A priest and an atheist were sitting next to each other on a flight. They spent most of the time arguing their respective positions when suddenly the captain notified the passengers that the engines are burning and the plane is about to crash. As the plane nosedived, the priest began to fervently pray. He couldn’t help but notice that the atheist was praying too. “I thought you don’t believe in god,” he asked. “I don’t,” answered the atheist, “but it sure won’t hurt to try…”

It seems like “won’t hurt” is what many people say about supplementing. They’re not really sure, but aggressive marketing combined with less than optimal nutrition as a result of junk food, leave many people opting for the “extra insurance”.

Are supplements just a placebo? According to two recent article in the Washington Post and Reader’s Digest, vitamins and supplements don’t contribute to improved health, and according to some studies may actually cause damage:

Megadoses of E, for example, can increase the risk of bleeding if you’re already on heart meds like blood thinners. An earlier 2004 analysis by Johns Hopkins researchers found consuming 400 IU or more of vitamin E a day alone (some products on the market today contain 1,000 IU per capsule) was associated with a higher risk of dying and should be avoided. (One theory says high doses may alter your natural immune function and actually become pro-oxidant.) Taking too much niacin without a doctor’s okay can lead to liver damage and other problems over time. And too much vitamin A increases the risk of liver and lung cancers, and can cause birth defects and reduce bone density.

The supplement industry does not like bad reviews that could hurt the $7.5-$10 Billion a year business. And it seems that many people dearly want to believe that vitamin pills are their savior – have an unhealthy day, munching away on junk food and slurping cola, but redeem yourself with a multivitamin for dinner.

Without getting into the debate on the efficacy or not of these pills, let’s think for a minute about the nomenclature – supplements. A supplement is something that may be added, not something that replaces real nutrients from whole foods. Eating pizzas and burgers all week long and then supplementing will NOT make you healthier.

And despite our understanding of how individual vitamins interact with the body, there are thousands of additional nutrients in each fruit or vegetable that science has yet to fully understand. Not to mention how they all work together. Isolating a few of the nutrients while disregarding the others may be the reason that many of the promises on the supplement packaging never come true.

The American Dietetic Association recommends we get our nutrients from food, not pills. There is leeway for people with certain deficiencies as well as a general recommendation to get vitamin D for those of us who live in dark cold regions of the country, without too much sunlight in the winter. But that does not justify the existence of entire aisles in pharmacies for insta-pills.

What to do at the supermarket:

Buy lots of fruits and vegetables. If you think they’re too expensive, consider the extra $$$ as money not spent on supplements, medications, and future doctors’ visits. You can buy frozen produce at lower prices. Canned goods are also an option, but watch out for high levels of sodium.

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This is a guest vlog by Chef Rob Endelman.

Now you know what to do with kale! Do you think it will work with Guinness beer?

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This is a guest blog post by Chef Rob Endelman.

Cooking, despite what Big Food wants us to believe, does not have to be a time-consuming chore.  I’ll argue that waiting in line at the doctor’s office and pharmacy is the real energy-draining bore.

You do not need much to successfully cook for yourself and your family, save for simple ingredients and basic cooking technique.  I can’t shop for you, but I can help you realize that often just a little sautéing or stirring is all that is needed to produce meals that are far superior to packaged and processed foodstuffs.

I’ve chosen three dishes that illustrate cooking’s simplicity.  Feel free to substitute ingredients, especially in the hearty vegetable soup and pasta sauce.

1. Hearty vegetable soup recipe – A hearty winter meal that further debunks the myth that cooking is difficult and expensive. I made about eight portions and it cost me $9. (Had I not used mostly organic ingredients, it would have totaled $5.) Prep time was 10 minutes and cooking time (mostly unattended) was roughly an hour.

2. Pasta sauce recipe – make a quick sauce, in about 10 minutes, to put over whole wheat pasta. The pasta cooks while you prepare the sauce.

3. Hot chocolate recipe – Making your own hot chocolate with quality cocoa powder (I use Green & Black’s) takes about the same amount of time and isn’t that much more expensive than using packaged hot chocolate mixes that contain refined sugars and synthetic ingredients. Plus, the difference in flavor is startling.

Rob Endelman is a chef who, in addition to teaching cooking technique, empowers people with the knowledge to make better choices when it comes to buying and preparing food.  He believes that a lack of awareness about our industrial food supply has contributed to the increase in modern diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cancer.  Through The Delicious Truth and Cook with Class, Chef Rob helps people understand, identify and avoid hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and synthetic additives.

