New Fall Catalog!

Have you seen the new fall catalog yet?

I think it’s one of our best ones ever!

My graphic designer and I have been working on the newest poster designs for months! We came up with the concepts, created the photos, picked the colors, and then modeled everything. Then we rested. Then we assessed, re-assessed, and tweaked with the whole team until we had created posters that we were entirely confident you and your clients would love!

Let’s shine a spotlight on one of my favorites, shall we?

It’s time to Lead With Your Fork!

Traditionally, foods that you can eat out of a bag with your hands (including snacks and most fast food) are loaded with empty calories and devoid of the nutrients that you need for good health.

Foods that require a fork or a spoon to eat, however, are often chock-full of nutrients. Think salads, soups, rice, veggies, lean protein, etc. All this is a lot better for health than eating out of a bag!

We have created this amazing graphic poster, Lead With Your Fork, to help people visualize how their eating patterns impact their health.

What a great way to show how to put your best fork forward! This poster supports the messages of our two most important resources for education, MyPlate and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

  • MyPlate advises people to divide their plates between fruits, vegetables, whole grains, varied protein, and low-fat dairy at each meal.
  • The Dietary Guidelines for Americans maintain that “All food and beverage choices matter. Choose a healthy eating pattern at an appropriate calorie level to help achieve and maintain healthy body weight, support nutrient adequacy, and reduce the risk of chronic disease.” That means focusing on variety, nutrient density, and amount of food while limiting consumption of added sugars, saturated and trans fats, and sodium.

This health and nutrition education poster, Lead With Your Fork, helps everyone visualize a balanced and healthful eating style. It is also very light-hearted and positive. It would be great for nutrition awareness or health fair programs!

And of course, there’s lots more in the fall catalog. Which items are you most excited about? The prizes? The handouts? The books?

Finally, just ’cause I love ya, I’ve come up with a new discount. Use the code FALLSAVE15 to save 15% on any and all products!

Let’s Get Excited About the New DGA

With all that’s going on in our country, it’s possible that not everyone is as excited as we are about the new edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). But we’re not letting that stop us!

Here are three ways to get your students, clients, or employees excited about (or at least aware of) the new DGA:

  1. Teach it: Our new 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines PowerPoint Show and Handout Set has everything you need to share the new DGA with just about anyone. It’s eye-catching, with bright colors, crisp graphics, and beautiful photos of real food. And it’s customizable, so you can make it work for any audience or time-frame. Use this PowerPoint presentation for a webinar or break the content up into mini-sessions to use with clients or on social media.
  2. Post it: People will stop to get a closer look at our new Dietary Guidelines Poster and Healthy Eating Patterns Poster. They’re a bright and colorful way to let everyone know that the new DGA is here and show what healthy eating patterns are all about. These posters are perfect for your office, hallways, waiting rooms, exam rooms, cafeterias, and classrooms.
  3. Wear it: Make Every Bite Count is the simple, catchy theme of the new DGA. We have Make Every Bite Count wristbands in three sizes (kids, bigger kids, and adults). Send them to your clients, use them as incentives for your students, or give them away to your social media followers.

Let’s get excited about the new DGA!

Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Babies, Toddlers & Added Sugars

As we talked about in last week’s blog, the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee warns that Americans are consuming too much added sugar. The Committee’s new Scientific Report recommends that children under age two consume no added sugars at all.

Let’s take a closer look at the under 2 age group. Consider these points from the Scientific Report:

  • Intake of added sugars increases significantly between 12 and 24 months of age. (The trend continues through the preschool years, peaking during adolescence and young adulthood.)
  • Toddlers age 12 to 24 months consume about six teaspoons of added sugars per day. That’s almost 10 percent of their recommended daily calories.
  • The main sources of added sugar are sweetened beverages (27 percent), sweet bakery products (15 percent), yogurt (7 percent), ready-to-eat cereals (6 percent), candy (6 percent), and other desserts (5 percent).

Once a baby turns one year old, they’re pretty much transitioning to the standard American diet. In fact, the Committee writes that “during this time between infancy and toddlerhood, large increases in added sugars and solid and saturated fats are observed.”

We need to get the no-sugar message to parents, grandparents, child care providers, and other caregivers. Important conversations to have:

  1. There’s no room in young children’s diets for sugary drinks and sweets. Those empty calories start a sugar habit that will last a lifetime.
  2. Check the Nutrition Facts label for every food and drink you buy. The amount of added sugars is listed on the label.
  3. As adults, your intake of added sugars should be limited as well. This helps you stay healthy while limiting your children’s exposure to high sugar foods.

