Posted by admin on November 17th, 2008 in Healthy Food Ideas
Thanksgiving is a holiday that can strike fear into the hearts of many dieters, the generally health conscious, and even people who don’t normally watch what they eat. But don’t worry - these healthy Thanksgiving tips can help anyone leave the holiday table without packing on the extra pounds. Here are a few tips to help you enjoy the holiday season without derailing your healthful eating habits:
- Don’t go hungry – Too often people skip the other meals of the day when they know a big holiday dinner is coming. Try eating like you normally do, with a full breakfast, lunch, and snacks, not only will you be filling up on nutritious food, but you won’t be ravenous once your at the Thanksgiving table.
- Bring a Dish – It is always polite to bring a dish when you’re invited over to someone else’s house. Why not make that dish a healthy one? This way you can fill up on food you know is healthy.
- Host Thanksgiving Dinner – If you are the host, you control what food is served. Make your nutritious favorites and you might even convert some of your friends and family to be healthy eaters too.
- Eat Healthy First – There are plenty of healthy Thanksgiving foods. Try filling up on the steamed green beans and baked sweet potatoes first.
- Don’t let bad habits come back to stay – If you find yourself at the Thanksgiving table tempted to go off your healthy eating plan, you don’t have to be perfect, but don’t throw up your hands and fall back on your old habits. Jump back into it, and eat healthfully for the next few days. Your one bad meal becomes insignificant in the big picture, but only if you don’t let those old bad habits come back for good.
Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate friends and family, so enjoy. It doesn’t mean you’re off your diet if you indulge a bit. You may be faced with friends and family who don’t quite understand your new way of eating and it’s ok to say “I don’t know,” or “I’m just seeing how this goes.” In the end it’s all about you.
Posted by admin on October 17th, 2008 in Healthy Food Ideas, Healthy Tips
We all shop for groceries, so why not make it good for the environment? It just got easier to go green with reusable grocery bags. The next time you are stocking up on nutritious food at the market, take a reusable grocery bag, and cut down on the waste that can come from producing millions of plastic and paper bags then tossing them in the garbage.
Almost every supermarket chain these days sells reusable grocery bags, like Stop and Shop, Pathmark, and Whole Foods. Some stores even give you a little money back for bagging your groceries in a reusable bag. This means, if you use them enough, they could pay for themselves and beyond. Another kind of eco-friendly bag on a mission is the FEED bag. When you purchase this bag, the money goes to raise funds for the UN World Food Program (WFP), which offers nutrient-packed meals to hungry children in school in 74 countries.
Whether the bag you buy supports a cause, or simply helps to reduce and reuse, you will be shopping for the good of the planet. While you’re buying green vegetables and eating healthily, you can also go green with reusable grocery bags.
Posted by admin on October 8th, 2008 in Home & Kitchen
With Halloween right around the corner, its time to stock up on goodies for the whole family. Healthy Halloween treats are a great way to celebrate the spirit of the holiday without derailing the healthy habits you have started. Here are some nutritious Halloween food ideas:
- Trail mix – This can be a mix of anything you can imagine, like raw or roasted nuts, dried fruit such as craisins, and mini whole wheat unsalted pretzels.
- Non-Fat and Sugar-Free Candy – Some of the most popular Halloween candies have no fat, like gummy worms and spiders. You can also find endless varieties of sugar-free candies. The key to this is moderation.
- Roasted Pumpkin Seeds – These are arguably the favorite healthy Halloween treat after an afternoon of pumpkin carving. Simply scoop out the inside of the pumpkin, separate the seeds out, place on baking tray, and put in a 350 oven until lightly brown.
- Strawberry Pineapple Sorbet – This colorful frozen treat is good for those with a sweet tooth. Serve it in an imaginative Halloween colored bowl.
Creating these healthy Halloween treats can start a fun family tradition. Use your imagination, the possibilities are endless.
Posted by admin on October 8th, 2008 in Books
There are many diets out there based on food scoring. Giving food numeric values, with a target number to hit each day, can be a great way to manage what you consume. But most of these food scores revolve around calorie counting, and not nutrient scoring. Calorie counting can help you loose weight, but nutrient counting can help you loose weight, be healthy, and fight disease your whole life.
Food scoring with ANDI and MANDI is about counting nutrients and assigning food a nutrient score. But what are these scores and how do we use them in daily life?
- ANDI stands for Aggregate Nutrient Density Index, and is a rating system which scores foods on a basis of 0 to 1,000 according to the nutrients per calorie for that food. The ANDI score is used mainly for figuring out the pure nutrition of a food, for example cabbage scores 481, while a Snickers bar is just 14. This makes sense since most of us know that vegetables are generally more nutritious than candy bars.
- MANDI stands for Menu Aggregate Nutrient Density Index, and focuses on scoring a serving size. MANDI food scoring uses the ANDI score, but to calculate the point value of serving sizes of individual foods, recipes, and your daily menus. Eating 100 MANDI points per day is the ideal diet, but making it to 60 points is the first step. The average American diet is around just 13 points due to the high amount of processed foods we consume. The MANDI score has more practical daily use because most of the time we are eating a meal, not just one food item here and there.
As you may see, food scoring with ANDI and MANDI can be quite different from the approaches of some of the other leading diets. The difference is about eating to fight disease, ward off cancer, reverse early type two diabetes, and generally feel and look good. You can find MANDI and ANDI food scores and recipes in the Eat for Health books, and helpful quick ANDI scores in the Eat Right America Food Scoring Guide.
