Are you choosing to eat healthy or is someone or something choosing for you? The answer could have an effect on how much you eat and how hungry you feel.
The Times of India published results of an interesting study about how choice plays a part in hunger as it relates to eating healthy.
Next to blaming our mothers, blaming our genes might be the most popular method of understanding how we as individuals navigate the world. But in a new book, The Genius In All of Us by David Shenk, the author addresses the role “practice” plays in what we refer to as “talent”. He rejects the notion that genes play the most significant role in how and if talents manifest – whether that talent is for writing sonatas or pitching fast balls.
In her review of the book in The New York Times, Annie Murphy Paul wrote, “It’s ambitious indeed to try to overthrow in one go the conventional ideas and images that have accumulated since 1874, when Francis Galton first set the words ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ against each other.” As Paul suggests, attributing our body shape, our success in business and baseball, or our susceptibility to disease to something other than genetic destiny is like moving a cultural mountain.
In her review, Paul refers to the emerging field of epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of how genes are activated and deactivated by stimuli like hormones, the environment, and nutrition, and is based on beliefs that run counter to the idea that genes simply serve as a blueprint for our lives. In fact, we are only just learning how the study of genes and genetic expression can be applied. For instance, another emerging field that studies the effects of food, specifically, on gene expression is nutrigenomics. Nutrigenomics researchers believe that eventually a diet tailor-made for an individual can activate the switches that turn genes on and off, providing personalized nutrition based on genotype. By turning genes on or off, the individual can take advantage of the genes they want and leave those they don’t (like those that cause cancer or high blood pressure) dormant. More than just providing us with a one-of-a-kind piece of abstract art for our living room, mapping our genome can have more important applications.
Express Yourself – Genetically
Even before nutrigenomics was widely acknowledged area of science, Dr. Steven Pratt, the doc behind the famed superfoods, initially created his list of foods with these principles of nutrigenomics in mind.
“If you look at your body, you have all these genes that are ready to be expressed and that starts to create proteins and enzymes,” Pratt told Wild Blueberry Health News this past fall. “So, berries promote the expression of good genes and suppress the expression of bad genes in our body. We all have some good genes and we all have some bad ones – berries are great regulators of gene expression,” he said of wild blueberries, his superfoods list topper. Pratt said such gene activation doesn’t require unwieldy amounts of food in order to get the active or counteractive benefits. Ordinary amounts of these foods will suffice in providing the nutritional bang we need.
We can’t yet map our genome and spit out our perfect anti-aging, disease prevention diet at our family physician’s office to suppress the genes we don’t want from switching on. But the good news is we already know, for example, that if you have the genes for high blood pressure and inflammatory markers (either you have high blood pressure or your relatives do), you can take steps to decrease inflammation, decrease blood pressure and decrease c reactive protein by eating foods that are anti-inflammatory, like berries. And, when you lower inflammatory markers, you cut down your risk for most diseases.
The Bottom Line
While understanding “how” is still an emerging science, the “what” is clear: food can control your genes. If that seems like a bold statement, it may prove Paul right: understanding that genes do not dictate our bodies, our health, and our talents goes against all we have learned. But freeing ourselves from the albatross of genetics could be one of the biggest ideas of modern science.
You can read more about nutrigenomics at The Center of Excellence for Nutritional Genomics website.
You know eating nutritious food is good for you. You know it can prevent, even reverse diseases of aging such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. You know it can thwart weight gain that leads to obesity and exacerbates these diseases. What’s more, you actually love healthy food: avocados, wild blueberries, wild salmon, dark chocolate, olive oil, fresh, delicious greens and fruits…. So, why do processed sugars and animal fats seem to linger in your mind?
We know that for most Americans, foods of all kinds are readily available. But why do feel we have to eat it? Is it poor self image? No willpower? Are we simply to weak to resist a little temptation? We make smart decisions everyday about our family, our finances, our work—why is this so different? It’s almost like an addiction.
If you think food might be mimicking addictive behavior, many experts say you’re right. Food provides a burst of pleasure. You think about food all the time. The pleasure is fleeting, not truly satisfying. It leaves you wanting more.
Last year, David Kessler wrote The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, a revealing book about what is responsible for our inability to resist certain food. In it, he explained that foods created with a magical recipe of high fat, high salt and high sugar alters the brain’s chemistry in ways that compel people to overeat. These foods do the opposite of satiating us—they make us crave more.
In fact, many things are at work in the foods that surround us. First, some foods override the body’s signals that tell us we’re full. Artificial sugars, for instance, trigger cravings. Add to that Kessler’s sugar-fat-salt profile that has been honed by food engineers to deliver the high doses in the most irresistible combinations. Administered in intermittent doses, this combination can have a powerful affect on the brain. The brain, in some cases, is not able to curb its dopamine response, the same response researchers see in those who take cocaine.
