The International Food Information Council Foundation’s fifth annual Food & Health Survey takes an extensive look at Americans’ eating, health and physical activity habits, as well as food safety practices. In other words, they reveal us for what we are and what we think when it comes to eating and staying healthy. The unsurprising headline? That many Americans are concerned about their weight.
A whopping 70% say they are concerned about their weight status, and 77 % report trying to lose or maintain their weight. At the same time, we don’t have a solid handle on our calorie needs and intake, and despite being extremely weight-conscious, we are not using exercise to assuage those concerns.
Here are some additional findings about the American consumer that we found interesting:
69% are changing the amount of food they eat 63% are changing the type of foods they eat
12% accurately estimate their recommended daily calorie intake for weight maintenance
73% are focused on trying to consume more whole grains
53% are concerned about the amount of sodium in their diet
86% say taste has the largest impact on food and beverage purchasing decisions
58% say healthfulness does
73% are satisfied with the healthfulness of products offered at their supermarket
77% do not meet the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Physical Activity Guidelines
68% actively use the Nutrition Facts Panel
74% of those who use the Nutrition Facts Panel rank calories as the top piece of information they use
10% say they have either eliminated caffeine from their diet
Love, don’t dread, your summer cookout. Cookouts are great ways to go healthy and still indulge—no sacrifices necessary. Whether you are hosting, bringing the dessert, or fingered for grill duty, here’s the scoop on stellar cookouts that don’t put health on the back burner.
Veggie Up
Did you know the average ear of corn has 800 kernels, arranged in 16 rows, with one strand of silk for each kernel? This amazing emblem of summer is a perfect way to indulge in great taste and get big nutrition too. Corn provides fiber, folate, thiamin, phosphorus, vitamin C, and magnesium.
WebMD provides a recipe for Grilled Corn Confetti Slaw. You can also try grilling corn in the husk at your next gathering. It’s a delicious and dramatic way to serve a veggie.
Dietitian Nancy Dell offers some advice for healthy summer picnics which includes doubling up on the carrots, celery, onions, zucchini and summer squash that get added to traditional macaroni or potato salads. The goal is to get as much color into those white dishes as possible, for health and for aesthetics.
Get Fruitastic
If you are in need of something impressive to bring to your summer gathering, remember that fresh fruits are in their glory, and color is the way to dazzle up a dish and provide disease-fighting antioxidants at the same time. The Wild Blueberry Association always has recipes that bring a rich, vibrant splash of blue to the potato salad beiges and burger browns. Start with daring Veggie Sticks with Ricotta Wild Blueberry Dip and end with Wild Blueberry Cassis Mousse Cake. Love lemon glaze? It’s creates the perfect profile with wild blueberries. A Lemon Glazed Wild Blueberry Cake is a simple crowd pleaser that won’t stick around for long. Also, serve or bring watermelon instead of chips – that’s a summer no-brainer.
Grill Something Good
Grills seem to call out for butter-slathered buns in the summer, but there’s more to grilling than burgers and dogs.
Opt for shrimp and chicken. Ginger-Garlic Shrimp with Tangy Tomato Sauce and Grilled-Vegetable Gazpacho are part of these good-food cookout recipes at delish.com. You’ll be missing nothing when it comes to standard cookout fare, and you can still enjoy the flames.
Cover the grill with veggie-laden kabobs. They are colorful and fun party eating, and even with bite-sized beef included, they cut meat intake and coerce eaters to take in a pepper or a mushroom before they get to it. Sneaky!
Grill lobster for a veritable cookout event. There’s plenty of dipping sauce ideas out there so you don’t have to soak them in butter.
Cook a Portobello Burger. Loaded with veggies and some tasty condiments, this faux burger is no sacrifice—anecdotal evidence suggests they are even better than their meat counterparts. Bring on the compliments.
Grill fruit. That means apples, pears, pineapples, strawberries…Chaos in the Kitchen soaks their grilled fruit kabobs in rum. Delicious. Enough said.
Be a Burger Buff
If you are at a summer cookout, you’ll be exposed to burgers and hot dogs – it’s a summer fact. If you either fear or love the burger, pull up a chaise and relax. Here’s the fix:
Use a 100% whole wheat bun.
