Do cravings derail your plans to eat healthily?

Have you ever decided to give up unhealthy snacks like cookies or ice cream, but ended up eating them because of a strong craving? You aren’t alone and it isn’t your fault- blame it on evolution resulting in irresistible forces causing you to eat if you are hungry or if you are losing weight. But you can counter these physiological forces with some simple strategies of your own design.

What you eat for breakfast, whether you sit down at 6 a.m. or scarf it at 10 a.m., determines whether you’ll have cravings in an hour or two, and the same goes for lunch. It’s not necessarily trivial to design meals that you like and that incorporate the healthy fats and protein foods you need for long lasting steady energy- but I’ve found in my work with people of varied sizes and needs that it can be very effective. You probably already know that eggs for breakfast are more satisfying than cereal- you may just need some help reconciling all the nutritional & psychological effects of foods in designing menus that work for you.

A Healthy Winter Salad

I never knew what to do with kale until my son made this delicious salad for me. Kale will give you the iron and vitamin C you need to fight off colds, as well as the potassium you need for a healthy heart. To get all the ingredients in one quick stop, try Country Sun, a store on California Ave. in Palo Alto that requires much less time and $ than Whole Foods.

Noemi’s Kale Salad With Apple, Date, and Tahini

• ~ ½ bunch curly dark green Lacinato (or dinosaur) kale
• 1 apple, preferably organic so that you can leave the peel on
• 2 Medjool dates
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/6 cup seasoned brown rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon tahini (sesame seed paste)

• Wash the kale by dipping it in a large bowl of cold water, then thoroughly dry it in a salad spinner. Cut the leaves lengthwise into 2-4 strips, discarding the stem. Chop the strips into ¼ inch pieces. You should have about 3 cups of finely chopped kale.
• Cut the apple into quarters, remove the core, slice each quarter into 3-4 slices, and chop each slice into ~ 6 pieces.
• Remove the pits from the dates, slice the dates into pieces ~ ¼ inch wide, and then cut these into small chunks.
• Combine the above ingredients in a salad bowl, separating the date pieces as much as possible.
• Measure olive oil- if you add seasoned vinegar to reach the ½ cup mark, that will be 1/6 cup.
• Add tahini to oil + vinegar, mix with a whisk or fork, and gradually add to salad, tossing to mix well, until kale is well coated with dressing. You will probably have leftover dressing.
• Serves 2

How much vitamin B6 and B12 should we take?

If you don’t eat well, have heavy menstrual periods, use oral contraceptives, etc., you likely need extra iron and/or vitamin B6. Try a B-complex containing from 10-100 mg of vitamin B6, and 10-100 mcg of vitamin B12.

Ensuring that your vegetarian diet contains enough iron & protein (& vitamin B12)

Someone asked me about getting enough iron and protein in a vegetarian diet with milk, but no eggs. It's difficult to get enough iron or protein without meat, fish, or eggs, so I’m not surprised that the questioner’s son has low hemoglobin. My answer: try to eat beans at most meals (together with fruit or veggies for vitamin C to help you absorb the iron). You’ll need to eat all sorts of beans, like lentils (dal), kidney beans (chili), garbanzos (hummus), etc. to get some variety, but in particular try to eat soybeans (edamame) or tofu. Here’s a quick recipe that kids like:

Crispy Tofu Tenders
Cut open tofu package with a knife and drain out water. Cut tofu into slices about 3/4 inch thick, and drain on several layers of paper towel. Cover with additional paper towels, and press lightly to dry. Leave to dry for a couple of minutes. Cut slices into cubes. Heat about one tablespoon of olive oil in a nonstick pan, or two tablespoons in an iron frying pan. Fry tofu until it is crispy and brown on at least two sides. Serve immediately with soy sauce for dipping. An alternative dipping sauce is mayonnaise with a little catsup mixed in.

P.S. It’s very unlikely that you’re getting enough vitamin B12 if dairy products are your only animal foods. Take a multivitamin&mineral with B12.

How to use healthy fats in your cooking

People are always asking me “What is the best oil for cooking?” and “Is coconut oil good for health?” Those are great questions, that I’ve written about quite a bit, so for the answers, I can refer you to either my book, Fat Is Not The Enemy, for an in depth discussion, or to an article I wrote for How To Do Things.com, at
http://www.howtodothings.com/health-fitness/how-to-use-healthy-fats-in-your-cooking - this can also be accessed from my How To Do Things.com profile page: http://www.howtodothings.com/user/endemann . Let me know if you have trouble accessing it- maybe I’ll reprint it here.

Don’t use grapeseed oil for frying

Over the past few years, more and more people have asked me if they should use grapeseed oil for frying, since they’ve heard that it has a very high smoke point. I don’t think grapeseed oil is optimal and here’s why.
For frying foods, it is desirable to use an oil that will not smoke, for both taste and health reasons. But it is also desirable to use an oil that will not become oxidized.
The oxygen in air attacks polyunsaturated fats, especially when they’re heated. This is called oxidation, and it will cause the production of oxidized fats that taste rancid and probably contribute to coronary heart disease.
Grapeseed oil is very high in the polyunsaturated fat, linoleic acid- an essential nutrient that you would die without. Like other polyunsaturated fats, linoleic acid lowers blood cholesterol too. This is all good, so if you like it, use it in salads and for baking, but don’t subject this delicate oil to high temperatures where it will become oxidized.
But what we need even more than linoleic acid is the other essential fat, alpha-linolenic acid, an omega-3 fat. So for baking or salads, why not use walnut oil or canola oil, and get them both?
Back to frying- for high temperature cooking use oils that are low in polyunsaturated fats, such as olive oil and peanut oil, and in particular, use refined oils (clear) from which all the troublesome proteins, etc., have been removed that contribute to smoking.

Diet or drugs for cholesterol-lowering?

The American Academy of Pediatrics caused a big stir by recommending the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) in kids, even though there have not been safety or efficacy studies of these drugs in children. I looked at the AAP position paper to get the details, hoping that they would recommend starting out with safe nutritional strategies before progressing to drugs. Well, yes and no. They do recommend dietary intervention, but just the same old low fat and low cholesterol diet that has been ineffective for adults and has driven them by the scores to statins.

The authors of the AAP position paper are not nutritional scientists, they are M.D.s. They need to be told of research by Chris Gardener at Stanford, Jenkins & Kendall in Toronto, and others, showing that there are much more effective means to lower cholesterol than the documented-ineffective “low-fat” diet. Through a variety of mechanisms, eating more plant foods (including fatty ones) can be quite effective at lowering cholesterol. With simple nutritional strategies, a client of mine lowered her LDL cholesterol from 164 to 123 in 3 weeks, and then to 106 in another 4 weeks. What will it take to get medical doctors to stick to medicine and to let more knowledgeable nutritional scientists make diet policy?