Nutrition News

Happy Summer from NutritionWorks

August 2005

• Hello from Sandi and Kathleen

• Solutions group is starting!

• Our waistlines and menopause

• Health benefits of chocolate?

• Add an Avocado

• Recipe to try: Hot and sour salmon with greens

• Favorite product: Food for Life brown rice tortillas

• NutritionWorks upcoming events and happenings

Hello from Sandi and Kathleen
We hope you are having a wonderful summer!

Well, lots of excitement at NutritionWorks…. Sandi has a precious three month old son and Kathleen’s gorgeous daughter turned two!

Due to our family commitments, our office is closed on Mondays and open Tuesday through Friday.

Check out our interesting articles on everything from waistlines and menopause to the Solutions groups that we are starting in the Fall , make our delicious Summer recipe, and try our product of the month. Read on, enjoy and make the most of the rest of the Summer days!

Kathleen and Sandi

Solutions Group is Starting!
The Solution method was developed by Laurel Mellin MA, RD at the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine. Health magazine named it one of the 10 top medical advances of 2000.

The life-changing potential of The Solution Method is that it directly addresses the feeling brain, the home of our most primitive urges, like eating. It is very challenging and frustrating to try to lose weight using only our thinking brain. This is because there is no significant relationship between the feeling brain and the thinking brain. Reason can’t make anyone stop wanting a cookie.

Two- and six-year follow-up studies have shown The Solution to produce weight loss without dieting and unparalleled results in terms of keeping it off.

Sandi is a certified Solutions provider and will be running a 5-week Solutions groups at the Blakeley Wellness Center starting on September 8th. There will be ongoing groups starting throughout the rest of the year.

Feel free to call or email if you would like to join a group or explore these skills in individual counseling sessions.

Our Waistlines and Menopause
A large number of peri-/postmenopausal women find it increasingly difficult to manage their weight as they age. Many women as they get older notice that their “waistline is getting thicker.” A recent study looked into the body composition changes associated with menopause and what, if anything, can be done to prevent them. In particular, the study examined the impact of exercise on waist circumference around the time of menopause.

The study was cross-sectional and looked at the influence of menopausal status and physical activity on body composition and fat distribution in 450 women. Scientists found that late peri- /postmenopause was associated with lower lean mass and tended to be associated with higher percent body fat. However, they also found that higher levels of physical activity, particularly vigorous- intensity activity, were associated with decreased percent body fat and smaller waist circumference in these women. On average, women who did 10 or more minutes of vigorous physical activity per day had 5.8 inches less (14.8 cm) around the waist than women who did no physical activity!

This is great news. Though there is nothing we can do to change our age or menopausal status, we can do something to change our level of physical activity. And, according to this information, exercise is exactly what mid-life women need to do to prevent getting “soft around the middle.”

From www.strongwomen.com

Reference: B. Sternfeld, Ph.D. et al. Menopause, Physical Activity, and Body Composition/Fat Distribution in Midlife Women. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, Vol. 37(7); July 2005

Health Benefits of Chocolate?
Many of us have been excited to hear that something in cocoa beans may be good for our hearts. Is it true?

The health potential is real. Cocoa beans have antioxidant compounds called flavanols, and a growing pile of scientific research suggests they do good things to blood vessels.

Despite the enthusiasm, flavanols are missing from much of the chocolate on store shelves today. Flavanols make chocolate and cocoa taste bitter, and confectioners have spent years trying to perfect ways to remove the pungent flavor.

Most chocolate isn't flavanol-rich and it is rich in fat and calories. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy it – but the rule of moderation does apply!

Flavanols are found in other foods, such as red wine, grapes, apples and green tea, although cocoa beans are a particularly rich source.

The chocolate company, Mars Inc, has developed CocoaVia granola bars, made with a special cocoa powder that retains most of the flavanols. The bars also have plant sterols, which have been shown to help lower cholesterol.

For now, the 80-calorie, 23-gram snack bars are sold only on the Internet. The bars have a satisfyingly rich chocolate flavor, along with a slight but distinct bitter taste.

Researchers are excited by the potential of flavanols to ward off vascular disease, which can cause heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, dementia and hypertension. Vascular diseases are linked to the artery's inability to make a simple but fundamental chemical called nitric oxide. Flavanols appear to reverse that problem.

A Harvard flavanol researcher, Hollenberg, studied Central America's Kuna Indians, island dwellers near Panama who make their own locally grown, flavanol-rich cocoa.

The Kuna drink a lot of cocoa, and they don't have high blood pressure -- except for those who move to the mainland and start drinking commercial cocoa that's flavanol-poor. Testing the link between flavanols and improved blood flow, Hollenberg fed cocoa with and without flavanols to a study group in the United States and discovered that flavanols seemed to improve blood flow throughout the body.

Another researcher, nutrition professor Carl Keen at the University of California, Davis, has found that flavanols had an aspirin-like effect on blood, among other findings.