Furthermore, food manufacturers make food easy to chew, so hundreds of calories slip into our mouths and into our bodies easily. (Compare the satisfying crunch of fresh carrots to an air filled, sugar encrusted donut.) They also cater to our brain’s desire for novelty with complex flavors and food combinations like chewy nougat and milk chocolate, ice cream with chunks of nuts, chocolate or, yes, dough. These kinds of combinations stimulate our brain and make us desire more. Before we know it, we’re acting like addicts, and all the self-esteem and will power in the world can’t stop our hunger.
What’s the solution? Kessler says in the Guardian:
* Individually, we can practice eating in a controlled way.
* As a society, we can identify the forces that drive us to overeat, and diminish their power
* We can enact mandatory calorie counts for fast food and labeling food products, and monitor our food marketing in an effort to shift attitudes about unhealthy food.
We can also be a sponge for knowledge. We can understand the draw foods create and the physiological affects they have on our bodies, and start eating consciously. We can substitute wild blueberries for vending machine candy, and eat low glycemic index foods so we aren’t slaves to the artificial sugars that trigger our cravings. We can realize some burgers serve as entertainment, not nutrition. We can ask ourselves if a caveman would eat the food we have on our plate. We can begin to take control over the powerful forces that keep whisking us into the cycle of what might rightly be called food addiction.
March is National Nutrition Month! Sponsored by the American Dietetic Association, it’s a month devoted to smart food choices and physical health. Kelly at The Health Nut Blog offers some great tips to get you in the spirit of this year’s theme, “improving your nutrition from the ground up,” including watching “stealth” salt, and not depriving yourself of tasty treats.
Try this experiment: Take a piece of paper and make three columns. In the first column, list the meals or snacks you ate yesterday. In the second, list the veggies or fruits (if any) that were part of each meal or snack. In the third, write what could have been included. Here’s a sample:
Then, put it into practice. Try sneaking in a fruit or veggie into as many meals or snacks as you can. This is not a suggestion to replace food (you can, but let’s start small). It’s a way for you to do one of the most powerful things you can do for your health: start getting your daily requirement of fruit and vegetables. It might be easier than you thought.
There are lots of ways to help you get your requirement. Here are 10 to get you started:
Trying the fruit and veggie experiment could change the way you look at food. It could even change your life.
Psst. Pizza is good for you.
So say the authors of The 10 Things You Need to Eat: And More Than 100 Easy and Delicious Ways to Prepare Them, a new book written by New York Times Health columnist Anahad O’Connor and Food Network chef Dave Lieberman. O’Connor and Leiberman give it to us straight: ten foods, lots of ways to eat them. They have culled only the luminaries of nutrition that can lower our risk of developing a host of ailments, from heart disease to prostate cancer, grabbed them from the grocery store shelves, and whipped into more than 100 recipes. It’s a fun, chatty and exceptionally accessible book for eaters of all kinds.
Hey, what about the pizza?
Ok, pizza is not actually on the list, but it’s close. The authors say it actually meets the requirements of being the new “health food” with its heavy doses of tomatoes, their pick for one of the top foods you need to eat. Here’s one reason: a study shows that people who eat pizza regularly were 40% less likely suffer a heart attack that those who never ate it. Those who ate pizza two or more times a week? 60% less likely.
Tomatoes are busting with lycopene, phytonutrients and vitamins that work synergistically – that is, they work better together to deliver their high nutritional value. Plus, O’Connor and Lieberman say cooked tomatoes deliver higher nutritional value – making the tomatoes in pizza sauce even better than those in salad! Buon appetito!
Besides tomatoes, their ten things list includes avocadoes, nuts, berries, fish and quinoa. You can share your thoughts about this must-eat list at the The 10 Things You Need to Eat Facebook page.
Do the Super Chocolate Sugar-Os you had for breakfast claim to combat heart disease? Did that 20-ounce bottle of soda from the vending machine you polished off during lunch say it actually contains 2.5 servings?
If so, you are a casualty of Nutrition Labeling.
Nutritional Labels began showing up on food packaging in 1992 as a result of an effort from the Food and Drug Administration and the USDA to help consumers better understand the food they are eating. Since then, the ubiquitous black and white rectangle has endured criticism and ridicule as a tool to improve eating habits. For starters, they often present unrealistic serving sizes, and their polysyllabic ingredient lists can require a Ph.D. in Nutrition (or Philology) to translate.
These little boxes also epitomize the challenge of too much and too little. By leaving out the stuff we could use – such as daily values for trans-fats, for example, which can lead to the development of heart disease – they sometimes come up short by offering information without a way for the consumer to actually use it.
