Category: Healthy Living

If you follow social media, you may get the impression that the whole world is vegan now. Celebrities and influencers advocate online about their plant-based diets and how great they make them feel. Meat, it seems, is evil, and its health value is in doubt. But are humans designed to be herbivores, eating only fruit, vegetables, and grains? Tooth marks on fossilized animal bones suggest that meat-eating has been around for at least 2.6 million years, so why should you stop now?

Of course, vegetables and fruits are delicious and healthy. Where would you be without your crunchy salads, tomato pasta sauces, baked potatoes, and cherry pie? There are certainly some fantastic vegetarian recipes available out there. Eating more of them is a great way to ensure that you get all the vitamins, minerals, and roughage you need. Unfortunately, research suggests that most people in Western societies eat far too little plant-based food, with only one in 10 Americans consuming as much as health experts recommend. But does that mean that you should abandon meat-eating altogether?

In fact, lean red meat, poultry, and fish also contain plenty of important nutrients that are essential for health. For example, eating meat — white or red — is the easiest way to boost your iron stores to prevent anemia. Meat is also full of zinc which is necessary for your immune system, vitamin B12 for your nervous system, and lots of other goodies. In fact, far from making you put on weight, protein from good quality meat is an efficient food for building muscle, not fat.

In addition, some people don’t do well on vegetarian and vegan diets. I had a friend in college who got anemic when she went vegan. Her doctor ordered her to eat red meat. Other people I know can’t digest red meat well at all. We all have different metabolic needs, and so need to listen to what our bodies want more than what some Instagram influencer says we should do.

Selecting the Best Meat to Eat

So, if meat is on the menu, try to buy the best lean cuts that you can afford. Farmers’ markets are a great place to find fresh, high-quality food. You can often find local producers there. Food that hasn’t traveled very far by the time it reaches your fridge is far more environmentally friendly than food shipped in from miles away.

Make sure the meat is at its freshest by checking the color — red meat should be an attractive dark pink, while poultry can vary from pale to golden depending on the food that the bird has eaten. If possible, you should touch the meat to make sure that it is dense and springy. Any suspicion of a slimy texture is a no-no!

The smell is also very important — one sniff and you will know whether the cut is fresh or not! Unfortunately, you may find that farmers’ markets in your area have been affected by the pandemic. Still, you can always buy gourmet meats online from companies that will do all the choosing for you.

By all means, have a meat-free Monday now and then to ensure that your family eats a wide range of vegetables, but you don’t need to ditch the steak altogether. Instead, a home-cooked meal with a lean cut of meat protein and a range of tasty side vegetables and salads will give you and your family all the nutrients you need.

If you’re going to a large meal, make it breakfast suggests recent research published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. A large breakfast may help you maintain a healthy weight and manage your blood sugar.

The researchers looked at a process called diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT). When we digest food for the absorption, digestion, transport, and storage of nutrients, we expend energy. DIT is a measure of how well our metabolism is working, and often differs depending on the mealtime.

“Our results show that a meal eaten for breakfast, regardless of the amount of calories it contains, creates twice as high diet-induced thermogenesis as the same meal consumed for dinner,” said the study’s corresponding author, Juliane Richter, MSc, PhD, of University of Lübeck in Germany. “This finding is significant for all people as it underlines the value of eating enough at breakfast.”

Another reason why breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

This study is preliminary and was only conducted on a small number of men (16), with no women in the study. They did a two-phased approach. The participates ate a low-calorie breakfast and high-calorie dinner for three days, then at a high-calorie breakfast and low-calorie dinner for the next three. The researchers found identical calorie consumption led to 2.5 times higher DIT in the morning than in the evening after high-calorie and low-calorie meals. The food-induced increase of blood sugar and insulin concentrations was diminished after breakfast compared with dinner. The results also show eating a low-calorie breakfast increased appetite, specifically for sweets. (I’ve always wondered about that!)

“We recommend that patients with obesity as well as healthy people eat a large breakfast rather than a large dinner to reduce body weight and prevent metabolic diseases,” Richter said.

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This story was based on a press release, and not the journal article.

As I ride around the rural roads of the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area, I love looking at mile after mile after mile of corn and other crops. I suspect that a lot of the crops I’m looking at are organic, and being that September is Organic Harvest Month, I thought I’d visit the topic and answer some questions that people often have about the term “organic.”

