28 February 2012
Three Hidden Ways Wheat Makes You Fat 
I hate the title of this article but the content is pretty good. It also explains why we’re seeing more and more cases of celiac disease and gluten intolerance — and why going gluten-free is more than just a diet fad. Here’s a taste:
[We now eat dwarf wheat, a genetic hybrid and manipulation of the wheat our ancestors ate.] Dwarf wheat is that it contains very high levels of a super starch called amylopectin A. This is how we get big fluffy Wonder Bread and Cinnabons.
Here’s the downside. Two slices of whole wheat bread now raise your blood sugar more than two tablespoons of table sugar.
There is no difference between whole wheat and white flour here. The biggest scam perpetrated on the unsuspecting public is the inclusion of “whole grains” in many processed foods full of sugar and wheat, giving the food a virtuous glow. The best way to avoid foods that are bad for you is to stay away from foods with health claims on the labels. They are usually hiding something bad.
Not only does this dwarf, FrankenWheat, contain the super starch, but it also contains super gluten which is much more likely to create inflammation in the body. And in addition to a host of inflammatory and chronic diseases caused by gluten, it causes obesity and diabetes.
Gluten is that sticky protein in wheat that holds bread together and makes it rise. The old fourteen-chromosome-containing Einkorn wheat codes for the small number of gluten proteins, and those that it does produce are the least likely to trigger celiac disease and inflammation. The new dwarf wheat contains twenty-eight or twice as many chromosomes and produces a large variety of gluten proteins, including the ones most likely to cause celiac disease.
[…]
A major study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that hidden gluten sensitivity (elevated antibodies without full-blown celiac disease) was shown to increase risk of death by 35 to 75 percent, mostly by causing heart disease and cancer.[4] Just by this mechanism alone, over 20 million Americans are at risk for heart attack, obesity, cancer and death.
22 February 2012
We all know about emotional eating. We’ve all accepted that it’s a real thing, and most of have probably done it at some point.
But recently, I had a small epiphany about a different type of activity: emotional cooking.
I just realized that I love to emotional cook. When I’m feeling sad, angry, disappointed — or even happy and excited — I cook. I don’t know if I buy that my emotions at the time transfer to the food I’m cooking (there’s a whole movie based on that premise), but cooking absolutely helps me get through whatever I’m feeling.
Yesterday, I was feeling a little blah for a bunch of reasons (nothing major, just a lot of small things). I didn’t feel horrible, I just felt a little meh. When I finally got home, there were a lot of things I could have done to relax: watch TV, read, call a friend, go for a walk, or even start snacking. But all I felt like doing was cooking. Not normal cooking, though. I felt like cooking up a STORM.
So I did. I made a pancetta, basil, and green onion frittata with gruyere, a slow cooker chicken dish with bacon, mushrooms, and white wine, kale chips, and roasted potatoes (recipes to come!). It took me about two hours (well, the chicken still needed a few more hours but the hands-on time was over). And when I thought about what I may have done in another circumstance (emotionally eat) I was pretty glad that I decided to emotionally cook instead.
To me, cooking is like any other art form. When I cook, I’m expressing myself (as cheesy as that sounds). I’m fairly confident I have an innate cooking talent, so when I’m making up recipes as I go, or when I’m cooking because I just don’t know what else to do with myself, it’s just like a painter or a singer who practices their art because it’s soothing and fulfilling for them.
Even if cooking isn’t YOUR “art,” when you’re feeling meh and you need something productive to do that will be good for your health, your tastebuds, and your neglected kitchen, try cooking something. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to be delicious. Try something that involves a lot of repetitive motions — chopping, stirring, etc. It can be really calming. Sometimes, I even take my computer into the kitchen and watch a show while I cook.
The most wonderful thing about emotional cooking is the result: tons and tons of delicious food. I have more food than I know what to do with (well, not true. What I don’t eat this week, I’ll freeze. I’m more than happy to have leftovers!).
Emotional cooking is a beautiful thing.
20 February 2012
I know, I know, I owe you like a week’s worth of posts. I had to travel to the East coast for a few events, and blogging just wasn’t in the picture. I promise I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled stuff this week. In the mean time, here’s one of my very favorite posts from last year for your reading pleasure.
A few days ago, I was sent some fiber bars to try out. I won’t name the company, because they were extremely generous to send me free stuff, even though I told them I don’t eat fiber bars anymore. I was honest and told them I’d pass them on to someone who would try them.
But when I got the bars and read through the ingredient list, I knew there was no way I could tell anyone else to try them in good conscience. Ingredients included all kinds of hydrogenated oils and even something called shellac, which I’m fairly certain I want nothing to do with.
Right after I read the ingredients on the fiber bar, I saw a commercial for sugar-free Jell-O with “zero Weight Watchers points!” I had this thought like, “If I ate that, it’d be like eating air… Because it isn’t actually food!”
When I get questions from readers who say that they’re constantly hungry, my first question is, “What are you eating?” Without fail, it’s diet foods like Baked Lays, Fiber One, Light & Fit Yogurt, low-fat Kraft cheese, etc.
It’s no wonder they’re never satisfied — they’re not actually eating real food! Those foods masquarade as health foods, but they’re not healthy. In fact, they’re not even food. They’re a bunch of ingredients and chemicals processed together to RESEMBLE food. I know, I know, nothing you haven’t heard before from Michael Pollan.
But here’s where I’m going to take it a step further: If you’re eating a bunch of food with no calories, even if it adds up to your designated 1,400 cals (or whatever) at the end of the day, you’ll feel like you’ve hardly eaten anything — because in reality, you haven’t. Calories are your friends, guys! Foods with an appropriate amount of calories for what they are — be it a calorie-dense food like meat or a food with high water content like a veggie — are going to satisfy you more than something that’s been processed to remove calories/fat/sugar/whatever. Calories aren’t always a bad thing. Remember, calories (when they’re not in processed food) usually mean nutrition. Foods with more calories also tend to have more nutrition.
