The 2012 TEDMED Conference, modeled after the famed TED talks, gathered thinkers and doers from around the world this past April to share exciting ideas and innovations in the fields of health and medicine.
Some videos from the conference, which was held at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and streamed live to audiences nationwide, have been made available to the public so an even wider population of people can take part in the presentations that addressed issues affecting all Americans, including innovations in disease prevention and cure, health care considerations and management, and pioneering ideas in diagnostics, genetics, medications and social issues.
If you are a health and medicine geek, you’ll want to browse the topics of these dynamic talks. Here are just some of the videos now online with ties to some of Wild About Health’s most talked about topics:
Judith Salerno & John Hoffman talk about the consequences of the obesity epidemic.
David Kirchhoff, the CEO of Weight Watchers talks about living and coping with today’s new “obsogenic” environment and why obesity isn’t about eating too much.
Franziska Michor investigates how to use math to decipher how cancer grows and how we can computationally crack the cancer code.
And there’s plenty more from this year and past years, including videos with Lance Armstrong, Dr. Oz and others. (Check out Calvin Harley and Elissa Epel’s 2011 presentation on how psychological stress causes our cells to age.)
A recent study about nutrition is making a lot of headlines this month. The news is not so much a nutritional breakthrough as a rethinking of an old idea. While some consider the USDA study just a new way to crunch nutritional data, it may contribute to a major shift in how we view the cost of being healthy.
The report concluded that eating healthy food is more cost effective than eating poorly. It’s a conclusion that debunks accepted wisdom that it’s cheaper to eat a diet loaded with sugar and fat than it is to eat more nutritious food. Such assumptions, based on calorie-to-calorie comparisons, have been supported by previous studies, including one conducted by the University of Washington Nutritional Science Program in 2010, and has led many to point the finger at a broken food system that particularly affects low income families. Unhealthy foods full of calories – like cereals, pastries and fast food – could be purchased cheaply, while the price-per-calorie of fruits or vegetables was much higher in comparison, stated previous studies. Poor eating habits were understandable, if unfortunate, because it was the cost-effective choice.
The USDA study could begin to change this way of thinking.
The Study
According to the USDA report, “fruits and vegetables are often cheaper when you calculate the cost in a smarter way.” This new calculation was the result of researching 4,000 foods and analyzing price per calorie, price by weight, and price by average amount consumed. Previous calculations that guided the “junk food is cheaper” conclusion measured only price per calorie. Researchers found that fruits and vegetables were cheaper when taking into account the amount of vitamins and minerals they provide – that is, they give more “bang for the buck”. In addition, more satisfaction can be derived by higher amounts, One article about the USDA study shows a plate of nutritious food (broccoli and berries) compared with calorically comparable junk food amounts like M&Ms and chips. The amounts of nutritious food dwarf the junk food portions. The message is that healthier food is the better value after all.
In fact, before the onslaught of headlines this month, Mark Bittman wrote an article for the New York Times that questioned this entrenched idea that junk is more affordable. (We talked about his article in a previous post.) Like the researchers cited in the USDA study, he mentions beans and lentils as inexpensive foods that provide high nutrition, high volume, and serve as great nutritional meat alternatives. Bittman also cites roasted chicken, rice, pasta, other grains, and vegetables as less expensive alternatives to cheaper fast or processed food, arguing against the idea that grass-fed meat and high priced organics are the only ways to eat healthier.
A Crack in Food’s “New Calculation”?
By all accounts, nutrition is the best way to avoid health problems, prevent disease, and reduce the myriad issues that accompany weight gain. But previous conclusions about the high cost of staying healthy have been reiterated thousands of times in writings and discussions about the health crisis. Understanding more about food and its nutritional and monetary value by looking at it in a new way – with a “smarter calculation” – may indeed provide a way to break us out of a learned helplessness when it comes to eating better.
At the same time, the study does not factor in crucial elements that lead to that value – like cooking. That roasted chicken with lentils may be pound smart, but it doesn’t calculate for preparation time or for the knowledge about how to cook. It neglects to take into consideration that we must 1) understand the importance of nutrition and how to get it, 2) know how to cook and prepare real food, and 3) have the time it takes to do it for ourselves and our families.
