Seven Holiday Tips

Seven Holiday Tips

Want to enjoy the holidays and the food and still stay healthy? Planning ahead is important, especially if you have diabetes. The seven tips below can help guide you through your next holiday event:

1. Focus on friends and family instead of food. Remember, the holidays are a time to slow down and catch up with your loved ones. Play games, volunteer, or spend time outdoors enjoying the winter weather together.
2. It’s a party, but don't overdo it. Eat slowly, and really enjoy the foods that you may only have once a year. If the meal will be served near your usual meal time, try to eat the same amount of carbohydrate that you normally would for a meal. If you plan to have a dessert, cut back on other carbohydrate food in the main course. Make sure your portions are reasonable and resist going back for second helpings.
3. Eat before you eat. Don’t skip meals or snacks earlier in the day to “save” calories and carbs for the large holiday feast later on. If you skip meals, it will be harder to keep your blood glucose in control. Also, if you arrive somewhere hungry, you will be more likely to overeat.
4. Bring what you like. Don't spend time worrying about what will be served. Offer to bring your favorite diabetes-friendly dish. It could be a low-sugar or low-fat version of recipe. If you count carbs, check your recipe’s nutrition facts so you know how big a serving is and how many carbs it has.
5. Drink in moderation. If you drink alcohol, remember to eat something beforehand to prevent low blood glucose levels later. Whether it’s a glass of eggnog or red wine, holiday drinks can add a significant amount of calories to your holiday intake. Keep it to no more than 1 drink for women and 2 drinks for men.
6. Stay active. One reason that we have problems managing diabetes and weight during the holidays is our lack of physical activity. Sure, the holidays are busy, but plan time into each day for exercise and don’t break your routine. Make the holidays an active time!
• Off from work or school? Use this extra time to do some physical activity.
• Train for and participate in a local holiday run or walk (like a turkey trot or reindeer run).
• Start a game of pick-up football or play other games in the yard.
• Bundle up and go for a walk with your loved ones after eating a holiday dinner.
• Offer to help clean up after a meal instead of sitting in front of leftover food. This will help you avoid snacking on it and get you moving around!
7. If you overindulge, get back on track. If you eat more carbs or food than you planned for, don’t think you have failed. Stop eating for the night and focus on spending the rest of your time with the people around you. Include extra exercise, monitor your blood glucose levels, and get back on track with your usual eating habits the next day.

http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/planning-meals/holiday-meal-planning/seven-holiday-tips.html

10 Holiday Cooking Tips

1.     Limit (avoid?) appetizers—you can easily take in a meal’s worth of calories in stuffed mushrooms, cheese, crackers, nuts and dips.  Chew gum while you cook or brush your teeth beforehand so you are less likely to nibble.

2.     Start the meal with a low fat soup (fluid fills up your stomach)

3.     Make at least two non-starchy vegetable dishes (so you can fill half your plate)

·      Roasted broccoli, Brussels sprouts or cauliflower adds a unique twist on “common” foods. http://www.eatingwell.com/healthy_cooking /healthy_cooking_101/shopping_cooking_guides/vegetable_roasting_guide

4.     Consider limiting simple carbohydrate-based foods.  Do you really need mashed potatoes and stuffing and sweet potato casserole and macaroni and cheese and dinner rolls?  Choose a couple of family favorites and save the others for a different holiday meal.

5.     Don’t over-do it on variety.  More options = more calories.  Your palate doesn’t get “bored”

6.     Seek out healthy (but delicious) substitutions

·      Mashed cauliflower

·      Vegetable (not bread) based stuffing

·      Fresh herbs and roasted garlic rather than butter and salt to add flavor

·      Lower sugar desserts

7.     Leave the food in the kitchen, not on the table.  If anyone wants seconds, they can get up and go get some, but it’s less tempting if it’s less available.

8.     Cancel your membership to the clean plate club, and let others do the same.  It’s easy for our eyes to be bigger than our stomach at this time of year.  It can end up as “waste” or “on your waist.”  You decide.

9.     Resist the urge to make multiple desserts – stick to one and sensible portions

10. Send leftovers home with others.  Stock up on “Gladware” and get it out of the house

Cancer Prevention through Diet

By Anna Gewecke, MS RD LDN

When you have a friend or family member who is battling cancer, it can make you wonder “how can I keep this from happening to me?” There are different types of risk factors for cancer. Some you can affect, and some you are stuck with. Age, sex, and family history are risk factors that you can’t change. However, there are many things you can change, and these will not only lower your risk for cancer, but also for heart disease, diabetes and overweight.

First, eat right! There are many specific recommendations that go into this, but they boil down to eating more plant foods (whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts), and eating less meat , processed, high fat, high salt, and high sugar foods.

Specifically,

Strive to eat 7-9 servings of fruits and vegetables each day. This sounds like a lot, but when you consider how many meals and snacks you eat, along with portion sizes, it will seem much more manageable. A serving of veggies is a half a cup of cooked or raw veggies, or a cup of leafy lettuces- that’s not very big! It’s the same for a serving of fruit- half a cup, or one small piece. If you can have a piece of fruit with breakfast, and for a midmorning snack, then you can eat two servings (one cup) of veggies with lunch and supper and a dessert of fruit, then you’re at 7 servings already!

Whenever you can choose produce with a lot of color- like orange carrots or sweet potatoes, dark green spinach or broccoli, red tomatoes or watermelon, yellow pineapple or peppers, you are making your meal both pretty, and extra healthy. Fruits and veggies are “color coded” to let you know what kind of nutrients that they contain. So the more natural color you get at a meal, the greater the variety of nutrients, and the stronger they are at fighting off cancer.

