Friday, June 16, 2006
Nondairy Creamers
Nondairy creamers are my pet peeve so let me explain why.
These are food science concoctions of hydrogentated oils, sugars, and additives, usually with casein. Casein is a milk protein, which might make you wonder why these products are called "nondairy", but that oxymoron is a consequence of FDA rule making. One way to view nondairy creamers is as nothing more than white, sweet, liquid margarines. The fat free varieties substitute milk solids for fat. The low carb versions replace sugars with artificial sweeteners. The chocolate, mocha, and berry flavors mask the taste of the other additives.
The ingredients are cheap and have a looooooooooooooooooong shelf life so food service companies love to use these products whenever they can get away with it.
They package the products to look exactly like milk shakes, yogurt smoothies, and soy milk drinks, but with a 1 tablespoon, 40 calorie serving size, just like the dry powder original. A 16oz bottle of Nestle's Chocolate Raspberry Coffee Mate will set you back 1280 calories. The equally oxymoronic "Fat free Half and Half" at least begins with real food. Non fat milk is its starting ingredient, but the rest are the usual sugars and additives. Despite the milk, my local stores shelve it with the nondairy creamers.
A quick browse of the Internet shows that practically every brand of dairy substitutes has passionate devotees who write enthusiastic testimonials about how much they love the products.Granted, taste is a personal matter. Personally, I do not like liquid margarines.
Unbelievable
Unbelievable as it may seem, one third of all vegetables consumed in the United States come from just three sources: french fries, potato chips, and iceberg lettuce.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Food is Your Friend
• Be mindful. Food does not just happen. Make a conscious decision to go grocery shopping once a week and stick to it.
• Put produce front and center. Think asparagus first – then plan around that.
• Cook. Just like grocery shopping, cooking takes commitment and planning. When YOU cook, you control the portion size, as well as the fat and salt content of the dish.
• Go gradually. Whatever you do to eat more healthfully remember that it does not have to be every day. For example, make a pact with yourself to have a piece of fruit after lunch every other day. Or, promise yourself that you will cook just one or two meals this week. Focus on doing one or two things as many times as possible. Soda pop drinkers could get more calcium in their diets by switching to milk for just one meal a day – try to replace one soda a day for a two week period.
• Change your restaurant mind set. What makes restaurant eating treacherous is not just gooey appetizers, fatty sauces, and rich desserts . . . it is the sheer volume of food that is served. Plan in advance to take home half of what you order. You save money and already have tomorrows dinner set to go. It is a win win! When it comes to choosing entrees, order baked or broiled dishes instead of fried or fatty selections.
• Eat breakfast. Having a nutritious first meal gets you in the mind set to continue making healthful choices later on. It is soooooooooo easy to eat a nutritious breakfast. Just a piece of fruit, a hard boiled egg, a bowl of cereal with milk or a slice or two of whole-grain toast, and you are on your way.
• Eat adventurously. Healthful eating is not all salads and cottage cheese. How about having a papaya? Or, steaming some asparagus? Try some new greens such as Swiss chard. Experiment with fresh baked multi-grain breads from your grocery store or even try whole grain pancake mixes. Healthful eating is EATING, not NOT eating. Don't think about what you can not have but focus on what you should eat more of – interesting choices among fruits, vegetables, low fat dairy products and whole grains.
• Build in treats. Depriving yourself too often can backfire. Build small amounts of
your favorite foods into your diet.
• Take pleasure in eating. Food is not just a collection of nutrients. It is important to take time out and enjoy it. Do not eat on the run or in the car. Sit down and savor every forkful.
• Put produce front and center. Think asparagus first – then plan around that.
• Cook. Just like grocery shopping, cooking takes commitment and planning. When YOU cook, you control the portion size, as well as the fat and salt content of the dish.
• Go gradually. Whatever you do to eat more healthfully remember that it does not have to be every day. For example, make a pact with yourself to have a piece of fruit after lunch every other day. Or, promise yourself that you will cook just one or two meals this week. Focus on doing one or two things as many times as possible. Soda pop drinkers could get more calcium in their diets by switching to milk for just one meal a day – try to replace one soda a day for a two week period.
