Tag Archives: food

The attack of our toxic food environment. And how to fight back!

Posted on February 26, 2015 | Leave a comment

The term “toxic environment” was popularized by Kelly Brownell, an obesity and weight loss researcher, years ago to refer to conditions that promote the consumption of high-calorie, unhealthy food and encourage being physically inactive. This combination is thought to be a major factor that contributes to obesity and other chronic diseases, so understanding both aspects deserves our attention. Hy Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week  focuses on our toxic food environment. (Next week I will explore our toxic activity environment)

Fastfood One characteristic of the toxic environment is that food is available almost everywhere. Gas stations have evolved into convenience stares that happen to sell gas, tempting you as you enter to pay. Displays of candy, soda, and other snacks are present at nearly every checkout lane in nearly every store, even stores that have nothing to do with food. You can find vending machines that sell candy and soda most places you go, even hospitals and schools. Many workplaces have a common area where you can typically find a candy dish or a break room with vending machines. Even going to a meeting at work may mean sitting around a table with a plate of donuts in the center. Sure, you don’t have to buy a soda when you pay for gas or take a donut from the plate, but resisting can be difficult. The more you are around food, the more likely you are to eat it, even if you aren’t hungry. Whether your goal is to eat less food or to eat healthier food, the world we live in makes it difficult. It’s not just willpower, either. We are all susceptible to marketing, whether done by a store, restaurant, or a friend with a plate of freshly baked brownies. The power of marketing, combined with the fact that most of us don’t really understand food or nutrition, is difficult to overcome. It gets worse. It turns out that much of the food we are continually exposed to is of poor nutritional quality. Convenience foods such as candy, snacks, and drinks tend to be high in calories, mostly from added sugar and/or fat, and low in nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Many restaurant meals, both fast food and casual dining, are similar in this way. Even prepackaged meals that you eat at home tend to be high in calories and low in healthy nutrients. So, not only are we almost always around food, much of that food is unhealthy. It also turns out that these unhealthy, calorie-dense foods come in portions that contain a shocking number of calories that can contribute to weight gain. Think about soda, for example. It used to be that you could buy a soda in a 12 oz. can or a 16 oz. bottle. Now 20 oz. bottles are common and even larger sizes are almost always an option. The same is true for candy and snacks, like chips. As portions increase, so do the calories we consume. To be fair, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with having so many foods and drinks available to us. We don’t need to eat these foods, right? But, all too often, we do. And when the excess calories from all of this food are combined with a low level of physical activity, a “perfect storm” is created that almost always leads to weight gain. Changing our food environment is difficult, maybe even impossible. But we can change the way we interact with our environment. This includes being more mindful of what, when, and why we are eating. Being aware of internal signals like hunger and external forces like advertising and peer pressure can help us make smarter decisions within our toxic food environment.

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Eat slow, then fast. How and when you eat may be as important as what you eat for weight control.

Posted on February 2, 2015 | 1 comment

What you eat is an essential part of achieving and maintaining good health. What you may not know is that when and how you eat can be just as important. This is especially true if your goal is to lose weight.

My Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week describes  two ways that changing the way you eat can help you lose weight and keep it off. Neither of these are necessarily new ideas, but implementing them together may help you eat less.

First, eating more slowly can help you limit the amount of food you eat. Perhaps your mother admonished you to “slow down” at meals when you were young. This was good advice, for both practical and physiological reasons. In addition to controlling how much food you consume, eating more slowly is a good way to enjoy meals, both the food and the company, more fully.

You mother may also have told you to “chew your food.” too. This was probably to remind you to eat more slowly.  Almost 100 years ago Horace Fletcher recommended a process that involved chewing each bite of food 100 times. “Fletcherizing,” as it was called, was a way to reduce how much people ate, among other more dubious health claims.

There is a physiological reason to slow down, too. Your appetite is regulated by a host of factors, including the act of eating and the presence of food in your stomach. As you eat, your stomach fills. This triggers the release of hormones that signal your brain to reduce your appetite. The result is that as your stomach fills, you feel less hungry.

