Healthy Nutrition News: Restaurant Calorie Counts Often Inaccurate
Health Buzz: Restaurant Calorie Counts Often Inaccurate
Study: 1 in 5 Restaurant Calorie Counts Is False
Calorie counts posted in chain restaurants are often inaccurate, and one in every five meals packs at least 100 more calories than advertised on the menu, new research suggests. Boston scientists measured the calories in 269 items from nearly 50 fast-food and sit-down eateries, including McDonald’s, Burger King, Chipotle, Olive Garden, and Outback Steakhouse. They found that only 7 percent of the foods were within 10 calories of what the restaurants claimed, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Seventeen foods had at least 273 more calories than stated on the menu. Restaurants were most likely to underestimate low-calorie fare like soups and salads, and overestimate the calories in less-healthy choices like pizza and chips and salsa. “The calories on your plate may be quite different from what you think you are getting, and the trouble is you can’t tell,” study author Susan Roberts, a senior scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, told USA Today. “I have a Ph.D. in nutrition, and I can’t tell if my dinner is 500 or 800 calories just by looking at the plate, and our study shows you can’t rely on the restaurants’ numbers for an individual meal.”
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10 Things That Can Sabotage Your Weight Loss
So you’ve got your plot to drop the extra pounds. It certainly seems sensible: You’re going to eat right, eat less, and exercise. After weeks of declining dessert and diligently hitting the treadmill, you step on the scale and…only 2 pounds gone? You conclude that something or someone must be sabotaging you.
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You might be right. While experts say weight loss can always be reduced to the simple “calories in, calories out” mantra—meaning if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you’ll lose weight—a host of oft-hidden saboteurs may be meddling with the balance. Here’s a smattering of them:
1. Treating healthy foods as low-calorie foods. “A lot of times they’re not consistent,” says Scott Kahan, codirector of the George Washington University Weight Management Program in Washington, D.C. So while whole grains, avocados, and nuts might be kind to your heart or cholesterol levels, dieters who binge on such foods can, before they know it, add hundreds of calories to the day’s total. Enjoy calorie-rich healthy foods, dietitians urge, but ration them out: a quarter of an avocado on a salad or a small handful of almonds for a snack.
2. Shunning shuteye. Some research has linked shorter sleep duration to a higher body mass index (a measure of body fat) and increased hunger and appetite. Additionally, if you’re tired, you might be prone to grab a sugar-laden treat for a midday boost, skip the gym, and have takeout for dinner to avoid cooking. It’s a vicious cycle. Aim for seven or eight hours a night. [Read more: 10 Things That Can Sabotage Your Weight Loss.]
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How to Stay on a Diet to Lose or Maintain Weight
A diet is only as good as your ability to stick to it. Research has found that most plans will help you lose weight, regardless of type—low-fat or low-carb, for example. What counts is whether you can stay on it long-term. And with restaurant meals, dinners with friends, and hot fudge sundaes to tempt you, adherence is an understandable challenge. Here are five tricks for making your diet stick:
1. Gather the troops. You need support, be it from a friend, a group like Overeaters Anonymous, or even an online community. Research suggests those who go it alone are most likely to fall off the wagon. That’s why some diet plans have a formal support component—Weight Watchers connects dieters via weekly meetings, while Jenny Craig members are assigned counselors for advice and encouragement. If you’re not comfortable talking about your weight face-to-face, log online. By signing up for the free program PeerTrainer, for example, dieters can interact and track each others’ weight-loss progress, pose questions, and swap diet and exercise tips. “It’s important to have people who will pick you up when times are tough and cheer you on when you have successes,” says registered dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner, author of The Flexitarian Diet. Plus, she adds: “Healthy habits are contagious.”
How to eat your way to lower blood pressure
If you need to lower your blood pressure, consider swapping bread, crackers and cookies for foods like milk, yogurt, tofu and soy beverages.
According to a U.S. study published this week in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, partly replacing refined carbohydrate with foods high in soy or milk protein may help prevent and treat high blood pressure.
