Archive for the ‘Food’ Category:
10 Things That Are Surprisingly Good For You
The List Universe has a list of ten things that are surprisingly good for you, which really means they’re healthier than you may think. The reality is that most things that are bad aren’t that bad when taken in moderation, but I was very happy to learn that Ice Cream made the list at #1.
Ice-cream is a low GI (glycemic-index) food. This means that it is a slow sugar release food that keeps you satisfied for a longer period of time than a high GI food. For that reason, you are less likely to binge after eating ice-cream. 75 grams of Ben and Jerry’s Cookies and Cream ice-cream contains only 114 calories compared to a slice of cheesecake with 511 calories. Furthermore, ice-cream is made of milk which contains many essential nutrients and vitamins. 1 cup of milk contains up to 30% of a man’s daily recommended intake. Other nutrients in ice-cream are biotin, iodine, potassium, selenium, vitamins a, b12, D, and K. Studies show a possible link between milk consumption and a lowered risk of arterial hypertension, coronary heart disease, colorectal cancer.
The full list:
- Pornography – yay!
- Smoking
- Beer
- Cannabis
- Chocolate
- Red Wine
- Caffeine
- Stress
- Dirt
- Ice Cream
Subscribe to the comments for this post5 Weight Loss Foods: Grains, Asparagus, Pomegranates, Nuts & Green Tea
Ever get tired of seeing all those green tea weight loss advertisements everywhere? Think they’re scams? Turns out they’re, green tea anyway, actually on the list of five foods that can help you lose weight according to Dr. Maoshing Ni, author of Ask. Dr. Mao on Yahoo! Health.
The five foods are:
- Whole Grains: He specifically calls out millet, a type of whole grain that is non-glutinous, over 10% protein, with significant amounts of fiber and B-complex vitamins.
- Asparagus: Asparagus is rich in folate, vitamins A, C, and K, and fiber, which is great for helping you feel full. Asparagus also has a carb called inulin that promotes healthy bacteria in the large intestine.
- Pomegranates: Pomegranates, along with other fresh fruits, is valuable for its antioxidants. Go with the fresh fruit and not so much the juice because you’ll get more fiber and drink fewer calories.
- Pine Nuts: Chinese medicine believes pine nuts can improve digestive functions and the oil is often used for appetite suppression.
- Green Tea: I didn’t know this but apparently coffee and caffeine in large amounts can lead to food cravings, I’ve always found that coffee suppresses my appetite in the mornings. Either way, Green tea provides both a little caffeine and beneficial antioxidants.
Other tips? Learn to graze by eating five smaller meals, chew more slowly, and avoid processed foods.
5 Essential Weight Loss Foods [Yahoo! Health]
Don’t Snack on Trail Mix
On my desk is a bag of PLanter’s Trail Mix – Fruit and Nut. It’s a pretty good medley of nuts and fruit actually, some peanuts, raisins, banana chips, cashews, pineapple, cranberries and even some papaya. It’s absolutely delicious. It’s also jam packed with a lot of fat (good and bad fats), calories, and sugar. Fortunately it doesn’t have much salt otherwise I’d give myself a heart attack considering all the caffeine I drink in the morning (just kidding!).
Trail mix is delicious but it’s also heavy on calories. Three tablespoons (28g) has 140 calories, 9 grams of fat (2.5g saturated), and 13g of carbs of which 10g is sugar. The dangerous part about trail mix is that you could end up eating the whole bag, all 6 oz., and not even realize it. There are six servings in the bag so you’d be talking about half of your caloric intake (assuming 2000 calorie day) in one sitting. Just snacking.
This is the same concerns some have about dried fruits. Since the fruit is dried, it takes up less space in your stomach so you end up snacking on way more than you should be. The fruit is also packed with sugars and calories so you unknowingly consume a tremendous amount of calories just snacking. While it’s better than snacking on potato chips or chocolate bars, it’s not something you want to make a habit of.