Remember, the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans won’t be published until later this year. The recently released Scientific Report has been submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These agencies will review the report and develop the next version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Dietary Guidelines: Keep on Cutting Added Sugars

The Scientific Report of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee was released last week. Among the recommendations is to limit intake of added sugars to 6% of daily calories. This is a decrease from the 10% recommended in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Considering that an estimated 63 percent of Americans aren’t meeting the 10% goal, we have our work cut out for us! Sugar sweetened beverages are a good place to start.

The Scientific Report says that about 1/3 to 1/2 of the added sugars we consume comes from sugary drinks. Here’s a look at the percent of added sugar intake from beverages (not including milk or 100% fruits juice) for different population groups:

  • Young children: 32 percent
  • Adolescents: 49 percent
  • Adults (age 20-64): 58 percent
    • Pregnant women: 48 percent
    • Lactating women: 31 percent
  • Older adults (age 65+): 35 percent

We have lots of materials to help you teach about added sugars, sugary drinks, and better beverage choices, including:

  • Are You Drinking Candy materials — to show just how much sugar is in common drinks like soda, sweet tea, and sports drinks.
  • Sugar Math PowerPoint show — to teach clients and students how to get from “10% or 6% of daily calories” to the grams of sugar shown on the Nutrition Facts panel.
  • Food Label materials — to find grams of added sugar on the Nutrition Facts panel and make sense of the % Daily Value.

Here are five points to share about cutting down on sugar sweetened beverages:

  1. Break down the 6% recommendation so folks can understand it. Using a 2000 calorie diet as an example, you’re looking at 30 grams of added sugar, which is equal to 7.5 teaspoons of sugar.
  2. Show them where to find added sugars on the food label. The number is given in grams and % Daily Value.
  3. Identify their sugary beverage of choice. The Advisory Committee found that these drinks provide the most added sugar to our diet: soft drinks, fruit drinks, sports and energy drinks, smoothies, coffee and tea with added sugar.
  4. Keep track of the sugary beverages you’re drinking, then make a plan to cut the number of ounces down gradually. Alternatively, some people might just want to make a clean break all at once.
  5. Brainstorm low- or no-sugar options to replace their favorite sugary drink.

Remember, the 6% added sugar recommendation is in the recently released Scientific Report, which was submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week. Now these two agencies will come up with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans — the recommendations on what the average American should eat and drink to promote health and prevent chronic disease.

We’ll see if the 6% added sugar limit makes it into the 2020 Dietary Guidelines that will be published by the end of the year.

 

 

Getting to Know Barley

The most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that all adults eat at least half their grains as whole grains – that’s at least 3 to 5 servings of whole grains every day. The average American eats less than one daily serving of whole grains, and some studies show that over 40% of us never eat any whole grains. So, I’ve been on a mission to try different whole grains to add variety to our meals.

One whole grain that tends to be forgotten by many is BARLEY.

As a kid, I remember loving those little white fluffy things floating in my canned vegetarian vegetable soup.  That’s the barley.  If you are like me, this is the extent of your experience with barley, you may be surprised to know that it is the world’s fourth most important cereal crop after wheat, rice, and corn.

Barley can be prepared in many ways in addition to soups and stews. It used as a hot side dish or served as a cold salad. Or eaten like oatmeal. Barley flour is used in bread, pancakes, muffins, and cookies. If you’ve never eaten barley plain, the flavor can be best described as “rich” with a mild sweetness.

Nutritionally ¾ cup cooked barley contains 160 calories, 8 grams fiber and 6 grams protein. It is an excellent source of manganese, selenium, and thiamin and a good source of magnesium, phosphorus, copper, and niacin. There has been enough research documenting barley’s role in protecting heart health that the U.S. FDA allows barley foods to claim that it reduces the risk of coronary heart disease.

I went looking for barley at my local store.  It’s in the section with the dry beans and rice. I had to look high up on the shelf and found “pearled barley.”  Barley has a particularly tough inedible hull that adheres to the grain kernel. This hull is difficult to remove without losing some of the bran. The easiest way to get this off is to scrape or “pearl” it. That’s why it’s called “pearled barley.”  This process does remove some of the bran. Thusly, “pearled” barley is not technically a whole grain.

