When Willpower Isn’t Enough

Interesting article by David Katz, M.D. from the Huffington Post: Healthy Living Takes Skill!.

He says that though willpower is certainly required to live healthfully, the average person requires several skills  for navigating through today’s fast food/high volume/huge portion/quench your thirst/satisfy your each and every craving (even those you didn’t know you had) kind of world.

Willpower is far more often on the marquee, but skill power matters at least as much. Will is good, but skill may be required to find, fashion, pave, and/or follow the way to health. In the absence of skill power, it may simply not be possible to get there from here.

In the modern world, living healthy is also a steep uphill climb. Skills are required.

He mentions several authorities on the subject, such as Barbara Rolls, who is well known for her Volumetrics eating plan. Volumetrics is based on catering to one’s satiety signals by filling up on high nutritional value/low calorie dense foods (i.e. fluids & fiber). Which, incidentally, is an ideal way to promote weight loss.

Like anything in life, one needs tools to make good choices on a regular basis. It takes practice to live healthfully, every day we are faced with a myriad of food options, most of which are not going to further our health or improve our waistline. It is the person who can make an educated decision and knows when to say no (and of course when to indulge) that really has the advantage, and will ultimately reap the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.

I recommend working with a professional trained in the field of nutrition as a way to start acquiring those skills.

 

Victoria’s Secret Angel Diet Revealed

File under “Don’t Try this at Home”

Victoria’s Secret Angel Diet Revealed: Egg Powder, No Solids & Gallons Of Water!.

Apparently the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is actually akin to training for an extreme sport, at least so far as the nutrition and exercise leading up to the big event is crucial for models’ “performance.”

Hey, at least they work with a nutritionist who is monitoring them throughout the process…

 

Savory Thin Mini Edamame Crackers – Trader Joe’s

A good alternative to rice crackers

Looking for an alternative to the binding, albeit low calorie rice crackers?

Look no further, at 120 calories for 38 chips…these savory edameme cracker from Trader Joe’s are a good solution.

They taste pretty good too, and pair nicely with some yummy hummus or crumbled onto some savory soup.

 

 

Is Chef Boyardee trying to kill our kids?

Or at the very least trying to start them off with high blood pressure before they are old enough to go to the prom?

Let me back up, I was at Target recently and was thinking back fondly on eating Chef Boyardee Mini Raviolis as a child. For a moment, I thought, maybe I would let my kids try it to so they could experience this canned goodness I remembered. Nerdy label reader that I am, I did feel it necessary to check out the nutrition first and was kind of horrified at what I saw, hopefully this image is clear:

1 serving has a whopping 900mg sodium!

900 mg of sodium per serving, a whole can is 2 servings. It’s pretty clear that Chef Boyardee’s audience is children, and while there are no RDAs for sodium set at this point for children, there are what’s known as “Adequate Intakes” and “Upper Limits” set for this electrolyte.

Using children ages 4-8 years old as an example, the adequate intake of sodium for this group is 1200 mg/day. The upper limit is 1900 mg/day. If you are wondering what an upper limit is, it’s

The maximum level of daily nutrient intake that is likely to pose no risk of adverse effects.- NIH

I guess I find it disturbing because if your child ate just one serving, not only is this a huge sodium load for an adult, let alone a child, it’s 3/4 of their daily allowance.

Too much salt can have adverse effects on one’s blood pressure, kidneys and bones. Not to mention, why start our children out with a taste for excessive salt in foods?

My recommendation is to provide whole and fresh foods as often as possible, and read the labels on all processed foods. If your child has 3 meals and 2 snacks daily, each meal should have no more than 250-350 mg/serving. (For the 4-8 year old age group.

For more information on

 

2010 Dirty Dozen & Clean Fifteen

Which version of produce should you buy when faced with both the organic and conventional options? Well, the Environmental Working Group has updated their Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists. These lists come in very handy when making decisions at the food store.

They have a PDF list you can print out, and this year there is also as an Iphone App! You can find them both here.

If you’d like to compare this year’s lists to last year’s, check out my post: A Little Help With Buying Organic

 

Coming Soon: The Sriracha Cookbook

Kinda wish I was the one to come up with this idea, but, I wasn’t. Apparently we can look forward to a book of Sriracha recipes in January 2011: The Sriracha Cookbook by Randy Clemens (Random House).

While you are waiting for the book to be released, you can always check out my post on Sriracha from June ’09: Sriracha Having Its Moment

I love it on cabbage and in soups. Can’t wait to see what Mr. Clemens has up his sleeve…

 

Helping Special Needs Kids Eat Right

A book on nutrition written by a nutrition expert

There is so much information out there on special diets for children on the Autism Spectrum, as well as those with ADD/ADHD that it can be overwhelming for anyone to try to sift through what’s factual information and what is questionable. I was excited to see an alert come through yesterday about the book: Special-Needs Kids Eat Right: Strategies to Help Kids on the Autism Spectrum Focus, Learn, and Thrive by Judy Converse.  I have not seen many books about nutrition therapy for autism spectrum disorders actually written by a nutrition expert. While I have not yet read the book, I definitely plan to add it to my list.

While on the subject, I have also had the pleasure of taking a webinar by another registered dietitian, Sharon Lemons who has a blog called the Autism RD Sounds Off. As both a mother and a nutritionist she has a unique perspective on the special nutritional requirements of children on the autism spectrum.

Finally there is a database of information regarding dietary supplements for Autism Spectrum Disorders which is maintained by IBIDS, the International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements database.   It is free to peruse and you can find it here.

 

More Support for Broccoli as Cancer Prevention

Broccoli may help in the fight against cancer

A recent article in Clinical Cancer Research offers further support towards the belief that components found in broccoli known as sulforaphanes may help fight cancer.

Essentially this study shows that when sulforaphanes were applied to breast cancer stem cells, their growth was inhibited and/or prevented. Unfortunately because this was an in vitro study, it’s not clear how much broccoli one would need to eat in order to reap this type of benefit, but, the results are encouraging.

If you’d like to know more about sulforaphanes , I have gone into depth on them in, Another Reason to Eat Broccoli, but, basically:

• Sulforaphanes are present in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, brussel sprouts and cabbage.

• Maximum sulforaphane benefits seem to be derived from the vegetables in their less cooked states

I have noticed that there are broccoli sprout supplements boasting high levels of sulforaphanes, such as one by Source Naturals, but, as is the case with most supplements, by taking those, you would miss out on all of the other nutrients that broccoli has to offer, such as vitamin C. Plus, broccoli is a very versatile vegetable and tastes great. Adding broccoli to your diet on a regular basis will no doubt benefit your body in more ways than one.

What’s your favorite way to eat broccoli?

 

Freshway Foods Romaine Lettuce Recall

Here’s the info from the FDA on the Romaine Lettuce recall: FDA Supports Freshway Foods Voluntary Recall.

 

Romaine Lettuce Recall

Prepackaged lettuce has always given me a little bit of the creeps, but, anything that gets people to eat more salad is still okay in my book. So, that makes this latest food recall a very big bummer, but, it appears that now Romaine lettuce is the focus of a food recall. It is related to E.coli so it has the potential to be very serious.

Click on Freshway Foods site for the full story. I’ll update this post as more information is available. Official FDA information forthcoming.

Stay tuned.