I Read This Article From The USA TODAY On Tuesday, November 22 And Found It Very Interesting So I Decided To Write A Blog About It 🙂
Three Squares A Day Is So Yesterday… 24/7 Snacking Becomes New Normal
One of the great lessons of social history is that food, and the rituals surrounding it, both express and instruct in a society’s values. Food is not mere ballast; it carries with it, unavoidably, a society’s values. Which is why this news from USA Today is depressing:
We eat what we want, when we want. No more of this breakfast, lunch and dinner stuff. We snack all day. We casually skip meals. And we want to customize everything we cram into our mouths. It’s as if our social-media habits are going right to our stomachs. A culture hungry to put its personal stamp on everything it touches is driving some foodmakers and restaurant operators bonkers. At the same time, it’s offering all kinds of opportunities to those willing to sprint ahead of the food curve. Nowhere is this trend more palpable than with Millennials. “Eating weird is the new normal,” says Shawn LaPean, executive director of Cal Dining at the University of California- Berkeley, which serves students 30,000 times daily. “If students eat any square meals per day, it might be one. The rest is filled with snacks and food on the go.” These may seem like quirky, student eating habits, but they’re evolving into lifetime traits. The numbers are mind-boggling. At least 35% of the meals eaten by Millennials aren’t meals at all, but snacks, reports consultancy The Kruse Company. Four in 10 Millennials snack more than once daily, reports research firm Technomic. And only 5% of all consumers eat three square meals a day, says Technomic. There are no traditional eating hours anymore, says Wade Thoma, vice president of U.S. menu innovation at McDonald’s. “People eat at all strange hours of the day.”
It’s hard to be traditional about food rituals these days. You would think that my family would be ordered along these lines, but it hasn’t worked out that way. For one thing, one of my children has sensory processing disorder, and can only eat a few things (fortunately, the same things, and easy to prepare). Another of my children appears to have the same problem. More importantly, though, until I took the job at Templeton, I was never able to be home at a predictable hour. My newspaper job sometimes got me home by six, sometimes by nine, but never on a predictable schedule. That was the nature of the work, but it made family dinners impossible to schedule. Now we can do that, given that I work from home, but it’s hard to break old habits — especially given that the kids usually don’t eat, and won’t eat, what their mother and I eat. Still, the whole snacking between meals thing is something we resist in our household. So there’s that.Anyway, we are losing, and appear to have lost, food traditions. Food is not religion, of course, and besides, as Adam Gopnik points out in his book about France and food, when a food tradition ossifies into pure formalism, it loses its vitality. But the opposite — to thoroughly reject any formal tradition, is also imprudent, and not to be desired. To be in Louisiana and to decide that gumbo, jambalaya, and boiled crawfish are no better and no worse than Big Macs is to lose a sense of oneself and one’s culture. It’s to say that one’s culture has no claim on one, and no right to educate one’s culinary sensibilities. And, it’s the jettison the idea of taste itself. Worse, to completely lose the idea of the family meal, or the meal as a social event, strikes me as a quite different and far worse thing than preferring to eat different foods. Here’s Leon Kass, in his terrific book “The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature.” Precisely because human beings usually eat together, the customs of eating govern not only what human beings eat but also where, when, with whom, and especially how. The manner(s) of eating, even more than what gets eaten, expresses the humanity of the eaters, at least as they have come to understand it. Though the specifics differ markedly from one society to the next, all cultures have explicit or tacit norms governing the “how” of eating — norms that serve to define the groups, ease interpersonal relations, and help civilize the human animal. Social rituals around eating are one thing that separates us from barbarians, and indeed from animals. More Kass:
To be at table means that one has removed oneself from business and motion and made a commitment to spend some time over one’s meal. One commits oneself not only to time but also to an implicit plan of eating: We sit to eat and not just to feed, and to do so both according to a plan and with others. A decisions to have a sit-down meal must precede its preparation, and the preparation is in turn guided by the particular plan that is the menu. Further, to be at table means, whether we know it or not, to make a commitment to form and formality. We agree, tacitly to be sure, to a code of conduct that does not apply when we privately raised the refrigetrator or eat on the run or in our cars, or even when we munch sandwiches in front of the television with our buddies who have gathered to watch the Super Bowl. There we eat (or, more accurately, feed) side by side, as at a trough; in contrast, at table we all face not our food but one another. Thus we silently acknowledge our mutual commitment to share nto only some food but also commensurate forms of commensal behavior. To be sure, the forms will vary depending on the occasion; the dinner table at home with family, the dinner table at home with guests, a banquet table at a testimonial dinner, adn a picnic table in the park have different degrees and (in part) different kinds of formality, as do the family breakfast and the family dinner. But in all cases there are forms that operate, regulate, and inform our behaivor and that signify our peculiarly human way of meeting necessity. A table, all by itself, silently conveys the beginning of this meaning. … The set table in the home is in fact an embodiment of the community that is the family.
