Balance of Food

Fitting in fast food: fantasy?

Can you really fit in fast food into a diet that can keep you in shape? Many, of course, will say you can't. Of course, if you get two large sandwiches, super sized fries, and a regular soft drink on a daily basis, then no it won't fit in well.

I get occasional hankerings for Burger King. It's good that they are only occasional since they aren't always located in convenient places. And I don't live on the West Coast with Jack in the Box, In and Out, et al. And I was in Burger King recently and while eating my meal, noticed the placemat had meal suggestions ranging from 410-615 calories.

That range fits in to about a third of the daily requirement for most people, so if you ate one of these meals and kept your other two meals to around the same size, theoretically it could work.

But would you stick to these set meals?

• If you wanted to do 410 calories, you could have a grilled chicken salad with light Italian dressing, apple fries with caramel sauce, and water. Not a whole lot of food, but rather good by fast food standards.
• Amazingly, one of the options parallels what someone could realistically order. For 520 calories, you could get the junior hamburger with a small onion rings and a diet soft drink.
• The largest combo on the placemat, at 615 calories, is a 9-piece chicken fries, side salad with light Italian dressing, and a diet soft drink.

One theme in these combinations is that there are 0 calories from drinks. Water or diet drinks are your only options. The sides in these combos are salads with reduced calorie dressings. In other words, there are a lot of rules. Fast food, as a rule, doesn't usually like rules.

The funny part is that I used to steer my life around eating at a fast food place. "I don't feel like fixing dinner. Let's go eat out." And being on a budget, eating out meant burger, fries, and drink.

Even though I don't eat that way anymore, I still eat fast food. But it's usually on the run, before an event or to tie me over until I can eat a regular meal.

So I might have a couple of the smaller burgers. You figure that these are better deals in terms of health. But they are surprising high in calories, fat, etc. The snack to "tie me over" is more like a meal and I'll still have a meal afterwards. 

And this snack is without French fries (mostly) and a soft drink (now always). So eating is better, but still with a feeling that it still isn't good.

But the reality of our lives is that fast food will slip into our lives. There isn't much we can do short of significantly slowing down our lives.

So enjoy fast food when you can. Bring healthier snacks to supplement. If you know that a fast food meal is in your future, bring raw veggies for snacking. And eat those veggies before the grease gets into your system.

Starting the Holiday Chocolate Express to Weight Gain?

Halloween always was the gateway between the eating sensible traits of warmer weather and the piggy temptations of the colder weather.

Whatever we might think of children eating tons of Halloween candy, they can burn it off easier than we can. At least, they used to do so when we were children.

If only we were tempted by one night of treats while dressed up in a costume. Adults get exposed to Halloween candy for several weeks, including this period now. When you got to work on Monday, were you hit up with "Hey, I got some leftover Halloween candy." Guess what, most of us have our own leftover candy.

And we feel like we have to eat it.

The temptations are also at work. Bosses and fellow co-workers offering sweets. And for the many without jobs this year, there are Halloween parties or even goodies at counters when we shop.

So what do we do? Go without candy?

Of course not. Having some candy is fine. But using the holiday as an excuse to behave literally like a child isn't good. "Well, this leftover candy will go to waste if someone doesn't eat it." So. If you had given away every single piece of candy at the door, or had bought a reasonable amount to begin with, you wouldn't have had this conversation.

Or if it absolutely breaks your heart, or traumatizes your inner child, spread out your candy over a long period of time, like a month. Not 3 days. 

If you don't have leftover candy, and have successfully avoided most of the temptations, yet you still want a treat, buy yourself some high-quality candy, such as high cacao percentage chocolate. More chocolate taste with less sugar, yet it's still a treat.

Besides, as pies go, pumpkin pie is one of the healthiest.

This is temptation season. Even if you "messed" up over Halloween, don't worry. There is still plenty of time to make it up. Perhaps a little more time in the gym or fewer soft drinks or French fries or whatever else gets you in trouble.