The health possibilities have many chocolate makers playing up the amount of cocoa in their chocolates. Next month, Hershey's will release a new Extra Dark chocolate bar containing 60 percent cocoa -- more than its 34-year-old Special Dark bar. The cocoa percentage is showing up on many chocolate bars. Neuhaus, for example, has bars with 71 percent, 73 percent and 75 percent cocoa.

Even if you find a flavanol-rich chocolate bar, eating one every day would make you gain weight faster than it would lower your blood pressure, said Abby Ershow, nutrition science officer at the National Institutes of Health's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
So, the message really is to eat dark chocolate in small amounts and enjoy!

Adapted from www.intellihealth.com, August 2005

Add an Avocado
Slices of fresh avocado with salsa or in a salad add a creamy decadence and rich flavor. They also add fat, a fact that has frightened away many weight-conscious eaters. Now researchers say that avocado’s fat is advantageous, increasing the body’s absorption of antioxidant carotenoids.

Many fruits and vegetables, including carrots, spinach and tomatoes, are packed with carotenoids, such as beta carotene, lycopene and lutein. These nutrients have been linked to risk reduction of various diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. But recent studies have shown that unless vegetables are consumed along with fat—with salad dressing, for example—the body can barely absorb the carotenoids and get them into the bloodstream where they work their magic.

Food scientist Steven Schwartz at Ohio State University and his team wanted to see if avocado, a great source of heart-healthy monounsaturated fat, could match the antioxidant-boosting properties of salad dressing. They gave 11 volunteers salsa or salad with or without avocado, and then tested their blood periodically for 9 1/2 hours. They found that when volunteers ate avocado, concentrations of lycopene, beta carotene and alpha carotene in their blood ranged from 2 to 15 times higher than when the dishes were eaten without avocado. They also found that the fat in the fruit was indeed behind the increased absorption.

The researchers found that half of an avocado fruit (about 2 1/2 ounces) with a typical salad is sufficient to increase carotenoid absorption. There are also added benefits to consuming avocados—dietary fiber and other nutrients like folate and vitamin K.

The great news: All fat enhances absorption of carotenoids, but monounsaturated-fat-and-nutrient-filled avocados provide an extra health kick.

From www.eatingwellnutriton.com

Recipe to Try – Hot and Sour Salmon with Greens

6 wild salmon steaks, about 6 ounces each
2 ½ pounds baby bok choy or bok choy, stem ends and leaf tips trimmed
8 to 9 whole scallions, ends trimmed, cut into thin julienne slices on the diagonal
3 heaping tablespoons fresh ginger cut into very thin julienne shreds

Dressing
6 tablespoons soy sauce
3 ½ tablespoons Chinese black vinegar or Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup sugar, or to taste
2 tablespoons minced garlic

1. Trim the tough outer leaves from the bok choy and discard. Rinse the stalks and leaves and drain. Cut the stalks in half lengthwise. Cut the halves diagonally into 2-inch sections. In a bowl, toss the scallions and ginger with the bok choy sections. Arrange on a heat-proof platter.

2. Mix the ingredients of the Dressing, and pour into a serving bowl.

3. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place the salmon steaks on top of the greens. Pour into a roasting pan several inches of water and heat until boiling. Carefully place the platter of salmon and vegetables on top of a rack or steamer tray in the roasting pan. Cover the top of the pan tightly with aluminum foil. Bake 7 to 9 minutes, or until the fish is cooked.

4. Serve the salmon from the heatproof platter or arrange the steamed vegetables and salmon on serving plates. Spoon some of the dressing on top and serve with steamed rice.

Serves 6

Recipe from "A Spoonful of Ginger" by Nina Simonds (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)

Favorite Product
Food for Life brown rice tortillas
If you are gluten intolerant, then you will be so excited to find out about this new product! And if you can eat wheat and gluten, then this product is still fun to try.

These wheat and gluten free tortillas are moist and delicious. A quick and easy dinner is to warm a tortilla, stuff with canned pinto beans, low fat cheddar and your favorite salsa and enjoy! The ingredients are excellent (no hydrogrenated oils) and rice bran is added for some extra fiber.

We think these are just a great product – try them and let us know what you think!

NutritionWorks Happenings

• Our popular Food and Mood class is back at PCC Natural Markets this Fall. We will be teaching at the Issaquah store on Wed Sept 14th, The Roosevelt head office on Wed Sept 21st, and the West Seattle store on Wed Oct 19th. To register, go to www.pccnaturalmarkets.com or call (206) 547 1222.

• We will be teaching a “3 Day Solutions Plan” class on Wed Sept 28th at Discover U. To register, go to www.discoveru.org.

• Solutions group starts on Wed Sept 8th. Call us at (206) 729 2633 to register for the Sept group or any of our upcoming groups later in the year.

If you'd like to share experiences or successes with managing your health, favorite recipes, or newly discovered foods...we'd love to hear from you!

If you know anyone who would like a nutrition/wellness presentation offered, please tell them about NutritionWorks! If you would like to unsubscribe, please email us. Thank you.

NutritionWorks Nutrition Consulting