Eating for Optimum

Today, we face dietary choices and nutritional challenges that our grandparents never dreamed of­ exotic foreign foods; dietary supplements; artificial sweeteners; no-fat, low-fat, and artificial-fat alternatives; cholesterol-free, high-protein, high-carbohydrate, and low­calorie products-thousands of alternatives bombard us daily. Caught in the cross fire of advertised claims by the food industry and advice provided by health and nutrition experts, most of us find it difficult to make wise dietary decisions. Just when we think we have the answers, a new research study tells us that what we thought was true probably wasn’t.

A study of more than 2,000 college student dietary practices has indicated that students often face considerable difficulty planning their own menus for eating healthfully and having the resources to prepare balanced meals. While this study provides a somewhat gloomy forecast of college student eating habits, a subsequent study of approximately 1,300 students and their nonstudent counterparts indicated that college students and graduates tended to practice more healthful habits and made more healthful food choices than did nonstudents in their area. Many of the eating behaviors from both of these studies appeared to mirror eating patterns and behaviors that these students learned in their homes.

What Do You Think?

Tim is an avid fitness enthusiast who runs 5 to 10 miles daily, lifts weights 3 to 4 times per week, and constantly talks about his quest for the perfect body. He criticizes anyone who puts mayonnaise or butter on bread, eats any form of meat, and/or eats any kind of fast food. He constantly worries about his food intake and the “fuel” that is supplying his body.

Do you consider Tim to be a healthy person? How would you assess Tim’s dietary behaviors? What factors may have contributed to his attitudes and beliefs? What aspect of his behavior would you want to change? Why? If you were to describe someone with healthy eating behaviors, what would that person be like? What kind of person do you like to associate with when it comes to eating behaviors?

College students often face a challenge when trying to eat healthy foods. Some students live in dorms and do not have their own cooking or refrigeration facilities. Others live in crowded apartments where everyone forages in the refrigerator for everyone else’s food. Still others eat at university food services where food choices may be limited. Most students have time constraints that make buying, preparing, and eating healthy food a difficult task. In addition, many lack the financial resources needed to buy many foods that their parents purchased while they lived at home. What’s a student to do? The following sections provide advice for some of the particular problems you may face.

Fast Food: Eating on the Run

If your campus is like many others across the country, you’ve probably noticed a distinct move toward fast-food restaurants in your student unions so that they now resemble the food courts found in most major shopping malls. These new eating centers fit student’s needs for a fast bite of food at a reasonable rate between classes and also bring in money to your school.

You should recognize that not all fast foods are created equal and not all of them are bad for you. Even at the often­ maligned burger chains, menus are healthier than ever before and offer excellent choices for the discriminating eater. The key word here is discriminating. It really is possible to eat healthy food if you follow these suggestions.

Ask for nutritional analyses of items. Most fast-food chains now have them.

Order it “your way”- avoid mayonnaise or sauces and other add-ons. Some places even have fat-free mayon-naise if you ask.

Hold the cheese.

Order single, small burgers rather than large, high­calorie, bacon or cheese-topped choices.

Order salads and be careful how much dressing you put on. Try the vinegar and oil or low-fat alternative dressings. Stay away from eggs and other high-fat add-ons such as bacon bits.

When ordering a chicken sandwich, order the skinless broiled version rather than the deep-fried version.

Check to see what type of oil is used to cook fries if you must have them. Avoid lard-based or other saturated fat products.

Order the wheat buns/bread and ask them to hold the butter.

Avoid fried foods in general, including hot apple pies and other crust-based fried foods.

Opt for spots where foods tend to be broiled rather than fried.

When Funds Are Short

Balancing the need for adequate nutrition with the many other activities that are part of college life can become a difficult task. However, if you take the time to plan healthy diets, you may find that you are eating better, enjoying eating more, and actually saving money.

In addition, you can take these steps to help ensure a quality diet:

Buy fruits and vegetables in season whenever possible for their lower cost, higher nutrient quality, and greater variety.

Use coupons and specials whenever possible.

Whenever possible, shop at discount warehouse food chains; capitalize on nofrills products.

Plan ahead and avoid extra trips to the store. Make a list and stick to it.

Purchase meats and other products in volume, freezing portions for future needs. Or purchase small amounts of meats and other expensive proteins and combine them with beans and plant proteins for lower total cost, lower calories, and lower fat.

Cook large meals and freeze smaller portions.

Drain off extra fat after cooking. Save juices for use in soups and in other dishes.

If you find that you have no money for food, talk to someone at your county!city health department. Although they often restrict subsidies such as food stamps for full-time students, they may know of some alternative ways for you to get assistance.

What Do You Think?

What problems cause you the most difficulty when you try to eat more healthful foods? Are these problems that you noted in your family, too, or are they unique to your current situation as a student? What actions can you take that would help improve your current eating practices?

Once believed to be a rare fact, approximately 5 percent of all children in the United States, and more than 10 percent of all adults may have an allergic reaction to something they eat. Typical culprits include milk, eggs, peanuts, soybeans, tree nuts, fish and shellfish, and wheat. Reactions can range from minor rashes to severe swelling in the mouth, tongue, and throat to violent vomiting and diarrhea, and, occasionally, death. Emergency rooms and hospitals throughout the country report rapid increases in the number of incidents tied to food allergies.

