Who are you getting your nutrition information from?

Load Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or any web site. Search for the nutrition topic of your choice. What will you find? Pages upon pages of information, meaning your simple nutrition question just became a million times more confusing.

So, how do you know what information to trust? One way is to look at the credentials of the writer.

Here is what some of the credentials of nutrition writers mean: (more…)

Coconut Water: Are you drinking the “right beverage” for your workout?

Many articles have been published on the importance of staying hydrated during physical activity. Markets have a wide array of beverages that promote “rehydration” benefits. But, how do you choose the best beverage for your workout?  Do you need Gatorade? Coconut water? Or plain water?

For the everyday exerciser, water is still the only recommended beverage within the scientific literature.

Researchers* have tested active adults’ and athletes’ hydration response to a generic sports drink, coconut water, and water after their exercise routine. All participants performed intense exercises that would dehydrate them. Following that exercise, participants consumed one of the three beverages. Their body weights were recorded prior to exercise, following exercise, and then in hourly intervals following the “rehydration beverage.” For a regular exercise regimen—less intense than an athlete—all beverages had the same effect on hydration. (more…)

Stay on Trend in 2014: Five Foods to Add to Your Grocery List

Check out the 5 popular foods of 2014 that will add something extra to your food repertoire while keeping it healthful and delicious.

Tea

Move over coffee, tea (in a hot or cold preparation) is front and center this year. In 2014, tea bars are opening that exclusively serve tea. But don’t limit yourself to just a tea beverage. Tea can be added to many dishes—try it on proteins—for an herbaceous flavoring similar to traditional seasonings. Along with its great taste and many varieties, tea is an excellent source of polyphenols: a type of antioxidant associated with lowering your risk for multiple chronic diseases. So toast the New Year with a delectable, hot cup of tea.

Asparagus

Roasted asparagus is a thing of the past; this year asparagus ribbons are in. Asparagus ribbons are the new base to the traditional leafy green salad. With a knife or mandolin, asparagus can be thinly sliced lengthwise to make ribbons. If high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems are a concern, the potassium in asparagus should help to reduce your risk. Try asparagus in its new or old form—it will always be delicious. (more…)

New Year, New Resolution, New You

At this time every year, we make resolutions for the future. Often times those resolutions are about getting healthy, losing weight, eating better, and other healthful adjustments to daily living. Unfortunately, shortly after these resolutions are made they are discontinued or placed “on hold”. This year it is possible to make the change and stick to it. All it takes is following the 5 steps of the “stages of change” within the “transtheoretical”, or behavior change, model. These steps include pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance.

1. Pre-contemplation- Unprepared to make a change in your behavior.
2. Contemplation- Determine the change you want to make in your life.
3. Preparation- Collect all of the things you need to make your resolution.
4. Action- Make your change and keep it.
5. Maintenance- Keep your resolution for 6 months. You have finally reached maintenance.

(more…)

Try some Yummly new dishes for the holidays

Still unsure of what you are cooking for Thanksgiving tomorrow? Do you want to add a twist to a dish that you have been making for years? Then check out Yummly.

Yummly is a recipe app and website (www.yummly.com) that has a variety of recipes from different web sources.  When using Yummly, you can easily access the cook time, ingredients, and direct link to the directions for any recipe. For the Yummly recipes that you enjoy, or want to try, you just click “yum” and they are saved for later. Think of this app as your portable recipe book. (more…)

Two Facts and A Myth: Vitamin A

“Two Facts and A Myth” is a series of nutrition topics that you can share at the dinner table, around the water cooler, or in line at a coffee shop. This series will bust popular misconceptions about nutrition while highlighting little-known facts. For this week, we will focus on Vitamin A.

Fact Vitamin A is important to your eyesight.

Vitamin A takes part in several key steps that allow us to see. The retina (the inner part of the eye) uses vitamin A to convert light into visual signals that are sent to the brain. So, carrots may not make your vision better, but they (and other foods with vitamin A) are important to eyesight.

Fact Vitamin A deficiency causes night blindness.

Night blindness is when your eyes have difficulty adapting from bright light to darkness. To treat night blindness, clinicians have prescribed diets rich in vitamin A to patients. This practice has been used for centuries. The first known treatment dates back to Hippocrates’ advice to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. (more…)

Why My Food Safety Exams Made Me Skeptical About Eating Out

This week I was required to take certification exams for ServSafe and HACCP as a part of my DPD certificate program. What are these exams for exactly? ServSafe and HACCP are designed to teach employees of food service (for example restaurants or fast food vendors) the ways to protect people from foodborne illness.

These types of training programs are essential because they can help reduce the number of foodborne illnesses each year. This issue is a priority. According to ServSafe, millions of people are diagnosed with foodborne illness each year.

