Fad Diets

It seems like almost every day, there's a new diet out there claiming to be the answer to healthy eating. It can be hard sometimes to figure out which diets are healthy. Most diets have both positive and negative aspects, but unless the diets are overall healthy, you should stick to the dietary recommendations made by MyPlate or by a dietitian. Here are some red flags to look for when evaluating a new fad diet:

• Cutting out any whole food group (i.e. carbohydrates, fats, protein, grains, dairy) is a red flag because that means you are cutting out a whole group of nutrients needed by your body.
• If the fad diet is based on research, check the research the diet references. If the diet is based off of only a few limited studies this is a red flag because the diet lacks evidence.
• Promising a quick fix is a huge red flag since the only way to lose weight is to simply burn more calories than consumed. 
• Diets that require you to take supplements to meet nutrient needs. This is a red flag because our daily nutrient needs can be met by food unless under certain medical circumstances. 

These four red flags can help you spot a fad diet that might not be healthy or safe. A big key to always remember is that you lose weight when you burn more calories than you consume. So if you aren't either consuming less calories or exercising to burn more, weight loss will not happen. The best diet to follow is that recommended by MyPlate because it contains a variety of different foods to supply your daily nutrient needs. If you are exploring a new diet and have more specific questions, you may wish to speak to a dietitian who can help you evaluate the diet more in depth. 

Choosing Healthy Snacks

Incorporating snacks into your diet can be a healthy way to keep from getting too hungry in between meals. And choosing those snacks wisely can help add nutrients to your diet, rather than just empty calories. Some ideas for healthy snacks include:

• Whole pieces of fruit. Try to remember to grab an apple, banana, pear, or orange on your way out of the dining hall to have as a snack later.
• Crackers or pretzels with peanut butter. The protein in the peanut butter will help you stay full longer, and both of these foods will store for long periods of time to just keep on hand when needed.
• Applesauce cups can be an easy and tasty way to get in another serving of fruit as a snack. And you don't have to have a refrigerator to store applesauce if you buy the pre-packaged variety.
• Dry cereal stores easily and for long periods of time as well. Cereal can also be a good source of whole grains and certain vitamins. Make sure to look for whole grain varieties when purchasing cereal. The ingredients should list "Whole grain" or "Whole Wheat" as one of the first ingredients.
• Trail mix again is easy to store and is a great snack to keep you full until your next meal. The nuts found in trail mix contain healthy fats and many needed nutrients like vitamins and minerals. And if the trail mix contains dried fruit as well, that counts towards your daily fruit needs.
• If you do have a refrigerator to store perishable items, keeping yogurt cups on hand is a good idea for snacking. Choose low-fat or fat-free options to cut down on extra saturated fat.
• Carrots and hummus is another great snack idea if you have access to a refrigerator. The carrots will add vegetables to your diet and the hummus adds protein.

It's important to remember that snacking can fit into your daily requirements! A common misconception is that eating late at night can cause weight gain, which may prevent people from snacking after dinner. But it is not the timing of when we eat that causes weight gain, it's the balance of calories over the entire day that influences our weight. If snacking late at night causes you to consume more calories than needed, then weight  gain will occur. However, if you are hungry and haven't met your daily calorie needs, snacking will not cause weight gain. So if having a snack helps you focus on what you're working on later at night, then pick a healthy snack to have. Getting a sense of your daily needs and requirements will help you figure out if snacking can fit into your diet. As mentioned in an earlier post, try using the USDA's SuperTracker tool to track your calorie needs and balance your healthy snacks. 

Healthy Shopping

Shopping at the grocery store can be a confusing task if you don't know what to look for on food labels. Most food labels look very similar and are required by law to be included on packaged foods. Let's look at some of the basics of the Nutrition Facts label: the serving size, calories, and percentages as shown below.

Right under the Nutrition Facts label, and ingredient list will be included. The ingredients will be listed in decreasing order in the amount by weight found in the food item. Becoming familiar with certain ingredient items will help you identify healthier choices. For example, looking for the words "Whole Wheat" in the ingredients lists indicates that product contains whole grains. And the closer to the beginning the words "Whole Wheat" are listed, the better because that means there's more whole wheat flour than any other type of flour. Another key word to look for in the ingredients list includes "Partially hydrogenated oil." This term in the ingredients list indicates there is trans fat found in the food item, even if it is labeled as "Trans-fat free."