Once you start eating, it takes time for your stomach to release these hormones. Eating quickly, like many of us do, allows you to take in lots of calories before your brain gets the message that you are full. This is one factor that leads to overeating. But if you slow down at meals, you start to feel full before you eat as much. Research shows that this can lead to lower calorie intake during the meal.

Second, the time between meals may affect your metabolism in ways that result in less fat accumulation. Again, the concept of fasting between meals isn’t new, but recent research helps explain why eating less frequently may help prevent obesity and related conditions, including diabetes.

While this research was done using rats, the physiological concept may well apply to humans. In these studies, rats were put on a diet that included an overnight fast ranging from 8–12 hours. The researchers found that the rats that experienced a longer fasting period between meals had better insulin levels and less fat storage.

The reason for this seems to do with the gut microbiome, the bacteria that live in the intestine and play an important role in regulating metabolism. A longer period without food changes the nature of these good bacteria, promoting these benefits.

I first heard about this on Science Friday, which provides an excellent summary of this research.

It is unclear whether this same effect occurs in humans. Even without this evidence, adopting a fasting period between dinner and breakfast, which should be about 12 hours, seems prudent. At the very least, it will keep you from snacking in the evening, which almost certainly involves unhealthy choices.

An additional finding of this research is that the benefits of the 12-hour fast seem to persist, even through a day or two of more frequent eating. This is relevant, since many people do well to modify their eating habits during the week, but tend toward less restrained eating on the weekends. The fact that the benefits of an overnight fast most days of the week are maintained despite a “wild weekend” is good news!

The combination of what, when, and how you eat can make an important difference in how much you eat, the key to losing weight and keeping it off. As you try to make healthier food choices, consider eating more slowly and making dinner the end of your eating day.

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The five pillars of good health

Posted on January 12, 2015 | 2 comments

What does it really take to live a healthy lifestyle? This is the topic of me Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week.

Confusing and conflicting information can make improving your health especially challenging. Some advice is straightforward—quit smoking, for example. But other recommendations, especially those regarding nutrition and exercise, are less clear. In an effort to stay focused on the “big picture” I have created what I call the Five Pillars of Good Health. These are five habits that are the basis for achieving and maintaining good health.

Don’t Smoke.

Smoking doubles your risk of heart attack and stroke and is the leading cause of lung cancer. Second-hand smoke can affect the health of others, so these risks are not limited to the smoker.

If you smoke, quit now…no excuses! Newer prescription medications and over-the-counter nicotine replacement products can help, but quitting will require dedication, effort, and support.

Eat Smart.

Good nutrition is essential for preventing and treating most chronic diseases including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Perhaps the best way to cut through the conflicting nutrition information and diet claims is to simplify healthy eating to it’s most basic form: Eat real food, not processed “food.”

This isn’t easy, of course. One sure way to make better choices is to limit added sugars and salt, which are almost always present in processed foods. Strive to eat more whole fruits and fruit juices, vegetables, whole grains, legumes (like beans), lean meat, dairy, and nuts. If weight loss is a goal for you, reducing portion sizes will absolutely help you cut calories.

Move More.

This is a three-step process. First, sit less. Limit sedentary time at work and home and make opportunities to get up and move. The health effects of prolonged sitting are similar to not exercising. If you find yourself in stuck a chair for an hour, at least get up and stretch for a minute.

Second, move more. Look for ways to add activity to your everyday routine. This can include yard work and house work as well as using the stairs and parking further away in parking lots. Every additional step counts!

Third, dedicate time to be active every day. This can include activity such as taking the dog for walk as well as more structured exercise that includes endurance, resistance, and flexibility training. Strive for 30 minutes per day, but know that more is better.

Chill Out.

Chronic stress can have a powerful effect on your health. While it is not possible to eliminate all stress from your life, you should dedicate yourself to identifying and modifying sources of stress at work and home and learning to control your stress response.

