Yesterday morning, I was sitting in the Bistro at a Marriott in San Antonio.  While my breakfast was being made, I took a glance through the USA Today.  Of course, sodium was front and center on the lead page of the newspaper.  All the health news this past week has been centered around sodium, and the Institute of Medicine’s report that the regulatory agencies in our country should start decreasing the levels of salt allowed in food.

As I read the article, a little light bulb went off in my head.  And it wasn’t about sodium.  Are we as a nation – consumers and health professionals alike – afraid to talk about the fact that we eat too much food?  Is it too personal?  Is it too complicated?  Are we just afraid to really touch the whole topic?

I ask because we’ll talk ad naseum about salt right now.  We can go and on about trans fat.  But in reality, getting us to eat less food would solve all these problems.  If we ate less food, we’d get less sodium.  We’d get less saturated fat.  We’d get less trans fat. While this change won’t necessarily get us to the levels of sodium recommended (2,300 mg a day), it will get us a good chunk of the way there.

But no one seems to be talking about this.  Why is that?

Visit www.nuval.com to see a system that includes the energy density (calories per gram) of food in its scoring process.

Looking for FREE Continuing Education Credits for Registered Dietitians? Plan to attend:

GPS for the Grocery Store:  NuVal Nutritional Scoring System

Overview:

Looking for insight into one of the hottest nutrition topics of the day?  Then plan to attend this webinar sponsored by NuVal LLC, which will provide an overview of the regulatory climate on front-of-pack iconography and retail shelf labeling programs.  The background on NuVal will be provided as will a comparison of the various systems in the marketplace.  Research validating NuVals scoring algorithm as well as research on the relationship between health outcomes and high NuVal scoring foods will be presented.

Presenters:

Rebecca Reeves, PhD, RD, Assistant Professor, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, former President of the American Dietetic Association Annette Maggi, MS, RD, LD, FADA, Sr. Director of Nutrition, NuVal LLC

Sponsored by: NuVal LLC, NuVal.com.

Time:  1.5 CPEUs have been approved through the Commission on Dietetic registration.

Webinar Options (all content is identical, simply choose one):

• Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at from 10:00-11:30 CST
  Registration link:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/908342267

• Friday, May 21 from 10:00-11:30 CST
  Registration link:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/724705923

• Wednesday, May 26 from 1:00-2:30 CST
  Registration link:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/761361235

Questions?  Contact Rachel Rodek at rrodek@nuval.com<mailto:rrodek@nuval.com or 781.228.5725.

As a health professional, I am often asked to define the biggest problem with eating habits.  If I could pick one thing that most contributes to obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc, what would it be?

It seems like a tough question, doesn’t it?  With all the nutrition advice out there, how can I pick one piece of it as being most important?

But, I have an answer.  It fact, it comes to mind quickly for me.  If I had to define the most important piece of nutrition advice, it would be to listen to your hungry, to truly get in touch with your body’s signals that it needs nourishment.

In reality, we all have many external cues for eating.  We make our kids eat breakfast each morning before catching the school bus.  You schedule a networking meeting, and plan it at a coffee shop.  It’s 12:00 and that means lunchtime.  You head to the movie theater, and the smell of popcorn convinces you to visit the concession stand.  Your coworker keeps a jar of M&Ms on his desk, and after walking right by it 50 times, you decide to grab a handful on walkby 51.

Then there’s the internal, non-hunger, related cues driving us to eat.  A stressful meeting at work, a breakup with a girlfriend, financial problems – any and all can drive us to eat.

Somewhere in all of this, we need to find a way to listen to our bodies and only eat when physically hungry.  But how?  Here are some ideas:

1. Get in tune with your body’s physical signs of hunger.  A rumbling stomach is the telltale sign.
2. Remember that you should be able to go 3-5 hours in between meals and snacks.
3. When you think you’re hungry, rate your physical hunger on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being not hungry at all and 10 being very hungry.  Eat or don’t eat based on this, and if you do eat, make it a portion in line with the level of your hunger.
4. If your hunger rating is a 1, consider what other cues are telling you to eat.  Is it emotional?  Something in your environment like the time on the clock or the smell of popcorn?  Once recognized, think about what you might do to help the hunger such as …

• • Taking a quick 10-minute walk.  Soon you’ll be thinking about something other than eating.
  • Use your hands.  My neighbor Becky finds knitting to be a great weight management trick.  She knits while watching TV, during downtime shuttling kids to their activities, etc, and finds her hands aren’t available for snacking.
  • You’ve heard this before, but drink a glass of water.  Often, when you think you’re hungry, you’re actually thirsty.

