Nutrition News

Fall 2003

In this issue:

In this issue:

• Hello from Sandi and Kathleen
• Professionals on site at NutritionWorks
• Experts call for new food guide pyramid
• Children on diets gain weight
• Laughing may help reduce blood sugar levels!
• Fast Foods Undermine Appetite Controls
• Recipe to try: Mixed Veggie Salad
• Favorite products: Trader Joes tapenade and mixed greens
• From the Bookstore: Meal Solutions for Busy People
• NutritionWorks upcoming events and happenings

Hello from Sandi and Kathleen
As many of you have noticed, this is our first newsletter since the end of July. We have decided to switch to a quarterly newsletter format – more articles, more news, four times a year. We certainly may send out an exciting recipe or product information in between newsletters as well! Please feel free to let us know your thoughts on this change.

Sandi was out of the country for a two-month period as her beloved father passed away on September 21st. Clients have been so incredibly understanding during this challenging time – thank you for your gift of love and support! We appreciate you so much.

Kathleen returned early from maternity leave and is doing a wonderful job juggling time at work with her precious baby Hope.

We are incredibly grateful for our partnership, which gives us the ability to be there for our clients as well as our families!

The leaves have turned color, the weather is chilly and the holidays are on the way! Happy holidays to each of you – may we all be truly thankful for our blessings and may this holiday period bring you much joy.

Remember to put into place your winter exercise plan and eat lots of fall fruit and vegetables! Take care of yourself.
Kathleen and Sandi

Professionals on site at NutritionWorks
We are really excited to have a range of experts on site at the NutritionWorks offices.

Cyndy, massage therapist, specializes in dealing with patients with chronic pain issues and fibromyalgia. She also gives wonderful Swedish massages for relaxation and energy renewal.

Peter is a very experienced therapist who deals with a range of issues including family and marital counseling, grief and bereavement counseling, and children and adolescent issues.

Yoko is both a counselor and a hypnotherapist. She is very skilled at working with addiction issues. Yoko uses an energy psychology technique called Emotional Freedom Techniques, a form of psychological acupuncture without needles. She integrates conventional talk therapy with hypnotherapy and this innovative energy therapy.

Hye-Jung is the newest addition to the team. She is an acupuncturist who specializes in treating a range of health issues. She works at the Northwest Hospital acupuncture clinic, as well as on site at the NutritionWorks offices.
We can highly recommend each of these skilled practitioners. Please feel free to contact us for more information.

Experts call for New Food Guide Pyramid
Health experts on nutrition and diet on Tuesday called on the government to overhaul its public dietary guidelines, charging that heavy reliance on refined carbohydrates and fear of all fats has left the nation seriously overweight.

The Department of Agriculture's pyramid oversimplifies the food groups and stresses such food as refined bread and white pasta at the expense of high fiber carbohydrates, lean protein sources and unsaturated fats.

"Looking at some of the recommendations from the department of agriculture gives the idea that they've forgotten that we're feeding people, not horses," said Walter Willet, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight and 30% are obese, which has been related to illnesses that account for one out of every eight U.S. deaths annually, according to the Surgeon General's office.

While the USDA's flawed guidelines are not the only culprits, Willet said, "The pyramid, it hasn't helped. It probably made it harder for people to control their weight."

The food pyramid, seen in most doctors' offices and schools, outlines the government's version of the healthiest way to eat. Few revisions have been made since its release by the Department of Agriculture in 1992.

The latest edition of the pyramid recommends that Americans eat six to 11 servings of carbohydrates a day, or the equivalent of six to 11 slices of bread. The type of carbohydrates is not emphasized so that all servings can come from the refined carbohydrate category. The pyramid also groups together fats, oils and sweets in one group and recommends they be eaten in small amounts.

The pyramid does not account for the difference between the healthy unsaturated fats and high-fiber carbohydrates, such as those found in whole grains, and their undesirable counterparts.

