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Five Very Unexpected Benefits of Eating Fruits & Vegetables

Eating fruits and vegetables – widely across the color spectrum – can yield tremendous benefits when it comes to our health and disease prevention efforts. But there are some advantages to eating deeply colored, antioxidant-rich fruits and veggies that may not be on our radar. You can consider these five unexpected benefits just a healthy bonus for eating well. They might even provide a little extra motivation to get your servings.

1. Benefits for Runners

Runner’s World recently reported on a couple of outlandish food benefits especially for runners. One is eating blueberries. (The other is, surprisingly, beer.) A study from Appalachian State University showed that runners who ate a cup of blueberries every day had less inflammation and oxidative damage before and after their run. It’s no surprise – these antioxidant leaders are known to have a major impact on cellular inflammation. The powerful anthocyanins in the berries actually protected them from the after-effects of challenging workouts and helped recovery. If you are in training, eating a cup of anthocyanin-rich berries will help boost your performance and get you in shape for that marathon – or your next workout.

2. Help Quitting Smoking

New studies show there are major benefits associated with eating many types of fruits and veggies if you are trying to quit smoking. The reason is not just limited to replacing a bad habit with a healthy one. First, fruits and vegetables don’t trigger a desire for nicotine, and unlike some foods like meat and alcohol, they don’t enhance its flavor – they actually make it taste worse. Another reason that fruits and veggies can serve as a secret weapon for those trying to quit might be the satiety fruits and vegetables provide. It can help lessen the desire to smoke, and high fiber choices can contribute to that effect. (Fruits and veggies that are high antioxidants also provide protection against lung cancer and respiratory ailments, which can benefit smokers and former smokers.)

3. Prevent Depression

A diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help reduce the risk of depression. Substantially so, according to the Mayo Clinic. Fruits and veggies that are deep in color and fiber-rich provide the most intense benefit. Also, B vitamins are a major weapon against depression because they help balance mood and even treat depression in those experiencing it (Vitamin B6 is found in many foods including bananas and spinach). Vitamin C (oranges, berries, leafy greens) has also been shown to enhance mood and stave off depression. Further studies have linked depression and wild blueberries. In 2010, a study conducted by a team led by Dr. Robert Krikorian, Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Cincinnati, confirmed that a diet supplemented with wild blueberries improved memory function and mood in older adults and could decrease depression in the elderly.

4. Change Your Friends…and the World

Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables can be contagious. We mimic the habits of those we hang around with, which is why recent studies have indicated that obesity is contagious and our social circles affect our weight. Studies indicate that if you start eating better your friends will start eating better, not to mention the affect it will have on your family. If your diet is being sabotaged by your friends’ or co-workers’ bad habits, see what being a positive influence can do to those around you. If you are an influencer, your passion for fruits and veggies could actually start a badly-needed revolution of better health around the nation.

5. More Mojo

It may not be the first reason you change your eating habits, but it could be a reason to continue. Improving your love life can actually be a side effect of eating more fruits and vegetables. According to Slim Calm Sexy Diet author Keri Glassman, indulging in certain fruits like peaches, for example, can increase male hormone production and regulate thyroid function that helps increase libido for both men and women. Fruits and vegetables have the benefit of not just being good for us but boosting our energy and controlling our weight, which translates into feeling more amorous. And, foods high in nutrients, folic acid, potassium, and antioxidants translate into increased energy – and you can channel that in whatever way you’d like.

Learn what specific nutrients contribute to good health at Fruit and Veggies More Matters. You’ll also find out which fruits and vegetables provide the best sources of the nutrients you need.

Wild Blueberry Favorites – Your Top 5 Recipes

Need a Healthy Eating Idea? These Favorites are Tried, True & Blue

Looking for a new dining or dessert idea that’s big on health and just as big on taste? We’ve assembled the top most-viewed recipes from wildblueberries.com from the last twelve months and made them into our – that is, your – countdown of the Top 5 Wild Blueberry Recipes. Of all the unique, creative ways to use wild blueberries, why do these recipes keep coming out on top? The answer is palpable. Here, you be the judge.