Much of the stress of life comes down to not having enough time. Good time management, planning carefully, and setting priorities will certainly help reduce both long and short-term stress. You should also know that inadequate sleep adds to the health effects of stress, so strive to get enough sleep.

Make It Work For You.

This is the tricky part—how to actually make these changes. The first step is to make good health a priority and dedicate time and energy to your efforts. No doubt you have tried some of these changes before, you probably have an idea of what does and doesn’t work for you. Try something different this time around. The support of others is essential, so don’t be afraid to ask for help. Get your friends and family involved, too. They will certainly benefit from joining you on your journey toward better health.

 

 

 

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Take a lesson in healthy eating from your turkey this Thanksgiving.

Posted on November 24, 2014 | Leave a comment

My Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week is about Thanksgiving dinner. With all the talk about how to make it a “healthier” meal by replacing traditional dishes and modifying recipes, I think we may be missing an important lesson in healthy eating.

This is Thanksgiving week, and people throughout the country are planning a feast including traditional dishes and family favorites. Even though many of these are not the healthiest choices, they make an appearance on the dinner table each year. Combined with the common occurrence of over-indulging, Thanksgiving dinner can represent a day of poor nutrition choices.

In an effort to make Thanksgiving dinner healthier, recommendations for modifying or replacing traditional dishes are a common theme in magazines, on the morning TV shows, and on the web. While these suggestions are meant to be helpful, I’m not sure they actually serve to make a significant impact on health.

After all, Thanksgiving is one day, and if there was ever a day to give yourself license to indulge, this is it! Of course, trying new foods and cooking techniques is always good, but the impact of replacing the butter in your mashed potatoes with fat-free sour cream or taking the marshmallow topping off Granny’s famous sweet potato dish isn’t realistically going to make you any healthier in the long run.

The truth is that if you eat a healthy diet every day, or even most days, and you have an active lifestyle you can get away with a day—or weekend—of overeating. (Obviously, you should always follow dietary restrictions for any medical conditions you have.) The problem comes when Thanksgiving dinner is yet another unhealthy meal in addition to the others that week or month.

Some of these recommendations are worth trying, for sure. Making an alternative to a traditional dish can get your family to try new foods they might not otherwise consider. And cooking using different ingredients or techniques on Thanksgiving can give you ideas for other meals, too.

However, focusing on modifying your Thanksgiving dinner may distract you from appreciating the greatest potential health benefit of this meal. Given the current confusion about how much and what type of carbohydrates and fats we should eat, there is an increased push to get us to eat less processed food and more real food.

For many of us, Thanksgiving dinner is one of the only times we cook and eat real food. A real turkey, vegetables, and home-made dessert are a huge improvement over the processed foods most of us eat on a daily basis. While we eat turkey at other times, it is almost always in a processed form such as ground turkey or deli meat, which frequently includes other additives. Cooking and eating a whole turkey is, for most families, relatively rare. So is eating a meal that doesn’t come from a restaurant or is heated in a microwave.

Additionally, Thanksgiving dinner is shared simultaneously around a common table (and maybe a kids’ table, too). All too often, meals are consumed away from the family table, frequently at different times. The benefits of eating together as a family are well-known, and can impact nutrition, psychological well-being, and health in general. Maybe Thanksgiving dinner isn’t about the food as much as it is the company. Why not make this a habit at other meals?

This week, let’s all give thanks for family, friends, and a shared meal. Let’s also take a lesson from the day and try to prepare and eat more real food as a family. This may be the biggest benefit of Thanksgiving. That, and a second serving of pumpkin pie!

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What’s wrong with the way we eat, according to Jim Gaffigan.

Posted on October 22, 2014 | Leave a comment

I happened to catch a segment of the public radio show Here & Now yesterday afternoon. The guest was comedian Jim Gaffigan, who has a new book out, called Food: A Love Story. Food is a common topic in his comedy.