Organic foods have been long promoted as the best choice when buying groceries. The USDA program for labeling organically produced foods began in 2001. In 2016, there were more than 31,000 certified organic commercial farmers in the nation, and in more than 100 countries. Organics is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world — sales have risen over 20 percent each year. The industry is worth $43 billion today.

However, what does the term mean? In a scientific sense, all life is organic. But that’s not what we’re talking about in reference to produce, meat, and other foods you can purchase at the grocery store. The term has a legal definition, as well.

What does “organic” mean?

The term, when you see it on a label, simply means produce grown naturally, without the help of any synthetic or chemical pesticides, fertilizers, sewage sludge, etc. Meat-producing animals (chicken, pigs, cows, etc.) were raised without being given hormones, antibiotics or was given only organic products to eat (no animal by-products). Animals also need access to the outdoors whether or not they use it.

What are the USDA guidelines?

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP) has developed a very wordy definition, as well as guidelines, for organic producers and farmers to follow in order to attain and keep their license. Here are the guidelines in a nut shell:

• They are not permitted to use any materials for three years before being granted their certification and while maintaining it.
• They must allow their livestock a way to get outside, ensuring animals can roam freely.
• They cannot feed them food with hormones or give them antibiotics.
• Animals must be fed with 100 percent organic feed.
• Processed products must not have been contaminated, and operation records must be kept.
• They must not use any Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
• They must keep non-organic and organic foods separate.
• They must not use any kind of irradiation to kill pests.
• They must use compost or manure rather than synthetic fertilizers.
• They must undergo annual inspections to make sure they are following the guidelines.

NOP is booth the federal regulatory framework in the U.S. governing organic food and the name of the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) program responsible for administering and enforcing the regulatory framework. The goal of NOP is to ensure the product is protected from beginning to end, as well as addressing other concerns, such as water and soil quality, food additives, livestock practices, and pest control. When NOP is followed, we get improved animal health and preservation of the resources that lead to biodiversity.

How do you know what is and is not organic?

Your first indication can be found on the label. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has some strict rules as to what is and is not considered organic. For the label to be placed on produce, it must be grown by USDA standards. Any person making a false claim on the label could be fined up to $11,000 for misrepresentation.

How are multi-ingredient foods classified?

Some products use multiple ingredients. If the label claims that the product is organic and uses the USDA seal, then the USDA requires that the product be made from at least 95 percent organic ingredients. Products with a certifying agent but no USDA seal must be made from at least 70 percent organic ingredients and must state the following, “made with organic ingredients.”

What do the different categories mean?

When you’re doing your grocery shopping, you’ll find three distinct categories the USDA has allowed manufacturers to label their products:

• 100% Organic: This means all ingredients are 100 percent organically produced.
• Organic: This means at least 95 percent of the ingredients are organic.
• Made with Organic Ingredients: This means that 70 percent of a product is made up of organically produced ingredients with stringent restrictions on the other 30 percent.

Products that contain less than 70 percent organic ingredients cannot claim to be organic, however, they can list them in the ingredients panel. You can learn more about this by visiting Organic.org.

What are the benefits of organic foods?

There are not many long-term studies looking at the health benefits that come from eating or using organics. However, a recent University of California Davis study did find that organically grown foods had more nutritional value in them than foods that are not. According to some people (including myself), they also taste much better.

On the other hand, organically grown foods contain no pesticides or fertilizers, which means your body is not subjected to the dangerous effects these products can have on it. Pesticides and fertilizers can damage the body’s immune, nervous, and endocrine systems. And, for children, the effects are even more harmful.

And then there is the environment. When you grow food organically, it means you’re not using pesticides or fertilizers that could pollute the land, sea, or air. You also conserve soil, water, and air and ensure that more carbon dioxide is recycled without letting any toxic gases get back into the atmosphere.

There you have it! The most common questions about the term organic. If you have other questions, please put them in a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

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Take Charge of Your Health!

Changing your eating habits can be tough. But it doesn’t have to be if you take a little time to think it out and create a plan.

This Healthy Eating Worksheet will walk you through the process of creating a healthy eating plan. All you need to do is print it out, set aside some time to complete it, and then fill it out. Then you can create your plan, knowing that you have addressed potential obstacles and came up with some creative ways to handle them.

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