The goal is not Halloween or Thanksgiving or the December holidays. The goal is springtime, and if you're close in weight at that point, you'll be happier.

Having been to the doctor and having been weighed professionally, there is a temptation to remain at that weight through the winter months. Winter has been rough where I live in the last couple of years. Losing weight isn't a thought -- maintaining for the next 6 months would make me do cartwheels, if I could physically do a cartwheel.

And the place to start -- making sound decisions yet having some fun.

'Smart Choices' labels a dumb idea in theory and practice

Just as well that the powers-that-be pulled the plug on the Smart Choices food label system -- I didn't understand why they thought labels would make a difference in how people shop.

When Froot Loops had a label that said "Smart Choice," you knew the program was dumb.

Having a huge corporate shadow over the program destroyed what little credibility the program might have had. The foods that really needed a label didn't have any corporate backing, such as fresh fruits and vegetables.

And too many labels confuse the shopper. The joy of seeing "0g trans fat" on a gallon of milk made the concept of labels more laughable than any other adjective. 

Consumers need accurate information to make tough choices when going up and down supermarket aisles, yet companies try to legally deceive consumers into buying their products. Having government-sanctioned food had the charm of upsetting liberals and conservatives, not easy to do these days.

There are too many issues with what makes something good for you. Sodium, fiber, carbohydrates, fat, saturated fat, et al. But sugary cereals and foods with a lot of sodium don't belong in a group to get rewarded. According to this article, foods that had the "seal of approval" were Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Baked Cheese Crackers, Country Crock spread, and Froot Loops and Cocoa Krispies breakfast cereals.

If we are going to spend time and money on spotlighting healthy foods, let's do it right. Dump the corporate influence and promote unprocessed, naturally nutritious food. Those are the real "smart choices."

Notebook: 7-layer Whopper and other food news

_{picture from here}

Beat reporters often end up with odd fragments of material, more than a sentence or two but less than a story or a column. And so the Notebook was born. The Notebook usually consists of a few pithy segments that don't really connect to anything else, but they are short bursts of knowledge laced with humor.

** It was fun watching the media freak out over the Whopper 7, a Burger King parody tied into the Windows 7 launch this week. In Japan, Burger King offered a Whopper with 7 beef patties to honor the latest software from Microsoft. 

Visually, it's very impressive, and since we do tend to judge foods on how they look (and not on practicalness), the Whopper 7 is beautiful. In reality, it's messy and you would lose the sensation of the other ingredients, which truly makes the Whopper the Whopper.

Still, the CNN reporter in Japan who made it appear as if she ate one whole Whopper 7 certainly looked messy on bite one.

For those who freaked out over having such an item should realize that doing it only in Japan bought Burger King a lot of publicity worldwide. That's bang for the buck, or at least, the yen.

** The Onion scores again with this headline: "Television, Processed Foods Couldn't Be More Proud Of Child They Raised." TV and processed foods are seen as having a horrible effect in "raising" obese children.

Brand recognition is one of those areas where children really do learn fast, a trait displayed in the classic Onion style.

Jo Ann Smith, board member of the frozen meals conglomerate Tyson Foods, said she was equally delighted with the dangerously obese young man her company helped raise. According to the wistful executive, she still remembers the first time her "little darling Brian," then only 13 months old, took his first steps toward a plate of deep fried chicken strips, completely ignoring a bowl of fresh fruit as he toddled by.

Unlike children of generations past, today's children aren't getting the level of exercise they need to burn off the processed foods.

Irene Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft Foods, agreed. "There's just so many great memories," Rosenfeld said. "The time Brian spent all afternoon eating Easy Mac when he could have been out hitting his first Little League home run, the family-size bag of marshmallows he slowly devoured while the rest of his graduating class attended prom. I'll treasure them all."

It's easy to laugh at The Onion but we know there are too many kernels of truth underneath. Mmmmm, kernels.

** Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle ripped into the smaller cans of Coca-Cola "Now with 36% less death!" Morford is not very subtle in his take on social trends.