Posted by admin on October 3rd, 2008 in Nutrient Scoring
These days, because food is shipped to us from all over the globe, it’s easy to eat healthy all year long even if some foods aren’t in-season locally. In order to keep track of where in the world our food is coming from, the Country of Origin Labeling, or COOL law, recently came into effect as a part of the Farm Bill. This means we can make more educated food choices and it also helps to improve food safety.
The Country of Origin Labeling law seems very timely as people’s concerns over food safety seem to be high after China’s tainted milk scare and the recent salmonella-tainted Mexican peppers caused alarm over imported foods. Under this new rule, grocery stores will have to identify the country of origin for meats, produce, and certain nuts.
This is good news for people trying to eat healthy because choosing the foods we want to eat just got easier. For example, those with a preference for Egyptian grapes can now seek them out better. Eating healthy works best when you enjoy the foods you’re eating, and in the coming months you will be able to find them easier.
Posted by admin on October 2nd, 2008 in Nutrient Scoring
We have so many equations for figuring things out like our mortgage payments, how much money we need to put away for retirement, and now amongst this financial crisis - how we can best protect our financial assets. But the biggest challenge worth solving is really our health. The health equation for healthy living is really something we need to plug in and use every day because it can effect our overall quality of life.
Keeping a simple health equation in mind when you’re making your food choices can keep you on the right track and be your guide.
H = N/C
(Health = Nutrients/Calories)
Making sure you pack as many nutrients into every calorie you consume is the key to better health. Many diets focus on managing your calories intake, but you can really put those calories to work for you. Making sure you’re eating foods rich in nutrients has the biggest impact on your health because they can fight disease and help you achieve a healthy weight all at the same time. Keep the health equation in mind when you’re in the grocery store, planning your weekly menu, or even when you’re grabbing a snack on the go.
Posted by admin on September 30th, 2008 in Nutrient Scoring
Every day many people are told by their doctor that they have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, are pre-diabetic, or more. Often they are stumped by this news. Maybe they thought they were living a healthy lifestyle already, or they don’t know what steps to take next, or why this happened in the first place. Often their doctor will recommend eating a healthier diet. But what does eating for health mean?
Eating for health is the practice of eating a diet to get you healthy and keep you healthy. Eat for Health is the book, written by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, in order to help you achieve healthful eating by consuming more nutrients. Most importantly, it can be simpler than you may think to start taking the first steps towards eating a healthier diet.
If you have gotten the recommendation from your doctor to eat healthier, or even if you haven’t, here is a simple method to help you shape your food selections:
Eat All You Want Of These:
- Green Vegetables
- Colorful Vegetables
- Fresh Fruit
- Beans/Legumes
Eat These In Moderation:
- Strachey Vegetables (corn, potatoes, squash, parsnips)
- Raw nuts & seeds
- Whole grains
- Fish
- Non-fat dairy
- Wild meat & fowl
Eat These Rarely:
- Red meat (beef)
- Refines grains
- Full-fat dairy & cheese
- Refined oil & sweets
When eating for health, it doesn’t matter what foods you are used to eating, or what recipes you’re used to using. Following the above guidelines will make your food choices fall in line with a healthy diet. Of course there are exceptions, like a diabetic would not want to eat sugar filled fruit all the time, but this diet can be customized for every condition.
Posted by admin on July 17th, 2008 in Nutrient Scoring
A nutritarian is a person who consumes a diet full of nutrient rich foods. When you make food choices based on nutrition, you get the most vitamins, minerals, and fiber from your food as possible and there is no limit to what you eat. Nutritarians eat every food group, and make choices based on nutritional value. Eating foods like broccoli, blueberries, oranges, spinach, and carrots give us lots of nutrients, and that’s what our bodies want to fight disease and make us feel good.
This is not a diet that excludes one food group or another. This is not a fad diet, low carb diet, high protein diet, vegetarianism, vegan, or anything of the sort. When you approach food the nutritarian way, it’s not about calorie counting like other diets, but rather nutrient counting. Each food has a nutrient score, like kale and collard greens that score over 1,000 points each while a jelly doughnut is a 6, so you can keep track of which foods are full of nutrients and eat like there is no tomorrow. The more points the better.
Being a nutritarian is easy because it’s not about cutting any food out. You won’t be committing to dieting in the sense of depriving yourself or cutting back on food. No one likes to cut food out, but adding food in is a whole different prospect. When you add in more good food you naturally become less hungry for not as nutritious foods. Nutritarians add nutrient rich foods to their diet, keeping them full and not deprived. We all love to eat and your diet should reflect that. Are you a nutritarian?
Posted by admin on July 16th, 2008 in General
Welcome! Eat Right America is committed to keeping America healthy and informed about nutrition. Here at the Eat Right America Blog we are committed to the same thing, giving it to you straight and simple. Unlike other diets, Eat Right America focuses on adding more nutrients to your diet, not making foods off limits. We are your ultimate resource for everything nutrition, food, health, and lifestyle related. This blog will cover all kinds of topics ranging from what nutritious choices you can make while dining out, top super foods, food tips for kids, and even how to fight diabetes or other diseases with food. Proper nutrition can be just as effective as medicine, and even more so because it can address the root of health problems and can even prevent them. Nutrition is the prescription. Here we will help you make informed choices, so that you can eat for health.