Also, the reality of nutrition is that better food must be available. The growth of supermarkets in urban areas and farmer’s markets is encouraging. Improved cafeterias are changing the health of our kids. Health efforts for employees that include distributing menus from places that offer fresh foods and spending lunch breaks walking has changed the health habits in many workplaces. But the “fast food mile” we drive by on the way home from a long work day can destroy good eating habits, even when money is not an issue. Good food must be available for us to have the option to choose it, and its availability must slowly replace the abundance of poor food choices in our homes, schools, and communities.
Changing Food Value By Buying Frozen
With news of the new food value calculation, the mention of frozen surfaces over and over again. Taking advantage of frozen fruits and vegetables is one of the easiest ways we can significantly change how we invest in our health. Here’s why:
Frozen fruits and veggies are just as nutritious as fresh if not more. Understand why that is.
Frozen means nutritious foods like wild blueberries, one of the highest antioxidant foods there is, are available every day of the year, at your supermarket and in your freezer.
Frozen can be purchased affordably in bulk. Buy a bulk bag of a frozen fruit or vegetable, and it stays for weeks in your freezer. That means there is no waste, a major contributor to rising food bills.
There is no prep. Frozen is easy to use and cook with.
How do you weigh in on food values? What’s the most appropriate way to measure the cost of a meal? Should food by measured by calorie or by portion size? What’s the most nutritious meal you can make on the cheap? Let us know.
A major health symposium that we told you about back in 2010 is back by popular demand, and it’s continuing the important mission it started two years ago. It’s the Food for Your Whole Life Health Symposium, and it’s bringing some of the best minds in health and nutrition together to educate the public and professionals in the field about food and lifestyle choices that are essential for better health. This year, Food for Your Whole Life will convene at the Hilton in New York City on June 3rd and 4th, promising attendees the tools they need to “improve our nation’s health and be empowered knowing that nutritious food is tasty and delicious and an exciting and flavorful way to improve your health.”
The crowd-drawing presenters that wowed in 2010 return as well, including Dr. Mehmet Oz, host of “The Dr. Oz Show”, Dr. Michael F. Roizen, author of the best-selling YOU series, which he co-authored with Dr. Oz, and regular on-air personality Dr. David L. Katz. They will be joined by other internationally-recognized researchers, clinicians, educators and health experts who will present nutrition tips for achieving optimal health as well as their own new research and theories on nutrition. (If you are thinking of attending, you can get a taste of the 2010 event by browsing the live blog from 2010 courtesy of Don’t (White) Sugar Coat It.)
Understanding the Effect of Food on Health
Those in the healthcare field, including physicians, dieticians, nurses, and educators will attend the Food for Your Whole Life Health Symposium to share information that will support the clients and patients they see in their practice and learn about philosophies that are relevant for today’s attitudes about nutrition and health. This year’s event specifically focuses on the aged-based diet, including food-based dietary patterns for the general population and specific groups.
While the first half of the Symposium is targeted to health professionals, Sunday, June 3 events are open to the public. They will include presentations by Dr. Oz and Dr. Roizen, exhibits, cooking demos, exercise sessions and BMI testing. It’s a perfect opportunity for anyone, whether you serve others or just serve yourself and your family, to learn more about improving health through nutrition.
Live blogging the event?Let us know and we’ll keep our readers updated.
Defend Your Body!
Get involved in good health by telling others how you “defend your body.” Join forces with Food for Your Whole Life by sharing your own personal principle that helps you achieve optimum health as part of the 100 Great Ways to Defend Your Body Challenge. Whether it’s a hot bath, eating fruit with every meal, or doing yoga, you could win a health club membership or a 5-pound bag of California Walnuts just for sharing your healthy tidbit!
A recent study into the effects of an extract found in blueberries provided good news this month about a certain type of cancer. The research showed promise in the treatment of bladder cancer, demonstrating the compound’s anti-cancer activity in the cells.
Previous research into this powerful fruit has already demonstrated potential in cancer treatment and prevention. Research has shown that blueberries inhibited the growth of Triple Negative Breast Cancer, a particularly aggressive and hard to treat form of breast tumor, and other research shows compounds in wild blueberries may be effective inhibitors of both the initiation and promotion stages of cancer. This latest research was conducted by a professor from National Cheng Kung University in southern Taiwan, and it indicated that a substance extracted from blueberries can induce the death of bladder cancer cells and may be effective for chemotherapy-resistant bladder cancer.
