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Good Morning. And Happy Halloween!!
What is this Vegetable?
Hint: This is not an alien. It actually grows on earth, and even in the US.
Here’s a note we got from Carrie, a Fooducate community member.
LOVE your blog and your app! I’m so glad I found you — I don’t follow every “rule” every time, but it is important to me that the vast majority of the food I eat be — err, actually food.
I travel for business 4 days per week, every week. While I can pack some things, I don’t have access to a refrigerator in my hotel so that very much limits what I can bring from home. I can store things at the refrigerator at work, but of course, I only have access to that during the day.
Would love for you/your site to share any tips for how to eat well when on the road. Thanks!
If you travel a lot for work, you can empathize with Carrie. Food in airports is usually crappy and very expensive. Cheap food in restaurant chains around hotels and motels is usually a fast food chain, or ethnic mom and pop shops with heartburn written all over the menu. While it’s nice to eat out at $50 restaurants every now and then, most of us can’t afford to.
Suddenly, making and eating your own meals while on the road doesn’t sound like a crazy idea anymore.
Here are some suggestions:
1. Be prepared – Do some googling ahead of your trip to see what the food scene will be like where you arrive. Is there a supermarket nearby where you can get fresh food? What are its opening hours – many times it’s 24 hours a day, so you can pop in late after work, or early in the morning. Are there any healthy restaurant choices nearby? What hotels / motels offer some sort of a kitchenette , fridge, etc…
2. Refrigeration – While some hotels do not have a fridge, many do have mini-bars. True, the space is very limited, but you can take out some of the non-perishable beverage bottles and store your stuff instead.
3. Canned food – If you don’t have refrigeration in your room, you can still used many canned food products including fruit, vegetables, and protein sources such as tuna or sardines. Beans are fine too, but not a thrill to consume them at room temperature.
4. Extended stay hotels/ motels – some chains are made especially for people who want to eat home cooked meals. Each room comes with a full size fridge, microwave, and range. Pots, pans, basic cutlery and plates are also included. You can prepare a decent meal quite easily.
5. The jazz-it-up mini kit – includes a few miniature-sized things you can pack into a little box. salt, pepper, olive oil, lemon, small onion, tabasco sauce, and plastic utensils. Just these few things can help you turn few sliced veggies into a salad, add flavor to a sandwich, and in general bum up the flavor profile of whatever you are preparing.
6. Always have water on you – no matter where you go, you need to drink. Have a bottle with you. Empty it before passing through security at the airport, but fill it up again at the water cooler before boarding your flight. You are always the most thirsty when there’s turbulence or the drink service is over.
7. Always have an emergency food stash – We prefer a ziplock bag filled with homemade trail mix – cashews, almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts and/or peanuts mixed with raisins, cranberries, or apricots. Dates are also very good,if sticky. You can also opt for a snack bar such as Kind or Larabar (They can hold for up to a year).
8. Apples and Bananas – abundant and cheap year round, they can be found in many places including airports, convenience stores, and supermarkets too.
Hope these ideas help. If anyone else has suggestions, please share in the comments below.
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This is a guest blog post by Dr. Ayala Laufer-Cahana M.D.
Eating out, and especially eating at fast-food restaurants, is considered a risk factor for obesity, poor diet and chronic diseases.
Yet eating fast food is a major American habit: At least one quarter of adults eat fast food daily, as do 25 – 30 percent of kids.
Fast food meals typically serve big portions of calorically dense food, rich in fat and sugar and quite aptly labeled “fiberless food”. The typical kids’ meal in fast food chains is no better – the main distinction of the young ones’ fare is the addition of the collectable toy.
Fast-food restaurants publicize (and are often applauded for) their move to healthier oils, and many have revamped their menu and now include a few healthier options, such as salads and apple slices (both accompanied by condiments that return guilt into the equation). But do kids and their parents order the ‘better’ menu options?
A new study in Childhood Obesity collected the receipts and interviewed 544 families with kids visiting the McDonald franchise inside the Children’s Hospital of San Diego for lunch.
Let me pause for a moment to comment on the presence of a McDonald franchise inside a children’s hospital, which feels like a great endorsement from a major medical institution. I assure you that no reputable medical authority has ever given McDonald’s its blessing, yet San Diego’s Children’s Hospital is not alone in hosting a fast-food joint. Children’s hospital of Philadelphia, considered by some the No 1 children’s hospital in the nation, had a McDonald’s for 34 years — it closed a few weeks because the hospital needed the space – Children’s Los Angeles has a McDonald’s on its first floor, as does Texas Children’s.