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Spend 20 minutes watching the passionate plea of super chef turned food revolutionary, Jamie Oliver. his wish:

I wish for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again, and empower people everywhere to fight obesity

Some highlights from the talk:

• For the last 7 years Jamie has been working to save lives through food education.
• Eating good food at home binds us to the best bits of life.
• We have an awful awful reality now – this is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world.
• Diet related disease is the biggest killer in the US today.
• Smoking costs way less than obesity. Obesity costs $150B a year and will double in 10 years.
• Obesity is a preventable disease – a waste of a life.
• Fast food has taken over this country. Some of the most important powers are fast food companies.
• The labeling in this country is a DISGRACE. The industry cannot police itself. How can you say something is low-fat when it’s so full of sugar.
• School lunch is critical. Lots of respect for the school lunch ladies – they are doing the best they can.
• Knives and forks are too dangerous for school lunchrooms? This means you are endorsing fast food – which is hand held.
• If kids don’t know what stuff is – they’ll never eat it (cauliflower, eggplant, tomato, etc…)
• Kids have a right to milk at school – but why all the added flavorings, colorings, and SUGAR.
• With all this sugar, any judge would find the government guily of child abuse.
• If I came here with a cure for cancer or AIDS, you’d all line up to meet me, but here is a preventable disease. We need to reboot our thinking.
• The fast food industry needs to wean us off the hits of sugar, fat, salt over a 5 year period.
• Labeling is an absolute farce that needs to be sorted.
• New standard of fresh proper food for our children in school is required.
• Every child should leave school with 10 basic recipes they can cook that will save their lives.

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It seems like the best and brightest MBA graduates go to work for marketing firms. In 1989, one of them came up with a great idea to increase snack sales in the ho-hum month of February. According to the Snack Food Association (SFA) the idea of the month long munch-fest was

to increase consumption and build awareness of snacks during a month when snack food consumption was traditionally low. The result has been a substantial increase in snack food sales during this month. The promotion kicks off on Super Bowl Sunday and publicity is generated throughout the month of February.

Twenty plus years later, you can’t argue with “success.” We’re a snackin’ nation, that’s for sure, with over $60 Billion in sales of snacks annually.

What you need to know:

The decline of family sit-down meals as well as a blurred line separating meals from snacks means that today it’s easier than ever to not even once during the day eat a meal. Whether it’s the breakfast bar you can chew on your commute or a bag of chips in your desk drawer, we’re always an arm’s reach away from a quick and easy hunger fix.

Riding on the health trend, marketers are now busy reformulating and re-messaging their products has healthy snack options. Whether it’s the 100-calorie snack genre, the “health hallowed” granola bar, or potato chips with only 3 natural ingredients, consumers are being convinced that the snacks they are consuming by  the billions are the best thing to happen in the world since sliced bread.

Now don’t get us wrong, snacking is fine, and can fill an important part of the day both nutritionally and socially (cookies and milk, anyone?), but we’ve really, really got to notice how often we snack, what we choose, and how it affects our mealtimes.

Especially with young children, where a less than ideal snack can fill up a small tummy instead of a much more balanced meal to be served an hour or two later.

What to do at the supermarket:

Get out of the snack aisles, and choose your snacks from surprising lanes in the supermarket. Fruits? Check. Veggies in a dip? Check. Bake your own cookies from scratch? Check.

A great resource full of ideas for healthy snacking is over at the Snack-Girl blog.

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Just when we thought we had covered all the nutrition rating systems out there, here’s a new system being implemented at Whole Foods Market stores nationwide. ANDI, short for Aggregate Nutrient Density Index, is the brainchild of author, MD, and founder of Eat Right America, Dr. Joel Fuhrman.

The ANDI system is a part of a bigger initiative by Whole Foods, entitled Health Starts Here, which encompasses not just making healthy food available, but also providing education on what to do what with that food (culinary lessons, 28 day programs to jump start healthy eating habits…).

The healthy eating principles WFM is promoting are:

• plant based diet
• whole foods (less processed flours, for example)
• low fat – or the right fats (unsaturated, more from plants and less from animals)
• nutrient dense (that’s where ANDI comes in)

The ANDI score, based on a Dr. Fuhrman’s Nutrient Density Scoring System analyzes many nutrients in a food product

Calcium, Carotenoids: Beta Carotene, Alpha Carotene, Lutein & Zeaxanthin, Lycopene, Fiber, Folate, Glucosinolates, Iron, Magnesium, Niacin, Selenium, Vitamin B1 (Thiamin) Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin), Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Zinc, plus ORAC score X 2 (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity is a method of measuring the antioxidant or radical scavenging capacity of foods).

The data for whole foods such as produce, grains, and legumes is relatively easy to analyze based on USDA databases. It is much more complicated to get accurate info for packaged or processed foods, especially because the ingredients in a processed food interact with each other and change the nutrition profile of a product.

