Lean in that the portions are so small?
Lean in taste and flavor?
Lean as in lean forward as your gut drags you around?

Whatever the reason, the Lean Cuisine name makes it sell. It is crazy how well these things sell.

I brown bag my lunch most days. I bring an insulated lunch bag with an ice pack to keep my lunch cold. It isn’t that we don’t have a fridge at work…. Its just that there is no room in it. The fridge AND the freezer are literally packed to the brim with Lean Cuisines. This is not an exaggeration… they are completely full with the little cardboard boxes. With the exception of an occasional egg-o waffle box or Marie Calendar pot pie, 90% of these cardboard boxes say “Lean Cuisine”. It is crazy.

Now I am not going to lie. There have been times in my life where I lived off little freezer boxes. Michellina’s and the generic cheapies were sometimes all I at 3 meals per day. They were cheap and easy to make. They were VERY cheap and VERY easy to throw in the microwave.

Occasionally when they were on sale I got the Lean Cuisines too. You know what? They were terrible! I think I once ate the cardboard box that it was in on accident because it indeed did taste as good as the meal. That and it doesn’t really matter how many of these gross little meals I ate, I was inevitably still starving afterwards.

Now on to the speed and convenience of Lean Cuisines. The simplicity of opening the box and tossing it in the microwave is completely negated at my work. Come lunch time, there is actually a line the forms at the microwave. People queue their food up and actually tell each other “Your turn” as they retrieve their heated plasticy cardboard contraptions. Considering that each meal takes 3-5 minutes or so to heat up, it can easily be 20-30 minutes before it is your frozen cuisines “turn” to get fried. Me? I whip out my lunch bag and dive into some delicious egg salad, nuts, pork rinds, veggies. No wait… instant delicious gratification.

Ugh and the smell of these things. It doesn’t even smell like food. During the Lean Cuisine Queue at lunch, an awful aroma fills the office. It is funny because sometimes I do bring leftovers that need reheated. Once I heat up my meatloaf etc., I usually get quite a few people coming by my desk asking what that “Delicious smell” is and also frequently get told “did you bring enough for me?” Funny, though Lean Cuisine appears to be bountiful enough for all, no one really seems to enjoy eating it.

08/08

08/09

I almost missed it. This month one year ago, I decided to turn my life around and started moving towards a primal lifestyle.

Wow… I never could have imagined that I would be where I am right now.

Here are a few things I have learned along the way:
- It is WAY easier to be fit and healthy that you would expect
- A lot of people are going to think you are crazy
- You have to do it for you
- The outdoors is an awesome place to be
- Over-analyzing and over-sciencing your approach is a waste of time
- Food is more than something to tide your hunger over. Real food is delicious.
- I love cooking
- I really can live without bread and french fries and chips and corn and sugar… and live well!
- Eating fat can make you NOT fat
- I really do have abs under there!
- Most people really do have no idea how to get healthy
- Most people do not realize how much of an impact what you eat has on your health
- I don’t think that I ever want go back
- Much much more that I neglected to mention here!

So here is to my success… and yours!

What did he just say?Did the SoG really just say that whole grains are part of a balanced diet?

Yes… yes I did.

Here is the thing. I do not WANT a balanced diet. I want a darn good diet. Balanced to me implies that you are balancing something good with something bad. So if you are eating really really well and want to “balance” your diet. Go ahead and eat grains. I don’t see any truth in advertising issues with claiming that whole grains ARE in fact part of a “balanced” diet. This is merely a misrepresentation in my eyes.

As far as I am concerned, Kellogs can take their “Balanced diet” and shove it.  I personally am going to stick to a diet overwhelmingly unbalanced to the side of good and of health.

A diet Big Gulp is really just crud too

 Lets call a horse a horse. Soda pop is colored sugar water. Diet soda is basically colored chemical water. We have already covered some reasons not to drink regular sodaso now lets focus on “diet” soda. The chemicals alone go way against the primal blueprint (or paleo lifestyle) but if that hasn’t been enough to motivate you to drop the can of crap… hopefully this will do the trick.

