On Adult-onset Absurdities and Eating Along Practical Healthy Guidelines

In About Alice, Calvin Trillin says, according to his wife, Alice, “the measure of how you held up in the face of a life-threatening illness was not how much you changed but how much you stayed the same, in control of your identity.”

I like this, even though identity is organic and complex. I like it because it's a challenge to not define yourself by illness or misfortune. That you should likewise not be defined by your strength or fortune goes without saying.

This seems to be Paula Deen's defense: that for the past three years since she was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes she was not allowing it to change her.

This I do not like. "You are what you eat," does not go that deep. Refusing to change your diet in the face of life threatening illness is not identity-affirming. It's weakness.

I've said it before:  life is simultaneously too short to not eat cookies and too short to eat them just because you like chewing and swallowing cookies. If you're not sure how to find that balance in your own life, here's a direct order: think about what Paula would cook or eat and then NEVER EAT THAT. Ever. There is a time to celebrate, and a time to indulge, but neither of those times call for Fried Butter Balls. Even my puppy knows that.

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What the USDA Dietary Guidelines Mean to the American Consumer

Eat less, that's what.

The seventh edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans "places stronger emphasis on reducing calorie consumption and increasing physical activity" - critical in a country in which more than one-third of children and more than two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese.

The USDA plans to consolidate the information in the lengthy report into consumer tools like the Food Pyramid at a later date. For now, they've issued several tips from the guidelines to help consumers put the report into action. They are, essentially:

1. Eat less
2. Avoid oversized portions (in case #1 wasn't clear enough)
3. Make half your plate fruits and vegetables
4. Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk
5. Compare sodium in prepared foods and choose the foods with lower numbers
6. Drink water instead of sugary drinks

Bravo for sounding an alarm on portion sizes and overeating!

Criticisms? You betcha! First, why suggest loading up on fruit on every plate (#3) when they could have been specific and said Eat less meat, or Switch to lean protein. I would love to see the USDA encourage fat comparison on foods, similar to the sodium challenge. USDA still has meat and cheese all over their hands. And really, why leave sugar out of this message. #5 should really read, Compare sodium, sugar and fat on packages and choose the foods with lower numbers.

To #6 I would add fruit juice as something to avoid - as in, Drink water instead of sugary drinks or fruit juices.

That's all until they produce the new Pyramid.

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A Calorie is a Calorie?

The was a story recently about a Kansas State nutrition professor who ate only convenience store snacks for two months and lost 27 pounds. His cholesterol levels* went down, too, from 214 to 184. His blood pressure remained about the same.

How? He capped his caloric intake at 1800 calories per day. That's twelve Twinkies a day. And nothing else.

It would make one think that a calorie is just a calorie, that the body is a simple machine.  For those trying to lose or gain weight, calorie math is a useful tool. Both the over- and underweight need an accurate assessment of how many calories they are consuming in a day to know how much they need to add or subtract.

But total health and fitness is not about calorie math. While our bodies need a certain number of calories per day, the balance of calories we consume from fat, protein, and carbs effects every internal sytem. Shedding pounds is usually a good thing, but the volume of refined carbs and absence of fiber involved in the professor's diet is a come-hither call for diabetes and colon disease. Let's face it - with one hand rooting around in a bag of Doritos, disease is the only thing that will end up on your doorstep.

Come on, Professor! There's more to health than prancing around in skinny jeans, chain smoking, and dating rock stars.


* I'm not well-versed in cholesterol math. Here's the stats from Haub's Facebook page:

Total cholesterol: Pre=214; wk10=184
LDL-C: pre=153; wk10=123
HDL-C: pre=37; wk10=46
TC/HDL ratio: pre=5.8; wk10=4.0
TG:HDL ratio: pre=3.3; wk10=1.6
Glucose: pre=94; wk10=75
Blood Pressure: pre=108/71; wk10=104/76

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Big Bad Brother: How the USDA is killing you

I'm so glad this got front-page coverage:  While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales

Essentially, the USDA (the nutrition police behind the food pyramid) has been talking out of both sides of its mouth, advising Americans to cut dairy fat while their marketing arm works with restaurants to increase the amount of cheese in menu options. Turns out if Domino's has a pizza with 40% more cheese Americans will eat at Domino's.