Here is a table with some sample scores. The highest score is 1000, the lowest is close to zero.

This is a very interesting table, especially if one compares it to NuVal ranking which goes from 1-100. Take a look at these 4 healthy products and their scores:

• Kale – 1000
• Orange – 109
• Whole wheat bread – 25
• Olive oil – 9

A naive shopper may be led to believe that kale is the only product worth consuming. But all 4 of the aforementioned are healthy and needed by our bodies. Dr. Fuhrman addresses this:

Keep in mind that nutrient density scoring is not the only factor that determines good health. For example, if we only ate foods with a high nutrient density score our diet would be too low in fat. So we have to pick some foods with lower nutrient density scores (but preferably the ones with the healthier fats) to include in our high nutrient diet.

So wouldn’t it be more practical to create a scoring system that doesn’t require people to analyze a score , the product type, the required nutrients and then decide? The entire point is to simplify life for consumers, not complicate it!

Whole Foods is perceived as a healthier, albeit expensive, grocery retailer. But recently John Mackey, WFM CEO and founder, openly admitted that his chain sells lots of junk food. The Health Starts Here program may be a signal that Mackey is retuning to the roots of what WFM stood for in the seventies when just starting out.

The ANDI scores are an interesting first step in trying to help consumers better choose healthier foods, and it will be very interesting to see consumer response. We expect Whole Foods will continue to introduce and test additional tools to help their customers.

What to do at the supermarket:

Don’t let the Whole Foods health halo confuse you, as organic junk food is still junk food. Stick to the less processed products, of which Whole Foods has copious amounts, including in bulk (cheaper).

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This is a guest post by Melissa Marek, RD LD

Fiber is an extremely important part of your daily diet. Its best known benefit is its ability to help keep our bowels moving. Eating enough fiber will help prevent constipation. The added benefit is that it also plays a role in protecting against diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. If that isn’t enough reason to get a daily dose of fiber, it also helps with weight management by helping to keep you fuller longer.

In order to make sure you are getting enough fiber, it helps to understand where it comes from and where you can find it. Fiber comes mainly from plant cell walls, the parts that cannot be digested by the enzymes of the GI tract. For that reason, fiber can be found in plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, and grains.

To best benefit from fiber, the recommended daily amount is 21-25 grams per day for women and 30-38 grams per day for men. This is not a difficult goal to meet, but remember that when adding fiber to your diet, you will need to increase your fiber intake slowly and more importantly, increase your fluids. If you don’t drink enough fluids you may suffer from constipation, the very thing that fiber helps alleviate.

To better comprehend the benefits of fiber and how to best meet daily requirements, it helps to understand that there are different types of fiber. They come from different sources and, accordingly, help with different things.

SOLUBLE FIBER may help lower blood cholesterol, especially LDL (bad) cholesterol. It also helps control blood sugar in people with diabetes. You can get soluble fiber from oats, oat bran, dried beans and peas, nuts, barley, flax seed, oranges, apples, carrots, and psyllium husk.

INSOLUBLE FIBER moves bulk through the intestines, which helps prevent constipation. It also controls and balances the pH in your intestines. Insoluble fiber can be found in fruit skins, root vegetable skins, dark green leafy vegetables, whole wheat products, corn bran, seeds and nuts.

Soluble fiber, as it name alludes, becomes a jelly-like mass when mixed with water and ferments in the intestinal tract, but insoluble fiber just absorbs the water and bulks up stool.

The term DIETARY FIBER, which appears on nutrition facts labels is merely a sum of the soluble and insoluble fiber content in a product, per serving.

A common source of fiber is whole grain. Whole grain refers to the entire grain seed (bran, germ, & endosperm).  Whole grain foods are an important source of not only fiber, but also of vitamins, minerals and other health-promoting compounds that you won’t find in a refined grain.

HOW MUCH SHOULD I BE EATING?

According to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 3 or more ounce-equivalents of whole grain products per day is ideal. You can meet this requirement by adding barley, buckwheat, bulgur, corn, millet, rice, rye, oats, sorghum, wheat and wild rice to your daily diet.

What does a one-ounce equivalent of whole grains look like?