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In the study, 352 adults with high-normal blood pressure or mild hypertension were assigned to take 40 grams of either soy protein, milk protein, or a refined carbohydrate supplement, every day for eight weeks.
The supplements had a similar sodium, potassium and calcium content and were taken twice daily in water or juice.
Compared with the carbohydrate supplement, using soy protein and milk protein significantly lowered systolic blood pressure. (Systolic blood pressure is the top number in a blood pressure reading and measures the pressure when the heart contracts.) Refined carbohydrate supplements did not change blood pressure.
The reduction in blood pressure was small on an individual level, but was considered important on a population level. It’s a decrease that could lead to 6 per cent fewer stroke-related deaths and a 4 per cent lower rate of heart-disease deaths.
Earlier studies have found that daily soy protein helps lower blood pressure. Soy protein’s blood pressure-lowering effect may be due to its phytochemical (isoflavone) and phosphorus content.
The well known DASH diet, rich in low-fat dairy products, has also been shown to guard against hypertension, presumably because of its calcium and potassium content – two minerals linked with healthy blood pressure. (DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.)
The results of this week’s study demonstrated that milk protein also has a blood pressure-lowering effect. Milk protein contains enzymes and amino acids that have been shown to lower blood pressure.
One in five Canadians has high blood pressure, a condition that can cause heart attack, stroke, heart failure and kidney damage. High blood pressure is defined as 140/90 mm Hg or higher. If you have diabetes, 130/80 mm Hg is considered high.
An equal number of Canadians have pre-hypertension, a blood pressure reading between 130-139/85-89 mmHg. Unless lifestyle changes are made to bring blood pressure down, 60 per cent of people with pre-hypertension will develop high blood pressure in four years.
The following diet modifications can help you prevent hypertension, or lower your blood pressure if you already have it.
Limit refined carbs
A steady intake of white starches and sugary foods can cause salt retention and elevate blood pressure. Switch to 100-per-cent whole-grain foods such as whole-grain whole wheat bread and crackers, brown rice, whole-grain pasta, large flake or steel-cut oats, quinoa and unhulled barley.
Avoid sugary drinks; limit dessert to once or twice per week. Get used to adding less sugar or honey to coffee and tea and breakfast cereal.
Add milk or soy protein.
The DASH diet includes two to three low-fat dairy servings per day. One serving includes 1 cup skim or 1 per cent milk, 1 cup of 0.1 to 1 per cent milk-fat (MF) yogurt and 1.5 ounces of 7 per cent MF cheese.
To increase your intake of soy protein, use unflavoured or unsweetened soy beverages in place of, or in addition to, milk. Add firm tofu to stir-fries, toss soy beans into salads and snack on roasted soy nuts or edamame.
Increase fruit and vegetables
The DASH diet is also plentiful in fruit and vegetables: seven to 12 servings each day. These foods are excellent sources of potassium, a mineral that helps blood vessels relax and causes the kidneys to excrete more sodium. In fact, studies show that people with a low daily intake of the mineral are more likely to develop high blood pressure and suffer a stroke.
Adults need 4,700 milligrams of potassium each day. Excellent sources include bananas (1 medium = 422 milligrams), apricots (4 = 362 mg), prune juice (½ cup = 373 mg), cantaloupe (1 cup = 440 mg), spinach (½ cup cooked = 443 mg), Swiss chard (½ cup cooked = 508 mg) and sweet potato (1 small = 285 mg).
Eat legumes and nuts
Include beans and/or nuts in your diet four times per week. These foods are a good source of vegetable protein and they’re rich in magnesium, a mineral that promotes normal blood pressure.
Add chickpeas, kidney beans, black beans and lentils to salads, soups, pasta sauces, tacos and chilies. Snack on a small handful of unsalted, raw or dry roasted nuts.
Watch sodium
Excess sodium has been linked with elevated blood pressure in many studies. Canadians, aged nine to 50, require 1,500 milligrams of sodium each day. With age, our body becomes more sensitive to the blood pressure-rising effect of sodium and daily requirements drop to 1,300 milligrams for adults aged 50 to 70 and 1,200 milligrams for people over 70.
