Overeating, not lack of physical activity, blamed for obesity

While most experts agree that diet and physical activity are BOTH important when it comes to the etiology of obesity, there is a definite dichotomy between the diet-pushers and the exercise-pushers. It seems to me that everyone takes a side, believing that one or the other is just a little more significant. I have made no secret of the fact that I am firmly in the diet camp; I think that overeating leads to obesity far more frequently and with more certainty than being sedentary does. My evidence: I rarely exercise with any vigor (a horrible thing, I know), yet my low-calorie and mostly healthful diet keeps my weight consistently low. I also know many individuals who are very active and still can't seem to lose weight.

Now, it appears there is some research to back up my claim. A recent study found that an increase in calorie consumption is more likely the main cause of the increase in obesity rates seen in recent years. I have to admit, I question the researchers' methodology here, but because their results affirm my own bias, I'll look past it.

Regardless of what studies show, it is simply common sense that eating well should be the top priority for anyone trying to lose weight. It's a lot harder to exercise away a few hundred calories than it is to just not eat them in the first place!

Mistakes people make

I'm not sure why I'm thinking about this today, but I felt compelled to explain why one of the most common eating habits that people have is ALL WRONG. I am referring to the tendency to eat tiny little meals for breakfast and lunch and then eat a big, multi-course dinner at 8:00 at night and then go to bed 2 hours later.

When you think about it, it just doesn't make any sense. When you wake up in the morning, you've been fasting for at least 8-10 hours and you're getting ready to start a whole day's worth of activity. Why would you think that what your body needs is just a cup of coffee? Even if you eat breakfast, you're probably eating something like a yogurt, a granola bar, bowl of cereal, bagel, donut, or some other carbolicious 3-bites-and-it's-gone food. For one thing, most of these popular breakfast items are not enough calories. Yup, you read that correctly. NOT ENOUGH. Secondly, they also happen to be high in carbohydrates and/or refined sugar but low in protein, healthy fats, and often fiber. These are the things that give you lasting energy and make you feel full.

For many people, this starvation continues through lunch, where typical choices include salad, soup, sandwiches and other "light" fare. After all, we don't want to blow all of our calories by mid-day do we?

Then 3:00 hits. And the munchies start to set in. The next thing you know, you're grabbing whatever junky snack you can out of the vending machine and wondering how you'll ever stick to a diet when they all make you so hungry!

When dinner rolls around, the only "real" meal most people eat all day, it's a big production: big portions of meat, starch, and sometimes a veggie (like a salad drowned in a few hundred calories' worth of dressing. And of course, you have to save room for dessert. Now having eaten all of those calories, you do the only reasonable thing: go to sleep.

Does this seem backwards to anyone else but me??? Your body needs the most energy in the morning, not in the evening. Accordingly, breakfast should be the biggest meal of the day. Lunch should be moderate in size but still pretty hearty and dinner should bear closer resemblance to a snack than a holiday feast. I realize this is a difficult concept for people to grasp. Most of us have grown up eating this way and it has become part of our culture. But starving all day and binging at night is a recipe for weight gain. And if you try to lose weight while maintaining this habit, you will set yourself up for struggle and failure.

Yippee!! Another good blog for healthy food for kids!

I was so disappointed when the Lunch Nugget blogger stopped posting, as I thought this blog was a great resource for parents. But it has been brought to my attention that there is a new kid in the blogosphere posting healthy meals for babies, toddlers, and kids. It's called Weelicious (it's even got a cute name!). I couldn't agree more with the philosphy of the talented mom who writes this blog. She ssays of her son, Kenya: "Kenya only knows what I feed him. If I gave him McDonalds, he’d love it, but if I give him pesto chicken, that’s what he’ll crave." BINGO! I say this all the time. Unfortunately, I don't have any real-life experience with parenting to back it up, but this woman does!

Foods we eat too much of- Part I

I just read this great article on MSN.com about portion distortion. It names 8 foods that Americans tend to overeat: pizza, salad dressing, ice cream, burgers, white rice, potato chips, soda, and orange juice. I would have to agree that the typical portion sizes for these items are often 2-4 times the recommended "serving sizes," which are as follows:
pizza- 1 small slice
salad dressing- 2 tbs.
ice cream- 1/2 cup
burger- 3 oz.
white rice- 1/2 cup
potato chips- 1 oz. (about a handful)
orange juice and soda- 8 fl oz.

I would add a few more items to this list of foods that people eat way too much of. In fact, after some thought, I would add lots of items to this list! In this first installment, I'll discuss three:

Cheese. A serving size is one ounce, which is the equivalent of one slice or 1/4 cup shredded. However, most foods that contain cheese have at least twice this amount. Cheese is often portrayed as being a good source of protein and calcium, and therefore relatively healthy. I disagree. While small amounts of cheese can be incorporated into a healthy diet, one serving per day is more than enough. Cheese may have some redeeming qualities, but it also contains a lot of saturated fat. Plus, there are better ways to get protein and calcium: low fat yogurt and milk are prime examples.