Use low fat content meat.
Go for a turkey dog or turkey burger to cut the fat.
Say no to the cheese, skip mayo in favor of mustard.
Load it with veggies.
Know the Low Down on Char
Even when you’re in the party mood, take a moment to get serious about charring. Grilling leads to charred food, and ingesting that char can increase cancer risk. Here’s the low down:
Research has revealed that preferences for high temperature cooked meat were generally linked with an increased risk of pancreatic cancer. In terms of overall consumption and doneness preferences, those with highest intake had 70 percent higher risk than those with the lowest intake.
Also, taking in smoke from the grill can be dangerous, and that’s no summer myth. Wood smoke is 12 times more carcinogenic than equal amounts of tobacco smoke, and the American Cancer Association says inhaling the smoke from or eating well-done, charred meat regularly may increase your risk of pancreatic cancer by up to 60 percent.
That’s enough to put a damper on your family barbeque. But you can keep health and safety in mind and still enjoy the festivities:
Stay upwind of grill smoke and keep exposure to a minimum.
Cut charred areas of meat off before eating or serving.
Turn down the heat to avoid char.
Microwave meat for a few minutes before cooking on the grill so it’s cooked through without necessitating char.
Enjoy
Finally, stay conscious of grazing, eliminate soda sipping in favor of other healthy liquids, and when the family Frisbee competition starts up, join in.
Now you’re ready. Go forth and cook out – summer won’t last forever. Enjoy!
Even the most ardent healthy eating enthusiast will agree that there’s more to a well-rounded diet than fruits and veggies.
There is also Grain.
Grain is simply a staple no matter where in the world you live. Italians consume loads of pasta, Asians devour tons of rice – even the ancient grain of the Incas, quinoa, has had a resurgence. Grains aren’t just the foundation of a good diet – in their minimally processed form, they have huge health benefits.
Current dietary guidelines recommend eating 6 to 11 servings of grain products daily, including at least three whole-grain foods. (Find the recommended amount of grains for your age and gender.) While the Department of Health and Human Services called for 75% of Americans to meet whole grain intake goals by this year, only 7% reportedly do. While grains are consumed heartily, for most of us, they are not whole grains.
Breadly Sins
Grains have earned their good food classification, but when it comes to processing, they take a devilish turn. It’s not that processing is all bad. Some minimally processed grains can get the thumbs up, like brown rice, barley, and oats, for example. That being said, substituting whole grains for refined grains can help lower risk for diabetes, stroke, heart disease and some cancers. If you’ve taken up brown rice over white and darker breads for white squishy ones, you’re on the right track – you are preserving the vitamin and mineral-rich “germ” of the wheat that gets stripped out in the refining process.
Deceptive Foods Divine Caroline helped pull back the curtain on deceptive foods in a recent post about supermarket breads. Deceptive foods are those with healthy-sounding names (termed “healthful halos”) that hide the fact they should be on the Don’t list. She outs breads that hide towering sodium amounts, bleached flour and high fructose corn syrup, despite their deceptively healthy names. (Does Healthy Choice 7-Grain Bread sound nutritious? Better check the label.)
It’s a good idea to get bread savvy: when it comes to grains, marketing jargon can obfuscate food evils. Common misnomers include stone ground, organic and 7-grain. While these terms sound healthful, they don’t designate a whole grain product, and they may hide a multitude of diet and nutrition sins to boot.
Another common bread blunder is seeking out brown breads as a way of separating “good” from “bad”. Avoiding white by choosing tan colored breads is well-intentioned, but a toasty color doesn’t always mean whole wheat. Breads can be colored by caramel and molasses, turning evil white to a seemingly angelic brown without the advantages.
Addressing the Grains (Hello, Grains)
Any food made from wheat, rice, oats, cornmeal, barley or another cereal grain is a grain product. Bread, pasta, oatmeal, breakfast cereals, tortillas, and grits are some common examples. (MyPyramid.gov provides a reference list of what foods fall into the grain group.) When we refer to grains, we are generally referring to these subgroups:
1. Whole Grains
Whole grains contain the entire grain kernel — the bran, germ, and endosperm. Examples include whole wheat flour, bulgar and oatmeal. Often, cereals can be labeled “whole grain” because they include the entire corn kernel in its ingredients, even though the cereal also contains corn syrup and artificial dyes.