For most adults, the daily upper sodium limit is 2,300 milligrams. If you’re over 50 or have high blood pressure you should consume less.
Limit or avoid alcohol
If you drink, limit yourself to one to two drinks per day or a weekly maximum of 7 for women and 9 for men. Drinking more than two drinks per day increases blood pressure and escalates the long-term risk of developing hypertension.
Lose excess weight.
If you’re overweight and have hypertension, losing five kilograms will lower your blood pressure. In some cases, weight loss can reduce or eliminate the need for blood pressure medication. If you need to cut calories, replace refined grains and sweets with more fruit and vegetables.
Leslie Beck, a Toronto-based dietitian at the Medcan Clinic, is on CTV’s Canada AM every Wednesday.
More Supermarkets in Poor Neighborhoods Not Enough to Change Eating Habits
A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people on a tight budget don’t necessarily spend their money on healthier foods, even when they have easier access to them. The survey, which studied the eating habits of several thousand people in a number of cities in the U.S. for more than a decade, showed that making more fruits and vegetables available to poor families was not incentive enough to make them change their diets. Cheap snacks and fast food still remain the preferred choices.
Nutrition experts and policy makers have long argued that the scarcity of grocery outlets in low-income neighborhoods, a.k.a. “food deserts,” is one of the reasons why obesity and other lifestyle-related diseases are so widespread among the poor. That is why many, this writer included, have called on supermarket chains to set up shop in these deprived areas.
While the omnipresence of fast food places can explain a preference for burgers and fries, it comes as a surprise that easier access has done little to increase consumption of healthier food items.
“This raises the serious issue of how we get people to eat healthy,” said Barry Popkin, director of the Nutrition Transition Program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and lead author of the study.
Limiting the number of fast food joints and opening more grocery stores in these neighborhoods is obviously not enough. In 2008, the Los Angeles city council tried just that. It ordered a moratorium on new fast food restaurants and gave supermarkets incentives to expand their presence. “We had great success in building grocery stores, but selecting healthful foods from a store is up to the individual, said Jan Perry, Los Angeles councilwoman and one of the sponsors of the legislation.
The issue of money, of course, comes first to mind. The healthiest foods are routinely the most expensive ones. Especially the costs for fresh fruits and vegetables have dramatically gone up in recent times. Obviously, it makes no sense to stock a lot of items people can’t afford. Perishable foods will always be pricier because of their shorter shelf life and extra expenses for refrigeration and labor.
“The cheapest calories come from fried foods, chips and sodas,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, who wrote a commentary for the study. What matters most for people with limited funds is to get the biggest bang for their buck. In terms of calories per dollar, fast food wins out every time.
Still, nutrition experts insist that improving the food environment is an important step to change people’s eating habits. “It can’t happen in a vacuum,” said Gwen Flynn, director of community health and education at the Community Health Council in Los Angeles. “What is needed is a comprehensive plan to change what people are eating, including community education and government and private subsidies for healthful foods.”
Programs like these actually exist already, although they are few and far in between. For instance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sponsors what it calls the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (SNAP-ED), which provides free health- and nutrition education for food stamps recipients.
Educating the public is never an easy task, no matter what the subject is. Getting people to change their ingrained eating habits is probably one of the hardest things anyone can try. Predictably, there are plenty of voices decrying the involvement of government in such personal matters and their arguments are not always unjustified. However, most would agree that only informed choices are truly free choices. If people don’t know they have alternatives available to them, they will just keep doing what they’ve been doing before, whether it’s in their best interest or not.
Knock knock! You’ve got meal
Dubai: Thousands of well-heeled residents used to eating or ordering from fast-food outlets and restaurants are now turning to healthier nutrition services where dieticians and chefs work together to customise meals for them.
As buzzwords like calorie count and healthy eating at such ‘clinical and catering’ services catch on, refuelling on the run is no longer about making do with takeaways from fast-food outlets or quick-fix meals ordered from neighbourhood restaurants.
