While some of us usher in the holiday season with joy, others will be lamenting its inevitable companion, cold and flu season. Colder air means sealed up windows, recirculated air, and closed spaces where germs flourish, and there seems to be little escape from them when they arrive.
But while germs are falling on us like a Christmas Eve snow, they are more apt to cling to some and bypass others. What makes the difference? Food. It’s our best defense against poor health, and that translates directly into our day-to-day susceptibility to viruses. Healthy eating is our armor against life-threatening disease, just as it is against the pesky cold, and fruits and vegetables top the list of cold and flu resisters.
Here are some guidelines for armoring up for the coming season.
Boost Your Immune System. A consistent intake of high nutrition means you are getting vitamins, minerals, fiber and antioxidants, which offers tremendous help in fighting off viruses. Start by getting 4-5 servings of fruits and veggies every day. It will help you resist colds and flu, and if they come, your body fights them off quicker and gets you back on your feet in days, not weeks.
Go Frozen. It may be the best thing that has ever happened to nutrition. Today, freezing fruits and vegetables when they are at their peak preserves taste and nutrition – as much as if they were fresh, and possible more. There’s no reason not to eat frozen any time of year. Fruits like berries are sky-high it immune-boosting nutrition and antioxidants. It’s like your own daily flu shot against winter germs.
Choose Phyto Foods. Dr. James Sears, a regular on NBC’s The Doctors, and friend of Wild About Health, offers this advice in Parenting for cold and flu season: eat foods packed with phytonutrients. Phytos are found in deep-colored fruits and veggies such as blueberries, tomatoes and spinach. The color intensity signals immune-boosting power. Try these phyto-intense recipes that combine phytonutreint-rich wild blueberries with an array of favorites.
Eat Citrus. Oranges and grapefruits are not only available all winter long, but they are less expensive in the winter months. These fruits are notoriously high in vitamin C, and while the research into the vitamin C-cold connection is inconsistent, what is certain is that these fruits offer a wide variety of phytonutrient compounds, and they have antioxidant and immune boosting properties.
Opt for Real. We tend to reach for supplements to maintain our health in the winter, but remember that foods with vitamins and nutrients will trump vitamins in pill form every time. Why? It may have to do with synergy. Fruits, for example, offer combinations of nutrients – including not just vitamins, but minerals, flavonoids, and anitoxidants. These nutritional components work together and work with other foods to provide the immune system boost that provides the prevention.
Lean on Greens. The irony is that we eat less of the foods we need most in the winter. Colder months mean less fruit and vegetable intake. It may be the desire for comfort food combined with holiday eating, which often translates into lots of meaty, sweet, high-fat dishes. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Regularly eating a dinner that has leafy greens like spinach and kale as the primary ingredient will boost your defenses. Leafies are full of the vitamins and antioxidants your body pines for during cold and flu season. Try these 10 get-your-greens recipes from BlissTree.
More To Cure
Want more foods that will have you striding confidently through flu season? Check out this list of foods that prevent cold and flu from Livestrong.com. You can also view this slideshow from WebMD that breaks down the basics about how to fight flu with food.
Have you ever looked down at the food you’re eating and thought, “Where did you come from?”
It’s no space age phenomenon – it can happen right here in 1873…er, 2011. You can get the feeling a spaceship arrived in your kitchen and took over what you thought was a decent, healthy meal. Sometimes even the good guys – that is, the healthy, disease-preventing foods that provide antioxidants, vitamins and nutrients – can’t battle the forces that have brought your dinner plate to its knees.
That’s when you know you’ve entered a culinary battle royal coming to a kitchen near you: Cowboys and Aliens.
The Cowboys
Whether you consider your eats as urban as Sissy’s line-dancing Bud, or as free as a galloping horse carrying Alan Ladd, your culinary cowboys will always be characterized as foods that roamed the West when America was young. The cowboy foods are the good guys. They are the mainstays of your health: the foods that crusade against disease, fight cancer, maintain a healthy heart, and prevent obesity-related illness. They slap the dust off their boots and get to the work of dusting free radical from your cells.
Feeling like it’s your first rodeo? Here are some examples of culinary cowboys that will tip their Stetson to your well-being and longevity.
Caveman food. They pre-date cowboys by a smidge, but eating like a caveman isn’t that different from eating like a cowboy. Follow suit, and you’ve got a start on battling gastronomical evil forces. According to Superfood originator Steven Pratt, our genetic makeup remains the same as our cave dwelling (or ranch-roaming) ancestors’, but our lifestyle does not. The more modern our lifestyle and food choices, the more we need foods that cavemen used to get their nutrition in order to counteract our choices. That means eating berries, nuts, and foods that grow on trees and from the ground.
Food without labels. Food that requires no packaging and no ingredient label should serve as the basis of our cowboy diet. These cowboy-friendly foods – usually found at the perimeter of the supermarket or at farmer’s markets – are sold just as nature intended them to be, and they are the foods that do the most to keep us healthy as we traverse the frontier.
Local food. They may roam far and wide on their trusted steed in movies, but real cowboys were too busy handling things at home to stray far from the pasture. They ate food made and grown locally that was native to their surroundings. Taking advantage of local food means eating what local farmers grow. And, cooking with indigenous ingredients is often indicative of someone eating real, whole, healthy food. Not to mention, when you are eating locally, your dollars are kept close to home, and that means your helping your own, Pilgrim.