Whole grain foods also contain higher amounts of fiber, and some contain significant amounts of bran. But research suggests that it’s the whole-grain that delivers abundant amounts of antioxidant vitamins and phytochemicals that appear to act together to provide protective effects.
2. Refined Grains
Refined grains have been milled, a process that removes the bran and germ. This is done to give grains a finer texture and improve their shelf life, but it also removes dietary fiber, iron, and many B vitamins. By removing the germ and bran from the grain, whole grains are turned into refined carbs stripped of nutrients. Some examples of refined grains are white flour, white bread and white rice. Most pitas, tortillas, and crackers are made with refined grains, though some are not, and some may be a mixture of both refined and whole.
3. Enriched & Fortified Grains
Many refined grain products have key nutrients, such as folic acid and iron, that were removed during the initial processing and added back, earning them the name enriched. White rice and white bread are enriched grain products, and their packaging indicates as much. This means certain B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid) and iron are added back after processing. (Fiber is not added back to enriched grains.) In addition, some enriched grain foods have extra nutrients added. These are called fortified grains, a term you’ll recognize from many cereal packages.
4. Multigrains
We often hear the term multigrain when we shop forbreads. It sounds healthful enough that we tend to associate it with whole grain. In fact, multigrain means what it says: different types of grains have been included, and none of them have to be whole grain. Multigrain breads are as likely as any bread to have enriched flour as their first ingredient.
Shopping for Virtuous Grains: The Bottom Line
Are you gazing affectionately at a virtuous bread product or are you staring evil in the face? No guesswork is required to figure this out: Simply check the ingredient list.
If “whole” doesn’t appear in the first ingredient you see, it’s not a whole grain product, and you may be treading in the land of bad bread.
Don’t trust the marketing. Any whole or multigrain brand name could still contain refined grains, so pay attention to ingredients.
High fructose corn syrup at the top of the list? Hydrogenated oil making an appearance? You’re in black hat territory, no matter what the angelic name on the package is.
Finally, check the fiber content. If the Nutrition Facts has less than 2-4 grams of fiber content per serving, say buh-bye, bread.
There’s interesting news out of Temple University that shows restricting methionine consumption can increase lifespans in some animals.
According to researcher Domenico Pratico, “We believe this finding shows that, even if you suffer from the early effects of moderate cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s, switching to a healthier diet that is lower in methionine could be helpful in that memory capacity could be improved.”
Research into Alzheimer’s most often concerns prevention and delay, but interest in research that addresses reversing symptoms has given hope to millions.
This study, conducted on mice, showed that a when a methionine-rich diet was changed to a healthy, nutrient-rich diet, cognitive impairment that had developed during the first part of the study had been completely reversed.
There’s Something About Methionine
Methionine is an essential amino acid found most commonly in protein-rich foods such as red meats, eggs and beans. Most fruits, vegetables, and legumes contain very little methionine. In previous studies, methionine consumption has been linked to the accumulation of amyloid plaques, which often predispose disease and other brain disorders.
In research on mice, restricting the amino acid methionine in the diet provides many of the health and longevity benefits of calorie restriction. In fact, parts of the longevity community have embraced this strategy for life extension.
But isolating any chemical or compound is problematic, and some research reports potential benefits of methionine, at least in combination with other nutrients. Methionine helps in the biochemical breakdown of fats in the body; this action prevents the accumulation of fat in the liver and in the arteries. In addition, research reveals a dramatically lower risk for lung cancer was found among participants with the highest blood levels of B6 and methionine. However, as the Temple study indicates, it may be that a diet rich in methionine can mean a diet dominated by proteins to the exclusion of beneficial fruits and vegetables.
Momentum in Alzheimer’s Research
We’ve talked here about how blueberries, for example, have been reported to reverse memory loss because they are rich in flavonoids. Foods found to lower risk of Alzhiemer’s including diets rich in omerga-3s and fruits and vegetables, and lesser quantities of red meat, organ meat, butter, and high-fat dairy products.
There are many resources for those seeking information on Alzheimer‘s and Alzheimer’s research. Until more is known, a diet rich in nutrients and high in fruits and vegetables is a one of the best defensive actions you can take.