Anyway, in the discussion, he made a joke that I think perfectly describes what is wrong with the way we think about food. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but basically he says:

Artists have long painted bowls of fruit because no one will touch the fruit. There are no famous paintings of donuts because someone will eat them before the painting is complete.

That’s funny, at least partly because it is true. And that’s the problem.

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Celebrate Food Day every day by eating real food

Posted on October 20, 2014 | 4 comments

This Friday is Food Day, an annual event that aims to raise awareness about the food we eat and the impact it has on our health, environment, and quality of life. It turns out that many of us don’t know much about our food including where it came from, the method of preparation, and the quality and nutritional value.

As I describe in my Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week, we are increasingly disconnected from our food, a fact that has implications for our health and the health of the environment.

Our lack of knowledge about the food we eat has been replaced by a heightened awareness about nutrients. In fact, many people follow diets that either emphasize or restrict certain nutrients in order to obtain health benefits. But the research to support the importance of these individual nutrients is often mixed or lacking altogether. Still, as we seek out sources of these nutrients we are led to supplements, such as fish oil, or processed foods with added nutrients, like fiber.

To be sure, fish oil and fiber are good for us. But does that mean that taking a fish oil supplement will have the same health benefits as actually eating fish instead of, say, fried chicken? Or is adding fiber to a chocolate breakfast bar equivalent to getting more fiber from fruits and vegetables? Both research and common sense suggest that the answer is no.

Beyond the individual nutrients, the food we eat has changed. Even the way food gets to our table has changed. Since nearly half of our meals are eaten outside the home, it’s not even “our” table anymore. And when we do eat at home, take-out and prepackaged heat-and-eat meals have become the norm. In fact, the idea of cooking meals from ingredients is so foreign that we have to be reminded about how and why we should do it.

Events like Food Day are an attempt to get us back to the basics of cooking and eating real food. This, of course, is how people ate for years before the obesity and diabetes epidemics we are dealing with now, so eating real food again is a step toward reducing these, and other, health problems.

In addition to the potential health benefits of focusing on food over nutrients, this approach is also good for the environment and the economy. It turns out that eating healthier food promotes sustainable agriculture and can support local farmers. Locally grown produce, which is picked at the peak of freshness, can be more nutritious and have a lower environmental impact than food from factory farms which is often shipped great distances. And most important, food from local farms usually tastes better!

This is the point of Food Day. We should make ourselves aware of where our food comes from and do our best to eat “real food” as opposed to processed and pre-packaged foods that tend to be high in calories, added sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats. When possible, we should buy foods that are grown locally to minimize the environmental impact and support local farmers who live, work, and pay taxes in our area.

It turns out that focusing on food, not nutrients, will have a positive impact on your health, the environment, and quality of life for you and others. And that is why it is called Food Day, not nutrient day. You can learn more about how you can celebrate Food Day every day at www.foodday.org.

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Fat still matters

Posted on September 15, 2014 | Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about some recent research suggesting that low-carbohydrate diets may be better for weight loss that low-fat diets. For many, this study reinforced the notion that traditional recommendations are wrong and that the key to good health is to eliminate carbohydrates from your diet. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The recent study did show that people lost more weight and experienced beneficial changes in blood lipids when they followed a low-carbohydrate diet compared to those who ate a low-fat diet. However, this does not mean that low-fat diets aren’t effective for weight loss or that they are “unhealthy.”

In fact, low-fat diets have long been used effectively to promote weight loss, reduce heart disease risk, and lead to healthier eating in general. This is supported by the results of hundreds of research studies as well as the practical experience of health professionals and real people. Here are two reasons why fat still matters when it comes to health.

First, reduced-fat diets have been shown to improve blood cholesterol and lower the risk for heart disease. Eating a diet low in fat, especially saturated and trans fat, has been the foundation of nutrition recommendations for decades. The fact is that these diets are effective for weight loss, reducing cholesterol, and otherwise improving heart health.

