Delicious Nuts

“When I work out at the gym, I am there for a couple of hours and by the end of the first hour, I am still energized but start getting hungry. I read your article on packing food for lunch but wanted to specifically ask if you recommend any specific store bought bars.”

I frequently get questions about different nutrition and energy bars. Generally I think all of them are a bad idea, since they are little more than processed food with added vitamins and/or other trendy diet ingredients–a hallmark of food from the Matrix.

Energy and meal replacement bars serve only one purpose: convenience. So let’s make no mistake about it, these are not health foods.

But I understand that quick calories can be incredibly useful, particularly when intense workouts are a regular part of your day. If you get hungry and don’t have anything around to eat, the chances of you breaking down and eating something you’ll really regret increase substantially. But I think there are better things to carry around than energy bars.

My quick snack of choice is nuts or trail mix. I always have a small stash of nuts hidden somewhere in my gym bag (which comes with me everywhere). My personal favorites are almonds, pistachios, cashews and macadamia nuts. When I’m feeling ambitious I’ll combine a few different kinds together in a plastic zipper bag along with some dried fruit, just to mix things up.

One of the only drawbacks of snacking on nuts is if you are really hungry it is easy to eat too many and ruin your appetite for dinner. Too many nuts can also be difficult to digest. To avoid this I recommend getting into the habit of counting the nuts you eat, drinking water and waiting 20 minutes before eating more. The protein and fat in nuts can be very satisfying, but it takes awhile for the satiety signals to reach your brain.

For almonds, cashews and macadamia nuts 10 is a good number to start with. For shelled pistachios and peanuts, 15-20 nuts is more realistic. You are aiming for a single serving size of 1/4 cup. After some practice, eating the proper amount will come naturally to you. But at the beginning you should either count the nuts or measure them out in advance so it is easier to make good decisions.

There are a few other easily transportable foods that can serve as good substitutes for energy bars. Fruit is a great option, particularly filling fruits with lots of fiber like apples and oranges. Be careful with soft fruits, however, or you may end up with a gym bag filled with goo. Yes, I’m speaking from experience.

(Read: How to transport soft fruits and vegetables)

Another option that I don’t often use but am not opposed to is jerky. Beef and turkey jerky are generally high in protein and very satisfying. Just be careful about the teriyaki flavor that is often high in added sugar.

As a final thought, I wonder if you are maybe spending too much time in the gym? For weight loss and fat burning, more than an hour is really overkill and may actually work against you. If you are training for a specific athletic event, you’ve gotta do what you gotta do. But for the rest of us mortals one hour in the gym is more than enough to accomplish our goals. Maybe your hunger is a signal to you that it’s time to shower up and head home?

One of the most essential aspects of a great healthstyle is planning for moments of hunger throughout your day, but processed foods are hardly ever the answer, no matter how convenient.

What are your favorite post-workout snacks?

Originally published November 16, 2009.

Tags: dried fruit, Exercise, fruit, jerky, nuts, processed foods, snacks, workout

This is one of my favorite discussions on health and processed food so far, thanks everyone for your questions. As always, show notes are below.

August 17, 2011 | Episode 11 of Summer Tomato Live will be here tonight at 6pm PST. The format is a little different this week. Instead of covering one topic, I’ll be answering 3 recent subscribers questions. The questions I’ll be answering are:

1. What’s the deal with processed foods, why are they so bad?
2. Are artisan breads as bad as grocery store breads?
3. Cooking healthy food takes me forever. How can I make it quicker and less overwhelming?

Summer Tomato Live normally requires a subscriber password, but since we have so many new readers this week (thank you TIME Magazine!) I’m going to leave this episode open so anyone can participate.

Also to celebrate making TIME’s list of best websites, for the rest of the week I’m offering one free month off a new Tomato Slice subscription. So if you’ve been thinking about signing up, now would be a great time.

Read this for more information on the show and newsletter.

To watch live and join the discussion click the red “Join event” button, login with Twitter or your Vokle account, and enter the password when prompted. I encourage you to call in with video questions, particularly if your question is nuanced and may involve a back and forth discussion. Please use headphones to call in however, or the feedback from the show is unbearable.

See you soon!

Show notes:

• In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
• How To Avoid Getting Sick In Flu Season
• How To Cook Perfect Rice Without A Rice Cooker (and make magical rice balls)

Tags: bread, processed foods

By D Sharon Pruitt

Most people’s eyes light up if free food is mentioned. But using “free” as an excuse to eat junk food is nothing to be proud of.

We are excited by the concept of free food because we perceive it as having value. But cheap, mass-produced food isn’t worth much in health, taste or even satisfaction.