These exams cover many concepts: including how to properly handle food as well as how to maintain a clean work environment. Make sure to look for these key things next time you dine out. (more…)

Meet New Guest Blogger Stephanie Snell

My name is Stephanie Snell and I am a new guest blogger for The Plate Coach. I am currently a Master’s Candidate studying Nutrition Communication at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. In addition, I am finishing the Didactic Program in Dietetics (DPD) certificate at Simmons College; the DPD is an academic requirement to become a Registered Dietitian. My previous degree from The George Washington University is a Bachelor’s of Science in Exercise Science, which focused on exercise and its relationship to nutrition.

I recently moved to Boston for these two academic tracks, but I am also enjoying other opportunities within the city. Outside of school, I like to exercise, dance, explore Boston, and learn to cook new dishes. It is important for me to always be active and eat a healthful diet (with some room for indulgence). (more…)

To cleanse or not to cleanse

Hyped as a means to remove harmful pollutants from the body and lose weight, cleanse and detox diets are all the rage. But despite their popularity, research has revealed that cleansing – especially via restricting intake and fasting – brings about unwanted side effects and weight re-gain after restoring a normal diet. These cleanses can be relatively healthy if approached cautiously, such as simply incorporating more fruits and vegetables into the diet. On the other hand, they can be darn right dangerous. Always bear in mind that most cleanses are dreamed up by individuals lacking nutrition credentials – and therefore should be reviewed carefully before trying.

Here are a few things to think about with cleansing:

• Excess energy intake – juice is a high caloric drink often incorporating much more fruit and vegetables than one could consume in whole form.
• Liquid meals cause lazy guts. Our gastrointestinal tract needs solid foods including those with fiber and protein to stay healthy and maintain integrity.
• Decreased satiety, liquid meals take longer for you to feel full causing cravings earlier, not to mention irritability from blood sugar spikes and falls.
• Our bodies remove toxins; it’s how we’ve survived for thousands of years. So there’s really not much of an incentive to detox via dieting.

The bottom line: There is no evidence that any of these “cleanse” diets enhance the bodies own detox mechanisms. Concentrate on fueling your body right, hydrating appropriately with low-sugar drinks, getting good sleep, and staying active. Take a moment to appreciate the remarkable way the body protects and cleanses itself safely and naturally, without any help from the outside.

By Liz Schneider, guest blogger and nutritionist

Eating for beauty

The best compliment I’ve received is that I have great skin. I was actually taken a back given that I have freckles and a long clash with acne. But I’ll take what I can get. After years of trying every cream, lotion, pill on the market I stopped focusing on the things I put on top of my skin and instead focused on what I was putting into my body. Maybe I just grew out of the acne, but I’m eating healthier than ever before and my skin has never looked better. My tip is to try and eat antioxidant and anti-inflammatory rich foods every day, simply put: eat your fruits and veggies.

Antioxidant rich foods are those that contain:

• Vitamin A aka beta-carotene, the orange/red pigment that gives carrots and squash their color, can also give your skin a healthy glow as the pigments accumulate under the skin’s surface.
• Vitamin C and E are often paired together as they help protect against cellular damage in our bodies including skin. In fact a vitamin c deficiency usually manifests with dry, scaly skin and bleeding gums – a testament of vitamin c’s influence of tissue health.
• Selenium is a mineral found in the earth, and thus many foods contain it including seafood, meat, and plants. Depending on soil conditions, the same food grown in different soils can contain varying amounts of selenium. One Brazil nut is usually all you need for a days worth of this antioxidant.
• Zinc – although not really considered an antioxidant, zinc is essential for the proper functioning of the antioxidant pathways in the body.

Anti-inflammatory rich foods are those that contain:

• Healthy fats like those found in ground flax and fatty fish. A soft fluid-like membrane (made up of the fat you eat) protects all of your trillion cells, so you can imagine they are extremely important for skin structure. In the omega-6-fat laden society we live in, it is hard to obtain omega-3 fats, which research has shown to decrease inflammation in the body. A great goal is to incorporate fish into your meals twice a week.

Tips for eating clean

• Go slow. Especially if you are not use to regularly eating whole foods. Try adding one fruit or veggie at a time. Pay close attention to your body. There is such a thing as too much fiber!
• Drink more water. Fiber requires lots of hydration to pass through your gut comfortably and efficiently. Extra water is good for your skin too. Everyone’s hydration needs vary, but generally 6-12 glasses per day will do the trick.

I hope this inspired you to eat your fruits and veggies if not for anything else, for a glowing complexion!

Did you know? Acne is a disease of western civilization. It does not exist in certain countries like Paraguay and New Guinea. As expected, these cultures eat very clean diets excluding processed and refined foods…

Need help finding healthy foods containing antioxidants? Check out this website at www.WHFoods.org

PS – you don’t need to take supplements for great skin. Eat the food, the whole food, and nothing but the food! It’s how nature intending us to get our vitamins and minerals.

By: Liz Schneider, guest blogger