The standard wisdom is that "studies show" the average American gains 5 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. The good news is that the standard wisdom is wrong and actual studies (as published in 2016 in the New England Journal of Medicine) conclude that the actual weight gain is about 2 pounds.
The bad news is that those 2 pounds tend to stick around and add up year after year.
Still, two pounds comes to about 7,000 calories. (Its actually a bit more complicated than that, but when talking about a few pounds over the short term its a good rule of thumb.) That may sound like a lot but it really isn't. If you consider the number of calories in those holiday cookies, the Thanksgiving meal or the Christmas Party buffet you will find it pretty easy to cut back enough to hold the (waist)line on gaining weight. Do it over several weeks and you probably will not even notice. You can probably do it just by cutting out a few drinks.
So there is no need make yourself miserable being a diet fanatic while everyone else in the country is celebrating. Go ahead and enjoy. Just be a little more mindful about it.
11 December 2019
06 December 2019
Flower Power
Flowers beautify our homes and our tables and are the go to gift for apologies and Valentine's Day. But did you know that a great many of the flowers that fill our vases are not only edible but highly nutritious and even tasty? Come one admit it. You didn't.
Marigold petals cooking into an omelette or quiche will give it a tangy, citrusy flavor. Many people say the taste is similar to saffron only milder. The flowers are a powerful anti-inflammatory so good for you as well.
Lavender flowers add a sweet flavor to foods and make a tasty tea when steeped for 5 minutes in hot water. You can use them as a replacement for rosemary in just about any recipe. Try them on a baked potato. They have strong anti-oxidant properties.
Violets have a sweet and floral taste, making them a perfect companion for everything from salads to iced drinks. Dip them in egg white and powdered sugar for a colorful topping for frosted cakes. Violets are anti-oxidants and contain high amounts of soluble fiber, helpful in lowering cholesterol.
Squash blossoms taste faintly like the squash itself. They are a great source of vitamins A and C and work well as a salad topper. If you want to bet a little more adventurous, stuff them with goat cheese and bake for a memorable side dish.
If you would like to take a deeper dive and explore some of the many flower varieties that are both tasty and nutritious, here is a good place to get started:
Marigold petals cooking into an omelette or quiche will give it a tangy, citrusy flavor. Many people say the taste is similar to saffron only milder. The flowers are a powerful anti-inflammatory so good for you as well.
Lavender flowers add a sweet flavor to foods and make a tasty tea when steeped for 5 minutes in hot water. You can use them as a replacement for rosemary in just about any recipe. Try them on a baked potato. They have strong anti-oxidant properties.
Violets have a sweet and floral taste, making them a perfect companion for everything from salads to iced drinks. Dip them in egg white and powdered sugar for a colorful topping for frosted cakes. Violets are anti-oxidants and contain high amounts of soluble fiber, helpful in lowering cholesterol.
Squash blossoms taste faintly like the squash itself. They are a great source of vitamins A and C and work well as a salad topper. If you want to bet a little more adventurous, stuff them with goat cheese and bake for a memorable side dish.
If you would like to take a deeper dive and explore some of the many flower varieties that are both tasty and nutritious, here is a good place to get started:
40+ Edible Flowers
Flowers! They're not just for Valentine's Day any more.
05 December 2019
Cheesecake Factory Wins 21st Extreme Eating Award
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has awarded its not-so-coveted Extreme Eating Award to the Cheescake Factory for its Cinnamon Roll Pancakes. Cheesecake Factory is no stranger to the honor, having previously won the award 20 times. With 2/3 of Americans either overweight or obese, its great to have businesses doing what they can to move the numbers - albeit in the wrong direction.
If you often eat 11 Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Doughnuts at one sitting, then the Cinnamon Roll Pancakes may be something you want to check out. They are nutritionally equivalent. You do have to admire a company that can create a brunch item containing a whole day's worth of calories (2,040), two and a half days supply of saturated fat (51g), more than a day's worth of sodium (2,950mg) and (wait for it!) a three day supply of added sugar (137g).
Is it any wonder that restaurant chains so adamantly oppose showing nutritional information on their menus?
If you often eat 11 Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Doughnuts at one sitting, then the Cinnamon Roll Pancakes may be something you want to check out. They are nutritionally equivalent. You do have to admire a company that can create a brunch item containing a whole day's worth of calories (2,040), two and a half days supply of saturated fat (51g), more than a day's worth of sodium (2,950mg) and (wait for it!) a three day supply of added sugar (137g).
Is it any wonder that restaurant chains so adamantly oppose showing nutritional information on their menus?
04 December 2019
Diabetes Can Be Reversed
Type 2 Diabetes has been regarded by the medical establishment as irreversible. Once you had it, it inevitably went only one way - downhill. Treatment focuses on minimizing the damage and slowing the decline, yet diabetics suffer from a wide range of serious conditions including high blood pressure, increased risk of stroke and heart attack, blindness, neuropathy, ketoacidosis, digestive disorders and fatigue. And if that were not enough, about 60% of all foot and leg amputations are caused by diabetes.
