Our blog post today will deal with how we eat more than what we eat.  Keeping in theme with our chili cook-off this week, we’ll discuss how eating socially with friends and family can affect our eating habits.

1) Getting kids involved in cooking and teaching them about food

It’s a little scary how many people I met in college who didn’t know how to cook anything past ramen noodles, mac & cheese and microwave meals – if it wasn’t for dining halls I don’t know if any vegetables would have been in anyone’s diets (and even then it’s questionable).  When time is taken to have a family meal, use it as an opportunity to show your children what you are doing and why.  Don’t take for granted that over time they will learn to cook on their own!  As well, this can be a time to teach children what their food is and where it comes from.  Just take a look at this clip from Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and see why this is important:

Identifying Tomatos (Click for Link to Video)

Help your kids become self-sufficient when they leave the house by giving them the tools they need to cook healthy and delicious meals on their own – get them involved in the cooking process when you make dinner!  (And maybe…just maybe…they’ll be more appreciative the time and effort you put in!)

2) Strengthen relationships

There is a plethora of studies and research out there that show the benefits of family meal time.  Teens who eat meals with their family four or more times a week have higher academic performance, less substance abuse, decreased chance of disordered eating, lower depression and lower incidence of getting into fights than those who do not – even after research is controlled for other factors such as socio-economic status and family connectedness.  European countries, in general, tend to place a higher emphasis on family meals, and research has been done to see how this affects youth:

“Data <on percentage of students whose parents eat their main meal with them around a table several times a week> were collected for 15-year-olds, with Italy at 93.8% (no surprise), followed by Iceland, France, and Netherlands. The US ranked near the bottom of the list at 22nd of 25 countries. The report analyzed six dimensions to see how well children and teens fare in various countries. These included material well-being, health and safety, education, family and peer relationships, behaviors and risks, and sense of being loved, valued, and included in families and societies into which they were born…The US and UK ranked lowest.”

<From http://nutrition.wsu.edu/take5/07/200711.pdf>

These benefits don’t just exist for children either – adults benefit from social meals as well.  Adults studied in residential homes who ate meals in groups were shown to have better health, more energy, stable weight and were more likely to participate in recreational activities.

3) Eating Slower!!

Here’s one way that social eating affects everyone in a beneficial way: Controlled eating!  When we get together around a table, a meal can take up much more time than when we sit around a television or eat on our own.  Taking more time in between bites to listen and talk can make your plate last longer, which can cause you to eat less.  It takes around 20 minutes for your stomach to know that it’s full, so taking more time to eat the same amount of food can cause you to feel fuller.  As well, taking more time improves ease of digestion, preventing indigestion.

So, stop by this week to sample some chili with friends at Empower!  If you can’t get a chance to stop by, here’s a link for a healthy chili recipe to try on your own:

White Bean and Turkey Chili                                   

As well, here are some more links about the benefits of family and social meals and educating children about food:

• Food Education for Kids
• Family and Social Meals Information and Help
• Family Meal Statistics
• Family Meal Research and Ideas

Here at Empower we enjoyed the Vegan Challenge Week so much that we decided to have another nutrition challenge for fun. We hope you’ll join us as we take nutrition back to our Paleolithic roots. Here’s a quick guide on the why, what, and how for the week:

All the lean meats, fish, and seafood you can eat

All the fruits (except dried fruits) and vegetables (except potatoes and corn) you can eat

No cereals

No legumes (including peanuts and soy products)

No processed foods

No sugary soft drinks or fruit juices

*Always try to eat your meat, fish, poultry, and seafood as fresh as possible. Fresh is almost always best, followed by frozen; stay away from canned, tinned, processed, smoked, or salted animal foods. When it comes to beef, pork, and chicken, free-ranging, grass-fed, or pasture-produced meats are always best.

*Steer away from processed meats like bologna, bacon, hot dogs, lunch meat, salami, and sausage. These are synthetic mixtures of meat and fat; they are artificially combined with no consideration for the actual fatty acid profile of the wild animals our Stone Age ancestors ate.