Tired of chewing the same old carrot stick in order to get a serving of veggies into your day? We know the feeling: with daily recommendations of fruits and vegetables coming in at 1 to 2½ cups (depending on your age and gender) getting your daily servings can seem daunting. But keep the faith! With this Idea-a-Day list made for any month (start now, or hang it on your fridge for July) you’re guaranteed to find at least one new way of getting a daily serving every day of the month.
So ditch the bare celery sticks and start mixing it up. Try one new idea every day, or combine 2 or 3 ideas together with your own regular servings of fruits and veggies for a month of better health and disease prevention. (Feeding a family? Many are kid-friendly!)
Idea-a-Day: An Easy, Printable List for a Whole Month of Fruits & Veggies
Day 1: Start your day with a glass of juice.
Day 2: Pile lettuce leaves and tomato slices on your sandwich for lunch.
Day 3: Have slices of avocado with a half piece of pita bread for a snack.
Day 4: Add ½ cup salsa to a dinnertime baked potato.
Day 5: Munch a pear before going out to dinner (it will replace the “bread” course when you get there).
Day 6: Eat six strawberries for breakfast on yogurt or cereal.
Day 7: Eat fifteen grapes with lunch.
Day 8: Have four slices of onion (no deep frying) with dinner or a sandwich.
Day 9: Add a half of a baked sweet potato to your plate during dinner.
Day 10: Serve fresh berries topped with cream for dessert.
Day 11: Mix 100% fruit juice with club soda for a healthy soft drink.
Day 12: Send yourself a fruit basket at work for munching.
Day 13: Make a smoothie at home with bananas, blueberries and a little non-fat milk.
Day 14: Sprinkle ½ cup of wild blueberries on a salad.
Day 15: Put a colorful helping of wild blueberries on a piece of fish.
Day 16: Puree zucchini, peas and greens and add to marinara sauce.
Day 17: Add dried fruits to oatmeal. (Raisins count.)
Day 18: Serve apple sauce as a side dish at dinner.
Day 19: Freeze grapes and eat them as a cool snack.
Day 20: Eat a half of an avocado with lime juice and little salt for lunch (no dish necessary!).
Day 21: Throw in extra broccoli florets to dress up a green salad.
Day 22: Add a stash of frozen vegetables to canned or homemade soup.
Day 23: Buy frozen vegetable blends to steam in the microwave oven for quick side dishes.
Day 24: Top pizza with spinach, peppers, olives and tomatoes.
Day 25: Bake apples with cinnamon for a warm dessert.
Day 26: Combine apple slices with raw almonds or peanut butter as a mid-morning snack.
Day 27: Munch blueberries and nuts – synergy is the new caffeine!
Day 28: Have a bowl of snap peas ready for after-work crunching.
Day 29: Use about-to-be-tossed vegetables in a veggie stir-fry for dinner.
Day 30: Make delicious hummus or dip for an hors d’oeuvre – use the broccoli and the “sticks” as your delivery system and ditch the chips.
White rice, listen, it’s not you. It’s me. We’ve had some good times – the nights we shared Chinese take out together, those halcyon days when all I needed was a saucepan and a minute – but the fact is, we’ve grown apart.
You had to know this was coming – what with all the fresh leafy greens hanging around lately and the wild blueberries sharing space with the ice cream bars in the freezer…the whole grains I’ve been leaving around.
The fact is, I need a little space – on my plate, that is, for something not quite so colorless. We can still be friends.
Please, don’t press me for the details.
Ok, you asked for it. Here’s the truth: There’s been a study published in the June 14 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine in which a team of scientists from Harvard University showed that regular consumption of brown rice – 5 servings a week – reduces the risk of diabetes by 36 percent.
The study also shows that people who eat white rice five times a week had 17 percent higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who eat only once a month.
Now you know.
Your New Brown Rice Doctrine
Welcome to your new, more colorful life where white foods don’t get the time of day. It’s a good idea for everyone, but if you have or are in danger of developing type 2 diabetes, dumping the white could be one of the best things you can do to maintain a healthy weight, a healthy heart, and healthy glucose levels.