Food allergies occur when a person’s body views a specific food, usually a protein, as an invader or a threat. The body’s immune system kicks into high gear and tries to rid the body of the problem by using typical immune system helpers. The first signs are typically rapid breathing or wheezing, hives, rash, eczema, or a chronic runny nose. More dramatic symptoms include facial swelling or respiratory problems related to anaphylactic reaction, which require a shot of epinephrine, a hormone that stimulates the heart and relieves oVert symptoms.

Once diagnosed with a food allergy, the key is to find a nutrition specialist (with a degree or academic training in nutrition) who can help you make necessary dietary adjustments. See Table 94 for a listing of possible foods that cause allergies and tips on how to reduce your reactions. Also, remember that many apparent reactions to foods are really not allergic reactions per se. Included among this group are:

Food intolerance, which occurs in people who lack certain digestive chemicals and suffer adverse effects when they consume certain substances because their bodies have difficulty breaking them down. One of the most common examples is lactose intolerance, experienced by people who do not have the digestive chemicals needed to break down the lactose in milk.

Reactions to food additives, such as sulfites and MSG.

Reactions to substances occurring naturally in some foods, such as tyramine in cheese, phenylethylamine in chocolate, caffeine in coffee, and some compounds in alcoholic beverages.

Food-borne illnesses.

Unknown reactions in people who have adverse symptoms that they attribute to foods and that may actually go away when treated as allergies but for which there is no evidence of a physiological basis for the reactions 34

Food intolerance Adverse effects resulting when people who lack the digestive chemicals needed to break down certain substances eat those substances.

Organic Foods

Mounting concerns about food safety have caused many people to try to protect themselves by refusing to buy processed foods and mass-produced agricultural products. Instead, they purchase foods that are organically grown-foods reported to be pesticide-and chemical-free. Though they are sold at premium prices, many of these products are of only average quality. They are probably not worth the money, according to most experts, for several reasons. First, whether food has been exposed to pesticides at some time in the production cycle is not as important as the residual pesticides in the food at the time you consume it. Obviously, too much of anything is potentially harmful, but if a “nonorganic” food has been sprayed and the poison has since evaporated, changed into a nontoxic compound, or been diluted below the point at which it can do any harm, the food may be no more harmful than a product labeled as “organic.” Second, even though so-called organic foods generally claim to be pesticide-free, tests indicate that many contain pesticide residues in the same amounts as nonorganic foods. These residues may be the result of pesticide drift from neighboring farms and water supplies, sneak sprays by unscrupulous producers, or soils that have residue from previous growers.

The bottom line is what is really in the food, not whether it is labeled as “organic,” “natural,” or “healthy” In fact, these labels are often placed on foods that are far from healthy and may actually be of very low quality. Although the ideals upon which the organic movement was founded are sound, more testing and regulation are needed before people can be assured that what they are paying high prices for is the real unadulterated thing-a pesticide-free product.

Organically grown Foods that are grown without use of pesticides or chemicals.

Once believed to be a rare event, approximately 5 percent of all children in the United States, and more than 10 percent of all adults may have an allergic reaction to something they eat. Typical culprits include milk, eggs, peanuts, soybeans, tree nuts, fish and shellfish, and wheat. Reactions can range from minor rashes to severe swelling in the mouth, tongue, and throat to violent vomiting and diarrhea, and, occasionally, death. Emergency rooms and hospitals throughout the country report rapid increases in the number of incidents tied to food allergies.

Green tea is well been associated with the Chinese medical world since past over 4,000 years. It is believed that the Chinese medical professionals widely used green tea for treating various diseases right from common headaches to even depressive states. Actually the green tea is supposed to have certain anti-cancer properties and also helps enhancing the levels of antioxidants in the blood that may cause heart ailments. This very quality, helps you to lose weight with green tea. As published in the March edition of the International Journal of Obesity, the green tea extracts improves the burning of calories and fats required for losing body weight.

Green tea is supposed to contain caffeine that remarkably improves the thermogenesis by 28 percent to 77 percent according to the typical dosage, whereas the caffeine singularly showed no noticeable rise. By adding the ephedrine – the stimulant to the green tea with caffeine, the rise was distinctly remarkable as compared to caffeine or ephedrine alone. Caffeine and ephedrine are used together in several herbal weight loss preparations but there are some safety factors for ephedrine as it increases heart rate and blood pressure. Studies reveal that green tea helps losing weight by enhancing the body’s metabolism.

People in general keep asking about the side effects of all kinds of protein shakes and their affect on health. It is the common question to arise as it is found in the allopathic medicines and people consider this protein shakes and the supplements as medicines which are not true. Protein shakes or the supplements are taken as additional diet in your regular diet and not only when you fall sick. There are no any documented side effects till date from consuming the protein shakes.

The side effects are seen in some people and the complaints have been studied in such minimal cases for the cause of side effects. Side effects in the protein or nutritional supplements are caused if the person consuming is allergic to the specific ingredient present in the protein supplement. For example if a person allergic to dairy products consumes whey proteins then he will be allergic to whey protein. It is not the side effect caused by the whey protein, this could be the case if he had consumed normal cow’s milk and its products.

Definition of side effects is to be well defined by the scientists in these cases in the lay man language. This would be helpful in removing the unnecessary fear among the innocent people who would like to use such products. Green drink is no less to that matter, if a person allergic to kind of vegetables consumes the green drink made of that very vegetable he tends to develop allergy and should avoid taking such products made of allergic ingredients that doesn’t suit your body.