If you Google “nutrition,” you get 85,300,000 hits.  It’s a clear sign of the interest in this topic as well as the variety of resources that are available.  In light of this vast cyber-land, I have been flattered that you have chosen this blog as a source of your nutrition information over the past two years.  I have tried to convey nutrition insights to you in a way that is practical and meaningful, and hope that my viewpoint on this important topic has been impactful for you.

But life (and a career!) is ever changing, ever moving, and to this point I am moving on.  But the message I have tried to share will live on.  At the end of each blog, I have always directed you to a website – www.nuval.com. While my role as a dietitian is to communicate nutrition in a meaningful way, this website highlights a very powerful tool, the NuVal^® System, that takes expert nutrition advice like mine and synthesizes it into a score on the grocery store shelf.  From all the stories we’ve heard, this system is helping moms put more nutrition choices on the dinner table, helping pastors to mechanics lose weight, and educating many on more nutritious choices in each aisle of the store.

While you will no longer have my guidance to rely on, you will have the guidance of the NuVal^® System for better nutrition.

Visit www.nuval.com to learn more about this GPS of the grocery store.

The Biggest Loser show has received much criticism over the past year.  The bulk of the criticism centers around the fact that these individuals are taken completely out of their normal routine, and put into an environment where they focus 100% of their time and energy on weight loss.  They lose massive amounts of weight quickly, and as history is showing, re-enter their normal lives and end up gaining some weight back as they don’t have the same amount of time to focus on managing their weight and health.

But I take a different view on the show.  Millions of consumers watch the show.  If it motives even a small percentage of these viewers to make changes towards a healthier lifestyle, it’s a good thing.  After all, who can watch the show, see the amazing amount of work they do and fortitude the contestants have and not think “If they can do this, I can do something” to be more active or eat more healthfully.  Workplaces and communities have gotten into the action, with Biggest Loser team competitions occurring across the country.

Three paragraphs in, this brings me to the topic of this blog – motivation.  Most of us know we could make changes to live a healthier life, but we don’t necessarily do so.  The trick is finding the trigger that makes a healthier life meaningful to us personally.

The company I work for, NuVal LLC, recently heard from a mom who has lost 115 pounds in the past 18 months, by exercising and using NuVal® Scores to make more nutritious food choices at her local Hy-Vee grocery store.  What interested me most about Sally Galvin’s story was the trigger that tripped for her, the signal that she started her down the pathway to better health.  For Sally, it was an upcoming trip with her husband and two kids to Walt Disney World.  She wanted to be fit enough to enjoy all the parks and keep up with her kids. 

Sally Galvin lost 115lbs using NuVal Scores

Can you follow the lead of Sally and all those contestants on the Biggest Loser and find the trigger that will send you down a pathway of healthier living?

Visit NuVal to learn more about Sally’s story and the NuVal® Mom of the Month program.

Even though I’m not big on making new year’s resolutions, it’s hard not to be in a reflective mindset at this time of year.  As I’ve been spending time reflecting, I realize that I have gotten into a bit of a rut with my eating habits, tending to eat the same few things for breakfast each day and rotating a limited variety of foods at lunch and dinner.  At the same time, there are new and interesting items appearing on grocery store shelves every day, and more and more interesting research touting the health benefits of different foods.  To this end, my reflecting has led me to a new year’s resolution:  to try and eat more of certain foods in the new year.  Here’s my list so far:

Pommelos. (NuVal® Score: 99 )  Last year, I noticed this fruit in the produce section of the store, sitting betweentraditional grapefruit and ugly fruit.  I was intrigued by the size of the pommelo, so decided to splurge and try it.  It’s much larger than a grapefruit, and the skin is much thicker.  Once I got through the skin, and took my first bite, I was hooked.  The pommelo is much less bitter than a grapefruit, and feels lighter in flavor to me.  I like eating it just plain, as a snack.  Somewhere between last winter and this winter, I had forgotten about the pommelo, but with only 230 calories per whole fruit (I can never eat more than a half at a time) and 6 grams of fiber, my goal is to enjoy it more often this year.

Fish and Seafood. Once upon a time at a conference, I ate salmon (NuVal® Score: 87) and got food poisoning.  Since then, I haven’t eaten salmon.  But there are countless other options in the fish and seafood category, and I realize what’s stopping me from eating them more is that I’m not good at cooking fish and seafood.  So this is my goal, to find a few really good and easy fish and seafood recipes that get me eating these foods more often.  I think my first attempt will be a shrimp (NuVal® Score: 75) chowder as I’ve been craving it since ordering it recently at a restaurant.

