Here’s what it is:   the CDC defines a food desert as an area “that lack(s) access to affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, and other foods that make up the full range of a healthy diet.”

How Does A Food Desert Affect Health?

It would seem pretty obvious that if there isn’t a readily available supply of good food for people to buy and eat then they won’t eat healthy food.

But here’s the problem:  many food deserts may not have a lot of affordable healthy food choices available, but they may have readily available and inexpensive fast food choices.

The CDC indicates that some researchers think a link exists between having easy access to affordable healthy foods and the consumption of those foods. But other studies show that even when healthier food options are available in food deserts, many people continue to make unhealthy choices based on their own personal preferences — or put more simply — because they want to.

Food Choices May Be Unrelated To The Availability Of Healthy Food

A study of 5,115 people,  just published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, looked at fast food and fruit and vegetable consumption compared to the availability of fast food restaurants and groceries.  The researchers found that in “food deserts,” where fast food is readily available and there are few or no supermarkets, the local population is drawn to the fast food. But even where there are supermarkets and groceries the food choices the locals make don’t seem to be based on healthy eating.

The results showed that in low-income areas, particularly among men living within one to two miles of a fast food restaurant, there’s a strong association between the availability of fast food and how much of it they consumed. But, they also found that there was no strong association between living near a supermarket and eating more fruits or vegetables.

Are Supermarkets Important?

The lead researcher says that it isn’t enough to expect that building supermarkets will make people shop for healthy foods in them.  She thinks that healthy foods need to be promoted and affordable and that people also need to be taught that there are better and healthier food choices available in fast food restaurants, too.  If someone chooses to go to a fast food restaurant they should have the option to find and choose food items that are “relatively more healthy as opposed to less healthy.”

However, just because there might not be a strong association between food choices and supermarkets doesn’t mean that markets aren’t important.  It might be that the market may not be stocked with an abundance of healthy food choices or that the healthier options are expensive and crowded out by an overwhelming array of unhealthier options.

What Is Important?

It’s not enough to just teach people what’s healthy and how to make healthy choices. The food environment is crucial and needs to support making healthy food choices easy, attractive, affordable (competitive with the “cheap” calories of fast food), and the cool choices to make.   Just like the oasis in the sandy dessert, there needs to be a welcoming oasis of healthy food choices in the “food deserts.”

The post What’s A Food Desert – And What Happens There? appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

The Study

The study looked at the “health halo effect” of whether food products labeled “organic” were perceived as more nutritious and  better tasting than conventionally produced products.

144 volunteers compared what they thought were conventionally and organically produced chocolate sandwich cookies, plain yogurt, and potato chips. Everything was actually organic, but the products were labeled as either “regular” or “organic.”

They participants ranked them on taste, estimated the caloric content, and indicated what they would pay for each product.

What They Found

The results showed that organic foods fall under a “health halo” and that having supposedly healthy food – in this case the food labeled organic — within a meal, can lead to misjudging the entire meal as being healthier and lower in calories.

The participants in the study:

• preferred almost all the taste characteristics of foods labeled “organic” even though the “regular” food was exactly the same.

• thought the food labeled “organic” was lower in fat, higher in fiber, significantly lower in calories, and worth more money.

• thought the chips and cookies labeled “organic” were more nutritious than the ones they thought were not organic.

What Does Organic Really Mean?

“Organic produce and other ingredients are grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation. Animals that produce meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products do not take antibiotics or growth hormones.”

According to the USDA:

• “100% Organic” products are made with 100% organic ingredients

• “Organic” products are made with at least 95% organic ingredients

• Products labeled “Made With Organic Ingredients” have a minimum of 70% organic ingredients (with strict restrictions on the other 30%)

• Products with less than 70% organic ingredients can list organic ingredients on their side panel but not on the front

The post Don’t Let An “Organic” Label Pull The Wool Over Your Eyes appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

Info You Can Use About Hunger

• Hunger is somewhat unpredictable.  Your actual hunger levels are not the same every day and can be affected by what your body needs and does — like activity, hormone levels, sickness, and other things.

• Hunger doesn’t necessarily follow a time schedule.  You can adjust the types and amounts of your meals and snacks to influence the next time you will be hungry.  Eating just because the hands of the clock are at noon or 6PM – even though you’re not hungry – can lead to weight gain and unhealthy eating habits.

