Fast Food: Cheeseburger Versus Salad

I admit it. I watched part of The Doctors television show the other day. I caught a segment on how Americans eat and one of the doctors was working at a fast food drive-through window attempting to get customers to choose a healthy meal over the unhealthy meal they were ordering. It did not go that well for him. Only one person on the segment out of four changed their meal after he told them how unhealthy their selection was in terms of calories, fat, and sodium levels. 

What stuck with me was that one woman said that a cheeseburger was kind of like a salad. Her point was that salads have vegetables and cheeseburgers have vegetables. Therefore, they are similar. The audience laughed good-heartedly and I groaned and laughed.

Then I got to thinking… Is a fast-food salad really that much better of an option than a fast-food cheeseburger? I turned to the restaurant’s Web sites to make some comparisons.

Let me start by saying that there are other choices than what I have compared below. If the Wendy’s Garden Side Salad with no croutons and low-fat dressing (70 calories, 0 g fat, 190 mg sodium) or the ¾-pound Dave’s Hot ‘N Juicy Triple Burger (1060 calories, 67 g fat, 2020 mg sodium) are your choices then yes, the salad is much healthier. However, I have tried to pick middle of the road choices that I think people would make in these examples.

 First, I compared a regular McDonald’s Cheeseburger to their Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken (with and without the creamy southwest dressing). As the table below shows, the salad with dressing, which is how most people would order it, has 90 more calories, 2 more grams of fat, and 240 more milligrams of sodium than the cheeseburger. If you can forego the dressing for the salad, you are only saving 10 calories, 4 grams of fat, and 100 milligrams of sodium versus the cheeseburger. That is not a huge difference.

Food	Calories	Fat	Sodium
Cheeseburger	300	12	750
Salad	290	8	650
Salad with dressing	390	14	990

Next, I moved to Wendy’s to compare the Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe to their Apple Pecan Chicken Salad (with and without the pomegranate vinaigrette dressing). Again, the cheeseburger is the healthiest option in terms of calories, fat, and sodium. The salad with dressing has 210 more calories, 8 more grams of fat, and nearly 700 more milligrams of sodium. If you can go without the dressing, you will still have 100 more calories and 3 more grams of fat than the cheeseburger; but you will save almost 300 milligrams of sodium.

Food	Calories	Fat	Sodium
Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe	350	19	850
Salad	450	21	580
Salad with dressing	560	27	1540

I could continue; but I think the pattern is clear. The salad is not always the healthier choice at a fast food restaurant. We are still operating under the assumption that the salad is always healthier, or at least that audience and I were, and that is just not true! Now, there is a lot to consider when deciding which choice is healthier, such as the types of fats, cholesterol, and other nutrients such as the vitamins and minerals. But if I included all of that, you would have stopped reading by now…

My advice?

·         Avoid the fast food places altogether. You can make a yummy salad or a healthier cheeseburger at home using a small portion of lean beef, low-fat cheese, and lots of vegetables.

·          If you cannot avoid the fast food restaurant, ask for the nutrition information before you order (many have handouts) or look at their Web site before you go. Most importantly, make your choice before you order at the register (where you can see the pictures and smell the food).  

·         Realize that what you think may be an unhealthy choice, may not be the unhealthiest choice on the menu. Sometimes, the cheeseburger may be better than the salad.

As always – enjoy your food!

How To Be A Healthy Snacker

I am a snacker. I typically do not leave the house without two things: a snack and my water bottle. Snacking used to have a bad reputation. The standard American diet consisted of three square meals a day, not snacks. Snacking was linked in people’s minds with overeating and weight gain. It was a bad thing to do.

Oh how things have changed. Snacking is no longer the exception, it is now the norm and it may help people to lose or maintain their weight.

I got to thinking about this because I came across an article entitled “Frequent Snacking Linked to Healthier Diet” (1). This article reports on a five-year study of over 11,000 people aged 20 and over which found that snackers consume more healthy foods such as whole grains, fruits, and milk products and less high-sodium foods. Well, it sounds like snackers do have healthier diets! As one reads on, the study also reported that snackers also consumed more sugar, solid fats, and alcohol along with fewer vegetables. Hmmm. Finally, the article reports on another study in a younger population (teenagers) that found that teen snackers also consumed more fruit and dairy products.

