Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Aside from the obvious things like partially hydrogenated oil, have you ever wondered what some of the items in your favorite food’s ingredients list are? With things like Calcium caseinate, Butylated Hydroxytoluene, and Calcium disodium EDTA routinely appearing on labels, it’s hard to figure out just what’s in there and how it can affect you.

Cooking for Engineers, an excellent cooking weblog, has a very comprehensive list of food additives that you may find helpful, or perhaps frightening:

• Cooking for Engineers – Kitchen Notes: Additives

The alphabetical list includes common uses of each additive, known side effects, and a detailed description. If you’ve happened upon a food additive not listed there, you can submit it for future addition to the list.

Everyone is talking about the new USDA Pyramid. I like this entry the best:

• The Food Museum Blog – What Pyramids, Where?

For all of you out there that are complaining that the food industry’s fingerprints are all over the new pyramid, remember one thing: it was made by the USDA. This wasn’t an eating and fitness plan created by the AMA or the AFAA. It was created by the food industry.

Glean from it what you can and discard the rest. Did anyone really believe that we needed 7-9 servings of grains?

I have been obsessed with weight control since I was in eighth grade (1983). In those past twenty-two years, many foods have gone in and out of style. Grapefruit, salads before every meal, eight glasses of water every day, and cabbage soup have all gone in and out of fashion.

It seems like foods that are good for you “get discovered” and are the hot topic for the next few years. Right now, dairy foods are the hottest thing in dieting circles:

• 24/24 Milk Your Diet

• About.com – Say Yes to Yogurt! – by Jennifer R. Scott

• WebMD – Dairy Foods Help Burn Fat, Speed Weight Loss – by Jennifer Warner

• The Seattle Times – Got weight? Get more dairy – by Shari Roan

• American Dietetic Association – Milk Your Diet: A New Approach to Fuel Your Weight Loss Efforts

• About.com – Lick Your Weight Loss With Dairy – by Larrian Gillespie

• NPR – Exploring the Link Between Dairy and Weight Loss – by Allison Aubrey

This is only the tip of the iceberg. I could have listed three times as many articles on this subject. Milk is the new Grapefruit Diet. Dairy is the new Eight Glasses of Water Every Day. Yogurt is the new Eat a Salad Before Every Meal. Cheese is the new Cabbage Soup.

The funny thing is: all of these things are good for you. Grapefruit is low in sugar and provides lots of vitamins. Keeping hydrated not only curbs your hunger, it makes your skin healthier. Salads and cabbage soup fill you up with vitamin-packed fiber. Milk and dairy products provide calcium and vitamin D. All of these things are healthy; I just find it amusing which ones the media decides to obsess about.

I grew up with Cookie Monster bingeing on cookies at every opportunity. I remember noticing that he ate so quickly that half the cookies ended up on the floor. I remember thinking, “If he was careful, he would get a lot more cookies in his mouth.” I consciously took notes, “When bingeing on cookies, make sure to eat slowly so you can get every crumb.” I had no grasp of the concept that Cookie Monster was a muppet and couldn’t actually swallow the cookies he was crunching. Now, it looks like Cookie Monster is slimming down.

• Sesame Workshop – Healthy Habits

I don’t know what to think of this. Cookie Monster wasn’t my favorite of the Sesame Street characters. I would have to go with Oscar first and then Burt and Ernie. So, with Cookie Monster at a distant fourth (or maybe fifth, I forgot about Grover), do I really care that he is changing? The main feature of his personality was that he was obsessed with cookies. I was too. I always felt like I never got enough cookies to fill my mouth. Cookie Monster eventually always found enough cookies. He had so many that he didn’t have to eat up every crumb.

When I finally got a job and had enough money to buy all the cookies that minimum wage could afford, I ate a lot. Much of the money I earned at K-Mart went right to the junk food industry. Ironically, when I can have all the junk food that I want, I’m less obsessed with it.

So, Cookie Monster is going to tell kids how great mangoes are. I guess I think this is a good thing. Childhood idols enticing kids to eat different fruits and vegetables is probably the best way for them to at least try healthy food. Of course, Popeye and his spinach addiction has been doing this for years. Looks like Cookie Monster is just trying to jump Popeye’s train.