Clear origins. Cowboys brand their cattle so if they stray, there’s no question where they came from. Can you trace the origin of what you’re eating? What does that origin look like? Is it a farm or a factory? Is it a kitchen or a plant? Is it made by many hands or none? Could you tour the facility that made it? Is it far away or close to home? Tracing the origins of what’s on your plate can be a great way to discover the real roots or the wicked source of the food you’re colluding with.
Eating with the Posse. Eating together is the cowboy way. What does that have to do with your plate? A lot, actually. Research shows that making and eating family meals is a key element in eating well and staying healthy. Cowboys also eat as much as they are hungry for, and they eat mindfully – they don’t scarf a bag of chips while they on a perilous journey into the sun. They slow down and enjoy the victuals.
The Aliens
No food is bad. But some are just not of this world. Now that you know the cowboys, the aliens are easier to identify. Sometimes these advanced organisms are straight out of a Spielberg film, sporting one eye and two antennas, but sometimes they walk stealthily among us, their true identity hidden by an earthling-like smile that charms our eyes and our stomachs.
Extraterrestrials. Food activist Michael Pollan cautions against foods your “grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food”. That usual means, in true alien style, that it doesn’t come from the earth. If your food comes in a tube or a carton, is sprinkled with colored sugar or iridescent cheese powder, Rooster Cogburn might have sauntered right by it without even realizing it’s food – and so should we.
Alien names. Do the ingredients in your food seem, well, alien? Unpronounceable, multi-syllabic words on your ingredient list is a sign clearer than a crop circle that there is something unearthly in your lunch. It could be hurting your health, or at least taking up calories that could be spent on those that improve it. Instead, throw your lasso around foods that have four ingredients or less, and when you can, those that have just one.
Alien claims. Whether they are “light”, “enriched” or “heart healthy”, alien foods try hard to assimilate, but if they require a label, it means they are trying a little too hard. The best foods come in their own packages (with the exception of frozen, which require packaging – the good ones have just one ingredient) and make claims from nutritionists and scientists, not marketers.
Ageless food. According to the Lempert Report, shoppers are making more trips to the supermarket and spending less money per trip. These “narrow missions” could be part of avoiding aliens – that is, food that keeps forever. If your food doesn’t go bad, there’s a reason (see above). Frozen fruits and veggies or unfrozen foods that decompose like a giant parasitic egg bent on attacking Sigourney Weaver are foods that are real, whole, natural, and healthy. Keeping fresh, vulnerable foods around might require more frequent trips to the store, but you’ll be free to buy what you want without worrying it won’t get eaten.
Fight the Good (Food) Fight
Sure, sometimes we’re all itching for a good fight (or have a soft spot for Harrison Ford riding a horse), but if you’re interested in doing the best thing you can do for your health and longevity, give the food aliens a boot back into orbit. Knowledge and a few good cooking tools will serve as your magic bracelet – that’s all you need to saddle up and get yourself some colorful, antioxidant, nutrient-rich fixins that aren’t from a galaxy far, far away.
Is a truckload of veggies as desirable as a truckload of flat screen TVs?
Skyrocketing food prices, a difficult economy, and lifestyles that depends on good nutrition may have created a perfect atmosphere for these produce thieves who stole a truckload of tomatoes and cucumbers valued at $42,000. The veggie heist comes on the heels of a similar incident in Florida last month in which a $300,000 worth of vegetable and frozen meat was stolen.
Such high-nutrition hi jinx may be the result of yet another mixed societal message. As a country, we get the blame for eating poorly while at the same time we are virtually enclosed by a ring of processed food; we are urged to buy fresh, whole, organic food while living in a dire economic downturn where household budgets are continually squeezed. It’s no wonder a truckload of fresh food is a precious commodity.
The Costs of Poor Nutrition
If your slip at the supermarket register is telling you food prices are rising, you’re right. According to the U.S. government’s Consumer Price Index, food prices in January rose 1.8% from the prior year, which is the fastest pace since 2009. Basic commodities have risen in price, and average nationwide vegetable prices rose 9.8% in March compared to the same month in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly Consumer Price Index reported this month.
At the same time, according to the USDA., the cost of food for the average U.S. household makes up a lower percentage of income than almost any other nation – just 6.9% of the average American household’s expenses. Generally speaking, even while food prices inch up, food is available to the majority of middle class Americans at low costs. But is it the right food? Why does food availability seem to parallel our poor eating habits?
Despite the ubiquity of low-priced drive-thrus and cheap bulk snack food, we can eat well for less money—we must. And in the long run, we can’t afford to do otherwise. The treatment of diseases preventable with good nutrition is raising health care costs and sabotaging our health and longevity. As American consumers, we must find a way to eat good food affordably.
Cut the Waste
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans waste about 20% of their food. It’s a statistic that speaks to our world of food plenty. Wasted food means we expend enormous amounts of manufacturing energy unnecessarily and watch nutrients and dollars go down the drain. A University of Arizona study estimates that the amount of waste from a typical household that shops for four adds up to $40 each week.
While bulk purchases can make budgetary sense, stocking up on perishables like fruit and vegetables is a recipe for filling the trash. How do we start cutting our waste? One European government has considering ridding labels of “best before” dates in order to curb our tossing habit. Websites like Allrecipes.com and the FoodNetwork.com can help us search out dishes based on the ingredients hanging around the house. We can shop with lists; we can organize our kitchens so we know what we have and use it. And, when we must throw out food, we can compost to give food trash a new use.
We can also loosen our standards of perfection when it comes to food. According to New York Times contributor Tara Parker Pope, the trouble with having plenty of food means we can often confuse spoilage for mere less-than-perfect. Brown spots on the lettuce? Cut it off. Not sure about that ice cream? It’s probably fine. Down to the end of that ketchup? Use it up before popping open a new bottle.