Let me ask you this: Would you rather eat a sandwich on reduced-calorie bread with low-fat cheese and fake mayo and be starving in an hour? Or a REAL sandwich on sprouted grain bread, full-fat cheese, and some high-quality meat and only need to eat half because you’re sufficiently satiated mid-way through? Even if you ate the whole thing, you wouldn’t need to eat your snack of popped air later that afternoon. Sure, you’d be consuming more calories in the moment, but you wouldn’t be setting yourself up for the munchies later.
REAL food is satisfying. Fake food is just that — fake. I’m not saying there’s no place for Baked Lays or frozen yogurt (I eat it all the time!). Just don’t pretend it’s food.
8 February 2012
The Super Bowl is one time of year when I unabashedly eat low-quality junk (trust me, it’s not the only time). What do I mean by “low-quality”? Mostly cheap chain food that’s been prepared in huge quantities to be consumed in, well… huge quantities.
This year, we ordered Chicken Parmesan pizza from Jet’s, wings from Champp’s, and then my man got me what I call movie nachos — just cheese sauce and tortilla chips — because he knows I love them.
Let me tell you something: You can make real, high-quality nachos with homemade or similar chips, shredded marinated chicken, seasoned beans, expensive cheese, lettuce, tomato, guacamole (I could keep going), and they WILL taste good. They’ll taste amazing. I love those kind of nachos too.
But to me, there’s something about that cheap queso-esque cheese over plain store-bought tortilla chips that really hits the spot in a way that real deal nachos just don’t.
So I get that there are some foods that, no matter how nutritionally abyssal or chock full of chemical additives, people just love (as the author of The End of Overeating would argue, they were designed to be not just loved but obsessed over).
The cheap foods we just can’t get enough of — despite having access to higher quality options — are designed to be addicting. That much is clear. So I don’t recommend making them a regular, everyday part of your diet. But if you’d often rather have a cheap burger from the greasy diner down the street than a homemade grilled one made from top sirloin and seasoned to perfection, I can understand why.
That’s why it’s so important to make a list of the foods you really love and own it. Don’t feel guilty about your list for one second. You might love cheap burgers because when you were growing up, your dad took you to get one every time you ran errands with him on the weekend. Or maybe you just genuinely love the taste… That’s okay, too.
I recommend making the low-quality foods a part of your life in a very intentional way. First, make a list of the ones you love and the ones you’re just “meh” about. Then, decide on a reasonable number of those kind of treats you’d like to have in a given month (once a week? Twice a week? What seems reasonable but also won’t prevent you from reaching your goals?). Finally, make sure you can eat those foods without going totally overboard every time you try.
I know I can seem like a big food snob, and sometimes, I am. But I appreciate the allure of low-quality foods because sometimes they hit the spot in a way nothing else can. There’s no reason to fully eliminate movie nachos, candy bars, or chain food from our lives completely; we just have to be very intentional about how we eat it.
Which “low-quality” foods do you crave?
25 January 2012
Recently, Mary presented me with three common happy hour options and asked a simple question: Which is healthier? I’ve written about how to have a healthy happy hour before, but this seemed like a fun and challenging happy hour dilemma to tackle. Here are the choices Mary gave me:
- Glass of wine and a bread basket with olive oil at an Italian restaurant
- Sliders and light beer at a sports bar
- Skinny margarita with chips and salsa at a Mexican Restaurant
First let’s establish portion size. I went with 3 5-oz. glasses of red wine and 3 smaller pieces of crusty white bread with 1/2 tbsp olive oil for the Italian restaurant, 4 small sliders and 3 12-oz. light beers for the sports bar, and 25 chips + 6 tablespoons salsa and 3 skinny margaritas for the Mexican restaurant.
The first thing most people would probably be tempted to do is look at the calorie count for each of these options. You might be surprised to know that the approximate calorie counts for each happy hour pick are pretty similar: around 850 for the Italian restaurant, 745 for the sports bar, and 745 for the Mexican restaurant. Yes, you could save around 100 calories by avoiding the Italian option, but calorie count isn’t telling us much here.
So let’s go beyond calories, since I don’t think they tell the full health story anyway. The Italian happy hour choice not only has the most calories, but it also has the most carbs by far — around 95g compared to 50g for the sliders and beer and only 35g for the Mexican meal. But that low carb count in the Mexican happy hour might be due to some artificial sweetener in the margaritas — and I definitely don’t think artificial sweetener is healthy. But if you don’t want your blood sugar to spike, stay away from the Italian happy hour with all that bread! White bread has pretty much no redeeming nutritional qualities anyway.
Looking at protein, the sports bar meal packs the most punch, with 30g compared to 16g in the Italian meal and 11g in the Mexican meal. The sports bar meal also has the most fat (presumably from the burgers), which you all know I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing. No, the beef in those sliders is probably not very high quality, but the fat will still be more filling.
If I had to give a final verdict, my vote goes to the sliders and beer. It will be far more filling than either of the other options because of the protein and fat. If you want to kick the health factor up a notch, eat your sliders open-face and cut back to two beers. That brings the calorie count down to around 545 and the carb count down to 20g.
If you can mix and match, go with 1-2 glasses of red wine (a healthier option than beer) with 2-3 open-faced sliders. That’s around 400 calories, 15g carbs, and 15g protein. It would also be pretty satisfying because of the protein/fat, and keep you from walking away feeling bloated. Not a bad option!
