the grocery store: it's a jungle out there

I recently got involved with Cooking Matters, a program run through Gleaners Food Bank, teaching participants about nutrition and what it means to eat and live healthfully. On top of nutrition education, each class includes a cooking demo (hands down the most DELICIOUS part of the class!) where a chef teaches class participants basic knife skills and cooking techniques as well as fun facts about the foods we are preparing that day. If you love people, have an interest in nutrition, and live in Southeastern Michigan, I would highly suggest that you sign up to help teach a class! (And no, you don't need to be a nutrition professional to teach! They give you the lesson plan in advance to guide you.) Definitely a good time and extremely rewarding, too.


One of my favorite Cooking Matters lessons is the grocery store tour - where we go to a local grocery store and give suggestions for navigating through the twists and turns of those looming Meijer aisles. I thought I'd share with y'all some tips we share with the participants, along with my own suggestions that I've come up with to help give you the most nutritional bang for your buck.

1. Make a list! Check it twice! AND STICK TO IT. When we don't make a list, we make more impulse buys. AKA buy foods we don't need, are not healthful, and end up spending more money.


2. Stick to the perimeter. Think about how grocery stores are usually set up. We've got the produce, dairy products, bread, and meats around the perimeter. And what about the middle aisles? Cereals, cookies, chips, sodas, frozen meals, and all of those colorful boxes and cans that claim there's a balanced meal inside, waiting for you! Now, there are some decent canned and frozen foods out there (this can be a blog post unto itself), for sure, but the majority of the middle aisles will be processed foods - things we want to eat in moderation. 



3. Buy in bulk, but only if you're going to use it. Stocking up like the end of the world is near seems appealing. Most of the time, however, the extra food just goes bad and is thrown away. And think of it this way: those are your dollars being thrown away! Produce that keeps well for a long time are root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, and beets; and fruits with skins like apples, oranges, and pears. Fruits and vegetables that have a higher water content, like berries, peppers, and zucchini, can be frozen for later. Try the freezing technique found in this post here. Just make sure to use your frozen produce within 6 months so you can enjoy them to their yummiest potential and without freezer burn.


On another note, bread (and other bread products like bagels, English muffins, and tortillas) can also be frozen! When I first starting living off-campus during college, my friends definitely did a double take when they saw my loaves of bread in the freezer. But who wants moldy bread, especially when you can't eat it fast enough and your non-air conditioned student housing has bananas ripening and bread molding within 2 days?! So just pop the entire loaf of bread in the freezer and take out the number of slices you want when the moods hits you. Just be sure to zap 'em in the microwave first for a few seconds to defrost.


4. Pre-packaged foods = more $$$. Buying bagged lettuce may be an easy option, but you are also paying more money to have the dirty work done for you. If you are looking to save a few dollars, try cutting up your own fruits and veggies instead of ones that are already chopped up for you.  Don't think you'll have time to peel and chop carrots into carrot sticks? Try this: Prep all of your produce right when you get home from the grocery store. Then when you want it during a hectic day, it is ready for you!


Also, did you know that the more "convenient" the food and the more it is handled - think pre-packaged lettuce mixes, bagged spinach, and baby carrots - the more of a concern food borne illness becomes? I'm not saying that your bagged lettuce contains E. coli, but as the convenience factor of a food increases, so does the risk of a contaminant coming into contact with the food. 


5. Don't get stuck in the middle, high and low is where to go! Remember this saying when you frequent the center aisles where the more processed foods live. Did you know that manufacturers pay the grocery store more money to have their product placed on the middle shelf? It's a pretty intelligent tactic to help increase sales, mostly because the middle shelf is at eye level for....kids! This is especially true in the cereal aisle. Cereals found on the middle shelf often have more sugar, cost more, and have less fiber than a cereal found on the top or bottom shelf. Check it out the next time you're in the cereal aisle! Also, when choosing a breakfast cereal, find one with a good source of fiber, which is 3 or more grams per serving.

VS.

It's the battle of the century. Who will prevail?

Also, consider buying bagged cereals. They're a bottom shelf cereal, and you might be surprised by their top-notch taste! If it's hard to believe that Frosted Mini Spooners are equitable to Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats, give the ingredients list and nutrition facts a glance. They might be more similar than you originally thought.


Do you have any of your own tips for navigating the grocery store jungle? I'd love to hear 'em!


Photo creds: Grocery store, Frosted Mini Spooners, Frosted Mini Wheats,

how sweet it is: breakfast make-over

So have I got the breakfast recipe for you that is perfect for this beautiful spring/summertime weather we've been getting in the Mitten! Yes. COLD oatmeal. Maybe some of you have had oatmeal made like this before. I just discovered this recipe during my food service rotation with Dexter School District back in January, and man, oh man, I think it's delicious. The best part? This recipe lets you mix n' match what goes in it to make and endless combination of oatmeal yumminess - a great way to prevent breakfast from becoming ho-hum. Today's concoction? Cinnamon banana walnut oatmeal!

