Menu Labeling Will Help Only the Already Motivated

What's on the Menu?
jenny downing / CC BY 2.0

I thought since the calorie information was posted right next to the cheesecakes on display at the Cheesecake Factory, that the calorie and saturated fat would be posted right there on the menu next to the item I was considering. Right? Wrong. You have to ask for the "nutritional guide" which is separate from the actual menu. And at the Claim Jumper, another restaurant chain that is providing nutrition information in my state, the nutrition information is at the back of the "saloon guide."

Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm happy it's there. I'm just thinking you really have to be motivated to (1) find the numbers, and then(2) consider them when making your selections. When people are eating at restaurants, they tend to be in a "splurge" mode and many of the people that tend to go to fast food chains, I'm guessing, just aren't as motivated or interested in this thing called nutrition. They might be largely focused on getting the most food for their three dollars.

Apparently, a provision requiring chain restaurants to post calories on their menus is one of the items buried in the nearly 2,000-page health reform bill recently passed by the House. Well a few studies have been done to assess what impact New York City's menu-labeling legislation, which took effect last year, has had on its citizens. The results were largely unimpressive. I suspect you are going to have a small segment of the population who appreciates and uses the nutrition information and a larger portion that just isn't interested or doesn't care about the nutrition information. They came for the food, not the nutrition information.

My guess is restaurant goers might be more motivated to consider the information compared to a fast food customer who is perhaps more motivated by getting the most food for their dollar or had already decided which fast food favorite they were getting before they even bellied up to the counter.

Are you more likely to consider the calorie and saturated fat information when eating a restaurant versus a fast food?

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Taste Test Tuesday: Weight Watchers Chocolate Chip Soft Cookies

My first thought after tasting the new Weight Watchers Chocolate Chip Soft Cookies (individually wrapped) was, "I like my chocolate chip cookies with a bit more chocolate than cookie." They are indeed "soft" cookies. Each cookie is worth 1 Weight Watcher point mainly because they have pumped up the fiber (which lowers the points in the Weight Watchers point system).

Without the fiber fortification, each cookie would be worth 2 points.

Is the fiber coming from the use of whole wheat flour? Well...no, the first ingredient is enriched wheat flour. The second ingredient is invert sugar, the third is chocolate chips, and the fourth is sugar. Just in case you wondered...there are 8 grams of sugar per cookie, which computes to 36% calories from sugar.

A little further down the ingredient list you'll come to inulin, which they describe as a "natural extract of chicory roots". Bingo! What do we know about inulin? It's considered to be a "low-digestible carbohydrate" which means it is incompletely or not absorbed in the small intestine but is partly fermented by bacteria in the large intestine. Manufacturers often use inulin, also considered to be a prebiotic, as a fat replacement.

How does it taste?
These cookies taste pretty good and they seemed to appeal somewhat to the other people that sampled them. I prefer homemade cookies from the oven made with part whole wheat flour, but admittedly that takes a bit more culinary cunning than opening up a box of these cookies.

Each cookie contains:
90 calories, 2.5 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 18 g carbohydrate, 8 g sugar, 5 mg cholesterol, and 4 g fiber.

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If You Have Been Gaining Weight Should You Blame Your Best Friend?

What company are you keeping and are they encouraging weight loss or weight gain? A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that a person's chance of becoming obese may increase by 57% if he or she has a friend who became obese in a given period.

I think it makes sense that whom we spend our social time with does have some influence on what we eat and drink to some extent. For example if you run in a social circle where social drinking is a big part of what you do when you get together, you are likely going to be taking in a lot of alcohol calories.

Cocktail hour friends
For this social situation, would it help to make a plan ahead of time so that you are prepared to order or bring alternative drinks that are low calorie but still "festive" and social? Would it be a big deal if you were drinking something like light cranberry juice blended with club soda or a coffee or seltzer water with a slice of lemon or lime? Maybe you could join your friends for one glass of wine and then switch to something with few calories after that.

Friends that workout together stay healthy together
Another way to discourage weight gain over time is to stick to an exercise plan so if your social group is at all interested in a particular sport or activity I would put this into motion right about now. Plan some of your social occasions or visits around physical activity like meeting in the gym at a certain time, taking a weekly yoga or Pilates class together, planning a "talk and walk" so you are catching up while you walk instead of in a coffee shop or on the couch. You can even plan this so you are both talking on the phone together and walking in separate cities!

[New England Journal of Medicine Vol. 357: 370-379]

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The Downward Spiral

I saw it with my dad and I've seen it happen to friends' loved ones... I call it the downward spiral. This is when people get so obese or medically challenged that they can't be active. It becomes a downward spiral because the heavier or more medically challenged they get, the harder it is to exercise and be physically active and yet one of the only ways they can improve their situation medically is to be physically active.

Perhaps, like in my dad's case, the window of opportunity to "get with the program" while he still had legs that worked pretty well and the ability to exercise somewhat...came and went. Once there was neurological damage (he had type 2 diabetes) and even small amounts of physical activity were difficult, then it becomes even MORE challenging to lose weight and be active. Enter.... the downward spiral.

Various different reports have been coming out basically telling us that Americans are more (not less) obese than we were 10 years ago. What that tells me is that everything we have been doing as a nation and society to fix this problem over the past 10 years hasn't been working. All those billions of dollars spent (each year) on weight loss products, books and programs...have been a sickening waste of money. Looks like we need a plan B pretty darn quick.

There is no quick fix and America has to face that. Turning this obesity train around is going to take everything we've got...changing the environment we live in (to make healthy eating and regular exercise more possible), it's going to take helping people make permanent lifestyle changes, helping people deal with the personal issues that are contributing to binge-eating and overeating (if this is a factor for them personally), and it's going to take a whole lot of compassion. And we are going to have to do all of this while people still have a chance of turning their health around.

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Hurry and Grab Some Curry for Weight Loss?

Photo: Alpha

There's a component found in certain plants that reduced body weight gain and total body fat without any other change in the food intake when it was included in a "high fat" diet given to mice. The researchers noticed mice with the special diet had less blood vessel growth, specifically in fat tissue . The special phytochemical is curcumin, a bioactive component found in turmeric and some curry spice blends (such as korma curry paste, yellow curry paste, and most commercial curry powders). The noticeable bight yellow color of curry comes courtesy of turmeric, a common ingredient in Indian cooking.

The mice whose diet was supplemented with curcumin also benefited from lower blood levels of glucose, triglycerides, and cholesterol and lower liver fat levels. It sure sounds like we should all hurry and start cooking with curry, doesn't it?

The next step for researchers is to study whether cooking with reasonable amounts of curcumin would actually help reduce weight in humans and lower serum triglycerides, cholesterol and glucose.

***

Turmeric Tips: Who knew turmeric has an interesting history! It's been dried and sold as a powder and used in cooking since before the time of Christ. In the Middle Ages, it was called "Indian saffron" and used as a cheaper alternative to saffron thanks to its bright yellow color. Store turmeric in a cool dark cabinet (as is best for most herbs and spices) because it is sensitive to light.

Source: Journal of Nutrition May 2009 Vol 139

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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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