Eat Right to Boost Immunity – National Nutrition Month

I don’t know about where you live, but there are lots of nasty illnesses going around - from the flu to strep to this weird stomach ache that is nicely paired with a low grade headache and an all-over achy body.  Our family was lucky to have the stomach cluster issue all last week, but have (so far) warded off the other stuff.  Don’t be surprised when I tell you that our eating patterns can help protect or put us at risk for all the nastiness out there.  Good nutrition is essential to keeping your immune system strong.

March happens to be National Nutrition Month, and every March we encourage everyone to get back to the basics of healthy eating.  This year’s theme, “Get Your Plate in Shape,” is a perfect reminder in using food as a weapon against a variety of illnesses from the minor to the major.  So many people turn to popping supplements that they forget the power that food has in doing the trick better!  The USDA’s MyPlate is a great visual of how we should build our plates. 

Here are some ways to “Get Your Plate in Shape” and also boost that immune system:

·        Make half of your plate fruits and vegetables: Eat a variety of vegetables, especially dark-green, red and orange varieties. Add fresh, dried, frozen or canned fruits to meals and snacks.  Fruits and vegetables are loaded with immunity-boosting capabilities including key nutrients such as vitamins A and C (especially orange and yellow varieties).

·         Make at least half your grains whole: Choose 100 percent whole-grain breads, cereals, crackers, pasta and brown rice. Check the ingredients list on food packages to find whole-grain foods.  Whole grains including fortified cereals and breads contain zinc has been a key player in maximizing immunity.

·         Switch to fat-free or low-fat milk: Fat-free and low-fat milk have the same amount of calcium and other essential nutrients as whole milk, but less fat and calories. For those who are lactose intolerant, try lactose-free milk or a calcium-fortified soy beverage.  High in protein and vitamin D, these are also two things that help ward off illness.  Some research suggests that vitamin D may help reduce the incidence of the flu.  And if they happen to get the flu, it is important to have adequate levels to fight off the illness. 

·         Vary your protein choices: Eat a variety of foods from the protein food group each week, such as seafood, nuts and beans, as well as lean meat, poultry and eggs.  Keep meat and poultry portions small and lean. And be sure to choose seafood as the protein at least twice a week.  Lean meat, poultry, beans and nuts are all good sources of zinc.  Non-meat sources of protein include beans, nuts and tofu.  Protein is the basic building block of immune cells, so it is vital for both the prevention and treatment of illness.  

·         Cut back on sodium and empty calories from solid fats and added sugars: Compare sodium in foods and choose those with lower numbers, and season your foods with herbs and spices instead of salt. Switch from solid fats to healthy oils like olive and canola oil. Replace sugary drinks with water and choose fruit for dessert.   High sugar foods have a tendency to have less nutrients to fuel that immune system.

·         Enjoy your foods but eat less: Avoid oversized portions. Use a smaller plate, bowl and glass. Cook more often at home where you are in control of what’s in your food. When eating out, choose lower calorie menu options.  Overeating and being overweight can stress your body out, which can lead to a variety of illnesses including cancer.

·         Be physically active your way: Adults need at least 2 hours and 30 minutes of physical activity every week. Choose activities that you enjoy, and start by doing as much as you can.  Exercise has been shown to fight off infections, although they aren’t fully sure how.  Some theories include flushing bacteria through the lungs, temporarily increasing body temperature to kill bacteria and decreasing stress hormones.

Other ways to keep immunity boosted nicely is to get plenty of sleep and keep stress levels to a minimum.  I know this is easier said than done sometimes, so make sure you have people around you to encourage and support you in this thing we call “life.”

Throughout the month of March, I will discuss other practical ways to "Get Your Plate in Shape."  What are your barriers to eating healthy?  I would love to hear from you!  We can address them together.

For more information on National Nutrition Month, head over to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics webpage to check out some fun nutrition games and practical food suggestions by topic.

