Yogurt, muesli and blueberries

I should admit right now that I’m a born again breakfast eater. In the past I always told myself that skipping breakfast meant one less meal adding calories to my day, and I was proud to have eliminated this annoyance from my life.

For the last several years, however, I have grown to love breakfast and am something of an evangelist. Breakfast may seem like an odd thing to try to covert people to, but once you see my reasons you may become a believer yourself.

8 Reasons Breakfast Makes Your Life Better

• It’s easy. Breakfast doesn’t take much time or energy to prepare; I’m half asleep when I pour my cereal, rinse my fruit and boil my coffee every day. It also requires minimal planning. Just buy everything you need every week or two and you are good to go. What’s your excuse?
• Health wins. We all must deal with the internal struggle between eating healthy and eating not-so-healthy. Throughout the day breakfast is by far the easiest battle in which health can triumph, since there is no outside social pressure and unhealthy options are harder to attain. I recommend taking winning odds whenever they are presented.
• Hunger check. If you eat a satisfying breakfast before heading into work you are less likely to be tempted by the junk food that haunts most office environments. Likewise, you will have better self-control when it comes time to decide what to eat for lunch.
• Whole grains. For my own healthstyle, intact whole grains are the most difficult to get in my diet. Unsweetened oats, plain brown rice and quinoa aren’t exactly staples on American restaurant menus. But without grains I feel constantly hungry and my workouts suffer. If I eat them at breakfast I am guaranteed at least that one serving during the day. (For tips to get more whole grains at dinner, check out my easy frozen brown rice balls).
• Higher metabolism. Eating healthy food has a positive effect on your metabolism. Not only does what you eat for breakfast affect how your body reacts to different foods for the rest of the day, it also influences your metabolic rate in the long term. Be careful though, highly processed and easily digested foods have a negative effect.
• Healthy habits. Healthy behavior begets more healthy behavior. According to some studies, this is especially true of breakfast eaters. Waking up and eating a healthy breakfast encourages you to pack a healthy lunch and plan your day around wholesome food. It feels really good to do healthy things, but we easily forget this when presented with free donuts on an empty stomach during a mid-morning meeting. Build your healthy habits when it is easy and help them stick around for the long haul.
• Self-esteem. I think it is important to reiterate how good it feels to do healthy things for your body, and as a bonus it extends to how we feel about ourselves. Most of us feel proud and confident when we know we are doing the right thing. Why not start out each morning on the right foot?
• Deliciousness. Of all the reasons I just listed, this one probably has the biggest sway with me personally. My breakfasts are absolutely delicious and I adore waking up and eating such yummy food. It is worth going out of your way to find healthy foods you enjoy eating, that way good food has as much pull on you as the less healthy junk. This will make your food decision making a whole lot easier.

Once you have convinced yourself that eating breakfast is important and worthwhile, it helps to know what constitutes a healthy one. I have written about breakfast before, focusing on the difference between fake “whole grains” as sold to us by processed food manufacturers and real intact whole grains.

Recently I have switched to a new favorite breakfast: plain yogurt, muesli and fruit.

I love this new combo for a few reasons

1. I tried yogurt because I was having digestive issues for a few weeks and was hoping the probiotics in the yogurt (I eat even more probiotic foods now) might help. It totally did, and I’m sold on this method for improved digestion (despite my mild lactose intolerance).
2. Coarse and chewy muesli is perfect on yogurt and I was able to completely cut out the fake whole grain flakes that bothered me about my old breakfast. Woohoo!
3. The added protein and fat from the lowfat plain yogurt helps me feel satisfied longer in the day and adds a creamy luxury to my morning.

Be sure that when you are choosing your healthy breakfast you find foods with no added sugar. For example, fruit and vanilla yogurts are notorious for having obscene amounts of sugar (especially vanilla) putting it more on par with ice cream than health food. Likewise, most store bought granolas are loaded with sugar, molasses, honey, agave, concentrated fruit juice and other sweeteners. This is why I prefer muesli–completely unsweetened grains with bits of dried fruits, nuts and seeds.

When choosing plain yogurt I recommend lowfat instead of nonfat yogurt, because it is much more palatable and satisfying. Nonfat plain yogurt tends to be too tangy for me. Also, you need the fat to help with nutrient absorption and satiation.

My breakfast

• 1 c. Plain lowfat yogurt
• 1/4 c. Dorset muesli
• 1/4 c. fresh fruit

What is your favorite healthy breakfast?