If that wasn't sneaky enough, they have financed studies aimed at documenting how dairy fat can help a person lose weight (actually, it can't, according to other research). So we pour nonfat milk on our granola in the morning and then say yes to sour cream and cheddar at Chipotle at lunch.

It's a sign of progress that Americans now prefer lowfat and nonfat milk. Whole milk isn't even used at Starbucks anymore; 2% is the norm.  But all that skimming leaves dairy farmers (and the government that subsidizes them) with an excess of cream on their hands. That excess is turned ino butter and cheese. And it's got to go somewhere.

The article reports that the nutrition committee of the USDA this summer released new guidelines on saturated fat intake that affirm the way I've been cooking along for as long as I've had a family to cook for: that saturated fat not exceed 15 grams per day for a 2,000-calorie diet. If  2,000 calories is about 500 calories too many for you, you really should not be exceeding 10-12 grams of saturated fat in a day. Allow me to put that into perspective for you:  one large Chipotle chicken burrito on a 13-inch flour tortilla with black beans, rice, cheese, sour cream, and salsa has 18 grams of saturated fat (per Livestrong/The Daily Plate). By either caloric guideline you've already maxed out your saturated fat allowance and it's only lunchtime.

Read more about caloric intake and longevity here.

And I don't mean to harsh on Chitpotle. I really like Chipotle. I use them as as example because they seem like a reasonable lunchtime option. Take that burrito, remove the tortilla, sour cream and cheese and you're down to 3 grams of saturated fat. That's more like it. (I used Chipotlefan.com as source.)

Bottom line, Uncle Sam has cream all over his hands. We've got to take nutrition into our own.

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Substituting Meat for Carbs? Death First!

Quinoa with Celery, Leek, Red Pepper and Almonds

This came across my desk the other day: Nutrition: Risky Additions to a Low-Carb Diet. I've been hopeful that a study would come out that discouraged people from indulging in sausage and bacon while curbing carbs. And now it has.

The study's conclusion:

A low-carbohydrate diet based on animal sources was associated with higher all-cause mortality in both men and women, whereas a vegetable-based low-carbohydrate diet was associated with lower all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality rates.

How then shall we eat? Curb carbs, but replace those calories with protein from beans and nuts or lean animal sources. Here's five great menus for the week that will get you eating along those lines:

• Indian Feast with Tandoori Chicken, Curried Lentils, Cauliflower Curry and Naan
• Grilled Salmon with Artichokes and Quinoa
• Penne alla Greca and a Big Greek Salad
• Tortilla Soup with Grilled Lime-Cilantro Chicken
• Flank Steak Sandwich with Slow Roasted Tomatoes and Arugula


Further reading: Lean Proteins - 10 Delicious Sources

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On Fish as Food

Shopping and eating responsibly means eating with a small footprint, and not eating so much that your footprint gets too deep. It means supporting local growers who don’t use chemicals, prophylactic antibiotics or hormones. Thanks to farmers markets and consumer demand for information about how our carrots and pork shoulder were cultivated, it has become easy to stock our shelves with sustainable produce and meat. But being a responsible consumer of fish is not as easy. A 2005 ruling forced fish to be labeled by their country of origin but those labels tell us nothing about the methods used to raise or procure the harvest. Even the distinction of Wild when purchasing salmon doesn’t tell the whole story. How was it caught? How many other fish were caught (and killed) inadvertently at the same time? How far did it travel to reach your plate?

We turned our back on the ocean. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates over 70% of the world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Yet I’m hopeful tides are shifting. All the reports from the Gulf of Mexico, depressing as they may be, are raising awareness about the health of our oceans. Writers like Paul Greenberg, organizations like Greenpeace and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, retailers like CleanFish, I Love Blue Sea, and SweetSpring Salmon are beginning to reach consumers. Even Target gets good marks from Greenpeace for selling sustainable fish. We’ve become a more educated, respectful and resourceful population with regards to what we harvest on land. It’s high time we take to the sea, and become good stewards of all our resources.

