Finn Crisp: Real taste, real crunch, real food nutrition

How are you living up to that New Year’s resolution to lose a bit of weight? We all fight the battle of the bulge, but it can be a lot easier if we’re not constantly denying ourselves something satisfying and tasty. Fortunately, whole grains have been shown help you lose weight and keep it off - and the crispy crunch of Scandanavian ‘crackers’ are a nifty way to eat right while eating a little.I’ve been a lifelong fan of these crispbreads - growing up in a predominately Swedish family. They’re so easy to top with good things like hummus, nut butters, low fat cheeses and more, and yet only pack about 30 to 45 calories per slice. More importantly, you get the goodness of real whole grains and intact fiber - rather than the empty fiber (inulin, oat fiber, wheat fiber or polydestrose ) contained in a lot of the current crop of big name brands. These empty, isolated fiber sources that fill the popular big brands ramp up the overall fiber content - and that looks great on the label - but they offer little nutritionally speaking.

Interestingly, since these great little crisps are imported from Finland, they have honest ingredient labeling - like we could have here were it not for the lobbyists running our government. Note the percentages of each ingredient are given:

Wholegrain rye flour (59%), linseeds, oat flakes (8%), wholegrain wheat flour (6%), wholegrain oat flour (6%), wholegrain barley flour (6%), sesame seeds, water, yeast, wholegrain buckwheat flour (2%), salt (1,2%) and emulsifier (E 471).

Here in this country, you have to guess according to the order the ingredients are listed. Ignorance is bliss - or obese.

At breakfast, crumble these into a bowl and top with berries and plain yogurt for a fast out-the-door meal that is super low calorie, low sugar, low fat and high nutrition.

For lunch, you can top them with Tsatziki made with non-fat, high protein Greek yogurt for a snack that will keep you filled up. You might also try low-fat neufchatel cheese with shrimp and fresh dill, chopped egg and anchovy, buffalo mozzarella with salsa, tuna salad with cornichon pickles.

In the evening, they go great with soups and stews instead of bread. And nibbling on them with just a bit of nut butter and jam, with some hot tea, makes a low guilt bedtime snack.

Give ‘em a try. They’re always in my pantry as a healthy go-to when I’ve got the ‘crunchies’.

-maven

Baloney Alert: Yogurt is yogurt. Activia is marketing hype.

“Never eat anything you’ve ever seen advertised!” Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

Whatever happened to just eating yogurt because it’s uh, tasty … oh and it’s good for you. The cult of the culture has been a boon to Madison Avenue and the huge food conglomerates since yogurt finally appeared on the American radar in the 1970’s. Europeans had known about it for, well … hundreds of years?

As Americans, we are really good at taking a simple idea and bastardizing it beyond all belief in the rush to make money. Yogurt is one of those things. Add the fact that it’s been no so slyly marketed to women - yes, we’re all looking for that magic something that will make us forever slim - well, it’s kept more advertising account executives in BMW’s than almost anything else.

Enter Dannon’s Activa.

Jamie Lee Curtis has been telling women  - and now men and women - that a little Activa a day will keep … what at bay? Just what does Activia do for us? Beyond that graphic on the front with the pancake flat stomach with the arrow pointing down at her, uh …. what’s it all about?

Activia claimed to ‘regulate’ a woman’s digestive system - and until the FTC weighed in, nobody apparently gave a rats ass if men had unregulated digestive systems. Unfortunately, the ‘fine print’ that you had to eat no less than three cartons of the stuff daily to get that ‘effect’ was lost to most consumers, including me. I tried it for a while, my ‘digestive’ complaints, being at most vague. Finally, I decided that eating plain yogurt was just as ‘effective’ - whatever that meant - with less unneeded sugar, food coloring and artificial flavors. Certainly, the premium plain, organic Bulgarian yogurt that I have every evening is cheaper and I can flavor it with a bit of maple syrups, fresh fruit and other healthful ingredients I have handy.