So what’s for lunch? The most frequent items bought for preschoolers (2-5 years) were French fries, soda, chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers and hamburgers. The most frequent items for kids 6-11 years were French fries, chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, soda and apple pie. Adolescents’ choices centered on French fries, soda, cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, and chocolate chip cookies.
Less than 1 percent of kids bought the yogurt parfait, and apple dippers were bought by less than 1 percent of preschoolers, 3.5 percent of 6-11 year-olds, and almost none of the teens (0.3 percent).
And now to the calorie count: The average caloric content bought for kids’ lunch was 646-811 calories, which makes about half of the daily caloric need of a young kid.
The meals averaged 35-39 percent of calories from fat, with about 10 percent of that fat saturated.
The sodium content of the meals averaged 866-1100 mg, which pretty much covers the daily sodium allowance of a preschooler.
The parents were asked what made them choose McDonald’s for lunch, and the most common reasons for their pick were “the kids like the food” and its convenience.
This study confirms what we already know: Customers go to McDonalds for fries, hamburgers and soda, not for milk and salad. A recent article by Christina Rexrode of the The Associated Press sums up the healthier options at fast food chains as just that – a remote option. What really sells is the high calorie, high fat food, which the chains are famous for. And the reasons are varied, but one of them is price: “Healthier foods also are usually among the most expensive menu items, which can be tough for recession-weary customers to stomach”.
Let’s face it, McDonalds isn’t renowned for its salads and apples, and as the kids in this study testify, they’re ‘lovin’ it’ for the taste they know — it’s the McDonald’s fat-salt-sugar mixture they crave.
And it would have been fine, had it remained an infrequent indulgence. Problem is, kids are eating fast food often. Very often.
Ayala Laufer-Cahana M.D. is a pediatrician, artist blogger and co-founder of Herbal Water Inc.
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This is a guest blog post by Alice Callahan, PhD
I have a PhD in Nutrition.
Yet, spending all those years in the classroom and the lab, investigating minute mechanisms of nutrient metabolism, didn’t do any favors for my own diet. In fact, my grad school friends and I joked that our own nutrition was at an all-time low during our doctoral studies. I hate to think of the many nights that I bought dinner out of a vending machine at the library so as not to interrupt a marathon study session with something as time consuming as cooking. Hey, at least they sold trail mix!
Things didn’t improve much during my postdoctoral training either. My husband and I were both working long hours, and there were many nights when dinner was frozen pizza in front of the TV. Oh, and then there was that 24-hour burrito joint just around the corner. Carnitas, yum!
But of course, I knew how to eat well. I was raised in a family that gardened and canned and cooked from scratch. I loved healthy meals made from fresh, local produce, and my formal training in nutrition assured me that science backed up the value of eating well. I knew full well the pitfalls of processed food and eating out, but I was tired, and cooking wasn’t a priority.
Becoming pregnant changed the way I ate. Preparing food for my child, now 11-months-old, has changed it even more. Here’s how:
1. I started paying attention to my pesticide exposure.
It wasn’t just about me anymore. Numerous studies have linked pesticide exposure during pregnancy to lasting health effects on the developing fetus. We don’t know for sure that everyday exposure is a problem, but I tried to minimize it during my pregnancy and continue to be careful since I am now breastfeeding and my daughter is eating veggies, too. I don’t buy everything organic, but I pay attention to the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list of foods with the highest pesticide residues. We also try to purchase most of our produce through a local CSA or farmer’s market. I don’t mind if these farms aren’t certified organic, but I like to be able to look a farmer in the eye while bouncing my precious offspring on my hip and ask, “what are the spraying practices on your farm?”
2. I care more about where my food comes from.
We took our baby to several u-pick farms over the summer for fresh blueberries, strawberries, apples, and peaches (check out my post Exploring and Enjoying Food with Baby). I want my daughter to know the deliciousness of fresh-picked produce, and even more important, that it comes from dirt and hard work. We also planted a small garden last summer, and we’re still enjoying one of my daughter’s favorite foods from it – broccoli!