What One Meal Tells You About a Person

I had lunch with two other dietitians today and we got to talking about what many of my dietitian friends talk about.  It never fails, you go to a dinner party or somewhere that involves food and someone discovers your a dietitian.  Dun dun dunnnnn!  The rooms tenses up.  Eyes widen.  Pause.  To break the silence, they proceed to spill the beans (pun intended) about what they eat or not eat, their weight problems or their various food issues and phobias.  I especially love it when they start apologizing for the food that they are eating right in front of them in hopes that they have just went ahead and "outed" the dietitian's thoughts.  In actuality, this whole scenario makes the dietitian self-conscious about how the food she's eating is going to be analyzed.  It's an awkward situation all around, so many dietitians choose not to "spill the beans" about their profession in those situations.  I went to speak at a doctor's office recently and they told the front office person, "Great. You ordered pizza for us on the day the dietitian was coming to visit.  What's up with that?!"  Oh man.  I could go on and on with all the funny things that we come across in our line of work.  One of the dietitians I ate with today even shared that a person told her, "I can't believe you are eating that.  You should know better!"

The truth is that you can tell virtually nothing about what a person by one meal. (I hope that is comforting as we have recently move on from our annual Thanksgiving dinner!)  Sure, you can tell little nuances about someone like the way they hold the fork, mix their food together or even push something off their plate.  But when it comes to assessing the quality of a person's diet, it's really the patterns of eating that give you that true insight.  This is generally how dietitians see things, so don't worry the next time you share a meal with one.  I made Paula Deen's green bean casserole for my family Thanksgiving - full fat version, no modifications.  True story,  Contrary to popular belief, we are not the food police.  Nope.  We just love what healthy, nourishing food does for people and our families - so we eat it.  And promote it.  Well, most of the time.  :-)

Dairy Power: Happy National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day!

Cheese...Grilled Cheese!  My son, Evan, enjoying his grilled
cheese sandwich to honor this "cheesy" holiday.

Happy National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day!  And many sources tell me that we should celebrate this the whole month of April. I am convinced they have a day for everything now. Seriously! Well, this day is very apropos for me because I just spoke at the 2011 Texas Dietetic Association Food & Nutrition Exhibition in Houston this past weekend on a dairy topic – lactose intolerance. In my talk, I spoke about how to enjoy 3 servings of low-fat dairy while also managing your lactose intolerance. But the part I believed was the most important part of the presentation was the implications of avoiding dairy.  And as a pediatric dietitian, I am mostly concerned about the impact avoidance has on growing children. [Children with a milk allergy (very different; is a reaction to the protein in milk vs the carbohydrate in lactose intolerance),  do need to avoid milk and all milk products - but also must be consulted by a Registered Dietitian so they can get the nutrients normally obtained in milk.]  My past posts in honor of National Nutrition Month’s Eat with Color theme focused much on produce that cover 2 food groups - fruits and vegetables. Well, we have other food groups that are vital for good health and dairy is one of them.

When you have a moment, re-visit my blog post entitled, “Ditching Dairy? CAUTION!” More than just calcium and vitamin D, there are at least 9 essential nutrients that are found in dairy products and with the new 2010 Dietary Guidelines out, we know that diary supplies 3 of the 4 nutrients of concern: calcium, vitamin D and potassium (the 4th one is fiber).  Did you know that dairy also contains bioactive compounds that help with blood pressure control, cholesterol reduction and anti-clotting in the blood?  There have also been a lot of studies on how low-fat dairy can help with managing your weight. 

So, go! Grill up that grilled cheese sandwich and celebrate National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day/Month and at the same time, maximize your nutrition.  Grill it with ham, onions, spinach or serve it with chunky tomato soup.  The choice is yours.  If your like my almost 4 year old son Evan, he prefers the good 'ole traditional recipe (see photo).  Eating Well's website has a lot of choices if you want to try a new version!  My colleague, Dr. Sandra Frank, RD, has some creative grilled cheese sandwich choices on her latest blog post as well.