Chia Seeds. As a kid, I loved Chia Pets. As an adult, I crack up every time I see a Chia Pet (see left) at the local drug stores. What’s not to love about growing fake grass/hair out of a terra cotta pot in the shape of an animal?  But more recently, chia seeds have become popular as a nutritious food.  Chia seeds are high in omea-3 fats (think healthy fats) like flax seed, but they don’t spoil as quickly as flax does.  Additionally, if chia seeds are soaked in water, they form a gel.  Some experts believe that this can happen in the stomach, making you feel full longer.  I recently saw a smoothy recipe that included chia seeds, so this will be my first taste of this food.

Legumes and Beans.  I tend to eat fairly well overall, getting a variety of foods, focusing on fruits and vegetables, etc.  But I know that I still don’t get enough fiber.  My goal here is to get more beans into my weekly eating habits – pinto beans (NuVal® Score: 93) in chili, garbanzo beans (NuVal® Score:  91) in salads, homemade hummus.  When I do focus on these foods, I am amazed at how full I feel for how long, and as we slog through the winter months in the Midwest, it’s a great way to keep weight from creeping up.

Less Starchy Vegetables. One of the real powers of vegetables is that they can be nutrient-dense – packing a lot of nutrients for not many calories.  But vegetables can fall into two camps – the starchy kind (think potatoes and corn) and the less starchy kind (think peppers, zucchini and broccoli).  With an active, teenage boy in my house who can plow through the calories, it’s easy to use the starchy vegetables as fillers.  But my goal is to focus on the less starchy ones – get the benefit of their nutrition but minimizing the calories.  Zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach (NuVal® Scores: 99 or 100)  – they’re all on my list.

What foods will you try and eat more of in 2012?

Visit www.nuval.com to find high scoring foods that you might want to eat more often in this new year.

In a world of constant data, I have a lot of news bulletin-type emails that come across my desk that only get opened if the subject line seems intriguing.  “How much time do Americans spend eating?” came across my desk recently and definitely caught my eye.

The article discusses research done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on this exact topic – how much time we spend eating.

Here are the stats (based on consumers age 15 and older):

• We spend about 67 minutes a day in primary eating and drinking
• We spend an additional 23.5 minutes eating while doing something else
• We spend an additional 63 minutes drinking while doing something else

The something else ranges from watching television to working to prepping and cleaning up meals to grooming (think getting dressed).

The study then went on to try and assess whether these habits impact our health.  As it turns out, if you eat or drink while grooming, prepping or cleaning up meals or working, your Body Mass Index (BMI, a measure of overweight) is below the national average.  Those people who eat and drink while watching television have BMIs higher than the US average.

It’s not to say that one causes the other.  But as we’re in the season of New Year’s Resolutions, this research seems to suggest a very tactical, straight-forward action to take – stop eating while watching television.

Visit www.nuval.com to assess the overall nutrition quality of the foods and beverages you consume in all these minutes.

One of the things I stress out about at work is blog writing.  Blogging seems like a simple thing to do, but when you realize you have readers, the pressure is on.  I’m always trying to decide what’s really compelling about nutrition right now, and how I can frame it up to be helpful to you.  I also stress about whether I’m blogging enough.  I don’t want to spout off about absolutely everything, overwhelming you with constant emails and information.  So I try and write when I have something to say.  But this end of it stresses me out too.

As we come to the end of 2011, I am pleasantly surprised to realize I have written 58 blogs this year.  That’s more than one a week, more than I realized I had written.  Topics have ranged from chewing to raw milk to trans fat in our food supply to going vegan to balance and moderation to the truth about sugars and low-calorie sweeteners to raising kids with healthy eating habits to food labels to pantry clean outs.  Together, we have covered a lot of territory in the area of nutrition.

As we move into the new year, this is an open invitation to you to tell me what you think of this blog.  Is it helpful?  Has it had impact in your life?  What would you like to hear more of?  Less of?  I’m intrigued to hear what you think.

Enjoy the holidays!

Watching headlines and what comes into our email inboxes from media sources is a fascinating way to watch trends.  I’m amazed right now with all the chatter about sodium.  It’s everywhere.  It’s the evil nutrient once again.

But what strikes me is why the press and public health officials are obsessed with sodium, when it isn’t the “big issue.” The “big issue” by far is weight.  Many people are overweight or obese.  Kids carrying too much weight for their ages; adults carrying too much weight for good health. 