Here are some Brown Rice Rules to help you get out there on your own:
#1 – Start loving it. Brown rice is nutty, it’s chewy, it’s delicious. It’s the perfect foil for fish, beans, veggies, olives, raisins. You name it, brown rice adds a robustness, taste and style.
#2 – Start a merger. If you have an unflagging love for white rice, mix it with brown. Half the brown rice means half the benefits, and if you’re a true white rice fanatic, cold turkey isn’t for everyone.
#3 – Take it slow. Perfect brown rice requires more water and more patience than white. But slow is the latest trend in food, and quickening the pace could lead to cultural frustration, so do your psyche a favor.
#4 – Don’t sauce it, toss it. Remember that all rice starts out as brown. It only becomes white through the refining process that strips it of the minerals in the hull. Eating food as close to its original form is usually a good rule of thumb, so when you see white rice, think weddings, not dinner.
#5 – Don’t be a slave to instant. Go instant if you must. But instant has been precooked and dried and has lost nutrients and fiber, and its higher on the glycemic index. According to Dr. Sears, “Compared with regularly cooked rice, the instant variety has a bit less of the following nutrients (though the differences may be insignificant): selenium, zinc, B-6, folic acid, and much of the amino acids. Instant rice also loses a bit of its texture.” Still, if it’s brown, it’s a start.
#6 – Look to the East. Asia’s rice consumption is 135,000 thousand metric tons, while the U.S. consumes about 3,882. While rice is part of every meal across many parts of the world, our carb choices tend toward the potato. Taking a page from Eastern diets can provide a little inspiration. While no food is evil, switching out your white carbs for brown rice (especially if those carbs are shaped like shoestrings or tend to sport a crinkle) could reap huge benefits for your nutritional profile.
When it comes to greens, the two adjectives to keep in mind are dark and leafy. Green leafies are the most concentrated source of nutrition compared head to head and calorie to calorie with most any food in your diet. It’s the dark color that provides the clues that phytonutrients called flavonoids are close by, and flavonoids have disease fighting properties in spades.
We know from many sources, including Dr. James Joseph’s The Color Code that eating a diet rich in vibrant colors offers outstanding protection against disease. Dark, leafy greens have cancer-protective properties, are found to lower risk of cardiovascular disease, and have great value for those with type 2 diabetes. Putting dark, leafy greens on your plate means not only are you getting important phytonutrients, you’ll be getting a wealth of beneficial nutrients such as vitamin K, iron, and calcium. Best of all, greens comes in a low calorie package.
If your goal is to eat like a caveman consider this: our cave dwelling ancestors would graze all day on greens, regularly taking in six pounds of leaves per day! It makes getting our 3 cups a day seem a little more achievable. It’s especially easy if you seek out variety. Noticing lots of lettuce on your plate? Is broccoli a mainstay that’s a getting a little too reliable? Get some greens with more gusto! Start by giving these emerald envoys of excellent health a chance.
Broccoli Rabe
Broccoli rabe (rhymes with bob) may have the broccoli moniker but it’s really a turnip. Despite its clusters of broccoli-like flowers among its spiky leaves, it hails from the turnip family and has a flavor to prove it. Broccoli rabe is an extremely nutritious vegetable that is high in phytochemicals that help the body defend itself against some cancers, and it has the deep green color that we look for when we eat across the colors of the rainbow.
Broccoli rabe is remarkably versatile, too. Its distinctive taste makes it perfect for certain pairings, particularly salty, sweet or acidic foods. Garlic is a popular pairing as is sausage, olives, and tangy veggies like tomatoes and vinegars. It makes a nice addition to many meat and seafood dishes, and even makes brings out the beauty of a pizza.
Beet greens are a beloved veggie-top all by themselves, and as part of the beet, they provide a nutritious twofer: you’ll be extracting two dishes from one veggie, and get maximum economical benefit. Mild and sweet, thanks to their natural sugars, they appeal to almost everyone, including kids that may balk at more daring greens.
Beet greens pass the fabulous food test because they are nutritious, delicious, and can be part of your diet in many capacities, including a simple sauté in olive oil, or tossed in a fresh salad. Some beet greens found in grocery stores can be tough and fibrous, so blanching in hot water is required. For use uncooked, consider removing the center, tougher ribs of the leaves and just eat the outer leaves. At farmer’s markets or packaged especially for salads, every inch of the beet green is generally tender and lovely.