The smaller portion sizes have been praised in a number of circles, theorizing that drinking less is better than drinking more, though of course, not as good as drinking none. Morford's take is that smaller sizes makes it easier to drink more than one, something I had not considered.

If you actually do the math -- which we know you won't -- you'll find that you could drink an entire eight-pack of minis, and still be a full 12 ounces short of how much you'd consume if you drank a normal six-pack of 12-ouncers. This means, if you drink two per day, as you're more likely to do, you'll run out even more quickly, and will buy even more. See how that works? Christ, we should've thought of this years ago.

Is Morford correct? Coca-Cola might hope for that, but can the American mind be satisfied with only 7.5 ozs. of high-fructose corn syrup laden soft drinks?

Companies that switch out HFCS for sugar do good, but do we need so much sweet?

If sadness abounds when one of your favorite food items switches from sugar to high-fructose corn syrup, what is the reaction when, amazingly, a favorite food item goes from HFCS back to sugar?

I had stumbled upon this low-fat Italian salad dressing that had sugar (why are we putting sugar in our dresssings anyway?). But fairly recently, the dressing took the HFCS plunge and I had to give it up. Very sad.

But there was a recent victory to celebrate, and I rarely single out specific products, but kudos to Miracle Whip for going back to sugar.

My family grew up on Miracle Whip in lieu of mayonnaise. And so I followed along well into my adulthood. I subconsciously avoided the product when I started going in-depth into getting rid of HFCS. I used it rarely or not at all for awhile.

When I started doing the runs to Canada, one of the first products I would buy was Miracle Whip, sometimes even getting the "Calorie-Wise" version. Calorie-Wise is like their equivalent of low-fat, perhaps a countrywide desire to have more accurate labeling. Wish our labels in the U.S. were as "wise."

But Kraft, makers of Miracle Whip, went through recently and changed some of their products from HFCS to sugar (sorry, Oreo lovers, not that product).

For the first time in years, I bought a Miracle Whip product in the United States. I got the regular version and brought it back home.

I was in the mood for a BLT, and the "new" Miracle Whip was the end piece to the puzzle. The taste test proves it, the improvement is made for the better.

Besides the obvious health concerns, products made with sugar taste much better (to me) than those with high-fructose corn syrup. It also felt less heavy, something you want in a mayonnaise-type product.

In the transition process, I checked out the label for the Canadian version: the Canadian Miracle Whip had glucose/fructose AND sugar. That can't be good. Turns out that glucose/fructose is HFCS. This changes my perspective on the Canadian runs.

I should have been more suspicious that glucose/fructose wasn't a good thing, but perhaps, I was naive that Canada would do something that unappealing. The U.S. has been pressing Mexico to carry HFCS (Thanks NAFTA), but I haven't seen the stories about our neighbors to the North.

There is more prevalent use of HFCS in the U.S. than glucose/fructose in Canada, but both countries use it way too much, and in products that don't need a sweetener, sugar or otherwise.

Do we need a sweetener in hot dog buns, salad dressings, mayonnaise, and countless other products? And is that why we have worse obesity in North America than in most of the world?

As dangerous as HFCS (& glucose/fructose) is, the better question might be "can we find a way to have a food policy that doesn't treat sweeteners as a filler to reduce costs and make it harder for people to give up those foods?"

Eating well 12 months of the year reduces the yo-yo cycle

Summer is unofficially officially over; for some, given the weather, summer never really kicked in. But we did have a summer, where likely you ate the best and worst of what was there.

Summer is the season where we look forward to eating the best of nature, whether we grow it ourselves or visit a farmers market or go to a friend's barbecue. And summer is also the time where we indulge in foods we likely should have said "no" or at least stop before you did.

If you fall into patterns and situation eating, the end of summer is a great time to reassess what you like about what you're doing and what you don't.

I have prided myself on enjoying meals straight from farmers markets on vacation, yet on my trip to Halifax, I also had a beaver tail, a blueberry style donut, and much fried seafood.

