A new recipe? No, a round-up of questions from the Nutrition Over Easy mailbag:
Q. I enjoy peanut butter and peanuts. I recently heard that it is not healthy to consume peanut & peanut butter because of aflatoxin. Is this accurate information or just a myth? Continue reading “Peanuts, Yogurt, Spinach, Graham Flour”
Q. Taught by my grandmother, I practice the time-honored tradition of eating spring greens: dandelions, burdock, stinging nettles, pigweed, lamb’s quarters, plantain, shepherd’s purse, garlic mustard, chickweed, cleavers, and so on. What does modern nutrition have to say about this? Are these greens truly “blood cleansing” or “liver cleansing?
A. In traditional Chinese acupuncture, each season is associated with a different organ and spring is the season of the liver. Many other traditional and alternative healing systems teach that certain plants “cleanse” or “strengthen” the blood or other organs. You won’t find too much about that in Western nutrition science, though. Continue reading “Seasonal Vegetables: Spring Cleaning for the Body?”
Q. I’m a 30-year-old man and I’m struggling to gain weight. I exercise 5-7 hours a week. My health is good. I really enjoy vegetables and other healthy foods, but it’s hard to get enough calories without adding soda and dessert to my meal of chicken salad, for example. I know sugar causes a host of bad health effects, but what alternatives are there? How can I get more calories without causing collateral damage?
A. You’re absolutely right: You don’t want to get those extra calories by loading up on soda and dessert!
Fortunately, I can think of lots of ways to add calories without resorting to foods that undermine your health and nutrition. Continue reading “Tips for Healthy Weight Gain”
A couple of readers have written this week with variations on this question.
Gwen notes that many weight loss plans allow for unlimited amounts of vegetables and wonders whether this rule is really a good one or whether some restrictions make sense. Jim says he’s not dieting but he’s gradually increased his vegetable intake to the point that he’s now eating up to five pounds of vegetables a day. He wonders whether that may be excessive and whether he should be concerned that almost all of the calories in vegetables come from (natural) sugars.
Obviously, you can overdo just about anything…even water. Drink several gallons of water in a short period of time and and you can put yourself into a hyponatremic coma. (Don’t try this at home.)
But assuming you’re not actually trying to hurt yourself, how easy would it be to get yourself in trouble by eating too many vegetables? All in all, not that easy. In most vegetables, the ratio of water and fiber to calories and sugar is high enough to keep you from from over-doing it. But as you appear to be craving some guidelines, here are a few:
I’ve been giving a lot of interviews surrounding the launch of my book this month and reviewers seem fascinated by the subtitle: What to Eat, What to Avoid, and What to Stop Worrying About.
As I wrote in the introduction to the book, “that last category may be the most important of all…In addition to helping you make the best choices at the grocery store and navigate the many decisions you make throughout the day, my ultimate goal is to help you prioritize the things that will make the biggest difference in your health.”
I can’t think of a better illustration for this than the e-mail I received this morning: Continue reading “Are Your Nutrition Priorities in the Right Order?”
People buy organic foods for lots of reasons: They are produced without chemical fertilizers and pesticides and (in the case of animal products) without hormones and antibiotics. But a 100% organic diet may not be possible. So people often ask me which foods are most important to buy organic. Here’s my short list, in order of priority:
Of all food types, pesticide residues are most common in fruits and vegetables. According to the FDA’s most recent (2007) Pesticide Monitoring Program Report, pesticides were detected in slightly over a third of all fruits and vegetables (domestic and imported) tested.
You’re probably familiar with the Environmental Working Group’s list of the Dirty Dozen–12 commonly eaten fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide residues. I talked about the Dirty Dozen in my podcast on getting the biggest bang for your organic dollar. Continue reading “Avoiding Pesticides: Beyond the Dirty Dozen”
What could be more nutritious than fresh vegetables? Frozen ones, quite possibly.
A new study finds that frozen vegetables, which are usually processed within hours of being harvested, may contain more of certain nutrients than “fresh” vegetables, which may be weeks old by the time they’re consumed. This latest study was funded by Birds-eye, but it’s actually nothing we didn’t already know. According to the USDA, fresh vegetables can lose up to 50% of their nutritional value after just one or two days of room temperature storage or one to two weeks of cold storage.
This is not a nutritional emergency. Even at half strength, vegetables are still among the most nutritious foods you can choose. And many valuable nutrients, such as fiber, minerals, and fat-soluble vitamins like E and K, are fairly stable in storage. In other words, the kale that’s been sitting in my fridge since last weekend’s shopping trip is still going to make a great, nutritious side dish for tonight’s dinner.
But the study is a good reminder. Scoring extra-fresh produce from the garden or farmer’s market is a good way to maximize the nutritional value–but eating it promptly is just as important. And if you are stocking up for more than a week or so at a time, frozen veggies may be the best bet for long storage.
See also: Is all processed food bad?
It’s not just kids who resist eating vegetables. The latest reports show that less than one-third of American adults are eating the recommended five servings fruits and vegetables every day.
Believe me, I know how this happens. Even as a professional nutritionist, I have sometimes struggled to follow my own advice! I’d load up my fridge with fresh produce with the best of intentions. But something always got in the way of actually eating them. I just never seemed to have time to make a salad for lunch. Then, we’d end up eating out for dinner while that day’s vegetables wilted in the fridge. On busy days, dinner is often the only meal that includes any vegetables at all, and how many servings of steamed broccoli can you eat at one meal?
But recently, I’ve discovered a couple of really simple strategies that have literally tripled the amount of fresh vegetables we eat every day. And I’m not talking about adding grated carrots to your oatmeal or switching from gin-and-tonics to Bloody Marys. Here’s what’s worked for us: Continue reading “Tasty Ways to Get Your Vegetables”