Balance of Food

What's Tempting: Snacking for dinner

We sleep for several hours before breakfast. Work forces us to be awake for lunch. Dinner? Yeah, we're usually tired.

Dinner works best if the meal is being cooked while you are at work, either with a slow cooker in motion all day or having a loving spouse or partner who has time to make dinner.

Sometimes, all we really want is to eat something, but society puts pressure on us to fix a "meal." Some days, we just want to snack our way out of dinner.

When we are tired, we tend to make poor eating decisions. Pick up something on the way home from work, call for a pizza and hope we are there when the pizza arrives, grab some leftover rice or pasta from the fridge and start chowing down.

Being tiredness lends itself to wanting more energy, which leads to wolfing down simple carbohydrates, which can deepen the problem and lose sight of the issue.

If you think of snacking as sitting on the sofa mindlessly eating whatever is in the bag in front of you, that isn't the kind of snacking in mind.

Smart snacking: taking the convenience of snacking with the nutrition of what dinner should be.

A handful of almonds, some dark chocolate, a modicum of carbohydrates (rice, pasta, cereal), cut up vegetables and fruit, and you can have a "meal" that feels more like a snack.

That bowl of (hopefully healthy) cereal and milk can work as part of the snacking meal. The cereal/milk duo with the cut up vegetables and fruit would definitely work.

We want quick, convenient, and hopefully healthy. Snacking … but for dinner.

Dinner Boards

Dawn Jackson Blatner is a registered dietitian and, for full disclosure, a friend of mine. Blatner has created "dinner boards" as a quick and healthy solution. Or as I like to think about the dinner boards: snacking meets Pinterest.

Dinner boards offer a 300-calorie combination of healthy food with a 100-calorie treat for a simple dinner solution with little planning and effort.

Here are Dawn's sample boards:

Asian

• ¾ cup in shell edamame
• 9 seaweed brown rice crackers
• 1 cup carrot sticks
• 2 tablespoons peanut sauce

Italian

• 1½ oz. mozzarella cheese
• 1 slice sprouted whole grain toast cubes w/garlic
• ¼ cup marinated artichokes
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes

Mediterranean

• 2 oz. (½ can) tuna in olive oil
• 1 cup cucumber slices
• 13 multi-seed crackers
• 5 large olives

Mexican

• ½ cup black bean salsa
• 12 corn tortilla chips
• 1 cup pepper slices
• ¼ cup guacamole

American

• ¼ cup hummus w/1 teaspoon hot sauce
• 1 cup broccoli
• 1½ cups popcorn
• 3 tablespoons peanuts

Each 300-calorie Dinner Board also comes with a 100-calorie treat: 5 oz. wine or 2 dark chocolate squares or 16 oz. kombucha. If your dinner ends up being all 3, well that's 300 calories but not a very nutritious snack.

Carbohydrates, protein, good fat, and veggies sparkle on her Dinner Boards. Mediterranean is the only board that gets meat of any kind, and then only 2 oz. of tuna.

400 calories is 20% of what we typically need for the day. If you can handle only 400 calories between the midday meal and bedtime, chances are you don't need much help with your diet.

That being said, making the transition would take some time. And to Blatner's credit, she lays out how much 300 calories really is, making it easier to see if 300-400 calories is enough.

Her boards don't include too much Vitamin C, though the pepper slices in the Mexican version come close. While the cherry tomatoes (Italian) are technically fruit, that key dietary element is missing from the dinner boards.

A cup of strawberries is just under 50 calories, so a cup of strawberries with a dark chocolate square fits the definition of a 100-calorie treat. Strawberries have antioxidants, fiber, fruit sugar, and Vitamin C.

Carbohydrates are obviously very light on the dinner boards. 9 seaweed brown rice crackers (Asian) are not to satisfy the carbohydrate standards of the typical American. Even though 1½ cups of popcorn (American) sounds like a lot, eating that little size of popcorn goes pretty quickly.

The Pinterest element appeals to those who visualize. In the era of calorie counting, we rarely see what 300 calories of food actually looks like.

On the surface, Dinner Boards are aimed at women. There certainly isn't anything wrong with a man eating one of these Dinner Boards, but stereotypically, this might be more difficult for men to achieve.

Takeaway

The Dinner Boards help you organize for when you might otherwise have a bowl of cereal and milk. If 300 calories isn't enough for you, use the idea as a springboard (pun intended) toward an idea of your own.

You can mix and match from the boards: you might want corn tortilla chips instead of seaweed brown rice crackers, though your new combo might be fewer or greater than 300 calories. If you aren't anal, you'll be fine.

The boards are also designed to help you think about portion control, so even if you pick another food, keep the portion size in the general neighborhood of what is on the board.

You can guesstimate the calories in your cereal and milk and see whatever else you can add in terms of veggies and fruit.

Non-starchy vegetables are generally low in calories. If you double the portion of carrot sticks (Asian), cucumber slices (Mediterranean), pepper slices (Mexican), or broccoli (American), you aren't adding that many more calories.

Don't be pulled in by convention if a snack is all you need to sustain you at 6 pm. Having healthy food at a quick pinch is cheaper and better than other "easier" temptations. Healthy snacking can be done in the time it takes to pick up carryout or heat a frozen pizza in a microwave oven.

photo credit: Dawn Jackson Blatner

FDA eventually in 2018 will ban trans fats

How bad are trans fats?

The FDA will give the "generally recognized as safe" wording to just about anything that passes for food. But the FDA has now ruled that trans fats are not "generally recognized as safe" anymore. Food companies now have 3 years to rid their products of trans fats.

While the FDA has sent signs that this ban was coming, the policy, even in the height of the fight against trans fats, has been to allow companies to post "0g trans fat" if the amount was less than ½ gram per serving. Of course, serving sizes are up to the discretion of the food company.