Consumer awareness may be improving but there remain mixed messages about purchasing and eating fish. The AHA tells us to eat fish twice a week, that the benefits (improved heart health, lower incidence of certain diseases) outweigh the risks (contaminants like mercury, PCBs, and dioxins). The good folks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium advise we eat wild, not farmed fish, because of poor aquaculture practices harm native fish populations. Farmed fish frequently escape and spread disease among and compete for food with wild fish. The pens themselves pollute surrounding water with waste and excess feed. Further, a farmed fish raised in poor conditions, with poor feed and the use of antibiotics and hormones is just as bad as eating meat from a feedlot. And farmed fish require a lot of smaller fish to grow, resulting in a net loss in the ocean. Farmed Atlantic salmon, for example, requires three pounds of fish food (smaller fish) to yield one pound of harvested salmon, so a farmed Atlantic salmon consumes more fish than it provides.

So the Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA) advises we purchase only wild Alaskan salmon. But if we’ve already overfished the waters off California and most of Oregon, and the demand isn't going away, aren’t we just on borrowed time if we continue to eat wild salmon from Alaska and Canada? And air travel from Alaska greatly increases our footprint. Indeed, it would seem if we’re meant to eat locally then we’re going to need to build some environmentally friendly fish farms in our inland cities. The MBA also fails to take into account that not all fish farms employ the same practices. Some farms are making a concerted effort to produce a sustainable, low-impact product.

A quick sidebar – the local argument is such an interesting one to me. Growing up in a household that appreciated both food and travel, we sought out the local catch wherever we found ourselves. Due to overfishing, this is becoming nearly impossible to do. In San Francisco, the birthplace of the locavore movement, Dungeness crab is practically the only wild creature left to harvest. Read about fish imports in the land of locavorism here.


In 2006 Science published findings from a four-year study and predicted the world will run out of seafood by 2048 if marine species continue to decline. Other scientists concur: consumption of wild fish is unsustainable; supply does not meet global demand. Farmed fish are the future.

So how do we become responsible consumers of farmed fish? The answer lies in knowing your fish farmer, or knowing the right questions to ask at your local fish counter or restaurant. Greenpeace has been quietly compiling a Supermarket Scorecard for the past four years. I was surprised by the results:

Best
1. Target
2. Wegmans
3. Whole Foods
4. Safeway
5. Ahold
6. Harris Teeter
7. A&P
8. Delhaize
9. Wal-Mart
10. Trader Joe's

The worst, from bad to worse:
11. PriceChopper
12. ALDI
13. Kroger
14. Costco
15. SUPERVALU
16. Giant Eagle
17. Publix
18. Winn-Dixie
19. Meijer
20. H.E. B.

An interesting side note to the Greenpeace report: when they started rating supermarkets, not a single one passed. In four years, grocers have shown willingness to improve, a very positive shift.

The Greenpeace scorecard is based on policy (on things like catch method, or low by-catch numbers), inventory (selling endangered/overfished species), support of conservation measures, and transparency (labeling). Taste and product quality, which are critically important to discriminating cooks and eaters, were not factors. Whole Foods, where I buy delicious fish, pledges they know where their fish swam, what they were fed, and what they weren’t fed. Read Whole Foods' fish/shellfish standards here.

In the end, the best a consumer can do is to make informed food choices and purchase foods that that are healthy for our bodies, the land on which we dwell and the seas we are still discovering.

What you can do:
1. Buy fish from responsible retailers. I didn't even know Target sold fish, but I'll take a look.

2. Know what species to choose and which to avoid (see #3, below) or ask your fish guy. My personal faves are: Farmed tilapia (tilapia are herbivores so they don’t have the net fish loss associated with carnivorous farmed fish), Rainbow trout (environmentally friendly to farm because they are efficient at converting feed into body mass, and because they are mostly farmed in Idaho and the US has done a good job keeping escape and pollution levels low), farmed Atlantic Salmon (my fish guy at Whole Foods promises me it’s sustainable. I hope he’s right.) I have yet to try US-farmed freshwater Coho Salmon. The MBA reports this variety eats less than farmed Atlantic salmon, and has lower risk of escape/contamination issues.