In 2009, a federal court in Los Angeles heard testimony that said Activia/Dannon’s own studies didn’t back up the claims for Activia.  Yet, Activia racks up in excess of $505 million in annual sales, common sense notwithstanding, and the $35 million penalty imposed on Dannon for their exaggerated claims is chicken feed that they will call a business expense and get it back on the corporate tax bill.

“These types of misleading claims are enough to give consumers indigestion… Consumers want, and are entitled to, accurate information when it comes to their health. Companies like Dannon shouldn’t exaggerate the strength of scientific support for their products.” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz

So now you see good old Jamie Lee telling couples that Activia will just … just … make them feel good, or something like that. Meanwhile, Dannon must remove the words “clinically”, “scientifically proven” and “immunity”  from product labels, as well as include a qualifier to its claim that its yogurt “helps strengthen your body’s defenses” or “helps support the immune system.” 

Meanwhile, back at the tee-vee, Heide Klum pitches Dan-Active for those of you who can’t figure out how to have a more or less daily dump. Again, no proof. It’s bogus.

But hey, it’s your hard-earned money.

Is there a cost-effective, and Baloney-Free way to stay, uh … regular? Of course there is! That’s why you came to Maven.

Eat a lot of whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables … plain old yogurt, if you like it.

Avoid refined grains and sugar, stuff you can’t pronounce, faux foods.

Drink plenty of water.

Get plenty of daily exercise and a good night’s sleep.

Oh, and don’t eat anything that’s advertised.

-maven

Ask your cancer related diet and nutrition questions for answers from MD Anderson Cancer Center experts

NOTE: You must ask during this week to be included in this weeks forum.

Ask the Expert

A cancer diagnosis always comes with questions. How is it treated? What can I expect? Questions like these are best answered by physicians and other health care professionals who deal with cancer every day. Anderson Network’s Ask the Expert message board allows patients and caregivers to get accurate, credible answers from MD Anderson cancer experts for issues that may arise during or after treatment.

Ask the Expert will focus on different cancer-related topics. Questions submitted by you will be answered by MD Anderson faculty and staff members chosen to address topics in their fields of expertise.

Next Forum:

December 6-10, 2010

Diet Makes a Difference

Linda Pataki, L.D.

Supervisor

Clinical Nutrition

Please note that the message board will be active only during the posted dates for each topic. However, previous topics will be archived so that you may access the information. If you have questions regarding the board or topic, e-mail andersonnetwork@mdanderson.org. Please read the message board standards below, then click the “I Accept” button to submit your question.

Olive oil could help breast cancer patients lose weight

Keeping your weight down has been seen as a great way to avoid breast cancer in the first place, and when you’ve had breast cancer - like me - keeping the pounds off after diagnosis and treatment are crucial in my efforts to keep the cancer from recurring.

With the obesity epidemic in America, there are potentially too many women who may unknowingly be putting themselves at risk by being significantly overweight - and I was one of them about 20 years ago. I also had breast cancer. Anecdotal to be sure, but a lot of researchers are looking at the possible links.

That’s why I am interested in articles such as the following:

PROVIDENCE, RI – Researchers from The Miriam Hospital have found that olive oil may offer another potential health benefit – it produces greater weight loss in breast cancer survivors compared to a more traditional low-fat diet.

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Diet fact, fiction or maven's way?

I usually find the ‘diet factss’ just as lame as the bullshit they replace. So, here’s my take on the debate as presented in Women’s Health:

The advice: Chug eight glasses of water a day.

Why it’s useless: Peeing every 20 minutes seriously interferes with life.

The real deal: Believe it or not, the eight-glass quota isn’t etched in stone. Yes, we need to be well-hydrated, but if your urine is clear or close to it, you’re probably getting enough fluids. If your No. 1 is neon yellow, lighten things up by adding one or two glasses a day. Once your body adjusts to getting more fluid (and you don’t have to run to the can every 10 minutes), add another, says Karen Benzinger, R.D., a dietary consultant in Chicago who specializes in health care. And don’t forget that all liquids—including tea, juice, even the tonic in your vodka drink—help keep your body sufficiently saturated. 

