Category Archives: Disease Prevention

Salt Shake Up

Posted on March 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

Is your salt intake in need of a little shake up?  With the release of the new USDA Dietary Guidelines there have been lots of headlines about salt consumption recently.  I don’t think a lot of people realize what damage excess salt can really do to a person and quite how much salt the average American consumes.

To start at the beginning, the USDA just outlined new guidelines for salt intake.  African Americans, those over 50 years old and those with high blood pressure should limit their salt and sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams per day (that’s low).  This group of individuals makes up over 50% of the US population, so the USDA is making a general statement to say that we should all be aiming for this low number.  However, they’ve also added another category for those of us without the risk factors mentioned above.  Individuals who are not African American, those under 50 and without high blood pressure should aim for 2,300 milligrams a day.  That is still pretty low considering that when I was in my internship working in clinical nutrition we handed out 2,400 mg low sodium diets – now 2,400 mg would be considered high!

So, why the change?  Well, excess sodium can lead to health problems such as high blood pressure, leading to heart attacks and stroke.  It can also cause kidney disease and has been linked to stomach cancer.  Plus, Joe-Average American is eating about 3,400 mg of sodium daily, so we’ve got a bit of work to do.

The thing about cutting down on sodium is that it is a sneaky little mineral and is hidden in many different foods.   Things like cereal, desserts and pastries, muffins, seasonings like taco and fajita mix, baked beans, tomato sauce, bagels, dressing, tomato juice and ketchup among others.  However, it is easy to find on the Nutrition Facts label.  When trying to decrease your salt intake look for foods with low % Daily Value for Sodium – 5% is considered low.  If you are in the category of people who need 1,500 mg or less choose packaged foods with less than 5% DV of sodium.  If you are in the 2,300 mg group then aim for less than 10% DV of sodium.  Or, even better, skip the packaged food all together, sodium is used as a preservative in most packaged and canned foods.  Fresh foods rarely have added sodium, one exception is chicken, which companies sometimes inject with a broth solution.  If you stick to mostly fresh, unpackaged foods that are sodium free then you can feel comfortable adding salt during cooking and at the table.

Salt is a great way to enhance the flavor of foods, so I can’t recommend giving it up completely (I know I never could).  So choose your foods wisely- skip the prepackaged stuff, opt for fresh and add salt yourself at the table.  Also, invest in some gourmet salts.  I love salts like McCormick French Grey Sea Salt for my salad, it has large chucks of salt so you only need a tiny bit.  I also like Murray River Pink Flake Salt.  You can pick up flavored salts like truffle salt at places like World Market or TJ Maxx for cheap.  When you use these salts you’ll realize that you don’t need as much and they impart such great flavor to your fresh foods that you’ll never go back to prepackaged again.

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Posted in Disease Prevention, Food Facts

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Diet Drinks – Not What We Thought They Were

Posted on February 11, 2011 | 2 Comments

Big and bad news this week for all those diet soda lovers out there.  Daily diet soda consumption may lead to vascular events like stroke.  Not good!   To dieters everywhere diet soda was the panacea – it was going to save us, help us lose weight while still giving us sweet carbonation!  I say us because I too was a diet soda drinker at one time.  Till it started making me sick and I quit – feel much better now, thanks!  I will still occasionally opt for a diet soda over water, but I can count on one hand how many times that happens in one year.  So, this study isn’t for folks like me and others who don’t indulge in diet soda daily – it’s for the other millions and millions of people out there who do drink diet soda every day.  The study didn’t tell us why diet soda leads to a 61% greater risk of stroke, but it did and the science is sound.  The researchers even accounted for caloric intake, age, smoking, and alcohol consumption, all of which can also lead to stroke and diet soda still increased the risk.  Unfortunately, we don’t know what it is about the diet soda that is making us sick, but do we really need to to know that we have to cut back?

Besides this newly revealed stroke risk with diet soda there are other problems with diet soda.  Such as, the propensity for overly sweet foods and drinks that diet soda and other diet beverages perpetuate.  Since diet drinks are so much sweeter than water, milk and even their regular sugared versions Americans are becoming accustomed to the super-sweetness and, like a drug, after a while a one diet drink doesn’t cut it anymore and we’re out searching for more and more sweet things.  Then foods that we once thought were sweet, like fruit, is no longer sweet enough so we end up giving that up too and switching to fruit snacks instead of real fruit as a snack.  This is happening to your children too – especially since your kids have a built-in sweet tooth.  Children are born for a preference for sweet, so  giving sweet drinks, snacks and cereals just increases this preference until naturally sweet foods  are no longer sweet enough.

