Healthy B.P.M.

It’s lunch time folks and you want to eat healthy. Most of us head on over to the salad bar because its much better on our waistlines than Wendy’s or McDonalds. Now here is where things go awry…we start adding high calorie, low nutritional value items to our salad!

Listen to this, certain types of lettuce are even better for you. Iceberg lettuce is a standard on most salad bars but it offers very little nutritional value. More greener, leafy varieties such as romaine start your salad out packed with nutrients. The typical salad bar is full of items that are definitely not healthy, like high fat dressings, calorie laden tuna salads, high fat cottage cheese, baby corn (starch), sugary jello mixtures with dates and other high calorie fruits in heavy fructose syrup.

Picture this, a Classic Cobb Salad with chopped bacon, egg, blue cheese, avocado, and creamy dressing, or standard restaurant Chef Salad loaded with Swiss cheese, roast beef, eggs, and dressing can contain more than 1,000 calories and 80 grams fat! For some people, that’s more than half their day’s worth of calories (and all their fat). You would have woofed down more calories than a McDonalds Big Mac and regular fries! What a way to shoot your diet in the foot.

Joy Bauer, a leading nutritionist shared with Katie Couric on the Today Show “5 rules to make the best low-calorie salads” Joy says “don’t give up on salads; they’re loaded with nutrition and can be satisfying and delicious. Follow my guidelines for making a perfect low-calorie salad — and you’ll never have to worry again.

1. Pile on leafy greens
2. Load up on plain veggies
3. Add a few lean proteins
4. Indulge in one high-calorie “extra�,
5. Go easy on dressing

I also came across a good video on CBS Early Show with Hannah Storm and R.D. Terri Glassman with audience members challenged to prepare a good salad on stage! Check it out here

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We all know that eating processed foods is harmful. Problem food elements like trans fats are products of a process called hydrogenation, used by food manufacturers to extend the shelf life of their products.

Some reasons to avoid processed foods include:

1.As processed foods have more refined sugar, salt and other flavors, you never seem to get enough of it. Your taste buds are never satisfied.

2.Dangerous foods are hidden. You never get to know how much of salt and sugar ae hiding in your packet of crispies.

3. I read that some strange additions to processed foods include animal skin, snouts, ears, etc.:(

4. Plus the food really loses its nutritive value when its processed.

More on the harmful effects of processed food here.

Like Holly says in The Skinny on Fats:

“Refined” people eat “refined” food, right? It looks like peasant food has always been healthier. Apparently in old Europe, each town had an oil press and vendors would go door to door delivering flax oil, much like milk. And like milk, it had to be used right away before it went rancid in the days before refrigeration. Well no wonder there was a market for more “stable” oils. Oils that don’t seem to EVER go rancid because because all their vitamins, minerals, lecithin and phytosterols have been removed and and the oil has been “deoderized” to conceal any rancid smell that might occur. As you can imagine, these oils seem to have been better for business than for our bodies.

So think twice before you feed your kids junk food in your effort to pacify them!

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