What’s also interesting about this study is the extract Professor Wang Ying-jan used: it’s pterostilbene. The word may sound familiar – it’s a compound found most commonly in blueberries, and it’s becoming more and more important in the world of nutrition research. Its unique health benefits once again show the blueberry – particularly the wild blueberries with its potency of concentrated compounds – has more secrets under its deep blue skin.
Pterostilbene: A Promising Compound
Pterostilbene is an antioxidant found specifically in blueberries and red-skinned grapes. It is similar to resveratrol, the popular compound present in wine and known for its anti-aging properties, but it’s not as well known – yet. (And, despite its presence in grapes, it isn’t found in wine.) It’s one of many “stilbenes” a type of organic compound that is makes up food’s chemistry.
According to Professor Wang who conducted the bladder cancer study, pterostilbene also has antioxidant and antiseptic features that exhibit anticancer activity, and it has the potential to lower blood fat levels. We already know the powerful effect antioxidants have on the body. They help our bodies protect against disease and age-related health risks by decreasing inflammation and fighting free radicals that cause diseases of aging. Research is in the beginning stages for this exciting new antioxidant compound but it is thought to have a preventative effect on cancer and cognitive decline, effectively slowing cellular aging. It also shows promise for type 2 diabetes by slowing sugar surges and regulating the secretion of insulin. (You can find this study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.) And, early studies indicate a benefit in preventing high cholesterol and heart disease.
Blueberries & Pterostilbene
The best news about this compound is its accessible delivery system. Pterostilbene is most commonly known for its presence in blueberries, in particular the more potent wild blueberry, and also in grapes and peanuts. It is marketed as a supplement; however, the most dependable way to get the benefits of nutritional compounds remains to eat it in its natural form in food.
If you are intrigued by the unique benefits of pterostilbene, your best approach is to increase your intake of wild blueberries: they are a leader in antioxidants, and the smaller berry with its high skin-to-pulp ratio (where the antioxidants are found) has the highest antioxidant capacity compared to 20 of the most common fruits. At least ½ cup every day provides an exciting, delicious way to boost your health in a promising variety of important ways.
Feel like you’ve lost your head when it comes to diet and nutrition? You might be eating mindlessly, and it could be having a major effect on your health.
It’s unfortunate, but not surprising, that something as simple as eating can be so complicated. We begin a relationship with food several times a day—we must. We eat to stay alive and energetic, we eat to feel happy, to ease boredom, or for no reason at all. We battle cravings at the same time we create celebratory food traditions.
But the biggest food irony lies in the fact that food is also the cornerstone of our health. Good nutrition is essential for disease prevention and longevity. How do we reconcile food’s health functions
when raising a fork is so fraught with implications?
The answer to these food woes might be found in mindful eating – it’s a concept in health and well being that’s trending upward, and just in time. Eating mindlessly, characterized by binging, starving, craving, stuffing ourselves, grabbing whatever and eating it obliviously, touches us all. Besides shaking us from our unconsciousness when it comes to food, mindful eating promises to deliver major benefits in weight control, disease management and emotional well-being. If you feel like your relationship with food is acrimonious, mindful eating may help you mediate, and deliver big changes in your diet and nutrition in the process.
Power Over Food
It may be today’s “It” thing in non-diet dieting, but mindful eating has been practiced by Buddhist Monks for generations. Now, it’s being adopted by workers on the Google campus during their lunch hour. It is touted on talk shows and is the subject of many books. So what is mindful eating? Simply put, it is an approach to eating in which we pay close attention to our food, noticing its wonderful aspects and tuning into what we are putting in our bodies.
The mindful eating concept is a way of adopting a new attitude about whatever you eat that includes slowing down and controlling how much. According to one system of mindful eating, the practice allows us to “recapture power over food” that we let go with when we “allow other people, events and emotions to control how you eat, how much you eat, how fast you eat and how you use food in your life.” If that sounds familiar, you are probably the perfect candidate to put mindful eating principles to work in your life. But eating mindfully does not require that you eat well – that’s only a by-product of tuning in. You can mindfully eat a chocolate cake as easily as you can a salad, and you can still reap the benefits.
According to the The Center for Mindful Eating the “Principles of Mindful Eating” include being aware of the nurturing aspects of food preparation, using all of your senses, and being aware of satiety cues. Making these changes in the way we eat and approach food is what leads to potentially life-changing results. Dr. Susan Albers, author and psychologist at Cleveland Clinic Family Health Center says in “The Surprising Benefits of Mindful Eating” that mindful eating has been found to help with deep emotionally issues surrounding food, reduce chronic eating issues like binge eating and anorexia, and improve the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes.
