| 7/19/2006 3:05:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| EATING HEALTHY: Lucy and Rick Bedwell of Indianapolis dress a garden salad with honey mustard dressing at The Downtowner restaurant on Main Street. Many restaurants have started offering more healthy options, such as salads and wraps, in addition to standard menu items. (Staff photo by Julie Kish) |
| | Experts provided tips for eating out | • Visualize your “at home” portions. Restaurant entrees can be at least twice the size of your usual portion.
• Request a lunch portion when ordering dinner.
• Realize that you will get fuller faster when eating in a restaurant, thanks to high-calorie, high-fat foods. Remember that socializing while eating often makes you less attentive to fullness signals.
• Eat slowly and take a break halfway through a meal to check your fullness. Stop eating at the “comfortable fullness” point. Remember, it takes 20 minutes for the brain to get the message that the stomach is full. Box up the remainder for the next day.
• Choose beer or wine rather than mixed drinks. Beer and wine have fewer calories. Better yet, stick with water. A diet soda or unsweetened iced tea are also no-calorie options.
• Limit bread, chips or rolls, setting aside a roll or piece of bread, or a small serving from a basket of chips before your meal and sending the rest back to the kitchen.
• Order salad as your main course.
• Avoid “all-you-can-eat” restaurants. The price may be right but you are likely to overeat.
• Don’t let the restaurant determine what you should eat. Oversized portions are a major contributor to overeating and gaining unwanted weight.
• Ask for a “to-go” box at the beginning of the meal. Eat only what you feel you should at one sitting. Make the meal stretch into two, providing lunch the next day.
• Skip the appetizer if what you are really hungry for is the main course.
• Try ordering an appetizer or two instead of a main entree, especially if they seem more appetizing.
• If the restaurant’s specialty is its dessert, eat a very light meal such as a small salad instead of topping off a heavy meal with an equally delectable but calorie-laden dessert. Or, split a dessert.
• If you’re really watching your calories, bring a couple of pieces of hard candy with you to the restaurant.
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The war on obesity
Restaurants draw the battle lines
Pat Whitney
Courier Staff Writer
The battle lines are drawn.
At a time when 61 percent of Americans are considered overweight, CKE restaurants, which operates Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.’s, has unveiled a jumbo-sized cheeseburger containing a whopping 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat.
A little over the top, you say?
To put it in perspective, the half-pound dressed cheeseburger with French fries and ketchup eaten by millions at McDonald’s every day represents nearly as many calories at 1,345 – without the Coke.
However, patrons making the latter choice can draw a little consolation that they are consuming half of the fat-gram intake that makes up the Monster burger.
If adults are examples to their children, no wonder kids are getting fat.
Michele Maher, registered dietitian at King’s Daughters’ Hospital, cautioned people who point the blame solely at the restaurant industry for the obesity epidemic.
“People have to remember that they are the ones who are making the food choices in the drive-throughs – not the restaurants,” Maher said.
She warned that children might be getting the most mixed messages, learning the pyramid food groups in school and taken out for pizza, burgers and fries too many times during the week.
About 25 percent of all children aged 2 to 18 now meet the criteria for being overweight.
“In 2004, 19 percent of children in Jefferson County aged birth to 18 are overweight or obese,” she said. “It’s probably a little higher today.”
“You can eat out, but you have to be aware of what you or your children will be eating,” she said. “Be sure to check out nutritional charts before you go to a restaurant to help you make a good selection.
“The drive-through is too late to think about it.”
Most fast-food restaurants have nutritional charts in their stores and online that list the amount of fat, carbohydrates, sodium, calories and protein in food items.
Portion distortion
Another big factor with eating and expanding waistlines are the portions being served in restaurants today.
A study published by the American Medical Association, using nationally representative dietary intake data, found that between 1977 and 1996, each day Americans were consuming:
• 93 more calories from salty snacks
• 49 more calories from soft drinks
• 97 more calories from hamburgers
• 68 more calories from French fries
• 133 more calories from Mexican food
With an extra 10 calories a day translating to one pound a year if there is not enough exercise, 440 additional calories a day amounts to 44 pounds a year. Clearly, portions are a big reason why people are getting fatter.