Which this brings up a confusing part of labeling. Labels can claim, "fat-free" or "trans-fat free" when that may not be the case. According to the FDA labeling law, if there is less than 0.5g fat (or trans fat) per serving, then the label can claim the term "fat-free." This is where you have to be careful about serving sizes. Because if an item has a small serving size, where you eat more than one serving, you have to remember you are adding up that fat that's not being listed less than 0.5g. For example, if a cookie has 0.49g fat per serving, which a serving size is one cookie. This item can be labeled as "fat-free." But now let's say you eat 3 cookies, you now have approximately 1.5g of fat intake So you have to be a smart consumer when you see on the label "fat-free." Look closer at the serving size and ingredients to really decode what's in the food.

Another term that labels will list, but doesn't have much meaning include "natural." The term natural isn't regulated, and doesn't carry much meaning on a label for a consumer who knows what to look for. So if granola bars says 100% natural, those granola bars can still contain preservatives and dyes, just so long as they fit into the vague category of "natural." There is no real regulation of this term, so again, be a smart consumer when you see the term "natural" on a label. Look closer at the ingredients to see what you're actually consuming next time.

Other simple tools to make a shopping trip at the grocery store healthier include:

• Making a list beforehand to help decrease purchases bought on a whim. If you plan to buy a set list of food and stick to it, you won't be inclined to indulge in unneeded purchases
• Shop the perimeter of the store when possible. The food found on the perimeter is in general fresher or less processed than the food found within the center isles.
• Don't shop for food while hungry.

So my challenge to you is the next time you go shopping for food, take a second to look at the label of a food item before you purchase it. Maybe even compare two different brands of the same item and see if you can find a difference. And follow as many of the above simple tools for your next shopping trip and see if that makes your shopping trip healthier.

Dietary Guidelines Decoded

            Have you ever wondered where nutrition recommendations come from in the United States? And who changed the famous Food Pyramid into the plate we see now? The answer to both of those questions can be summed up by looking at the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 

      The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are published every 5 years by a diverse faculty of scholars and contains the most up to date nutrition recommendations. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans contains recommendations ranging from serving sizes of foods to alcohol consumption to vegetarian diets. If you're interested in looking at the full document, here's the link!! It is 112 pages though, so let's look more closely at some important information and tools that will be helpful to you when trying to make healthy food choices.

      The Dietary Guidelines for Americans contains recommendations for the amount of calories and amounts of each food group you should consume. Let's define those two things. The calories you require each day will tell you how many total calories you should consume from foods to maintain your current weight. Consuming the correct amount of calories is important because you need calories to do things like walking around town, playing tennis, or cooking a meal. You also need calories for your body to perform it's basic functions: like for your heart to beat and your stomach to churn. Too many calories though can cause unwanted weight gain, which if you gain too much extra weight, can be a risk factor for diseases. The other definition to talk about is the amounts of each food group you should consume. Based off of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, there are 5 different food groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, protein, and dairy. Based off your measures, the recommendations will give you how many servings of each food group you should have.

     

      So here's how to personalize the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to your measures. The easiest way if you have internet access is to go to USDA's website called Daily Food Plan. Input your personal measures into the web page and click submit. The following page should summarize your daily calorie needs and specific servings of each food group (colorful chart). If you get good at estimating servings sizes after looking at the chart below, you can use this colorful chart to help guide your choices. If this is your first exposure to food groups, there's an even easier way to help you estimate your food intake. 

    

      The same MyPlate website also has a tool called SuperTracker that does all the calculations for you. Go to the SuperTracker website. Create a profile for free in order to input your age, sex, weight, etc. like you did before. Then under the Food Tracker section, add the foods that you've eaten that day. It will prompt you to enter a meal and amount of food eaten. When you've entered all your food for that day, SuperTracker will summarize the food you've eaten into easy-to-ready information. See the information below to help decode what SuperTracker tells you about your food intake that day.

      The last piece of information that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans helps us with is choosing correct serving sizes of each food. Determining serving sizes is a difficult task, especially considering that most portions served at restaurants or fast food locations can be multiple servings. To learn specifically about each food group's serving sizes, choose a food group on the website and click on the tab called "What Counts as a Cup?" or "What Counts as an Ounce?" That is a lot of information to memorize every serving size for all 5 food groups, so use this helpful chart from Web MD to give you practical ways to estimate serving sizes.

      There are a lot of nutrition resources online, and the MyPlate and SuperTracker resources explored in this post are both reliable sources of nutrition information. I challenge you this week to look at both of those websites, and for one day this week enter the food you eat into SuperTracker. Being able to see where your diet lacks or is sufficient in each of the food groups can help you make better decisions when choosing foods.
    