However, far from being the culprit, labeling is being touted as the key to a healthy diet – and it can be, if those labels provide accurate and helpful information. New regulations may make labels that are apprehendable by humans the norm. As part of efforts towards fighting the nationwide battle against obesity, the FDA is currently supporting a requirement by food manufacturers to post nutritional information on the front of packages where it can be seen, not in a little box on the back, and requiring more “practical” serving sizes and accurate health claims. As a result, your box of Super Chocolate Sugar-Os can only claim it is “heart healthy” if it comes with a treadmill and a pair of sneakers – and instructions to throw out the box.
Such regulations might make labeling part of the solution. Of course, conventional wisdom tells us that the best foods don’t have labels. They are found in the produce section, where the only packaging is bright, unblemished skin and lush leaves. But thanks to quick freezing technology, we know that frozen fruits and vegetables maintain all (or more) of the nutritional benefits of fresh food, as well as offering convenience, price and low waste…and frozen fruits and vegetables have labels, right?. As smart consumers, it seems we’ll never get away from reading labels despite our on-again, off-again relationship with them. It pays to be label-savvy.
As part of improving our label I.Q., we’re taking a look at a typical Nutritional Label created from a nutritional analysis done on wild blueberries to see what this “just the nutritional facts” box has to offer – and what it doesn’t offer up.
5 Nutrition Label Numbers You Should Know About
1) Serving Size & Calories
While many of us have grown wise to the scheme, we know that the “new math” demonstrated by the serving size/calories equation can trip up even a keen consumer. It’s why a bag of chips may seem low in calories, until you realize a “serving” is four chips. And, if you’ve ever eaten New York Super Fudge Chunk directly from the carton, you have a little field knowledge about the voluntary delusion these numbers cater to.
In the case of the wild blueberry label, there are 40 calories in 100 grams. One hundred grams is equal to a little less than ½ cup, and USDA’s Dietary Guidelines recommend 1 to 2½ cups (depending on age and gender) of fruits and vegetables a day. So, ½ cup of wild blueberries delivers one fruit serving, getting you well on your way to your quota, a mere 45 calories later. Not bad – blueberries are truly a naturally low-calorie food. If you ate wilds exclusively in an effort to get your daily requirements, you’d only be racking up between 90-225 calories a day.
While that’s low, we also have to consider nutrition-to-calorie ratio: healthy foods mean more nutrients per calorie, and that’s the key to achieving better health and lower weight. It’s why fruits and vegetables get high marks for health: their calorie to nutrition ratio is excellent, so in most cases (unless you are battling a broccoli addiction) the more you eat the better.
Also, wild blueberries have more skin per serving – cultivated blueberries create their serving-size bulk with a much higher pulp-to-skin ratio. That means higher antioxidant capacity and more nutritional punch per serving for wilds, another thing the label doesn’t tell you.
2) Fiber
When choosing foods, consumers are often looking for good sources of dietary fiber. Fiber is good for you because it can help prevent diseases such as heart disease and cancer. It’s also good for your digestive system, and it can help maintain a healthy weight.
The recommended amount of fiber is 25 grams per day. While processed foods are void of fiber, some high fiber foods can also be loaded with sugar and salt. So if we’re using high fiber numbers as a rule of thumb, we have already found ourselves in a sticky (if not a sticky bun) situation.
Whole grains are great sources of fiber, as are fruits, and this label indicates that each serving provides 4 grams of fiber. Blueberries are high on the fruit fiber scale, along with apples, pears and mangoes. One cup of blueberries per day would provide 36% of your daily requirement of fiber without stealth additives straggling along. Bravo!
3) Sugar
Sugar has become a nutritional expletive, but sugars are a part of a healthy diet, and there is no nutritional organization that calls for a limit on natural sugars. Most fruits and vegetables contain sugar, and sugar amounts are plainly labeled on food packages. What isn’t on the label, however, is whether they are natural or added, making the sugar amounts less helpful than they should be.
It’s up to us to avoid foods that are high in sugar but void of other nutrients, and to differentiate between sugars like sucrose and corn syrup that are added to foods and those that occur naturally. We can do that by referring to the ingredients list.
Our blueberry label indicates 7 grams of sugar. Because this label refers to the natural food and the data refers to just one ingredient (there is nothing added), these are natural sugars, not added ones. Frozen wilds have no additives (who needs them) and their nutritional makeup is exactly the same as a blueberry taken straight from the barren.
4) Carbohydrates & the Glycemic Index
The nutritional label indicates that this food has 13 grams of carbohydrates. What’s most interesting about this food, however, is a number behind the carbs that isn’t listed here. Perhaps it should be—it’s the Glycemic Index.