Another study on snacking from the November 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association (2) looked at women in the 30-60 age range and grouped them by BMI. The study found that normal weight women had the highest number of snacks (2.3 snacks/day), followed by those who had lost weight and were maintaining that loss (1.9 snacks/day), followed by those who were overweight (1.5 snacks/day).

This all seems to point to the fact that snacking may actually be beneficial in terms of BMI as long as we choose healthy snacks.  

But is there a downside?

Let’s say that we eat a snack that includes carbohydrate-containing foods, such as fruit, milk, or grains. For most people, it takes 1 to 2 hours for all consumed food to move through the stomach and reach the small intestine where nutrients are absorbed. Absorption of glucose (blood sugar) from the carbohydrate-containing foods triggers the hormone insulin, which is needed move glucose into our cells for use.

If we graze all day or have large snacks of carbohydrate-containing foods in between meals, we are asking our bodies to continue to release insulin and our insulin levels do not have time to go back down in between meals. On the flip side, if we eat three big meals a day, we see a big spike of glucose after that big meal and we may overload insulin’s ability to be effective. Both overloading our insulin with high levels of glucose at one time and having constantly elevated insulin levels can lead to insulin resistance and potentially to type 2 diabetes. Insulin also promotes energy storage – in other words, it makes our bodies store fat.

What’s a snacker to do?

It sounds like moderation and balance are the keys. I think we have heard that somewhere before. Here are some guidelines to help you keep your snacking healthy.

·         Respect your body and eat when you are physically hungry. If your stomach is grumbling and you have been drinking your water, then it is time to eat something.

·         Pick your snacks wisely. Focus on healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy, whole grains, and lean proteins. If you decide to have a “fun food” for a snack, then pay attention to the next point!

·         Watch your portion size.  A snack should not be the same as a meal in size or calories.

As always – enjoy your food!

 References

1.       Frequent Snacking Linked to Healthier Diet. Today Health Web site. Available at: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45307103/ns/today-today_health/t/frequent-snacking-linked-healthier-diet/

2.       Bachman et al. Eating Frequency is Higher in Weight Loss Maintainers and Normal-Weight Individuals than in Overweight Individuals. Available at: http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)01376-9/abstract

Dieting Does Not Begin With Food

Here's an article I wrote about a year ago and never used. I stumbled across it this morning and thought it might be appropriate. After all, it is the time of year when most people disregard their healthy eating habits for a few weeks and then jump back on the "dieting" bandwagon in Janaury. -NMC

According to Merriam-Webster, diet means “food and drink regularly provided or consumed” (1). Why then does this word have negative connotations for people who want to lose weight?

The reason is that diet usually means caloric restriction, which means not getting to eat the yummy, inexpensive foods that surround most people every day. Caloric restriction means having to take time to buy, prepare, and pack foods that are not regular choices. Diet usually means deprivation and a change in habits - things that are not fun or met with enthusiasm. The challenge with calorie restricted diets is it forces people to break their normal habits, their cultural norms, and their usual eating patterns. Following the same habits, norms, and patterns results in the person’s current weight; these things must change for weight to change.

Unfortunately, dieting often ends with no weight loss or with lost weight being regained. In the worst cases, dieting methods include following fad diets or cutting out entire food groups or specific foods. If it were as simple as picking up a book and following a one-size-fits-all plan, then everyone would reach and maintain their goal weight. It’s not that simple. This is because people haven’t been given safe, accurate information about food, energy balance, and behavior modification.

Dieting doesn’t begin with food; dieting ends with food.

Dieting begins with digging deeper into one’s motivating factors (goals) and with education about healthy foods and preparation methods. Talk or write about your motivating factors and keep asking yourself WHY something is motivating. You will drill down to what truly motivates you by continuing to ask yourself the question of "why?"

After you discover that deep-rooted motivation, making changes to your eating habits will be easier and dieting won't seem like a chore. Dieting will no longer be a dirty word. The focus will be on making healthier food choices in order to get you to your goals.  

Reference

(1) Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diet

Fill Your Plate with Color for National Nutrition Month

March is National Nutrition Month and what better way to celebrate than with a plateful of colors? The American Dietetic Association’s theme for the 2011 National Nutrition Month is “eat right with color” to emphasize the importance of choosing a variety of foods to promote optimal health.  Since different colors of food contain different types of nutrients, incorporating a variety colors provides a wide range of nutrients that our bodies need to function at their best.