The Pleasure of Masticating
Adopting a mindful eating lifestyle might begin by holding a single blueberry, for example. According to mindful eating principles, you might spend up to 20 minutes looking, feeling, tasting and chewing this piece of fruit. Time consuming? Sure. But the payoff is that by being aware, we can tune into sensations of enjoyment and pleasure.
In addition, practicing awareness can help us start training to move past our desire to eat fast and stuff ourselves with food. Because eating fast means eating more, we start to eat less. And, because eating mindfully allows us to tune into what we eat and how we feel when we eat, we may naturally decide we want to enjoy other, healthier foods.
Wake Up Your Eating Life
Ready to wake up your diet? Start with some simple awareness questions when you eat, such as, “How hungry am I on a scale of 1 to 10” and even “Am I sitting?” (You can download the full awareness checklist from Eatingminfully.com.) Other strategies for putting mindful eating into practice, according to the recent New York Times piece, Mindful Eating as Food for Thought, include, unsurprisingly, unplugging the media that tends to accompany our eating in favor of focusing on our food, and using rituals like candles and flowers as part of our meals.
Here’s more tips to shift you into focus:
7 Mindful Eating Tips is a downloadable tip sheet from Dr. Susan Albers. Dr. Albers is also behind eatingmindfully.com, which has information and resources about mindful eating.
The Center for Mindful Eating provides a wealth of educational resources for practitioners as well as the layperson, including training and workshops.
Are YOU a Mindless Eater? Brain Wansick, author of the book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think hosts the Mindless Eating website, a hub of engaging videos, anecdotes about the way we approach food, free stuff and tools for teaching mindful eating.
Walmart announced this week that it will introduce new labeling on select foods in its stores. The labels, which will begin to appear this spring, will alert customers about those foods that have been vetted for health. Foods that meet the health criteria will be labeled with a bright green front-of-package seal with the words “Great For You” on Great Value and Marketside items, as well as fresh and packaged fruits and vegetables. Learn more about Walmart’s new food labeling.
In a press release, the company stated that the new labeling aimed to help make purchasing decisions easier for moms, and that it would serve as a step toward achieving a population of healthier kids and lower rates of obesity. The move got the thumbs up from First Lady Michelle Obama, who was also quoted in the release. The company also announced that it would be reformulating thousands of packaged food items by the year 2015 in an effort to reduce sodium and added sugars in their Great Value brand. Both the labeling and the repackaging is part of the company’s healthy food initiative.
To meet the Walmart standards of a “Great for You” food, it must contain certain healthy components and be limited in fat, sugar and sodium. Proteins, fruits and vegetables (bagged and canned – there was no mention of frozen) and whole grain foods get the seal, as do dairy, beans, and eggs. Approximately a fifth of the store’s foods will have the label.
Will the new labeling efforts lead to better health? According to Food Politics author Marion Nestle, it may prove to be more nutritional clutter in an already untidy landscape. Nestle told the New York Times
that while she approves of the strict guidelines for the labels, she fears they may only promote sales, not health.
It’s no surprise the labeling effort has met with groans from those who study food and nutrition. Labels have been long abused by food companies that advertise healthiness on packages that contain foods that meet no such criteria. Such misleading marketing has jaded both experts and consumers, not to mention prompted legal action. Walmart’s “Great For You” seal may drive home the health factor for some truly healthy products, but whether the label will lead to change in our eating habits and our health remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, the principles of healthy shopping at the grocery store remain the same:
Shop the perimeter of the store: that’s where healthier, whole foods hang out.
Read Nutrition Facts labels, not front-of-package claims.
Health and nutrition can be confusing. We are bombarded with marketing messages, inundated with confusing food labels, and assailed with scientific research and multi-syllabic names for compounds and nutrients.
The Wild About Health Made Simple Series explains health and nutrition as simply as possible. The easier it is to understand, the easier it is to have a longer, healthier life.
Nutrition: Good vs. Bad
Q: Are you eating well?
We’re told by our doctors, by our leaders, and by countless talking heads to eat well and maintain our health; we’re urged to “get healthy” in order to maintain our weight, our heart, our brain, and our longevity. It sounds simple, and in some ways, it is. But how do we accomplish it?
Here, we dump the science and the complex guidelines and strategies, and break down good nutrition in simple terms so you can start today moving the needle toward healthy.