I contacted Kelly Toups, Director of Nutrition at the Whole Grains Council about only being able to find “pearled” barley on the grocer’s shelves. She responded that this is not a big problem because barley is different than other grains because the fiber is distributed throughout the grain kernel, rather than being concentrated in the bran.  This means that even pearled barley has a rather impressive amount of fiber.  Barley has 17% fiber which is the highest of all the whole grains. Comparing it to other whole grain foods: brown rice contains 3.5% ?ber, corn about 7%, oats 10% and wheat about 12%.

Toups told me that “whole grain barley does offer higher levels of many essential nutrients when compared with pearled barley.  One 45-gram serving of hulled (whole grain) barley has approximately an additional gram of fiber and protein, and has about twice as much magnesium as pearled barley.”

If you want to get the entire whole grain goodness of barley look for hulled barley or hulless barley. If you can’t find it at your store’s whole-grain aisle, barley can be purchased online.

Tips for cooking barley:  combine one cup of dry uncooked barley with three cups of liquid. This will expand to about 3 ½ cups of cooked grain. Whole grain barley can take 45-60 minutes to cook when simmered slowly. It can be helpful to use a rice cooker since you can cook almost unattended.

Reference:  Oldways Whole Grain Council, https://wholegrainscouncil.org

Cheryle Jones Syracuse, MS
Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University

 

SIX Healthy Tips for July 4th

It must be “human nature” but even those who do a good job of healthy eating at other times seem to resort back to “traditional” foods on holidays. These foods are typically chocked full of empty calories, fats and sugars.

Rethinking the menu and “tweaking” your shopping list a little can take your 4th of July meal from calorie overload to healthful.

July 4th Healthy Holiday Tip #1—Lighten up. Can you substitute some ingredients when making favorite recipes? Gotta have potato salad?  Use non-fat plain Greek yogurt, nonfat sour cream or low-fat mayo for part of the regular mayo in the dressing. Or look for a new kind of veggie salad that uses a light vinaigrette instead of one that is bathed in high fat mayo or salad dressing.

July 4th Healthy Holiday Tip #2- Double or triple-up on veggies. Set out a series of vegetable platters or arrangements instead of cheese or antipasto plates.  Make sure you have lettuce and tomatoes as sandwich toppers. Try roasted vegetables or vegetable kabobs on the grill. Corn-on-the cob (roast with olive oil and seasonings and forget the melted butter).

July 4th Healthy Holiday Tip #3 – Pick some whole grain products.  Select whole grain buns, whole grain tortillas or whole wheat pita bread for sandwiches.  Whole grain chips and salsa can be an alternative to fried potato chips and dip.

July 4th Healthy Holiday Tip #4—Look for lean protein. How about fish patties or crab cakes instead of burgers?  Grill salmon instead of steak. Instead of brats or hog dogs on the grill go for grilled skinless chicken. For a fun and colorful entrée put hunks of chicken on skewers with the vegetables—this also helps reduce portion sizes and cooking time—and adds even more vegetables to the meal.

July 4th Healthy Holiday Tip #5—Burn those calories. Don’t forget to pack games and balls. Start a new tradition of a family softball or volley ball game. Walking and/or throwing Frisbees are also great activities that can involve family members of all ages.

July 4th Healthy Holiday Tip #6—Enjoy the company of family and friends.  Remember what we’re celebrating at this holiday. Don’t just focus on food and eating. Be mindful of the non-food intangibles like music, games and fireworks.

Cheryle Jones Syracuse, MS

Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University

Fall in Love with Salad

I was recently stuck at the airport on the way home from a trip to New Orleans. It was lunch time and after a weekend of jambalaya, etouffee, gumbo, bananas Foster, and beignets, what I really wanted was a big healthy salad.

Lucky for me, I found a pretty nice pre-made salad at an airport shop. That’s the great thing about salad – you can get one just about anywhere. The catch? When it comes to nutrition, not all salads are created equal. Teach your clients to build a healthy salad wherever they are with our beautiful Salad Themed materials.

Start with our Fall In Love With Salad poster. It’s a bestseller and the content is aligned with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, MyPlate, and the Offer Versus Serve Program. And it comes with handouts, including salad fact sheets, fun puzzles, and recipes.

Use the poster’s key healthy salad messages for individual counseling or group sessions:

  • 6 Salad Lover Tips, like choosing darker greens, piling on colorful veggies and fruits, watching out for high fat toppings, adding protein, and using a healthy but tasty dressing.
  • 3 Reasons to Love Salad: it’s a great way to fit more veggies into your day, eat fewer calories, and get more nutrients and fiber.
  • How to spice up your salad with different ingredients, like Mandarin oranges, water chestnuts, or arugula.
  • Play “what should it be?”. Create a virtual salad using the audience’s favorite vegetables and writing these down on a dry erase board. Calculate the calories quickly by googling “calories for x” with x being the vegetable and let everyone in the audience help. Add them up. Most salads are less than 100 calories. Then go to the fast food websites and check out the calories for popular salads and check out those calories, which often go above the sandwiches and burgers. Why is there a greater difference? See if the audience can guess. By putting the dressing on the side and making smarter choices they can ensure that their salad is a low-calorie choice! Check out a visual comparison here.