Those calories do come in handy when you’re actually hiking on a trail though!
Truth About Eggs
I remember watching old movies where you’d see body builders consume a dozen raw eggs for breakfast. I mean these guys would be filling up a cup of the good stuff and chugging it down as a source of quick source protein. Since then, with the advent of whey protein powders and shakes and reports of the bad stuff in eggs (cholesterol in the yolks), you see fewer and fewer lifters eating so many eggs. But are eggs that bad for you?
The truth is eggs are good for you but, like many other foods, only in moderation. The concern comes from the cholesterol found in the yolks of the egg. The American Heart Association warns that you should only consume 300 mg of cholesterol per day and the yolk of one large egg contains about 210 mg. So, you can eat an egg a day as long as you control how much other cholesterol you eat.
There are two sources of cholesterol – the food you eat and the amount your body makes. Most of your consumed cholesterol comes from animal fats though there are trace amounts in some plants. Your body’s production (the reason why genetics plays a role) of cholesterol is in reaction to what you eat, so manage that and you can play a small role in controlling your cholesterol.
Bottom line – an egg a day is safe as long as you manage your other cholesterol consumption.
Red Bull May Give Heart Problems
Hmmm… the first time I saw Red Bull was on a trip to China when I was a teenager, about a dozen years ago. We saw the bus driver drinking these cans and thought he was getting drunk! It wasn’t until we inspected the can did we learn that these were energy drinks, which hadn’t become popular (other than Mountain Dew!) in the United States yet, and Red Bull was one of the most famous. I later turned to Red Bull for a pick me up whenever I needed to drive from Baltimore to Pittsburgh, a four hour trek, after a long day of work. Red Bull gave me wings… but apparently it can give heard problems too.
A study of 30 university students, aged 20 – 24, found that just one 250ml sugar-free Red Bull can increase the stickiness of blood and led to increased risk of blood clots forming.
“After one can it seemed to turn the young individual into one with more of the type of profile you would expect to see with someone with cardiovascular disease,” he said. “People who already have existing cardiovascular disease may want to talk to their physician before they drink Red Bull in future.”
It’s only 30 students but it’s still something to cause concern. I’ve stopped drinking Red Bull myself because I didn’t feel as though I needed it (I stopped needing to drive as much) but these types of things do worry me.
Red Bull gives you wings – and heart trouble? [Times Online]
Michael Phelps Consumes 12,000 A Day
The New York Post has an article today about the diet of swimmer Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps eats an amazing 12,000 calories a day (vs. a typical diet of 2,000 calories) and is well on his way to trying to beat mark Spitz’s record of 7 gold medals in an Olympics. The man has already won five of five with five World Records set and has a career gold medal count of ten eleven – which is itself a record. Simply amazing.
Now here’s a sampling of his typical daily intake:
Breakfast
- Three fried egg sandwiches with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayo.
- Two cups of coffee.
- A five-egg omelet.
- A bowl of grits.
- Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar.
- Three chocolate-chip pancakes.
Lunch
- A pound of enriched pasta.
- Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread.
- 1,000 calories in energy drinks.
Dinner
- A pound of pasta.
- An entire pizza.
- 1,000 calories in energy drinks.
Damn that’s a lot of calories.
Phelps’ Pig Secret: He’s Boy Gorge [New York Post]
Myths About Coffee: America’s #1 Drink
The New York Times recently took a look at America’s #1 beverage, coffee, and the ingredient that makes people drink, caffeine, the most widely used drug. The article has a lot of facts but here were the ones that stood out for me:
- There’s a list of how many milligrams of caffeine is present in average beverages. 8 oz. of decaf coffee or tea has about 2 mgs, a 12 oz. Diet Coke has 35 mgs, 1 tablet of NoDoz Maximum Strength has 200 mgs, and a 16 oz. Starbucks Coffee Grand has 330 mgs!
