Cutting Back on Added Sugars
by Shereen Jegtvig
This week the American Heart Association released new guidelines on how much added sugar is acceptable in a healthy diet. Added sugars include sweeteners such as table sugar, honey and high fructose corn syrup that are either added during the production of foods or at the table. In general, the guidelines suggest no more than about 150 calories per day (based on your daily calorie need) come from added sugar. That’s approximately the same as 6 teaspoons of table sugar.
This may be less than many Americans are consuming each day. In fact, one 12 ounce can of soda might exceed your limit – and just imagine how much sugar is in a giant super-sized soda. It’s important to watch your sugar intake because eating too much sugar can easily cause you to take in more calories than you are able to burn each day. That leads to being overweight, then obese and increases your chances of having high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Another consideration is that added sugar really has no additional nutritional benefit – nothing but simple carbohydrate calories that are easy to absorb and your body has no trouble converting the extra energy to fat. Read more
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Partially Hydrogenated Fats and Trans-Fats
by Shereen Jegtvig
When you look on the ingredients lists of your packaged foods, you may see ‘partially hydrogenated oil’ lurking there. Hydrogenation involves forcing hydrogen molecules into the polyunsaturated fat molecules of liquid oil. The addition of the hydrogen molecules changes the chemical structure of the fats and turns the liquid oil into a more solid shape (think about stick margarine). These fats are called trans-fats.
That’s a bad thing because partially trans-fats are worse for you than saturated fats. Trans fats raise LDL cholesterol (the bad kind), which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Eating too many of these artificially created trans-fats clogs your arteries and increases inflammation.
It’s so bad, that food manufacturers are required by the United States Food and Drug Administration to indicate how many grams of trans-fat are contained in each serving of their products. And New York City has banned the use of trans-fats in local restaurants. Read more
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Vitamin D: The Sunshine Vitamin
Mother nature gave us the ability to form Vitamin D simply by sitting in the sun. It’s the only vitamin that is made in our body without us consuming anything, and this is great news for those of us who live in sunny climates, or spend a lot of time outdoors and so can easily obtain enough sunlight most days.
However, as more Americans are lathering on the sun screen and spending more time indoors, their Vitamin D levels lowering, which in turn is resulting in a growing health problem. Additionally, as we turn to soft drinks and juices to quench our thirst we are drinking less and less milk, which is good source of Vitamin D.
Recent studies have showed that between 50 and 75 percent of Americans have less than optimal levels of Vitamin D, this is concerning because low levels of the sunshine vitamin can raise the risk of weak bones and, possibly, heart disease. In fact, worryingly, America is seeing a return of rickets – a disease caused by lack of Vitamin D. The figures show that 7 out of 10 of American children have too-low levels of Vitamin D putting them at huge risk of developing rickets. Read more
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Omega-3 Fatty Acids: What Role Do They Play?
by Shereen Jegtvig
Fats can be confusing. Some are bad for you, if you eat too much of them, like the saturated fats and trans fats, but some are good for you, like the polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. But you even have to be a little careful with the good fats, because all fats are high in calories. One gram of fat has nine calories, almost twice as much as the same amount of carbohydrate or protein. You need fats, but not a lot of them and some, like the omega-3 fats are essential – your body can’t make them for you – so you need to get them from your diet.
Omega-3 fats are necessary for good health – they’ll help protect your heart, slow down macular degeneration (the leading cause of blindness in the elderly), and reduce inflammation in your body. Your brain and nervous system need omega-3 fats for normal function, and in fact, it’s crucial for pregnant women to get lots of omega-3 fats during the third trimester of pregnancy as well as through the first three months of nursing, so that the baby’s brain and eyes develop normally. Read more
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Cutting Fat and Calories by Using Cooking Sprays
by Shereen Jegtvig
With obesity becoming a major health problem, it’s good to look for ways to cut calories – every little bit counts. One way to reduce the calories and total fat in your diet is to use cooking sprays instead of oil or butter when you cook. These cooking sprays work great for coating pans and bakeware without adding extra calories because you’re able to use just a thin layer of the product on your cookware.