Although we believe we are getting a great deal, foods typically offered as free don’t even fulfill our most basic nutritional (or emotional) needs.

Thus one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my 12 years of higher education is:

Just because it’s free doesn’t mean you have to eat it.

On occasion someone will offer you high quality food at no cost, but these times are few and far between. More often you will find yourself wading through a sea of donuts, pizza, cookies and other junk food.

Your best bet is skipping the empty calories all together when attending meetings, seminars and other public events.

10 reasons to never eat free food

1. It’s cheap. You may be inclined to think that cheap food is a good deal, but if you take a minute to think about what you’re really getting you find it is not the value you may have thought. Cheap food means you are getting low quality, mass-produced calories made from industrial processes. Isn’t that the stuff we want to avoid?
2. It’s flavorless. The right combinations of sugar, fat and salt, pretty easily deceive your brain, as these ingredients can strongly activate your neural reward pathways. But if you try and focus on the true flavor of food and eat mindfully, you quickly notice the tastelessness of industrial food.
3. It’s bad for you. Evidence is mounting that processed foods are the cause of most “diseases of civilization” such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. When you wolf down a few of those Costco brownie bites at happy hour, you are contributing directly to your likelihood of developing these chronic diseases. Is that value?
4. You aren’t saving money. You may tell yourself that this free meal will keep you from eating later, but there’s a good chance you will eat again anyway. Processed foods do not satisfy you, but actually stimulate your appetite and strengthen future cravings. Also, if you factor in your future health care costs, what you save by eating that $2 slice of pizza starts to seem rather trivial.
5. You’ll feel gross later. Junk food makes you feel bad, both physically and mentally. If someone offered you a free headache, would you take it?
6. It screws up your metabolism. Highly refined foods create rapid insulin spikes that induce insulin resistance over the next few hours, making your next meal more fattening. If you make a habit of eating cheap abundant food, this condition will become chronic and may develop into type 2 diabetes. What a bargain!
7. You’ll gain weight. With insulin resistance comes weight gain, and with time you will gain more weight eating fewer calories. Unfortunately, people aren’t often giving away free plus-sized jeans.
8. You’re eating empty calories. When you submit to eating cheap food, you are also choosing not to eat nutritious food. Choosing a diet rich in vitamins and other essential nutrients may be the single biggest factor in determining your risk for disease and overall longevity. Luckily, local, seasonal foods taste way better than anything your co-workers can pour out of a plastic bag.
9. You don’t need it. Chances are you get plenty of calories in your typical day. So why do we feel like we need to eat junk food just because it is free? Healthy food does not have to be very expensive.
10. It isn’t worth it. The truth is free junk food isn’t really free. Even if processed foods don’t cost you money, they still cost you your health, happiness and sense of well-being.

Why do you eat free food?

Originally published September 21, 2009.

Tags: diseases of civilization, free food, industrial food, junk food, processed foods

For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

If you haven’t yet, please vote at Quirky to help us pick the final look of my farmers market bag. We’re almost done!

Great reading this week about why the case against saturated fat isn’t as strong as you thought, the role of fish in vision maintenance and the importance of childhood nutrition.

I read many more wonderful articles than I post here each week. If you’d like to see more or just don’t want to wait until Friday, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@summertomato) or the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. For a complete list of my favorite stories check out my links on Digg. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Links of the week

• The New USDA Dietary Guidelines: Total Hogwash, and Here’s Why <<Please read this. It’s really more about why saturated fat isn’t bad for you, and other nutrition myths promoted by health experts. It’s long and sciencey, but important. (Raw Food SOS)
• If you want lasting vision, eat those omega-3s <<We spoke this week about the importance of eating green leafy vegetables for vision. A reader pointed out fish is also important, and it seems he’s right. (MSNBC)
• GM alfalfa: the politics explained <<I’ve had a lot of questions about the genetically modified alfalfa ruling last week, here’s some of the details on what went wrong. (Food Politics)
• Diet soda and heart, stroke risk: A link doesn’t prove cause and effect <<Great identification of BS of the week by LA Times. Be careful with your science.
• Processed Food Diet in Early Childhood May Lower Subsequent IQ <<Isn’t this lovely? You are what you eat as a child. (ScienceDaily)
• Exercise Helps Overweight Children Think Better, Do Better in Math <<Hmmm, it’s starting to sound like eating right and exercise is healthy for children. Go figure. (ScienceDaily)
• The difference between fructose and glucose: it’s not all in your mind <<Interesting new data about how differences in sugar type effect brain activity. (Los Angels Times)
• The 21 Funniest Menu Fails EVER (PHOTOS) <<High-quality childish humor up in here. (Huffington Post)
• Prenatal Exposure to Pesticides May Harm Kids’ Development <<Stuff like this really scares me. How about you? (Medline)
• Everyday Chickpea Salad <<This recipe looks absolutely amazing. Can’t wait to try it. (ShutterBean)

What inspired you this week?

