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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Santa Claus, one of the most popular children’s icons, is not an appropriate role model for kids these days, a comical holiday report from the British Medical Journal says.

A review of literature found that:

Santa made a reckless role model, noting his frequent cookie snacks, occasional cigars and refusal to don a helmet during “extreme sports such as roof surfing and chimney jumping.”

“Santa promotes a message that obesity is synonymous with cheerfulness and joviality” (Ronald McDonald took that theme to new heights)

We still love you Santa, but this year we’ll leave you carrots and lowfat dip on the kitchen table instead of cookies and milk.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

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Very healthy! Or at least that’s what new research, sponsored by ConAgra, has shown. Here’s the press release:

ConAgra Foods announced today new research that shows people who ate Healthy Choice(R) really did get healthier. Participants in the 24-week study, on average, lost 18 pounds – all as fat – trimmed their waistlines by about three inches, and lowered their cholesterol by 12 points. Leading cardiologist Dr. James Rippe, founder and director of the Rippe Lifestyle Institute, led the research team that conducted the study, which was presented during the 2009 Experimental Biology Conference April 18-22 in New Orleans, La.

get it all here…

Excuse us while we scratch our heads. How can The Rippe Institute conduct a truly objective study when it is being heftily paid by a company with a vested interest in a specific outcome?

Reading into the study, the people eating Helthy Choice got healthier because they were forced to excercise, eat only fruits, vegetables, lean meat and dairy, and whole grains. Oh, and one Healthy Choice meal once a day. How can the weight loss be attributed specifically to the frozen meal?

This press release is part of a huge rebranding of the Healthy Choice empire, including the introduction of new products, reformulation of some existing lines, and new packaging. ConAgra is estimated to be spending close to $100 million on this effort, including National TV Ads starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and web activities.

What you need to know:

While frozen dinners have made some headway over the past few years in terms of nutritional content, they still lag far behind home made food on several fronts:

1. high levels of salt – in the clip above, Julia Louis Dreyfus is stuffing herself silly with Sweet Asian Potstickers containing 600mg of sodium. That’s a quarter of the daily maximum value.

2. high levels of sugar – 19 grams or 4 teaspoonfuls. Hey, is this dessert?

3. too many ingredients* – here’s what’s inside the Sweet Asian Potstickers:

Vegetable Potstickers: (Filling [Cabbage, Vermicelli {Mung Bean, Water}, Baked Tofu (Tofu [Water, Whole Soybeans, Nigari], Tamari [Water, Soybeans, Salt, Alcohol, Wheat], Natural Flavors, Spices), Bulgur Wheat, Precooked Rice, Water Chestnuts, Green Beans, Onions, Carrots, Soy Sauce (Water, Wheat, Soybeans, Salt), Sesame Oil, Evaporated Cane Juice, Salt, Xanthan Gum, Spice], Wrapper [Wheat Flour, Water, Corn Starch, Soybean and/or Canola Oil]). Cooked Whole Grain Brown Rice, Water, Sugar, Carrots, Red Peppers, Sake, Rice Vinegar, Scallions, Corn Starch, Wheat, Soybeans, Spices, Sesame Oil, Garlic Puree, Salt, Locust Gum

To be fair, most of the list above is actually understandable, and there are no freaky additives or preservatives in this dish. So when the food scientists want to, they can dish out healthy fare…

* We could not find the ingredient information on the Healthy Choice website. The customer support group did reply promptly to our email, though.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you really really can’t prepare your own food, and must grab something from the Frozen Dinner Aisle, take a look at health brands such as Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine first. The brand does not automatically promise you’ll get a nutritious dish, but it improves the chances.

Proceed to check the ingredient list, scanning for unpronounceable chemicals, and then look at the sodium count. It should be in the neighborhood of  400-500mg or less. The sugar count should be lower than 12 grams. Usually the calorie count will be decent, because manufacturers know that’s the only number most people look at.

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Lean Cuisine, A Nestle brand of frozen dinners, is very popular with dieters. “Lean Cuisine” is considered a nutrient content claim by the FDA, so all products under this brand are required to meet the “lean” criteria per serving: less than 10 grams of fat, less than 4.5 grams of saturated fat, and less than 95 mg cholesterol.

We decided to take a look at Lean Cuisine’s Shrimp and Angel Hair Pasta described by Nestle as:

Shrimp and angel hair pasta in a creamy seafood sauce with accents of sherry, tossed with red peppers.

Read more…

This is the second of a two part post.

In the first part, we explained why it is cheaper to gain weight than it is to lose it. The price of taste and convenience has fallen mightily to unprecedented levels in the past 50 years. As a result people are now fatter than ever.

Today we’ll show you that it’s not necessarily more expensive to eat healthy.

If you can’t pay more, and don’t want to sacrifice taste, yet still want to eat healthy, you will have to inconvenience yourself just a tad. You’ll have to invest more thought and time into food than you do today. But heck, if you have time for 3 hours of TV and 2 hours on the web daily, surely you can find some time to take care of your body.

Here are some strategies to eat more healthily and pay less. (Annual savings are for  a family of four). Read more…

Image: Campbell Soup Company

Last week, Campbell Soup Company reintroduced 12 of its popular canned soups for children, reformulated to be considered healthy by FDA standards:

…12 Campbell’s® Kids soups, reformulated to contain 480 milligrams of sodium per serving.

Now popular favorites [...] meet the government criteria for “healthy” foods – controlled for fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium and being a good source of a positive nutrient like vitamin A.

The newly-reformulated soups are the latest to come to market as part of Campbell’s ongoing commitment to wellness, for a total of 78 soups in the portfolio at the healthy levels for sodium. By leveraging a combination of unique, lower sodium natural sea salt and expertise in flavor design, Campbell has been able to deliver lower sodium options without sacrificing taste.

Read the Press Release…

What you need to know:

For years, using salt was a cheap and easy way for manufacturers to mask the canned flavor of commercial soups. However, due to high levels of consumption, salt is now recognized as a serious threat to public health. Americans consume almost twice the recommended daily allowance of 2400mg (a teaspoon) a day. This leads to high blood pressure and related ailments.

Reducing salt is a good move by Campbell’s, in line with its strategy to refurbish a tarnished image of canned soup as a mega warehouse for MSG and sodium.

Taking for example, the Disney Princess Pasta Shapes soup, Campbell’s has reduced sodium from 580mg to 480mg per serving, and eliminated monosodium glutamate completely.

However, the bit about unique, lower sodium natural sea salt is marketing hype. There is no nutritional difference between sea salt and regular salt (derived from rock salt mineral deposits). True, the flavor may slightly differ when shaken on to food, due to tiny amounts of additional minerals found in sea salt. But the amount of sodium is the same.

Also in the reformulation, the calorie count actually went up from 70 to 80 calories per serving, but this is negligible.

What to do at the supermarket:

Thinking about making your own soup but afraid to try? Soup is actually one of the easiest foods to prepare because it is very tolerant to mistakes by beginners. Scoot on over to the produce section and get some carrots, celery, pumpkin, zucchini, and onions. At home, wash, peel, dice, and throw into a pot of boiling water. Let cook for a few hours, add pepper and salt, and your soup is ready. Much tastier than canned soup, and guaranteed to contain less sodium.

OK, this week you don’t have time. In this case, look for soups with a reduced sodium level, preferably 480mg or less per serving.

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