holidays

Are You Ready For Holiday Eating?

November 19, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Holiday cookies, latkes, pumpkin pie, cornbread stuffing, eggnog, and a relative’s specialty of the season … food, food, food!

‘Tis the season to eat and there are “food landmines” everywhere you turn. We all have to eat but it can be a very slippery slope to eat well surrounded by food; family; friends; an encyclopedia of cultural, religious, and family traditions; and a whole host of expectations.

Holidays are supposed to be days of celebration and special significance — often religious, cultural, or traditional. Sometimes, they’re days just meant for play. A common denominator is that we often incorporate food – and lots of it — into celebrations.

Realistically, the actual content of your Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, or other holiday meal matters very little in the grand scheme of things. Although a few hundred calories here or there can make a difference when added up over weeks and years, the impact of overeating at one meal is usually negligible – even though your stomach might be singing a different song.

It’s the inevitable mindless eating – those treats on the receptionist’s desk, the gift of peanut brittle, the holiday toasts, the second and third helpings, the holiday cookies in the snack room – that are the main source of excess calories and added pounds during the holiday season.

What To Do

See it = eat it. It‘s incredibly difficult not to nibble your way through the day when you have delicious treats tempting you at every turn. How many times do your senses need to be assaulted by the sight of sparkly cookies and the holiday scent of eggnog or spiced roasted nuts before your hand reaches out and the treat is popped into your mouth?

Don’t keep your trigger foods stocked in your pantry or fridge. If you need to have supplies, don’t make them immediately visible. Hide them in the back of the cabinet or in a “not too easy to be reached” location.

Be aware of openly displayed platters and bowls of cookies, nuts, candy, and other holiday specialties. Make up your mind that it’s not okay – just because it’s the holidays – to taste test everything that crosses your path.

Coming soon to the Apple newsstand for your ipad and iphone: Eat Out Eat Well Magazine!

How Much Halloween Candy Will You Swipe From Kids’ Trick or Treat Bags?

October 28, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Come on, ‘fess up. What do you do? Do you just randomly grab candy out of trick or treat bags – or are you more selective? If your kids go trick or treating, when they get home do you dump everything in the bag on the table and go through it to hunt down your favorites?

Like it or not – candy rules on Halloween. Adults may dread the easy accessibility of candy – it’s everywhere – but secretly, a whole lot of us can’t wait to get our hands on our favorite kid candy.

Americans buy nearly 600 million pounds of candy for Halloween. On average, we eat 24 pounds of candy a year, probably a whole lot of it right around this time. The most popular types of candy, in order, are: chocolate, chewy candies, and hard candy.

What Do You Go For First?

Trick or Treat Bags – plastic pumpkins and colorful bags loaded with a collection of sweet memories and some dental nightmares.

If you’ve ever swiped candy from your kid’s trick or treat bag, don’t feel guilty. According to the National Confectioners Association you’re certainly not alone. Ninety percent of parents confess they occasionally dip into their kid’s stash.

And they do it big time! Parents eat one candy bar out of every two a child brings home. Favorite targets are snack-sized chocolate bars (70%), candy-coated chocolate pieces (40%), caramels (37%) and gum (26%).

How Many Calories Are In That Rick Or Treat Bag — Or Pumpkin?

It’s been estimated that, on average, a child in the US collects between 3,500 and 7,000 worth of candy calories on Halloween night.

Mathematically, it takes around 3,500 calories to gain or lose a pound, so you’re looking at around a pound or two if you would choose to eat all of those mostly sugar and fat candy calories on top of your regular meals.

It’s Just One Night …

One evening of collecting (and eating) candy certainly isn’t going to make anyone overweight or obese. But a constant bombardment of candy, sweets, and other treats can certainly lead to weight and health challenges.

Try this. Have a talk with your family – or with yourself — ahead of Trick of Treating to plan on what to do the candy collection. Is it to be a one-day free for all and then the trash — or will the candy by doled out in measured amounts over a given period of time? Do what works for your family but it helps if the kids buy into the plan.

What’s amazing is that when kids are offered the option of choosing how much and what kind of candy to eat, most of them don’t go overboard – they make their selections, eat it, and that’s it. It then helps if the candy fades from sight. It can be doled out in smaller portions day by day – or it can magically diminish in quantity or disappear entirely – just not down the hatch of an all-too-willing adult.

In Case You Want To Pick The Least Caloric Candy on Halloween . . .