     Sources: 
    USDA. Daily Food Plans. ChooseMyPlate.gov. Retrieved from http://www.choosemyplate.gov/
    USDA. Supertracker. ChooseMyPlate.gov Retrieved from http://www.choosemyplate.gov/
    Zelman, K. Portion Control and Size Guide WebMD. Retrieved from http://www.webmd.com/diet/printable/portion-control-size-guide

Navigating the Dining Halls

Eating healthy at college is important and completely possible while on meal plan. Eating in the dining halls can be overwhelming at first, but use this information to help you learn about healthy options offered at each of the four dining halls.

Use the symbols found in the dining hall to help you make healthy food choices. These are the four symbols you may come across in the dining halls and what they mean:

These symbols are a great tool you can easily use every day in the dining halls. You can also find menus in the lobby at each dining hall or on UGA Food Service's website (foodservice.uga.edu). The menus will list all the foods to be served and will include the symbols for foods as well.

There are also foods that you can choose during the day that will make a meal healthier.
For breakfast:

• Choose whole-grain cereals, whole grain breads or bagels, oatmeal, or plain grits. Check the labels at  for the cereals and breads and make sure the first ingredient is "Whole Wheat Flour." This ensures that the product is whole grain.
• Choose fresh fruit or fruit juice that lists 100% juice on the label
• Have an omelette made at the egg station. You can choose from olive oil, cooking spray, and even the butter is soybean oil flavored with butter to be healthier. Choose from whole shelled eggs, egg whites, or egg beaters. Add in vegetables to help meet your daily vegetable needs.

For lunch/dinner:

• Choose fresh vegetables from the salad bar. If having a salad choose low-calorie dressings or use oil and vinegar as a dressing.
• At the deli, choose Swiss cheese which is reduced fat and whole grain breads or wraps.
• Choose the vegetarian pizza at Snelling which is made on a whole grain crust.
• The pasta bar is open for lunch and dinner and will always include a whole grain pasta choice as well as low-fat marinara/homestyle sauces.
• The "Eating Smart" line at Bolton has baked chicken, baked fish, steamed vegetables, and a low-fat entree. 
• Use microwaves to steam fresh vegetables from the salad bar. Just make sure there's a little water and cover the bowl with another upside-down bowl. Microwave for about a minute.
• Choose low-fat yogurt and low-fat cottage cheese which is always available. 
• Veggie dogs and veggie burgers can be lower fat alternatives to regular hot dogs or burgers.
• Choose from various low-fat and vegetarian soups
• Choose baked potatoes and baked sweet potatoes for vegetables.
• A bean of the day and brown rice is available every day.

Desserts can be incorporated into a healthy diet when eaten in moderation. No one has to give up desserts to be healthy, but the availability of desserts found at the dining halls every day can be tempting. So here are some other ideas to make your dessert choices healthier:

• Smoothies at Village Summit.
• Have fruit topped with whipped topping.
• Low-fat and sugar free puddings, Jell-O, or fat-free frozen yogurt are all healthier choices.

These suggestions at each meal will give you an idea of some options that will be healthier to choose. You can also look up the nutrition information of each food on the UGA Food Service's website. Go to foodservice.uga.edu and click on the "Nutrition" tab to download the Food Fact Finder for each dining hall.

Another service offered by UGA Food Service's is a dietitian that you can see for free while on meal plan. Katherine Ingerson is the Food Service's dietitian and she can be contacted at 706-542-7313. The dietitian can answer specific nutrition questions you may have, can help you set nutrition goals, or help with food allergies. Katherine also teaches an Eating Smart Course that lasts for 8 weeks and is also free for students on meal plan. Sign up for the course is first-come first-serve. See the table tents at the beginning of the semester in the dining halls to sign up.

Another challenge that eating at the dining halls can present is the influence eating with friends can have on your own food choices. For example, if your friends get dessert at every meal, that may make you eat more dessert. But this also works the other way around too. If your friends eat healthy at every meal, that may make you eat healthier as well. So be aware of who you're eating with and how that influences your choices. One challenge you can do this week is to talk with your friends about wanting to eat healthier and to be good influences on each other while eating at the dining halls.

Eating healthy in the dining hall can be a challenge, but is possible if you know what to choose and if you enjoy foods in moderation. I challenge you this week to choose healthier options while in the dining halls and to use the four health symbols when making choices this week.