• What you eat affects your hunger level.  Carbs, fat, and protein are digested at different rates.  Simple, refined carbs like soda and candy are digested rapidly. They give you quick energy from a surge in your blood sugar – which is followed by a rapid drop in your energy.  Protein foods give you the most sustained blood sugar levels and satiety without the blood sugar spikes.  Eating food that has a balance of nutrients is probably the best way to satisfy your hunger, keep you feeling fuller longer, and give your body the fuel it needs.

• How much you ate at your last meal affects you hunger levels since larger meals take longer to digest.  Haven’t you ever eaten so much for dinner that you’re not hungry until lunch the next day?

• You can put off eating for a while –occasionally ignoring your hunger won’t cause a long-term or significant drop in your metabolism. If you do postpone your hunger the urge to eat will come back and may be stronger when it does return.

• Your stomach is about the size of your fist and can be filled by a palm full of food.  Of course, since your stomach is a muscle, it can also stretch.  When you stretch it out by putting in too much food you probably don’t feel so great (like overly stuffed at Thanksgiving).  When you eat small meals you’ll get hungry more often and perhaps fuel your body more efficiently.  This is the rationale for 5 or 6 small meals a day rather than two or three larger ones.

• Your body is smart.  Have you noticed that sometimes you are hungry for a specific food?  It might be your body’s way of letting you know that it needs a particular nutrient.  Careful:  sometimes that hunger is head or emotional hunger that popped up because you just passed a bakery and the smell of just-baked chocolate chip cookies is acting like a trigger!

• All kinds of foods can play a role in satisfying your hunger. Labeling food good or bad puts the food in charge. Depriving yourself of a particular food or attaching special meaning to it can set you up for cravings and overeating.  It gives the food power over you rather than vice versa. Allowing yourself to make good choices from all foods; eating when you’re hungry; and eating portions that satisfy and not stuff you, put you, not the food, in charge.

Next post

When Should I Eat:  a numbered scale to help you figure out how hungry you are and when to eat.

The post Can You Train And Tame Your Hunger? appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

The same thing is true on menus, in deli cases, and the little labels perched next to the choices in salad bars.  Are the calories in the low calorie tuna salad less than the calories in the reduced calorie?  Can you even believe those calligraphied labels behind the glass cases?

Checking The List Of Ingredients May Or May Not Help

Packaged food labels list ingredients in descending order by weight, not amount. The first ingredient listed has the greatest amount by weight, the last ingredient is the one with the least amount by weight. That’s why preservatives are usually at the end of the ingredients list.  A ton of chemicals are not necessary to increase shelf life — a little bit will do it.  However, fat, sugar, and grains have more heft and usually are closer to the beginning of the ingredients list.

Fatty Labels

Labels have to include the total amount of fat, saturated fat and unsaturated fat.  This carves the way for the low, reduced, and fat free categories.

• Low fat means 3 grams of fat or less per serving (or per 100 grams of food)

• Reduced fat means the food product contains 50% (or less) of the fat found in the regular version

• Less fat means 25% or less fat than the comparison food

• Fat free means the product has less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving, with no added fat or oil

Salty Labels

• Reduced sodium means at least 75% less sodium

• Low sodium means 140 milligrams of sodium or less per serving

• Very low sodium means 35 milligrams of sodium or less per serving

• Sodium free (salt free) means there is less than 5 milligrams of sodium per serving

Sweet Labels

• Sugar free means there is less than 0.5 gram of sugar per serving

• No sugar added means there’s no table sugar added but there may be other forms of sugar like dextrose, fructose, glucose, sucrose, maltose, or corn syrup

The Low down On Low, Light (Lite), Lean, and Reduced

• Reduced calorie on the label means there’s at least 25% fewer calories per serving than in the regular (full calorie) version of the product

• Low calorie means 40 calories or less per serving and less than 0.4 calories per gram of food

• Light (fat) means 50% or less of the fat than in the regular, full calorie, version

• Light (calories) means 1/3 fewer calories than the regular, full calorie, version

• Lean (meat, poultry or seafood) means less than 10 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, and 95 mg of cholesterol in a 100 gram serving

• Extra lean (meat, poultry or seafood) means less than 5 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, and 95 mg of cholesterol in a 100 gram serving

Confused???