Originally published August 17, 2009

Tags: Breakfast, fruit, intact grains, muesli, probiotics, whole grains, yogurt

Photo by TheGiantVermin

We all know the story. Eating carbohydrates causes a spike in blood sugar, which results in a surge of insulin. Insulin shuttles all that extra sugar into your fat cells and you become obese. Over time, your poor helpless organs become resistant to insulin and you develop type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, thereby shortening your life by 7 years.

All of that is true.

The story is more complicated, however, because all carbs are not created equal.

I’m not here to tell you sugar and flour won’t make you fat, they will. But unrefined foods that just happen to be slightly higher in starch or sugar don’t, in reasonable quantities, elicit giant blood sugar spikes or abnormally high insulin levels.

Instead, unprocessed carbohydrates generate gentle, moderate rises in your blood glucose and insulin, giving you a small but long-lasting supply of energy your muscles can use for several hours. This is what is supposed to happen when you eat nourishing food, and normal healthy people have no reason to fear it.

(In my experience, eating intact grains can even curb sugar cravings and help you avoid those late night slip ups that undo all your progress and riddle you with guilt.)

So what are these magical carbs that don’t make you fat? Pretty much anything you can find in nature. If it comes in a box and has a prominent “whole grain” sticker on it, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a license to gorge yourself on grains or any food. Eat enough of something, or eat it quickly, and you’ll still end up with more sugar in your blood than your body knows what to do with. But in moderate quantities you can eat from the following list without risking your life or growing out of your favorite jeans.

10 Tasty Carbs That Won’t Make You Fat

1. Fruit

Popular diets like Slow-Carb recommend limiting fruit, mainly because it makes “rapid fat loss” a little less rapid. However you can continue to lose weight even while eating fruit, so long as you don’t pig out on it. Fructose, the sugar in fruit, is bad for you not because it raises your blood sugar, but because it is converted to fat in the liver. However the relatively small amounts of fructose present in whole fruit is nothing to worry about.

2. Beans

Though beans are relatively rich in carbs, a substantial portion of it is fiber and the overall glycemic load is pretty low. Beans are also an excellent source of iron, protein and folate, as well as essential minerals.

3. Oats

Oatmeal is tricky because Quaker and other companies have somehow convinced us that cooking real oats is too hard and time consuming for any civilized human being. This conveniently allows them to mark up the prices on their instant, pre-sweetened varieties that are closer to dessert than they are to a healthy breakfast. But in reality real rolled oats are low calorie, high fiber, and not fattening in the least. They also cook up in minutes.

4. Dairy

Have you ever checked the label of plain yogurt and wondered how all that sugar got in there? No you’re not crazy, it’s just that the FDA nutrition labels don’t distinguish between added sugar (sucrose or fructose) and naturally occurring sugars like lactose, the sugar in milk. In reasonable quantities and without added sugars (read labels carefully), unsweetened dairy products will not usually contribute to fat accumulation.

5. Lentils

Like beans, lentils are full of fiber and slowly digesting. If anything, adding lentils to your diet will likely help you lose weight, not make you gain it.

6. Farro

One of my favorite foods, farro is a dense and chewy grain with a thick husk and rich flavor. Although it is a grain, farro is very filling and a little goes a long way. No need to spike your blood sugar with this stuff.

7. Wine

Though people often cite wine and alcohol as having a lot of calories, your body digests alcohol calories different than sugar calories and they have virtually no impact on glycemic response. Though there are many reasons to keep your wine portions under control, sharing the occasional bottle won’t stop you from losing weight.

8. Quinoa

Technically a seed and not a grain, quinoa (keen-wah) is high in protein and fiber, and has a very low glycemic index. It’s also high in iron, has a complete amino acid profile (great for vegetarians) and cooks in almost no time.

9. Brown rice

A lot of people claim to dislike brown rice, but cooked properly it can be a beautiful addition to almost any meal. A small serving of brown rice can make your salads, stir fries and other vegetable dishes more satisfying, while not forcing that big blood sugar spike you’d get from eating bread.

10. Potatoes

This may surprise you, but moderate amounts of potatoes cooked in healthy oils (not processed vegetable oils) won’t make you fat. Potatoes are actually fairly high in iron, vitamin C, vitamin B6 and minerals, making them a healthy alternative to other starches so long as you don’t go nuts.

What are your favorite healthy carbs?