Right Bite, Lively, Health Factory – and now Balance Café – there are at least four such nutrition services that operate in Dubai alone, supplying up to five nutrition-packed meals a day that cover everything from breakfast, lunch and dinner, to AM and PM snacks.
At monthly charges that could go up to Dh3,000 per head, the meal plans don’t come cheap. But there are many takers as they are deemed healthy and hassle-free.
Sandra Gojkovic, Business Development Executive of Health Factory & Epicure Catering, said the 12,000 square foot kitchen in Al Quoz has served more than 4,000 customers over the past three years, with a current enrolment of “several hundred” individual and corporate clients.
The customer base is diverse and covers different nationalities, said Natalie Haddad, Founder of Right Bite, another large kitchen which works 24/7 in the same area. Without divulging the number of clients, she said they are catered to by over 100 staff, including 45 chefs, besides a fleet of 17 refrigerated vans that deliver meals to their doorstep from 5am to 10pm every day.
“Over 50 per cent of our clients are business executives who want to eat healthy or find it convenient to order from us. We also have entire families, students, pregnant women and people with health conditions like diabetes, blood pressure or heart problems,” said Haddad.
While catering establishments bring to mind assembly-line processes churning out food in quick succession to a large, undifferentiated pool of clients, these nutrition services claim their meals are highly personal with special care taken to keep them healthy.
“There can be no conveyor-belt style, one-solution-fits-all way to meaningful health,” said Sumit Kumar, Chef, Balance Café, whose meal plans are set to roll out.
Open boxes ready to be filled at a counter at Right Bite reveal the attention to detail. Every box of every dish carries a label that not only has information about the client, his/her age and location, but also specific remarks about his health condition and the ingredients that have to be added or omitted from the dish.
For example, many customers had opted for baked zatar fish, one of the dishes on the menu of the day when XPRESS visited the kitchen. But as the labels let on, each had a different specification: ‘allergic to garlic’, ‘no artichoke’, ‘not spicy’, ‘no bellpepper’, ‘no couscous, ‘add vegetable’, ‘add rice’ etc.
The menu, which changes every day, has a host of options that customers can choose from. Haddad pointed to a Saturday menu for lunch which includes at least five main dishes: chicken and whole wheat spaghetti with alfredo style sauce, riz bil lahem (rice with meat), baked tandoori fish with garlicky eggplant and potato, yakhnit bazilla (green peas and carrot stew with vermicelli rice) and chicken mortadella salad wrap (wholewheat tortilla stuffed with chicken mortadella, cucumber, lettuce, mushroom, carrot and cream cheese).
This comes with a side-dish like Spanish flat beans or vegetarian ratatouille salad, followed by a skinny dessert as an afternoon snack like apple tart, chocolate walnut bites or bagel chips with tomato salsa dip.
Sumptuous as the meals may sound, the calorie count is carefully factored. For example, at Health Factory, a package designed for a low metabolism client who needs to lose weight and stay in shape allows him 1,300 to 1,100Kcal per day. At Dh2,950 a month, it consists of three meals and two snacks throughout the day, all of which remain within the prescribed limit and help burn the excess fat in the body.
Chefs customise meals based on recommendations of dieticians with whom clients consult before choosing a meal plan. Regular follow-ups are also conducted to make necessary changes. (See Box: How It Works).
Dr Archana Ainapure, dietician at Health Factory, said, “Proper meal planning involves many considerations, such as meeting nutritional requirements, individual or family needs, economic factors, time and energy levels and availability of foods.”
At Balance Café, an Ayurvedic lifestyle consultant makes recommendations with the same aim of achieving the right balance between different foods required by the body. “A healthy individual who is moderately to highly active, needs to consume a meal that is based on 55 to 60 per cent carbohydrates, 20 to 25 per cent protein and the remaining 15-20 per cent fats,” said Kumar.
Healthy meal plans are also about regulating the right intake of salt, sugar or other micronutrients, said clinical dietician Hala Barghout at Lively. “Healthier meals contain less salt, less sugar and less saturated fats, besides other ingredients. That’s why they are called healthy. They deliver higher energy levels and boost the body’s immunity.”
