Eating Healthy During the Economic Crisis

Registered Dietitian Offers Nutritional “Bailout” Plan

St. Charles, MO 10/16/2008 07:21 PM GMT (TransWorldNews)

Eating healthy is often determined to be too expensive for the average American. Fast food and foods loaded with fat and sugar tend to be inexpensive and always at hand.

Registered Dietitian Jayson Hunter has created some tips for healthy and affordable eating. He is calling it his Nutritional Bailout Plan.”Too many people think they can’t afford to eat healthy, especially during this Economic Crisis”, according to Hunter.

Science Sins and Media Mistakes
What You Should Know About Dietary Supplement News Reporting

By Neil E. Levin, CCN, DANLA

Are male smokers taking beta-carotene really at increased risk of cancer? Are high dosages of Vitamin E really hazardous to your health? Is ephedra, an herb with demonstrated weight loss benefits, really a “killer” that merits its banned status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration?

Natural health remedies have a long history of promoting health and wellness, dating back thousands of years. But sloppy science and sensationalist health reporting by the news media make this increasingly hard to believe.

Detoxification

By Neil E. Levin, CCN, DANLA

The EPA tracks about 650 toxic chemicals used in 23,600 facilities in the US. The agency reports that about half of the 4.24 billion pounds of these toxic chemicals are annually released into the air, ground or water. These include chemicals from the mining, smelting and power generation industries, paper production, electronic equipment manufacturing, plastics, pesticides, etc. While the highest release of chemicals is associated with mining and power production, other industries release problematic chemicals into the environment on a daily basis, all over our country.

Certain groups are most at risk (e.g., children, pregnant and nursing women, the elderly).

A recent journal article pointed out the widely-reported danger of smokers using beta-carotene, a natural source (provitamin) of vitamin A, as part of their multivitamins. 1 In this meta-analysis (as in common in such analyses) the researchers have neglected to consider pre-existing dietary and serum levels of this nutrient, making their claim to control by placebo inadequate to properly isolate this variable. In fact, this failure to determine the effects of beta-carotene at a dose-dependent plasma level – and by neglecting to measure total beta-carotene intake along with the relevant synergistic antioxidants associated with it, as opposed to simply measuring supplemental intake - raises serious questions about the validity of these results.

It’s the time of year when we flock to annual fairs and festivals. The midway can be a mine field of high fat and high calorie offerings. If you’re trying to watch your weight or your cholesterol some tips are:
-Don’t go hungry. Plan on having a meal or at least a substantial snack before you head out.
-Keep it simple and small. Try and order smaller portions or skip the cheese or gravy that increase fat content and calories.
-Drink water or calorie-free beverages.
-Share your food with your kids, spouse, significant other or friend.
-Check out all the possibilities first.

Seems like one positive trend during these more lean economical times has been to eat in instead of dining out. People are spending money again on cooking meals at home, instead of heading to restaurants, ordering pizzas or picking up fast food. We’ve heard about “staycations“….. what would this be called?

I saw a startling statistic today…only 55% of Americans wash their hands before preparing food! Ewwww! Folks, let’s stop and wash our hands thoroughly before handling raw or prepared food and let’s teach our kids to wash their hands before every meal.

Clients with diabetes frequently ask me “Will such and such a food make my blood sugar go up?”. My answer is most always, “Test your blood sugar to find out how different foods affect your particular body”. One of the corner stones to taking care of diabetes is monitoring blood sugars on a regular basis. Different foods react differently in everyones body due to a variety of factors such as weight, age, activity level, medications, etc.

If you want to see if and how much a particular food affects your blood sugar, check your blood sugar BEFORE you eat the food (so you have a baseline blood sugar) and then check your blood sugar one or two hours after eating.

I know…I know I sound like a broken record. Last week I was at the Austin Diabetes Summit, a professional conference, and it was reiterated again that one particular diet doesn’t help people lose weight over the long-term.

Since it was a diabetes conference one could image that some of the speakers were talking about low-carbohydrate, low-fat diets, etc. The message that I got loud and clear, which comes to no surprise to me, is that there are several diets out there and maybe there is one that is right for you or maybe you have to make it up as you go…

The bottom line is to find an eating style that works for you over the long-term whether your hope is to control your blood sugars, lose weight, control cholesterol or just make peace with food.