Bread. A serving of bread is equal to one slice of store-bought pre-sliced bread (think Wonder). So, when MyPyramid recommends 6 servings per day, that doesn't mean 6 6" grinder rolls or 6 Dunkin Donuts-sized bagels. Actually, a Dunkin Donuts bagel would provide 3 servings and about 300 calories. This New York Times article rounds up the caloric content of bagels from various eateries, some of which provide up to 7 bread servings. Other ways people eat too much bread: mindlessly noshing on bread before dinner and devouring sandwiches on oversized hard rolls or foot long grinders. I don't care who you are, no one needs a 12 inch sandwich!

Pasta. Do I even need to explain this one? A food guide pyramid serving is 1/2 cup, about the size of half a baseball. Even the serving size on the box (which provides 220 calories)is only one cup. It would barely fill a typical coffee mug. Does anyone eat that much?? Not even close. And here's a bit of news for you: whole wheat pasta has the same number of calories. It is more healthful, ounce for ounce, but it has the same potential to lead to weight gain if eaten in the quantities that people tend to serve themselves.

More to come in a future post! In case you're wondering, there ARE some foods that we don't eat enough of. Among them, vegetables, fruit,whole grains, and unsaturated fats.

Toss this salad out and enjoy something else!

I'm not sure how, but in the minds of most people, salads have become synonymous with health food. Determined dieters proudly resist the tempting burgers and fries on restaurant menus and order the guilt-free salad instead. They often bring homemade salads to work with them for lunch, or order a salad from the office cafeteria, assured that they are making the best possible choice from a nutritional standpoint.

Sadly, the salad is just as likely to be the dieter's downfall as it is to be her road to success. With the wide array of high-calorie toppings that are likely to adorn otherwise innocent salad greens and the globs of dressing that smother them, it is not surprising that salads can often put even the heartiest of meals to shame when it comes to calorie and fat content.

Of course most people know by now that the chicken caesar salad and taco salad aren't as healthful as once thought. But even the truly healthy-sounding salads can pack a caloric punch. A perfect example of this is a salad featured in the Food section of the New Haven Register today: the Signature Salad at Eli's on Whitney in Hamden, CT.

The menu describes the salad's components: "Mesclun greens, candied walnuts, craisins, gorgonzola cheese and Granny Smith apples with a balsamic vinaigrette." Sounds harmless enough. But an analysis of the recipe outlined in the Register's article reveals that this salad, most likely ordered as an appetizer or part of a larger meal, contains 1130 calories, 99 grams of fat, 21 grams of saturated fat, and 45 grams of sugar. For the record, that's more than half the calories most people need to eat in a whole day and more than 100% of the daily recommendation for saturated fat. This salad also has as much sugar as 15 Starburst candies! It has twice as many calories and more than 2 1/2 times the amount of saturated fat as a Big Mac.

The main culprit here and in most salads is the dressing. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup per serving. HALF A CUP! The serving size for most salad dressings is 2 tablespoons. And most dressings, even the seemingly "light" vinaigrettes, have 70-100calories per tablespoon. But even without the dressing, this salad is still higher in calories than most fast food burgers. This is because Eli's uses large portions of three high-calorie toppings: blue cheese, candied walnuts, and dried cranberries.

My advice to anyone watching their weight: unless you really know what's in it, skip the salad and get something more satisfying instead. It will likely be better for you, too.

New Pepsi line? Throw it back!

So PepsiCo is launching a new line of sodas that are made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Should we celebrate the company's newfound health consciousness? Hardly! The new sodas are still full of empty calories from sugar. Sugar is not health food, natural or not. Lard is natural, too, but I don't see people extolling its virtues and buying it in bulk.


People have gotten the idea that HFCS is worse than sugar, because it is allegedly metabolized differently by the body and leads to weight gain. HFCS has been partially blamed for the obesity epidemic, and rightly so, but it is not because it is inherently different from sugar, but because of the way it changed the food supply when it came on the market. HFCS is much less expensive than sugar. When HFCS became available, it enabled food manufacturers to sell sugary foods and drinks at much lower prices than they used to. This likely led people to start consuming a lot more calories from HFCS-sweetened products. As nutrition expert Dr. David Katz has explained, its cost-effectiveness also led to its widespread use in processed foods, even those that are not supposed to be sweet. The result is that we end up consuming more sugar overall. So, HFCS may have played a role in the rising prevalence of obesity and diabetes in the U.S., but sugar could have had the same effect if it were used in the same way ("Sweet and Corny").


