weight raisins range from about 67% to 72% sugars – mostly glucose and fructose.

Nutrition Info

A teeny mini box of raisins (.5 oz) has 42 calories, 0g fat, 11g carbs, and 0g protein.  This is the carb equivalent of about a little under 3 teaspoons of sugar.

A small box (1.5 oz) has 129 calories, 0g fat, 34g carbs, 1g protein.  This is the carb equivalent of around 8 and ½ teaspoons of sugar.

One serving of California raisins is ¼ cup and 130 calories and contains less than 2% of the Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) of Vitamins A and C and traces of thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic, Vitamin B6, folate, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, and 81mg of iron.

Think About This

Raisins have a lot of good things going for them – but they’re very high in sugar.

Think of it this way: one teaspoon of granulated sugar equals 4 grams of sugar; 4 teaspoons of granulated sugar is equal to 16 grams of sugar; 8 teaspoons of sugar is equal to about 32 grams of sugar.

If you’re grabbing handfuls of raisins from the container to eat as a snack – or dumping an equally large handful on your cereal — you may be adding a lot more sugar and calories than you realize.