When you hear the term “leafy greens”, think kale. Kale is a beloved green that may remind you of cabbage. In fact, kale is part of the cabbage family, and is sometimes even referred to as “black cabbage”. You know what that dark hue means: it’s packed with vitamins, fiber, calcium and iron and it has huge antioxidant capacity. It’s also a low-calorie way to get big nutrients.
You may be familiar with the supermarket’s curly kale that features ruffled leaves, but you’ll enjoy seeking out some other possibilities at farmer’s markets in an array of blackish, plum-red and purplish colors. Flavors range from somewhat bitter to sweet, so find one you like. It will be worth it for punch of nutrition it packs.
Because this green can be a bit tougher than others, it’s not a good choice for tossing in a salad, but it’s perfect for a soup or a stir fry. Kale can also be simmered for long periods (yielding a delicious liquor for sipping or sopping with bread) or blanched and sautéed in olive oil. Try kale in omelets, or braised or sautéed with onions and garlic. And if you can’t put it on pizza (you can!), then hey, what’s the point?
The International Food Information Council Foundation’s website Food Insight published an interesting interview recently with Dr. Rachel Johnson. Johnson is Dean and Professor of Nutrition at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Vermont, and member and chair-elect of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee. She discusses some new dietary metrics released by the The American Heart Association that have been designed to maintain ideal cardiovascular health.
Johnson’s message includes a focus on food intake, including types of foods and calories, rather than nutrients. That’s because nutrient-based messages are hard for people to translate into action, she said. The new directives also aim to address a messaging disconnection. In the past, recommendations have included terms such as “moderating” intake or “minimizing” certain foods, and such vague rules for healthy eating were not resonating with consumers the way hard numbers could, said Johnson.
The guidelines for good heart health include a recommendation of no less than 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables per day. Other guidelines include eating fish and whole grains, and cutting sodium intake. Another important principle for heart health, according to Johnson, is cutting sugar, and the guidelines also include strict calorie allowances for sugar, particularly sweetened beverages.
A New Kind of Sugar High
In the spirit of concrete measurements, the article sites research by the American Cancer Institute that says Americans consume 22 teaspoons of sugar per day. That translates into 335 calories per day – a high number for a country struggling with issues of obesity and the diseases that accompany it. New guidelines from the AHA dictate a limit of 100 calories per day for women, and 150 for men – that’s a mere 6 teaspoon and 9 teaspoons respectively.
Sugars in foods can be seemingly ubiquitous in our diets, and such a ceiling on sugar intake can seem strict. But Johnson doesn’t vilify sugar; instead she suggests that those who want more sugar should simply move more. “We haven’t said eliminate added sugars from your diet. I feel that the wise approach is to use your added sugars allowance in a way that enhances the flavor and the palatability of otherwise nutritious foods (e.g., putting a little maple syrup on your oatmeal),” she said.
Other positive sugar intake can include its use as an incentive for kids to eat well. A little flavoring in milk, for example, can encourage children to incorporate milk into their diet. The hope is that such dietary trade-offs will be well worth the net nutritional gain, so kids can maintain their own heart health for years to come.
Food Insight is a publication of The International Food Information Council Foundation, a foundation dedicated to the mission of effectively communicating science-based information on health, food safety and nutrition for the public good.
According to the results of a study from the Archives of Internal Medicine, eating just 2.4 ounces of nuts of any kind was associated with declines of 7.4 percent in bad cholesterol and about 5.1 percent in total cholesterol. Nuts, according to Dr. Joan Sabaté, a professor of nutrition at the School of Public Health at Loma Linda University in California, are major players in the world of HDLs and LDLs. “Nuts are the richest source of protein in the plant kingdom, and they also contain fiber and phytosterols, which compete with cholesterol to be absorbed,” she said in an article about the study in the New York Times. “All these nutrients have been demonstrated to lower cholesterol.”
If you’re in a daily battle with your bad cholesterol, this is good news that could have you thinking like a squirrel. But this latest in nuts news is working a couple of different angles of health and nutrition. What’s interesting about Dr. Sabaté’s assessment is her use of the phrase “all these nutrients”. Nature’s way of “packaging” nutrients has prompted great interest in food combinations and something widely referred to as food synergy. Some combinations of food can result in an even bigger benefit simply because of their synergy. Nuts seem to have that – both as a food and as a pairing.