When your hunger rates a 10, visit www.nuval.com to choose foods with the most nutrition to fuel your hunger.

The big day this week is Thursday – Earth Day.  In every community, activities are planned to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of this day designed to build advocacy for a healthy planet.  In all ways big and small, there are opportunities to take better care of our natural resources, and Earth Day reminds us of our responsibility in this regard. 

What’s the food tie to Earth Day?

For many people, choosing organic foods is a tie to respecting the earth.  Organic foods are grown without the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, relying on sustainable farming methods like crop rotation and biological pest control.  It minimizes the chemicals that end up in ground water.  And as a part of what the great Cesar Chavez fought for, organic farming also minimizes the chemicals to which farm workers are exposed. 

But what has come to light over the past several years is that buying local may be just as important if not more important than choosing organic.  What the organic regulations don’t cover is where the food is produced, and we now have organic produce being shipped to the U.S. from countries around the world as well as from one end of the country to the other.  The gas used and the emissions created in shipping these products into and around the U.S. have a negative impact on our earth, and some question whether the benefit of organic production can outweigh the toll this takes on the earth. 

Of course, this is true of non-organic food as well.  It travels that same distance to arrive in a market near you.  So buying local can be a way to protect our natural resources.  In general, local foods use less packaging, traveling much less distance, are fresher, and give you a variety of foods specific to your geographic area and seasons.  Farmers’ Markets across the country offer locally grown produce.  Products sold at my local St. Paul Farmers’ Market, for example, must be produced within 50 miles of the market. The USDA has a site where you can find a farmers’ market near you.  Another option for buying locally grown is a Community Supported Agriculture share, otherwise known as a CSA. Through a CSA, you buy a “share”  for the season and each week receive a share of a farm’s production.  Many farmers’ markets and CSAs offer organic product as well, giving you the advantage of both.

Another option for eating more green is to cut back on meat, which is a resource intensive food.  Raising cattle, and chickens and hogs uses natural resources like water, land and grain and can add pollutants to air, water and land.  It takes a lot more water, for example, to raise a pound of beef than it does a pound of potatoes. 

The packaging used for food is a hot button these days in light of the waste it creates.  Component meals, bags within boxes, single serve cartons, bottled water bottles – they end up in landfills, impacting the health of our earth.  

Speaking of food waste, composting is another way food ties to Earth Day.  In backyards across the country (including mine), apple cores, stale bread and cantaloupe rinds are mixed with grass clippings and leaves in compost piles.  Not only does it minimize the waste going to landfills, but it can cut down on trash costs and create a nutritious supplement for plants and gardens. 

Sounds like how we eat every day factors into the health of our earth, doesn’t it?

No matter where you buy your food or how it’s produced, nutrition quality still matters.  Visit www.nuval.com for a system that scores organic and conventional, local and distant, meat and vegetarian products.

Guest Post by Angie Gaszak, RDE

To become a Registered Dietitian, students must graduate from an accredited university in the field of nutrition and then be accepted to a competitive internship program. As a series of unfortunate circumstances during my dietetic internship led me to forgo a three week rotation in the food service department at a long-term care facility, I must admit, I was both a little relieved (at the thought of not wearing a hairnet) and curious at the notion of getting a peek at the industry side of the nutrition field. I always wondered where the rubber met the road from the field of nutritional science and dietetics to the grocery store shelves. Thank goodness I was graciously accepted under the wings of Annette Maggi, a dietitian for NuVal!

The week before my assigned rotation, I did some homework on the internet to research NuVal. I was pleasantly surprised to see it was a remarkably comprehensive nutritional labeling program that literally takes the guesswork out of comparing products in the grocery store. While looking through the scores, I was dumbfounded by some of the products that I assumed would be higher (reduced fat, sugar, sodium, etc.) but were actually, due to other ingredients, not the best alternative. I guess after studying nutrition for so many years quite expensively, I thought I could master spotting the superior product. You would think, out of any shopper, I should be able to manage. But low and behold, nutrition labels can be confusing to even a nutrition grad student. With so many nutrients and ingredients taken into consideration, it would be impossible to quickly and accurately make the product comparisons that the NuVal system achieves with one little hexagonal number. Also, because NuVal’s algorithm is scientifically sound and represents positives, negatives, and weights the score for certain disease states, it goes beyond simply comparing nutrients and considers overall health and well-being.

