Professional Diet

Posted on Thursday, 14th January 2010 by admin

Whole grains are healthy and nutritious. Studies have shown they reduce the risk of certain cancers. Whole grains help keep the digestive tract healthy. Getting your family to eat more whole grains can be a challenge. Here are some tips to add more whole grains to your family’s diet.

Overview

If your kids are like mine, they won’t eat brown rice and getting them to eat whole grain bread is almost impossible. There are other forms of whole grains that kids find appealing. Adding whole grains to your family’s diet is an important way to improve their health. Studies have shown that diets high in whole grains help prevent cancer and other diseases. This is why it is more important than ever to get your family to eat more whole grains.

Whole Grains Your Family Might Enjoy

Breads

Let’s start with bread. All breads, whole grain or not, have a lot of calories. White bread is so awful for your health. Fresh baked bread, on the other hand, tastes wonderful and it is void of trans-fats, high fructose corn syrup and preservatives. Baking bread has become really easy. I fell in love with the artisan breads that you can make in five minutes a day. In his article Five Minutes A Day For Fresh Bread, Jeff Hertzberg and Joe Francois show how easy it is for anyone to have fresh baked bread anytime they want it. We use this recipe and others in my home. It is saving us tons of money and the kids are eating healthier. It is unlikely that sandwiches and toast will become a thing of the past. Make sure that the bread calories they are eating are healthy calories.

Rice

White rice has very little nutritional value. Some people find that brown rice has a bitter aftertaste. Here are some tips to getting better quality rice into your family. Cook brown rice in chicken stock and add chopped fresh scallions just prior to serving. This removes the bitter aftertaste of brown rice. After a while, brown rice gets boring. Try mixing different types of rice. Bhutanese red rice has a much better flavor than brown rice does. It is just as nutritional, if not more nutritional, than brown rice. Lotus Foods carries good quality Bhutanese red rice. The flavor is slightly sweet and kids seem to like it better than brown rice.

Forbidden Black Rice is another good rice to try. This can be mixed into soups or stews. Mixing it with other grains is advised, having a serving of shiny purple-black rice on the plate is striking but not kid friendly. Forbidden Black Rice is tasty. It is definitely one to try instead of brown rice.

More Healthy Grains

There are other grains that you family may love. Polenta, made with whole grain corn is wonderful. Don’t bother buying the expensive polenta in a roll at the supermarket. A box of quick cooking organic polenta is fast and easy to make, as well as healthy. Polenta can be served soft, almost like grits or it can be allowed to set up and then pan fry it (using cooking spray or a dry pan). When allowed to set up and pan fried it tastes a lot like corn bread. Soft served it can replace white mashed potatoes as a side dish. One of our favorite dishes is sausage and peppers with polenta.

Quinoa, pronounced Keen-wah, is another whole grain that your family may love. Sweet and nutty, you cook it similar to the way rice is cooked. The result is a sweet grain that is tasty. Quinoa will pick up any flavors from cooking. I purchase quinoa grains and cook them myself. I find many of the boxed quinoa side dishes to be very salty.

Finally there is millet. Millet can be used in muffins, dessert breads and cookies. Use it just like you would wheat flour. Millet muffins are tasty. Kids love them and they are packed full of vitamins.

Where to Find More Information

If getting your family to eat more whole grains is one of your goals, the book Whole Grains: Every Day, Every Way by Lorna Sass is a must have. In this book all types of whole grains are discussed. Lorna Sass explains exactly how to cook whole grains, where to get them, and gives you wonderful recipes to try. You can find this book online or in any major book store.

For a quick list of 16 whole grains and ideas on how to include them into your diet, check out this diet and nutrition article.

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Posted on Wednesday, 13th January 2010 by admin

The next step in fat loss and extreme energy, Thermo Lean Extreme is meant to help you to get a time release formula that will really help you to burn fat and otherwise lose extreme amounts of weight.    They talk about using the ultimate formula for your needs to even suppress appetite while giving you these fat burning results, and without any side effects.

Now they focus on the most common of ingredients in formulas in general, talking about 3 major ingredients: caffeine, green tea, and synephrine.  They are all of course sources of caffeine.  But synephrine is above the other two, because while green tea has literally hundreds of studies, synephrine has been suggested to be more powerful, even matching ephedra without all the potential harm.

Now the good thing is that they do have 500mg of green tea.  The problem is that it is not even close to 50% caffeine. Considering the fact that it’s the caffeine actually burning fat, you won’t see any results.  Likewise, they don’t have the needed 400mg of caffeine or 250mg of synephrine either.  They have a grand total of 30mg of synephrine, which is typical of products such as this.

Their other ingredients in some cases could work.  For example 7-OXO DHEA has been known to burn fat without stimulants and only requiring 2 doses per day of 200mg.  That’s tiny!  They have 100mg, meaning it’s not set up well at all.  Considering coleus forskohlii requires over 1000mg, and they only have 100mg, obviously speaking, it is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Outside of that, they have a number of diuretics.  Yes, diuretics help you to lose weight fast.  But it’s only water weight! You will end up gaining it back, and then you have a harder time losing weight in the future while also suffering through various side effects in general.  Diuretics are never the way to go!