• 1 slice 100% whole grain bread
• 1/2 of a 100% whole grain English muffin or bagel
• ½ cup hot cooked oatmeal (Rolled oats or quick oats)
• 2 cups popped popcorn
• 1 ounce baked tortilla chips (About 15 chips)
• 1/3 cup cooked whole wheat pasta
• 1/3 cup cooked brown rice, bulgur, sorghum, or barley

TIPS TO INCREASE YOUR FIBER INTAKE:

• Sprinkle flax meal, wheat germ,  or nuts/seeds onto your cereal, cottage cheese, yogurt, or even frozen yogurt
• Add fresh or dried fruits to your cereal or yogurt
• Substitute whole wheat flour for at least 1/3 of the all purpose flour in baked goods
• Add frozen vegetables to soups or casseroles
• Add beans into a salad, soup, or stew
• Cut prunes into pieces and mix them into yogurt, cereal, or pancake mix

What to do at the supermarket:

Packaging for fiber rich foods now often contain a label promoting its fiber content. These labels make finding fiber-rich foods easy so shoppers don’t have to go through the hassle of checking out the food label or searching for the fiber content. But what do these regulated fiber claims mean exactly?

• 100% Whole Grain or 100% Whole Wheat: The product doesn’t have any refined white flour
• Good source of fiber:  There are at least 3g per serving
• Excellent source of fiber:  There are at least 5g per serving
• When reading the ingredient statement, a whole grain should be listed FIRST!

Here’s a handy list of fiber rich products:

• Oats
• Oat bran
• Grains (Barley, bulgur, Kasha, Amaranth, Quinoa, Couscous)
• Polenta
• Brown rice
• Whole wheat breads and pastas
• Fresh fruits (Oranges, pears, dried figs, apples, berries, raisins)
  —> Choose whole fruits (fresh, frozen, or dried) over juices, which have most of the fiber removed
• Fresh vegetables (Winter squash, peas, eggplant, beets, cabbage, broccoli, artichoke hearts, corn)
• Potatoes & sweet potatoes
• Dried beans
• Nuts

Melissa Marek is a graduate of Texas A&M University with degrees in both Nutritional Sciences and Food Science & Technology.  She has experience with recipe analysis for magazines and restaurants as well as with nutrition facts labeling for large corporations and private label companies. She is a registered dietitian at Axxya Systems, makers of Diet Analysis and Food Labeling software products. Contact her at mmarek [at] axxya [dot] com.

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This is a guest blog post by Carol Harvey, director of nutrition labeling at Palate Works. She recently visited the San Francisco Fancy Food Show.

For 35 years, the Fancy Food Show has been the trade show of all things tasty, gourmet and upscale. Many food products are launched there, including an increasing number dished up as “healthy” or “better for you,” due to evolving consumer demand.

In fact, the “top 5 food trends” for 2010 just announced by NASFT (the trade association that produces the show) include “good-for-you foods”. This “trend,” brewing for most of the 20 years that I have been attending the show, has proven a smart business move for a number of brands.

Whether any of the 100,000+ exhibited products really nailed the “taste + nutrition” prize was my focus again this year in San Francisco. And once again, how a company uses nutrition claims separated those that know their nutrition and labeling from those that don’t. Here are three examples. Read more…

One of the hottest buzzwords in nutrition and health circles, fiber is the indigestible portion of plant foods. It helps us feel full and decreases our appetite. Fiber helps the intestines function smoothly, regulates blood sugar levels, and lowers bad cholesterol.

As you probably know, fiber rich foods include whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes. The rule of thumb is that the less processed the food, the more fiber. The problem is that these unprocessed foods are not always popular with consumers. They require some preparation (peeling an orange vs drinking Tropicana), are less tasty than processed foods (whole grain rice vs white rice, beans vs a steak), and are harder to chew (wonder bread vs rye bread).

As a result, most Americans are far from reaching the required daily consumption of 25 grams of fiber for women and 38 grams for men. This means a huge opportunity for the food industry, which now adds fiber to many processed foods.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Some foods, such as whole wheat bread, are naturally high in fiber. A growing number of products, however, proudly proclaim their high-fiber content, such as Arnold’s Double Fiber Bread and Yoplait’s Fiber One yogurt, getting some or all of their fiber from so-called isolated or functional fibers — ingredients with names like inulin, maltodextrin and polydextrose — that manufacturers intentionally add to foods to boost total fiber content. read more…

But questions are being asked about the utility of these functional fibers as compared to the real thing. When we consume fiber directly from the source, we’re getting the additional benefits of micronutrients in the whole grain or fruit. Once isolated from its nutrient buddies in a plant and injected into a yogurt or juice, the health benefit of inulin may not be the same as a similar amount of fiber in a whole food.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you are seeking fiber, don’t look just at the nutrition facts panel. Read the ingredient list to find whole grains at the beginning. A heavily processed food with a long ingredient list that includes inulin or maltodextrin is less beneficial than a less processed product with whole grain.

Bran (the hard outer layer of a grain) in the ingredient list is a good thing to find. In breakfast cereals, products that include bran and whole grain have better fiber content than those based on processed grains.

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