Confused by the ins and outs of labeling?  You’re not alone.  Try to be as savvy as possible and do a little investigating. A product sporting a reduced fat label  just means that it contains at least 25% less fat than the original version. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it ends up being a low fat product. Take a reduced fat muffin. If the fat content in the original full fat muffin is 30g and the fat has been reduced to 15g — a 50% reduction which allows it to say it is reduced fat — the reduced fat muffin still has a fat content five times higher than the 3g of fat per serving that officially qualifies as low fat.  Check the calorie count and fat breakdown on the nutrition label for more complete info.  

The post A Primer On Reduced, Low, Light, And Free! appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

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.

The post Too Few Veggies — You’re Not Alone! appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

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.

The post Use By, Sell By, Expires By: What Do These Actually Mean? appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

All blueberries, especially the tiny wild ones, are loaded with antioxidants and phytochemicals that may play a role in reducing risk for some diseases.

Fantastic nutrition, too.  One cup has 84.4 calories, no fat, 21 grams of carbs (4 g fiber, 15g sugars) and 1 g of protein and 24% of the recommended daily value of Vitamin C.

They’re a good tasting, good looking super food. That’s why manufacturers add them to lots of cereal and baked goods (or at least imply that they do).

So, what’s the problem? Here it is: a bunch of food products that have labels or lovely pictures that suggest that they contain real blueberries really contain types of fake blueberries (not plastic, but not whole fruit either).

Blueberry Crunchlets

In an investigation, the nonprofit Consumer Wellness Center found fake “blueberries” that were actually a mix of sugar, corn syrup, starch, hydrogenated oil, artificial flavors and food dyes blue No. 2 and red No. 40 that were made to look like blueberries. Manufacturers like Kellogg’s, Betty Crocker, and General Mills, use them in bagels, cereals, bread, and muffins. Some products mix real blueberries with fakes.

For instance, Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry Muffin variety has blueberry flavored “crunchlets,” not blueberries and General Mills’ Total Blueberry Pomegranate cereal contains no blueberries and no pomegranates.

What Are Crunchlets?

Here’s the ingredient list and description, from their website, for Kellogg’s® Frosted Mini-Wheats® Blueberry Muffin:

It is described as “Naturally and artificially flavored lightly sweetened whole grain wheat cereal, blueberry muffin.”

Ingredients:  Whole Grain Wheat, Sugar, Blueberry Flavored Crunchlets (sugar, corn cereal, soybean oil, modified cornstarch, water, natural and artificial flavor, glycerin, corn syrup, red #40 lake, blue #2 lake), Natural and Artificial Blueberry Flavor, Sorbitol, Gelatin, Reduced Iron, Niacinamide, Blue #2 lake, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Thiamin Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Red #40, Folic Acid, Zinc Oxide, Vitamin B12.  To maintain quality, BHT has been added to packaging.

What’s A Consumer To Do?

Your best option is to buy real blueberries and put them on your cereal.

But, what if you crave blueberries in January in the Northeast with multiple feet of snow on the ground and you don’t want to pay a fortune for berries shipped from thousands of miles away?

If you’re thinking of buying cereal or baked goods that claim to have blueberries in them, read the ingredients list on the box to see if the product contains any real fruit.

Items with fake blueberries will have red No. 40, blue No. 2 or other artificial colors listed on the label.  Read carefully, artificial colors and dyes may also be used for components other than blueberries, too.

There are some products with honest to goodness blueberries in them.   Just look carefully.

The post Are You Eating Fake Blueberries? appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

Take a look in your fridge and in your cupboards.  What’s in there?  Why did you buy it and when? Sometimes figuring out what to buy and eat is really tough.  Here are a baker’s dozen categories.  Which do you fall into most frequently?

1.     Are you a bargain shopper looking to get the largest amount of food for your money —  so you buy a dozen of what’s on sale or two of the gigantic size at Costco?  Check your cupboard or the back of your fridge there still might be some “bargains” left over from two years ago.

2.     Do you look for the most calories for your money (supersize me) — the biggest bang for your buck?  This often goes hand in hand with #1 above.

3.     Do you want the best nutrition for your money so you shop in CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) or go on the hunt for country farm stands? Do you then end up with so much produce that some of it rots and you have to toss it –- or, you’re so overloaded with kale or spinach that you never want to look at it again?

4.     Do you buy only what you want to eat – with no regard to cost, calories, or meal planning of any kind? My guess is that most people in this group are younger than 35.