#5: Wild Blueberry Chicken Breast

We were delighted to see a non-dessert recipe show up in the past year’s Top 5: This one is perfect for its easy pairing of protein with the sweet, tangy taste of wild blueberry sauce. The secret: deglazing the pan with red wine, wild blueberries, lemon rind and salt. It turns chicken into a superfruit specialty. Using frozen wild blues means you can keep this recipe up your sleeve for any time you want something unique, easy, and big on healthy ingredients.

#4: Wild Blueberry Crisp

The jury is in: we simply can’t resist a crisp – the crunch, the sweetness, and the satisfaction is what makes this dessert a true favorite. This crisp recipe delights over and over again because of its fruit combination (apples paired with blues) and its ease. Add chopped pecans if you wish for an additional nutty crunch – undeniable dessert excellence.

#3: Brownie Dominoes with Wild Blueberry Cinnamon Sauce
Brownies are a consistent, seasonless favorite, and this recipe comes in at #3 for its winning combination that rose quietly above the rest. It must be its chocolately flavor that pairs so wonderfully with blueberries. Served with wild blueberry sauce as recommended gives them the crave-worthy quality that makes them a list topper. Hard to believe, but these are Color Code health-approved, too.

#2: Wild Blueberry Pie

The second place spot for popularity over the last 12 months is no surprise – it’s a pie classic that stands the test of time because it is always flawless and delicious. Winning out over more inventive desserts, Wild Blueberry Pie reigns for its supreme beauty (and rustic lattice-top crust, if you choose) and its bountiful six cups of wild blueberries that flow past its corners. Wildly delicious? Agreed.

#1: Wild Blueberry Smoothie

What makes this recipe the top visited recipe of the last year? There’s no secret that the smoothie is a beloved way to get healthy antioxidants. While nutrition experts advocate eating the whole fruit rather than those in juiced form to preserve desirable fiber, the Wild Blueberry Smoothie fits the bill. It contains all the fiber of the whole fruit, and all the dark blue skins where beneficial phytos reside. Add the benefits of yogurt and honey to this naturally sweet concoction, and yep, it’s the best of the best.

Runner-Up: An Easy Summer Dessert. Looking for an easy, colorful, warm-weather dessert that everyone will love? Try #6 on our list, Wild Blueberry Cassis Mousse Cake, a perfect choice for summer.

Check out our new look! A brand new design for wildblueberries.com means searching for all our best recipes is even easier and more fun, whether it’s for breakfasts, snacks, salads, entrees, desserts or a delightful summer drink. (Bookmark us for when you need a delicious, antioxidant-rich dish any time of day!)

Latest Health News: Healthy Eating is Affordable

by Pink Sherbet Photography

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.

He Said, She Said: Is Eating Any Type of Fruit & Vegetable Good For Health?

By many accounts, the American diet is in crisis. Our plates and portions are oversized, and our fat, sugar, and salt intake is stratospheric. Only a few of us, it seems, are getting the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables – as low as 11% according to some studies.

But the more we know about the benefits of fruits and vegetables, the more inspired we are to change our habits. Fruits and veggies hold the nutritive power to lower cancer risk and decrease our chances of getting diabetes. They contribute to a healthy heart and brain and help us maintain our weight. Eating fruits and vegetables has a positive effect on almost every organ in the body by helping to preserve their function, prevent disease, and allow us to live longer, better quality lives.

Many of us are making efforts to get our recommended servings. These efforts can leave us wondering: is that salad at dinner really providing the nutrients we need? Does the tomato sauce in a pasta dinner mean we’ve logged a serving? Is it better to grab a bowl of wild blueberries or a carrot? That orange or that potato? The more we improve our eating habits, the more we want to know how important our fruit and veggie choices are, and if eating any serving is better than none at all.

He and She weigh in on the question, and provide their evidence.

Q: Does it matter what fruits and vegetables we eat as long as we eat them?