Stretch Your Food
As any good restaurant chef knows, the most efficient way to run a kitchen is to use up the food you have: yesterday’s entrée becomes tomorrow’s Soup of the Day. Start thinking like a restaurant chef and you’ll see food costs plummet. Using your ingredients takes a little creativity and a pinch of culinary acumen, but it’s a habit that will stick.
Use leftovers to make delicious soups or to fill a healthy burrito, and embrace foods like chili, shepherd’s pie and quiche to revisit ingredients and take a “stone soup” approach to make ingredients go further. This simplebites.com article called Eat Well, Spend Less offers up five frugal meals to stretch your dollar, including black bean burgers and crustless quiche that uses that scrap of ham and random cup of mushrooms and turns it into something to rave about.
Shop Locally
Supermarkets may have some price points licked, but local markets can come out on top for some important budget-busting items. Check out local Asian markets for good prices on produce and rice, and you’ll likely find budget-friendly spices, meats, cheeses and items like olive oil at your local Italian grocer. As Livestrong.com points out in Cheap Ways to Eat Healthy, shopping at the local farmer’s markets is no luxury—they provide cheap, fresh goods that cut out middleman costs, and allow you to choose amounts based on your needs, whether that’s 1 or 8.
Make Convenience the Enemy
The myth that fast food is easy on the wallet is just that – a myth. According to Michele Hiatt, a registered dietitian at St. John Medical Center, the least-processed foods are the least expensive as well as the healthiest. Yes, you can supersize your meal for a mere dollar, but convenience food is, in general, not good economics. Making food from real ingredients is better on the wallet and the calories, and eliminates unhealthy ingredients that go into processing like those unusually high sugars, salts, and fats.
It’s just that…convenience is so convenient. But a recently article in the Atlantic Monthly called the Joy of Not Cooking points out the irony that surrounds the age of food preoccupation. We obsess over the newest ceramic kitchen knife and spend big for a tricked-out high end stove, but for all its equipment, we actually spend less time in the kitchen than ever before. For example, women who work outside the home log an average of 5.5 hours per week in the kitchen—that’s food preparation and cleanup included. Compare that to our grandmothers, who either ran or grew up in households with women who spent 30 hours a week on food preparation. If it doesn’t motivate us to add a little more preparation time, it at least puts convenience into perspective.
Hiatt discusses her “Top 5 Food Savers” in a recent article and recommends a shopping list which targets fruits and veggies in season, dried beans/legumes, frozen produce on sale, potatoes, lean protein on sale, skim milk and yogurt, and store brand rice, pasta, oatmeal, barley and grits for budget stretching.
Tap into the Season
You can keep good food on your plate and pennies in your pocket by taking local to the next level. Growing your own vegetables at home is a budget-conscious strategy, not just a hobby. According to the National Gardening Association home gardens are up from 27 million households in 2005 to about 31 million households last year. The main reasons? Better tasting food, higher quality food and saving on the grocery bill. According to Michael Pollan, any amount of land will do to start a home garden. Even his own self-described postage-stamp-sized yard with three raised beds provides him with enough to add to dinner most nights, and the price is right.
If you are looking for home farming resources, start with Brett L. Markham’s Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on Acre, or reveal your green thumb by using it to thumb through Lisa Taylor’s Your Farm in the City, which provides a complete look at the trend of urban farming.
Other ways to take advantage of the season include picking your own fruits and veggies. Farms that offer this labor-intensive shopping experience can give you bulk produce for a low price: find farms at pickyourown.com. Find other ways to buy fresh on a budget on eHow.com.
Finally, Make Use of Frozen
Frozen is part of any discussion devoted to nutrition and stretching dollars. It can be your secret weapon when it comes to budget cutting. Frozen fruits and veggies offer economy because of their bulk sizes and because they eliminate costly waste that gnaws at the household food budget. There’s also no competing with frozen when it comes to off-season prices and availability. Besides, having at-the-ready daily servings is incentive enough to use frozen – accessible nutrition that is just a good as fresh is worth a truckload of flat screens to any family.
Go forth and eat healthy! You can’t put a price on good health, disease prevention and longevity, so don’t let a tightening budget squeeze the nutrition off your plate. You know fruits and vegetables are the best way to get the most from your dollar when it comes to nutrition – armed with a few dollar-stretching strategies you won’t have to sacrifice good health for their powerful nutritional value.
Not sure what’s in season? Coupons are fine for boxes and cans, but for produce, taking advantage of low prices means homing in on what’s inexpensive in any given time of year. About.com’s Frugal Living
section provides an easy month-to-month reference perfect for posting on the fridge. This month, go for pineapples and artichokes; in May head toward asparagus and okra.
Go Frugal! Forward this post to start a trend in saving money and preserving health!
Lately, the American public has been looking at itself in the mirror. What we see before us is someone overweight or more likely obese; someone with unhealthy eating habits that include large portions, high fat, high sodium, and highly processed food; and someone who either has or will have a litany of preventable diseases. We aren’t just unhealthy, we are sick and costing the country a bundle in health care costs.
Last year, the USDA changed dietary guidelines for Americans. The new guidelines recommend focusing on a plant-based diet, limiting sugars and solid fats, and reducing sodium. Perhaps most importantly, while fruit and veggie serving recommendations themselves didn’t change, the USDA’s conclusion was that we consume too few of them.