*Oils that may be used in cooking ñ olive, coconut, avocado and butter. Flaxseed oil and walnut oil can be used in low heat cooking, salad dressings and to drizzle on already cooked vegetables.

*Consume the following foods in moderation: eggs, nuts, seeds, sweet potatoes, dairy products. The best dairy products to consume are yogurt, kefir, and buttermilk.

Here are some great reference websites: Mark’s Daily Apple and Paleo Diet.com.

Paul Piracci, BS CSCS

Paul brings a background of athletics and education to the Empower team. He believes that wellness should be viewed as a blended lifestyle that balances nutrition, a healthy mind, and fitness which incorporates fun recreational activities. For more information about Empower Personal Training please call (919) 401-8024.

People often ask me when it comes to fruits, vegetables and meats which is better, local or organic? My quick answer is local, however I feel that the question is dealing with apples and oranges here (no pun intended!). So here goes a more comprehensive explanation as to why I feel that if you must choose one, go local.

Organic is a food industry term that consumers understand as grown/raised without pesticides, hormones or other industrial substances. The definition is so broad that all sorts of little allowances have eroded the intended high standards of the organic designation. Many food advocates now caution consumers against the perception that organic is still the gold standard for clean food. Rather, they say, it is best to think of organic as good rather than great or pristine. One reason for this downgrade is, for example, the US government’s decision to allow genetically modified (GMO) seeds, grown organically into produce, to be called organic. Not only is this a huge deception perpetrated on the US consumer but now consumers have no way of knowing if their organically produced veggies originated from a GMO seed or not.

Why is GMO a problem? Because we are not GMOs! GMOs are seeds that have been tinkered with in the lab on the DNA level to produce greater yields. Now many GMO crops are created to have a certain nutrient profile. Like the rapeseed, which has been genetically altered to have a higher omega 3 oil content and from which we get the highly processed canola oil. These GMO oils are now being linked with a whole host of degenerative diseases because human cells have no idea what to do with GMO molecules. These Frankenstein nutrients are therefore treated as invaders causing high levels of inflammation which is the first step in many disease processes.

I have barely touched on the complicated issue of the organic designation. It would take volumes to cover it adequately. For more information, I leave you with a few websites that deal with these issues www.nrdc.org and www.organic.org .

Now let’s talk about local. There are so many benefits to buying local produce that go beyond the healthfulness of the fruits, veggies or meats you are purchasing. First of all you are supporting your local economy, making where you live a more prosperous place. Second, your fresh produce is actually fresh! It did not sit on a truck or a boat (from China ñ Heaven forbid!) for days or weeks before you get to eat it. Third, with a local product you can ask the producer directly how the products were grown, processed, packaged and ultimately brought to you. These tremendous advantages.

If you shop at your local farmer’s market or food coop, talk to your farmers or managers. Ask them how the produce was grown, what do they feed their pigs that makes their chops the tastiest you’ve ever had? In chatting with my local producers I have found out that many local veggie farms do not have the organic designation because the fee to get their farms inspected is too high. They practice organic farming methods yet are not allowed to state that they are organic until they pay the hefty fee. There is no way for me to know this without actually having a conversation with my farmer.

Small vegetable farms do not receive government subsidies to offset the high cost of farming (yet corn is heavily subsidized, not the edible kind we enjoy in summer, the horrific GMO kind from which they can only produce high fructose corn syrup ñ thanks for the obesity epidemic! And feed for cows on those vile giant beef farms which produce sick cows, e-coli outbreaks and blood lipid levels in humans that guarantee heart disease). These farmers are true warriors out there. They work very hard to be good stewards of the land and safeguard our health with their good crops all in the face of government policy that works very much against them.

It’s important to engage the people who feed you. Not only does it create community, the knowledge that you gain gives you peace of mind. They care about the quality of the product they offer so you can trust them and feel confident that you are getting the best value for your health and your wallet.

A most excellent Farmer’s Market is in your backyard: http://www.durhamfarmersmarket.com/

Keeping it healthy and delicious,

Cara Demu, RD, MPH