How Cooking Sprays Work
Cooking sprays combine a small amount of oil with an emulsifier (usually soy lecithin) and a propellant. You simply spray the product onto your cookware. Some brands contain small amounts of silicone-based materials that appear to be harmless when ingested in these small amounts; however I don’t think they have the greatest flavor. Many also contain preservatives and even some artificial flavorings. The best cooking sprays keep the ingredients list short – only an oil, lecithin and a propellant. Read more
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Fortify Yourself With IRON
If, like many of us, you see the encouraging words ‘fortified with iron‘ or, ‘a great source of iron‘ splashed across a myriad of food labels these days you could be forgiven for thinking you are doing the right (healthy) thing by assuming that if it says that, then surely…it must be good for me – right? In most cases – No. But perhaps more to the point – do we really understand the role that iron plays in our body? FoodEssentials investigates, and discovers there’s more to Iron than science labs and iron gates!
Iron is one of the most vital minerals needed in our diet because of it’s important functions in the body. Among other things, it carries oxygen around the body, helping our bodies to grow and repair themselves, whilst keeping our immune system on top form. Read more
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Cheese: Healthy Lifestyle or Fattening Indulgence?
by Shereen Jegtvig
Cheese is one of those foods (like chocolate) that’s good for you in the right amount, but too much probably isn’t so good. Cheese is a dairy product so it’s a good source of protein and calcium, but it’s usually high in saturated fat and sodium. Too much saturated fat may lead to cardiovascular disease and inflammation, plus all that fat adds a lot of calories (cheese is a very energy dense food). Then there’s the sodium.
People who have high blood pressure have probably been told to cut back on their sodium intake to around 1500 milligrams every day. Those of us without high blood pressure should probably eat no more than 2400 milligrams sodium daily. The obvious source of sodium is the table salt you add to recipes or to foods at the table, but that only accounts for about 11% of your daily sodium content.
In order to get the health benefits of cheese, you need to do three things. Read more
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Cholesterol and Your Diet
by Shereen Jegtvig
Cholesterol is a waxy type of fat found in your body, and although many people think of cholesterol as a bad thing, it isn’t. In fact, your body needs cholesterol to produce hormones, vitamin D and bile, plus cholesterol protects your nerves and is a major component in the structure of cells. The problem occurs when your body has too much bad cholesterol (called low density lipoproteins) in your bloodstream and not enough good cholesterol (high density lipoproteins) (http://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/tc/high-cholesterol-overview). The cholesterol can stick to blood vessel walls, so having increased levels of cholesterol (especially LDL) can directly increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, increasing the liklihood of heart attacks and/or stroke.
Most of the cholesterol your body needs is made by your liver, but some of the cholesterol comes from the animal based foods you eat (foods from plants don’t have cholesterol – they have sterols that can actually lower your cholesterol – more on that later). It would be nice if lowering the cholesterol levels in your body was as easy as just cutting out cholesterol, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. Two other types of fats have a bigger impact on your cholesterol levels than the cholesterol you eat – saturated fats and trans fats. Read more
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Fewer Calories for a Longer Life?
by Shereen Jegtvig
A recent study looked at the effect of low-calorie diets on monkeys. It was a long study, up to twenty years. The monkeys that lived on low-calorie diets stayed healthy and lived longer. In fact, the monkeys on low-calorie diets experienced a much lower risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes than monkeys who were fed a regular diet.
Scientists suggest that calorie-restriction may be the way for humans to eat as well. Some people see it is the best way to increase longevity. The Calorie Restriction Society was founded to support people who want to follow a restricted calorie diet in order to live longer and age more slowly. They aren’t interested in quick weight loss in order to fit into a pair of skinny jeans – the members of this group believe that calorie restriction is considered a healthful way of living. Read more
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Too Much Saturated Fat Is Bad for You
by Shereen Jegtvig
Saturated fat is found mostly in animal products (beef, lamb, pork, lard, butter, cream, whole milk and high fat cheese) and some plant sources like coconut oil, cocoa butter, palm oil and palm kernel oil. Saturated fat is fairly solid at room temperature (think of butter or the fat you see in a raw marbled steak. Eating too much saturated fat increases the amount of cholesterol in your blood (much more so than consuming high cholesterol foods) and research shows diets in saturated fat increase inflammatory conditions in the arteries.
Many years of research has resulted in the American Heart Association and other expert groups, including the School of Public Health at Harvard to recommend limiting the amount of saturated fats in your diet. This doesn’t mean you can never eat red meat or cheese again, just watch your portion sizes and add variety to your diet with poultry, fish and seafood, and vegetarian dishes. Replace butter with heart-healthy oils like olive and canola oil, and buy non- or low-fat dairy products. Limit your daily saturated fat intake to less than 10% of your daily calorie intake (less than 20 grams for most of us). Read more
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