Some Foods To Think About While You Snack:
The Colors of Health
Fruits and vegetables come in terrific colors and flavors, but their real beauty lies in what’s inside. Fruits and vegetables are great sources of many vitamins, minerals and other natural substances that may help protect you from chronic diseases. To get a healthy variety, think color. Eating fruits and vegetables of different colors gives your body a wide range of valuable nutrients, like fiber, folate, potassium, and vitamins A and C. Some examples include green spinach, orange sweet potatoes, black beans, yellow corn, purple plums, red watermelon, and white onions. For more variety, try new fruits and vegetables regularly. Fruits and vegetables contain essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber that may help protect you from chronic diseases. Compared with people who consume a diet with only small amounts of fruits and vegetables, those who eat more generous amounts as part of a healthful diet are likely to have reduced risk of chronic diseases, including stroke and perhaps other cardiovascular diseases, and certain cancers.
I have started eating more eggs and egg whites every single day in order to improve strong muscle and healthy bones! Breakfast should be your #1 meal of the day. The most important meal of the day that can keep your energy levels high giving you the momentum you need without crashing early 🙂 Consumption of eggs and egg white omelets along with servings of fruits and vegetables in the morning will give your immune system and your metabolism a huge jump in the morning and last you throughout the day. Snacking on nuts, whole grains, and an energy bar and/or apple will curb your hunger for larger meals. The point is that you need to keep your metabolism going throughout the day and ultimately help your body become an efficient fat burning machine! The amount of cholesterol in a single large egg has decreased by 14 percent according to the new United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrition data*. Consuming an egg a day fits easily within dietary guidance, which recommends limiting cholesterol consumption to 300 mg per day.
Snacking Is Good But You Have To Be Responsible 🙂 Watch The Following Video For More Information:
This camp was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to meet the best of the best in the sport of rowing, especially in the singles event. The singles event is known in the world of rowing to be the toughest of all rowing events and respected by other sports as being one of the hardest things to master. To be the best in the world in the single is like being Superman in my eyes. There are 8 Parts to this Blog simply because each one of these athletes has had such a tremendous impact on the world of rowing and beyond. I want to share my experience with each of these great rowers. Part 3
Tamara Sachs, M.D. is a specialist in Functional and Integrative care from New Medford, Connecticut. She graduated with honors from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine in 1988 at Saint Raphael Hospital and Yale New Haven Hospital. She studied Naturopathy in France for three years and also worked as an Emergency room doctor for four more years before starting her private practice in 1991. She is currently a graduate member of the Institute of Functional Medicine and has over a decade experience in clinical nutrition. She has served on numerous medical boards, including the Scientific Advisory Board of WomanHeart.org, the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.