But what goes up must (and can) go down.  As someone who used to enjoy artificially sweetened beverages with some frequency I too had to wean myself off of these saccharin sweet drinks.  Slowly but surely, bit by bit, the diet drinks, Crystal Light and flavored waters disappeared from my shopping cart and from my diet.  Now, as I said, I do have the occasional diet drink and more often than not, when I do, I can taste the fake sugar, that saccharin sweetness and it becomes too much for me and I need a chaser of plain old H2O.

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Pesticides and ADHD

Posted on May 24, 2010 | Leave a comment

A new study from Pediatrics found that children with higher levels of pesticides in their urine had more ADHD symptoms compared to children with less pesticides in their urine.  This shows some relationship between pesticides, used to keep pests off produce, and ADHD, great news for parents looking for natural ways of handling their children’s ADHD.

To avoid pesticides you can buy organic fruits and vegetables, which are grown without the use of pesticides.  But buying all organic can be expensive.  So, do what I do, I buy organic of the foods I eat the most.  For example, we have salad almost every night in my house, so I buy organic lettuce.  I also eat a lot of fruit, especially berries, so whenever I can I buy organic berries.  I don’t buy much organic cantaloupe or bananas because I figure the skin is so thick I don’t get much of the pesticide.  I also thoroughly wash all of my fruits and vegetables.  Or you can just buy organic for your children, even though adults are exposed to pesticides too, the effects seem to be worse in children.  Another way to reduce your families pesticide exposure is to eat locally grown produce, although usually not certified organic, many small local farms do not spray their produce.

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Posted in Disease Prevention, Feeding Children, Nutrition Opinions

Cut Your Child’s Obesity Risk by 40%

Posted on May 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

A recent study in Pediatrics found that there are 3 household routines that can cut a preschoolers obesity risk by 40%.  If obesity runs in your family, you will want to make sure you are adopting these three no-cost, simple routines today!

1. Have family meals, the more often the better. Eating as a family reduces all risky behaviors that children may engage in as they get older and that includes their eating habits.  Children who eat family meals eat more fruits and vegetables, drink more milk and are less likely to be overweight than their peers.  Family meals are a great time to role model healthy eating for your children, try to sit down for a family meal at least 5 times a week.

2. Get enough sleep. Children who received at least 10.5 hours of sleep per night on a regular basis were less likely to be overweight.  When kids are sleeping they cannot eat, and to get 10 hours children need to be in bed early, which essentially eliminates nighttime snacking.  Also, kids who are sleep deprived tend to eat more sugar and refined carbohydrates because their brains are craving quick energy.

3. Limit screen-time to less than 2 hours. The link between TV, computer and video games and childhood obesity is well-documented.  Kids who sit more, weight more.  Limit your childrens’ screen-time (TV, computer and video games) to less than 2 hours a day.  Even if they’re not outside moving with their extra time, they are still more likely to be doing something active like chores, walking the dog, playing with a sibling or playing a board game, which is still more active than watching TV.

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Posted in Disease Prevention, Feeding Children, No Cost Tips, Nutrition Opinions

Childhood heart disease – should you be worried?

Posted on January 7, 2010 | 1 Comment

We constantly hear about childhood obesity and that this young generation is on track to be the first generation in history to have a lower life expectancy than their parents. Scary stuff, but is it true? Well, I’m not going to quote any major scientific articles I’m just going to offer some first hand experience.

Young children, as young a 8 years old, are being referred with diagnoses of high cholesterol, high triglycerides, elevated blood pressure, and elevated insulin.  If your child falls into one of these groups he or she is definitely at risk and if you’re not already doing something to change the entire family’s eating habits then, yes, you should be worried.  If you haven’t had your child tested, but you have a strong family history for these conditions, and you know your family’s diet isn’t exactly up to par or your child is overweight -  he or she should be tested.

A healthy heart begins with a healthy diet, which means lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean means and beans.  Heart healthy eating is the same for kids as it is for adults and all changes that occur need to be family-wide – chances are everyone in the household can benefit from eating a healthier diet.  Two easy ways you can  reduce your family’s heart disease risk tonight are:

1. Serve at least 2 vegetarian meals a week.  That can mean one night of whole wheat pasta with sauce and one night of rice and bean burritos.

2. Reduce the amount of red meat your family eats to only once a week.  Eating red meat has been linked not only to heart disease but cancer as well.

Unsaturated fats, the “good fats”, will actually help protect you from heart disease.  So, while you’re cutting red meat feel free to add peanut butter, fish, olive oil, avocados, flax seed, almonds, and walnuts to your family’s diet.  Have your family watch this fun webisode from the American Heart Association to learn more about Unsaturated and Saturated Fats: 

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Posted in Disease Prevention, Feeding Children, Food Facts