To remind people to eat a healthy salad every day, give them one of our I Love Salad wristbands. What’s not to love about salad?

Nuts in Your Gym Bag

I’ve been teaching about healthy eating for a long time. I can remember back when the commonly accepted recommendation was to cut out nuts due to the amount of fats and calories. We’re not saying this anymore.

I probably don’t really need to talk most people into eating nuts. This is a fairly easy sell for most.

Current research shows that nuts can be part of a healthy diet. The most recent version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that we all “choose a variety of protein foods, which includes seafood, lean meat and poultry, eggs, beans and peas, soy products,  nuts, seeds and soy products.” They also recommend limiting the intake of saturated fats and trans fats and replacing them with polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats, such as those found in seafood, nuts, seeds, and oils.

Proponents of the Mediterranean Diet say to aim for at least three-ounces of nuts per week. Now this doesn’t mean to eat nuts on top of what you’re eating now. The key is to have nuts INSTEAD of the other potentially less healthful foods.

Nuts are easy to overdo and do have lots of calories. One ounce of nuts can range from about 160 to 200 calories—depending upon the type of nut. On the other hand, nuts are good sources of fiber, protein, magnesium, copper, potassium, folic acid and vitamin B. One ounce is a small handful or about 1/4 cup.  If it comes down to counting: 14 walnut halves and 24 almonds, 16 cashews, 45 pistachios or 18 pecan halves.

Single serving packs of nuts are also available to purchase ready to go.  I know you’re probably saying it’s cheaper to make your own, but for some people that just doesn’t work https://news.nutritioneducationstore.com/perspective/.

I’ve never really been a snack or protein bar person so putting a little bag of nuts in my gym bag to take to the pool is an easy choice.  They are portable and I don’t need to worry about food safety or a banana getting squished at the bottom of the bag.

I do make my own portion controlled bags from bulk nuts. I like to toast the nuts before I put them into the little bags—I just think the flavor is better.  I dry roast them in a fry pan. Slow heat or they burn easily.  My favorites are pecans, but just pick your favorite or go for a combination of mixed nuts.

Grab and go.

Cheryle Jones Syracuse, MS

Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University

 

The butter dish is empty

We haven’t had butter in our house for over eight months.  We’ve made a conscious effort to do this.

It all started while reading and learning about the Mediterranean Diet.   Traditionally people that live in this region of the world eat lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, more fish, nuts, beans, seeds and olive oil. Eating a Mediterranean-style diet has shown to reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

With the concerns about trans fats I had previously switched from margarine to butter. We weren’t eating that much butter anyway, but now my goal was to get rid of the butter.  The Mediterranean Diet concept is to substitute solid fats with unsaturated versatile olive oil.

I’m here to say…you can do it!

I’ve seen lots of website and recipes that talk about substituting oils for the solid fats and increasing the olive oil.  Using olive oil in stove top cooking works. So does making a salad dressing.  These substitutions were easy.

Others were a little more difficult.

I’ve heard people suggest that you even use olive oil on your toast in the morning.  I’ve had bread dipped in olive oil with herbs and olive oil on whole grain toast and both are good.  But olive oil on cinnamon toast wasn’t that great. In my opinion cinnamon toast is better just plain. 

While on vacation in Florida I went to a special olive oil store where they have samples of olive oil and flavored vinegars (similar to a wine tasting). It was fun to taste the different types and flavors.  I bought several to try including the “butter flavored” olive oil —thinking it might be good on the cinnamon toast.  Nope, I’m sticking with just plain toast—or peanut butter (another monounsaturated fat).

There have been times when it took some extra thinking or a change in “what we’ve always done”.

One of these times I thought of making a special candy as a holiday gift, but I didn’t have butter in the house.  Then I thought why am I making something that isn’t that healthy to give my loved ones?  So I didn’t buy butter.

Another time also involved guests. I usually make a local specialty of shrimp and grits when we have house guests.  The original recipe that came from a restaurant called for sautéing onion and shrimp in two sticks of butter.  I’ve worked to modify this recipe to start sautéing the onions in a small amount of olive oil, adding celery (to get another vegetable in) and then adding chicken broth for the sauce.  Some folks like it better than the original –they ask for the “healthy” version—and others don’t know there was another version.