This latest message is worth sending, but it had to make its way to consumers. It has had those in the food and nutrition industry asking: how can we increase the public consumption of fruits and vegetables? How can we cut portions and eliminate salt?
To further complicate matters, the challenge may not be solely in the message being heard. For instance, according to a study by Supermarket Guru, 42% of us try to follow the dietary guidelines. As they point out, “try” is no doubt the operative word. Even members of the public who got the message, know the message, and could recite the message like a beat cop reciting his Mirandas, may not know what to do with this information.
The result is a second, equally important question: how do we bridge the gap between what we aspire to do when it comes to healthy eating, and actually doing it? The issue has prompted us to look at a few of the pieces of the nutritional puzzle that work together (and apart) to influence the American consumer.
Suppliers: Heroes & Anti-heroes
Some brands profit from obfuscating their unhealthful ingredients and some proffer outright consumer deception. At the same time, some suppliers use positive messages to penetrate the market. Produce for Better Health Foundation along with the Fruits & Veggies More Matters, recently named their 15 Supplier Role Models and Supplier Champions for 2010. They are food suppliers that were recognized for their positive efforts toward the public health initiative that includes eating more fruits and veggies and less salt and fat. Suppliers like the Wild Blueberry Association, Welch’s, the Pear Bureau Northwest, and even McDonald’s were lauded for being positive role models when it comes helping get consumers the message and make it easier for them to eat healthy.
While these suppliers are mini gladiators in the amphitheater of changing America’s costly health and nutrition habits, we know that information can be both good and bad. One part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to continue efforts to understand the best way for consumers to get useful point-of-purchase nutrition information. Today, the value of prominent displays, clear labeling, and messages that connect clearly with the consumer are red hot topics that have stakeholders battling it out in the stadium.
Supermarkets: Passive Profiteer or Potential Partner?
Supermarkets can help us eat better, but as we all know, they can also sabotage our efforts. Our stores hold a lot of power, and they may also be holding a lot of untapped potential to connect with their shoppers. And yet, so much of the time we spend shopping for healthy food is still spent avoiding traps.
For example, we know products at eye level aren’t necessarily good for us – they are just those being given preferred placement. We know that the basics like eggs and milk are in the back, forcing shoppers to walk a gauntlet of temptation. We even know that new stores have adopted indirect aisle-planning strategies that serve to sabotage our efforts to shop for “perimeter” foods like produce and other whole foods.
Must the supermarkets we frequent to feed our families be our nutritional nemesis? In the same Supermarket Guru poll, almost half of consumers said they weren’t sure whether their supermarket made it easy to meet dietary guidelines. The resulting report wielded these challenges: Does your supermarket have a dietitian in the store? Does it offer substitution suggestions such as trying frozen yogurt over ice cream? Does it provide options for meeting guidelines that meet our requirements for good taste?
In short, are our supermarkets passive profiteers or nutritional partners? It seems clear that opportunities exist for stores to take a stronger role in health and wellness – if they are willing.
Messaging: Plain Talk for a New Century
When supermarkets and suppliers fail, we rely on the information around us to make our own good decisions. But messages about health haven’t always been effective. Studies indicate that consumers find it difficult to count calories as a way to keep their nutrition and servings in check; they do not connect with the old pyramid-style guidelines for eating; they fail to understand cryptic nutritional labels and ambiguous health claims on food packaging.
Fortunately, these messages and how they are communicated have begun to change for the better. New guidelines have become increasingly consumer-friendly. Rather than lots of numbers that include grams and calories and fractions, messages are getting straight to the heart of the matter by promoting things like simply eat less, filling plates with color, or changing lifestyle habits like cooking at home and eating fewer processed food.
In one example of the new and improved communication of the health and nutrition message, Fruit & Veggies More Matters conjured up the Half Your Plate concept. In an effort to make serving sizes easy to understand, they urge us to simply fill half our plates with fruits and veggies – that’s it. Even National Nutrition Month 2011, which is being recognized during the month of March, focuses on eating right with color – a message that’s easy to implement by merely looking down at your plate. Armed with these goals, we can make smarter decisions about what we buy at the store, despite all the possible pitfalls.
Programs: Nutrition from the Top Down & the Bottom Up
Improving health and wellness can sometimes be effective if it comes to us from the top down. Recently, the United States Agriculture Secretary announced that the USDA will fund the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, an effort from the USDA to help children change their eating habits and start new consumer habits. The previously mentioned Let’s Move! program launched by First Lady Michelle Obama aims to solve the problem of obesity within a single generation. Healthy People 2020 was created to establish national health objectives and give communities the tools they need to achieve them. These are just a few examples of top-down programs working to take on a true crisis in health and nutrition.
Smaller-scale programs and bottom-up initiatives in schools, communities and businesses are also making it easier to make choices that help us and our families live better by virtue of being part of them. Many of them exist because someone dared to imagine that those just being born today could grow up in a very different, healthier world.
How did YOU get the message of health?
What message of health and nutrition resonated with you?
Was your mom your messenger? Your doctor? A great book or an inspiring TV personality? Whether it was calorie counting or colorful food, let us know what nutritional messages connected with you – leave us a comment!
It’s the stuff of late-night commercials: What if we could max out on nutrition without maxing out on food? With food prices on the rise and fruit and vegetable serving requirements firmly set in stone, extracting the most nutrition and disease prevention from our food purchases is just good sense. The key is to make the nutrients we are already eating go the extra mile. Is it possible to put the stretch on nutritional value?