Aside from being convenient from a personal perspective, I feel like this concept has great potential for the public’s health. Through its integration in schools, restaurants, and other establishments where food decisions are made, the NuVal system has the potential to affect a broad scope of customer choices. These collective selections have the potential to impact on the health status of the nation. With obesity rates as elevated as they are and the risk of disease associated with excessive body weight, an easy-to-use “nutrition GPS” guide might be just what our nation needs.

As I complete my work on my Masters degree in Public Health Nutrition, I will be sure to keep an eye on NuVal which I believe shows much promise in helping change the way our nation chooses food. They have created an empowering system and I look forward to seeing them expand in the future.

On Friday, I sat through a round of presentations at the Institute of Medicine’s Committee Meeting on Front of Packaging Labeling Systems.  In layman’s terms, the committee is trying to decide the best method for highlighting “healthy”  or “better for you” foods on the front of the food packages so consumers don’t have to study the in-depth information on the Nutrition Facts Panel.

The committee’s job is due diligence, and I get that.  We want our government and policy organizations to be researching, investigating and exploring all the options.  But at some point, from my perspective, the discussion and debate becomes exhausting.  I’m a dietitian, I truly care about these issues, but the ability of my colleagues to poke holes in and debate the various systems, and the advantages and disadvantages becomes exhausting.

And at this point, I call to mind a saying that many have said.  Perfect is the enemy of good.  While he didn’t coin the phrase, Dr. David Katz, the inventor of the NuVal scoring system I work with, will often bring it to mind when the debate gets too far into the minutia, too far into the details, too far into the weeds.

If what we want is a perfect solution, we’ll never get there.  If what we want is a really good system that can help consumers make more nutritious food decisions, we’re there.

Visit www.nuval.com to meet Dr. David Katz and to explore a really good, but perhaps not perfect, system.

We live in a country that for all of our history has been driven against innovation.  When I started my career, computers were huge contraptions that took up entire rooms.  Today, they’re touch screen, and you can do it all from a 2” x 3” device using just your thumbs.  We have clothing that protects kids from harmful sun rays.  We have automobiles that no longer run just on gasoline.  We have GPS, we have iPods.

Of course, as innovation was happening in all these industries it was also happening in the food industry.  Really smart, innovative people work in the food world.  In part, these talents have been put into improving the taste, texture, and overall appeal of the foods we eat.

Case in point:  Before coming to NuVal, I worked in the private label foods division at Target.  In their Archer Farms brand, they introduced a line of gourmet potato chips.  The flavors were amazing – Buffalo Wing Potato Chips, Guacamole Potato Chips, Black Pepper and Sea Salt Potato Chips, Maple Barbecue Potato Chips.  Who wouldn’t want to try every single, enticing flavor? (Yes, I have.)

But this, then, is the problem when it comes to the obesity epidemic and health crisis in our country.  Food has become extraordinarily delicious and the options are limitless.  It’s no longer the two version of chips that were available when I was a kid (plain and ripple chips), but it’s a bounty of flavor explosions, texture differences, and opportunity for experimentation.  When shopping the aisles of the grocery store or trying to decide on a restaurant menu, it has simply become too hard to say no.  Innovation in the food industry has given us too many options to possibly say no to.

I bring this up in follow-up to a blog post on USAToday.com on Friday, which points out that food companies have just done what businesses are supposed to do – give people what they want — but at the same time are creating food addiction.   It’s easy to say this is the problem, but it’s harder to say what to do about it.  Are we suggesting that innovation in this industry should stop? Are we saying grocery stores should limit the number of options they offer?  Should a fat tax be implemented of foods that don’t meet specific nutrition criteria?  Or are we saying that consumers just need to have more will power?

In a country that prides itself on innovation as well as on capitalism and free enterprise, it’s definitely tough to know the right answer as to where all this should lead.

Visit www.nuval.com to choose the most nutritious options amidst all the tempting flavors.