Roworx ‘Frappee Friday’ has become so popular that we have decided to extend the offer of FREE nutritional shakes to 3 times a week! When I am teaching class Monday… Wednesday… And Friday at 9:30 AM… I want everyone to have the best experience and nutrition possible. I will be exclusively offering these healthy protein shakes at the Roworx Studio/ Warehouse Location at 1347 Loma Ave. Our Roworx philosophy is that only with proper exercise and nutrition can an individual accomplish their fitness goals sooner. At Roworx we will only use the finest ingredients in our shakes immediately after class that includes organic blueberries, strawberries, bananas, walnuts, almonds, spinach, carrots, apples, and 3 servings of the Juice Plus Complete Protein Powder. This Juice Plus Complete Product is the best of the best when it comes to protein and vegetable supplementation.
The REAL Scoop On Protein Shakes
Although the average person doesn’t need to worry about getting adequate amounts of protein, having weight loss surgery makes protein shakes essential (this is especially true for patients who have had gastric bypass as they will not absorb protein very well.) Athletes and weekend warriors often drink protein shakes because they have been brainwashed into thinking they are healthy or because they think the protein shakes will somehow help them build bigger muscles or burn more fat (which isn’t true!) The problem is, many protein shakes are made from artificial, nutrient-poor ingredients.
Throughout my life and training hard for so many years I have consumed many different nutritional and supplemental products in order to increase my athletic performance. I was curious as I looked up Myoplex Original Shake Ingredients and found stuff I didn’t like one bit including dairy creamer with corn oil, corn maltodextrin, artificial flavors, and milk protein isolate. It’s bad enough Myoplex contains highly processed, nutrient-poor ingredients but just as bad is that it is completely devoid of disease-fighting, immune-supporting plant-based phytonutrients and anti-aging antioxidants. Myoplex is simply a highly processed food product. If you read the Nutrition Facts on Myoplex you’d think you were getting a healthy product, but the Nutrition Facts are highly misleading and tell you absolutely nothing about the intrinsic nutritional properties of the food. The Nutrition Facts don’t tell you anything about whether the food is actually healthy or not. The Nutrition Facts will only tell you about the macronutrient content (carbs, fats and protein) of the food, but they tell you absolutely nothing about the micronutrient and phytonutrient (also called phytochemical) content. I never thought of taking ‘all natural’ products or organic when I was younger… I just always wanted more or to feel a positive difference in my athletic ability. Products such as Creatine and other special protein powders actually hindered my performance as ‘more’ was not necessarily better. In one physical testing on the Concept 2 rowing machine in college my whole body cramped up during the physical test and I nearly lost my spot on the team as I told my coach I could no longer continue with the workout. My coach replied ‘then I believe your chances of making the boat this year are gone… you’re out’ he said. I immediately did everything I could in order to continue with the physical testing and took a hard look at my supplementation and quit taking most supplements shortly afterwards. The message here is that you need to keep things simple and eat more fruits and vegetables and not to try and take ‘shortcuts’ like I did and end up hurting yourself in the end.
Phytonutrients that are used in all the Juice Plus products from real fruits and vegetables are disease-fighting substances found only in plant-based foods. You want a shake made with lots of phytonutrient-rich plant-based foods including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans and legumes. This is because phytonutrients not only help protect the plant, but also you, the plant-eater. Plant-based foods contain literally hundreds of different phytonutrients that work on many different cellular levels to optimize health. The greater variety of phytonutrients you get, the better protection you have. Juice Plus offer over 27 different kinds of fruits, vegetables, and berries in their ingrediants. Phytonutrients are one of nature’s most powerful antioxidants; they work to prevent both visible and cellular aging. Scientific evidence supports the value of phytonutrients in preventing and treating at least three leading causes of premature death including cancer, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Juice Plus has over 20 scientific studies that prove the fruits, vegetables, and berries get absorbed into your system! Phytonutrients also enable your body to burn fat faster by stimulating PPAR’s (peroxisome proliferator activated receptors). PPAR’s reduce fat-storing insulin levels and even lower cholesterol. Phytonutrients are plant based sterols that act as precursors to human sterols. They act to modulate the human endocrine system. One of the most important human sterols is Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Scientific research reveals that adequate DHEA in the body can slow the aging process, and prevent, improve, and even often reverse conditions such as cancer, heart disease, memory loss, obesity, and osteoporosis. DHEA blood levels peak between ages 20 to 25 years and then decline with age in both men and women.