Happy Together
Food synergy occurs when components within the same food, or components between different foods, work together in a way that is more powerful than their effects would be separately. Food combinations for heightened nutritional value are piquing the interest of researchers and nutritionists because of their impact on disease prevention, heart disease, cancer, chronic diseases, and even weight loss. Elaine Magee, author of Food Synergy and WebMD contributor, has posited that food synergy can be harnessed to fight major diseases such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.
Other synergistic enthusiasts, of course, combine purely for taste. But taste can unwittingly be a factor in health. Food combos based on what we might consider tradition may actually stem from the nutritional effects they provide. That is, our instincts may be leading us toward a yen for salt with chocolate. For example, the vinegar in sushi rice can reduce the glycemic index by up to 35%, limiting the rice’s effect upon blood sugar. Similarly, the oil in salad might make it possible for the body to absorb all the dish’s antioxidants. Our need to be healthy may be urging our palate to gravitate toward these extraordinary food combinations.
Food “Packages” & Powerful Pairs
Thanks to research into food synergy over the last five years, more and more evidence suggests that the components in the foods we consume interact with each other to give our bodies extra disease protection and a higher level of health. Recent studies focused on risks of chronic diseases and whole grains have suggested that chronic disease may be reduced if whole-grain foods are consumed in a diet otherwise high in plant foods. Another powerful pair? Cooked tomatoes with olive oil. Absorption of two key carotenoids in the skin of the tomato is much greater when the tomatoes are cooked and when eaten with “smart” fat, making olive oil their perfect pairing.
While food combinations can be powerful, components also work together within a single food, confirming that the power is truly nature-created. As a result, these natural mysteries of synergy make it difficult to replicate in supplements that contain only the component. (We’ve written previously about this supplement challenge.) For example, cruciferous vegetables, according to Magee, a category of vegetables that includes cabbage and broccoli, contain two phytochemicals that were more active when combined, according to research that tested the compounds in rats. These vegetables, with their powerful combination of components, protected the rats more effectively from liver cancer. Also, almonds, cashews, and walnuts, according to the Archives of Internal Medicine nuts study discussed above, contain two forms of vitamin E and tend to work best together: alpha- and gamma-tocopherol.
Wild Blueberries: 1 + 1 = 3
Such good news about nuts along the amazing things we know about wild blueberries might make you think these two nutritionally potent foods would be better together. You’re right. Superfood expert Dr. Steven Pratt has touted the immense synergy between blueberries and walnuts for brain health. Dr. Pratt says, “There is synergy between blueberries and almost every other food. If you have blueberries plus walnuts for brain health, that’s better than just walnuts by itself. It’s not 1 plus 1 is 2, its 1 plus 1 is 3.” That’s the mystery of synergy at work.
Great Combinations for Taste & Health
Here is a collection of some fantastic combinations suggested by a selection of synergy experts that have the potential to enhance health and prevent disease – and liven up a plate.
* Tomatoes & Avocados
* Tomatoes & Broccoli
* Oatmeal & Orange Juice
* Broccoli & Tomatoes
* Wild Blueberries & Grapes
* Wild Blueberries & Walnuts
* Wild Blueberries & Fish
* Soy & Salmon
* Peanuts & Whole Wheat
* Apples & Chocolate
* Lemon & Kale
* Almonds & Yogurt
* Any Fruit with its Peel (especially darkly colored fruit)
* Green Tea & Lemon
* Garlic & Fish
So go ahead – give synergy a try! Whether you are seeking disease prevention or optimum nutrition, or you’re just bored with the regular old meat and potatoes, seek out powerfully nutritious food “packages” and find out what combinations are best for your health goals and your taste buds. While you’re at it, go ahead and thank Mother Nature for giving us a taste for what’s healthy!
A whopping 70% say they are concerned about their weight status, and 77 % report trying to lose or maintain their weight. At the same time, we don’t have a solid handle on our calorie needs and intake, and despite being extremely weight-conscious, we are not using exercise to assuage those concerns.