Lately, I've been making this oatmeal with thawed out strawberries and blackberries that are in my freezer, which makes me feel like I'm getting a sneak peak of summer. Freezing berries from the summer is a GREAT was to extend their life, and you can eat them all through the winter months if you freeze enough of them! Just make sure to pre-freeze them first by laying them out on a cookie sheet. This makes sure that they don't clump together to form a lovely ginormous ball of ice. After they're rock solid, transfer your now nicely frozen berries into Ziploc bags. Currently, mine are in gallon-sized bags, but snack-sized bags are a good idea since then you can take the berries out in more realistic sized portions.


However, I probably could eat at least a half gallon bag of frozen berries....they are just that delicious.


Showing off my summertime oatmeal, berry-style, is for another day, though. Let's talk about this concoction right here and how you can make it, too.

Summertime Oatmeal
1/2 cup uncooked oats
1/2 cup milk of choice (Lactose-intolerance has made me an almond and soy milk fan, so that's what I usually reach for)
Mix-ins of your choice! Some good ideas are: Chopped walnuts, almonds, raisins, bananas, berries (all kinds!), cinnamon, nutmeg, honey, Greek yogurt, the sky's the limit! The nuts are especially good sources of monounsaturated fat that will help keep you satisfied.


Mix up the oats and milk into a bowl. Stir in any fruit or nuts that you want to add. Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, take out your oatmeal and top it with any flavorings you like - this means spices or natural sweeteners (like a few drizzles of honey or flavored Greek yogurt - more on this in a second). Stir it up, and devour!

 A great thing about this oatmeal is that it is sweetened naturally and without the extra sugar that you might find in those oatmeal packets. Think of the ones that come in Peaches N'Cream, Cinnamon N'Suga, and even Dinosaur Eggs flavors. If you currently add a decent amount of brown sugar, sugar, maple syrup, etc. to your daily bowl of heart healthy goodness, why not explore some alternatives? According to the USDA in 2000, an average of 31 five-pound bags of sugar were consumed per capita (or per person) each year. 

It is almost no wonder, then, that complications with type 2 diabetes is in the top 10 leading causes of death and that more than one-third of American adults are obese. Extra weight gain also puts us at risk for obesity-related conditions like heart disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer.


So what can we do?  Well. The first step is to start eliminating unnecessary sugars from your diet. Gradually, of course. Cold turkey is just a recipe for disaster. Since many breakfast cereals, oatmeals, and granola bars usually have a good dose of sugar in them, a good start to reducing your sugar intake is taking a look at what you eat in the morning. Let's start with this oatmeal that we've been talking about.


Soy milk and almond milk have a different kind of flavor and sweetness than non-fat milk, and using it in this recipe is a great way to utilize it as a natural sweetener. However, it's important to be aware that almond milk has only about 1 gram of protein per 8 oz. serving, while most soy milks have about 6-8 grams per 8 oz. serving (non-fat milk has 8 grams). Both, when calcium fortified, will provide you with about 30-45% of your daily needs for calcium (depending on the brand). Just make sure it is fortified with vitamin D, as well, or all that calcium will be for naught, since vitamin D is necessary for our bones to take up the calcium we consume.


Fruit is another great natural source of sweetness, and adding loads of it to this recipe can help satisfy your morning sweet tooth. I also mentioned in the recipe that adding some flavored Greek yogurt (about 1/4 cup might do the trick) is another way to amp up the sweetness in your morning grub, without adding spoonful upon spoonful of sugar. The protein-boost in Greek yogurt will also help to keep you full and satisfied until your next meal or snack comes along.


Try these tips a few times a week and see what happens. Listen to your body. Do you feel satisfied after eating a more protein and whole grain rich, naturally sweetened breakfast? Maybe you will notice that you are able to concentrate better during the morning hours and are able to keep your focus until lunchtime without that sugar rush and crash that refined sugars tend to give us. Give it a whirl!

we are the [breakfast] champions, my friends

Good morning, y'all! And a big, fat, HAPPY REGISTERED DIETITIAN DAY to you and you and you! And here's a little bit of some beautiful music to make those good feelings come alive.

So when you wake up in the morning, or more like, tumble out of your bed and stumble to the kitchen (or maybe this is just what I do), what's the first thing you reach for? Is it that pot of joe? Your cereal bowl? Energy drink? A granola bar or piece of fruit? We've all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and guess what? It is. Even if you're not hungry, eating a little bit of something helps to light your fire...errrm, furnace, if you will...and gets your metabolism going. Not breaking the fast in the morning keeps our body in a semi-starvation mode, a sneaky little biological response our body does to help us survive. This means that when we skip breakfast, our bodies hold on to the energy stores (fat) it already has to keep our muscles moving, heart beating, and mind working as it should, even though we don't give it energy when we wake up. That's pretty smart of it, huh?


