Eating Out in Athens

Eating out can sometimes pose a challenge for eating healthy, but if you know some key things to look for, you can enjoy eating out while still making healthy food choices. The easiest way to make eating out healthier is to learn key words typically found on a menu. Look for foods cooked or described using the words below for the healthiest options:

• Baked, grilled, steamed, or roasted items rather than fried
• Items served without gravies or cream-based sauces
• Light items or items specified on the menu as healthier or low-fat options

Besides looking for key words, use these other tips for making a meal healthier when eating out:

• Order water instead of a higher-calorie beverage like soda or sweet tea
•  Have salad dressing served on the side so you can control the amount used
• Order an appetizer as an entree as the portions tend to be smaller
• Package half of your meal to eat as leftovers the next day
• Avoid adding extra butter or toppings to your food items

Eating out should be an enjoyable experience, and by using these tips you can help make it a healthy experience as well!

Eating Healthy during Stressful Times

Having stress can sometimes lead to unhealthy behaviors, especially this time of year during mid-terms. But stressful times don't have to mean unhealthy times. The healthier you can stay during stressful times, the better your body will function for that big mid-term or paper. But it's not always easy. One of the first things you can do is figure out the triggers that make you stressed out. Think for a second about some of the potential stressors you may encounter in the near future. Identifying stressors in your life will help you figure out how to avoid those, or if they're unavoidable, help you to better cope with them. Other ideas for ways to manage stress and stay healthy are listed below: 

• Find a friend where you both will encourage each other to stay healthy and hold each other accountable. 
• Try to only eat when you're hungry. If you find yourself wanting to eat when stressed try another activity like going for a walk, talking to a friend, journaling, drawing, exercising, listening to music, or playing with a pet.
• Maintain healthy eating habits. The more unhealthy your diet becomes the less energy you will have and the worse you will make your body feel.
• Try to get as much sleep as possible. Stressful times can leave you with little sleep, but without proper sleep your immune system could become impaired making you more susceptible to sickness.
• Avoid overdosing on caffeine, especially if it's found in high sugar beverages. Both caffeine and sugar only provide short term energy highs, potentially leaving you more drained shortly afterwards.

These are just some generic ideas for managing stress. Think of other ways that you personally deal with stress and write those down some place you can reference. Then try incorporating these habits into your day if you're feeling stressed. 

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.