The current thinking is that there is nothing you can do other than try to manage the symptoms and minimize the inevitable damage. But that may all be about to change thanks to a clinical trial underway in the UK called the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DiRECT) that released its initial results in March of 2019.
The trial assigned 272 people in the UK to receive either the standard treatment (the control group) or a closely supervised, very low calorie diet (the intervention group). For those in the intervention group, all diabetes medication was halted on day one of the trial. After one year, 46% of those in the intervention group were completely free of diabetes and off all their medications. At the 2 year point in the trial, 36% of those in the intervention group remained diabetes free. And the control group? After 2 years, 3% were diabetes free and off their medication. Regardless of which group they were in, 64% of those who lost 22 pounds or more were diabetes free after 2 years.
So the approach did not work for 100% of the people or 100% of the time. But nearly half of those assigned to the intervention group were diabetes free and medication free after 2 years.
This is not an approach for the faint of heart, and it absolutely, positively should not be attempted unless under close medical supervision. The intervention group was on a diet that provided only 850 calories a day from vegetables, salads and a specially formulated nutritional shake. They remained on this diet for 12 - 20 weeks. After the initial restrictions, they slowly added foods back into their diet over the next 4 - 8 weeks. After that, they had regular meetings with a nurse clinician and dietician to help them maintain their lower weight. Anyone who gained 10 or more pounds was immediately restarted on the initial calorie restricted diet.
Clearly this was no fun. But if you were one of those who walked away free of diabetes and all its many health dangers, perhaps worth the cost.
In the United States, the number of people with Type 2 diabetes has tripled between 1990 and 2010. In 2015 there were 30.3 million Type 2 diabetics, about 10% of the population. Another 84 million (nearly 1 in 3 of us) have pre-diabetes, many of them undiagnosed and unaware.
The takeaway from this is embarrassingly simple. "The incidence of diabetes increases if a population is overfed," says Roy Taylor, one of the researchers involved in the DiRECT study. "If a population is short of food, diabetes disappears."
We eat to much of the wrong things and we exercise too little. And it can kill us. Now, at least, it looks like we can step back from the brink. IF we are willing to give up the garbage we bring home from the grocery store, the 3,000 calorie meals we eat in restaurants and some of our couch time.
For more details on the DiRECT trial go to ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal/#publicinformation .
The current thinking is that there is nothing you can do other than try to manage the symptoms and minimize the inevitable damage. But that may all be about to change thanks to a clinical trial underway in the UK called the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DiRECT) that released its initial results in March of 2019.
The trial assigned 272 people in the UK to receive either the standard treatment (the control group) or a closely supervised, very low calorie diet (the intervention group). For those in the intervention group, all diabetes medication was halted on day one of the trial. After one year, 46% of those in the intervention group were completely free of diabetes and off all their medications. At the 2 year point in the trial, 36% of those in the intervention group remained diabetes free. And the control group? After 2 years, 3% were diabetes free and off their medication. Regardless of which group they were in, 64% of those who lost 22 pounds or more were diabetes free after 2 years.
So the approach did not work for 100% of the people or 100% of the time. But nearly half of those assigned to the intervention group were diabetes free and medication free after 2 years.
This is not an approach for the faint of heart, and it absolutely, positively should not be attempted unless under close medical supervision. The intervention group was on a diet that provided only 850 calories a day from vegetables, salads and a specially formulated nutritional shake. They remained on this diet for 12 - 20 weeks. After the initial restrictions, they slowly added foods back into their diet over the next 4 - 8 weeks. After that, they had regular meetings with a nurse clinician and dietician to help them maintain their lower weight. Anyone who gained 10 or more pounds was immediately restarted on the initial calorie restricted diet.
Clearly this was no fun. But if you were one of those who walked away free of diabetes and all its many health dangers, perhaps worth the cost.
In the United States, the number of people with Type 2 diabetes has tripled between 1990 and 2010. In 2015 there were 30.3 million Type 2 diabetics, about 10% of the population. Another 84 million (nearly 1 in 3 of us) have pre-diabetes, many of them undiagnosed and unaware.
The takeaway from this is embarrassingly simple. "The incidence of diabetes increases if a population is overfed," says Roy Taylor, one of the researchers involved in the DiRECT study. "If a population is short of food, diabetes disappears."
We eat to much of the wrong things and we exercise too little. And it can kill us. Now, at least, it looks like we can step back from the brink. IF we are willing to give up the garbage we bring home from the grocery store, the 3,000 calorie meals we eat in restaurants and some of our couch time.
For more details on the DiRECT trial go to ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal/#publicinformation .
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