Today's Poll: Will the recent news on alcohol and breast cancer risk affect your drinking habits?

British researchers this week announced findings from a seven year study of over a million women, finding that even low to moderate alcohol consumption increases the risk of some cancers; breast cancer, in particular.  At least one of the authors concludes that "there is no level of alcohol consumption that could be considered safe."

Yet moderate alcohol consumption (that's one drink per day for women and two for men) is associated with lower risk of heart disease and longer, healthier lives.  How do you weigh these seemingly contradictory findings?

I don't have the answer, but here are some questions to consider and discuss with your doctor to decide whether moderate alcohol consumption is a boon or bust for your health:

1. Is there a family history of breast cancer or heart disease? Either one might tip your decision.

2. Do you have other modifiable risk factors that might be more significant? 

For example, the recent study found that each daily drink increases your risk of breast cancer by about 1.5%.   On the other hand, regular exercise can decrease your risk of breast cancer by up to 30%. Eating more fiber can slash your risk by up to 50%.  Sleeping fewer than six hours a night can increase your risk by 60%, and so on.  Maintaining a healthy weight as you get older also has a substantial protective effect.

I'm also reminded of some research a couple of years ago that found that women who drank moderately had absolutely no increased risk of breast cancer, as long as they ate a diet high in folic acid.

My point is this: If you're 30 pounds overweight, are using your treadmill as a laundry-folding station, are chronically sleep-deprived, and/or have little time for green vegetables, that evening glass of wine may be the least of your worries.

There are a lot of pros and cons to weigh and any decision on how to respond to this latest news will be highly personal.   What's your take? 

Online Surveys & Market Research

Please also add your comments by clicking on "Post a Comment" below.

"Blueberries protect kids against cancer!" Now, read the fine print.

This kind of thing drives me nuts: A headline appearing in an internet newsfeed reads: "Blueberries may reduce childhood cancer risk."   Quick: what do you think of when you hear "childhood cancer?"  If you're like most people, you think of leukemia, which is the most common cancer in children.  Many will scan this headline and, without reading further, conclude that feeding kids blueberries may reduce their risk of leukemia. But a closer look reveals just how misleading and sensational this headline is. 

Here's the fine print: A study on mice found that administrating large doses of blueberry extract reduced the size (but not the incidence) of growths in blood vessel walls that occur in 3% of newborns and usually resolve on their own without treatment.

That's a somewhat different story, wouldn't you say? Probably not as likely to spur blueberry sales, either.  (Did I mention that this "news story" was released by a marketing organization for the natural foods and nutritional supplement industry?)

Arrgh. It's no wonder that so many nutrition myths and misunderstandings abound.

More ways to customize your ND experience

The good news? You'll find detailed nutrition information for 10,000 different foods on Nutrition Data.

The bad news? You'll find detailed nutrition information for 10,000 different foods on Nutrition Data.

Last week, I blogged about customizing your Nutrition Data experience by using our preference settings to control what categories of foods show up in your searches.  Today, I want to show you how to speed up your searches even more by using My Foods.

Customization Tip #2: Save frequently used foods to My Foods

By saving your favorite and frequently-used food listings to your My Foods list, you can quickly find the foods you are looking for when looking up nutrition information, analyzing recipes, or tracking your intake. 

Here's an example of how to do this:

1. When you search our database for "chicken breasts" and you'll get at least 43 results, depending on how you have set your preference settings.

2. Narrow your search to "Poultry Products" (by clicking on the category link) and you'll have just 14 results. But let's say the one you want is the boneless, skinless, raw chicken breasts.

3. Now, click on the orange plus sign to the left of the correct entry and select "Add to My Foods."

That's it!  You never have to hunt through the entire database for this listing again. Simply click on My ND in the top navigation bar and select My Foods to go directly to your list of favorites foods. 

 

From your My Foods list, you can view nutrition facts, build recipes, compare foods, or add foods to your tracking report. In the next post in this series, I'll show you what to do if the food you're looking for isn't in the database.

Not paying attention? You're likely to gain weight.

A new study in this month's Journal of Nutrition finds that eating more fiber not only helps keep you from gaining weight but, importantly, keeps you from gaining fat tissue.  In fact, every extra gram of dietary fiber translated into a pound less of body weight and reduced body fat percentage by a quarter of a percent. 

This doesn't mean that eating a gram of fiber will make you lose a pound, obviously. It means that women who ate 30 grams of fiber weighed, on average, 5 pounds less than people who ate only 25 grams per day. And this was true regardless of age, activity level, and other variables.

As interesting as this is, it was actually something else in the study that got my attention:  Of the 252 women followed for the study, fully half of them gained weight over the course of 20-months between their initial assessment and the follow-up. 

The women weren't trying to gain or lose, just going about their daily lives...and gaining weight. To me, this suggests that if you aren't actively involved in maintaining your weight, you can easily end up gaining weight. It also suggests that keeping your fiber intake up is an effective way to avoid this unwanted weight gain.  Why? It appears that those who eat more fiber tend to eat fewer calories, probably because fiber-rich foods are more filling.

Use our nutrient search tool to find foods high in fiber.

Calorie needs during pregnancy and breast-feeding

Q. I am pregnant AND lactating.  I know my caloric intake and dietary needs are different than women who are only lactating or only pregnant.  Do you have any information on this?

A. That IS a somewhat unusual situation! Our Daily Needs Calculator can help you calculate your calorie needs if you are pregnant or lactating but doesn't include an option for both.  Here's how to handle this special case.

First, use the calculator to determine your calorie needs as if you were neither pregnant nor lactating. Be sure to include any exercise you regularly do. 