He: No. Getting the recommended number of servings of fruits and vegetables will provide important health benefits no matter what those fruits and vegetables are. Here’s why:

Reason #1. It is recommended we eat a wide variety of fruit and veggies that span the color spectrum. The more fruits and vegetables, the lower the risk of developing heart disease, some cancers, and lower there risk of diabetes and weight related illnesses, end of story. The USDA Food Plate specifies no types of fruits and vegetables. Even the Mediterranean diet, for instance, touted for its dietary excellence, emphasizes not specific kinds of fruits or vegetables, but that more are eaten, and eaten with with lots of olive oil, nuts and plenty of fish.

Reason #2. When we fill up on fruits and vegetables, they take the place of less healthy foods. For most Americans, eliminating high calorie foods, sugary snacks, fast foods, and processed foods in favor nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables is the key to better health. Whenever we are making the choice to eat any fruit or vegetable, we are eating a whole, natural food, not a processed one, and that means better health and more powerful disease prevention, period.

Reason #3. In the future, a simple saliva test will determine our susceptibility to certain diseases, and it will be affordable and accessible to everyone. We’ll understand then how certain hereditary risk factors can be counteracted by specific food choices. However, today, most of us simply don’t know which nutrients will promote a desirable gene reaction. Until we know more about our genetic makeup, we can’t be sure of how to target the best fruit and veggie Rx for our personal health, and getting our servings and eating widely across the color spectrum is the best advice.

Reason #4. Focusing on good foods, bad foods, and better foods is simply counterproductive. Any and all foods can be part of a healthy diet. They key to good nutrition is balance and moderation, with a focus on portion control. What’s more, there are virtually no unhealthy fruits or vegetables. As long as they are not processed, fried, or interfere with medications, allergies or other conditions, all are good for you. Enjoy!

She: Yes. Making smart nutritional choices about which fruits and vegetables you eat is vital to good health. Here’s why:

Reason #1. Some foods are just better than others when it comes to disease prevention, and if you are eating for good health, why not eat the best? For instance, targeting high-antioxidant, deeply colored foods will help with prevention as we age more effectively than less colorful, lower antioxidant fruits and vegetables. Eating nutrient dense, high antioxidant foods like wild blueberries has been found to combat free radicals and prevent diseases aging, some types of cancer, and heart disease. This fruit has also been found to improve cognitive function. If you have disease prevention in mind, says EmpowHer, and you’re reaching for an apple or orange for breakfast, you may want to reach for blueberries or strawberries instead.

Reason #2. As He pointed out, we must eat variety, and the best fruit and veggie choices are those that span the color spectrum, including rich greens, deep blues, bright oranges and reds. Making a conscious decision to “eat across the rainbow” is important for food in general, and especially fruits and vegetables. And while we may agree on that, the fact is, focusing on broad fruit and vegetable servings without digging deeper into nutritional quality can lead to deficits and less effective disease prevention. Not making an effort to eat specific types of fruits and vegetables that provide the highest nutritional value can lead to eating only those we love or are used to, or those that stretch the budget more effectively. That can often mean missing out on valuable nutrients, antioxidants, phytochemicals, and vitamins that are crucial to our health. That tomato sauce has valuable lycopene, but that’s just a piece of the puzzle. Those potatoes are potassium-rich and full of vitamins, but their value can be negated by portion size and preparation.

Reason #3. One reason to choose your fruits and veggies carefully is that high Glycemic Index foods should be eaten in moderation (or paired with other things that have a low GI.) The Glycemic Index ranks foods according to its effect on blood glucose levels, and some fruits and vegetables may score higher on the GI scale. For optimum health, especially for those people with diabetes and weight concerns, we must understand glycemic measurements, obtain a list of foods and their Glycemic Index scores, and eat accordingly.

Reason #4. For some dried fruit, fruit juices, or fruits with additives, the nutritional benefits are outweighed by high calorie or sugar content. The truth is, not all fruits and vegetables are created equal, and weighing your food choices carefully – even when it comes to fruits and vegetables – makes good, healthy sense.

* * *

Did You Know? Antioxidants combat inflammation in the body which prevents diseases like cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s, and provide major anti-aging and disease preventing benefits.Wild blueberries top the list of health promoting properties over most other fruits. Read the latest news about how blueberries, especially wild blueberries, protect the body.

