Chocolate Milk: Better than Sports Drinks?

A few weeks ago, one of my co-workers asked me my opinion on a fancy sports drink that her 16-year-old son was trying to get her to buy for him. He's in training with the high school football team and the word around the locker room was that this pricey potion would help one get stronger, faster.

After looking at the formula, I told Joanne that, while I didn't think it would hurt him, he could probably get much the same benefit for a fraction of the cost by drinking low-fat milk. (One of the primary ingredients in the drink was whey protein, or, the stuff you get in milk.)

Today, I ran across research that not only validated my call on the sports drink but added a delicious twist.   Researchers at Indiana University are saying that chocolate milk is just as good as sports drinks in aiding recovery from intense exercise. (See also this response from nutritionist Felicia Stoler on Shereen Jegtvig's Nutrition Blog.)   Although chocolate milk obviously contains more sugar than plain milk, sugar has a less dramatic effect on blood sugar right after a work out, when your body uses the sugar to restore glycogen stores in spent muscles rather than storing it as fat.

So, if your inner kid (or your actual one!) craves chocolate milk, go ahead and give in--as long as it's after exercise!

Tricks to make ANY diet more successful

As a nutritionist, I naturally focus on the nutritional aspects of weight loss: calories, fat, sugar, fiber, glycemic impact, and so on.  But as any successful loser knows, the dieting game is at least half mental.  A new book by Judith Beck (The Beck Diet Solution: How to Think Like a Thin Person) zeros in on the all-important behavioral and cognitive aspects of weight loss. 

Beck's motivational exercises and strategic tips aren't exacly revolutionary (see Jim Foster's summary on The Diet Blog) but if you are looking for some tried-and-true advice on the head-game of weight loss, this book might give you the edge you need to negotiate around the pitfalls of dieting.

I particularly like Dr. Beck's insights on hunger and cravings.

Caffeine content of sodas no longer secret

How much caffeine is in that soda? Some manufacturers would rather not tell you. I'm not sure why they'd want to keep this a secret, but since a petition to force disclosure of the caffeine content of sodas failed, most have declined to include this information on the label.

Now, nutrition researchers at Auburn University have lifted the veil of secrecy! In a study recently published in the Journal of Food Science, they analyzed the caffeine content of 131 national and store brand sodas. (Thanks to the bloggers at HealthCastle.com for bringing the study to my attention.)

Some of the findings were not what I would have thought. For example, Diet Coke has 25% more caffeine than regular Coke, but Diet Pepsi has less caffeine than regular Pepsi.  Even more surprising, citrus-flavored sodas generally contain more caffeine than colas.  Store brand sodas tend to have less caffeine than national brands.

I agree with the conclusion of the researchers: Because the caffeine content of various soft drinks vary greatly and aren't always what you'd expect, this information should be included on the nutrition label.  (The caffeine content of foods and beverages is also reported as part of Nutrition Data's nutrient analysis reports.)

Help! I started running and GAINED weight!

Dear Monica,

Recently I started running about 35 to 40 minutes a day. I usually run 4 to 5 times a week but I have gained weight in the process. I gained 4 lbs. I wanted to know whether this was muscle weight or is it because I have been eating a bit more carbs than normally?

A. Congratulations on your new healthy habit! But if one of your goals for your new exercise program was to lose weight, I can imagine how frustrating it would be to see the scale going UP instead of down. Let's see if we can get to the bottom of things.

Has your life been touched by diabetes?

I recently got a note from a spokesperson for InspiredbyDiabetes.com, a global campaign designed to bring diabetes to the world’s attention.  The site is sponsoring a Creative Expression Competition, which invites anyone who has been touched by the disease to share his or her story through some sort of artistic work. 

A $5000 contribution to charity will be made in the name of the Grand Prize winners, who will also win a trip to an Inspired by Diabetes art exhibition.  More details about the campaign and contest (which is underwritten by the pharmaceutical company, Lilly) are found here:

http://inspiredbydiabetes.com/content/how_to_enter_120.jsp.

