Greetings! Here are 5 nutrition related articles that caught my eye this week. Enjoy and drop me a comment to share your thoughts.

Snacks are in, Meals are out

That is our eating culture today according to this story in the recent New York Times. Research conducted by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services between 1997 and 2002 found that fewer children ate 3 meals a day while the percentage of those who had a snack instead went up by 40%. This should hardly be a surprise since snacks are now available everywhere. And parents are asked to bring snacks to sporting events or other extracurricular activities. It is no wonder that the traditional family meal is no longer a tradition now except around the Holidays!

Right now, we are experiencing this problem first hand. It takes a lot of effort to create a distinction between mealtime and snack time. Healthy snacks have a place in a child’s diet, but when they begin to demand their favorite snacks at regular mealtimes, you have to draw the line. Snacks are meant to keep them from getting too hungry between meals. Not as a substitute for regular wholesome family meals. So we are trying to be gentle, yet firm in our approach to having our twins understand this difference. Share your tips for getting your child to eat regular meals and not demand snacks and mealtimes.

Obesity rates are flat, but that’s no reason to celebrate

New data from CDC suggests that obesity rates among US adults have reached a plateau, which means they are not rising anymore. But the bad news is that the number is quite high – nearly 34% of the US adults are obese, which is nearly double the number about 30 years ago. Although the number of obese children is at about 17%, this number as tripled over the same time frame. Some may see this as “halting the obesity epidemic”, but I think that attitude does nothing to solve the problem at hand.

This graph in the New York Times is interesting. It shows that Hispanic and African American children 2-5 year old have a higher rates of obesity (BMI is >95% of children in this age group) compared to White children of the same age. Same conclusion can be drawn for adults 20 and older. There is a clear correlation between race and, more importantly, the socioeconomic status, and obesity. And I don’t think there is any coherent strategy to target this group of people to solve this problem. There is no reason we should get complacent about “flat” rates of obesity in the US. This problem is deep and quite severe.

Fuel Up to Play 60

This is an interesting program sponsored by the National Dairy Council and the NFL to encourage kids to eat healthy, play at least 60 minutes a day and do fun activities in and out of school. Kids and Schools can enroll in a competition of sorts where they score points by tracking their food choices and activities. Even the USDA has joined in as a partner.

I think this is a great project. More than anything else, it will get kids to pay attention to what they are eating on a daily basis. I strongly believe in the power of measurement – you get better only when you measure. That is why tracking the food choices and physical activity is a good idea. And of course if they win, they get to hang out with NFL players, which is also very cool!

The only thing to watch out for is that undoubtedly dairy products including flavored milk will be pushed into schools and kids will be encouraged to grab them so they can “score” points. Milk is a far better option than soda or other sugary drinks in schools, but too much flavored milk is also not good. The reason is that it has added sugar in addition to the natural sugar found in plain milk.

Bottom line – stick to plain milk, eat fruits and veggies and give up on soda and junk food. But do bring this program to the attention of your child’s school if they don’t know about it. 60,000 schools have already signed up!

Here are 2 neat recipe ideas for you this week

Take the beef out of your burger and (still) enjoy the experience

Who doesn’t love to sink their teeth in a thick, juicy burger?! But with so many scary stories of E. coli contaminated beef recently, even the most devoted burger fan is probably looking for safer options. This article in the Well column of the New York Times offers 5 ways of enjoying a beef-less burger! You can make burger-like patties by combining fish, chicken, turkey, vegetables, beans  and mushrooms. Sounds like a good idea, certainly worth trying.

Cold quinoa salad with feta cheese

We like quinoa and we love feta cheese! That is why this simple recipe on The Nourished Kitchen caught my eye. First you cook the quinoa and chill it before preparing the whole salad. Aside from the feta cheese it also calls for chicken and pine nuts, both very healthy ingredients. I could also consider experimenting with finely chopped pieces of apple. Overall, it looks very good and worth a try.

Enjoy and let me know what is on your mind.

Photo Source: adactio on Flickr via everystockphoto
©2010 Littlestomaks.com

Let us admit it – we love our hamburgers! No barbecue party is complete without grilling burgers, the smoke filling the air as you enjoy a couple of beers with friends gathered around the grill. McDonald’s serves millions of hamburgers each day. And if you include other fast food outlets and restaurants, the total number would probably reach tens of millions every day. If we had one, you could say the hamburger has become our national food!