- Caffeinated drinks are diuretics but it takes more than 575 mgs of the good stuff to make it a diuretic, but since to reach that you’ll have had to had two 16 oz. cups of Starbucks Coffee… chances are you would’ve needed to hit the restroom anyway.
- Many of the medical danger links with caffeine were recently refuted including heart disease, hypertension, and pancreatic cancer.
- Caffeine won’t help you lose weight. It will speed up metabolism but there’s no long term effect, 100 mgs will burn an extra 75-100 calories a day (better than nothing!).
Sorting Out Coffee’s Contradictions [New York Times]
Spinach: A Nutrient Packed Superfood
Popeye used to eat the stuff by the can when he needed a little ‘pick me up’ against that brute Bruno. I like to grab a whole bunch whenever I make a salad. What is this awesome leafy green? None other than Spinach. Spinach is a leafy green vegetable that is packed with an incredible amount of goodness and is readily available to most American grocery shoppers. It is low on the calorie count but high on important nutrients like Vitamin K, Vitamin A, Manganese, folate, magnesium, iron, and scores of others.
Are you a proponent anti-oxidants? If so, you probably already know about spinach because researches have identified at least thirteen phytonutrient flavonoids that act as anti-oxidants and the reason why researchers have created extracts to use in studies to investigate it further.
My wife and I have been trying to eat more vegetables and thankfully two of our favorites are spinach and broccoli, another superfood. If you’re a salad eater, skip the iceberg lettuce (which is mostly water), and instead grab some field greens and throw some spinach on there. That minor change will help improve your health even more so than before and helps reduce those hunger pangs that strike.
Volumetrics Diet: Fill Up To Lose Weight
Volumetrics is a diet plan developed by nutritionist Barbara Rolls, PhD, with one aim in mind – fill you up with food that is low in calories but high in volume (volumetrics! get it!?). She explains the Volumetrics diet in a 2000 book titled The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan and then in 2005 with The Volumetrics Eating Plan.
First, who is Dr. Rolls? She’s a professor nutrition, the director of the Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior at Penn State University, and author of over 200 research articles. She’s not some random Joe Schmoe with a crazy plan and a dream of riches. Her plan is based on her empirical research and I think it has some merits.
So, how does it work? The plan revolves around the concept of energy density – that is the number of calories in a specified amount of food. The denser the food, the less of it you should eat. High density foods include cookies, chips, crackers, oils, nuts, chocolate and candy. Low densite foods include non-starch vegetables, low fat milk – stuff with a lot of water content. Vegetables are 80-95% water, so the idea is that you “fill up” on low energy density foods to quell that hunger urge.
It’s not a particularly innovative diet, in that it’s not some blockbuster straight out of left field idea; it’s stuff nutritionists have been saying this entire time. Personally, I’m going to integrate more vegetables into our meals. I’m a huge fan of broccoli and recently we learned that spinach was remarkably good for you so we’ll be having more of those in the future.
Home Grown Vegetables Taste Better
This spring and summer, my wife and I have restarted our patio garden and planted some tomatoes, hot peppers, and bell peppers. So far we’ve only harvested a handful of patio and Roma tomatoes but they’ve tasted fantastic. We did it for several reasons:
- There is entertainment value out of growing your own fruits and vegetables,
- It’s a fantastically frugal way to enjoy freshly picked items,
- It’s cheaper than driving to the store and buying (we hope!),
- You get a lot of satisfaction from being self-sustaining (to a certain extend).
I recently posted a video update on the garden’s progress recently and are eager to pick the eggplants!
There are studies that have shown that organically grown fruits and vegetables, despite being smaller and more expensive, pack more nutrition (vitamins, minerals, and other good stuff) than the conventionally grown stuff. One thing we’ve empirically learned was that the vegetables tasted better than from the store. Now, we don’t know if it’s because we can taste the love and sweat we put into caring for the little guys or if it’s because they’re actually tastier, but they are tastier. 