And that was before the “Super-Size” era.
“Portions are often three or four times the size we should eat,” Maher said. “It is especially important for parents who are taking their children out to eat five to seven days a week to choose from the healthier selections.” Children need to stick with the kid’s menu, she said.
She pointed out that a 3-ounce hamburger and small fries in a kid’s meal are closer to an appropriate adult portion than the typical meal eaten by adults.
Restaurants offering
healthier options
Most fast-food restaurants are offering calorie-saving options amid concerns that the industry could be liable for America’s obesity epidemic. Salads, yogurt with fruit and veggie-burgers are giving healthier choices to consumers – if they have the willpower to choose them.
McDonald’s and Wendy’s, for example, offer the option of a fruit instead of fries; milk or juice instead of soda for children.
It’s not just fast-food, but all restaurants offer some sort of challenge to the consumer.
One local restaurant, The Downtowner, doesn’t claim to offer low-fat, low-calorie foods, yet a recent addition of wraps may be preferable for the health-conscious patron to the butter-grilled, Parmesan-laced bread of the signature sandwiches. Even then, diners have to be aware that the tasty dressing inside the wrap is made from a special pesto-mayonnaise recipe that is as delicious as it is high in fat and calories.
The Downtowner, known for its rich cakes and cookies, doesn’t serve fried foods, said co-owner Stacey Fields, noting that the hamburgers are cooked in a convection oven.
“We do serve salads and vegetarian foods for more health-conscious people,” said Fields, who will be adding a sugar-free cake to his menu soon.
Down Main Street another deli-type diner – Buster and Jen’s – opened recently.
“We serve 97 percent fat-free deli meats with nothing fried on our lunch menu,” said Buster Delaney, who was formerly involved with running the Hard Body Gym.
“There are a lot of health-conscious people in Madison,” he said. “We aren’t necessarily operating for the health-conscious individual, yet we do serve yogurt, fresh-fruit smoothies with protein, low-carb veggie wraps and salads with a variety of low-calories dressings in addition to a regular menu.”
Everything is baked, broiled or boiled at the diner.
“It’s nice when a health-conscious individual comes in to eat with someone who isn’t and we can accommodate both,” he said.
Link between MSG and obesity
Another factor in the obesity epidemic may be monosodium glutamate. Used as a flavor enhancer, MSG is best known for its use in Asian restaurants but has found its way into wheat and soy protein, California wines, infant formula, yeast foods, gelatin and hair conditioners. It is even being sprayed on fresh fruits and vegetables.
Like aspartame, MSG is an excitotoxin, a substance that overexcites neurons to the point of cell damage and, eventually, cell death, according to neuroscientist Russell L. Blaylock, who wrote “Excitotoxins.”
In his lab studies using animals, MSG created a lesion in the hypothalamus that correlates with abnormal development, including obesity, short stature and sexual reproduction problems.
“One can only wonder if the large number of people having difficulty with obesity in the U.S. is related to early exposure to food additive excitotoxins,” he wrote. “With an increasing number of elementary school students bringing snack-size bags of chips to school in their lunch boxes, the MSG-obesity link demands parental caution.”
“Early exposure in life to high doses of glutamate, or other excitotoxins, could theoretically produce a whole array of disorders much later in life, such as obesity, impaired growth, endocrine problems, sleep difficulties, emotional problems including episodic anger and sexual psycho-pathology,” he wrote.
In the war over food, the educated consumer will come out the winner.
Tomorrow: Childhood obesity: You can make the difference
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Reader Comments
Posted: Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Article comment by:
Carol Hoernlein
Thank you so much for mentioning Dr. Blaylock's excellent book and that MSG is linked to obesity. Many people who eat fast food don't realize that MSG is in their fast food like KFC chicken and chicken sandwiches. For more info on MSG, where it is, and how to avoid it, please visit msgtruth.org
Posted: Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Article comment by:
Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum
Good article. Aspartame and MSG both cause obesity. We've asked for recall: Here are the links for you.
http://www.mpwhi.com/project_recall_aspartame.htm
http://www.wnho.net/project_recall_aspartame.htm
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