Disclaimer: My presentation last week and this week in Albuquerque was funded by the National Dairy Council, but that was after I contacted them initially for printed literature that I could provide the pediatricians I support that had been taking children off dairy and providing only a calcium supplement as an inadequate replacement. When they heard that these issues are coming up in the field, they wanted me to share my story. However, I am not a spokesperson for the National Dairy Council. I speak on my own clinical nutrition knowledge. As a dietitian, I believe that each food group provides essential nutrients for optimal health and dairy is one of them.

Food Quantity: Portion Control or Intuition?

As I continue my years in the nutrition and wellness industry, I find that there is often a division between dietitians that subscribe to one or the other philosophy when it comes to food quantity: portion control or intuitive eating. I see blogs and articles heavily promoting one or the other. But I would argue that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive of each other. They are both important approaches that can be used together for optimizing health. I was recently interviewed by a company called Healthy Steps by Jokari – a company that sells practical kitchen tools, including very useful portion control gadgets. They asked me what portion control means to me. The interview is provided here, although the video interview did not allow for me to expand on these concepts. So let’s explore this discussion in a bit more depth as we look at portion control, intuitive eating and another important eating approach – meal frequency.

Portion Control: Portion control is a tool that is used to show standard and appropriate serving sizes of foods. Examples of portion control tools would be comparing a deck of cards to represent 3 ounces of meat, or a baseball to represent a serving of starch or starchy vegetable. Or, even the useful products that companies like Healthy Steps sell to consumers that help load your plate with standard portions.  Portion control tools are meant to be a guide to what the USDA decides is an appropriate portion for most Americans based on research. Again, it’s merely a guide. In fact, I wish we renamed this to a more friendly approach – portion guidance. The word “control” seems so militaristic in nature and that is what turns many intuitive eating promoters off to this helpful tool. This approach was never meant to be something that would relinquish our right to listening to our own bodily cues. Portion guidance systems also help us to make sure we are eating enough of a given food. We are encouraged to eat a certain amount of fruit and vegetable servings each day (go to http://www.mypyramid.gov/ to get your own custom plan by plugging in age, gender, weight, height and activity level) so we need to know how much a serving is.  Portion guidance seems to be especially helpful for my patients that were raised in the "clean plate club" and are now psychologically unable to end a meal until their plate is cleaned. They need to have a jumping off point to set up their plates, and then dial in the intuitive eating concepts. We use standardized portions when prescribing constant carbohydrate diets for diabetics in order to optimize blood sugars.  For instance, one portion of carbohydrate for diabetics is 15 grams, and they must know what those portions are in order to dose insulin and/or to stay within their carbohydrate prescription.  As you can see, portion guidance is a very useful tool in a variety of situations.

But before we talk about intuitive eating, let’s insert another eating approach here that sets us up well – meal frequency.

Meal Frequency: Americans are leading busier than ever lives and often times we go way too long to eat. Most of my weight management clients either skip meals or go way too long between meals. Many times this causes a person to not be satisfied by an appropriate meal portion. In fact, this can cause them to overeat in order to make up for the lost calories earlier in the day. My recommendation, consistent with current research, is to make sure you eat three solid meals and also include 1-2 in-between those meals in order to decrease your risk of (or treat) obesity. That way, you never come too hungry to a meal. Let’s be honest, it’s difficult to make optimal food choices when you’re starved. More than weight control, the correct meal frequency optimizes energy levels and  promotes both normal blood sugars and cholesterol levels. I do find that my patients get used to not eating breakfast and they ask me if they should eat even when they don’t feel like eating. This is the one meal of the day where I would say...yes. Your body needs to be re-trained to eat with regular frequency, and this will help start the progress.

And now we have intuitive eating.

Intuitive Eating: Meal frequency and portion guidance set-up allows us to practice intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is a nutrition philosophy or approach that encourages us to tune into our bodies more and eat for simply the feeling of hunger. Living in a world of multi-tasking, it can be difficult to do what seems like such an obvious thing. But we do. We eat because the clock tells us to do so (and we try to push our kids to do the same!), or because of stress, or boredom or a variety of emotional reasons. This approach is very important and something that all people should look at in their own lives. Many times people are not overweight because of food, but because of outside influences that drive us to eat in order to soothe our feelings or emotions. Obesity caused by emotional eating can dredge up fear around food because emotional eaters don’t feel in control in its presence. Intuitive eating concepts are important for the ex-clean plate clubber or the busy parent or the emotional eater. Let’s get back to the basics and eat for real physiological reasons. If you find that you are an emotional eater, consider getting support by a counselor or psychologist that specializes in this field.