Are you filling up on the healthiest foods? See what superfoods will change your life.

May is National Salad Month

Rediscover a Side with Style

by L. Marie

Of all the outrageous food holidays (National Catfish Month? National Root Beer Float Day?), a month devoted to salads may seem on the surface to be the most unnecessary. We are more than versed in the cafeteria or grocery store salad bar, after all. Salads are a ubiquitous side dish, and they are even a popular fast food option. But if you are doing your level best to get your fruit and veggie servings every day, putting the spotlight on the salad may be just what you need to raise your servings quotient and rediscover what salad has to offer.

The Salad Advantage

Besides incorporating large amounts of veggies and fruit, salads arrive on the scene with their own built-in advantages. They are filling and fibrous, they are interesting to eat, and they provide variety that makes it almost impossible not to eat from the rainbow. Salads also come with their own deep history that makes them a surprisingly good fit as comfort food – fix a Cobb salad, a Waldorf salad or a little lime Jell-O and you’re instantly transported to the early 20th century. What’s more, salads deliver on a budget: salad-making is the stone soup of the American kitchen due to their uncanny ability to incorporate a fridge’s odds and ends and stretch a single chicken thigh or a sole carrot into a eight-serving dish.

So why not a month that pays homage to the ultimate vegetable delivery system? This May, get creative and make salad the meal, or decide that a salad dish will accompany every dinner plate. You might even take the opportunity to plan a salad-centric garden by experimenting with interesting greens that will inspire your salad days in the months to come.

In May, It’s Easy Being Green

Whether your penchant is to toss or to spin, here are three basic principles to live by as you embark on a month devoted to a pastiche of produce.

Know your greens. If you are still rocking the iceberg, it’s time to dump the colorless crunch and embrace dark leafies. Romaine or spinach provide the deep colors that indicate they are a food full of powerful antioxidants, for instance. You can also opt for no greens at all. Europeans are notorious for salads that use tomatoes or bell peppers as the under layer – tomato and mozzarella caprese salad is a beloved meal accompaniment, no greens necessary.

Make your own dressing. It’s a well-known salad trap: you start with a dish of healthy, and then ruin a good thing with fattening salad dressing. The solution? Forgo the supermarket bottles and take matters into your own hands so you have full control over your ingredients. Opt for basic vinaigrette, or make your own Russian by using low-fat yogurt. HuffPost’s Kitchen Daily covers the spread of DIY dressing, and Real Simple’s Simplystated.com has 6 Ridiculously Easy Homemade Salad Dressings including Creamy Tarragon and Avocado and a simple Thousand Island that kids will love.

Eat what you love. Silly for avocados? Think wild blueberries are the bomb? Can’t resist pasta? They are all ingredients that make salad sensational. If your salad seems a little dull, include a favorite topping that makes it delectable, whether it’s homemade croutons like these corn bread croutons that add killer crunch, or a sprinkle of parmesan. And don’t stint on the protein. Chicken, eggs or tofu can make a side into an instant meal. A part of using high-calorie foods moderately, decide to opt for the exciting flavor or olives instead of bacon, for example, and if you are cutting calories, a dash of Kosher salt might be enough to make dull different.

Salad Sensational

Cooking Light has 5-Ingredient Salads that run the gamut from Chicken and Spring Greens with Açai Dressing to Steak Salad with Creamy Horseradish Dressing.

Wild blueberries shine in salad! Blues add glorious, nutritious color that instantly upgrades a salad’s flavor profile. Case in point, this Duck, Spinach and Goat Cheese Salad with Savory Wild Blueberry Sauce. Quinoa Salad with Wild Blueberries is a delicious dish that uses zucchini and Havarti cheese to create a superior flavor mix with wild blues.

Why Adversity Leads to Success

A Unique Nutritional Concept Can Improve Health – Will We Listen?