3. Download and consult the Monterey Bay Aquarium's mobile or pocket guides.

4. Read and learn. Several compelling articles were a part of this research effort, including:

Farmed Fish, Food Fish; Wild Fish, Few Fish
Melissa Block, NPR

Tuna's End
Paul Greenburg, The New York Times Magazine

Farmed or wild fish: Which is healthier?
Elizabeth Landau, CNN

Is Fish Farming Safe?
Terry McCarthy/Campbell River, Time

Benefits of Fish Exceed Risks, Studies Find
Sally Squires, Washington Post

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Big Mac vs Chipotle Burrito

This - from The Atlantic - was a thought-provoking read.

The thing is, consumers aren't usually informed about the nutrition information of the foods they consume. And when they are informed, it doesn't always mean that what they will make healthier food choices (see Calorie Postings Don’t Change Habits, Study Finds from the New York Times). Which is why I think the only way to make dietary changes on a large scale is to prevent bad habits from forming in the first place. If a new generation of children consumes less high-fat, sugar and sodium foods the population of people who enjoy eating healthy foods will increase. I'm recalling that study of lab rats who ate too much junk food and got addicted to it. If we drum into our kids that Doritos and Big Macs are no good, if we stop buying them Doritos and Big Macs, it would reduce consumption of same. My daughter's fifth grade science class watched Food, Inc., and it's made an impression. Do we want to make an impression or make the same mistakes?

If you do want to be more informed about what you're eating when you eat out (and I would still advocate cooking your own food), sites like The Daily Plate are a great resource. It's not just for diabetics and dieters. I used it through Livestrong this time last year when I felt I had no idea how many calories I was consuming in a day. It was really helpful, and it didn't take too long for me to have a better sense of how my meals and snacks stacked up. For example, my standard Chipotle order (Chicken Fajita Bowl with peppers, pico de gallo, corn salsa and lettuce - note there's no sour cream or cheddar) comes in at 479 calories, 42 grams of protein, 13 grams of fat, none of which is saturated, 50 grams of carbs, and 1850 mg of sodium (over 75% of the daily limit). It's an improvement, to be sure, from the pork burrito in the Atlantic piece, but, still a very dense meal. Green gluttony is still gluttony.

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Taking a Swing at Calorie Counting

A series of events has brought me to this point: I am counting calories. Let me explain.

First, I was tipped off to ChipotleFan.com which tallies the nutritional data for that Burrito As Big as Your Head* that you love so much. I’m a fan of the burrito bowl (rice, chicken, pinto, pico, lettuce, no dairy) and was relieved my choice did not tip the 500 calorie barrier. (Tipping that barrier all on its own: bag of chips at 570.)

Next I followed another lead (thanks again to JP) to a Men’s Health piece on America’s worst foods. The Worst Food: something fried, smothered in cheese and served with ranch dressing. Go figure. If that’s not quality investigative journalism then I don’t know what is.

Finally, I surveyed my pudge and thought about my penchant for snacking and wondered how many calories I consume in a day and how many I should consume in a day. I’m fit (I exercise 4-5 times per week) and eat very healthy, lean food but I have grown pretty lax about watching how much I eat - a little too much like a old friend’s zero-sum calorie policy which mandates chocolate consumption post-workout.

SO…I’ve got my calorie number now (to figure out yours I recommend the LIVESTRONG site) and a counter on my desktop and iPhone. It’s really fun. And it’s a lot easier than the last time I tried to do this, two or three years ago. Livestrong's database of foods and restaurant meals is very well stocked, and they make it easy to enter nutritional data for foods not yet listed. They had the sliced turkey I picked up at Trader Joe’s and the granola bar I ate on the way to my volunteer gig this morning. It’s also equipped to measure the calories you burn during exercise. And I’m Lovin’ it.


Related:
Sticker Shock for the Weight Conscious (NY Times)
Counting Calories for Weight Loss (Fun &Food Blog)

--
* To be fair, Chipotle is not the chain that advertises Burritos As Big As Your Head. That chain is called La Bamba.