Tags: alcohol, beans, brown rice, carbs, dairy, farro, fruit, high-carb, intact grains, lentils, low-carb, oats, potatoes, quinoa, Slow-Carb, whole grains, wine

Photo by Venex_jpb

If there is a single subject that befuddles the health-conscious eater, it is undoubtedly carbohydrates.

Most of us have seen the impressive results of at least temporarily restricting carbs, but studies examining the long-term effects of carbohydrate restriction are often ambiguous. Also, while some experts argue fervently for a low-carb lifestyle, some nutritionists still warn about the dangers of eating too much fat or protein.

So how do we know what to believe?

A full examination of the science behind carbohydrate metabolism is beyond the scope of a single blog post, and is in fact not entirely understood by the scientific community (for a thorough review of this topic read Gary Taubes’ book Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I have reviewed here).

However, there are a few things we do know about carbohydrates that are worth pointing out.

Lesson 1: Refined grains contribute to nearly every chronic disease in modern civilization.

It is universally agreed in the nutrition community that refined, processed carbohydrates are the worst things to eat on the entire planet.

And it is impossible to overstate how remarkable this is.

The nutrition community is one of the most disagreeable bunches in all of science. But across the board–from vegans like Colin Campbell to carnivores like Robert Atkins–not a single one of them considers processed carbs to be nutritionally neutral. They all consider them dangerous.

Without question, refined carbohydrates contribute to poor health.

Lesson 2: Vegetables protect against nearly every chronic disease in modern civilization.

Where things start to get more complicated is with unrefined carbohydrates, and the various iterations of this definition. There is ample evidence that the carbohydrates contained in vegetables are not harmful, and possibly beneficial.

To call these vegetable carbohydrates “fiber” is to oversimplify the science, but suffice to say that vegetables are good for you and contribute to your good health.

This is also generally agreed upon.

Lesson 3: Whole grains are different from intact grains.

Few people will argue against my first two points. But bring up whole grains and you will unleash a fury of controversy. Some people believe whole grains to be the cornerstone of any healthy diet, while others consider them superfluous and possibly detrimental to good health. You can find dozens of PhDs and MDs to back up your claims no matter what camp you align with.

So why is there so much disagreement? What does the science say?

The problem is that nutrition science conducted in free-living humans is virtually impossible to interpret. This is largely because the studies are so difficult to control and people’s behavior and self-reporting are so unreliable. Another problem is that the definition of “whole grains” has been watered down to a point where it is virtually meaningless.

One reason whole grains are hard to identify is because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has created a definition that is friendly to food companies, but not to consumers.

The FDA requirements for a manufacturer to use the term “whole grain” on its label (along with the respective health claims) are as follows:

“Cereal grains that consist of the intact, ground, cracked or flaked caryopsis, whose principal anatomical components – the starchy endosperm, germ and bran – are present in the same relative proportions as they exist in the intact caryopsis - should be considered a whole grain food.” (emphasis added by me)

Get it? To be considered “whole,” grains do not actually have to be intact.

Thus food manufacturers create products using this loose definition to their advantage, demolishing grains as normal, then adding back the required ratios of grain parts (germ and bran) to meet the standard.

This is how products like Froot Loops get spiffy health labels claiming they lower heart disease when any unbiased nutrition scientist would agree that, with 41% sugar by weight, Froot Loops almost certainly contribute to heart disease.

On the other hand, there is compelling data that intact whole grains contribute to better health.

Lesson 4: Eating grains is a personal choice, not a nutritional imperative.

The good news is that it is really easy to tell the difference between fake “whole” grains and intact whole grains. If a food actually looks like a grain (i.e., it retains its original form and bran covering), then it is an intact grain. If it looks like a Cheerio, chip, loaf of bread or pasta with a “whole grain” label, then it is a fake whole grain.

People following a primal or paleo diet will argue that this difference is irrelevant and that all grains (and legumes?!) are unnecessary for good health. Personally I disagree, but remain fairly neutral on the personal choice of removing grains from the diet entirely.

Grains do not appear to be necessary for survival (Inuit tribes survive without them), but optimal nutrition may require slightly more effort than would be necessary following a traditional balanced diet.

This is generally how I feel about all healthy, restrictive regimens such as vegetarian, vegan and raw diets. You can make it work for yourself if you are willing to make sacrifices and put in the effort.

However you should be aware that for many people, myself included, cutting whole grains out of your diet completely is extremely difficult and, if you ask me, unnecessarily painful.