First I have to mention the ridiculous sight that most of us seen.The person ordering the double quarter pounder with cheese meal, supersized fries and the diet coke. lol. Anyways.. on to some science.

Diet soda is made from asparatame.
Three byproducts of asparatame are methanol, formaldehyde, and formate. Yum. Defenders of diet soda will claim that these are in small amounts. Interestingly enough, tobacco companies will also defend the levels of these chemicals in cigarettes.

Feeling a little down lately?
Aspartame and Depression and Bipolar Disorder
In 1993, a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Walton conducted a study of 40 patients with unipolar depression and a similar number without a psychiatric history. The subjects were given 30 mgs per kg of body weight a day of aspartame or a placebo for 20 days. That is about the same amount of daily consumption if completely replacing sugar.

Thirteen individuals completed the study, then an institutional review board called the project to a halt “because of the severity of reactions within the group of patients with a history of depression.” In a smaller, shorter repeat of the study, “again there was a significant difference between aspartame and placebo in number and severity of symptoms for patients with a history of depression…”

Accordingly, the author concluded that “individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to this artificial sweetener and its use in this population should be discouraged.”

Dr Walton stated that he believed aspartame inhibits serotonin synthesis by decreasing the availability of the precursor L-tryptophan. This was further supported in another research 1987 experiment on rats.

This study is the only one that has been done looking at both mood and aspartame. No study since has been attempted to support or refute Dr. Waltons Findings. According to Dr. Walton, “The NutraSweet company clearly tried to block our study.”

Diet drinks and obesity.
#1.In 2005, the UofT Health Sciences Center presented 8 years (!) of research data showing diet soda as identifier in over 1,500 Mexican Americans. The numbers they showed were staggering.
For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

36.5% for up to 1/2 can each day
37.5% for 1/2 to one can each day
54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day
57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.
For each can of diet soft drink consumed each day, a person’s risk of obesity went up 41%.

#2. Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome — the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels — and elevated blood pressure.

The scientists gathered dietary information on more than 9,500 men and women ages 45 to 64 and tracked their health for nine years.

Over all, a Western dietary pattern — high intakes of refined grains, fried foods and red meat — was associated with an 18 percent increased risk for metabolic syndrome, while a “prudent” diet dominated by fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry correlated with neither an increased nor a decreased risk.

But the one-third who ate the most fried food increased their risk by 25 percent compared with the one-third who ate the least, and surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.

#3.An independent study by researchers with the Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts, has turned up results which indicate that the consumption of diet soda correlates with increased metabolic syndrome. Of the 9,000 males and females studied, findings stated that 48% of the subjects were at higher risk for weight gain and elevated blood sugar. The researchers also acknowledged that diet soda drinkers were less likely to consume healthy foods, and that drinking diet soda flavored with artificial sweeteners more than likely increases cravings for sugar flavored sweets.

Rats lead the way.
Rats studied at Purdue University who were fed low-fat yogurt flavored with saccharine ate more rat chow and got fatter than those who ate the same yogurt flavored with glucose. The rats that ate the saccharine-sweetened yogurt were also less able to compensate for calories (i.e. eat less at the next meal to make up for a lot of food eaten at the last one) than those whose meals were “predictive”,” or sweetened with glucose. What does it mean for humans? The authors conclude that while you can’t take what you find in lab rats and assume it will apply to people, too, “it is conceivable that the widespread use of artificial sweeteners may have similar effects on us.

My Conclusions
A lot of this research is heavily disputed and controversial. I am sure I will catch some flak in the comments defending diet soda. The question I ask is “Is that (gross) little can of diet soda really worth the chance of ANY of this being true?” What do you think?

The Infamous Big Gulp

 

If  someone were to ask me “What is the single, most important and easiest way to lose weight?” I would tell them “Stop drinking soda pop”.

IMHO, this is the single easiest way to cut some of those excessive refined sugars out of your diet. According to a study done by UC Berkley, soda is the #1 source of sugar in the American diet. The average American drinks at lease 24 ounces of soda per day. Average soda/cola contains 2.8 grams of sugar per fl. oz.