If a food product has partially hydrogenated oils, that food has trans fat.

As a food society, we have wrestled with low-fat, no-fat, good-fat, and bad-fat. In a world where people are confused about fat, trans fats have been known to be bad for some time, yet were allowed to linger quietly. 3 years is still a long time, but the clock is now ticking.

Stephen Colbert and the Colbert Report told us in late 2013 why trans fats are bad. Individual cities and states as well as major food companies took steps to get rid of trans fats many years before that. 2018 feels like a long time given that the first story we reported on trans fat was in 2005.

In 2006, we found out that the American Heart Association set a specific limit on trans fats at less than 1 percent of total calories, less than 20 calories of trans fats in a 2,000 calorie diet. Sally Squires of The Washington Post put that at 2 grams of trans fat, or roughly what is in ½ of a small bag of fast-food fries.

Food companies should have been aware that this was coming. Even those that have already made the change (we're looking at you, McDonald's) did so kicking and screaming. Amusingly, most of the food that still has trans fats is food that you don't really need to survive.

McDonald's did take a taste hit when the restaurant chain finally ditched trans fat for its fries, but in 2018, every place will have the same advantages and disadvantages.

Without looking through my pantry, I know of one food item with partially hydrogenated oils: a generic brand of fake bacon bits. In those bits, the partially hydrogenated oil is the 2nd-highest ingredient on the nutrition label.

I don't eat much of those fake bacon bits or too often. As for restaurants, many have cut back on trans fats but we don't know which ones still use them. In about 3 years, the answer as to how much will be easier to find out.

Eating trans fat has been linked to higher levels of bad cholesterol and lower levels of good cholesterol as well as higher body weight, heart disease, and memory loss. But only in 2018 will trans fats be completely banned.

We need fat to live and should be eating more good fat. While we are still vague on bad fat, we know enough to do something about trans fat. Finally, the FDA recognizes the obvious … in 2018.

Here are the stories where we reported on trans fat from most recent to long ago:

• What's Tempting: Banning trans fats December 06, 2013
• Temptation of the Week: Kobe beef, but Trader Joe's serving size has way too much fat July 01, 2011
• 'The Simpsons' tackles healthy food phenomena November 23, 2009
• California to ban trans fats in restaurants July 26, 2008
• McD's fries may be free of trans fats, but the taste difference is bad news June 03, 2008
• Dunkin' Donuts getting rid of trans fats August 27, 2007
• McDonald's doing much better in NYC August 21, 2007
• Steak 'n' Shake switching to trans fat free oils June 03, 2007
• Burger King has a trans fat free plan February 02, 2007
• NYC bans trans fats December 05, 2006
• 'Dateline NBC' doesn't put up much of a food fight August 19, 2006
• Now we know how much trans fat June 24, 2006
• Trans fat battle goes after KFC June 13, 2006
• Wendy's to use healthier oil June 09, 2006
• I ate the free food March 05, 2006
• Read trans fat labels carefully January 16, 2006
• Report issued on trans fats in Canada September 07, 2005
• Just change the oil already May 22, 2005

What's Tempting: The time to make bone broth

Bone broth is one of the newest food crazes … in that this is how your grandmother used to do soup.

Soup in my childhood was opening a can and adding water. Sodium yes, but not much flavor.

That soup took opening a can, pouring the contents and a can of water into a pot. 3-4 minutes later and you had soup. Bone broth requires a lot more work than canned soup or even adding stock to vegetables, pasta, and meat.

I went to an event that featured bone broth to see if this was as good as advertised and whether bone broth would be worth making myself? Intricate dishes, while tempting, might be better outsourced than trying to make the bone broth yourself.

The primary issue is time. The creation of bone broth vs. stock is like comparing the time of a microwave vs. a dehydrator. Stock takes 45 minutes; bone broth 18 hours. That's not a misprint.

18 hours makes me think of Playtex bras and girdles that promised 18 hours of support. Maybe we should wear an 18-hour girdle to give us enough support to get through making a bone broth.

The 18 hours doesn't count accumulating the bones or specifically buying chicken necks. You can roast the bones for more flavor, but that is outside the 18 hours.

Our hosts had 2 different kinds of bone broth: Thai chicken and Caribbean spice. Both were delicious though I went back for multiple servings of the Thai chicken.

I also liked the idea that the bone broth was healthier for me than regular soup. It didn't taste overly salty, a criticism of canned soups, in part because there was enough flavor that salt wasn't required.

Other differences between bone broth and stock:

• Herbs are added very late in the process; our hosts said in the last 25 minutes.
• Bone broth has acid, such as apple cider vinegar and lemon juice, while stock does not.

One other difference is that bone broth is, well, jiggly. Maybe we need to bring in that 18-hour girdle.

Bone broth is jiggly thanks to gelatin produced by the breakdown of collagen. The collagen comes from using the bones.

Some of that 18 hours can be spent sleeping if you have a slow cooker. The more you cook the bone broth, the richer it will taste, so you do have leeway.

The bone broth advantages — glycine, proline, gelatin, amino acids — are spread across the spectrum so there are many reasons for choosing bone broth. For your humble narrator, making bone broth would ideally be timed just before getting the flu or a cold.

Before lumbering to find the slow cooker or chasing down chicken necks, you should definitely try bone broth, even if you pay hipster prices. Or find a nice grandmother who remembers when bone broth was soup.

Bone broth is not that expensive, given that the bones are inexpensive; your primary concern is finding a good source for bones.

If nothing else, you will end up with one of the best-tasting soups you ever had. Is bone broth 18-hours good? One taste and you'll know for yourself.

photos credit: me