Conclusion

When making food choices about grains, the critical question is not whether or not a food is “whole” grain but whether the grain is intact. For this reason, it matters very little if you substitute “whole grain” products for regular refined products such as pasta.

Examples of intact grains are oats, barley, brown rice, whole wheat, quinoa (sort of) and faro. White rice is not a whole grain, and is closer to a refined grain than a whole grain.

For optimal health, processed and refined grains should be eaten very sparingly. Small amounts such as those eaten in traditional cultures can be part of any healthstyle, but including them is a personal choice that will depend on your own goals and preferences.

The irony is that if you are able to remove processed foods from your diet, the way you eat could probably be described as low-carb. But this label really undermines a healthstyle based on real food.

Though I eat relatively few grains compared to most Americans, I cringe when I see the shining example of low-carb living, The Atkins Diet website, with images of fake pancakes and pasta plastered all over it. If that is what low-carb is, I want nothing to do with it.

Processed food is still processed food, whether the carbohydrates have been synthetically removed or not. Stick to eating real food and you’ll never have to worry about carbs.

Do you count your carbohydrates?

Originally published November 25, 2009.

Tags: bread, carbs, intact grains, paleo diet, pasta, processed foods, quinoa, raw food, real food, refined carbs, rice, vegan, vegetables, vegetarian, whole grains

For The Love of Food

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

Exceptional reading this week. Whatever you do, don’t miss Michael Ruhlman’s calling BS on the food industry deceiving us into believing we’re too busy to cook. There’s also new data suggesting your genes may determine what diet suits you best (healthstyle anyone?) and important news for diabetics taking vitamin B supplements.

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 complete reading lists join me on the social bookmarking sites StumbleUpon and Delicious. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you there. (Note: If you want a follow back on Twitter introduce yourself with an @ message).

Links of the week

• Message to Food Editors: What 30-Minute Meals Really Mean <<Please read this, it isn’t long and it is important. Michael Ruhlman does a fantastic job of explaining how absurd it is that Americans have stopped making food (i.e. health, family, culture) a priority as essential as showering, sleeping and spending time with family. You do have time to cook and eat well–it doesn’t take much. (Huffington Post)
• Fructose: poison or nutrient (or both)? <<People love to make a huge fuss over specific nutrients, but we would be much better off (and less stressed) keeping things in perspective. This is a great example of why. (Nutrition Data)
• 10 Tasty and Healthy Store-Bought Snacks <<BS of the week. Chips, pretzels and ice cream are “healthy”? Seriously SELF editor-in-chief? (Yahoo! Health)
• Individual Response to Weight-Loss Diet May Depend on Genes <<Though we still do not completely understand the interactions between diet and genetics, I can’t imagine how this wouldn’t be true. We have different eye, hair and skin colors. Why would we all metabolize foods exactly the same? Especially since we already know metabolism changes with muscle/fat mass. This is why it is so important to 1) not be dogmatic about diets and 2) find your own healthstyle. (Diabetic Mediterranean Diet Blog)
• Want college students to eat better? Try appealing to their sense of the greater good <<When food is a priority people make healthier choices. Turns out this is much more effective than teaching people about nutrition. Knowing facts is good, but caring is better. (Los Angeles Times)
• Kids Buy More Salad If You Put It Under Their Noses. This Is News? <<Not surprisingly, kids are a bit easier to manipulate than college students. Put healthy food in front of them and they’re 300% more likely to eat it. (Tree Hugger)
• Your chance to tell the FDA what you think of food-package labels <<My vote: tell them to ban them. Front of package food labels only serve to trick consumers into believing processed foods have nutritional value. They say these are “smarter food choices” but the smartest choices are in the produce aisle (or out of the store completely) and don’t have labels. (Los Angeles Times)
• Diabetics should not take high doses of vitamin B, researchers say <<”Rather than reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke, the vitamins appear to actually increase it, the researchers said.” Oops. (Los Angeles Times)
• Whole Grains Reduce Heart Attacks and Strokes <<Not particularly surprising, though I know some of you still don’t believe this. The study is a review of the science and is pretty reliable, though most of the experiments don’t even account for differences between intact grains and whole grains. (Diabetic Mediterranean Diet Blog)
• How to pick, store and cook peas <<Peas are such a springtime treat. Here’s some useful tips to make the most of them, with a recipe. (SFGate)
• Cabbage and lime salad with roasted peanuts <<This recipe looks so fresh, delicious and seasonal. Yum. (smitten kitchen)

What inspired you to eat well this week?