Other guidelines for healthy eating include:

Enjoy 2-3 servings of fruit every day. These provide many vitamins and minerals in the form of phytochemicals along with fiber. Eat the skins when you can! Fresh fruits make a great snack food, frozen fruits add thickness to homemade smoothies, and fruits can be pureed to use in place of fats in baking.

Sneak in 5-7 servings of vegetables every day. It’s important to eat vegetables from all five categories – dark green, orange/deep yellow, starchy, legumes (peas and beans), and others such as onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, okra, green beans, and cucumbers. Vegetables provide many nutrients and fiber. Pile vegetables on sandwiches, add to sauces and frozen entrees, and puree to add to soups. Just be sure to not add on calorie-laden sauces!

Aim for making half of your grain selections whole. Whole grains provide fiber and carbohydrates necessary for energy and brain power. Replace processed, refined, white products with whole grain products when choosing rice, pasta, and bread. Not all brands taste the same, so don’t give up if you don’t like the first one you try.

Lean meats and dairy are good choices for protein. Proteins are the building blocks of our bodies; they are the basis for our enzymes and hormones and build muscle that enables us to move. Proteins are typically high in fat. The healthest options are to choose lean cuts of meat, to remove visible fat and grease when cooking, and to look for low-fat or non-fat dairy products.

Last but not least are the fats. Fats are a major component of our cell membranes, they provide padding for our internal organs, and they help with absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins. Just be sure to choose the healthier mono- and poly-unsaturated fats found in avocado, almonds, walnuts, fatty fish, and canola, safflower, or olive oils.  

Fill your plate with a variety of colors while following the above guidelines and you are taking a big step towards good health.

By the way... March 9th is Registered Dietitian Day. Have you hugged your RD lately?

Genetics: An Old Excuse on Its Way Out

Research is now showing that how people choose to live (lifestyle habits) can, in effect, turn on or turn off genes. That’s right. If you consistently put down the donut during snack-time and reach instead for a cup of yogurt with blueberries, you could literally change the course of your life!

There is no denying that your genes play a pretty big part in who you become. They lay down the code for how you look and for what medical conditions you are predisposed to developing. The key word here is predisposed. The Free Dictionary online defines predisposed as “to make (someone) inclined to something in advance” (1). Predisposition does not determine your future health path; it just tells you which of the possible paths you are more likely to walk down.  

A simple example of this is found in the transcription of genes that produce lactase, an enzyme needed to digest lactose which is found primarily in milk. If a person stops drinking milk, the body doesn’t take the steps needed to produce lactase because it is wasted energy and eventually the person loses the ability to digest milk resulting in a lactose intolerance.  However, if that same person doesn’t stop drinking milk, or even begins to drink very small amounts of milk again, the body will spend the extra energy needed to keep making lactase and be able to digest milk (2). Same person. If they drink milk regularly, they can digest it. If they don’t drink milk regularly, they develop a lactose intolerance.

Pretty neat stuff.

The point of this discussion is an article (3) discussing lifestyle habits and cardiovascular disease (CVD). This article covers two studies. One of these studies suggests that developing healthy lifestyle habits can have more of an impact on a person’s predisposition to develop CVD than their genetics. The authors list five habits:

·         Do not smoke

·         Drink little, if any, alcohol

·         Maintain a healthy body weight

·         Be physically active

·         Consume a healthy diet

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

One of the studies this is based on had nearly 2,400 participants and spanned 20 years. It found that 60% of the participants who had all five lifestyle habits had a low-risk for CVD. The picture is not nearly as pretty for those who had one or none of those lifestyle habits – only 6% had a low-risk profile. 60% or 6%. That’s a pretty big difference when it comes to your heart health.

The other study reviewed data from the famous Framingham Heart Study and included nearly 16,500 people who were either 40 or 50 years old. This study found that genetics plays a small role in CVD when compared to lifestyle habits. Even scarier, it found that only 8% of Americans have “ideal levels of all the risk factors for cardiovascular health at middle age.”  8%! That’s a pretty low number!

So, what does this tell us?

It tells me a couple of things. One is that our population is falling short when it comes to practicing these healthy lifestyle habits and this concerns me. The other is that genetics does not absolutely determine our fate. We have some control over our fate.

Our future health is literally in our hands. It is determined by whether we reach for the donut or the yogurt. It is determined by whether we reach for our sneakers or the remote control.

Me? I’m going for the yogurt and my sneakers.

How about you?