The Glycemic Index ranks carbohydrate foods according to their effect on the body’s blood glucose levels. Individual foods are compared to white bread or glucose and ranked on a 100-point scale, with white bread at 100. A GI of 70 or more is high; 56 to 69 is medium; 55 or less is low. At the high end of the scale are crackers and corn flakes; at the low end are non-starchy vegetables, fruits, beans, sugars and most dairy products. Consuming low GI foods causes a smaller rise in blood glucose levels than consuming high GI foods — an important consideration for people with diabetes. (Nutritionists are also interested in the effect GI foods may have on weight loss and appetite control. Research is currently under way to evaluate these claims.)
In a recent test, wild blueberries scored 53 on the Glycemic Index (GI) scale making them a low GI food. This translates into health benefits – low GI foods don’t escalate blood sugar levels, don’t cause mid-day “crashes” and don’t contribute to that diet-decimating cycle of eating and getting hungry, then eating, and then getting hungry. In addition to lowering diabetes risks, low GI goods can decrease risks of cancer, high cholesterol and heart disease. So, while GI numbers aren’t showing up on the label, they probably should be.
5) Vitamins & Antioxidants
Only two vitamins (A and C) and two minerals (calcium and iron) are required on the food label. Food companies can voluntarily list other vitamins and minerals in the food. And, when vitamins or minerals are added to the food, or when a vitamin or mineral claim is made, those nutrients must be listed on the nutrition label.
While we don’t see anything listed for “antioxidants” on this label, vitamins A, C and E provide antioxidants, and they have made an appearance here. In fact, Women’s Fitness reports that one of the top 10 great things about blueberries is their high capacity to deliver on vitamins. They have the highest antioxidant capacity of all fruits, they include anthocyanin, vitamin C, B complex, vitamin E, and vitamin A, and they neutralize free radicals which can affect disease and aging in the body. There is no antioxidant number on this label, but if we’re nutrition savvy, the data about vitamins that deliver the antioxidant power can help tip us off.
Furthermore, wild blueberries also outperformed selected fruits in an advanced procedure known as the cellular antioxidant activity (CAA) assay, a new means of measuring bioactivity inside cells. Wild Blueberries performed better in cells than cranberries, apples and both red and green grapes. Find that interesting? It provides guidance not just about whether to choose a fruit over a fruit cake, but what fruit you should choose for the biggest nutritional punch. While the presence of vitamins is evident on the label, it’s what’s missing about what those vitamins deliver that is not.
Bottom Line
What can we learn by looking at the label? In this case, we know that wild blueberries are a naturally nutrient-rich choice. At just 45 calories per serving, they are packed with antioxidants and deliver substantial nutrients for every calorie consumed. But their nutritional power isn’t always evident on the label: antioxidant capacity, pulp-to-skin ratios, and the glycemic index aren’t numbers that can be easily extracted here. And if this had been a more nutritionally “complicated” food, this label could have masked some important nutritional deficits as well.
Until labels and packaging tell us more of what we need to know and less of what we don’t, the bottom lime is: don’t be a casualty of the nutritional label game – know the facts about what’s behind the numbers before you buy.
Love beets? That delicious earthy flavor makes them a favorite in salads, and while we’ve all had them pickled or canned, baked fresh beets can be superb. If beets are a staple in your kitchen, that’s great news. Beets are full of those natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters, and they are one of the healthiest foods you may or may not be putting on your plates.
But even if you are a die hard beet eater, let’s face it—it’s hard to eat them morning, noon and night. For those seeking an alternative food that still has the cancer fighting potential that comes with the deep purple color, New York Times Health writer Tara Parker Pope helps you expand your horizons. In her article Blueberries Morning, Noon & Night she figures when it comes to this kind of intense nutrition, if you’re stopping at breakfast, your missing opportunities to intensify the health benefits of your plate.
According to Pope, “These nutrient-rich fruits are available year-round and don’t spoil, and blueberries have been associated with better memory in animal studies.” She recommends integrative recipes like Rice Pudding with Blueberries or Papaya and Blueberry Salad With Ginger-Lime Dressing.
If you could use a break from the beloved beet, your health doesn’t have to suffer. Just keep in mind the importance color – that pigment you see in those bright vibrant fruits and vegetables is called anthocyanin, and that’s where the antioxidant activity lies. Of course, all colors of the spectrum are good for dressing up a plate. Consider deep greens, oranges, blues, reds and purples. Wild blueberries are always a powerful pick – because wilds are smaller size in size compared to their cultivated cousins, they have more skin, and that’s where the pigment is.