3. I’m cooking more healthy, balanced meals.
Our entire family benefits by eating better, and my daughter is learning that this is how food should be: colorful, flavorful, fresh, and healthy. Sure, we still have frozen pizza on occasion, but we also sometimes make it from scratch! That way we can pile it high with fresh veggie toppings, and my daughter gets to play with the dough and learn that pizza sauce comes from tomatoes! Plus, the yeasty smell of bread rising in a warm kitchen is one of my favorite memories from my childhood.
4. We sit down to meals as a family whenever we can.
No TV, no phone – just us and good food and conversation. I don’t know if it makes a difference to an 11-month-old, but my hope is that my daughter will remember that dinner together was a priority in our house.
I’m doing my best to model healthy eating habits for my child. The funny thing is, I don’t think I can credit all my nutrition training for this. Instead, I think this is something that I learned from my own mother. Our eating habits are formed from those earliest experiences with food. Having a baby reminded me of this, and I’m working to give her a solid foundation for a lifetime of good eating.
Alice Callahan, PhD, is a research scientist turned stay-at-home mom. She writes about kids’ health and nutrition, as well as her adventures in mothering, at scienceofmom.com.
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Hi folks, today we are introducing a new format – video. Here is the inaugural episode of the Fooducate Show. Please let us know what you think!
Take a look at this juice. You’d think it was some magic elixir that will help your baby grow strong and healthy bones.
What your toddler will be getting is an addiction to sweet and cavities. That’s because there are 4 tsp of sugar per cup of this juice, despite the “40% Less sugar” claim.
And the calcium? it’s simply fortified into the mix. Not coming from real food at all.
Our advice to new parents: keep your baby on water for as long as possible. She’ll be perfectly fine with it unless she gets exposed to juice. Once kids develop the taste for sweetened beverage, it is very hard to get them to go back to plain old H2O.
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Here’s a note we got from a a long time reader of the Fooducate blog, Alison:
Just curious to see if you have looked at the new Kraft Milk and Granola bars? I saw these at my local grocer in with the milk! The packaging claims its a good source of fiber, 7g of whole grains, good source of vitamin D, and the same amount of calcium of an 8oz glass of milk. I personally thought these statements were a little frivolous. I can’t find much info about them online.
I would be interested in your analysis on this product and its claims. Thank you for all your information to survive the grocery stores!
No problem Alison. Here’s an analysis of the “mixed berry, naturally flavored” bars.
What you need to know:
The nutrition panel seems tame. 140 calories for a bar is fine. 3 Grams of saturated fat is a bit on the high side. It comes from the milk cream and the fractionated plam kernel oil. Fractioning is a way to get oil to become solid at room temperature without creating trans-fat.
The fiber, at 3 grams, is nice, but when you look at the ingredient list you see it comes from oligofructose (also known as inulin or chicory root extract).
The sugar count is 10 grams, or 2.5 tsp, and it is all added sugar in 3 different forms (bold, below).
Here is the ingredient list:
Rolled Oats, cream (from milk), skim milk, cane syrup, oligofructose (chicory root extract), soy protein isolate, tapioca starch, soybean fiber, salt), dried cranberries, sugar, canola oil, calcium phosphate, brown rice syrup, fractionated palm kernel oil, dried blueberries, oat flour, molasses, cacium caseinate, honey, maltodextrin, salt, soy lecithin, natural flavors, vitamin d3.
So what about all the claims about good source of calcium, vitamin D, and fiber?
Yes, technically correct. But by reading the ingredient list we see that all these nutrients were ADDED to the basic ingredients. Always better to get nutrients from whole foods, not processed ingredients with a laundry list of add-on nutrients.
If you want to get the calcium of a glas milk, here’s a crazy idea – drink a glass of milk!!
Bottom line: C- on the Fooducate scale.
What to do at the supermarket:
Our usual advice is to ignore marketing claims and directly look at the nutrition label and ingredient list. You’ll lern so much more about what really goes into your mouth.