It’s been the principle of sticktoitveness since Henry Ford created his first car (and his first flop): the difficult road to success – in business, in the arts, in athletics – ends in gold. The bigger the hardship, the more intense the success. In other words, in most walks of life, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Can something that applies to football players and CEOs alike also apply to the world of nutrition? The latest research says yes, and it brings to light an exciting new concept in health and disease prevention.

The more we study the nutritional components of food, the more we understand why certain foods are good for us. Some antioxidant-rich foods can preserve healthy organ functioning, prevent disease of aging, and even reverse age-related illness – powerful stuff for something readily available. Part of the reason relies on the principle of adversity – that their challenges have made them stronger and healthier. If we seek out foods that have endured struggles to survive in a difficult environment, we’re taking in powerful nutrition that in turn makes US stronger.

Stressed to Be The Be the Best

Member of The Bar Harbor Group Don Ingram, Ph.D. of the Nutritional Neuroscience and Aging Laboratory and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, recently provided a case in point in an interview on the podcast To Your Good Health with Dr. David Friedman. Dr. Ingram explained why the huge nutritional capacity of certain foods like wild blueberries is the result of their tough nature.

Components in foods like wild blueberries act to protect the fruit against stressful events, said Ingram. Because the berries are grown naturally in demanding geographical areas in Maine and parts of Canada, they endure cold, harsh winters, temperature shifts and intense sun (for which they have developed their own UV protection in their deeply colored skin). They grow in rugged terrain and challenging soil, and they grow close to the ground where they are susceptible to insects, fungi and other pests. Wild blueberries are the product of a dangerous world, and they have evolved to thrive in the face of the harshest stressors. That’s exactly what makes them incredibly beneficial to us.

Why Some Foods are “Lazy”

Because wild blueberries have grown to withstand these environmental stressors, they have naturally evolved to have powerful defenses. When we put these foods in our bodies, we are getting the benefits of those defenses. According to Dr. Ingram, foods that are grown mainly as cultivated fruits such as the cultivated blueberry, or oranges, for instance, while still good for us, could be argued to be a bit “lazy” Dr. Ingram explains. These fruits have lost their protective abilities because through cultivation they have not needed to be tough – instead, we provide them with protection. As a result, truly powerful compounds, he surmises, have dropped from their nutritional profile.

Wild blueberries act on inflammation in the body, and inflammation is at the root of aging and many challenging diseases. Diets with blueberries, studies consistently show, calm destructive oxidative stress and reduce the inflammation in the cells of the brain, the heart, and other organs. That’s why in lab tests, wild blueberries are found to be advantageous for health in important ways such as fighting cancer, diabetes, heart disease, memory loss and Alzheimer’s, and other aging-related illnesses.

Food Adversity Principle = Improved Health for Us

The equation is groundbreaking. But why don’t we treat this phenomenon as the breakthrough it is? While the benefits of consuming foods high in nutrition is generally accepted, we’ve grown used to the evidence – both anecdotal and scientific – in support of healthy food. The advice can ring hollow because it seems so similar to a grandmother urging us to eat our vegetables and clear our plate. According to Dr. Ingram, food just doesn’t prompt the same level of excitement that cure-all medications and new scientific breakthroughs do. But it should.

The Whole Food Research Challenge

“This is a whole area of research that we need to be involved in,” Dr. Ingram told David Friedman of whole food research. “Funding agencies are remiss in funding this kind of research because it just doesn’t seem that sexy.” As a result, he said, we have yet to confirm many of the promising animal studies that would enable us to say definitively that wild blueberries, for example, can provide major benefits for the most pressing health hurdles for our culture.

The results of those studies could affect how we treat diseases related to oxidative stress as well as important areas such as insulin resistance, cognitive deficits, and overweight kids. Said Ingram, “Support for research that shows in a well-controlled trial that these types of foods like berries, particularly blueberries, can have these types of effects would go a long way to convincing the public that they should be eating these types of foods.”

Until we can figure out how to put the sexy into nutritional research, knowing that common Clark Kent foods can be the Supermen of health should be reason enough to make eating them every day a priority. Start applying the principle that what doesn’t kill you can make you stronger when it comes to the foods on your own plate. The street smarts inherent in your food has an excellent chance of translating into your good health.

