Archive for the ‘Shopping and Cooking’ Category

Change Your Route To Save Some Calories

Is your route around the supermarket always the same – and does it usually include the aisles that get you in trouble? For me it’s the home made cookie aisle, for some it’s the home for crunchy and salty chips and pretzels, for others, it’s the ice cream freezer cases with box after box of mouth watering ice cream confections.

I realized the other day that I was frequently stopping at a market near my office rather than going to the one I usually go to – one that’s closer to home and far more convenient. Both markets are quite similar – independent family run business with good quality and selection. Why was I frequenting the one closer to my office rather that my hometown market?

The Baked Goods

Answer: The market near my office has it’s own bakery – and sells not just the premade and packaged baked goods, but freshly made scones, cupcakes, tarts, pies, cookies. Really good stuff. My inevitable route in the store always ends up in the baked goods corner, and once there it’s almost impossible for me not to succumb to the freshly baked chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies or ham and gruyere scones.

Do You Find Your Route Home Goes Past A Bakery Or Fast Food Place?

I’ve met and worked with a number of people who complain about being unable to kick their habit of stopping for donuts or a Big Mac or Whopper on their way home from work. Maybe it’s a slice of pizza or a hot dog or an ice cream cone. Whatever the food of choice might be, stopping for it becomes a habit – a habit that translates into weight gain. The routine of traveling a certain route – one that passes the source of the food that has become the habitual snack – becomes so ingrained that you function on autopilot. You may not even think about going to the place that sells your choice of food – you seem to just find yourself there.

It’s A Weekend Thing, Too

These routines that end up with downing your snack of choice may be your weekend “thing” rather than your daily routine. For weekend mall shoppers: do you know where the pretzel store or the best chocolate store is in the mall? Does your shopping always include a walk past that food store – followed by the inevitable purchase?

SocialDieter Tip:

A treat is not always a bad thing. However, when a treat food becomes a habitual choice that leads to weight gain –probably followed by lament over the fact that you ate that (whatever it is) once again, perhaps it’s time to reconsider your route, and your routine. Change it up. Take a different route home, go to a different store, walk around the supermarket in a different direction. We all get used to doing certain things in a certain way. That may be fine – unless it’s not. If your routines are causing you to eat poorly, do something different. Do you have to drive by Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin Robbins, or Burger King on the way home? If you don’t drive, or walk, by them, you can’t stop in. Do you have to go to the mall with the pretzel shop, or can you go elsewhere? Yesterday I went into my “problem” market and made a point of doing my shopping in the reverse order. I started in the corner of the market with the bakery. Amazingly, pushing right past the baked goods when I first got into the market made them less seductive and I escaped without my cookie or scone of choice. I’m not quite sure why, but I’ll take it. And I’ll try it again the next time.

How are you going to change it up?

Do you have a clue about how much added sugar you eat each day?

Added sugar is the kind that doesn”t occur naturally, like in fruit, but is added during food processing, preparation, or at the table.

Because food labels show only grams or percentages of sugar in a product rather than the number of calories or teaspoons it contains, it’s hard to tell the number of teaspoons of sugar you’re eating. Food labels also don’t list which sugars are natural and which are added.  Sugar does masquerade under many different names and in many forms. You usually are aware that candy, cookies, and soda have sugar in them – although probably not how much.  You know when you are dousing your pancakes with syrup (how many teaspoons?) or dumping packages of sugar into your coffee for a “pick me up.”  But, who thinks of hamburger buns and crackers – or even ice cream or canned fruit — in terms of teaspoons of sugar?

Recommended Amounts of Added Sugar

The American Heart Association recommends that most women limit their sugar intake to 100 calories (25 grams), or around six teaspoons a day — men should limit their intake to 150 calories (37.5 grams), or nine teaspoons.  (Although there were no sugar recommendations for children, a national health survey found that 14 to 18 year olds consume 34 teaspoons of added sugar a day!)

Restricting yourself to the recommended limit might be difficult, since one 12-ounce can of soda has about 130 calories, or eight teaspoons of sugar. Data collected by a national nutrition survey between 2001 and 2004 suggested that, on average, Americans consume 355 calories, or more than 22 teaspoons, of sugar a day, the equivalent of two cans of soda and a chocolate bar.