Foods that you should include regularly include

•  Beans

•  Berries

•  Cruciferous veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale)

•  Dark green leafy vegetables

•  Flaxseed

•  Garlic

•  Grapes and grape juice

•  Green tea

•  Whole soy foods (tofu, tempeh, soy milk, miso, edamame)

•  Tomatoes

•  Whole grains

After you have served yourself vegetables for a meal, fill most of the rest of your plate with a whole grain such as whole wheat bread, brown rice, or whole wheat pasta. These foods have many vitamins, minerals, fiber and other nutrients that both strengthen your immune system to fight cancer, and remove cholesterol from your body to fight heart disease. These carbohydrate-rich foods give you the energy that you need to be about your business, and the fiber in whole grains makes them last longer so that you don’t feel exhausted 30 minutes after eating.

When you choose all these plant foods, and fill up on them, you’ll have less room for the foods that can promote cancer. High sugar and calorie dense foods like snack cakes, sugary sodas, French fries, chips and other “junk foods” don’t provide many nutrients, but can contribute to weight gain. Other foods to limit include smoked or cured meats (like bacon, sausage, bologna, ham and many sandwich meats), and salty foods.

Eat lean protein with your meals to keep your body healthy. These include legumes such as pinto beans, white beans and black-eyed peas, nuts, lean fresh meats like beef or pork tenderloin, skinless chicken or turkey, fish, low fat cheeses, eggs, and milk. Choose red meats, beef, pork and lamb less often- limit them to less than 18 ounces a week. You can have a 3 ounce serving of one of these up to six days a week, and stay within this recommendation. If you can have a meatless meal once or twice a week, you’ll be getting more of the healthy plant foods- beans and vegetables- and have an easy way to limit your red meat consumption.

In order to prevent cancer, it is also important to get exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that we all get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise every day. These activities include walking, dancing, bicycling, ice and roller skating, horseback riding, canoeing, yoga, volleyball, golfing, softball, baseball, badminton, doubles tennis, downhill skiing, mowing the lawn, general and garden maintenance. That’s quite a list, and most of us like at least one activity on it. What is the best exercise? The one that you’ll do regularly because you enjoy it.

Both eating well and getting enough exercise will help you do the last thing that helps you to prevent cancer: maintain a healthy body weight. Studies have shown that risk for many cancers including breast and colon cancer is lower in people who are leaner. If you are currently overweight, even losing just 10% of your current weight will help you to have a lower risk for cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

If you would like more information about cancer prevention, and healthy recipes, look at the website for the American Institute for Cancer Research – www.aicr.org.

Resources:
American Institute for Cancer Research www.aicr.org
American College of Sports Medicine www.acsm.org
WebMD http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/lose-weight-gain-tons-of-benefits

Food for Thought                     

Food for Thought contains articles on various nutrition topics written by KAND dietitians.

Local foods, are they better for you?

By Wendy Markham

When you think about nutrition, you most often think about what nutrients are in the food. What vitamins does it have, fat, calories, and the favorite, calories?  What is not often considered is where the food is from. In our global market, we are able to buy foods imported from all over the world. In some ways, this gives us an edge on nutrition by providing many options to suit all tastes. You no longer have to settle for oranges or strawberries to get vitamin C. Now, you can run to the supermarket and purchase exotic fruits from far away countries to get the same vitamin C but with a different flavor. Food is also more accessible. Now, you can run to the local super store and buy your produce in the same location as where you purchase hardware, clothes, and even have your car worked on. Time and travel reduce vital nutrients.

While all these options are pleasing to the palate, there are some downsides to the global food market. Food travels an average of 1500-2500 miles from farm to table. Fruits and vegetables shipped from distant states and countries can spend up to seven to fourteen days in transit before they arrive in the market. Most fruit and vegetables sold in supermarkets are chosen for the ability to withstand harvesting equipment and extended travel, not taste.  This results in very little variety in plants grown.

Does distance make a difference in nutrition? The answer is yes. Spinach stored at room temperature loses between 50 and 90 percent of its vitamin C within 24 hours of being picked and spoils after five days. Time and exposure to light destroys folic acid, a vital nutrient in many green leafy vegetables. Vitamin C, the B vitamins and vitamin E are all important antioxidants that protect against disease, because they attack free radicals which cause oxidative stress and damage our cells leading to cancer and heart disease. These vitamins are particularly sensitive to time. These vitamins are often not in fruit and vegetables that are picked green – they are picked green so they will survive.

Any fruit or vegetable is a healthy choice.  Here’s a few good reasons to buy local:

•  Local food is fresh and tastes good. Food grown in your own community was probably picked within the past day or two. It is usually full of flavor and has not lost nutrients due to processing and shipping.

•  Local food supports local farm families. Local farmers who sell directly to consumers or to local stores, markets, or institutions can get better prices for their food, which means that farm families can keep their farm operating.

•  Local food builds a strong community. When you buy directly from the farmer, you are establishing a direct connection between with those responsible for growing the food you are eating.

•  Local food helps preserve farmland. Farmland will survive only as long as farms make money. When you buy locally grown food, you are doing something to help preserve the land needed to help our community have access to food.

•  Local food supports a clean environment. The average distance most food travels is up to 1400 miles. This burns up a great deal of gas and creates pollution.  Food that is grown and sold locally travels a much shorter distance.

Click here for more information on Knoxville area farmer’s markets.