I wonder if the reason there is so much focus on sodium and not all that much focus on weight is picking on sodium is easier.  A finger can be pointed at food manufacturers and restaurants – it’s their fault that we eat too much salt.

But weight is personal.  It can lead to uncomfortable discussions.  It can make people feel guilty.  Talking about overweight kids is even more touchy, as it suggests parents aren’t doing their jobs.  We are overfeeding and under-exercising our kids.  Every parent wants the best for their kids, and suggesting that we’re doing a poor job of raising them is tricky territory to venture into. 

But weight is the “big issue” in our country today.  We need to have the discussion.  And we need to have it again and again and again.  Even if it’s uncomfortable, we have to step up to the plate and talk about it. 

Visit www.nuval.com to see a system where the calories per gram of food impacts the food’s score.

When asked, I will admit that I am more of a baker than a cook.  The day-to-day drudgery of putting meals on the table gets to me.  I have a cabinet filled with cookbooks and look at them periodically for inspiration, but on a typically day I’m scrambling to put dinner on the table.  My mother will probably be disappointed as she reads this, because she raised me with the skills to cook.  Yes, I know how to cook; I just don’t love to cook.

Which leads me to the topic of today’s blog – processed foods.  There is definitely an anti-processed foods movement out in the public these days.  In fact, a study done by the International Food Information Council found that 43% of consumers have a negative view of processed foods.  Only 18% of consumers viewed processed foods favorably.  I find this data fascinating, as I know few households that have no processed foods in them.

But it raises the point of how processed foods are defined.  Are frozen strawberries processed because they have been cleaned, de-stemmed and flash frozen?  Is marinating a pork loin at home different than purchasing one that has been pre-marinated?  All breads are made with flour that has been ground, cleaned and handled, which is mixed with leavenings and salt.  This is true whether they are made commercially or at home.  So is the store-bought bread processed but the homemade version isn’t?

It is true that some processed foods contribute significant amounts of saturated and trans fat, sodium and sugar to our eating habits.  But this isn’t all processed foods.

As a person who doesn’t love to cook, I try and think through a day of using no processed foods.  Would I have to make homemade cereals or granola for my son to eat before school every day?  Would I bake bread and whole turkeys (slicing and storing the meat) to send sandwiches to school with Jack every day?  For dinner, I would prepare the night before and marinade my meat and clean all my vegetables in preparation for the next day?

My point is that it shouldn’t be a discussion about processed vs. not-processed but more about the nutritional value and contributions to healthy eating habits that foods bring.  Agreed, frozen pizza isn’t the best choice every day.  But a rotisserie chicken and pre-cut stir-fry vegetables with instant brown rice is a solid meal consistent with healthy eating habits despite the fact that these foods might be considered processed.  And, as someone who doesn’t love to cook, it helps me get a healthy meal on the table for my family.

Visit www.nuval.com to evaluate the nutrition quality of unprocessed and processed foods.

I know.  It’s December.  The season of office parties and cookie bakes and holiday cocktails.  It is not the time of year that any of us really want to think about losing (or even maintaining) weight.  But I’m asking you to, and here’s why.

Come January 1^st, we all think about healthy behaviors we want to adopt and changes in our lifestyle we want to make.  Of course we do it on that day, after having eating all the cookies we baked, enjoyed all those family meals and holiday parties.  But I would contend that starting now, on December 1^st will help you in the long run.  It will help you avoid overindulging over this next month, and on January 1, you can wake up feeling pretty dang good about yourself.

The National Weight Control Registry  (NWCR) follows 10,000 individuals who have lost an average of 66 pounds and kept it off for 5.5 years.  The NWCR has learned the primary ways these people have kept this weight off:

• 78% eat breakfast every day
• 75% weigh themselves at least one a week
• 62% watch less than 10 hours of television per week
• 90% exercise about an hour a day
• Most continue to follow a low calorie, low fat eating plan

These tips aren’t necessarily just for those who are interested in losing weight, but can work for any of us as we work through the next four weeks of indulgence.  Follow these now, and wake up ahead of the resolution game on January 1^st, 2012.

Visit www.nuval.com to choose nutritious breakfast foods to eat every day.

Five or so years ago when the FDA decided that food labels needed to list the amount of trans fat in the product, I was working at Target on their private label business.  Like many other companies at the time, Target made the decision to remove trans fat from as many of their private label products as they could.  In light of the negativity around this nutrient, manufacturers wanted to have a “0 grams” in that spot on the label if at all possible. 