It’s no dietary miracle, but we found a few legitimate ways to get more super in our superfoods and squeeze more health from our healthy eating. So go ahead –max out, don’t pig out. Here’s how:
1. Go ahead — cook it a little.
While we tend to think of raw foods as the most nutritious, it’s not always the case. Carrots and tomatoes seem to be the exception: gently cooking them actually allows more nutrients to be released, turning golden veggies nutritional gold. While a sliced tomato can appear to make the perfect nutritional plate, cooking tomatoes, as with sauces, is actually better: it breaks down the cell walls making those beneficial vitamins and phytochemicals more easily available for absorption by the body, and it increases the level of lycopene — an antioxidant thought to help prevent certain types of cancer, heart disease, and vision loss.
Boil your carrots? Simmer your tomatoes? Crush your garlic? You can find these and some other under-the-radar tips to Boost Your Veggie Power to get the best nutritional bang from famously healthy foods.
2. Chop it up.
While keeping food intact before you prepare it is the best advice (resist the urge to pre-slice or chop for convenience), chopping at the time of preparation can help maximize the absorption of carotenoid nutrients, like those found in carrots. Research indicates that chopping or grating breaks down the plant material: the smaller the particle size, the better the absorption of beta-carotene. That goes for squash, kale, and sweet potatoes too, all great beta-carotene delivery systems.
3. Get the Skin(ny).
Even the grape-peeling diva Mae West would balk at a request to peel a wild blueberry. Just as well, since their skins are a must-eat: their high skin-to-pulp ratio is what makes them an antioxidant powerhouse! But when it comes to fruit, some skins are quick to be removed for easy snacking; veggies like eggplant, cucumbers, radish – even potatoes – are often stripped for cooking. In most cases, resist the urge to peel – the skins hold the nutrients, especially when they are dark in color.
In fact, some nutritional information suggests that even the seemingly non-edible skins of fruits like bananas or kiwi can help combat cancer—and that dumping the stalk and the core of foods means missing out on prevention properties that could be better in our bodies. Here’s the scoop on how to eat the nutrient-dense skins of some unlikely foods.
Of course, anticipating eating the skins of fruits and veggies is another good reason to choose organic produce. But be sure to wash fresh fruits and vegetables carefully before cooking and eating either way.
4. Use your fresh, or make use of frozen.
It’s a fact of life: time is the enemy. Produce that is sitting in your refrigerator is being drained of its nutrients. What’s more, food that sits on trucks during transport and then on grocery store shelves are no less susceptible to this nutritional leakage. The solution? Buy produce as fresh as possible and consume it soon afterward. But if going fresh is just frustrating, there’s another alternative for preserving nutritional value: IQF freezing of fruits and veggies preserve all the nutrients of fresh until the moment you want to use them, with no waste. And, they are frozen at their peak, which means no sitting on trucks or shelves – it gives your the best nutrition for your buck and the ultimate convenience.
Did you also know that serving foods promptly is the best way to get the most nutrition? The longer they stand, the more nutrients are lost.
5. Find your superfood’s sidekick.
Ready for an anti-anti-fat tip you can get behind? Research suggest that adding a little fat to your tomatoes helps absorption of nutrition. To get the most out of a tomato and boost your lycopene intake, you need only drizzle it with a little olive oil, or add an avocado. It might be nice to know you can forget the low-fat dressing – it’s the fat you need to enhance your plate!
The power of combining food doesn’t stop at the tomato. Certain food pairings provide more nutritional benefits and fight disease. The idea is to find the food combinations that create synergy and maximize nutrition benefit. These ideas from CBS.com present some dynamic duos that up the nutritional content. Tasty suggestions include spinach salad with mandarin oranges and fresh squeezed lemon dressing (an iron-vitamin C combo), and red wine sangria with mango and kiwi (it’s a combination of resveratrol and vitamin E).
You can find out more about synergistic foods for optimum health from our previous post, Food Synergy: Nature’s Meal Plan where we give you the background on these nutritional allies.
6. Avoid cooking culprits.
It comes as no surprise that frying food is a way of negating nutritional value. Deep frying causes continuous oxidation of oil, and that is a source of free radicals, those black hat agents that wreak havoc on healthy cells. Protective antioxidants, whether in the food or the oil, are depleted during the process of oxidation, so the benefit is lost, even for vegetables.
The best cooking method to preserve nutrients? Steaming, of course. It preserves both flavor and nutrients. Stir-frying, microwaving, broiling and high-temperature roasting are also good options, with boiling being a nutrient obliterator. (The microwave is sometimes blamed for taking the nutrients out of food, but it may be the water they are cooked in – no evidence yet suggests it’s the microwave itself.)
Eager to max out on health? While integrating these health-enhancing ideas can help put the super in your superfoods, our best advice is not to worry how you’re eating your fruits and veggies, as long as they end up on your plate.
A revealing video made by the Nonprofit Consumer Wellness Center points out a frightening consumer deception in some popular brands that sell products such as muffins, breads, and cereal. These popular brands named in the video are faking their fruit – they don’t contain blueberries, despite pictures on the front of their packaging, and in some cases claims in writing, that they do contain blueberries.
Instead, the products contain “blueberry bits”, “blue crunchlets” or out-and-out faked blueberries made from artificial colors, partially-hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup, chemically provided with a blue color. While it sounds shocking, it’s information that can be found with a little digging – into the ingredients list – where in these particular cases no blueberries are listed among the many sugars and artificial ingredients and colors.
While some products advertise fruits in their products that simply don’t exist, others admit it in fine print according to the video, but the goals for these big brands appear to be the same – convincing the consumer that they are buying blueberries to inflate prices, then making chemically colored bits more cheaply to expand profits.