One famous study demonstrated that following a low-fat diet contributed to a reduction in the severity of atherosclerosis, the narrowing of arteries that leads to many heart attacks. Literally hundreds of other studies have shown similar beneficial results.

This isn’t some magical effect of eating less fat, though. The health benefits are likely due to eating more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains as much as they are to reducing fat intake. The point is that adopting a low-fat diet can lead to better nutrition overall.

Second, reducing fat intake is a good way to reduce calories. This is true because fat contains nine calories per gram, more than twice that of carbohydrates and protein, so cutting fat is an effective way to cut calories. Limiting fat intake also reduces calories indirectly because many high fat foods are also high in sugar and calories (think of most desserts).

It is important to mention that simply reducing fat intake won’t always lead to weight loss; total calories must be lower, too. This is a mistake many make when they reduce fat intake, but increase the amount of calories from other sources, typically carbohydrates. Many low-fat foods are actually relatively high in calories due to added sugar or people tend to eat more of them (the SnackWell Effect).

The effectiveness of low-fat diets for weight loss has been demonstrated in research studies (like this one) and countless weight loss programs. In one notable study, a diet low in fat even led to weight loss in people who weren’t trying to lose weight. And don’t forget that in the recent study about low-carbohydrate diets, the subjects that followed the low-fat diet also lost weight.

For some people, cutting carbohydrates as a way to lose weight is reasonable; for others, reducing fat intake makes sense. For most people, though, doing both to some extent is the best option, but going to extremes is unnecessary.

Eating less added sugar and avoiding foods with added fats (such as French fries) are good recommendations for almost everyone. That said, there is little evidence for the benefit of limiting carbohydrates in the form of whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits or the fat in meat and dairy.

The bottom line is that the quality of food we eat is more important than the specific amounts of the nutrients it contains. Eating low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets can help steer you toward making healthier choices, but so can avoiding processed foods in favor of wholesome, nutrient-dense “real” food.

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Good sources of protein for your low-carb diet

Posted on September 10, 2014 | 1 comment

Thanks to a recent study and media coverage (including me), low-carbohydrate diets are a popular topic of discussion. For many people, cutting back on carbohydrates is a good way to reduce calories to promote weight loss.

Most low-carbohydrate diets also emphasize protein intake. But finding healthy protein sources is important for promoting weight loss and good health.

This recent discussion about the best protein for optimal weight loss  on the Train Your Body show on RadioMD should help.

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To make your diet healthier, add exercise.

Posted on August 25, 2014 | 2 comments

The American diet is frequently blamed for the poor health of Americans and, increasingly, other countries. The quest for the healthiest way to eat can literally take people around the world to find the right foods eat.

Unfortunately, diets and supplements that include these “super foods” are rarely the answer to good health on their own. It turns out that the key getting the optimal health benefits from your diet isn’t the food itself—it’s exercise!

This is the topic of my Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week. It’s not to say that what you eat isn’t important (it is!). The point is that healthy eating will only get you part of the way to the goal of good health.

For decades scientists have tried to isolate the types of foods or individual nutrients that lead to good health by studying what healthy and unhealthy people eat around the world. In some studies eating more of a certain nutrient or food, like saturated fat or red meat, was associated with a higher risk of heart disease and people who ate more fish had better heart health.

This is how we arrived at the common guidelines that encourage us to eat more fish and less red meat. The assumption was that the saturated fat in red meat was the cause of more heart attacks in Americans while the beneficial oils in fish protected the Japanese from heart disease.

But these studies, or at least the interpretation of these studies, didn’t take into account the fact that the populations that had the higher heart attack risk were also less active than their healthier counterparts. Perhaps it was the physical activity that made the difference in health.

A good example of this is the popular Mediterranean diet, which is often touted as the healthiest diet in the world. It’s true that people in the Mediterranean region historically tended to have a lower risk of heart disease. This was thought to be due to their diet which emphasizes healthy fats from olive oil along with vegetables, whole grains, seafood instead of red meat, and red wine in moderation.