Tags: B.S. of the week, Exercise, fish, fructose, GM foods, processed foods, recipe, saturated fat, sugar

Photo by Lord Jim

“What do you think of the Paleo diet which advocates zero grain consumption?”

The Paleolithic diet is one of the most rapidly growing diet trends of the past several years. Followers of the Paleo diet argue that humans have not evolved to eat agriculture-based foods and can only achieve optimal health by consuming a hunter-gatherer style diet. Thus the Paleo diet is completely devoid of grains and legumes, and also shuns dairy, salt, refined sugar and processed oils. The diet is composed primarily of meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, roots, nuts and seeds.

(The Wikipedia article on the Paleo diet is actually pretty good if you’d like to read up on the details. I particularly like the Opposing views section.)

Like most diets the Paleo diet has a little bit of good science behind it, but also a lot of logical leaps and baseless assumptions. The evolutionary argument that humans are somehow maladapted to agriculture-based diets is particularly unconvincing (resting on many unproven assumptions), yet is the fundamental premise on which the Paleo diet bases its recommendations.

The reasoning behind the Paleo diet is less interesting to me, however, than the impact of the diet itself. Will “eating like a caveman” really help you be healthier?

Possibly, but not necessarily.

The most obvious advantage of the Paleo diet is the lack of processed foods. There is ample evidence that societies on traditional diets boast far better health than those on modern, Western diets–and the hallmark of modern diets is food processing. Paleo diets therefore are low in sugar, refined carbohydrates, trans fats, excess salt and pretty much everything else that leads to “diseases of civilization.”

Paleo diets are also abundant in healthy, nutrient-rich foods such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, fish and meats. I have no doubt that anyone willing to stick to a Paleo eating plan will have a healthy weight and remain virtually free of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and may even have lower rates of cancer.

But the question still remains, is it necessary to eat Paleo to be healthy?

This is where I take issue with the Paleo philosophy. While a diet completely free of processed foods is undeniably healthy, the Paleo diet goes beyond this and demands considerable sacrifice.

Paleo diets do not allow for any grains or legumes. This pretty much eliminates every traditional cuisine on earth including Japanese, Italian, Indian and Greek. Not only is this a culinary tragedy, it ignores the fact that these cuisines feed some of the world’s healthiest and longest-lived individuals.

Traditional, global diets that exclude highly processed foods but also include grains and legumes have been some of the most successful for health. Diseases of civilization are only problematic in Western cultures where processed foods make up a large proportion of the calories and few whole food are consumed.

Proponents of the Paleo diet argue that it is necessary to eliminate grains and legumes because they contain “antinutrients,” substances that can interfere with the body’s absorption of other important vitamins, minerals and proteins. However, well-nourished individuals who eat a varied diet of unprocessed foods (including grains and legumes) are not nutrient deficient and are generally healthy.

Given that it is possible to thrive on a diet that includes some grains, legumes and even small amounts of processed foods, one must question if giving up the culinary joys of travel and global cuisine are really worth the sacrifice.

In my experience, food substitutions and modified recipes designed to mimic traditional meals can sometimes be tasty but can never replace true authenticity.

Another contention I have with the Paleo diet is the assumption that the same eating patterns will work for everyone. People’s lives differ in countless ways. We each have different levels of daily activity, demands on our time and food preferences. We also have different genetic backgrounds, which can result in significant differences in metabolism and hormone levels. These individual variations make dietary needs different for each of us.

Because of our individual differences, there is undoubtedly a percentage of the population that thrives on the Paleo diet and finds it easy to stick to and achieve results. Hooray! However there may also be a segment of the population (myself included) that finds living without grains and legumes to be chronically unsatisfying and unsustainable.

Try telling a foodie they can never eat cheese or drink wine again and see how far you get pitching a Paleo diet.

If you currently eat a typical Western diet with little variety and many processed foods, tend to have better success following rigid diet plans, and have no qualms about giving up or modifying traditional meals to meet your dietary demands, then you might have luck following the Paleo diet. However there is no reason to believe it is the only path to good health.

The best diet is the one that works for you. Finding a healthstyle you can embrace and enjoy is essential if you want to build a lifetime of healthy habits.

Do you follow a Paleo diet? What do you think?

Originally published February 22, 2010.

Tags: antinutrients, beans, diseases of civilization, intact grains, legumes, paleo diet, processed foods, trans fat