Choose bars that have 5-8 ingredients, all pronounceable…
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Note: See below reminder for Today’s Food Day Supermarket Tour
Here’s an interesting piece of research published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association: People don’t really read nutrition labels as much as they report they do. Researchers used sophisticated computer software to track the eye movement of 200 participants who viewed various product info on a computer screen:
In a simulated grocery shopping exercise, 203 participants observed 64 different grocery products displayed on a computer monitor. Each screen contained three elements, the well-known Nutrition Facts label, a picture and list of ingredients, and a description of the product with price and quantity information. These three elements were presented so that one third of the participants each saw the Nutrition Facts label on the left, right, and center. Each subject was asked whether they would consider buying the product. Participants were aware that their eye movements would be tracked, but unaware that the study focus was nutrition information. Read more…
Only one third of the people that said they read the nutrition info actually did!!
The info that appeared at the top of the nutrition label was read more often than the info at the bottom.
When the nutrition info was placed in the center of the screen (vs. right or left side), it was read twice as often.
The conclusion, according to researchers:
Nutrition Facts label position within a viewing area and position of specific components on a label relate to viewing. Eye tracking is a valuable technology for evaluating consumers’ attention to nutrition information, informing nutrition labeling policy (eg, front-of-pack labels), and designing labels that best support healthy dietary decisions.
When thinking about the proposed front of pack nutrition labeling initiatives coming from both industry and government, the stakes are very high. Will the info presented include positive datapoints or negative ones? Knowing that a consumer reads only one or two data before deciding, one can appreciate the efforts each side is putting into this debate.
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To our readers in the San Francisco Bay Area:
Fooducate founder Hemi Weingarten will be conducting a supermarket tour Today, October 24, 2011, AKA Food Day. (FREE!
The Gameplan:
When: TODAY, Monday Oct 24, 2 pm (estimated 40 minutes)
Where: Safeway in Foster City - 921 East Hillsdale Boulevard, Foster City, CA (map). We’ll meet at the entrance to the Supermarket. Look for the guy with the Fooducate T-shirt.
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This is a guest blog post by Carol Harvey, director of nutrition labeling at Palate Works.
At the risk of causing some to choke on their French canned duck leg confit (a great product, despite no Nutrition Facts), I’d like to highlight some little-known or underappreciated facts about US nutrition labeling.
Yes, US nutrition labels have their shortcomings, despite 20+ years of evolution, and enforcement can be weak at best, but compared to the European versions (and most of the rest of the world’s) we kick asparagus. Here are just a few reasons:
1. US labels were the first mandated and are still the model. European countries and the EU have yet to actually require nutrition labeling (except when nutrition or health claims are made), although that could change this year if the EU finalizes regulations similar to those in the US.
2. US nutrition panels are easier to read (when compliant with regulations): bolder, bigger fonts (OK, often due to not having to squeeze several languages on a package) and more consistent in format. On small packages, such as fruit & nut bars, this can be particularly eye-challenging (see photo above, where the top two are from the US; the other two from EU, with the bottom one, from Sweden, lacking any nutrition info). Got a microscope in your pocket?
3. European labels skimp on info. When data is provided on European products, not as many nutrients are shown: no data for trans fat, vitamins or minerals, and about a third of labels omit saturated fat, fiber, sugar and sodium. Trying to cut back on sugar or saturated fat but want more fiber? Good luck comparing foods in Europe.
4. US products must show serving sizes in common measures (cups, slices, etc.) and by weight in grams, plus the number of servings per package. Products of the same category/type generally must use the same serving size (aka the “reference amount”), a quantity that is NOT made up by food companies (although some small manufacturers violate it, usually due to ignorance).
Products in the EU often only give data per 100 g portion, although more are now offering info by FDA-comparable serving size as well. Per 100 g is great for A-to-B comparison, but less meaningful when you will consume a portion other than 100 g (a fairly large quantity for dry foods, and almost never the amount in a package). You’d need to do the math to figure out how many servings per package (rarely a whole number), as well as the actual nutrition per serving. Got a scale and calculator handy?
As for what’s inside European food packages…
1. Products are generally higher in sodium, with snack foods often packing 2x more than similar products in the US. These Spanish/Portugese PepsiCo corn snacks have 400 mg sodium in a 27g package (which is a slightly smaller portion than the US and EU standard serving size or “dose” of 30g):
2.Trans-fat is in many foods, and not only is it missing from the nutrition panel, but, as with this candy bar, often it’s unlabeled in the ingredients (e.g., “vegetable shortening” or “vegetable fat,” instead of “partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil”). This can happen in the US also, but mostly with small companies or imported products… and it’s illegal.