Think of it as your "back to school" agenda. When you were a child, you prepared for the new challenges for the upcoming year. Did you finish the summer with loose pants? Tight pants? Eating pants 24-7?

New Years Day is seen as the symbolic start of the year, but for your stomach and taste buds, Labor Day is as good a time as any to see where you are and where you want to be.

Hopefully, you are in pretty good shape at this point, since the temptation to exercise has hit its peak and may go downward from here. Being too cold is a common excuse to not go outside and get in an extra walk, and that same cold weather is also a good reason to eat that second piece of pumpkin pie.

In traveling to Quebec, I regale my friends and acquaintances with stories of poutine, a dish common to Quebec of French fries with Quebec cheese curds and brown gravy poured on top. I usually joke that this dish is popular in the Canadian province since it gets so cold up there.

But what once was necessary survival, using our fat to get through the winter, is now not doing us much good, no matter how cold it gets.

Autumn/fall is the time to rethink the cold mentality. Farmers markets are likely still going on where you live. Stock up on fresh food, and maybe take the long way to get those food items to sneak in some extra exercise.

We bemoan being in the middle of winter, New Years Day, and complaining that we need to lose 10-15 pounds. Want to be in a better frame (of mind or otherwise)? Start now doing just a little bit better, and you could be one of those in January who says, "Well, 2-3 pounds might not be so bad to lose."

It's not fun to hear, but eating a better diet isn't just for bathing suit season or New Year's resolutions. You have to put in 12 months of work to get year-round success. The up and down yo-yoing is what gets us into trouble in the first place.

How petite should your 'petit dejeuner' be?

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day" is the tired cliche we've heard since childhood. What may be new is the importance of what and how much to eat for the morning meal.

In French, petit dejeuner means breakfast. This means tiny. But we certainly don't think in those terms when it comes to breakfast.

On my last excursion to Montréal and Quebec City, I got an opportunity to experience the two sizes of breakfast. I chased down bagels at St. Viateur all three mornings I was there in Montréal. Yes, I tried the Fairmount. By regular bagel standards, the Fairmount was pretty good. The onion bagel I purchased was cold but pretty light. But it couldn't sit in the same room as the St. Viateur. Each sesame bagel I bought was hot, smelled wonderful, and was amazingly light. My only complaint at St. Viateur was not being able to get butter.

On the morning that I got the Fairmount, I still went over to St. Viateur.

In Montréal, I truly had a petit dejeuner. Since I was moving pretty quickly, I needed energy and one bagel was enough without being too much.

By contrast in Quebec City, I stayed at a bed and breakfast. I had crepes with maple syrup the first morning. I added blueberry yogurt and a small glass of orange juice. That morning, I felt weighed down.

On Day 2, I went a protein route with fried eggs, bacon, toast, and blueberry yogurt. I had initially used one bread slice for toast, then added another. I felt I had enough carbohydrates, but the protein wasn't ideal. Better than Day 1, but still didn't feel great.

On Day 3, I had crepes with bacon. I got fewer crepes because I got the bacon. With the blueberry yogurt and milk, I had the best of those days, but they weren't as energy efficient as one light sesame bagel in Montréal.

You could easily argue that the Quebec breakfasts wouldn't work because I wasn't used to having so much food. True, but is it better to eat tons of food to start your day or just enough to get the motor running?

I have tried huge amounts of food for breakfast and smaller amounts as well. I know what works well for me.

When I was in Montréal in 2002, I stayed at a bed and breakfast. Back then, I ate what I wanted, so I looked forward to eating a lot at breakfast. And those breakfasts were good, but now they would seem too much.

So why did I stay at a bed and breakfast in Quebec in 2009? I wanted to test my theory. And I know which breakfast worked for me: Montréal all the way.

My petit dejeuner experiences in Paris were small and beautiful. And they gave me plenty of energy.

The truth is that unlimited food can be too tempting, speaking from personal experience. And unlimited to start the day is more than I can handle. Even as much as I ate in Quebec, I cut myself far short of what I would have done under 2002 rules.