When it comes to food quantity, all these 3 approaches - in my opinion – are great tools to be used together for optimal health. The right meal frequency combined with guidance using standard portions and then letting intuition do the rest. Combine that with food quality, and you are well on your way to living your best life!

New USDA Dietary Guidelines - Done Cheap!

The new 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans was released on Monday. The press conference was attended by many dietitians on the world wide web, and all the while we were discussions were in real-time on Twitter. At the press conference, one of the age old questions was raised. I am paraphrasing, “How does the average American that is struggling in this economy feed their family the way these guidelines recommend?  Healthy foods are expensive!” Many of us in “Twitterland” were wishing they would have provided the public some good examples, but they answered only in generalities. Is a bag of chips really cheaper than a bag of frozen veggies? What about a box of twinkies?

Unfortunately, the report that was put together in order to come up with the guidelines revealed that children eat the bulk of their calories from grain-based desserts, yeast breads, processed chicken, sugary drinks and pizza. In other words, our children are overfed, yet are still undernourished.  This post will list the foods the USDA wants us to eat MORE of along with some budgetary tips (utilize the active links!) on how you can do this without blowing your monthly budget.

Increase vegetable and fruit intake, which includes eating a variety of vegetables, especially dark-green and red and orange vegetables and beans and peas. My local grocery store often sells 10 bags of frozen vegetables for $10. The other day, they had a sale on canned foods where you only pay 26 cents for 20 cans! You have to watch the sales and then buy in bulk when able. But remember, frozen is about equal to fresh on nutrient quality and very low sodium canned vegetables and canned fruit in their own juices are just a close second. You can often buy bags of beans for less than $1. Consider searching out a produce co-op in your local area or visiting your local farmer’s market. Locally grown produce usually contains superior nutrient quality since it’s farm to plate distance is shortened, and you get to support your local farmer. If your funds are really tight, government programs or WIC cards encourage for the purchase of produce items through special incentives.

Consume at least half of all grains as whole grains. Increase whole-grain intake by replacing refined grains with whole grains. Make your own breads! Make your own pancakes by adding half whole wheat or buckwheat flour. Start your day off with a big batch of steel cut oatmeal in the crockpot. Purchase things such as wild rice, whole wheat couscous, brown rice and barley in bulk or in the bags versus the boxed varieties. Cook them in large quantities and eat them throughout the week. Add these grains with beans, top with a low-fat cheese – serve with a side salad or frozen veggies for a super easy and nutrient-rich meal!

Increase intake of fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products, such as milk, yogurt, cheese, or fortified soy beverages. Generic brands of milk are often cheaper. Look for dairy items that are on sale. Blocked cheese is cheaper than the pre-shredded. Purchase yogurts in the larger containers instead of the single serve for big savings. Use dried/powdered milk for recipes.

Choose a variety of protein foods, which include seafood, lean meat and poultry, eggs, beans and peas, soy products, and unsalted nuts and seeds. Bulk, bulk, bulk. Remember that 3-4 ounces is a portion – decreasing portion sizes for each family member is a huge cash saving!

Increase the amount and variety of seafood consumed by choosing seafood in place of some meat and poultry. Shop ethnic grocers such as Asian stores, as they have a tendency to have cheaper prices. Look for frozen bags and canned seafood on sale.

Replace protein foods that are higher in solid fats with choices that are lower in solid fats and calories and/or are sources of oils. Higher fat meats may seem lower in price, but how much are you paying for the actual meat of that portion? You actually get LESS protein per pound than lower fat/lean cuts. So pound for pound, you pay MORE for the nutrients found in fattier meats. Food for thought!