The USDA may have a conflict of interest by supporting grain and sugar producers while recommending that Americans eat fewer refined carbohydrates and less simple sugar.

We look forward to the much-needed changes in the food guide pyramid and will be letting you know about those as they happen. In the meantime, we often recommend the Mediterranean food guide pyramid or the Mayo Clinic food guide pyramid as more desirable alternatives. We will be happy to assist you in developing an individualized nutrition plan to meet your health goals.

Source: Adapted from www.reutershealth.com

Children on diets gain weight
Children who diet may end up gaining weight instead of losing it, according to Dr. Alison Field and the other researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital. And those who diet more, gain more. The researchers, whose findings appear in the October issue of the journal Pediatrics, found that dieting children reported being more active and eating less than their peers, but they still gained more weight over the three years of the study.

''Although for children and adolescents who are overweight, diets carefully supervised by a clinician may be beneficial and appropriate, our results suggest that casual dieting to control weight loss in the long term is not only ineffective, it may actually promote weight gain,'' said Alison Field, a member of the research team, which reviewed 17,000 questionnaires filled out between 1996 and 1999. Field said the most likely explanation is that the children, ages 9 to 14, who restricted what they ate while they were dieting, ended up overeating or binging once they went off the diet. According to her team's research, dieters - 30 percent of the girls and 16 percent of the boys - were more likely to binge eat than their peers who didn't diet.

The typical 14-year-old girl who dieted regularly had gained 2 pounds per year more by the end of the study than nondieting 14-year-old girls, according to researchers. Dieting less often led to less weight gain, but still more than nondieters, the study found.

If your child or adolescent is experiencing weight management issues, then consult with a healthcare team, including a nutrition professional, so that your family can work on healthy lifestyle changes together. Dieting is not the solution but lifestyle changes can make a significant difference to your family’s health and wellbeing!

Source: The Boston Globe 10/7/2003 and www.sensiblenutrition.com

Laughing may help reduce blood sugar levels
According to a recent Japanese study, laughing may help reduce blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes. The average post-meal glucose in the study volunteers with diabetes was higher after a boring lecture than after a comedy show.

Laughter might help reduce blood glucose due to increased use of the muscles involved. Positive emotions like laughter might also act on the neuroendocrine system to suppress blood glucose levels. So go ahead, laugh away!

Source: Diabetes Care, May 2003 and Environmental Nutrition, August 2003

Fast Foods Undermine Appetite Controls
A recent British study may shed light on why people who regularly eat fast foods are likely to put on weight and become obese.

Fast foods are frequently linked to the epidemic of obesity now affecting more than 300 million people worldwide, but the likely causal mechanism has not been fully explained scientifically.

Nutritionists at the Medical Research Council believe that the foods not only contain many more calories than traditional foods but that they are also likely to undermine normal appetite control systems.

The findings, in the journal Obesity Reviews, show that a typical fast food meal has a very high energy density of around 275 calories per 100 grams (about 3.5oz)-- 65 percent higher than the average British diet and twice as high as recommended healthy diets.

Professor Andrew Prentice and Dr. Susan Jebb also reviewed trials in which healthy lean young men were invited to eat freely from diets that had been covertly manipulated to alter the energy density. Results showed that the men eating high-energy foods did not reduce the portion size, and so ate more calories than they needed.

They said this alone would be sufficient cause for concern but another factor was that errors in the amount of food consumed had much worse consequences in the case of energy-dense foods than with ordinary foods.

A 200-gram error on a diet of 300 calories per 100 grams equated to 600 calories, whereas on a diet of 100 calories per 100 grams it equated to only 200 calories. If a person made such an error when eating fast foods just twice a week, the cumulative effect would add up to 62,500 calories per year -- equivalent to almost 18 pounds of fat.

Prentice said in a statement: "We all possess a weak innate ability to recognize foods with a high energy density. We tend to assess food intake by the size of the portion, yet a fast food meal contains many more calories than a similar-sized portion of a healthy meal."