Eating Well: 5 Simple Steps
1. Fruits & Vegetables, Every Day
A healthy diet emphasizes fruits and vegetables. Need a visual? Use the MyPlate guidelines. The new “plate” version of the old pyramid presents the general guideline of how much of each food group we should be eating.
You can eat seasonal food, organic food, or local food – if it’s available and affordable, then that’s great. You can eat across the rainbow and make an effort to get important phytochemicals that provide some fruits’ deep color. But the most important principle is this: fill you plate to half with fruits and vegetables every time you eat.
2. Know the Basics
Keeping nutrition simple means knowing about a few hot button healthy eating issues. Good nutrition emphasizes dietary fiber and cuts salt, saturated and trans fats, and added sugar. Unless you are dealing with specific dietary needs, as a general rule, you can maintain a healthier diet by doing the following:
Reducing sodium
Getting more fiber
Drinking more water
Reducing saturated fat
3. Shrink Your Portions
In order to maintain a healthy diet, many Americans must cut calories. Our health is often associated with our weight. Being overweight contributes to diabetes and heart disease and can shorten our life, and it’s as simple as that.
According to the Lempert Report, portion size is linked to plate size. (Surprisingly, it is also linked to plate color!) If you love numbers, counting calories might help. (Realizing that a bowl or chips and french onion dip will take up at least half your day’s calories helps their importance sink in.) But the easiest thing you can do is shrink your meal. Get a smaller plate, cut portions in half to eat later, or get rid of family-style eating. Whatever you do, aim to get the most nutrition you can from the calories you eat, and eat only the calories you need.
4. Cook For Yourself
Why cook for yourself? It’s simple: You’ll know what’s in your food. You’ll eat more whole, unprocessed ingredients. You’ll be better able to control your sodium, sugar, and fat. It’s more economical. It’s tastier. And, cooking your own meals is almost always lighter. Start cooking: it’s one of the best things you can do for your health.
Is your goal to eat better? Get these four simple principles under you belt. You can start understanding the benefits or pterostilebene and the best superfoods for optimum disease prevention later – it will come naturally. For now, start simple, and change the way you eat and how much. Then, if someone asks if you have a healthy diet, the answer will be simple: Yes.
More on the Web
What is a healthy diet? Get a simple definition at Choosemyplate.gov.
Give your diet some digital help. This article has 5 Apps for Eating Better that will help you find fruits and veggies, locate local, seasonal foods, and give you a fun way to track of your servings.
Break it down.Fruits & Veggies More Matters takes the confusion out of healthy eating and provides nuts and bolts advice about calories, food groups, and what you should know.
Why Confusing Life with Football Could Be Killing Your Wellness Efforts by pinguinoWe live in a culture that is devoted to sports – we love the excitement and the competition, we feel satisfied by its clear wins and finite season, and we invest ourselves fully in our affection for our team. Looking forward to kick-off is healthy.Trouble is, we can often attack other goals – like disease prevention and good health – as if they are just another showdown on the field. But not everything is like football, including our personal health and wellness, and thinking that it is can set us up for failure.
Are you treating your health like a Patriots playoff game? It’s time for an interception. You can still wear you lucky socks when Tom Brady’s on the field, but throwing around that sports analogy doesn’t always makes sense.
Is Your Personal Health & Wellness Like Football?
Why It Is
You’re running offense and defense.
You’re getting aggressive when it comes to nutrition—you’ve armed your kitchen with frozen fruits, you’ve shopped the perimeter of your grocery store, and you’re playing AC/DC’s Thunderstruck – you’re ready. But if your defensive line is benched, you’re in big trouble. The snack table at work, the vending machine you pass midday, and the late-night food commercials during Top Chef all require a strong defensive line to keep you in the game. Being a nutritional Neon Deion is the only way to stay alive in the scrimmage for good health.
You’re as good as your last touchdown.
Go ahead and spike the ball when you cross the finish line—it’s those little glories that make the game worth playing. But it’s only the first quarter, and there’s and lot of maneuvering to go. A fumble, a bad pass or a difficult sack, and all that kiss-blowing and moonwalking in the end zone is ancient history. It’s the same with your health and nutrition efforts. You had kale salad for dinner? Nice work. But breakfast is around the corner and your choices – eggs Benedict or oatmeal with ½ cup of wild blueberries – start all over again, and that salad is just last season’s highlight reel.