Note: Animal foods do not contain phytonutrients so any shake made with animal foods (such as milk or whey protein) is not going to include phytonutrients.
I discovered the Juice Plus+ company from a general surgery patient of Andy’s (Tony DeMaio, who has since become a good family friend of ours.) If you aren’t familiar with it, Juice Plus+ is a “whole food” product containing fruits and vegetables in a capsule form and is extremely rich in phytonutrients. Juice Plus+ has a tremendous amount of clinical research behind their product line. My husband was so impressed with the product that he began recommending it to his patients (we were also one of the keynote speakers at the Juice Plus+ International Conference last year in Memphis.) In addition to loving the Juice Plus+ capsules we also discovered (and love!) the Juice Plus+ Complete shake formula.The Juice Plus+ Complete is a whole-food based shake that is very rich in phytonutrients. It’s a vegan protein-rich shake made from a vegetable protein blend (including chickpea powder, rice protein, tofu powder), 8 different fruits (apples, oranges, pineapple, cranberry, peach, acerola cherry, papaya), “super” greens including spirulina, kelp and wheat grass, and 8 different vegetables (carrot, parsley, beet, broccoli, kale, cabbage, spinach and tomato). Juice Plus+ Complete delivers whole foods nutrition with a superior phytonutrient profile. It’s simply a super healthy nutrient-dense shake for kids, active adults, and seniors.
In case you are curious, per 100 calorie serving the vegetable-protein based, phyotnutrient-rich Juice Plus+ Complete contains 13 grams of protein and the Myoplex contains 14 grams of protein.
Here’s how we can all get MORE Fruits And Vegetables in our system every single day!!!
Dr. Roy Vartabedian is President of Vartabedian & Associates/ Designs for Wellness, a Health and Nutrition publishing and consulting firm. He is also a Doctor of Public Health, with a specialty in Chronic Disease Prevention from Loma Linda University, and holds Master of Public Health degrees in Health Education and Nutrition also from LLU. He has worked in the field of health promotion and disease prevention for over 22 years, working with patients, managing programs, consulting, and speaking throughout the U.S. and Canada. His landmark publication Nutripoints has been used in a total of 13 countries in 10 languages worldwide. He has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs. Today Show, Live With Regis, and Everyday With Joan Lunden. Articles on his Nutripoints Program have appeared in many publications including Ladies’ Home Journal, New Woman, the New York Times, and the Dallas Morning News. Previously, Dr. Vartabedian worked as Executive Director of Wellness Programs at the worldrenowned Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Texas. There he worked with Dr. Kenneth Cooper to develop the residential lifestyle improvement program on the 30acre Cooper Aerobics Center facility in Dallas, directing the program for 6 years. Before working with Dr. Cooper, he taught Preventive Care at the Family Practice Residency in Florida Hospital, Orlando, Florida for 4 years. There he trained 36 Family Practice doctors how to incorporate Patient Education and Preventive Medicine into their practices, and developed the awardwinning Preventive Care Learning Center, a facility patients used to learn more about how to improve their health and understand their disease when visiting their doctor.
Much has been talked about in the sports and science community about the adverse affects of prolonged and strenuous exercise as it relates to the production of free radicals in an athlete’s body. What are these byproducts of aerobic exercise and why are they damaging to the human body? More importantly, what role do antioxidants play in neutralizing these damaging molecules and what can we as athletes do to facilitate this protective process?
* WITHOUT GOOD PROPER NUTRITION YOU MIGHT END UP LIKE THIS DURING YOUR WORKOUT :/
Foods that help you heal from injuries. By Liz Applegate Ph.D. Image by Ann E. Cutting From the December 2011 issue of Runner’s World
Most athletes get injured at least once in their running careers. Whether it’s a sore tendon or sudden muscle pull, your body goes through a series of responses to start healing itself. Research shows that what you eat while recovering can actually help you get back on your feet sooner rather than later. Here’s how to adjust your diet.