Listen to the interview with Dr. Don Ingram on the To Your Good Health with Dr. David Friedman podcast.

Waking Life: Why Mindfulness is the New Healthy

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.

Will New Walmart Food Labels Improve Health?

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.
Know the Good Guys from the Bad Guys.
Look for foods with the fewest ingredients.
Choose more foods that have no labels at all (like fresh fruits and vegetables or their equally nutrient-rich frozen counterparts).
Augment your grocery store shopping with local and farmers markets foods whenever possible.

Get label savvy. Learn the latest in Food Labeling & Nutrition from the FDA.

Your ORAC Questions Answered

Part 2 of Wild About Health’s Made Simple Series

More than any other topic, ORAC measurements have grabbed the attention of our readers over the last few months. Why the interest in ORAC? As part of our Made Simple Series, we are revisiting this nutritional buzzword to see what makes it worth knowing about by answering your ORAC questions as simply as possible.

What’s in this post:

ORAC Basics
Why High ORAC Scores = Health Benefits
Four Steps to Using ORAC to Better Your Health

1. ORAC Basics

What: ORAC is the nutritional measurement developed and used to evaluate the antioxidant benefit of food. The acronyms stands for or Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, which refers to how much radical oxygen a food can absorb – that is, its effect on combating damaging free radicals.

Why: The ORAC scale offers the general public a tool that can be used to choose the most powerful foods for health and disease prevention. It also allows for easy comparison of foods to see which food is best when it comes to antioxidant power.

The Buzz: ORAC isn’t a marketing ploy. It was developed by USDA researchers at Tufts University as a way to for consumers to understand antioxidant capacity of foods more clearly. It replaces vague terms like “high in antioxidants” or “superfood” as a reliable way to ensure that foods making antioxidant claims are telling it like it is.

2. Why High ORAC Scores = Health Benefits

What: ORAC is important because measuring antioxidant benefits helps us eat foods that prevent disease and help us live longer.

Why: Dietary antioxidants protect the body against unstable oxygen molecules by neutralizing free radicals. Free radicals are associated with:

cancer
heart disease
brain health & Alzheimer’s disease
inflammation – the chief offender when it comes to the effects of aging and disease

The Buzz: The effect of antioxidants on our health and wellness cannot be overemphasized. Research in the field of antioxidants continues, and according to Susan Davis, MS, RD, Nutrition Advisor to the Wild Blueberry Association it is “incredibly consequential for members of our community and the public at large.”

3. Four Steps to Using ORAC to Better Your Health

Step 1: Know the scale: ORAC rated foods range from 82 to nearly 14,000 in ORAC value, and the higher the better. Find a list on the United States Department of Agriculture or by checking OracValues.com.

Step 2: Know the ORAC score of common or favorite foods, fruits, vegetables and juices. For example, about 23 grapes rates 739 on the ORAC scale; while about 70 blueberries comes in at 2,400.

Step 3: Understand serving size: While chocolate comes in at 13,120 ORAC, it’s for 100 grams of unsweetened cacao – an unrealistically high amount to be contained in a sweetened bar.

Step 4: Use the scores to make better decisions about the food you eat. Make ORAC scores part making grocery lists, planning meals, and eating snacks.

What Foods Have High ORAC Scores? Read ORAC: What’s this New Nutritional Buzzword to find out what foods are big winners in ORAC measurement.

Your Health – Made Simple. No more nutritional mumbo jumbo! Got a nutritional knot you want unraveled? Let us know!

Want a Little Belly? Try a Little Blueberry

Meet a New Belly Busting Phyto…PLUS: NEW Supermarket Guru Video!

Interested in a more diminutive belly? You’re not alone. Growing middles are a body bane for many dieters, and it’s no coincidence. There’s a reason many of us battle belly bulge.

As we age, we naturally lose muscle, which results in more body fat, and body fat actually shifts from other parts of the body, like the arms or legs, to the middle. It’s particularly true for women, especially after menopause, due to a natural decrease in estrogen.