Tags: B.S. of the week, diabetes, English shelling peas, food labels, fructose, Healthstyle, recipe, time, whole grains

Vegetables

Most scientists agree that diet plays an important role in heart disease, but until now there has been no comprehensive analysis of which dietary factors most strongly affect disease outcome. A new meta-analysis published in the Archives of Internal Medicine reviews six decades of research (1950-2007) to assess how different dietary factors affect heart disease. Vegetables, nuts, “Mediterranean” and high-quality dietary patterns are strongly protective, while trans-fat, foods with high glycemic index or load and a “Western” dietary pattern were shown to be harmful.

The Study

This new study is unique for several reasons. First, the authors were only interested in factors that influenced heart disease directly, not simply heart disease risk factors such as cholesterol levels. Also, emphasis was placed on high-quality studies designed to identify strong dietary associations (cohort studies and randomized controlled trials) with long periods of follow up (at least one year). They asked whether the studies they reviewed were consistent with other data such as epidemiological reports, and sought to establish a causal link between diet and heart disease outcomes. Another important goal of the analysis was to identify factors that lack sufficient evidence to be conclusive and require further research.

Results

In addition to identifying vegetables, nuts, high-quality and Mediterranean dietary patterns as being strongly protective against heart disease, they also found monounsaturated fats (e.g. olive oil), dietary folate (e.g. whole grains, not supplements), dietary vitamins C and E (not supplements), alcohol consumption (in any form) and omega-3 fatty acids from fish (not plants, e.g. flax) to be moderately protective.

Factors that were not associated with heart disease in this study were dietary supplements (e.g. vitamins C and E), total fat, saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats (from plants), meat, eggs and milk. It is important to note, however, that negative findings in this analysis are not necessarily indicative of a lack of causality. Rather, it may indicate insufficient data to observe a significant positive association.

Dietary Patterns

The authors point out that “only overall healthy dietary patterns are significantly associated with coronary heart disease” in the controlled trials, while “evidence for most individual nutrients or foods is too modest to be conclusive.” They suggest that the reason an association exists for dietary patterns and not individual nutrients is that patterns “have the advantage of taking into account the complex interactions and cumulative effects of multiple nutrients within the entire diet.” The authors recommend future trials test various dietary patterns for disease outcome, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Taking this further, most dietary factors that were shown to be protective when consumed as part of a healthy diet were not protective when taken in supplement form. This finding bolsters the argument that overall diet rather than individual foods or nutrients are the best strategy for protecting against heart disease. The authors conclude that their findings suggest “investigating dietary patterns in cohort studies and randomized controlled trials for common and complex chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease.”

Based on their analysis, the dietary pattern that best protects against heart disease is rich in vegetables, nuts, fish, healthy fats, whole grains, and fruit. Likewise, the worst dietary pattern consists of refined carbohydrates and artificial trans-fats. The lesson: the best diet consists of plants, fish and whole foods, while processed foods contribute to heart disease.

What about red meat and saturated fats?

Interestingly, there was insufficient data to conclude that red meat or saturated fats are harmful for the heart. This is not terribly surprising, since the data has always been inconsistent. However, I would point out that many studies have looked at the role of red meat and saturated fat in coronary risk and the outcome always shows either harm or no result. And as explained above, no result can be indicative of a lack of statistical power rather than lack of causation. Importantly however, I cannot recall a single study suggesting that red meat and saturated fat is actually good for you.

From this the best we can conclude is that red meat or saturated fat may be involved in promoting heart disease, but if they are the effect is likely to be less harmful than a diet of processed foods. Practically this means small doses of saturated fat may not do much harm when eaten as a part of an overall healthy diet. This is a fairly compelling argument for exercising moderation.

Conclusions

Before you run out and order a ribeye, keep in mind that heart disease is not the only debilitating chronic disease that plagues our culture. Red meat is also associated with several kinds of cancer. Likewise, refined carbohydrates are highly correlated with type 2 diabetes. Vegetables and whole grains are protective against these other diseases as well, and fish may play a role in protecting against neurodegenerative diseases.

The take home lesson is that both diet and disease are complex systems that involve innumerable factors in several different regions of the body. When choosing what to eat it is important that you consider the context of your overall diet and do not get caught up is single foods or a single disease threat.

Tags: dietary pattern, fish, heart disease, Mediterranean diet, nuts, omega-3, red meat, refined carbs, saturated fat, trans fat, vegetables, whole grains