Healthy Weight Gain

Q. I need to gain weight (at least 5 kgs) in a month's time. Please advise me how to go about it.

A. In order to gain weight, you simply need to take in more calories than you burn. The Daily Needs Calculator will give you an estimate of how many calories you require every day. For every 3,500 excess Calories (kcal) you consume, you will gain more or less one pound (2.2g). 

Because fat contains more than twice as many calories per gram as protein and carbohydrate, adding high-fat foods to your diet would be an efficient way to add calories.  But I assume that you are interested in healthy weight gain. In that case, you don't want just any calories; you want to add high-quality calories to your diet.

Fortunately, Nutrition Data has several tools that will help you do just that!  On every food and recipe analysis page, you'll see Nutrition Data's Nutritional Target Map. Foods that appear in the lower right quadrant of the map are ideal for healthy weight gain, because they have a high nutrient density (more nutrients per calorie) and a high energy density (more calories per gram).

Right below the Nutritional Target Map, you'll see the Better Choices tool.  Use the pull down menu to select "better choices for weight gain" and click "show me!" for a list of similar foods with a higher nutrient and calorie densities. Or, go to the Food Category Explorer, select any category, and use the pull down menu to select "Better Choices for Weight Gain."

Remember as well that muscle tissue weighs more than body fat. A weight training program, supported by a nutritious high-calorie diet, can help you gain weight as lean muscle mass instead of body fat. If exercise, particularly strength training, is part of your weight gain program, be sure to eat plenty of protein, which speeds recovery and enhances lean muscle gain.

The Nutrition Data community includes a lot of elite athletes and body-builders who track their nutrition very closely as part of their training regimens. Any Nutrition Datanauts with experience on healthy weight gain? I'd be interested in your input.

ND's recipe analysis feature gets a big performance upgrade!

Great news for all who use Nutrition Data to analyze recipes and other food combinations. A recent performance upgrade has all but eliminated pesky server time-outs and the recipe analysis function is now running better than ever.  Thanks for your patience while we worked on the solution to this issue.

If you've never used this tool, it's a great way to get a detailed nutritional picture of what you're eating every day.  First, you'll need to set up a pantry and stock it with the foods and ingredients you need. Then, simply enter the quanties of each food in your recipe or mealplan, type in a name for your recipe (such as "Bran Muffins", or "September 14th"), and click the "Analyze Recipe" button.

You'll get a complete nutritional analysis of that combination of foods or ingredients, including Nutrient Balance, Estimated Glycemic Load, Fullness Factor, Inflammation Factor, and more. For instance, here's the analysis for a Greek Chicken Salad recipe that I entered. To keep a permanent copy of any, click "Save to Pantry".  (The Pantry Help page has all the the details.)

There are lots more improvements and upgrades in the works for Nutrition Data that I'm very excited about! I'll keep you posted on new develpments right here on the Nutrition Data blog. To keep up with all the latest, you can also subscribe to our free member newsletter at the bottom of the homepage.  If you'd like to have some input into new features, we're also looking for ND users in the NYC metro area to test drive some of our new features. Click here for details .

Ten best foods?

Q. Do you have a list of "nutritional all-stars" -- foods you consider the healthiest? Thanks!

A. Lists of "superfoods" are certainly popular. Just google the phrase "top 10 foods" and you'll find a slew of (different) answers to this question. There's a number of "Superfood" books and even cookbooks with recipes featuring the 10 (or 12, or 14, or whatever) "best" foods.

Personally, I'm not so crazy about this angle.  First of all, what criteria are we going to base the list on? Is it the foods with the most antioxidants? The most omega-3 fatty acids? The least sugar? The least pesticide residue? The most fiber? Some combination of all these factors?

Secondly, while I understand that the impulse to create these lists is a based on desire to choose healthier foods, I think it leads some people to eat diets that focus too heavily on just a few foods.  In my view, a varied diet is extremely important for good nutrition for a couple of reasons.

Live in the NYC metro area and interested in helping us improve ND?