When we eat a hamburger, getting sick is probably the last thing on our mind. It is cheap, readily available and tastes good. Yet, 8000 people have become sick by eating contaminated beef in 16 E. coli outbreaks in the last 3 years. The number may seem small given the very large amount of ground beef produced and consumed in the United States. But what if you or your child is the one getting sick next time. What if it makes you so sick that you have to be put into a coma and when you come out of it, you cannot even walk because you are paralyzed from the waist down. Shocking, I know, but that is what happened to 22 year old Stephanie Smith according to a recent New York Times story.

What is inside that packet of ground beef or ready-to-cook beef patties that can make you so sick?And how come we cannot test for the nasty E. coli bacteria so the contaminated meat does not reach the store shelves?

Ground beef is made from a lot of different cow parts and trimmings from a lot of different cows. In her book Safe Food, Marion Nestle cites a study which says that 1 pound of ground beef can contain meat from more than 400 cattle! The New York Times article E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection describes in detail how different raw materials from far flung slaughterhouses end up at a meat processor’s plant, usually without any testing. The final product is supposed to be tested for contamination, but there is no guarantee that everything will be tested before shipping out. Usually it is too late before contamination is detected. Although there is a product recall to protect customers, some do end up getting sick. And then it is not possible to trace the source of contamination because of too many different ingredients from too many different suppliers.

Clearly, the system is broken and something needs to be done. But no one has any smart ideas for a real fix. Not a surprise that most people are looking up to the Government. I hope you are not going to wait around for that to happen anytime soon!

Here are a few things you can do to safeguard your family’s health:

• Buy from a reliable store with high safety standards. Costco is taking several steps to ensure that the ingredients are tested before meat is ground.
• Ask the store manager about their safety record, sanitation and hygiene practices. Ask if they do any testing within the store.
• Do not buy ready-to-eat frozen patties. Go for the freshly ground beef packaged at the store. Check the expiration date to get an idea of how long the meat has been sitting in the store.
• Follow safe handling procedures. Cook thoroughly to ensure the inside temperature reaches 165 ºF measured by a meat thermometer. A word of caution – a recent NYT video Hamburger Confidential shows that these instructions are not sufficient to completely remove the risk of contamination.

But I think the best tip is what I tried this week after reading about it somewhere:

• Select your favorite beef cut and ask the meat department to grind it for you. I tried this at our local Publix, and they were happy to do it. This way, you will know exactly what is going inside your ground beef.
• You can also buy a meat grinder and do at yourself at home! We have not done it yet – but I read about it in Matthew Amster-Burton’s book Hungry Monkey – could be a lot of fun operating it with your toddler!

I will not say that you should stop eating red meat because it is not very healthy and it is known to increase the risk of cancer. Moderation is the key; after all there is no reason to give up enjoying a juicy burger once in a while. But when it comes to food safety, all it takes is just one incident to make your life miserable.

I would love to hear your ideas and tips for keeping ground beef safe.

©2009 Littlestomaks.com
Photo source: rick on Flickr via everystockphoto

It is great to see orange everywhere in the neighborhood these days! Some people have already put up their Halloween decorations. We don’t get to enjoy the Fall colors as much in Florida. So these decorations – along with the cool evening air – remind us of the changing season. It is great to be outdoors these days!

It seemed like a busy week for nutrition related news. Probably because I discovered a great website which aggregates news from different sources and organizes them in different categories. It is called Alltop and it is created by none other than the Marketing Guru Guy Kawasaki. I was delighted to see my blog listed on Alltop’s Top Nutrition News page. Check it out!

Here are the 5 nutrition related news that caught my eye this week. Enjoy and drop me a comment to share your thoughts.

Watch out, eating hamburgers can paralyze you

I was shocked beyond belief to read the unfortunate story of 22 years old Stephanie Smith, who got really sick after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli. She was so sick that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks, after which she could no longer walk because she was paralyzed from the waist down. A very heavy price to pay for a cheap hamburger all of us assume safe for eating without much thought.

Turns out there are serious gaps in the food inspection system which is supposed to test packaged meat for E. coli contamination. Ground beef is produced by processors from beef trimmings and other parts which they buy from many different suppliers. Not all of these incoming supplies are tested for contamination before grinding. The result is that  contaminated cow parts can sometime enter the ground beef supply undetected. Does not happen very frequently, but it does happen often enough to make the news. 8000 people have become sick from 16 E. coli outbreaks in the last 3 years.