I’m just not putting butter on the shopping list.

Cheryle Jones Syracuse, MS

Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University

Eat Eggs—No Yolking!

Earlier this year I posted an Egghead Quiz.  We love to hear from readers about our posts and this one got lots of responses. One reader indicated she wished I had also addressed eating egg whites vs the whole egg.  This got me thinking and doing some additional research in this area.

Like many of you, I’ve been teaching healthful living and nutrition-related topics for many years and the “bad guys” seem to come and go.  This is based on current research and longitudinal studies.  As I tell my students, as we learn more, we know more and things change.

Eggs (and specifically the yolks) used to be one of the “bad guys”. What we were talking about here was cholesterol and the belief that eating eggs and other foods containing dietary cholesterol increased the risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease.  Early versions of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) recommended that cholesterol intake be limited to no more than 300 mg per day.  This is no longer believed! 

The 2015 DGA do not contain this recommendation because research does not show a relationship between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol.  Cholesterol is no longer considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.  The American Heart Association recommendations agree with this.

The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans encourage the consumption of healthy dietary patterns that contains all foods and beverages at an appropriate calorie level while limiting saturated fats, added sugars and sodium.

Saying that, where do eggs fit in?

They can be part of a well-balanced healthful diet. According to the USDA Nutrient Data Base one large (50 grams) hard-cooked egg contains 78 calories, 6 grams protein and 5 grams of fat (1.6 g is saturated, 2 g monounsaturated and .7 polyunsaturated) and varying amounts of 13 essential vitamins and minerals. While egg whites contain almost half of the egg’s protein along with riboflavin and selenium, the majority of the nutrients are found in the yolk.  If you break it down, the yolk contains all of the egg’s fat and 76% (59) of the calories, 42% (2.52 g) of the protein and all of vitamins A, D, and B6, zinc, iron and choline.  Egg yolks are one of the only foods that naturally contain vitamin D.

The biggest concern about eggs would be about in the area of saturated fats.  Animal products, including eggs, do contain saturated fat, which can raise blood cholesterol. Too much bad (LDL) cholesterol in the blood can contribute to formation of plaque and narrowing of the arteries. The DGA recommendation is that less than 10% of your total daily calories come from saturated fats. For someone eating 2000 calories a day that’s about 13 grams of saturated fats.

While the numbers are small, if you are concerned about saturated fats and calories you could choose to eat one whole egg plus two egg whites instead of two whole eggs. But, don’t skip the yolk altogether, it contains a lot of the “good guys”.

A calorie comparison shows that portion control is important so you eat a 2 egg equivalent instead of 4:

  • 4 egg whites (2 egg equivalent) = 68
  • 1 egg plus 2 egg whites (2 egg equivalent) = 112
  • 2 eggs = 156
  • 4 eggs = 312

Cost comparison shows real eggs are cheaper by 50%:

  • Egg substitute (nonfat) = .16 ounce or about .32 for one egg equivalent
  • Eggs .16 each average cost (averaging store brand and free range eggs at $2 per dozen)

The real issue with eggs may be the high-saturated-at additions often added to eggs and omelettes:

  • Cheese – just one ounce is 110 calories, 20 grams of fat and 6 grams of saturated fat
  • Butter – just one tablespoon is 111 calories, 11 grams of fat, and 7 grams of saturated fat
  • Whoa – this means a 4 egg omelette cooked in a tablespoon of butter with one ounce of cheese would rake in 533 calories and over 30 grams of fat.

Solution:

Go with a 2 egg equivalent and prepare them scrambled with a little cooking oil spray in a nonstick skillet or poached or hardboiled. Skip the butter and cheese.

Cheryle Jones Syracuse, MS

Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University

 

References:

https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/pdfs/scientific-report-of-the-2015-dietary-guidelines-advisory-committee.pdf   Part D, Chapter #1, page 1

https://www.incredibleegg.org/egg-nutrition/cracking-the-cholesterol-myth/

http://www.eggnutritioncenter.org/science-education/health-professional/eggs-cholesterol-getting-heart-matter/

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2013/11/11/01.cir.0000437740.48606.d1 2013 American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association Guidelines on Lifestyle Management to Reduce Cardiovascular Risk

https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/ USDA Food Composition Databases

http://peapod.com for cost comparisons

Want heart healthy teaching tools? You are in luck: