8 Ways to Go "Green" in Your Kitchen

8 things you can do today to make your kitchen "green"!

Every kitchen in America has the potential of either helping make our planet greener and more energy and waste efficient or adding to the environmental load. More people are bringing those re-usable canvas bags with them to the grocery store than ever before and almost every home in my city has a recycling-garbage can near their driveway. You know you are doing something right when your recycling can is filled at the end of the week and your garbage can is half empty.

When it comes to conserving and eliminating waste, things are definitely going green in some parts of the country. We can all help keep things moving in that positive direction.

Here are 8 ways to go GREEN in your kitchen, starting today!

You can also take a quiz or two on "eating green" on the Center for Science in the Public Interest website:

• Tour the Food Supply
• Eating Green Calculator

What are you doing to make your kitchen greener?

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Taste Test Tuesday: Kashi Five Cheese Tomato Pizza

The makers of Kashi cereal have moved onto frozen pizza. When I saw this new product in the grocery store I was drawn to a few nutritional declarations on the front of the box:

• 14 grams of protein
• 4 grams of fiber
• 260 mg plant omega-3s

And since I have a couple of teenagers in my house, having a frozen pizza or two in the freezer is a necessity. When my teen daughter and her friends warmed this up in the oven they gave me their honest assessment and it was a resounding, unanimous..."OKAY"

My daughter said she would bake it and eat it if it was in the freezer but she wouldn't necessarily go out of her way to buy it. The crust was just a little too tough and the sauce was just a little too bland.

The omega-3s come from the flaxseed in the crust, in case you were wondering.

1/3 of the pizza is a serving and each serving contains:

290 calories
9 g fat
3.5 g saturated fat
14 g protein
37 g carbohydrate
4 g fiber
570 mg sodium

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There's Weight Loss Magic In The Food Diary/Journal

There's some magic in keeping a food diary - one study found it can double a person's weight loss! The researchers discovered that the more food records people kept, the more weight they lost. Published in the August 2008 issue of American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study adds more evidence to the notion that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories. This is an added bonus to people with diabetes who are also trying to trim off a few extra pounds.

I've included journal type forms in a few of my books (Tell Me What To Eat If I Have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Tell Me What To Eat If I Have Acid Reflux, Tell Me What To Eat If I Have Diabetes, etc.) for the purpose of taking note what type of foods, food amounts, and times of day might be contributing to the condition in question.

I admit the idea of writing down what you eat, how much, and other items (like your level of hunger) might feel like a punishment and might put you in a "dieting & deprivation" frame of mind. But if you approach it more positively, like a tool to help raise your awareness about some of your food behaviors and a way to increase your weight loss success, it's definitely worth giving it a try!

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Frugal Friday: 3 Tips to Save Energy (and Money)

Saving energy can mean saving money. Here are a few ways to save in your kitchen.

The Best Way To Heat Food.
If you need to warm up or defrost small amounts of food, use a microwave instead of the stove to save energy. Microwave ovens use around 50 percent less energy than conventional ovens do. For large meals, however, the stove is usually more efficient. But in the summer, using a microwave causes less heat to be released into the kitchen, which might save money on air conditioning.

Do The Dollar Bill Test.
Don't keep the refrigerator door open any longer than you need to. Close it to keep the cold air inside! Also, make sure the door closes securely. There is a rubber-like seal around the door that you can test. Just close the door on a dollar bill, and then see how easy it is to pull out. If the dollar slides out easily, the door is probably leaking cold air from inside.

Got A Second Refrigerator?
Is there an old refrigerator sitting in the garage or someplace else at home? Old refrigerators are real energy hogs! An old refrigerator could be costing your family as much as $120 a year to operate. Consider taking it out of commission if you don't really need this extra refrigerator or keep in mind that one large refrigerator is cheaper to run than two smaller ones.

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Taste Test Tuesday: South Beach Living Fiber Fit Cookie Packs!

Got a sweet tooth craving but want to keep your extra calories and grams of sugar to a minimum and your grams of fiber to a maximum? Well, there are two new cookies on the supermarket shelf that might just come in handy. Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk and Double Chocolate Chunk are manufactured under the "South Beach Living - Fiber Fit" product line and I've got to say, they had me at the 5 grams of fiber and the 5 grams of sugar. They do taste pretty good (I prefer the Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk) and the 6 mini cookies per pack seem to quell most sweet cravings.

They are made with mostly semisweet chocolate, whole grain wheat flour, high oleic canola oil and oat fiber with sweetener coming from several different directions - sugar, maltitol (a sugar alcohol), sucralose (Splenda) and acesulfame potassium.

The 5.1-ounce box contains 6 individual packs and they are often on sale for about $2.50 or less, so keep your eye out for the sales.

South Beach Living Fiber Fit Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies
1 package: 100 calories, 5 g fat, 1.5 g saturated fat, 1 g protein, 5 g fiber, 5 g sugar (2 g sugar alcohol)

South Beach Living Fiber Fit Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies
1 package: 100 calories, 5 g fat, 1.5 g saturated fat, 1 g protein, 5 g fiber, 5 g sugar (2 g sugar alcohol)

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Frugal Friday: Are Americans Crazy for Coffee?

We could save 60 million a day by switching to a top-rated coffee!

Are Americans crazy for their coffee? Okay, I already know the answer...it's an unapologetic, "YES!" Many people I know call it their "drug of choice." They are referring to the caffeine in coffee of course. And when I pony up to the coffee bar and order a "decaf nonfat latte no whip," the barista usually looks up at me with disdain and tells me they call it the "why bother."

The phones are ringing off the hook at the Consumer Reports press office this week and it's all because they published ratings of ground Colombian coffee in their March 2009 issue. The house editor, Bob Markovich told me they've never had such a huge response to an article. Just another sign that Americans are crazy for coffee.

I'm guessing the phones are also ringing off the hook for the top-rated caffeinated coffee which also happens to be one of the most reasonably priced - Eight O'Clock Coffee 100% Colombian.

Here's the part that blew me away...Consumer Reports estimates that Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee per day. Excuse me? What? That's right, baby! We are crazy for our coffee. So if we hypothetically switch from a coffee that costs 30 cents a cup to a top-rated coffee that costs 15 cents a cup (like the Eight O'Clock brand rated as #1)...we could collectively save around 60 million dollars a day! Imagine that.

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Vitamin Water on the Hot Seat

Glaceau's Vitamin Water (now owned by Coca-Cola) was on the list of beverage "sugar shockers" in a recent article I wrote for WebMD. I was just looking at potential products for the mere shock value over the amount of sugar a serving contains. I wasn't looking for which products had confusing and perhaps erroneous health claims on their packaging. But CSPI was...

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit health advocacy group based in Washington, DC, just served notice to Coca-Cola of a class action lawsuit filed over what CSPI says are deceptive and unsubstantiated claims on its VitaminWater line of beverages. CSPI is strongly suggesting that this VitaminWater is really:

Vitamins + water + sugar + hype…equals soda minus the bubbles.

Instead of promoting health, CSPI nutritionists believe this line of product with 33 grams of sugar in each bottle (and in spite of the health buzz words used on their labels like "defense," "rescue," "energy," and "endurance,") is actually doing more to promote obesity, diabetes, and other health problems.

"While it is true that vitamins do play various roles in the human body, the statements on VitaminWater labels go far beyond even the loose, so-called "structure/function claims" allowed by the Food and Drug Administration and cross the line into outright fraud," notes CSPI in their press release.

Stay tuned on this one folks! They could both be in for a wild litigation ride. In the meantime, my advice is to get your nutrients (or vitamins) from whole foods as much as possible and to drink water or green tea without added sweetener (or vitamins).

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Taste Test Tuesday: Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers

Simple Meal Creations - Rotini & Zesty Marinara Sauce

You know that section of the supermarket where they have "entrees in a box" like macaroni and cheese and Hamburger Helper? I don't go down that aisle often either, but I was doing research for an article I'm writing and couldn't help but notice the explosion of super convenient microwavable entrees found in this section. These would definitely come in handy in your desk at the office of in your pantry for the kids to fix themselves in a pinch. Just remember to recycle the packaging! Many parts are recyclable.

The one that seemed to have the most potential was the Healthy Choice Rotini & Zesty Marinara Sauce, mainly because it contains 7 grams of fiber, 10 grams of protein and it didn't have any meat I had to worry about chewing on. There's something about meat that has been sitting in a can or in a package on the shelf that just doesn't appeal to me.

The product tasted pretty darn good, even better with some Parmesan sprinkled over the top (do you have any of those packets from a pizza parlor lying around?) The marinara sauce had a great flavor and thick texture and the noodles were nice and satisfying and partially made with whole-wheat flour!

Each package (individual microwavable portion) contains:

300 calories
10 g protein
56 g carbohydrate
3.5 g fat
1 g saturated fat
0 g trans fat
0 mg cholesterol
7 g fiber
600 mg sodium

The sauce is made with some dynamite ingredients like mostly tomato puree, crushed tomatoes and tomato paste, fire roasted onions, burgundy wine reduction and extra virgin olive oil.

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Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie Not a Slice of Heaven

A Popular Restaurant Dessert You'd Better Order With 6 Forks!

Oh... I know how tempting Chili's Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie looks on the menu. On a recent trip to Chili's, my family and I witnessed quite a few of these tasty treats passing by our table (we were seated near the dessert fixing station apparently). A moist and chewy chocolate-chip cookie bar packed with walnuts and coconut is topped with rich vanilla ice cream, which is drizzled with hot fudge and caramel.

Had I known that each of these a la mode desserts represented a whopping 1,590 calories...I might have followed each of those desserts being delivered to their prospective tables and issued the warning, "You might want to share the dessert with everyone at your table (and maybe the next table over, too). "

Think about it - even if you order the dessert and 4 spoons to share with 3 other family members or friends at your table, we are still talking about 398 calories just for dessert! The entire dessert also contributes 37 grams of saturated fat - imagine that! That's the same amount of saturated fat in two Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese from McDonalds (there are 19 grams of saturated fat in each Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese).

This dessert was featured in the "Food Porn" section of the January/February issue of the Nutrition Action Healthletter, published by the nonprofit nutrition watchdog group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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