What’s the big concern about eating too much sugar?

Eating a lot of added sugar is linked to the rise in obesity and is associated with increased risk for high blood pressure, high triglyceride levels, and other markers for heart disease, stroke, and inflammation. 

Because sugar just provides calories with no other nutritional value, for many people eating sugary foods and beverages can displace the more nutritious ones that are part of a healthy diet.

The Biggest Sugar Culprits

According to an article in Circulation, the biggest culprits for added dietary sugar are:

Regular soft drinks:     33%

Sugars and Candy:      16.1%

Cakes, cookies, pies:    12.9%

Fruit drinks (fruit punch and fruitades):  9.7%

Dairy desserts and milk products (ice cream, sweetened yogurt, sweetened milk:  8.6%

Other Grains:  (cinnamon toast and honey-nut waffles):  5.8%

SocialDieter Tip:

Added sugars have no nutritional value other than calories. Many of us can reduce our risk of heart disease by achieving a healthy weight.   There’s pretty strong evidence that decreasing the amount of sugar in your diets can help you achieve that.  You don’t have to eliminate sugar from your diet, just use your allotment wisely. Make trade-offs.  Use more fruit to add sweet flavor to cereals, yogurt, as dessert, and for snacks. Cut back on candy and way back on sweetened sodas, teas, and flavored waters. Help your kids learn that so much sugar is not necessary, train their palates when they’re young to enjoy less sweet food.  And, read labels, know where hidden sugar hangs out. Be aware and smart about what you buy and eat – both in and out of your home.

You Are Hungry!

You’re standing in front of your open refrigerator. A container here and a container there. Move them around. Wow. A Tupperware all the way in the back. Wonder what’s in it.

Take a peek. Container #1: the leftover take-out Pad Thai from five days ago. Container #2: the rest of your lasagna you brought home last night from a huge restaurant portion. Some of Mom’s really delicious stuffing from last weekend. That’s in the Tupperware.

Big question: Will you end up writhing in pain and spending the next day in the bathroom if you eat any of it?

How Long Can Food Stay Out?

According to the FDA, when you buy hot, cooked food, you should eat it right away and avoid letting it sit out at room temperature. If the food is cold, eat it within two hours of preparing it, store it in the fridge, or freeze it.

Buzz, Buzz: The Food Is Here

When food is delivered, you want to prevent any lurking potentially nasty and harmful bacteria from multiplying, so eat the food within two hours after it arrives. If you aren’t going to eat it within two hours keep it hot in an oven set at or above 200° F (93° C). Side dishes, like that delicious stuffing in the Tupperware, also have to be kept hot in the oven. Cover the food to keep it moist while you’re keeping it warm. Don’t guess at the temperature of the food. Use a food thermometer to check that the food is kept at an internal temperature of 140° F (60° C).

The Danger Zone

The FDA defines the “danger zone” as the range of temperatures at which bacteria can grow. It is usually between 40° and 140° F (4° and 60° C). To keep food safe, it’s important to keep it below or above the “danger zone.”

The 2 Hour Rule

There is a 2 Hour Rule: Throw away any perishable food (the kind that can spoil or become contaminated by bacteria if left unrefrigerated) that has bee left out at room temperature for more than two hours. When the environmental temperature is above 90° F (32° C), throw out the food after one hour.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Nutrition Action Healthletter, expands on the Rules For Leftovers with what they call:

2 hours – 2 inches – 4 days

Think:

2 hours from oven to refrigerator: any leftovers should be

refrigerated or frozen within 2 hours of cooking or they should be thrown away.

2 Inches thick to cool it quick: food should be stored in containers at a shallow depth of about 2 inches or less, to speed the chilling time.

4 days in the refrigerator or freeze it: use refrigerated leftovers within 4 days with the exception of stuffing and gravy which should be used within 2 days. Reheat Solid leftovers should be reheated to 165 degrees F and liquid leftovers to a rolling boil. Whatever you don’t finish, throw out.

Do you still want that Pad Thai? Maybe some lasagna?

Are All Cooking Sprays Created Equal?

I’m staring at five different kinds of cooking spray:  Butter flavor, Olive Oil, Canola Oil, Baking, and Professional for high heat cooking.    All say they are for non-stick cooking or baking.  Some say they are for fat-free cooking and baking.