Unfortunately, eating more olive oil or drinking more red wine, both recommendations based on the Mediterranean diet, won’t necessarily make you any healthier. This is because health benefits are due to a complex interaction of what we eat and other lifestyle factors, including activity. And people in the Mediterranean region move a lot more than we do, a key to realizing the benefits of the local diet.

Another example is the Ornish diet, a low-fat, semi-vegetarian diet that has been credited with improving blood lipids and even reversing the process that clogs arteries in heart disease. This is part of the reason for the recommendation to avoid foods high in saturated fat and cholesterol and eat more vegetables. It’s true that this diet has been shown to improve heart health, but the subjects in the studies also exercised regularly. Achieving the full benefits of this diet requires exercise, too.

Even the typical American diet won’t necessarily be unhealthy when combined with enough exercise. The Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps famously revealed what he ate on a typically day. The amount and type of foods he consumed were not what you would expect from someone so fit and healthy! Without the hours of training he engaged in each day that diet would almost certainly have resulted in obesity and poor health.

So, as you work toward improving your diet, don’t forget about the importance of daily exercise or other activity in maximizing the health benefits. And when people ask your secret, you can tell them that the real key to a healthy diet is exercise.

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Are fat-free and sugar-free foods healthy? Maybe not!

Posted on August 4, 2014 | 1 comment

Have you ever felt confused by the health claims made about some foods? If so, you are not alone. Nutrition is isn’t always easy to understand and, unfortunately, misleading information on food labels only makes it worse.

There are a great many foods that seem as though they would be healthy choices for weight loss or good health in general. Surprisingly, some of these low-fat and low-sugar alternatives aren’t as healthy as you might think.

This is because, in many cases, the claims on the label only tell part of the story. This isn’t to say that the information is false, but it does require some interpretation to understand whether these foods are really a healthy choice.

My Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week includes two examples of label language that seems to indicate a healthier option, but may not necessarily be the case:

1. Fat-free

Cutting back on fat intake is a good way to reduce calories and is typically recommended for weight loss. It is also a major part of traditional recommendations to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease, although recent research suggests this may not be so important.

In order to meet a demand for lower fat and lower calorie foods, manufacturers have long offered fat-free versions of popular items. Cookies, snack foods, and salad dressings are among the most popular fat-free foods, especially for people who are trying to lose weight.

However, the number of calories in the fat-free foods may be the same as the full-fat versions because manufacturers often add sugar to make these lower fat foods taste as good. This is often the case for cookies, cakes, and other fat-free baked goods.

In the end, these fat-free foods may not really be lower in calories. And common sense tells us that the best way to reduce calories is to eat fewer of these snack foods and dressings in the first place.

 2. Sugar-free

Reducing sugar intake is also a popular way to limit calories in many foods and beverages. Currently, sugar is viewed as a major contributor to obesity and poor health in general, so this also makes some foods appear to be healthier than they really are.

While it is true that sugar-free versions of desserts and snack foods do usually contain fewer calories, the alternative sweeteners used instead raise some concerns. While there is no good evidence that these sweeteners are harmful, they certainly don’t make these foods any healthier.

It is important to note that the concern is with foods that have added sugar, such as packaged or prepared desserts, baked goods, and snacks. Foods with naturally occurring sugars like fruits, fruit juices, milk, and some vegetables are not worth worrying about.

Again, the most reasonable approach to creating a healthy diet is to eat fewer foods with added sugar, not looking for foods that replace added sugar with artificial sweeteners.

The Bottom Line

The problem for most people isn’t that they are eating cookies with too much sugar or salad dressing with too much fat, it’s that they are eating too many cookies and using too much dressing in the first place. Lowering fat or sugar in these foods does little to make people healthier.

The only way to do that would be to limit the intake of these processed foods in favor of more “real” food. Indeed, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and natural oils (like olive oil) are widely thought to be healthful, certainly better than processed and modified alternatives.

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