I remember when I was in the 4th grade in the 80’s when Ronald Regan wanted to make french fries and tomato sauce (and/or ketchup) part of the vegetable food group. I was actually very happy about that at the time but I knew at age 9 that ketchup and french fries were not in the vegetable food group. Playing sports as a child I knew that I had to be agile and quick and when I ate fast food or other unhealthy foods I could feel myself getting slower and my energy levels were plummeting. I made a pact to myself when I was younger that I would try to avoid and ultimately quit drinking soda and eating fast food. It was an awareness I had about my own eating habits and one that my father would instill in me that being overweight and eating unhealthy would not help my overall performance in sports. A few days ago I read a little article on the 10th page of the Press Telegram in Long Beach discussing the story of unhealthy lunches still being served in schools across the country everyday. In my opinion there are a few main reasons I see why we can’t put healthier food out on the table for children. One very easy and effective way to get great nutrition in a child’s body everyday is by taking Juice Plus.
 The holidays are here and we hope that your fitness goals are being met. With a variety of classes such as Indoor Rowing, Bootcamp, Spinning, and Zumba we strive to do the best job possible. I hope that everyone stays motivated throughout the holiday season. All of us here at Roworx wish you a very special holiday season. We are ready to move forward throughout the new year and have you accomplish all of your fitness goals.
I have come across some interesting articles lately about the importance of screening individuals for diabetes, cholesterol, and people with heart conditions in the L.A. Times as well as the Press Telegram here in Long Beach. It is a sign of the times that we are in a crisis of inhibiting bad eating habits and lack of participating in some sort of physical activity everyday. Growing up I was labeled in the ‘Generation X’ category, a generation that was known to be individualistic, technologically adept, flexible, and last but not least value a balance between work and life. ‘Generation Y’  was the next wave of kids to grow up throughout the 90’s and now I would personally dub this current generation of kids as ‘Generation O’ (O stands for Overweight). I’m noticing more kids with less energy and motivation more than ever before. I have to believe that lack of exercise activities and poor nutrition play a massive role in the way kids are moving around today. Combine that with the mentality that everyone wants things ‘now’ and patience is NOT a virtue is a scary thing. The fact that we all look to medication and the ‘secret pill’ to fix all of our problems is a huge mistake! Daily good exercise and nutrition are just another way of life. Just like sleeping and breathing… If you stop you will die. Simple as that! We all need to take a step back, gain some more balance in our lives between good nutrition and exercise, and look at our priorities and notice what is truly important in our lives. Patience and understanding with being healthy is a HUGE part of this and it takes time like everything does in order to become healthy and strong. A few years ago I heard someone say ‘Get in line.. And stay in line!’ Meaning that if you start a good whole-food nutrition or workout routine that you must be patient with your results. ‘Don’t get out of line’ or in other words quit your diet or workout routine just simply because you don’t have time or because your not having fun with it. Most likely you will end up spending more time in pain or in the hospital bed later in life. Individuals who work out and have a better diet are often generally happier and in better moods at a more consistent level. Daily exercise can releases endorphins which in turn create a better platform for a healthy happy lifestyle 🙂 I read the following story below this morning and found it disturbing that they would note that children should be taking lipitor or other drugs in order to lower cholesterol instead of really emphasizing the fact that parents and children need to drastically change their lifestyle into more productive healthier choices. Kids need influential ‘idols,’ whether it’s the parents or a professional sports figure to get motivated! One way to do this is to encourage children to participate in outside activities other than school and encounter more interactions in order to gain certain life experiences so that kids can grow and find their own identities. My identity is rowing and sport! I have an extreme passion for the sport and always encourage others to find out what they really want to do in life. I have had many experiences throughout my life to pick and choose what made me happy and what I could excel at… Whatever it is you want in life go for it and don’t let anyone hold you back 🙂
‘What YOU think is possible…IS possible!’ -John Nunn (Olympic Bronze Medalist 1968, Rowing)
Read on and learn learn more about where our next generation of children are heading…