Use oils to replace solid fats where possible. I am sure you have noticed by now, but canola oil is much cheaper than olive oil. I like canola oil because it has the least amount of saturated fat (~7% as compared to ~15% in olive oil) large percentage of omega-3 “heart healthy” fat. Canola oil can be used for both baking and cooking, so it’s very versatile.  Again, look for savings in the generic or store brands.

Choose foods that provide more potassium, dietary fiber, calcium, and vitamin D, which are nutrients of concern in American diets. These foods include vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and milk and milk products. Make budgetary room for low-fat dairy in your diet because dairy will help you achieve potassium, calcium and vitamin D. Beans of all kinds are a fabulous fiber and nutrient source that could be enjoyed alone, added to salads, soups and casseroles.

Other Tips

Be Flexible. Maybe your favorite food items are out of your budget. Remain patient and there will come a sale. Explore other foods. You might find something you like better! And the more variety we have, they better nourished we are.

Plan Ahead. Shop for your groceries one full week in advance in order to avoid the eating out trap. Eating out excessively leads to both budget and belt busting every time!

Bulk and freeze. This will not only save you money, but will also save you time – two precious commodities these days. Free resources for doing this can be found at http://www.menus4moms.com/bulk/index.php and http://bulkfreezercooking.com/. Be sure to choose the healthy recipes!

Grow your own garden. Again, eating on a budget demands that flexibility! There are a lot of resources for first time produce gardeners.  What a fun thing to do with your children and as a family.  Don’t have enough room outdoors? No problem. Many people are growing all kinds of produce indoors.
Brown bagged your lunches. Many of these components not only save you money, but they also help you stay on track with your healthy lifestyles. You can bag healthy food items that go on sale or even eat leftovers from last night’s dinner.

Be on the lookout for sales and good coupons. Grocery stores have weekly specials that can be found in a saver book located at the front of the store. You can also shop for coupons online at websites such as http://www.coupons.com/, http://www.couponsurfer.com/ and http://www.smartsource.com/. Consider taking a look at the coupons to help plan your weekly menu. You can search for recipes by ingredient at websites such as http://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.gov/ (under Recipes) and http://allrecipes.com/search/ingredients.aspx.

You can read more about all the recommendations in the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines by going to http://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/.

Are your food budgeting tricks not listed? Share them with us!

Need Practical Healthy Eating Resources for Families!

I really want to connect the nutrition and healthy lifestyle professional to the average family.  Often times I see a disconnect because some of the recommendations are unrealistic to families, or they are not followed up with the "how" to implement.  The key component to any connection is summed up in one word: P-R-A-C-T-I-C-A-L.  You see, I am educated as a Registered Dietitian and am extremely passionate about my profession, but I am also a mother trying to make it happen despite our very busy lives.  I tell families that they must make it a priority to feed your family well, and while that is certainly true, we also need easier ways to get it done in order to meet those goals.  Don't you agree?

This Mommy Dieitian project brings
new meaning to "Will Work For Food!"

That is why I am starting a very important project that I know you will be excited about.  The details will be announced in the near future.  But what I am looking for is this - Do you know of a practical resource out there that will help families eat healthy?  It could be a food product, a book, a website, a blog or even a place.  Whatever it is, I want to know about it! 

My goal for this blog is NOT to monetize, and professionally, I do not want to be paid by food companies or organizations that will make me appear biased in my recommendations to others.  I am the advocate for the child and family.  If I like something, I will let everyone know.  It's that simple!  This blog has not been up and running very long and I've already been approached by many people to review and recommend their products.  I'd love to do so, but I want to be honest and transparent in my views about those products.  There is my disclaimer.

So, please.  Send me your favorite resources!!  The gathering process is off to a great start.  I plan to use them in a way that children, mothers, fathers and families as a whole will benefit from - just wait and see!  By the way, if you have not already done so, please join the Mommy Dietitian Facebook fan page.  This page is a already a fan of many possible resources for families, and the fan pages will be growing.  As I am gathering resources, I will blog about some that I am extra excited about.  Thanks in advance for the help!