References

1.       http://www.thefreedictionary.com/predisposed

2.       Nutrition and Metabolism I class taught by Dr. Nancy Correa-Matos at University of North Florida

3.       Northwestern University (2010, November 15). Healthy lifestyle has bigger impact on cardiovascular health than genetics, studies. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101115151954.htm

Counting Calories (Original Date: May 13, 2009)

I saw a banner ad online today that simply said: Do you know how many calories you had for breakfast today? Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.

I wonder... Does that put me in the minority?

I talk to people I know about their weight and eating habits. I'm not a registered dietitian yet; but I'm learning and people have so many questions so I gladly share what I am learning. The majority of people I talk to want to lose weight and they want me to tell them the magic formula for weight loss.

I wish it were that easy, don't you?

I have a habit of answering questions with questions. The first step in making changes is to figure out what you are currently doing. We can't tweak something if we don't know what that something is yet. In fact, one of the first steps when you meet with a registered dietitian will probably be to keep a food journal for a number of days - make no changes to what you eat at all, just write down what you currently eat. So, one of my first questions is about food intake. How many calories are you eating and what types of foods? The usual answer regarding calories: I don't know. Okay. That's fair. Not everyone is quite as preoccupied with food and health as I am.

Let's find out then, shall we?

There is usually resistance the suggestion to track food intake. It seems so impossible and overwhelming. Before I tracked food, there was no way I could tell you how many calories were in a banana or a hamburger or a chicken Caesar salad. It seems like a lot of work to not only write down everything you eat, but also to have to figure out how many calories are in everything. Who has time for that?? Perhaps also, it's a little too personal, too revealing. I mean, I sure don't want to fess up when I dig into some Moosetracks ice cream! But, I do dig into it on occasion, and you can on occasion and still lose weight, and wow, is it ever good! Maybe it's even too embarrassing. Will people wonder what you are doing over there, scribbling furiously on a notepad before you eat?

Here's the magic formula, and you have heard this before, in a person with no underlying disease affecting metabolism, to lose weight burn up more calories than you take in. Simply: eat less (to a point) and move more. If you don't know how many calories you are eating, how can you figure out what changes to make to your diet to get good weight loss results?

It's not magic, it's math.

I'll tell you this too, if it weren't for free food trackers online, I probably wouldn't be too eager to track my food intake either. Lucky for us, there are easy to use, free Web sites. So, start there. I recommend and use Sparkpeople.com; but there are many others including mypyramidtracker.gov and fitday.com. Check them out. Join up. Build your list of "favorites" to make it easier to track the foods you eat regularly and stop making excuses!

I'm begging you. I don't want to be the only one who proclaims, "YES! As a matter of fact I DO know how many calories I had for breakfast!" I want you to stand up and shout with me.

Are You Ready? (Original Date: May 17, 2009)

A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend of mine who is also very into nutrition and fitness. We are both working on losing those last few stubborn pounds - the vanity pounds. I remarked to her, "I TALK about how much I want to lose this weight; but I really don't DO much about it." When it comes down to it, I'm not always doing what I know I need to do.

How do you go from talking about how much you want something to actually doing the things that will get it?

Start on the inside by pondering these two things:

1. Look past the "goal".

Why do you want to lose weight? Surely, the goal isn't the number on the scale or the number printed on a tag in your clothes - that is arbitrary. What is the underlying goal attached to that number? Is it how you think you will feel at that weight? Is it how you think you will look at that weight? Is it to be able to walk up the stairs without being winded? Is it to control your blood pressure? Is it something else entirely?

2. Look for the reasons for your choices.

Do you just want to relax at home after a hard day at work instead of go to the gym? Do you want that greasy hamburger because it's just soooo yummy? Sure, that will bring you satisfaction right now in this moment and I'm all for being satisfied; but these things work against weight loss. What are you wanting by making these choices? Is that relaxing at home a way to find some peaceful down time? Is that hamburger taking the place of something else? It is another reason entirely?

Only you have the answers to these questions.

This is how Intrinsic Coaching can help. Coaching conversations give you the time and space to explore these types of ideas. The coach is trained to ask the types of questions that open up new thinking for you.

Old thinking will get you what you've already got. New results need new ways of thinking.

No, I'm not perfect. Neither are you. But before you go from talking the talk to walking the walk, you've got to know what you want at the end of this part of your journey because what you want is guiding the choices you make.

Are you ready?