There is no empirical evidence that HFCS is any worse than sugar or that it has any different effects on appetite, weight, or other metabolic factors. The abstract from a review of studies on HFCS published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition had this to say:


"High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has been implicated in excess weight gain through mechanisms seen in some acute feeding studies and by virtue of its abundance in the food supply during years of increasing obesity. Compared with pure glucose, fructose is thought to be associated with insufficient secretion of insulin and leptin and suppression of ghrelin. However, when HFCS is compared with sucrose, the more commonly consumed sweetener, such differences are not apparent, and appetite and energy intake do not differ in the short-term. Longer-term studies on connections between HFCS, potential mechanisms, and body weight have not been conducted. The main objective of this review was to examine collective data on associations between consumption of HFCS and energy balance, with particular focus on energy intake and its regulation" (Melanson et al., 2008).


Bottom line: Stick to diet soda or no soda at all! What? Afraid of artificial sweeteners? See the post below.

My take on artificial sweeteners

Among the many misconceptions that people seem to have about nutrition and food safety is the notion that artificial sweeteners are essentially poison and must be avoided in order to be healthy. This one really gets my goat because despite the fact that it is not backed up by any credible science, a large proportion of the population readily believes it. This behavior strikes me as incredibly hypocritical, given how arbitrarily Americans seem to decide which products they are going to be wary of and demand the highest level of proof of safety and
which they will accept and use regardless of the
harm they are likely to cause.

For example, we have an abundance of evidence about the dangers of the typical American diet: one that is high in calories, saturated fat, sodium, and refined carbohydrates and low in fiber. Yet, this is not enough to convince anyone to abandon their typical American eating habits, save for the first week of January. On the other hand, a few unsubstantiated rumors about artificial sweeteners show up on some conspiracy-theory websites and everyone immediately swears them off!

All of the artificial sweeteners currently on the market have been approved by the FDA. Obtaining this approval is a long and rigorous process, entailing the meticulous conduct of numerous safety studies. But this is apparently not enough to convince the American public, who believes that the research demanded by the FDA is not sufficient. On the other hand, diet pills, vitamin and mineral supplements, and herbs, including the natural sweetener Stevia, are happily embraced despite the fact that they have not received FDA approval and are largely unregulated. (A product containing Stevia has recently received FDA approval, but it has been used by many for decades prior to this).

Another thing I think many people don't realize is that artificial sweeteners have been approved for use by adults, children, and pregnant women. If you use artificial sweeteners normally, there is no need to stop using them when you become pregnant or to prohibit your children from having any foods or drinks containing them. There is simply no scientific reason to ban them from your diet ever.

Even the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a well-known "whistle-blowing" organization often referred to as the "nutrition police" because of their rigid approach to consumer safety standards, has given sucralose (Splenda) its seal of approval, describing it as "safe." CSPI is not so kind to other sweeteners, but it does call aspartame and acesulfame potassium, two of the most commonly used sweeteners, "probably safe." Read their assessment of all sweeteners here.

Some studies have suggested that drinking diet beverages may actually lead to weight gain. I believe this to be a gross misinterpretation of research findings. The studies that have found an association between overweight and diet drink consumption were cross-sectional, non-experimental designs. In other words, they just looked at one group of people and compared those who drink diet beverages to those who don't. One can never determine causation with this type of study design. There are too many other factors at work. Researchers have theorized that artificial sweeteners may increase one's desire for sweets, leading to excess consumption of sugar later. It has also been postulated that the perception of sweetness actually triggers a hormonal response similar to what would occur if actual sugar were consumed.

I have read a number of experimental studies on artificial sweeteners (the ones that never make it to mainstream media because their results are not controversial enough), and these have found no difference in weight or in hormonal response (e.g. glucose and insulin levels, among others) when people were given a sugar-sweetened beverage compared to an artificially-sweetened beverage. Therefore, I have different theories about why people who drink diet beverages seem to be more likely to be overweight:

1. People who are overweight are simply more likely to drink diet beverages. Think about it, if you've never been overweight, it might not occur to you to buy diet anything. Whereas, if you are overweight, switching from regular to diet soda might be the first thing you do.

2. When people drink diet beverages, they feel free to eat more food. Be honest, how many times have you justified eating a larger portion of something or indulging in something high in calories because you a.) had a light lunch, b.) skipped breakfast, c.) ate really healthy yesterday, etc. ? When you eliminate calories you might otherwise be drinking, it's easy to think you can "afford" calories from something else (like that extra scoop of ice cream or the larger sized order of fries).

The easy way to avoid gaining weight when using artificial sweeteners is to make sure that your total calorie intake is within the range it should be for weight loss. If you write down what you eat and don't exceed your daily allotment, you will not have trouble losing weight even if you drink a gallon of diet soda daily. If any doubt remains in your mind, I use anywhere from 25-40 packets of Splenda a day (no, I'm not exaggerating) and I drink at least one 12-oz. can of diet soda, and I am underweight. If artificial sweeteners truly caused weight gain, this would not be possible.

The bottom line is that artificial sweeteners are probably going to do much less damage, if any, to your health than regular sugar would, especially if you are prone to drinking a lot of sweetened beverages or eating a lot of desserts.