Belly fat isn’t just discouraging because of how it looks. Research has shown that as fat in our waists grows, so does our risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, breast cancer, colorectal cancer and stroke. Weight specifically carried in the middle can also be a factor in premature death, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The reason is “visceral fat” – fat that resides deep within our bodies and surrounds our organs. The cells of this deep, internal fat release inflammatory compounds that can affect blood pressure and cholesterol levels, lead to insulin resistance, and be a factor in causing some cancers. Having visceral fat is an indicator that you may be at risk for these and other diseases.

Are we doomed to larger bellies and a higher risk of illness as we age? No way. As stubborn as belly fat can seem, it is not resistant to diet and exercise. Following basic measures to lose weight will whittle belly fat just as it will fat on any part of the body. In fact, some nutrition experts say belly fat is first to go when you start a diet and exercise program.

The Wild Blueberry Effect

If you are ready to tackle that muffin top, making smart food choices may translate to your abs and reduce your chances of illness. According to WebMD, new research indicates that making blueberries part of your diet may correlate to less abdominal fat. If your genetic profile (or tape measure) indicates you have or are at risk of having visceral fat, eating wild blueberries is a perfectly achievable (and perfectly delicious) line of defense.

The Benefits of Blueberries: Learn more about why consumers and experts alike are embracing the blueberry.

While this promising connection between blueberries and belly fat is the result of preliminary research, we already know that the wild blueberry’s health advantages can play a role in the diseases that are exacerbated by belly weight, including heart disease and diabetes. Phytonutrients, which are responsible for the dark pigment in fruits like blueberries, are uniquely helpful in lowering the risk of heart disease and type-2 diabetes, and maintaining glucose control. And of course, the nutrition-to-calorie ratio for this berry is huge. The recommended one-half cup per day provides just 42 calories along with its big health benefits, making it ideal food for belly-busting efforts.

Pterostilbene – A New Phyto to Know

Supermarket Guru Phil Lempert (see video above) reports that USDA research into a phytonutirients reveals a distinctive benefit to the blueberry – one that might shed light on its extreme health benefits. Blueberries, the report states, have high levels of pterostilbene, a phytonutrient which can help reverse the effects of heart disease and type-2 diabetes.

If you follow health and nutrition, this compound, pronounced TER-o-STIL-i-been, is one to watch. This nutritional compound is said to show cancer fighting properties, breast cancer fighting properties, and the potential to reverse cognitive impairment, among other health benefits. Pterostilbene is related to the famed resveratrol, and like resveratrol is also known for its existence in blueberries and grapes. (You can read more in this article from the USDA about pterostilbene’s healthy potential.)

When a fruit is truly super, like blueberries, which are loaded with advantageous phytonutrients, they win our trust. Lempert, an expert in predicting consumer views behavior lauds the fabulous deep blue fruit, and reports that true superfruits, like wild blueberries, are getting the thumbs up with even today’s jaded consumer.

But if your goal is a little belly, why go for a little fruit? Here’s why: phytonutients reside in the deep blue skin of the fruit, and the wild blueberry, due its small size, has a higher skin-to-pulp ratio than the larger, cultivated berry, which means you are getting the most intense nutritional benefit per serving possible. Go small! There are plenty of health benefits, and research is growing.

Do You Have Visceral Fat?

Check your BMI – While your BMI is a measurement of height and weight ratio, it doesn’t necessarily measure damaging belly fat. However, having a BMI that’s too high is an indicator that your weight can be detrimental to your health and increase your chances of life-threatening diseases.

Assess your shape – The better indicator of belly fat is whether you are an “apple” or a “pear”. If you are an “apple” – someone who has a wider waistline in relation to the rest of the body – it’s an indicator that you may be carrying visceral fat. Use the tape measure for a reality check – waist size in women should be under 35, and for men, under 40.

Know your levels (even if your thin) – Visceral fat is genetic, and you may have a tendency to have it even if you are not overweight. In fact, thin inactive people are more likely to store this internal fat. Know your cholesterol levels and blood sugar levels, first and foremost. Then reassess your eating and activity habits to counteract your genetic tendency.