• Change your restaurant mind set. What makes restaurant eating treacherous is not just gooey appetizers, fatty sauces, and rich desserts . . . it is the sheer volume of food that is served. Plan in advance to take home half of what you order. You save money and already have tomorrows dinner set to go. It is a win win! When it comes to choosing entrees, order baked or broiled dishes instead of fried or fatty selections.
• Eat breakfast. Having a nutritious first meal gets you in the mind set to continue making healthful choices later on. It is soooooooooo easy to eat a nutritious breakfast. Just a piece of fruit, a hard boiled egg, a bowl of cereal with milk or a slice or two of whole-grain toast, and you are on your way.
• Eat adventurously. Healthful eating is not all salads and cottage cheese. How about having a papaya? Or, steaming some asparagus? Try some new greens such as Swiss chard. Experiment with fresh baked multi-grain breads from your grocery store or even try whole grain pancake mixes. Healthful eating is EATING, not NOT eating. Don't think about what you can not have but focus on what you should eat more of – interesting choices among fruits, vegetables, low fat dairy products and whole grains.
• Build in treats. Depriving yourself too often can backfire. Build small amounts of
your favorite foods into your diet.
• Take pleasure in eating. Food is not just a collection of nutrients. It is important to take time out and enjoy it. Do not eat on the run or in the car. Sit down and savor every forkful.
Vitamins and Water
Eating more vitamins or minerals than are needed does not make healthy people healthier. But it is human nature to think that if eating some vitamins and minerals is good, eating more of them has to be better. Marketers know this about human nature and they take full advantage. If drinking minerals seems like a good idea, drinking vitamins might seem even more so. But there is one problem: vitamins taste awful. Dissolve a vitamin pill in a glass of water and try drinking the concoction. It cries out for sugar. Once manufacturers add sugars to water, they are creating a soft drink. Kool Aid is the historic prototype: it is sugar water supplemented with vitamin C. Unless vitamin waters are artificially sweetened, the first two ingredients are invariably water and sugars - sucrose, fructose, crystalline fructose, high fructose corn syrup, or fructose-glucose syrup.
Pepsi's Propel Fitness Water adds several vitamins and calcium along with a bit of sugar and some artificial sweeteners to make it drinkable: it is a vitamin enriched diet soft drink and a highly profitable one -- Pepsi spent nearly $38 million to advertise this one product in 2004.
Glaceau Vitamin Waters are all the same -- water and fructose sugar along with various vitamins, minerals, and herbs. Each comes with its own color coded health theme: "Endurance" (peach mango); "Rescue" (green tea); "Revive" (fruit punch). They are nothing more than vitamin enriched sugar waters in exceptionally pretty bottles.
Take your multivitamin pill each day and you do not need any more very expensive liquid vitamins.
Pepsi's Propel Fitness Water adds several vitamins and calcium along with a bit of sugar and some artificial sweeteners to make it drinkable: it is a vitamin enriched diet soft drink and a highly profitable one -- Pepsi spent nearly $38 million to advertise this one product in 2004.
Glaceau Vitamin Waters are all the same -- water and fructose sugar along with various vitamins, minerals, and herbs. Each comes with its own color coded health theme: "Endurance" (peach mango); "Rescue" (green tea); "Revive" (fruit punch). They are nothing more than vitamin enriched sugar waters in exceptionally pretty bottles.
Take your multivitamin pill each day and you do not need any more very expensive liquid vitamins.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Cinnabombs
"Now you can bring home all of the mouth watering aroma and flavor of Cinnabon World Famous Cinnamon Rolls" gushes the label on Cinnabon Cinnamon & Cream Cheese Turnovers. "Made with only the finest ingredients" it adds, the Turnovers are "an all occasion pleasure."
