Thursday, June 25, 2009

Brigitta's Rules of How to Eat (For Brigitta)

For those of your reading these blog posts, I thought I might share with you what goes through my mind when I think of food.

First of all, food is nutrition. Many people think they eat for energy. Yes, we do eat for energy, but think of plants. They get their energy from the sun and they still need nutrients from the soil. 40% of the calories we consume are used in the maintenance of our bones. 40% is HUGE. Osteoporosis is a disease of malnutrition. Many women in this country - one of the richest in the world - are suffering from a disease of malnutrition! There is not much if any nutrition in junk food and fast food and even most chain restaurant food. There is lots of energy (calories) but very little nutrition.

Please understand that I am human. I eat candy, cookies, ice cream - you name it, I've eaten it. Not much, not often. I'm sharing these "rules" with you in order to help you think about food and the role that food plays in your health. We are what we eat. What else could we be?

The rules:

Don't eat food from packages that crinkle. Don't eat food from packages.

Eat food that has been processed the least or not at all. I used to buy ShopRite's Natural Peanut Butter. (Ingredients: Peanuts, Salt) Last Saturday, I went to a health food store in Teaneck and bought peanut butter that was ground right in front of my eyes and contained just ground peanuts. It is tasty, but not so tasty that I am likely to overindulge. Do you know that the Jiff and the Skippy people have decided that peanuts need to be enhanced with sugar, salt and shortening? A cut up apple is better than a cup of applesauce or a glass of apple juice. An orange is better than a glass of orange juice. You get the point?

Look at the ingredients on your food. If there are ingredients that you can't pronounce or that you don't have in the cupboard, take a pass. I just pulled out a loaf of cinnamon bread that I bought for my husband. (He doesn't follow my rules - ever.) It has mono and diglycerides, palm oil and/or palm kernel oil, sodium stearyl lactylate, polysorbate 60. What are those things? I bake but I have never seen a recipe for home made anything calls for any of those ingredients.

Eat out very little. A chef or a restaurant has one motivation. Make the food so tasty that you'll come back. Your nourishment doesn't even enter the equation. We need about 2 or 3 ounces of protein a day. What's up with the 20 ounce Prime Rib? The portions of everything are too big. Study after study has shown that the more food is on your plate, the more you will eat.

Eat plenty of vegetables and fruit. We went out for lunch last week at a BBQ place. No vegetables were brought with our meal. None. French fries are not a vegetable. They are a shortcut for heart disease and a weight problem.

If you would like to weigh less, eat your dinner off smaller plates. This one trick will help you a lot.

Eat soup. It is so easy to put a ton of vegetables into a pot of soup. Soup is particularly satisfying to eat.

I love to look up the nutrients and calories in various foods. The more nutrients the better the food. http://www.calorieking.com/ is a particularly good website for nutrition information. If a food doesn't have much nutrition, I take a pass. Why waste the calories? Whole wheat flour has way more nutrition than white flour. Brown rice beats white rice. Beans are amazing nutritionally. All vegetables and fruits are powerhouses.

I bake my own bread. My bread has whole wheat flour, kosher salt, organic safflower oil, molasses, water, yeast, powdered milk and gluten. It is delicious and I highly recommend a bread machine. The space it takes up is worth having bread that is good for you.

Energy bars. You are doing something wrong if you need energy bars to get through the day. I ride my bike 10 miles, go for a one hour paddle in my kayak and go for a swim in the lake all in one day and do not need an energy bar. Eat an apple or have a banana. (Besides, energy bars come in a crinkly package. An energy bar is a candy bar in disguise, they are not that good to eat.) Actually, many people over estimate the amount of calories burned in an activity and underestimate the amount of calories in the food they eat. Do you know you have to walk a mile and a half to burn off a 150 calorie energy bar?

Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every day. Skipping meals is a bad idea. You are just setting yourself up to overeat at your next meal.

Time for all this. I have many clients that tell me they don't have time to cook or prepare food. Really? I can have a simple dinner on the table in 20 minutes. No way could you drive to a restaurant, get a table, order, get your food, eat it, wait for the check, drive home in less than 20 minutes.

So in a nutshell I eat: Vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, whole grains, a little protein from fish, chicken or turkey and a little dairy. It may sound boring but my clothes fit and I feel good. Can you say the same?

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