Fast forward to today.  Yes, literally today.  This morning, in fact.  As you know, NuVal LLC, the company I work for scores products on a scale of 1-100, the higher the score, the better the nutrition.  As part of the work we do, we keep a record of all the nutrition information and ingredient lists on tens of thousands of products.  I was running some reports against that data this morning, and “for fun” ran a report to see how many products have trans fat in them.

Of the almost 73,000 products in our database (including national and private label brands):

• More than 2,500 have 0.5 grams or more trans fat listed in the Nutrition Facts Panel
• Nearly 9,000 items have a “partially hydrogenated” oil in the ingredient declaration

Why the difference?  The FDA regulations indicate that if there is 0.49 grams of trans fat or less in a product, it is declared as “0” in the Nutrition Facts Panel.  So these other 6,500 products have low levels of trans fat in them, not enough to get counted on the nutrition panel.

The next logical question is whether it matters?  It does, if you consider that the recommended level of consumption for trans fat is as close to zero as possible in light of this nutrient’s negative impact on the risk of heart and other diseases.

I was actually surprised at the number of products that still have trans fat in them.  Almost 9,000.  Wow.  In looking at the food categories, these low levels of trans fat can be found in frozen pizzas, trail mixes, muffins, rice-type side dishes, microwave popcorn, candy, ice creams, crackers, cookies, drink mixes, and appetizers, to name a few. 

The take-home message?  While you don’t hear much about trans fat these days (the media has moved on to sweeteners and back to sodium as the evil nutrients), it’s still out there in foods you find on your grocery store shelf.

Visit www.nuval.com to use a system which guides you away from foods with trans fat and takes the presence of any trans fat into account when calculating a score—even if it is only on the ingredient list and not on the Nutrition Facts Panel.

In general, I try not to annoy people.  I try to be rational.  But there’s a nutrition issue that continues to circulate that is driving me crazy:  low calorie sweeteners.  It’s a polarizing nutrition topic, a love ‘em or hate ‘em kind of deal. So today, I wanted to try and set the record straight, and by “straight,” I mean from the standpoint of evidence-based science and government regulation, the basis we have to use for these types of issues.  I understand this may make some of you react strongly.  Feel free, but I ask that you do it in a way that is based on science.

Point #1

High-intensity or artificial sweeteners are approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  I was surprised to read a statistic from the IFIC Foundation’s 2010 Food & Healthy Survey indicating that only 24% of Americans believe low-calorie sweeteners are reviewed by the federal government, meaning 76% believe they are not reviewed or approved by the FDA.  The job of the FDA is to protect the consumer, and the process to get new ingredients approved can be daunting as safety for consumer consumption must be shown.  There are currently six low-calorie sweeteners approved by the FDA or considered Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) for use in food and beverages:  aspartame, acesulfame-potassium (Ace-K), neotame, saccharin, sucralose and high-purity stevia sweeteners.  They’re approved.  They’ve been tested and have passed all the hurdles required.

Point #2

The BIGGEST PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE IN OUR COUNTRY TODAY IS OBESITY. Yes, I get that I’m yelling.  We all see the statistics on the number of people in our country that are overweight, we hear the numbers of kids who have obesity-related diseases.  But we ignore the numbers, assign them to someone else, pretending like it isn’t happening in our neighborhoods, at our offices, in our kids’ schools.  Low-calorie sweeteners do what their name says – they lower the calories in food.  So if a person who is seeking to lose or manage weight replaces a regular sugar product with an artificially sweetened one, they are cutting out calories.  This is a good thing in a country with our rates of obesity as long as it leads to overall reductions in calories and is combined with exercise.

Point #3

As a parent and a dietitian, I do look at things different with kids.  Despite the fact that I start my day with a Diet Mountain Dew, I don’t, in general, give my child artificially sweetened products.  But it’s not because I’m concerned about their safety or the fact that they are not “all natural.”  I want him to focus on nutrient-dense foods that contribute all the nutrients he needs and avoid empty-calorie foods except as a treat.  I want to teach him to eat when he’s hungry and stop when he’s full, building habits where he understands portion control and listening to his own body and it’s hunger cues.  But giving kids sugar-sweetened beverages in an effort to avoid artificial sweeteners isn’t the right answer, which is some of what I see happening out there.

The beauty of an expansive food supply is that we can all choose what to include in our eating habits.  I’m fine with that, fine with the idea that some people simply don’t want to use low-calorie sweeteners.  What I struggle with is those who spread false information about these ingredients.

Visit www.nuval.com, where foods with lower energy density (calories per gram) score higher in general in light of the obesity epidemic in our country.