What can the consumer do? Rely on trusted brands that use real blueberries – they do exist. And most importantly, read labels. Look for artificial colors, like Red # 40 and Blue #2, needed to provide that blue-like color to their sugars and petrochemicals used to fake their fruit – they usually show up at the bottom of the ingredients list.
Of course real blueberries, especially wild blueberries, are incredibly nutritious and contribute big benefits to a healthy diet. Add them yourself by buying them fresh or frozen from trusted brands to be sure you are getting the real nutrition and powerful antioxidants they provide in their natural, authentic form.
The video, The Blueberry Deception, can be seen in its entirety below. Natural News also provides a sample letter you can send to these companies to tell them to get real and drop the deception.
This week, most of the chatter about New Year’s resolutions is about how terrible we are at keeping them. But there’s another side to the failed resolution story.
While some eschew joining the resolution bandwagon altogether, still others are motivated by the promise of a new year and the change it can offer. And, while many resolutions do get broken, according to the American Psychological Association, people are 10 times more likely to succeed with their goal if they make a New Year’s resolution.
So, while experts maintain nearly 60% will quit their resolutions after six months, that means 40% succeed in achieving long term change.
Even if you are ardently anti-resolution, the new year begs for a review of what has passed and what is to come. Rather than run off to the gym and buy five pounds of leafy greens first thing, start off the year with a little reflection first. Begin with pen and paper:
What is working?
It’s easy to forget about healthful changes we’ve made and ignore positive habits we maintain. What have you been successful with in 2010? What efforts have proven fruitful over the past several months, regardless if those efforts were consistent? The new year is also an excellent time to review what invigorates and motivates us. Do you take particular joy in your noonday walk with co-workers? Feel nourished by the Sunday meals with family? What activities make you feel your best? Most productive? Most stress-free? Those are building blocks for future wellness.
What must change?
Often, we know we fall into behavior traps that erode our health and wellness, but it’s easier to enter into a state of bad habit denial. Articulating the behaviors, habits and outside stressors that wreak havoc on our life is the first step. Consider what part of your life is ripe for change, and where change can be most beneficial.
What’s doable?
Evaluate your resolution style and get real about what’s just lip service and what you are willing to achieve. Will you really turn into a body building maven this year? Will you make dinner for your family every night regardless of the challenges of your work day? Decide what changes you feel truly committed to and what changes will just lead down the road to disappointment.
Making Change in 2011: Our 5 Favorite Resolution Tips
1. Be Led By Your Left Brain.
To jump start a new healthy habit, leave your emotional self behind and follow the plan. Make a nightly salad or drive to the gym because that’s your new schedule—don’t get bogged down about whether it’s working. Try letting your intellect take over for the first few weeks, then evaluate your progress after those weeks are over to decide if your new habits are fruitful, rather than letting your emotions sabotage you.
2. Prove You Can.
Lose ten pounds by March! Run a marathon by February! If you have a track record of failure, remember it’s human nature to get excited about lofty goals and then fall into the trap of “I knew I couldn’t do this.” Instead, prove to yourself that you are not goal averse. Set them small and achievable, just for that reason. Eat one piece of fruit a day (not 10), workout two days a week (not 7) and you’ll be invigorated when you find you can be successful.
3. Think Zebra, Not Horse.
Sometimes tackling a problem straight on doesn’t get to the heart of the matter as well as coming at it sideways. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, don’t focus your resolution on what goes into your mouth. Instead, resolve to make January seed purchases for your vegetable garden, or resolve to buy more local foods. Did you know that each year, Americans waste an estimated 160 billion pounds of food? In your efforts to improve your diet, you might resolve to reduce the waste that comes out of your kitchen by eating more widely, meal planning, or buying frozen.
4. Use the 10% Rule.
Resolutions are always about going whole hog—that’s why they are notorious victims of early burn out. Confronted with daily workouts your body fails; you can’t meet your oversized goals. Instead, resolve to commit to incremental change. Increase your workload no more than 10% each week. Eat just 10% less this week, change what you eat just 10%. Then do it 10% the next week. This year, embrace a little change and piecemeal your way to success instead.
5. Eat Your Servings.
If you are going to make a single change this year, resolve to get your servings of fruits and vegetables. You can start with wild blueberries, not just because they are our favorite fruit, but because they cover the best of healthful eating: they provide color, potent antioxidants, low calorie fiber, and health benefits for your blood vessels, eyes, brain and skin, just for starters. And because they are sweet and delicious on so many foods, they serve as a perfect example of big change in a small package.
Learning to Cook in 2011? All You Need Are These Three Foods
According to the New York Times, those who cook spend only 6.8 minutes more preparing food than those who don’t. Author Mark Bittman contends that with three basics — chopped salad, rice and lentils, and stir fries — you can cook and eat healthy for a lifetime. They represent meals that are super fast, super easy, and inexpensive, and they can be made with accessible food (especially when you take advantage of frozen).
Dieting and healthy eating can be a mine field of magical thinking. It seems that if we really have a desire to make a poor eating choice, we can rely on the trickery of our mind to allow us to do so guilt-free. A recent study from Northwestern University brought to light some new information about how our mind can tell us what we want to hear about what we eat.
In the study, weight-conscious people perceived that adding a healthy option to an indulgent meal lessened the total calorie count. For example, a celery stick paired with a cheeseburger was perceived as having a lower calorie count than the cheeseburger alone. They also underestimated caloric intake after viewing more caloric foods: after viewing a cheesecake, for example, participants estimated a cheeseburger as having fewer calories than they did if they had just viewed a salad.