Lets do the math on that. That means that the average American is drinking at least 67.2 grams of sugar per day! One of those 64 oz gas station drinks that are so popular contains 179 grams of sugar… in one drink. I watch some people in the office go through 2 of these in a day.

The average large drink from a restaurant 32 fl. oz. That is 64 grams of sugar right there. Eat out twice in a day and you are at 128 grams of sugar from sodas alone in the day. That’s not calories.. that’s grams of sugar!

You get the picture. Drinking soda is a sure fire way to get yourself a dose of insulin spiking, diabetes causing, obesity sparking sugar. Is that Coca-Cola with lunch really worth it? Drop the soda pop. Its a really really easy way to clean up your diet.

Important Caveat:Don’t replace the soda with other drinks that have just as much sugar (i.e that sugar laden latte from Starbucks).

That's a big burger

So last night I had a final exam. The class was run as a pilot program for the University and so to celebrate, they bought pizzas for the entire class. I planned ahead and ate a nice dinner of salmon and spinach before going so that I would not be hungry. This allowed me to observe a phenomenon.

I watched as overweight after obese after overweight person went up and loaded… and I mean LOADED their plates up with pizza. We are talking 3-4 slices of pizza at a time. These were not small slices either.

One women piled 5 pieces of pizza on her plate, immediately took a bite and then waddled back to her seat not realizing that cheese was hanging from her mouth and falling off her plate. It was sick and sad at the same time.

It was like people thought that if they didn’t stock up in that one run, they were never going to have the opportunity to eat pizza again. It is ok to take a slice and if you are still hungry… go back for another. Heck that extra trip up to the food source maybe even count as exercise (exaggeration of course). What happens when you tell yourself “I know that I am going to eat 4 slices of pizza so I might as well get them all now”? Well for one… you are most likely going to eat 4 slices of pizza!

What do you think causes this phenomenon? Well, for one… people are eating too much food. There could be several reasons for this, i.e. grains and sugars causing hormone spikes and keeping people hungry, larger portions at restaurants and fast food joints etc. but I think there are other factors as well.  I personally think part of it is caused by a socially competitive environment. People tend to be getting more selfish when it comes to food. I think that people have started to think “If I don’t get my 4 slices now, Sally is going to take 4 slices and there wont be more left if I am still hungry”. I wonder where this comes from because there was plenty of pizza. I see this even in family dinner type environments. People hoarding food because they fear that someone else might take the last roll that they are eying. I do also wonder how much the “free food” factor plays into people gorging themselves.

It really is ok to eat a little at a time. Food is still pretty abundant these days. Take a little and then, if you are hungry.. go back for more people!

What are your thoughts?

*edit* I love pizza too which is why I created a delicious and suprisingly healthy SoG Primal Pizza recipe!

Fries with a side of statins

*The nutritional information included in these posts is obtained directly from the company websites. I am NOT making this stuff up.

Warning: This is a long post. But stick with it… it will be worth it I hope.

I propose to you a scenario. You ask your child what they would like to eat for lunch. They answer “A snickers bar”. Are you going to say “Ok, great idea”? Probably not. Everyone knows that candy is bad for you and that it is not a meal. So instead you take your kid to McDonald’s. Because at least that’s real food… and McDonald’s is trying to become healthier right? For the purpose of this post, I am going to assume the McDonald’s order consists of a Big Mac Sandwich, medium Coca-Cola and medium fries (Probably pretty modest by today’s standards).

Your kid might have been better off with the snickers bar (no, I am NOT advocating that you feed your children snickers bars for lunch!). Lets looks at why…

First let us take a look at the nutrition facts for both meals.

Snickers Bar
Calories: 280
Total Fat: 14g
Sat Fat: 5g
Cholest: 5g
Sodium: 140mg
Carbs: 35g
Fiber: 1 g
Sugars: 30g
Protein 4 g

McDonald’s: Big Mac, Medium Coke, Medium Fries
Calories: 1130 (No joke! That is over half the recommended daily for most people in one modest meal!)
Total Fat: 48g
Sat Fat: 13g
Trans Fat: 1.5g (At least the snickers doesn’t have any trans fats)
Cholest: 75g
Sodium: 1320 (!…!!!!!)
Carbs: 151g (!….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Fiber: 8g
Sugar: 65g (That more that 2 snickers candy bars so heck, give your kid 2 while you are at it)
Protein: 25g

Those numbers speak for themselves pretty much but what I REALLY want to focus on is the ingredients in these foods.