So as you can see, they’re not doing well, and the fact that they have any ingredients that don’t promote weight loss in the right amounts considering all of this is just one more thing telling us that you should never use Thermo Lean Extreme.  Yes, it’s appealing because it sells on big sites under a big name.  However, you should not base your decisions on this as obviously, this would make a poor one.

If you are looking for a great option in weight loss, we would of course suggest checking out our recommended products.  They have all the right ingredients, and they have the right amounts.  They don’t use harmful and yet completely useless ingredients, and realistically, they have various other benefits that you may not expect from the average diet pill.  If you look into these, you are guaranteed to find something that would most likely actually give you results.

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Posted on Wednesday, 13th January 2010 by admin

Lowering glycemic index (GI) led to improved contol of blood sugar, better insulin sensitivity, and weight loss in people with type 2 diabetes given group education sessions, according to researchers at Pennsylvania State University.

As background, the scientists note that:

GI may play a role in preventing or treating type 2 diabetes by decreasing the risk for obesity or by altering metabolic endpoints.  Improvements in glycaemic control were observed in people with diabetes in a recent meta-analysis.  A lower-GI diet was shown to decrease postprandial glucose [blood sugar after meals] and insulin responses and improve serum lipid concentrations.  Lower-GL [glycemic load] diets were associated with decreased risk for type 2 diabetes, decreased levels of C-reactive protein and inflammation, and weight loss.

Ninety-nine test subjects completed the study that enrolled adults 40 to 70  years old who had diabetes at least one year but were not taking insulin shots.  Average body mass index was 33, so they were obese.  Average weights were 84.5 kg (186 lb) for women and 108.7 kg (239 lb) for men.  Average baseline hemoglobin A1c was estimated at 7%, so these folks were under good glucose control.  Baseline carbohydrate intake was 45% of total energy, a bit lower than the general population. 

The 9-week intervention involved nine weekly group education sessions—lasting 1.5 to 2 hours—focusing on selection of lower-GI (vs higher-GI) foods instead of restricting carbohydrates.  Also covered were monitoring of portion sizes to control carb consumption, carb counting to control carb distribution and intake, and self-monitoring of food intake. 

Results

Although weight loss was not a goal, weights fell by 1-2 kg (2-4 pounds).  Men lost more than women.  Overall diet glycemic index fell by 2-3 points (a modest amount).  Comparing values before and after intervention, fasting glucose and postprandial glucose fell significantly, and insulin sensitivity improved.  Although not measured, the authors estimate hemoglobin A1c levels would have fallen an absolute 0.3%, based on measured glucose levels.  Percentage of calories from carbohydrate did not change. 

Comments

This is one of the few studies to try low-glycemic index behavioral intervention in adults with type 2 diabetes.  Results are encouraging. 

The researchers and I wonder if results would have been even more dramatic if the test subjects hadn’t been so well controlled before intervention or if they had dropped their glycemic index even lower.  Probably so.  Many people with type 2 diabetes have hemoglobin A1c’s well over 7%.

The researchers attribute the weight loss to portion control and simple self-monitoring of consumption. 

For people with diabetes, this study supports selection of lower-glycemic index instead of higher-GI.  In fact, we’d see less diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer, and gallbladder disease if all women—diabetic or not—ate lower-GI. 

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Posted on Sunday, 10th January 2010 by admin

Harvard researchers suggest that our food consumption does indeed influence our risk of suffering a stroke.  This matters since stroke is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.

Scientists looked carefully at 121 different studies—published between 1979 and 2004—on the relationship between dietary factors and stroke.  High blood pressure is a major modifiable risk factor for stroke, so it also was considered.  Dietary factors included fats, minerals, animal protein, cholesterol, fish, whole grains, fiber, carbohydrate quality, fruits and vegetables, antioxidants, B vitamins, and dietary patterns.

I quote their conclusions:

Diets low in sodium and high in potassium lower blood pressure which will likely reduce stroke risk.

Consumption of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, folate, and fatty fish are each likely to reduce stroke risk.

A prudent or traditional Mediterranean dietary pattern, which incorporates these individual dietary components as well as intake of legumes and olive oil, may also prevent stroke.

Evidence is limited or inconsistent regarding optimal levels of dietary magnesium, calcium, antioxidants, total fat, other fat subtypes, cholesterol, carbohydrate quality, or animal protein for stroke prevention.

A diet low in sodium, high in potassium, and rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, cereal fiber, and fatty fish will likely reduce the incidence of stroke.

Take Home Points

The article abstract does not address the optimal intake amount of these various foods, vitamins, and minerals.  That’s probably not known with any certainty.

The traditional Mediterranean diet incorporates many of these stroke-preventing foods.  The Advanced Mediterranean Diet helps people lose weight while teaching how to eat Mediterranean-style.

The very low-carb Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet includes these stroke-preventing foods and minerals, except for whole grains and a tendency to be low in potassium.  The KMD is high in total fat and animal protien, and potentially high in cholesterol; this study indicates those issues are nothing to worry about in terms of future strokes.

I’ll use articles such as this to recommend long-term food consumption for followers of any future Diabetic Mediterranean Diet.

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