Via: The Salt Lake Tribune – ‘Sesame’ teaches kids to trade in cookies for carrots – by Kathy Stephenson

I was just cruising the grocery aisle when I came across this TV Dinner. It’s 16 ounces of food. The box announces it in bold letters, “1 lb. of food!” That cheeseburger and cheese fries looked so good to me. I figured it must be pretty small considering how big the box was. I was shocked when I turned it over and looked at the nutrition facts.

At 1110 calories, 66 grams of fat and 9 grams of fiber, that calculates to 27 Points on the Weight Watchers Flex Point Plan. Do you know how many points I’m allotted every day? 22 That one frozen dinner is a full 5 Points more than I’m supposed to eat every day (not including Flex Points).

If someone had shown me the picture and asked me to guess the points, I would have guessed 6 for the burger and 8 for the fries. I would have said 14 points, missing the mark by a full 13 points. I am so grateful that the FDA requires the nutrition facts on all food now. I would have eaten this monster and wondered why I didn’t lose weight.

I put the dinner back in the freezer where I found it…

WebMD has a nice article that gives you reasons for eating the recommended amount of veggies and dairy. It also has some good ideas on how to fit them into your diet.

• WebMD – Secret Summer Diet Foods – by Janice McDonald

These foods aren’t really a “secret,” but I would definitely recommend them to mix up your fruit and veggie routine. If you are sick of carrots, apples and salad, give these options a try.

A serving of peanuts is one ounce (28 grams). That’s a small amount of peanuts. It’s the amount that most people gobble in one bite. In that one ounce, there are 170 calories, 14 grams of fat and 7 grams of protein. One serving of chicken, on the other hand, is a huge 100 grams. For that amount of chicken, you consume 190 calories, 7.5 grams of fat and 28 grams of protein. You get a lot more bang for your buck with chicken than peanuts. Why would you choose nuts?

Well, peanuts are vegetarian. They are incredibly portable. Peanuts have vitamins that you just can’t find in chicken because they are plant matter. Chicken breasts are inconvenient to carry around for quick protein fixes, whereas one ounce of nuts fits in your pocket. That’s why nuts still exist.

From an evolutionary point of view, it makes perfect sense. You don’t have to risk your life to eat nuts (unless you are allergic to them). You don’t need to kill a huge beast. You don’t need to kill the chicken that lays eggs. You just pick them when they are ripe. You can bring a month’s supply of protein in a small bag with you if you need to migrate. Nuts are the perfect protein for cavemen.

We’re not cavemen anymore, though. Peanuts are now being hailed as the new health food. I agree. They are a perfectly healthy food in the proper portions. You just need to make sure you keep your serving of peanuts at one ounce.

I struggle with planning. I know that planning what I’m going to eat is the most effective way to prevent overeating, yet I still resist it. I don’t mind having options. If I have a list of healthy meals that I can make with ingredients that are in the house that all have similar calorie and fat content, I’m happy. That’s about as far into planning as I have been able to muster.

I guess some people love planning. They love to get menus and set the course for their week. I’ve never really met a person that really loves to plan out their food and snacks for a week or month ahead. I see those menus in the magazines and sometimes Weight Watchers gives us a one month menu planner, but I just carefully file them away in the folder in the hopes that one day I’ll get on board with this planning stuff.

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With everything in the news lately, I have an important question: What Would The Pope Eat?

• Food Museum Blog – Papal Diets

• Buon Appetito, Your Holiness : The Secret of the Papal Table – by Mariangela Vicini, Mariangela Rinaldi

• Cookbook Review – Buon Appetito – by Nancy Hurley for Good Cooking

Since gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, I would imagine that the Pope would have a light diet of bland and healthy food. According to this book, it doesn’t seem that way. Cream of Chicken Soup, Paprika Oysters and Eel just don’t seem simple to me. Maybe it’s only a sin if you eat too much.

We’ve been innudated with books about the French way of eating. These books claim that French women don’t get fat. They say that the French have an innovative way to eat that allows them to enjoy bread, cheese, chocolate and wine.

• French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure – by Mireille Guiliano

• The Fat Fallacy : The French Diet Secrets to Permanent Weight Loss – by Will Clower

• The French Diet: Why French Women Don’t Get Fat – by Michel Montignac

I really haven’t known what to say about these diets. I’ve found the way to lose weight and enjoy bread, cheese, chocolate and wine. Don’t eat so much. Do these books really have anything to offer me besides eating smaller portions?

Not according to the authors of four French Food bloggers:

• Roundtable: The French Paradox

Read this very informative interview with lots of “trucs” (tricks) to keep you slim. Try it out.