Maven’s way: Yes, indeedy. Look at your pee.

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Don't get tricked by so-called 'healthy' hamburgers

The fast food franchises are slugging it out in an attempt to out-huge each other, largely in response to Carl’s Jr. and its iconic jaw-dropping burgers. The Carl’s $6.00 Burger tips the calorie scale at 890 calories, before you even add the drink and fries.

The new McDonalds’ Angus Deluxe Burger is bigger than a Big Mac, and sets your diet back by 750 calories. By comparison the standard McDonald’s hamburger, that I grew up on, is 250 calories.

The McDonalds regular hamburger actually has fewer calories than any other menu item - less than their wrap sandwich offering even. In fact, most of the fast food salads start at more calories than the regular hamburger.

No wonder we weren’t all obese back in the day. A burger was also an occasional treat.

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Keeping your New Year's diet resolutions

Joy Bauer, on The Today Show, absolutely knows her stuff and always has great advice. However, here’s a simple one that I’ve found works: whole grains.

Replace - incrementally, if you must - the refined grains in your kitchen and pantry with whole grain products. This is going to require reading the labels - and not the front label which is designed to fool you into buying the product. I’m talking about the ingredients label.

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The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

Available at the mavenandmeddler.com amazon.com store: http://astore.amazon.com/mavenandmeddl-20?node=8&page=12

From Publishers Weekly
Conditioned hypereating is a biological challenge, not a character flaw, says Kessler, former FDA commissioner under presidents Bush and Clinton). Here Kessler (A Question of Intent) describes how, since the 1980s, the food industry, in collusion with the advertising industry, and lifestyle changes have short-circuited the body’s self-regulating mechanisms, leaving many at the mercy of reward-driven eating.

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Foods don't 'burn' fat, even in magazines

Can we ever get over this fantasy that we can ‘burn fat’ by eating special foods? On this month’s issue of Health, with a slender Brooke Shields on the cover, the headlines are blazing away:

Eat Your Way Slim

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Controlling your weight at the juice and smoothie bar?

Maybe not. In fact, you’re probably adding a lot of calories that you’re simply not aware of and they aren’t doing anything to decrease your overall appetite.

As eating on the run became more popular, smoothies and freshly squeezed juices became a quick, easy way - or so people thought - to get nutrition on the go. Time to let this diet busting myth go.

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Tips for eating less: so simple you'll wonder how you missed it

What I’m about to tell you may sound a little crazy, but it’s supported by a lot of expert opinion these days: ditch the diversity and go for the boredom in your meals.

There’s a scientific reason for it.

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Still looking for that 'right' diet?

I don’t think I am anymore, since I seem to be able to loose a few pounds now and keep it off without much effort. But there was a time about a year ago that I was stressed out that my weight creep was so inevitable that I’d better just learn to love it - in a completely unhealthy, neurotic way. Before I threw in the towel, however I went to see the local university nutritionists, and the advice they gave me was hard to accept at first, but I now think they were right.

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Nutrition Action from CSPI

That’s the Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of my enduringly favorite sources of reliable information. Really, if you want the straight scoop about food, nutrition and other health and wellness issues, this is one of the best places you can go to.

In this months’ newsletter there is a large article on how to keep your brain young - which all of us seem to be interested in these days. It seems that the bottom line is as follows:

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Low carb diets: Are they making us stupid?

The answer is apparently, ‘yes’ from the researchers at Tufts University, who studied the popular low and no carb diets like Atkins. They theorized that since the brain feeds on carbs - stored as glucose - then a negative impact could result from severely limiting the carbs in the diet. The brain, you see, doesn’t store glucose, and after a day or two of serious carb cutting, the body’s glucose reserves become exhausted.

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