Besides the food preparation, special care is also taken to ensure that they are delivered in refrigerated vans and insulated cooler bags to ensure that the food remains healthy. All hot items are put into microwave safe boxes which can be instantly heated and consumed. Fresh and full cooler bags are delivered on a daily basis, with empty cooler bags from the previous day being returned.
Customers vouch for the punctuality and benefits of the meal plans. “The food is delicious and since I have a hectic schedule with lots of meetings around town, logistics like timing of delivery and packaging are important to me,” noted Serge L., a customer of Health Factory, adding that the coordination with the dietician and the resulting calorie consumption plan had resulted in a weight loss of 19kg in five months.
A young couple based in Dubai said the whole-day meal plans from Right Bite made life simpler for them. “We don’t have to shop for our kitchen, cook or clean up. We love the variety of ready-to-eat foods we get at our doorstep, and we know they are healthy for us.”
Jessica, a 30-year-old sales executive who lives as a paying guest in Bur Dubai, said she switched to a healthy nutrition service last year after surviving on oily meals procured from a small-time restaurant for two years. “But I can afford only a lunch package. I wish they would bring down the costs,” she said, without naming the nutrition service.
How It Works
Customers must first have a consultation with a dietician to plan a perfect diet as per their need. They then get to choose from dishes on a menu that changes every day of every week. The information is then passed on to the chefs who customise meals accordingly. While the initial consultation in most services is free, there is a fee for the follow-ups which may result in changes needed along the way.
Take your pick
There are four major such services operating from Dubai with different monthly packages varying from around Dh1,000 to Dh3,780 per head:
Right Bite: Meal plans include full package (breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner); AM package (breakfast, morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack); PM package (lunch, afternoon snack and dinner); Executive lunch package (lunch main entrée with a side-dish and afternoon snack) and One meal package (lunch or dinner main entrée with a side-dish) etc.
Lively: Full meal package (breakfast and morning drink, AM snack, lunch (appetiser and main meal), PM snack, and dinner (salad and main meal); Executive meal package or lunch package (appetiser, main dish, PM snack, fruit and bottle of water); Afternoon package (lunch, PM snack and dinner); Daylight package (breakfast, AM snack, appetiser with main dish (lunch) and PM snack etc.
Health Factory: Miracle (three meals and two snacks for those with low metabolism); Detox (28-day programme that helps rid you of toxins); Serenity (for busy folks, covers lunch and snacks); Titan (Meals rich in proteins and carbs for high metabolism, sports people); Baby Love (specially designed for pregnant women) etc.
Balance Café: Meal plans to be unveiled shortly.
Extension Office Introduces New Nutrition Specialist
This week Scotland County’s Missouri Extension Office welcomed Jennifer Mayfield as the new Regional Health and Nutrition Specialist. Mayfield will assist with dietary and health issues in Scotland and eight surrounding counties.
Mayfield has an impressive background in nutrition. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and a Master of Arts in Family Systems from Southeast Missouri State University. She is also a Licensed Medical Nutrition Therapist in the state of Nebraska and plans on receiving a similar title in Missouri. For the past seven years, Mayfield worked in Nebraska, serving as a North American Missionary to the Santee Sioux Reservation and working as the tribe’s nutritionist, specializing in diabetic health. She also assisted with the Northern Ponca tribe’s dietary program.
During her time in Nebraska, Mayfield wrote and received grants for the tribes that focused on using traditional tribal foods and methods of gardening to reduce obesity, diabetes, and other health concerns in the groups.
Mayfield’s objective for Scotland and the surrounding counties is to provide opportunities for nutritional education and training while working to meet the needs of community members.
“The main goal right now is to find out what the community wants and needs and to be as helpful as I can,” stated Mayfield.
She noted that community health issues could be anything from diabetes and heart disease risk to a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables or walking areas. Mayfield’s plan is to tackle those issues and also work with other area specialists to utilize resources that are already available to Scotland County residents such as the Healthy Lifestyles Initiative.