So I know now that bed and breakfasts won't do me much good any more. But if I do stay there, I will have to limit my intake if I want to be at my best.

Manufacturers stepping up on getting rid of high-fructose corn syrup

Here is a nice article about how marketers are responding to the pressures against high-fructose corn syrup.

It's rather amazing that so long ago, when I told my friends about the evils of HFCS that people really didn't know what it was. Whether you agree with the view that HFCS is not good for you, people do know what high-fructose corn syrup is.

But there's a way to go. The article notes that while Kraft has taken HFCS out of some products, the ingredients remains in Oreos.

One intriguing tidbit from the article:

Some beverage companies are also promoting their lack of HFCS. PepsiCo launched "throwback" versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew, which are essentially HFCS-free formulations in retro cans. The products proved successful, leading the company to bring them back for another eight-week run, beginning Dec. 28.

So if you missed the boat the first time, or want to stock up, you have another shot. Though an 8-week run in the middle of winter might not be the best time to think about a nice cold soft drink.

But it does mean that manufacturers are getting more serious about the ramifications of products containing high-fructose corn syrup.

Colbert weighs in on the politics of sugar

On last night's "Colbert Report," Stephen Colbert was in a "panic" over a sugar shortage. But we aren't really running out of sugar.

The current sugar crisis is political in nature, as explained by Colbert's guest Marion Nestle, NYU professor and author of the book "Food Politics."

But in Colbert's comedy, he did touch on one serious question: what if we had no sugar?

Can you imagine an America with no sugar? Juice would contain nothing but 10% juice. And we'd all be eating uncarmalized apples. 

If we had less sugar, we might be able to enjoy foods without them being too sweet. The juice line is particular was hilarious, because we sell "juice cocktails" that are mostly water and high-fructose corn syrup (or even sugar). Juice is sweet.

I was on the plane back from Quebec when I was offered beverages. I asked what kind of juice they had. The flight attendant said orange and cranberry. I was excited to hear that they had cranberry; after all, it wasn't easy to find. I asked if it was 100% cranberry juice, and she got this look on her face. Turns out it was cranberry juice cocktail. The standard for that had become a juice cocktail was "juice." Not in my world.

As Americans, we could use less sugar, and more sugar, instead of high-fructose corn syrup. Politics on sugar shouldn't be the dominant force, people's health should win out.

Can music help you eat better and lose weight?

Can music help you to lose weight?

Not quite like playing Judas Priest against your stomach to improve your digestion, but perhaps music can be a positive tool.

I recently invested in a MP3 player that is not an iPod. Okay, it's a Zune. While the player serves many useful purposes, I'm also hoping it will help me eat better and exercise more.

The exercise element seems easy. Bring your favorite tunes makes you want to walk more, hence get more exercise. Given the stress of my day job, this might work at some point. But when I do walk with the Zune, my pace is faster. And with the built-in FM tuner, I can listen to radio when I want to do so.

But where I am hoping to make some improvement is using music to help me eat better. I'm a stress eater, and after a stressful day at work, I sometimes make bad choices for dinner.

This used to be a real huge problem for me. In the healthier era, I do make better choices. But within that realm, I make poorer choices than I should.

The hope is that music will put me in the kind of mood to relax me so I don't make poor choices when it comes to dinner.

Since we are in the initial stage, I am experimenting with what kind of music helps make this work better. Should it be upbeat, such as Side 1 of Van Halen's first album? Or something a lot more mellow, such as Laura Palmer's Theme from the Twin Peaks soundtrack?

Interestingly, so far, louder upbeat music is working better for me. (Don't worry, I use headphones at a relatively low volume, no earbuds.) I can forget the kind of mood I was in as I left work. With that distraction, I feel a little better adding more vegetables and doing less worshipping of carbohydrates. But it's still a work in progress.

Do you use music or some other device to change your body's attitude toward food? Tell us your story in the comments section below.