Finest ingredients? What is so fine about white flour, cream cheese, sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oils, plus a paragraph's worth of artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives? The oils help explain why each 410-calorie, 5 teaspoons of sugar turnover sends a load of trans fat (6 grams) and sat fat (6 grams) coursing through your arterial highways and byways. Make Cinnabon Turnovers an "all occasion pleasure" and soon some dislodged blood clot is going to hit a traffic jam that has no detour.
The company's CinnaPoppers look less damaging at first. But that is because the serving on the box (3 pieces) adds up to roughly half a Cinnabon Turnover.
CinnaPoppers are "not just for breakfast, but for dessert, at the office, for birthdays, or any time you want a special treat", says the label. Eat too many "special treats" and you can plan on serving CinnaPoppers at your post angioplasty party.
Choose wisely . . . live well
Finest ingredients? What is so fine about white flour, cream cheese, sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oils, plus a paragraph's worth of artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives? The oils help explain why each 410-calorie, 5 teaspoons of sugar turnover sends a load of trans fat (6 grams) and sat fat (6 grams) coursing through your arterial highways and byways. Make Cinnabon Turnovers an "all occasion pleasure" and soon some dislodged blood clot is going to hit a traffic jam that has no detour.
The company's CinnaPoppers look less damaging at first. But that is because the serving on the box (3 pieces) adds up to roughly half a Cinnabon Turnover.
CinnaPoppers are "not just for breakfast, but for dessert, at the office, for birthdays, or any time you want a special treat", says the label. Eat too many "special treats" and you can plan on serving CinnaPoppers at your post angioplasty party.
Choose wisely . . . live well
Good Cookie
Kellogg's new Granola Munch'ems are in the wrong aisle.
You will find boxes of the 1 oz pouches of bite size triangles in the cereal aisle near the granola bars. With just 2 grams of fiber in each 130 calorie pouch, they would not be cereal standouts. But if you moved them to the cookie aisle, they would be stars.
Whole grain oats are the primary ingredient, followed by modest amounts of sugar (9 grams or 2 teaspoons) and vegetable oil. The oil is mostly sunflower with what must be just a smidgen of partially hydrogentated soybean oil, since each pouch as less than 1/2 gram of trans fat and only 1 1/2 grams of sat fat. Kellogg also throws in the usual 10% or so of the same handful of vitamins and minerals that companies typically add to granola and cereal bars.
For a whole grain cookie, Much'ems numbers are top notch. And the portion control pouches should help you keep a lid on the munching.
Do NOT get me wrong. Stuffing a lunch bag with a pouch of granola snacks - with or without whole grains and vitamins- is no substitute for packing an apple, a peach, a small container of baby carrots or strawberries, or a small yogurt. But if it is a bag of Much'ems versus a bag of Oreos, go the granola.
Choose wisely . . . live well.
You will find boxes of the 1 oz pouches of bite size triangles in the cereal aisle near the granola bars. With just 2 grams of fiber in each 130 calorie pouch, they would not be cereal standouts. But if you moved them to the cookie aisle, they would be stars.
Whole grain oats are the primary ingredient, followed by modest amounts of sugar (9 grams or 2 teaspoons) and vegetable oil. The oil is mostly sunflower with what must be just a smidgen of partially hydrogentated soybean oil, since each pouch as less than 1/2 gram of trans fat and only 1 1/2 grams of sat fat. Kellogg also throws in the usual 10% or so of the same handful of vitamins and minerals that companies typically add to granola and cereal bars.
For a whole grain cookie, Much'ems numbers are top notch. And the portion control pouches should help you keep a lid on the munching.
Do NOT get me wrong. Stuffing a lunch bag with a pouch of granola snacks - with or without whole grains and vitamins- is no substitute for packing an apple, a peach, a small container of baby carrots or strawberries, or a small yogurt. But if it is a bag of Much'ems versus a bag of Oreos, go the granola.
Choose wisely . . . live well.
Helpful Idea
To keep grilled veggies from getting charred on the outside before they cook on the inside, microwave the cut up veggies for 1 - 2 minutes, then brush with oil or your favorite marinade and grill until tender.
Grandparents
BEING A GRANDPARENT IS THE ONLY THING I KNOW THAT IS NOT OVERRATED.