We'll be testing some changes to ND this fall / winter and would love your help.  It will take about an hour of your time to "test drive" some new ideas and improvements. The location would be in mid-town Manhattan sometime between 9am and 5pm on dates still to be determined.  So if you are in the vicinity and would like to be involved, we'd love your input! Just drop us a line to feedback@nutritiondata.com with the following information and we'll be in touch. 

Name
Phone
Email
Age Range (20-30, 31-40, 41-50 or 50+)

Thanks!

Ask Monica: Does a low-sodium diet provide enough iodine?

Q. First, what a great site! I have used the data here to lose 52 lbs. since last November. I have cut my salt intake to around 1200 mgs per day. I never use salt at home and am wondering if I am getting any iodine at all.  Does processed food (bread, cheese, mayonaise, etc.) use iodized salt or plain salt?  I am thinking they probably use plain and that I need some iodine.

A. Congratulations on your weight loss! I'm glad that Nutrition Data has been such a valuable partner in your healthy new lifestyle.  And thanks for your very interesting question!  Although most table salt is iodized, salt added to processed foods may not be.  Other food additives, such as calcium iodide and potassium iodide, can add iodine to processed foods. But iodine content is not reported on the nutrition facts label, so its difficult to know how much iodine is in your diet.

About 75% of the sodium in our diets comes from processed foods, which is why I usually suggest that people trying to cut sodium focus on cutting out processed foods (soups, lunch meats, frozen meals, etc.) and salt their freshly-prepared food to taste. As a culinary student, I was trained to place great value on the properly seasoned (i.e., salted) dish! And if you use iodized salt in your cooking and at the table, you will be sure to get enough iodine without overdosing on sodium.

You can also include more natural sources of iodine in your diet.  Seafood and edible seaweeds, such as wakame, are particularly rich in iodine.  You also get some iodine from vegetables, depending on the iodine content of the soil in which it is grown.  According to the Linus Pauling Institute, iodine is added to feed for dairy cows in the U.S., which makes dairy products a fairly good source of iodine.

Iodine deficiency, although common in developing countries, is quite rare in the U.S. and Europe. An early (and reversible) sign of iodine deficiency is an enlarged thyroid gland (or goiter), which is a fairly noticeable swelling in the neck. If you haven't noticed this, I doubt you are suffering from an iodine deficiency.  But if you wanted to be on the safe side, a high-quality multivitamin-and-mineral should include the daily recommended amount of iodine.

"Guiding Stars" steer shoppers to healthier foods

What a cool idea! A grocery store in Maine hired a nutrition advisory board to assign a rating to every food in the store...foods earned from 0 to 3 stars based on a formula that took into account vitamins, minerals, fiber, and whole grains (all plusses), trans fats, saturated fats, cholesterol, and added sugars and salt (all minuses). 

After a year of testing the Guiding Star system in their stores, they report that this simple system had a dramatic impact on which foods their customers bought.  Sales of foods with zero stars (such as whole milk) declined, while sales of similar foods with higher ratings (such as lowfat milk) increased.  (More details in this New York Times article.)

I found it particularly interesting that many foods touted by manufacturers as "healthy" scored low on the 3 star scale, usually because of added sugars and sodium.  Another good reminder that just because the box trumpets "low-fat" or "whole-grain" doesn't mean that that it's good for you!

Now, one could probably quibble over the (undisclosed) formula they used to assign stars.  And we don't have any information about whether buying healthier foods made these shoppers any healthier.  Megan Steintrager of Epicurious.com emailed me about this story and wondered whether people might be tempted to eat more (i.e., too much) if they are eating foods with high ratings.  Just a couple of days ago, I wrote about research showing that people eat tend to eat far more calories when eating at restaurants that promote their menu items as "healthy." (See "Healthy menu choices can really backfire.")

I think the real point of all of this is that people will choose healthier foods if you make it simpler to compare them.  That's the idea behind the standardized Nutrition Facts label mandated by the government. But maybe the Nutrition Facts label doesn't make it simple enough.