The author of the study believes these results aren’t just an isolated mind-meld, but indicative of the country’s larger obesity epidemic. Misleading food imagery can backfire in many unhealthy ways, and believing that eating healthy foods along with unhealthy ones decreases calorie count can dangerously interfere with meeting weight loss goals. According to the Lempert Report, which reports on trends in consumer marketing, these sorts of misperceptions can be used for good or for evil. Food marketers can rely on this kind of research to sell us more fattening food, or, alternatively, to help us make better, more balanced decisions while shopping.
How to win the battle of wits when it comes to eating? Step one: be active in your own intellectual machinations. To get a “head” start, we’re providing are a few of the most common games to be aware of that go on north of our neck and succeed in psyching out the smartest among us — and some that can help us fight back.
Eating Trickery, Courtesy of…Your Brain.
* Portion size. All-you-can-eat buffets are hip to this mind trick: providing slightly shrunken plates means less food is required to look like a lot. Big plates mean big portions. If you’re programmed to see a bounty of food as the only bona fide meal (aren’t we all), think about down-sizing your crockery to eliminate the white space, and increase the size of the one that holds your greens instead.
* Hidden ingredients. Having salad? Great! Dousing it with fatty dressings and adding globs of tuna salad? Not so great. A tablespoon of mayo adds 100 calories, and a cubic inch of feta adds 45. Fit Sugar has their top 10 list of hidden calories that can turn blissful ignorance into mind-game central.
* Snacks. Grabbing half of your kid’s pop tart while he’s going out the door? Mindlessly noshing on chips while you answer email? More of a mind-numbness than mind game, calories can find their way in your mouth unconsciously. Since duct tape across your mouth is unfashionable, writing down everything you eat can help – it makes you conscious of your eating, and gives you pause before the nosh. If you do snack, you at least have a record of what’s going in the pie hole so you don’t have to live in mystery.
* Drinks. You think you’re not eating because you’re not chewing. But that sprinkle-festooned holiday coffee comes in at 700-calories. Not a morning person? Maybe it’s cocktail hour that’s playing games with your diet. Health Castle lets the light shine in on drink calories that can have you thinking that you’re on track with your food when actually you’re getting derailed by your glass.
* Denial. Eating too much salt? Not following fruit and veggie guidelines? Look to that famed Egyptian river. Americans have been accused of being in denial when it comes to taking control of their poor eating habits. All the government regulations in the world won’t help us snap out of diet denial unless we nix the food coma and start thinking about what we put in our mouth as being as potent as the medicine we take.
Eating Mind Games That Can Help You Turn the Mental Table
* The kitchen is closed. If after hours snacks get you, set a rule that says the kitchen is closed after 8 PM, and anything crunchy, bagged, salty or sweet is on lockdown.
* Hypnotize yourself. When it’s dark out, telling yourself you’re *yawn* just too tired to eat can work, as can that powerful mind game of figuring that you can indulge in the morning if you stand firm tonight.
* Wait thirty minutes. A popular mind game for preventing eating when you may not be hungry, the half-hour wait can get you through a hard-hitting craving. Knowing that if it’s a serious hunger pang, you can let yourself indulge is part of the incentive.
* Brush your teeth. No one wants to ruin a freshly flossed mouth. Feeling like snacking? Brush instead, and tell your dentist your great smile is just genetics.
* Drink water. You’ve heard it before – a desire for food may just be thirst. A glass will fill you up temporarily, but it’s not just mental gymnastics – winter is an ideal time to increase your hydration and beat dryness, so give yourself 8 ounces of H2O for mind and body before you indulge.
* Photo of you in skinny jeans. The photo-on-the-fridge is a mind game classic because it taps into your motivation. Does it work? Some swear by it. Part affirmation and part reminder, the skinny photo, wallet card, or picture of your kids (even a photo of you at your worst that you don’t want to return to) can provide the mental poke that snaps you back to reality and reminds you of why you’re eating healthy in the first place.
* A positive attitude. Eating well is not a prison sentence. It’s an opportunity to try new foods, eat real, wholesome ingredients, and feel strong and healthy. A positive attitude is a win-win situation that can turn mental manipulation from demoralizing to empowering.
Watch the Lempert Report’s video which includes details about the food imagery study.
Fall food, fall foliage—autumn provides a bounty of dazzling color! The season is a vibrant reminder that the best way to eat healthy and stay well is to take advantage of the edible rainbow of color that occurs naturally. Consider the bright crimson apple, the fluorescent orange squash…these flamboyant fruits and veggies are making their best case in the fall months.
It’s the doctrine of The Color Code: color is your medicine all seasons of the year. Eating deep, colorful foods in the widest spectrum is simply the best thing to do for your health. When we eat colorful foods, we’re getting the benefit of phytochemicals, and phytochemicals protect us from disease.
According to botanist Dr. James Duke, author of The Green Pharmacy, we need phytochemicals in our diet because the human body evolved with them. In many cases, says Duke, cancer and heart disease are simply a deficiency of antioxidants. “Scientists are starting to think of these diseases as a shortage of phytochemicals,” he says.
So, if it’s loaded with color, it’s loaded with disease prevention. And right now, it’s all there for the taking, so load up.
Bewildered by Blues? Perplexed by Purples? Don’t Be.
Eating across the color spectrum can seem easy in some hues and less easy in others. Deep greens, for instance, can appear readily available, while blues and purples sometimes stump us.