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10 Ways to Start Eating Along Practical Guidelines

I’ve been looking at the Pinch tag line over the last few posts as a means of explaining further what is advocated on the site and to refocus the blog on its core values. After a holiday season filled with sweets and other indulgences it’s a good time to get back to the basics of sustainable eating.

This is the final installment in the series. Today I’m looking at the final part, “…eating along practical, healthy guidelines.”

What does this mean to you? For me, it’s not about weight loss or even weight management, though overall health is usually better when bodyweight is appropriate. Here’s what it means to me:

1. Eat breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. And a snack or two in between (see #4).
2. Create a healthy balance of protein, fat, carbohydrate for your body and keep every meal balanced accordingly. Popular diets advocate different ratios - Atkins and South Beach are high protein and fat, low in carb (SB sensibly argues dieters minimize saturated fat). Ornish and Pritikin are very low fat, high carbohydrate. The Zone Diet is high protein and low carb, but more lenient on carbs advocating a 40:30:30 ratio of carbohydrates, fat and protein at every meal.
3. Eat a variety of foods - fish, veggies and whole grains should probably be increased in everyone's diet.
4. Make snacks meaningful - no empty calories! 100 calorie packs of Pringles are neither nourishing nor satisfying - they’ll only make you reach for another 100-calorie pack of Pringles.
5. Consider the mini-meal, smaller meals throughout the day.
6. Eat close to the vine. Choose fresh foods, not processed.
7. Cook your own food. One way our weekly diet becomes less healthy is by eating out. Restaurants will either overload you on fat or calories, neither of which should be consumed in excess.
8. Eat like people are watching. Slow down - it will help you to appreciate your body’s cues that you’ve had enough.
9. Keep sweets to a minimum. Following the TCBY-binge of the early 1990s we all learned that hard way that low fat is not low calorie and that excess carbs become fat quicker than you can say “small fat-free vanilla-chocolate swirl.”
10. Make sure your protein is lean protein.

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Nuts: The holiday slow food

The New York Times sort of beat me to it on this post. I scribbled a post on nuts in early December and forgot about it until reading this.

Ah well.

My take on nuts goes more with the gorgeous photo they ran, shown here at left (now is a good time to credit the photo to Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times). But where the Times delved into the health benefits of nuts, my thoughts were on the old world/slow food beauty of the nut still in its shell.

We always have nuts around. Of the already-been-shelled variety, almonds, plain and smoked, and peanuts (GORP is a favorite household snack) are in steady supply. There's always a small tin of nuts in my glove box. A handful of nuts has gotten my children (by “my children” I mean me) through many an episode of food anxiety.*

In the summer we eat a lot of peanuts in the shell - either at Wrigley or at home watching the game on WGN. Sunflower seeds, also in the shell, are a summer snack when we’re camping or on a road trip. But it’s the holiday nuts that I get really excited about. Each year, right around November 1, I pull down a pewter challis from its perch on the shelf above my cookbooks and fill it with mixed nuts - walnuts, pecans, almonds, hazelnuts, and brazil nuts - all in their pretty shells. We have a growing fleet of nutcrackers. My favorite is a wooden screw turning one that I got my daughter out of a Montessori catalog.

Maybe it’s the excitement of the season, but something about cracking my own nuts and enjoying no more than five or six of them in one sitting makes for a delightful seasonal tradition. And this is what slow food is really all about - slowing down, enjoying our food more. It’s not about munching a handful of nuts between frenzied errands around town. And yes, by "munching" I meant "shoveling into one's mouth."

Slow down this season. Enjoy your food, whatever it may be.


*food anxiety - [food ang-zahy-i-tee] -noun
1. Distress or psychic tension caused by fear of one’s next meal not coming quickly enough.

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To Hell with Healthy Cheesecake

I borrowed the headline to my Dessert menu from Caitlin Flanagan. I enjoyed her essay collection/book To Hell With All That and it seemed a fitting title for a menu that completely breaks from the nutritional goals of the previous courses.