October 24, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Here are the calories in some popular Halloween candy in case you want to minimize the caloric damage (you didn’t read that wrong — candy has a big range of calories and fat grams):

Brach’s Milk Maid Caramels: 4 pieces; 160 calories; 4.5 g fat
Kit Kat: Twix Miniatures (3 pieces); 150 calories; 7g fat
Butterfinger: Fun size; 100 calories; 4g fat
Snickers: Fun size; 80 calories; 4g fat
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: Fun size; 80 calories, 4.5g fat
M&Ms: Fun size bag; 73 calories; 3g fat
Tootsie Rolls: 3 pieces; 70 calories; 1.5g fat
Brach’s Candy Corn: 11 pieces; 70 calories; 0g fat
Hershey’s Milk Chocolate: snack size .49-ounce bar; 67 calories; 4g fat
3 Musketeers: Fun size; 63 calories; 2g fat
Skittles Original Bite Size: Fun size bag; 60 calories; 0.7 g fat
Tootsie Roll Pop: 1 pop; 60 calories; 0g fat
Now and Later: 4 pieces; 53 calories; .5g fat
Peppermint Pattie: Fun size; 47 calories; 1g fat
Starburst Original Fruit Chews: 2 pieces; 40 calories; 0.8g fat
Dum Dum Pops: 1 pop; 25 calories; 0g fat

The Jack-o’-Lantern: A Devilish And Stingy Tale

October 15, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Have you ever wondered where the Jack-o’-lantern comes from?

According to an Irish legend that goes back hundreds of years, a miserable old drunk named Stingy Jack — who liked to play tricks on his family, friends, and even the Devil — tricked the Devil into climbing up an apple tree. Stingy Jack put crosses around the apple tree’s trunk so the Devil couldn’t get down — and told the Devil that if he wouldn’t take his soul when he died Stingy Jack would remove the crosses and let the Devil down.

When Jack died, Saint Peter, at the pearly gates of Heaven, told him that he couldn’t enter Heaven because he was mean, cruel, and had led a miserable and worthless life. Stingy Jack then went down to Hell but the Devil wouldn’t let him in, either. Ultimate payback! Jack was scared and with nowhere to go he had to wander around in the darkness between Heaven and Hell.

Jack-o’-Lanterns, Halloween, and Stingy Jack

Halloween, or the Hallowe’en in Ireland and Scotland, is short for All Hallows’ Eve, or the night before All Hallows. On All Hallows’ Eve the Irish made Jack-o’-lanterns by hollowing out turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes, and beets and then putting lights in them to keep the evil spirits and Stingy Jack away. In the 1800′s when Irish immigrants came to America, they discovered that pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve and the pumpkin became the Jack-o’-lantern.

If You Want To Eat Your Pumpkin . . .

Jumping from legend to fact: pumpkins come from a family of vegetables that includes cucumbers and melons. They’re fat free and can be baked, steamed, or canned.

One cup of pumpkin has about 30 calories, is high in vitamin C, potassium, dietary fiber, and other nutrients like folate, manganese, and omega 3′s. Pumpkin is filled with the anti-oxidant beta-carotene, which gives it its rich orange color. Pumpkin seeds are a good source of iron, copper, and zinc but aren’t low in calories. They have 126 calories in an ounce (about 85 seeds) and 285 calories in a cup.

Are You Ready For Some Conversation (Hearts)?

February 5, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN 1 Comment

“Be Mine,” “Kiss me,” “Sweet Talk, ” “Tweet Me.”

Candy hearts, originally called motto hearts, the brightly colored heart shaped candy with the stamped red sayings, have been iconic Valentine’s Day treats since 1902.

Also known as conversation hearts, motto hearts, and sweethearts, they’re manufactured by NECCO, the New England Confectionery Company, which has been in business since 1847.

How Did Candy Conversation Hearts Get To Be A Symbol Of Valentine’s Day?

Giving a gift of candy with a message inscribed on it can be traced back to the American colonists who gave homemade hard candy with messages etched into the surface to their sweethearts.

Years later, Oliver Chase, the founder NECCO and his brother Daniel, who developed the process of printing red vegetable dye mottos on the candy, turned this tradition into a business.

The candy’s original shape wasn’t a heart, but a seashell shape called a “cockle.” A message was written on a colored slip of paper that was wedged into the cockle’s shell. NECCO started producing candy with mottos stamped on them in 1900, but the candy was in shapes like horseshoes and baseballs that allowed for longer printed sayings like “How long shall I have to wait?” and “Pray be considerate.” The candy called Sweethearts wasn’t shaped as a heart until 1902.

Sweethearts And Motto Hearts

The original candies with printed sayings were called “motto hearts.” The sayings and flavors have been updated over the years with new ones added periodically. Some of the newer flavors are strawberry, green apple, lemon, grape, orange, and blue raspberry and new sayings include “Tweet Me,” “Text Me,” “You Rock,” “Soul Mate,” “Love Bug,” and “Me + You.”

NECCO still uses their original recipe, process, and machines they used at the turn of the century. Putting out approximately 100,000 pounds of candy a day, it takes about 11 months to produce the more than eight billion pieces — or about 13 million pounds – of colorful candy sweethearts that are sold in the six weeks before Valentine’s Day. The little hearts with messages account for 40% of the Valentine candy market, just behind – you guessed it – chocolate!

Although you’d be hard pressed to call them nutritious, they are fat free, sodium free, and a caloric bargain at about 3 calories apiece for the small hearts and about 6 calories apiece for the larger “Motto” hearts.