Next, add the calories needed to support your pregnancy.  According to the Dietary Reference Intakes established by the National Academies of Sciences, your calorie needs are not affected during your first trimester of pregnancy.  In your second trimester, you should add an additional 340/day to your normal requirements. In your third trimester, add 452/day to your normal requirements.   

Finally, add the calories needed to support breast-feeding.  Breast-feeding increases your calorie requirements by 330 calories/day during the first six months and 400/calories per day during the second six months. (Sorry, no information is given for breast feeding longer than one year.)

For example, if you're in your first trimester of pregnancy and breast-feeding a nine month old infant, you'd add 400 calories to your normal calorie requirements (0 + 400). If you were in your second trimester and breast-feeding a nine-month old, you'd add 740 calories (340 + 400).  And so on.

Keep in mind, though, that these numbers represent "the average daily amount of a nutrient considered adequate to meet the nedds of most healthy people."  Individual needs will vary.  While you're preganant, your obstetrician will be able to tell you whether you are gaining weight at the appropriate speed and this can help you adjust your calorie intake accordingly.  Best of luck with your family!

Great, healthy recipes for your Mardi Gras Celebration

Mardi Gras is coming up (February 24th). Whether you're planning a big celebration or just using it is an excuse for a festive family meal, here are some healthy recipes that fit the theme:

New Orleans Shrimp, Okra, and Tomato Saute 
(ND Analysis)

Asparagus, Peas, and Basil   
(ND analysis)

Edamame Succotash Salad 
(ND analysis)

Poached Rum Raisin Pears 
(ND analysis)

Is sweet fruit more nutritious?

Q. Is the sweetness of a piece of fruit an indication of its nutritional value? I recently bought strawberries that looked delicious and sweet. When I ate them they were about as tasteless as I've ever eaten.  I couldn't help wonder if their lack of flavor also meant they lacked the nutritional value of other sweeter/tastier strawberries.  Or, does a bland strawberry simply mean it has less sugar and still has all the nutritional value of a sweeter strawberry?

A. This is a very intriguing question!  Both sweetness and nutritional content will vary according to the variety of plant and where it was grown as well as the degree of ripeness and how long its been in storage. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the strawberries we get today were bred for looks and transportability, not for sweetness or flavor.  That's why you can get beautiful looking strawberries that taste like styrofoam. (Although I've noticed that strawberries that smell good usually taste good!)

In our database, we only have one listing for raw strawberries and it doesn't specify just how yummy the fruit was that they analyzed. I presume the nutrient information represents an average cross-section of what you might find in markets around the country. So, everything that follows is an educated guess.

Intuitively, it seems as if riper, more flavorful strawberries would indeed by more nutritious. We know that other fruits, such as bell peppers, contain more antioxidants when they are ripe (red, or orange, for example) than when they are green.  So I am tempted to guess that riper strawberries might also have more antioxidants than less ripe ones. They'd presumably also contain more sugar. I imagine the fiber content would be more or less the same.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Coffee and cholesterol

Q. There have been a couple articles in the lay press suggesting there is a correlation between increased bad cholesterol and the use of a French Press coffee maker.  Is this just silliness or is there some truth in this correlation that would encourage one to use a drip coffee maker more freqently? 

A. There is, in fact, research showing that drinking unfiltered coffee acts can raise cholesterol levels, but only in men.  In fact, the same studies found that drinking unfiltered coffee increased HDL (or "good") cholesterol levels in women!  It's not the caffeine, by the way, but another compound found in coffee that appears to affect cholesterol. This compound is effectively removed by passing the coffee through a filter, as in drip coffee. 

If you have reason to be concerned about your cholesterol levels, you might wish to choose drip coffee as your default.  However, no correlation has been found between drinking coffee (even unfiltered) and an increased risk of heart disease. In fact, people who drink coffee have a reduced risk of diabetes, Parkinson’s, colon cancer, gallstones, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Customize Your ND Experience

One of the greatest strengths of NutritionData is the wealth of detailed nutrition information you'll find here. But if you're having trouble finding what you're looking for, all that information can turn into a liability.  This week on the blog, I'll highlight several ways to streamline and customize your ND experience.

Customization Tip #1: Set your category preferences.

All of the ten thousand foods in our database are sorted into a few dozen categories, such as "Fruits and Fruit Juices," "Beverages," and "Baby Foods."   You can set your site preferences to display only the categories you're interested  in. For example, if you don't have infants, you can set it not to display results in the Baby Foods category. If you're a vegetarian,  you can set it so that meats are not included in your results. And so on. 

Here's how:

1. In the navigation bar at the top of the page, click on My ND and select My Preferences.

2. If you're not logged in, you'll need to enter your ND username and password.  If you've never registered, click on "register" to create a username and password for your account. 

3. On the preference setting page, you can select which categories of foods will display in your searches on ND. For example, if you don't wish to see food items from fast food restaurants, you can uncheck these boxes. 

4. Click "save preferences" and you're done.  Keep in mind that your preferences will be applied whenever you are signed in on NutritionData, unless you change them.  If you're ever searching in vain for a food that you feel certain should be in the database, double check to be sure it isn't in a category that you've excluded in your preferences. (Or, sign out and try your search again.)

Click here to find out how to make it even easier to find the foods you're looking for: Customization Tip #2.

Use the "cook with this" button to find recipes

Q. I am interested in finding some great, tasty recipes for black-eyed peas.  Can you lead me to a link for some? Thanks!

A. On the right-hand side of every food detail page, you'll find a box that says "Cook with this!"

Enter in your search term (the field will be pre-filled with whatever food you're currently looking at) and click to search our sister site Epicurious.com for some great recipes. Here's a list of some good ideas for using black-eyed peas.