New Year’s resolutions: Beans, berries, and beyond

If you’re like most people, you’ve already forgotten the resolution you made on January 1. Fact is, it’s not easy to change habits, unless you’ve just had a heart attack or some other traumatic event. You may know what you should eat, how often you should exercise, and when you should see a doctor and for which tests. But the gap between knowing and doing isn’t always easy to bridge.

To make life easier, we came up with a few practical suggestions for improving your diet. They’re backed up by good science, they’re specific (not just “eat less bad fat”), they go beyond the obvious (“switch from whole milk to fat-free”), and they’re doable.

You probably know the basics. Buy low-fat or fat-free milk and ice cream; switch from refined to whole grains; use oil or tub margarine instead of butter or stick margarine; and limit sweets, salt, and bad (saturated and trans) fats. (And don’t forget to exercise, take a multivitamin, get regular colonoscopies and mammograms, etc.)

Here are some tips that go beyond the basics.

Eat Less Meat Or Go Meatless

Colon cancer. Stomach cancer. Pancreatic cancer. Maybe even breast cancer and prostate cancer. People who eat more red meat — beef, pork, and lamb — have a higher risk of all of them. And all but premenopausal breast cancer have also been linked to processed meats like bacon, sausage, hot dog, and luncheon meat. That’s why the American Cancer Society recommends that people limit consumption of processed and red meat. You don’t have to become a vegetarian. The idea is to put more emphasis on plant foods and not have meat at the center of the plate.

Resolved: Go for fish, poultry or beans instead of red meat. Try veggie sausage or veggie burgers.

Don’t Drink Your Calories

Call it beverage float. The calories you drink are more likely to show up on your bathroom scale than the calories you chew. For example, researchers gave 15 young adults 450 extra calories every day for four weeks, either as a liquid (soda pop) or a solid (jelly beans). During their month on the jelly beans, the volunteers unconsciously compensated by cutting calories from the other foods they ate. But during their month on the soda, they ate no less food to compensate, which led them to gain an average of two and a half pounds. “It’s clear that beverages have a weak effect on satiety cues,” says Richard Mattes of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. “We ought to think of soft drinks as a treat, like ice cream, not as a staple,” says researcher Meir Stampfer of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Although most studies have targeted soft drinks, any beverage with calories makes a deposit in your fat cells. That includes your Starbucks venti Java Chip Frappuccino (650 calories)!

Resolved: Stick to water or other calorie-free beverages like flavored seltzer or plain coffee or tea (with a spoonful of milk or sugar if you prefer). Diet soft drinks may help if you’re hooked on soda pop.

Hold The Cheese

Cheese is everywhere these days — in or on soups, salads, steaks, sandwiches, breads, potatoes, chicken, eggs. Restaurants love cheese because it pumps up the flavor without much skill from the chef. But it’s bad news for the ol’ pumper in your chest. For example, the 17 sandwiches listed on the menu of a restaurant chain have roughly seven to 15 gm. of saturated fat. Their four cheeseless cousins average only four gm.

Resolved: At restaurants, order cheeseless sandwiches, salads, etc., and pizza with half the usual cheese. At home, buy high-quality Parmesan and grate a light dusting over your food as needed. With intensely flavored cheese, a little goes a long way.

Snack Smart

The average Filipino eats three meals and two meriendas a day. That hasn’t changed much since the last century. What’s changed — along with our apparently inflatable national waistline — is how much we eat per snack and per meal. We are certainly eating more in ounces, in calories, and in calories per ounce (calorie density).

In surveys that ask people what they eat, “the lower the calorie density, the lower the incidence of obesity,” says Barbara Rolls, chair of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University. “When we offered lower-calorie-density food in small portions, they reduced their calories by 30 percent — that’s over 800 fewer calories a day!” adds Rolls, who is the author of Volumetrics (Harper-Collins, 2000).

In other words, trade the chips, candy, cookies, and other junk foods for apples, carrots, red pepper slices, and other fresh (not dried) fruits and veggies. “Fruits and vegetables are key players in lowering calorie density,” says Rolls. In fact, she adds, “people who eat more fruits and vegetables can get away with eating a higher-fat diet and still be lower in body weight, because the water in fruits and vegetables dilutes the calorie density.

And if you can afford the calories, think nuts. Nut eaters have a lower risk of heart disease, in part because the polyunsaturated fats in nuts help lower LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. You can have almonds on Monday, pistachios on Tuesday, cashew nuts on Wednesday, walnuts on Thursday, pili nuts on Friday, etc.

Resolved: “Whenever you can, try to get extra fruits and vegetables into your day,” says Rolls. “Tuck them into casseroles, sandwiches, and pizza, and keep your favorites on hand to turn to when you get the munchies.”

Sip Soup, Not Salt

Salt raises blood pressure, which boosts the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Nevertheless, the food industry keeps dumping salt into our food, especially restaurant food — as though advice to cut back from scientists, physicians, medical organizations — didn’t exist.

Soup is one of the worst offenders because it crams so much sodium — roughly 1,000 mg. per serving — into a food that often has just 100 calories. But soup also has its good points. Your body doesn’t ignore the calories in soup, as it does the calories in beverages. In fact, people eat fewer calories — and feel less hungry — on days they’re fed soup than on days they’re given either beverages or solid foods. Researchers aren’t sure why. Soup may make us feel full, says Purdue’s Richard Mattes, “because they’re viewed as nutritive and substantial.”

Resolved: Make your own soup, so you can use much less salt and more vegetables, than in canned soup or those served in restaurants.

Finish With Fruits

For many people, dessert is the time to splurge. They wouldn’t be caught dead serving pork chops, meat loaf, or fettucine alfredo. But they proudly finish off their grilled salmon, broccoli, and arugula salad with chocolate cheesecake, tiramisu, or a leche flan. Everyone knows it’s a splurge … they just don’t know how much of one. At a typical restaurant, expect to pay at least 1,000 calories — and one or two days’ worth of saturated fat — for that slice of New York cheesecake or tiramisu or fudge brownie sundae. They make pork chops and meat loafs look good.

Resolved: At restaurants, look for fruit on the menu. At home, throw together some balsamic berries (combine four cups quartered strawberries with one teaspoon sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar, chill for one hour before serving) or another elegant but simple fruit dessert.

That’s not to say you can never have another slice of cheesecake. Just save it for (really) rare occasions when you can afford an extra 1,000 calories! –Tyrone M. Reyes, M.D. (The Philippine Star)