And that's precisely the point of the ND Rating system (which is also available to the 99.99% of us who don't shop at Hannaford's in Maine).  The ND Rating evaluates 27 different nutrients and assigns a rating of 0-5, according to the density of desirable and undesirable nutrients.  You'll see the ND rating on the Nutritional Target Map, which appears at the top of the analysis page for every food.  You'll also get an ND Rating as part of every recipe analysis and total consumption report.

So, what do you think? Would a simpler index like the Guiding Stars or the ND Rating system be more helpful than the Nutrition Facts label in helping you choose foods? How would you change the Nutrition Facts label to make it more useful?

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Please add your comments below!

Can celery lower your blood pressure?

Q. My blood pressure goes up and down a lot.  Sometimes it's normal, sometimes, borderline high, and sometimes very high.  There's a history of heart disease striking at a young age in my extended family.  I'm a 52 year-old woman, just over 5'9" tall, and I weigh 145,  so I'm not overweight.  I exercise vigorously about 5-6 times/week, so I'm not inactive.  I'd like to take a nutrition-based approach to the problem, if possible.  Some things I've read say that consuming garlic, celery, cayenne pepper, and apple cider vinegar can help.  What is your advice about these, and about the quantities to take them in?

A. It's not uncommon for blood pressure readings to vary considerably. Some research shows that just the stress of being in a doctor's office can raise your blood pressure temporarily.  It's possible that your blood pressure may be just fine.  But with a family history of heart disease, it's smart to pay attention to possible signs of a problem. (Remember that high blood pressure is only one risk factor for heart disease; others include elevated cholesterol, homocysteine, and C-reactive protein levels.)

It sounds as if you are in excellent health and already doing the most important things: maintaining a healthy weight and getting regular exercise!  Chances are, you have a fairly healthy diet, too. But perhaps some fine-tuning can further reduce your risk of high blood pressure.

The National Institutes of Health recommends the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension).  The DASH diet is low in sodium, fat, and sugar and high in fiber, potassium, magnesium, and other nutrients. On the DASH diet, you do this by limiting your intake of animal fats, processed foods (the primary source of sodium in the diet), and sweets, and loading up on fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains foods. In other words, it's a fairly common-sense healthy diet. You can read more about the DASH diet in the NIH's Guide to Lowering Blood Pressure.

In the context of a generally healthy diet, some of the foods that you mention may also be helpful. This article on Diet Therapy for Hypertension has a good overview of individual foods that may help lower elevated blood pressure and gives recommendations on amounts.  For example, according to Dr. Jacobs, four stalks of celery can be enough to lower your blood pressure! (Maybe all the crunching and chewing is relaxing?)

You can also use Nutrition Data's Nutrient Search Tool to find foods that are high in particular nutrients. For example, here is a list of foods that are high in potassium, magnesium, and calcium, and low in sodium.

"Healthy" menu choices can really backfire

Sometimes you just can't win for losing!  New research shows that the low-calorie and "healthy" menu items popping up on convenience and fast food restaurant menus often sabotage a dieter's good intentions.  As usual, though, most of the problem has to do with our perception and behavior, rather than with the food itself. 

A new study shows that consumers vastly underestimate the amount of calories in a food when it comes from a restaurant that advertises its menu items as healthy.  Consumers then compound this error by allowing themselves higher-calorie side dishes and desserts.  In one study, the accompaniments people ordered along with their "healthy" main dish contained over twice as many calories as the sides they ordered with regular menu items.  (Even when the healthy main dish already contains more calories!) At this rate, obesity rates are likely to rise just as fast restaurants add "healthy" options to their menus.

Take home lessons:  don't let advertising claims cloud your judgment by assuming that the healthy entrees are lower in calories.   Remember that portion size matters, even if the food is otherwise healthy or low fat. And don't cancel out those healthy entree choices by indulging in fattening side dishes or desserts. 

You can look up menu items from dozens of fast food and convenience restaurants right here on Nutrition Data for a reality check!