But don’t be color blind to the uncommon benefits and surprising accessibility of these colors—deep purples and blues represent some of the healthiest foods under the sun. In fact, fall is the perfect time for munching away at this particular end of the spectrum. Think red cabbage and red onion for those saturated red-purple hues. Lusciously dark eggplant is a fall staple and a great representative of the purple family. And wild blueberries, the number one superfruit, is a cobalt delight—get them frozen any time of year.
Fall is awash in color! Take your penchant for leaf peeping to the produce aisle and fill your bag to the brim with all the colors of the spectrum!
For additional inspiration, see WebMD’s video about Fall Food Colors.
Yes, it’s a Halloween tradition, and it protects your front yard from getting TP’d. But if you’ve been working on getting a cupful of blueberries and a bowlful of greens in your diet instead, bringing a bushel of mini Snickers into your kitchen can bring bone-chilling fear to your Hallow’s Eve.
But don’t be bothered by the boo – if you find October 31st truly scary, consider that it can provide a reminder of healthy eating principles that you can embrace all year. Here is a bit-sized list of rules for gathering Halloween loot that we’ve lived by since we were kids. We’ve applied them to the rest of year to help you turn a day that strikes fear in your heart into one that can actually strengthen your resolve and help you achieve your healthy eating ghouls…er, goals.
1. Cook what you eat.
One of today’s popular rules of eating better, attributed to real-food evangelist Michael Pollan, is if you’re going to eat it, cook it. Crave an indulgent dessert? Put in the time to do the baking. It’s not just penance—it ensures you are using real ingredients, and if cake isn’t available at a moment’s notice, it means you’re probably having it less often.
The same goes for Halloween. There are lots of treat options that don’t come pre-wrapped: roasted pumpkin seeds, chocolate dipped fruit, cocoa crispy balls, caramel apples…they are fun, unique, yummy, and less loaded with fat and preservatives. Bake Halloween cookies, try some frightening Halloween snack ideas, or check out these spooky recipes and tips.
2. Check for dangers.
It dates back to the early days of trick or treating – parents would scan their child’s candy bag for the truly frightening treat such as razor blades in apples or any other unwrapped, sinister-looking dangers posing as bonbons. Checking for dangers is a prudent health rule for the rest of the year as well. Healthy eating land mines including restaurant visits, overbooked schedules that lead to drive-through and packaged eating, and high stress times that only mindless eating can cure.
If you’re on a mission to be a cook, to get your servings of fruits and veggies, or to avoid brain-sedating taste triumvirates, make sure mindfulness is part of your life so you can keep your most dangerous habits in check. Otherwise, you’ll end up sleepwalking through a hall of horrors, an easy target for nutritional ghosts and goblins.
3. Trade your treats.
After the treats and tricks are over and you and your wig-wearing, makeup-smeared friends were back at home evaluating the take, trading was key. Too many Smarties and not enough hot balls did not a diversified candy sack make. But that could be easily fixed through the complex negotiations of treat trading, where a Snickers bar equaled two Junior Mints.
Even when the sacks are emptied, the trade must go on. Replacing portions of a meal of average nutrition with one fruit or veggie, or adding color to your plate to create a more vibrant edible rainbow should always be the rule of thumb. Get your trade on: replace potato chips for baby carrots; switch your white-colored food for something deep green or bright blue.
4. Divide.
You know the routine – ingest all you can on Halloween night, then put the rest in zip bag and store it in the freezer. Parceling out treats over the long term is just a mother’s intuition, and it couldn’t make more sense. You know eating thirty milk balls when two will suffice will help you maintain your diet and nutritional goals over the long term.
Portion control is a truly American phenomenon, where muffins are as big as manhole covers and cleaning our plate is the only option. Stretching high-fat, high-calorie food out over weeks or even months is pure mathematical division, and it has the same benefit as stretching those giant portions out so a little less goes in over a longer period of time.
5. Don’t eat your feelings.
Whether you dressed as a princess or pauper, you knew your Halloween candy was earned through the hard work of knocking on doors and trudging through the elements. This hard-won booty was yours, not to be doled out as a reward for doing your homework or taking out the trash.
Using candy as a reward or a bribe turns that peanut butter cup into a little ball of love and acceptance, and that equates confections with emotions. Don’t confuse your kids or yourself by conflating acceptance and love with something caramel-filled. Love yourself with a sweet peach or a blueberry smoothie instead – sometimes a mallow bar is just a mallow bar.
6. Snub the fear.
As a kid, you never passed up an opportunity for a haunted hayride or a late night slasher flick. As a grown-up, you can still be fearless. Just because you are surrounded by sweets, don’t let it scare you. Indulging is part of a realistic diet. Vilifying food by locking it up behind a three padlocks only leads to desperate lock-picking on the flipside.
Nutrition, disease prevention and longevity are life-long pursuits, and can’t be toppled by a momentary poltergeist. Have a chocolate eyeball or an orange M&M! Indulge – mindfully and in moderation. Remember, every day is full of demons, these just happen to be in fun sizes.
Here are some guidelines for armoring up for the coming season.
Choose Phyto Foods. Dr. James Sears, a regular on NBC’s The Doctors, and friend of Wild About Health, offers this advice in Parenting for cold and flu season: eat foods packed with phytonutrients. Phytos are found in deep-colored fruits and veggies such as blueberries, tomatoes and spinach. The color intensity signals immune-boosting power. Try these phyto-intense recipes that combine phytonutreint-rich wild blueberries with an array of favorites.