It’s hard to be traditional about food rituals these days. You would think that my family would be ordered along these lines, but it hasn’t worked out that way. For one thing, one of my children has sensory processing disorder, and can only eat a few things (fortunately, the same things, and easy to prepare). Another of my children appears to have the same problem. More importantly, though, until I took the job at Templeton, I was never able to be home at a predictable hour. My newspaper job sometimes got me home by six, sometimes by nine, but never on a predictable schedule. That was the nature of the work, but it made family dinners impossible to schedule. Now we can do that, given that I work from home, but it’s hard to break old habits — especially given that the kids usually don’t eat, and won’t eat, what their mother and I eat. Still, the whole snacking between meals thing is something we resist in our household. So there’s that.Anyway, we are losing, and appear to have lost, food traditions. Food is not religion, of course, and besides, as Adam Gopnik points out in his book about France and food, when a food tradition ossifies into pure formalism, it loses its vitality. But the opposite — to thoroughly reject any formal tradition, is also imprudent, and not to be desired. To be in Louisiana and to decide that gumbo, jambalaya, and boiled crawfish are no better and no worse than Big Macs is to lose a sense of oneself and one’s culture. It’s to say that one’s culture has no claim on one, and no right to educate one’s culinary sensibilities. And, it’s the jettison the idea of taste itself. Worse, to completely lose the idea of the family meal, or the meal as a social event, strikes me as a quite different and far worse thing than preferring to eat different foods. Here’s Leon Kass, in his terrific book “The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature.” Precisely because human beings usually eat together, the customs of eating govern not only what human beings eat but also where, when, with whom, and especially how. The manner(s) of eating, even more than what gets eaten, expresses the humanity of the eaters, at least as they have come to understand it. Though the specifics differ markedly from one society to the next, all cultures have explicit or tacit norms governing the “how” of eating — norms that serve to define the groups, ease interpersonal relations, and help civilize the human animal. Social rituals around eating are one thing that separates us from barbarians, and indeed from animals. More Kass:To be at table means that one has removed oneself from business and motion and made a commitment to spend some time over one’s meal. One commits oneself not only to time but also to an implicit plan of eating: We sit to eat and not just to feed, and to do so both according to a plan and with others. A decisions to have a sit-down meal must precede its preparation, and the preparation is in turn guided by the particular plan that is the menu. Further, to be at table means, whether we know it or not, to make a commitment to form and formality. We agree, tacitly to be sure, to a code of conduct that does not apply when we privately raised the refrigetrator or eat on the run or in our cars, or even when we munch sandwiches in front of the television with our buddies who have gathered to watch the Super Bowl. There we eat (or, more accurately, feed) side by side, as at a trough; in contrast, at table we all face not our food but one another. Thus we silently acknowledge our mutual commitment to share nto only some food but also commensurate forms of commensal behavior. To be sure, the forms will vary depending on the occasion; the dinner table at home with family, the dinner table at home with guests, a banquet table at a testimonial dinner, adn a picnic table in the park have different degrees and (in part) different kinds of formality, as do the family breakfast and the family dinner. But in all cases there are forms that operate, regulate, and inform our behaivor and that signify our peculiarly human way of meeting necessity. A table, all by itself, silently conveys the beginning of this meaning. … The set table in the home is in fact an embodiment of the community that is the family.
Some Foods To Think About While You Snack:
Breakfast is a the best part of the day!
momentum you need without crashing early 🙂 Consumption of eggs and egg white omelets along with servings of fruits and vegetables in the morning will give your immune system and your metabolism a huge jump in the morning and last you throughout the day. Snacking on nuts, whole grains, and an energy bar and/or apple will curb your hunger for larger meals. The point is that you need to keep your metabolism going throughout the day and ultimately help your body become an efficient fat burning machine! The amount of cholesterol in a single large egg has decreased by 14 percent according to the new United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrition data*. Consuming an egg a day fits easily within dietary guidance, which recommends limiting cholesterol consumption to 300 mg per day.