Snickers Ingredients:

Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, lactose, skim milk, milkfat, soy lechtin, artificial flavor), peanuts, corn syrup, sugar, skim milk, butter, milkfat, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, lactose, salt, egg whites, artificial flavor.

*Ok, not the best of stuff, but I can read this list and know what most of these things are at least! I can know what I am getting myself into if I were to eat a snickers.

Now let us look at the ingredients in the McDonald’s meal: Brace yourself…

Big Mac®
100% Beef Patty
100% pure USDA inspected beef; no fillers, no extenders. Prepared with grill seasoning (salt, black pepper).

*This was a pleasant surprise as I was expecting smeat.

Big Mac Bun
Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, high fructose corn syrup, yeast, soybean oil, canola oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, contains 2% or less of each of the following: sesame seed, salt, wheat gluten, calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate, monocalcium phosphate, ammonium chloride, calcium carbonate, baking soda, soy flour, dough conditioners (may contain one or more of the following: distilled monoglycerides, DATEM, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, enzymes, ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, sodium stearoyl lactylate, guar gum, mono-and diglycerides, calcium peroxide), calcium propionate & sodium propionate (preservatives), soy lecithin.
CONTAINS: WHEAT AND SOY.

*All this for a lousy bun! What is half that crap?

Pasteurized Process American Cheese
American cheese (pasteurized milk, cheese culture, salt, enzymes), water, milkfat, sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, salt, sorbic acid (preservative), acetic acid, artificial color, soy lecithin and/or corn starch (added for slice separation).
CONTAINS: MILK AND SOY LECITHIN.

*Once again… what is half that crap? And corn starch? In my cheese? Really?

Big Mac Sauce
Soybean oil, pickle relish [diced pickles, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, vinegar, corn syrup, salt, calcium chloride, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate (preservative), spice extractives, polysorbate 80], distilled vinegar, water, egg yolks, high fructose corn syrup, onion powder, mustard seed, salt, spices, propylene glycol alginate, sodium benzoate (preservative), mustard bran, sugar, garlic powder, vegetable protein (hydrolyzed corn, soy and wheat), caramel color, extractives of paprika, soy lecithin, turmeric (color), calcium disodium EDTA (protect flavor).
CONTAINS: WHEAT, EGG AND SOY.

*No wonder they call it “Special Sauce”. That is way easier than calling it the above and also way more marketable than “crap sauce”.

Lettuce

Pickle Slices
Cucumbers, water, distilled vinegar, salt, calcium chloride, alum, potassium sorbate (preservative), natural flavors (plant source), polysorbate 80, extractives of turmeric (color).

Onions
Chopped onions.

Medium French Fries
Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*), citric acid (preservative), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil ((may contain one of the following: Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness), dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent). *
CONTAINS: WHEAT AND MILK (Natural beef flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients).

*Do I even need to say anything about this one? lol… and how does “Natural beef flavor” derive from wheat and milk?

Coca-Cola® Classic (Medium)
Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sucrose, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors (vegetable source), caffeine.

*Don’t even get me started on sodas. We might address this one in a later post.

So which would you rather feed to your loved one? I would choose the snickers… and I would never recommend feeding a snickers to your child as a meal so what does that tell you. An interesting callout here is that these ingredient lists did not spell check well. Most of these ingredients weren’t even real words!

Most of these fast food joints now have nutritional info on their websites. The only reason that I can see that they are still in business after doing it is because no one goes to look at it. I highly recommend going to these websites, Subway, McDonald’s, Burger King etc. and educate yourself on what is truly being eaten. It is an informative and scary read.

What if fast food joints had to start printing ingredient lists on the box? Would the Big Mac ingredients even fit on the box?