5.     Do you buy food that you think, in the interest of your health or your family’s, that you and/or they should eat?  The problem is that a lot of these foods may not be what you want to prepare and what no one wants to eat.  The food you and your family like probably disappears quickly and the stuff that no one really likes ends up feeding the garbage pail.

6.     Do you buy special or celebratory food because it’s someone’s birthday, or Thanksgiving, or Easter, or Halloween?  Do you really buy it because of holiday traditions or because the holiday has given you an excuse to buy – and indulge – in what you ordinarily wouldn’t?

7.     How about the food you’ve always wanted to try and you bought on the spur of the moment because you happened to see it in the store. Then you got the food home and realized that you didn’t know how to prepare it or found out that the preparation is way too complicated – or that your spouse or partner really hates it.

8.     What about the product of the moment – which might fall into any number of categories.  It could be trendy, the latest low-fat wonder, or the cake mix your neighbor said was so good.  Maybe it’s good, maybe not.

9.     Then there’s the diet foods:  the  low or no fat, low or no sugar, fiber rich, reduced calorie food you bought in an endless quest for the miracle food that won’t pack on the pounds.

10.  What about “nutrition” foods – the ones with claims plastered all over the label that they can prevent or cure just about anything?

11.  Or, the convenience foods – the stuff, probably already prepared and/or processed, frozen, or take-out  — that you grab when you are totally exhausted or exasperated and you want to get the food on the table and not have anyone complain about it.

12.  Let’s not forget the craving foods – the sugar, fat, and salt foods that keep you coming back for more.

13.  And, last but not least, the reward foods — the “I’ve had such a tough day” or “I’ve been so good all day” food that almost always packs a whopper of a sugar, fat, and caloric punch.

Sometimes there is a time and place for food from any of these categories.  But, if you are a mindful, not mindless, eater you might want to think about the category you land in most frequently.

Did I miss any categories?  Please let me know what you think.

The post What’s In Your Cupboards — And Why Is It There? appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

The Red (or yellow or blue) Box With The String

Remember that cute little red, yellow or blue box with the string on top and tiny little animals on the front and back?  After you open the box and the heavy waxed paper inside you’re rewarded with crunchy little animal crackers, usually in the shape of animals you find at the circus or the zoo.

How Long Have Animal Crackers Been Around?

In the late 1800s, biscuits called “Animals” were imported from England to the United States and in 1871 Stauffer’s Biscuit Company baked their first batch stateside.

Barnum’s Animals (Crackers), named for P. T. Barnum who ran the circus, the “Greatest Show on Earth,” were first made in New York City in 1902 by the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco).   Barnum, an amazing self-promoter, had absolutely nothing to do with the labeling on the box and he never got a cent for it.

The famous string appeared when Nabisco designed the box to look like a circus wagon cage and then attached a string so it could be hung as an ornament from a Christmas tree.  It sold it for 5 cents a box. As we know, the package was such a success that it remains a year round treat – 40 million are made a year — although not at the same price!

Are They Crackers Or Cookies?

The crunchy little animals resemble crackers because they are made with layered dough.  But, because the dough is sweetened they have a cookie taste and consistency.

Over the years, 54 different animals have been represented. The most recent, chosen by consumer vote, is the koala. It beat out the penguin, the walrus and the cobra.  Some other animals are  tigers, cougars, camels, rhinoceros, kangaroos, hippopotami, bison, lions, hyenas, zebras, elephants, sheep, bears, gorillas, monkeys, seals, and giraffes.

Are They Good – Or At Least Okay for You?

The little box with the string contains about two servings.

• Each serving (about 17 crackers) has 120 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 22 grams of carbs, 1 gram of fiber, and 2 grams of protein.

• The ingredients are:  enriched flour, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, soybean oil, yellow corn flour, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, calcium carbonate, baking soda, salt, soy lecithin, artificial flavor.

• Although trans fat is not listed in the nutrition facts, the ingredients contain partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil (partially hydrogenated means trans fat).

When a product contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, the FDA requires that the content be listed in the package’s Nutrition Facts box as “0g”. When a label shows 0 grams trans fat per serving and lists a “partially hydrogenated” vegetable oil (such as soybean or cottonseed, among others) in the ingredients, the product may contain up to 0.49 grams of trans fat per serving.

Other companies do make organic and/or whole grain animal crackers and should you be concerned about ingredients these would make a better choice.  Unfortunately, they do not come in the classic box with the string which, at least for my sons, was part of the allure.

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