Interestingly, some products sold in Europe have US-style Nutrition Facts panels, but are missing the trans-fat (required in the US since 2006), or are otherwise out of compliance, meaning they can’t be sold in the US, but are OK in Europe. Here’s the nutrition info for the same candy bar (with strangely low sugar content considering it’s the first ingredient):
Note: See that 1 g fiber? It’s not from whole grains but cocoa. This is a chocolate-flavored wafer bar. Also, any trans fat will be hidden under “total fat” (which is quite high), not saturated fat.
3. Breads, snack foods and sweets have less fiber (fewer whole grains) than in the US. Germany is the main exception, at least for crackers and breads, due to a tradition of using whole grain rye and wheat.
4. Sweetened, flavored sodas and faux juice beverages are very popular in Europe. Orange Fanta often shows as “orange juice” and the lemon flavor as “lemonade” on menus (including in mountain huts, much to my disappointment), and the orange flavor is a common substitute for orange juice in sangria at bars/restaurants in Spain (doubly disappointing).
5. There are fewer good beverage options overall; for example, lightly- or unsweetened bottled teas found almost everywhere in the US are rare in Europe, but artificially sweetened and flavored “diet” teas abound, often masquerading as “natural, healthy” drinks, since “diet” is somehow equated with “healthy,” a term that is regulated in the US.
Outside of Europe, nutrition labeling and healthy options are even more scarce (exceptions are Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all of whom followed our lead). Considering the meager funds allotted to FDA for compliance and enforcement, and the gazillions of food products subject to regulation… the US is one of the better places for knowing what’s in your food, and one of the few where you could actually have a Fooducate app.
Carol Harvey has been a nutrition labeling and product development consultant for over 15 years. She can be reached at palatemail [AT] yahoo [DOT] com.
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A Fooducate community member, Sofia, recently emailed us with this question:
What is it about “Surimi” (or crab sticks), I often see women who are on protein diet eating surimis, I see them in my sushis, I see them in every supermaket but I really wonder if they are ok to eat? Are they healthy because they look quite artificial to me…?! I try to avoid them (no idea why btw)… but I have to confess that they’re quite tasty.
So please, I would be very thankful if you could enlighten me! In order to next time I eat (or avoid) them, simply know why…
We’ll be glad to elucidate.
What you need to know:
1. Surimi is a Japanese word that literally means “ground meat”.
2. To make surimi, the lean meat from white fleshed fish such as pollock is pulverized into a thick paste. The gelatinous paste can then be combined with various additives to become fake crab, fake lobster, and whatnot.
3. The assortment of additives may include other fish products, but it is usually egg whites, oils, salt, starches, and spices.
4. Here is the ingredient list for a fake crab product called Trans Ocean Crab Classic:
Alaska Pollock, Water, Egg Whites, Wheat Starch, Sugar, Corn Starch, Sorbitol, Contains 2% or Less of the Following: King Crab Meat, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Extracts of Crab, Oyster, Scallop, Lobster and Fish (Salmon, Anchovy, Bonito, Cutlassfish), Refined Fish Oil (Adds a Trivial Amount of Fat) (Anchovy, Sardine), Rice Wine (Rice, Water, Koji, Yeast, Salt), Sea Salt, Modified Tapioca Starch, Carrageenan, Yam Flour, Hydrolyzed Soy, Corn, and Wheat Proteins, Potassium Chloride, Disodium Inosinate and Guanylate, Sodium Pyrophosphate, Carmine, Paprika.
You can see that it is a highly processed food product, with MSG and an assortment of starches and gums to create the expected texture.
5. Food manufacturers love Surimi because it enables them to take cheap fish and upgrade it to a taste and mouthfeel of the most expensive fish meats – crab and lobster.
6. Approximately 2% of the world’s fish catch is processed into some sort of surimi paste.
7. Nutritionally, surimi is low in fat, but usually very high in sodium. In the product example above, a serving of 2 fake legs contains 480mg of sodium (20% of the daily max)
8. Surimi does have some protein due to the fish and egg content. But nothing to write home about. The above product has 6 grams of protein for a 3 ounce serving. Tuna has 30 grams. Lentils have 20. Cheese has 30 grams.
9. Surimi is cheap – you’ll pay 20-30 cents per ounce. Canned salmon or tuna are usually 50-60 cents per ounce. Real crab and lobster are much more expensive.
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