He added: "Since the dawn of agriculture, the systems regulating human appetite have evolved for the low-energy diet still being consumed in rural areas of the developing world where obesity is almost non-existent. Our bodies were never designed to cope with the very energy-dense foods consumed in the West, and this is contributing to a major rise in obesity."

The researchers warned that children might be especially vulnerable to fast foods because they had not yet learned any of the dietary restraint needed to remain slim.

Jebb said: "Fast food companies could play a major part in halting the rise in obesity if they adopted a more positive attitude to healthy eating such as providing meals of lower energy density."

If you are choosing to eat fast food, you may want to check out the nutrition information of the food you are eating at an interactive fast food website http://www.olen.com/food/.

Source: Adapted from Reuters Health, November 2003 and Obesity Reviews, 4th quarter, 2003

From the Bookstore
Meal Solutions for Busy People
We are really excited about this book because many of our clients have found it to be a very useful tool as they work on making lifestyle changes.

The book provides four weeks of menu plans with accompanying shopping lists and quick and easy recipes. Nutrient analyses are included with each recipe. The recipes include healthy versions of dishes like shrimp Creole, spinach lasagna, tortilla eggs, and oven fried fish.
You can pick up the book at NutritionWorks – just call or email before you stop by so we have it set out for you. The cost is $16.20 including tax.

Recipe to Try - Mixed Veggie Salad
During our stay in Israel, my aunt Rika concocted many delicious dishes to keep us well nourished. This is one of my favorites because you can use any mixture of veggies in season and the result is wonderful. Just use however much of each vegetable that you like – nothing scientific or complicated about this recipe.
This salad just disappears out of the bowl…even my two-year old cousin could not get enough of it!

Try it as a Thanksgiving side dish and enjoy.

Broccoli & cauliflower – slightly steamed and rinsed and cooled
Sliced mushrooms
Baby corn – cut
Red and yellow pepper- cut in strips
Spring onions
Green beans – frozen or fresh, if frozen then defrosted (not cooked)
Parsley
(Any combination of veggies will be fine)

Dressing
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup water
1-2 crushed garlic cloves
½ tsp. Oregano
¼ tsp. Mustard
Salt & Pepper to taste
Mix well and pour over salad 2-3 hours before eating

Favorite Products
Trader Joes tapenade and mixed greens
We each have a Trader Joes favorite product at the moment. Kathleen is a big fan of the Trader Joes tapenade (olive spread). Olives are high in monounsaturated, heart healthy fat and add wonderful flavor to many dishes. The tapenade is extremely flavorful and you only need a small amount as a spread or in a sauce to turn an ordinary dish into something special.

Sandi is sold on the mixed greens! Trader Joes carries bags of organic, pre-washed, pre-chopped mixed collard, spinach, turnip and mustard greens. That’s quick nutrition in a bag! Just steam them for 2-3 minutes, or sauté them in a teaspoon of sesame oil for a delicious and easy side dish.

Try both of these products and enjoy!

NutritionWorks Happenings
Here are some of our happenings until the end of 2003. Many more events are in the plans for 2004. See the complete list by clicking on Upcoming Events.

• We are again teaching our popular class called “Mediterranean Lifestyle” at the Swedish First Hill campus. The class is on Dec 4th and snacks will be provided. To register, call (206) 386 2502.
• Join us for a new class called “The Zone Made Easy” at Discover U in Northgate. The class is on December 8th from 6:30-8:30pm. To register, call (206) 365 0400 or register online at www.discoveru.org
• We are teaching another new class called “The South Beach Diet” at Discover U in Northgate. The class is on January 7th from 6:30-8:30pm. To register, call (206) 365 0400 or register online at www.discoveru.org
• We will also be teaching our popular “Food and Mood” class at the PCC stores in Greenlake, Issaquah and West Seattle in February and March next year. More details to follow.

Thanks for your questions and suggested nutrition topics.

• Continue to let us know if you have any questions.
• 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!
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