There are several desserts I make my family that fit into the Pinch eating guidelines (which limit saturated and other unhealthy fats): Vanilla Poached Pears, Chewy Ginger Cookies, Blackberry Cobbler, and Amaretti Cookies, to name a few. Others simply do not fit. They earn a spot on the menu because life includes feasts. Not daily feasts, perhaps not even weekly or monthly ones. But each year brings cause for celebration and I don't think it's possible to adequately celebrate without dessert.

Which brings us to Cheesecake. When I told my sister the ingredients on my favorite cheesecake recipe she couldn't believe I even made it. One pound of cream cheese, one pound of ricotta cheese, one pound of sour cream! Mercy.

We're entering a season of feasting. Enjoy it.

Cheesecake
Print recipe only here

INGREDIENTS
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
3 T flour
3 T cornstarch
2 eight-ounce packages Philadelphia cream cheese
15-ounces ricotta cheese
1 pint sour cream
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
Juice of one lemon
Zest of one lemon
1 T vanilla extract

For the crust:
10 graham crackers or 1 1/2 cups crumbs
2 T sugar
1/3 cup melted unsalted butter

METHOD
Preheat oven to 325°

Make the crust:
Butter a 9-inch springform pan.

Process graham crackers in a food processor until they are fine crumbs. Add sugar and pulse to combine. Add melted butter and pulse just to blend.

Empty crumbs into prepared pan and press onto bottom and up along sides. I use a measuring cup to press the crumbs into the edge of the pan. Refrigerate crust until ready to fill.

Make the cake filling:
Melt butter over low heat. Reserve.

Sift together flour and cornstarch and reserve.

Using a stand mixer with paddle attachment, cream the cream cheese for 2-3 minutes until softened. Add the ricotta and mix until smooth, about 3-4 minutes. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl to make sure the cream cheese is well-blended.

Add the sugar in three parts, over about a minute of mixing time. Stop mixer to scrape sides of bowl as necessary.

Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between additions.

Add the flour/constarch, vanilla, lemon juice and zest and mix well.

Add the melted butter and sour cream and mix just to combine, about 30 seconds.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for one hour.

At the end of the hour, turn off the heat (without opening the oven door) and let cake sit another hour.

Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

An hour before serving, remove cake from fridge and disengage spring. Cake should release easily. If not, run a knife around the edge.

If you like, brush the surface with raspberry jam and top with raspberries or strawberries. You can make a light glaze for the berries by warming seedless jam with some sugar syrup and painting it on the tops of the berries.

**Read here for a good refresher on metabolism, energy imbalance and the relationship between muscle mass and weight loss.

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How Then Shall We Eat?

Given global hunger it’s a sad state of affairs that overweight is such a problem in America. Rising food costs could likely make it a bigger problem as the cheapest consumables are the highest in fat, sugar, and starch.

We need a better national sense of What Not to Eat (or at least an eponymous TV show) and access to affordable healthy foods to trim America's girth.

The most practical recommendations on How to Eat that I've read recently came in the form of an introduction to Mexican Everyday from Rick Bayless (his book and his introduction) and Jane Brody’s New Year missive in the New York Times Well Blog. Bayless advocates sensible choices on a daily basis and enjoying weekly feasts. Brody cuts thru the clutter of weight-loss advice with simplicity:

“And really, it doesn’t matter whether you choose a diet based on your genotype or the phases of the moon, or whether you cut down on sugars and starches or fats. If you consume fewer calories you need to maintain your current weight, you will lose.”

Controlling consumption is key. As we age our muscle mass depletes, only to be replaced by fat. Muscle mass and caloric needs are directly related: muscle burns more calories than fat. The effect of muscle loss is a lower metabolism and, if caloric intake isn’t curtailed, increased body fat. Maintaining an ideal weight means eating less every year.

For those of us who love to eat, this sounds horrible.

Luckily, there's good news. If you work (via strength training) to create or maintain muscle mass you’ll be able to enjoy extra calories without losing them to fat. The trick is finding that balance - how many calories, how much strength training.

I’m still trying to find that balance and there’s great fun in the process. Especially when enjoying those weekend feasts. More on those later in the week.

Read More About It:
New York Times Well Guide
Mayo Clinic Food & Nutrition
USDA My Plate (the re-tooled Food Pyramid)

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