You can get slowed by injury.
Bronco receiver Erik Decker’s knee injury may keep him off the field this weekend, providing a potential windfall for the New England Patriots. The health game is riddled with similar hiccups. Times of stress can sabotage efforts at good nutrition; the holidays, with its cookie swaps and parties, can act like injuries and bench your best nutrition intentions; even actual injuries like illness or hospitalization can put nutrition and exercise on the back burner. Life is a nutritional gridiron, and as everyone who’s headed for the car a little too early knows, one quarter is never the same as the last.
Why it Isn’t
You can’t depend on your superstar quarterback.
Football can seem like a battle of the quarterbacks. When Tebow and Brady face off, it’s nearly a two-man game: it’s all about the two helmeted suns surrounded by their luminous satellites. But in the battle for good nutrition, you are your own quarterback. And your own offensive line, your own runner, and your own field-goal kicker. You can’t rely on your star to get you through the season, and your latest hair style makes nary a difference to your heart, your brain, or your cells.
There’s no coach calling the shots.
If only Bill Belichick could talk us through the right nutritional moves. While keeping nutritional goals can be supported by community, peers, and sometimes even a fitness trainer or nutritionist, most of our life does not come complete with a coach calling the shots from the sidelines. When you open your refrigerator, no one is yelling into their headphones, guiding your choice to chop up some vegetables instead of grabbing the leftover pizza. Instead, understanding dietary needs, learning new strategies for getting high antioxidant foods, and cooking with health in mind is completely up to us.
There’s no Superbowl.
Football season is about taking it all the way, and that’s one of the reasons we love it: we are always looking toward the final ticker tape parade. But there’s no clear goal when it comes to health. You might be counting down pounds, or tracking your cholesterol and blood pressure. But most of the time, living a healthy, disease-free life is a continuum with no gold ring, and no Vince Lombardi trophy. But the good news is that there’s no heartbreak about a blocked field goal that tanks the playoff. When the season’s never over, you’re always in the game.
The stands are empty.
Cook a meal four times out of seven this week? Choose a wild blueberry smoothie instead of a monkey bun this morning? These small accomplishments can have a huge cumulative effect – and yet, the stands are quiet, and the foam fingers aren’t waving. What gives? As nice as it would be, no one cheers your small health accomplishments. Good health and nutrition choices are usually private wins that don’t get the fanfare. When you realize no one’s going to slap you on the backside for yards run, then the next time you bite into a fresh salad and take a pass on the processed dessert, you’ve only to showboat a little on your own, and keep on.
There is no next year.
When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, there is no training season and there is no next time. Your health depends on what you do every day, year in and year out. Want a healthy heart? Make small changes in your diet like curbing salt and saturated fat. Concerned with cancer prevention? Maintain a diet that battles free radicals with foods high in antioxidants. Warding off the symptoms of metabolic syndrome? Eat your servings of fruits and vegetables every day for the advantages they provide to your well-being today and your longevity tomorrow.
The bottom line? No Monday morning quarterbacking – get a game plan for good health and start holding the line. Good health and longevity isn’t just sport, and you can bet it’s going to be a fight to the finish.
Happy Food Day! Maine’s governor has officially pronounced October 24, 2011 Maine Food Day, a day devoted to celebrating and fortifying the connection between food and the health and well-being of everyone in the state.
Among the goals of this auspicious day are reducing obesity so members of the state can up their health and prevent disease. Goals also extend to supporting fair conditions for farms operating around the state. Celebrations taking place in Maine include cooking meals exclusively with Maine ingredients, planting gardens, putting on school plays that highlight healthy eating, and taking the Real Food Challenge, an organized effort to put more real food on plates in college campuses.
The food fête isn’t just happening in Maine. Food Day is being celebrated in communities all around the country. Floridians will feature local food cooking demos, Nebraska is sponsoring healthy breakfast giveaway for kids, and Boston is marking the day with a crowd-sourced potluck dinner. At foodday.com, you can get inspired by the many food salutes happening in every state and join the festivities wherever you hang your hat.
The Goals of Food Day
What are the goals of Food Day? In short, to transform the American diet. Here are the tenets:
Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods
Support sustainable farms & limit subsidies to big agribusiness
Expand access to food and alleviate hunger
Protect the environment & animals by reforming factory farms
Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids
Support fair conditions for food and farm workers
Looking for a way to celebrate? Even small changes can make a big impact on our local food environment! Choose just one of these ten ideas and you’ll be doing your part toward building a better, healthier, more sustainable food future.