The nutrition facts for all five say that the serving size is about 1/3 of a second, the equivalent of 0.25 grams.  The ingredient labels all list an oil (canola, olive, soybean, or vegetable) as their first ingredient. All have an emulsifier, usually soy lecithin, and a propellant.  Some have other flavorings and the baking spray has wheat flour.

Nutrition stats for cooking sprays:

Listed calorie count for a serving (a 1/3 second spray): 0

Total Fat:  0

Time for a Reality Check

Okay.  So how can something with oil as the main listed ingredient have zero calories and zero fat?  In the US, any product that has less than 5 grams of fat per serving lists the fat content rounded to the nearest 0.5 g. If the product contains less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving, the listed fat content is rounded to 0 grams. If a product contains 0.45 grams of fat per serving and the package has 10 servings, the label would show 0 grams of fat even though the entire package actually contains a total of 4.5 grams of fat.

All of the cooking sprays that I checked call a 1/3 second spray a serving size – that’s the equivalent of .25 grams of fat.  Because the serving size, as created by the manufacturers, is under half a gram, the nutrition facts can be listed as 0 grams of fat and 0 calories.  Feel duped?

0.25 grams of fat is the equivalent of 2.25 calories (fat has 9 calories per gram), not a huge number.  However, how many of you use cooking spray for 1/3 of a second?  Can you even coat a small frying pan with a 1/3 second spray?

How Many Calories?

Most of us spritz for at least three to six times as long – many of us for probably longer.  A one second spray has about 7 calories, 2 seconds has about 14 and and 1.5 grams of fat.  Again, not huge numbers, but 2 seconds is still awfully short.  My guess is that a lot of sprays are a bit longer.

SocialDieter Tip:

Remember that nonstick cooking spray is not calorie free. Be careful of drenching your pans and skillets.  As you’re spritzing, count the seconds.  If the length and number of your spritzes crank up the calorie count, either cut back on the spray or consider using a small amount of oil on a paper towel to coat your pan. Using one teaspoon of olive oil adds 4.5 grams of fat and 40 calories and you will be avoiding the additives and propellant in the cooking spray.

Ever wonder if you can really trust all of the numbers written on the label of your frozen chicken with vegetables and rice or next to the burger description in your local fast food emporium?

Well, it turns out that you’re right to wonder.  The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/health/12calo.html)  reported on a Tufts study (http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(09)01679-4/abstract) that evaluated the accuracy of calorie counts of 29 typical under 500 calorie quick-serve  and sit-down restaurant foods and 10 frozen complete meals bought in supermarkets.

The calorie counts of the restaurant foods averaged 18% more than stated and the calorie counts of the frozen foods averaged 8% more than stated. These were average numbers:  some restaurants under reported caloric content; some choices had up to 200% more calories than stated; and in some there were no real inaccuracies.

When some free side dishes were added to entrees they boosted the inaccuracy of the total stated calories to 245%.  This highlights the nasty little fact that all too often we forget to add the calorie count of those side dishes – which are often over the top in calories and fat – to the total calorie counts of our meals.

All of the variations fell in the 20% margin that the FDA allows for packaged food (although it doesn’t specify maximum overage for restaurant meals they also fell within the 20% margin).

It’s easy to understand how there can be variation in restaurant food – a longer pour of oil, a little more of a schmear of cream cheese on the bagel – it’s often in the hands of the preparer.  Prepackaged food produced under factory control is a little more difficult to understand and obviously accounts for overage of only 8% versus 18% (there’s some speculation that since food companies are heavily penalized for underweighting they may add a little more volume, and therefore calories, to protect against this possibility).  And, as a Tufts researcher points out: 5% excess calories daily for someone eating 2,000 calories a day could mean a 10 pound weight gain in one year.

What to do?  Be mindful and aware. If it looks to good to be true, it probably isn’t.  Translation:  If it’s swimming in oil, arrives with a big pat of butter melting on top, it’s smothered in melted cheese, or it’s gargantuan in size it’s probably not a low cal meal.  Trust your reaction and stick up for yourself.  If you don’t get what you ordered or what’s described, bring it back and ask for it to be prepared the way it’s supposed to be.