Now for the clincher: there are tons of reasons why we do not always eat breakfast. I like to call them Breakfast Pet Peeves and maybe some of these sound familiar to you:

BREAKFAST PET PEEVES

"I'm not hungry."

"I don't have breakfast foods in the house."

"There's no time in the morning to eat breakfast or prepare it, for that matter."

"Breakfast foods? Ewww, I don't like them!"

"The morning is insane! My kids are insane, and YOU'RE insane for wanting me to eat breakfast!"

I know that I have fallen victim to some of these reasons, too, so you are not alone. The good thing is, however, is that there are realistic solutions to all of these problems with breakfast. My biggest breakfast pet peeve is not being hungry in the morning. However, I know that if I go without, I will be absolutely FAMISHED within 4 hours and then proceed to consume everything that happens to cross my path. This means the friendly donut that calls out to me, the slab of coffee cake in the break room that tells me it wants to be in mah belly, and the candy bar in the vending machine that seems to grow legs and walk into my eager little hand. 

Sound familiar, anyone?

There are a few solutions to this problem. One is to think about what you ate the night before. Did you eat a lot right before you went to bed? Maybe sticking to a smaller snack when eating close to bedtime is a good solution for you. Alas, some people just aren't hungry in the morning, regardless of what they ate, or didn't eat, the night before. Well, you are in luck my friends, because eating breakfast does not mean eating something right as your feet hit the floor. The key is to eat something within 2 hours of waking up, or even split your breakfast up into two parts. Drink a glass of low-fat milk before racing out the door and then eat a banana and a granola bar with 3+ grams of fiber once you get to your destination. Some more portable breakfast components include baggies of cereal (with 3+ grams fiber!), pieces of fruit, yogurt, a tupperware of last night's pasta dinner - whatever you will tolerate in the morning. Which brings us to another solution of these breakfast pet peeves. Breakfast foods don't need to be "breakfast foods". So go ahead and eat leftovers for breakfast! The key is to have breakfast contain at least three food groups:

This means a dairy with a fruit and grain, or a protein with a grain and dairy, etc. I'm wishing right about now that I had a handout of breakfast ideas to post along with this blog post, but I think this is something that could be done in the near future. So check back soon, and there just may be some fun lil handouts waiting for you!

Lastly, we have our last breakfast pet peeve to tackle: the T-word.

Time.

We're always talking about how we wish there was more of it, there's not enough of it, and how it goes by too fast. Well, I can't give you more time (I wish I could, I really do), but I can help you save time in the morning when you want to eat breakfast but the kids are screaming or you're later than you've ever been in your life or any other reason why time seems to slip away. One thing I like to do to save time is to actually set out everything you will need to eat a balanced breakfast the night before. Everything. This means, for example:

Cereal in the bowl covered with plastic wrap

Spoon

Banana

...all laid out at your kitchen table, waiting for you, and happy to see you when you wake up. You could even go so far as to pour the milk that you will drink in the morning into a glass and cover that with plastic wrap and place it in your fridge. This might sound silly at first, and you may think, "Really? It takes 5 seconds to pour milk into a glass!", and yes, this is true. It does not take a long time to pour milk. BUT! I challenge you to try this for a few days and see if it works. Most times it does because everything is literally right there that you need to eat a balanced breakfast.

What do YOU do to make time for breakfast? Is there an unusual food that is your favorite to eat for breakfast? Got any good ideas for breakfast-y deliciousness? Post 'em! I'd love to hear what you have to say!

Wicker Park eats

I recently returned from a great trip to the one and only Chicago. Definitely one of my favorite cities to explore! Not only did I spend time with a few of my good friends from undergrad, but we ate some, what I like to call, KICK-ASS FOOD (KAF).


kick-ass food (n. Abbr. KAF) a food of extensive deliciousness that may or may not be healthful in nature, but can fit into a balanced lifestyle.


Yep. That's right, my people. This nutritionist (can't call myself a dietitian yet until I take my boards) thinks that any food can fit into your daily diet. But more on that later.


Anyway, back to this KAF. While staying in Wicker Park, we had brunch at prasino, an establishment that boasts sustainable, "clean food" dining. I ordered the Caprese Eggs Benedict. Wow oh weeeeee.

Swoon.

The English muffin was topped with tomatoes, basil, fresh mozzarella, and a perfectly poached egg. That, topped with some hollandaise sauce and balsamic glaze made for a perfect start to my day. It also came with a side of house-made potatoes - cubed and spiced to deliciousness. Sadly, I do not currently have a working camera so I could not take a picture of this beautiful creation. However, I do highly recommend eating at Prasino if you happen to be in the Wicker Park area. Crisp clean lighting and sunshine pouring through the windows will also be yours if you decide to visit for breakfast or lunch!