Make a meal from only local ingredients.
Include a locally-sourced food at every meal you eat during the day.
Food as Medicine & Colorful Diet at the Heart of New Study, Says Nutrition Expert Susan Davis
This week, Wild About Health shared a new study from researchers at the City of Hope in Los Angeles that showed the positive effect of blueberries on triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of breast cancer that typically responds poorly to treatment. (Read our post, Exciting Study Ties Blueberries to Breast Cancer Prevention, where you’ll also be able to view the video and hear from the researchers firsthand.) Today, we’re following up on this compelling study with Nutrition Advisor Susan Davis, MS, RD, who provides insight into its promising results and helps us parse its nutritional message.
The investigation into the health benefits of blueberries was familiar to researchers Shiuan Chen, Ph.D and Lynn Adams, Ph.D. A 2010 study into the cancer-fighting properties of the fruit prompted them to refer to blueberries as one of the most potent and popular disease fighters available. Previous research has focused on the powerful phytochemicals in blueberries that counter the damage of free radicals, and this latest study took the inquiry one step further. “Our results demonstrate that blueberry consumption can greatly reduce the growth and spread of an aggressive form of breast cancer,” said Shiuan Chen, Ph.D., director of the Division of Tumor Cell Biology at City of Hope and senior author on the paper that will appear in the October issue of The Journal of Nutrition.
Such promise for a particularly deadly form of a challenging disease generated excitement for those interested in the topic of breast cancer as well as those in the fields of health and nutrition. While the study’s focus was on blueberries – already known for their disease-fighting properties – the true message of the study, said Nutrition Advisor to the Wild Blueberry Association Susan Davis, MS, RD, is not necessarily to urge people to eat more blueberries, but to help advance a vital health message that still needs spreading.
Wild About Health was fortunate to have Davis weigh in on the study. Davis is a member of the Bar Harbor Group, a collective of U.S. and Canadian researchers who are active in the fields of neuroscience, aging, cardiovascular disease, cancer, eye health and other health-related areas who regularly share their research findings and explore opportunities in blueberry and berry nutritional health and research. The group met this past August to share new research into the connection between blueberries and Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and diabetes.
Susan Davis, MS, RD
Davis said the City of Hope study was significant both in the dramatic performance of blueberries and because of their effect on many markers for breast cancer. Not only did tumor size decrease by 75%, but metastases, or the spread of cancer, was also decreased. In addition, mechanisms were identified to explain how blueberries could have these effects, an important step forward in understanding the connection between health and these superfood components.
The study’s applicability to all diets also reinforced an important message of food as medicine, Davis said. “The fact that the amount of fruit consumed is achievable in ordinary diets shows the power of foods in helping prevent disease,” she told Wild About Health. Researchers like Chen and Adams and those who are part of the Bar Harbor Group continue to make strides toward isolating components in food that could help prevent cancers and diseases of aging, providing more scientific evidence that we should view food as “treatment” for disease as well as use it defensively as a preventative for disease and the effects of aging.
According to Davis, studies like this one solidify this message for the public and help contribute to a cultural understanding that can save our lives and contribute to our longevity: that what we eat makes a significant difference in how we look, how we feel, and how healthy we are. She said that it’s a message that has not been fully adopted in this country. “Many other cultures look to foods and herbs to treat illnesses and honor their bodies,” she said. “In the U.S. we are slow to get the message.” While many of us are taking nutritional measures to preserve our health, others continue to miss the clear connection that exists between food and our wellness.
“Get the colors on your plate at every
meal, and make one of them blue,”
advises Susan Davis.
Davis said another important aspect of this study’s subsequent report and analysis is the message reiterated by its researchers concerning the effects of food synergy. Because fruits and vegetables contain very different compounds that complement each other, it’s important to understand that one will not provide all the health benefits we need. Instead, these components work together, in ways we don’t yet understand, to augment their singular effects. When it comes to fruits and vegetables, variety truly is the key to healthy eating, and that’s another message worth hearing again and again.
“Berries are powerful sources of protective compounds and the blues are one of the best. A good way to judge how healthy your diet is, is by color,” said Davis. “Get the colors on your plate at every meal, and make one of them blue.”
Have you made one of the colors on your plate blue today? Find out more about why you should get your daily dose of blue.