No matter how many regulations and inspections are put in place, there is no way to be 100% safe because of the way meat is processed in modern plants. My advice – cut down on beef in the first place – it has been shown to increase the risk of various types of cancer. And if you do want to enjoy a burger, make sure you follow the safe handling procedures and cook it thoroughly so that the inside of the hamburger reaches 165 °F.

Food insecurity increases the risk of childhood obesity

Sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it? Food insecurity is defined as lack of access to food, or nutritionally adequate food. So it is surprising that new research from the American Dietetic Association concludes that there is a link between food insecurity and childhood obesity. In particular, girls from households facing food insecurity are more likely to be overweight or obese. Girls 2-5 years old from household with food insecurity were 47% more likely to be overweight compared to those from food secure households. Boys of the same age did not show this correlation.

What could be the cause of this? Researchers are not sure yet, but suggests that food insecurity creates stress which affects behavior including food choices. Add to that the availability of cheap, energy dense, nutrient-poor foods and binge eating and you can see why this could happen.

I believe that hunger and obesity are two sides of the same coin. In poor countries, food insecurity is real and energy-dense foods are not affordable. There you see severe malnutrition and low weights. In developed countries, food insecurity causes malnutrition on the other end – that is energy dense foods leading to overweight and obesity. The common factors are distribution, quality and cost of food. This is where organizations like Share Our Strength are so critical. I have supported them by writing blog posts and will continue to do so in future.

Soy isoflavones reduce risk of diabetes and heart disease

I was quite excited to read about new research from UMass (my alma mater!) which attempts to explain how isoflavones from soy rich foods work with fat cells to regulate glucose uptake and increased insulin sensitivity. This mechanism is similar to how anti-diabetic drugs work in the body. This is a very important discovery because soy rich foods have been known to lower diabetes risk, increase insulin sensitivity and reduce cardiovascular disease risk, but the cellular mechanism was not well understood.

Isoflavones are plant-based antioxidants found almost exclusively in beans such as soybeans. They are also known as polyphenols because of their chemical structure. Many of these isoflavones act as dietary estrogens. Some studies have shown a reduced risk of breast cancer especially if the soy-rich diet is given in early childhood.

Although much research still remains to be done, particularly in humans, these results are quite promising.

Michael Pollan considers rules to eat by

What are your rules of thumb that affect your food choices? Do you follow the advice of your Mom or Grandma, or do you make these choices by nutritional labels, diet trends or advertisements? Michael Pollan, the highly acclaimed author of The Omnivores Dilemma is compiling genuinely useful, nutritionally sound examples of popular wisdom about eating via the Well blog on the New York Times. He is writing  a book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual based on these responses due to be published in January.

Pollan is known for his skepticism about modern nutrition science and food marketing claims. At the core, he believes that how we eat has been, and should be, influenced by culture based on our collective wisdom accumulated over generations. In short, have more faith in what your Mama told you and skip the advice based on nutrition science.

I have a little bit of a problem with this. What is culture? How do we know that the wisdom of culture is still relevant today? I agree, that culture strongly drives our behavior, but culture is constantly changing. More so than ever now because we live in the age of the Internet. I say, listen to your Mama, but also learn the science so you can make your own decisions. If you leave the decision making to others, even if they are scientists, you are really giving up responsibility for your own health. Science and culture are not mutually exclusive; use the power of information to make your own decisions. I would love to hear Michael’s thoughts on this.

What do you think? What are your favorite rules?

Preservative-free doesn’t make salty processed foods any healthier

Annie of PhD In Parenting wrote a very nice post this week about how Nestle responded to her question on high sodium content in Stouffer’s frozen foods. This was precipitated by Nestle’s claim on Twitter that Stouffer’s meals contained no preservatives.

The No Preservative claim on processed foods is getting quite common these days because customers are getting more sensitive to chemical additives in foods. What they don’t realize is that just because a certain processed food claims to contain no preservatives, it doesn’t mean that it is healthy for them. Most of them still contain loads of salt, fat and sugar.

Nestle’s response to Annie’s question based on their expert opinion is quite ridiculous! They want you to control your toddler’s salt intake by managing the portion size – that is don’t give the adult size serving to your toddler! As if your child is a robot that you can dial in a serving size to manage their salt intake. The right thing to do is to reduce the sodium content in the food.

Instead of hiding behind the numbers in their so called “expert” response, I would have liked to see them take ownership of the sodium problem and announce specific goals to reduce them to a certain level in their products ahead of regulations. That would have shown true leadership and concern for the consumer.

What do you think?

Photo source -Barbara L. Hanson on Flickr via everystockphoto
©2009 Littlestomaks.com