India, Oct. 6 -- Ritu Dalmia, one of India's best known chefs admits that she's the queen of snacking. At midnight. "All through the day I tend to take small bites here and there - I can't avoid it in my job, though I can still control it. But come night, I really snack. I just have to," she says. Dalmia is trying to clamp down on the midnight munchies, but it's hard. Even the dietician's suggestion of going to bed earlier hasn't worked. What has helped, though, is choosing what to snack on. "If earlier it was Camembert with crackers and fig chutney, or worse slivers of fatty ham and sausages, now I dig into sunflower seeds, nuts, or a dip like tzatziki, hummus or baba ghanoush with vegetable sticks. And I am loving it. So is my body," Dalmia says.

The restaurateur clearly is on the right track. The urge to snack strikes us all at some point of our lives (and of most of us, at some point of the day!). But mindless snacking, specially the 11 am, 5 pm and post-midnight tummy rumblings can undo even the strongest of wills and defeat all well meaning diets. Still, snacks aren't the devils they're made out to be. In fact, in-between pockets of nourishment have shown to make you less cranky, keep your weight under control, and provide essential nutrients. So long as you graze on the right stuff.

The local options

"Indians are notorious for their chai nashta and unfortunately almost all Indian snacks are lethal and totally unkind to waistlines," states Dalmia. "Chiwda, laccha, namkeens of all sorts, pakodas, samosas... no one can come close to Indians where snacking is concerned, except for maybe the Spanish." Aditya Bal, a foodie and a popular TV host agrees. "Across India, both in urban and rural areas, all I see people eat is deep-fried food, morning to night, and in between, they nibble on something sweet," he says. He adds that most Indian cultures simply don't have enough healthy alternatives to choose from. They don't, for example, have momos the way the people in the North East do. "I believe that Gujaratis have healthier snacks compared to others. Most of their stuff like dhokla, khandvi, etc is steamed. We can follow their example. But with fast food taking over so completely, coupled with their fabulous marketing, I am sure our next generation is in even deeper trouble compared to us," he explains.

All's not lost. Mumbai chef Vicky Ratnani, the man behind the Mumbai restaurant and lounge Aurus, lists several Indian snacks that won't keep your cardiologist busy. "Everyone can snack healthily, if they so desire,' he says. "Opt for steamed bhutta, which is one of the healthiest foods you can nibble on. I love bhel without sweet chutney, and lots of vegetables and sprouts like black beans, channa and masoor." Bal finds that nothing beats fresh, hot idlis with just a bit of sambar. "Steamed perfection," he says.

The global choices

The good news is: the whole world snacks. "Europeans usually snack as a rule," says Dalmia. "And while the French snack less than other cultures, they have street carts selling flat crusty cakes called galettes, which work as a between-meal snack. In Italy, shops sell pizzas by the slice or small paninis. They munch on olives or cheese with drinks before dinner, which really is snacking, isn't it? You'll also find office goers having an espresso between breakfast and lunch and eating a small piece of something. In Spain, tapas bars serve bite-size foods, and people go to nibble in these snack restaurants all the time. In fact when I was with friends in Barcelona, we were snacking all through the day. It was a way of life for them."

The Japanese, on the other hand, don't snack much. They see meals as almost a ritual. And when they do snack, it is usually on extremely healthy drinks and dairy that has body-boosting ingredients like probiotics. It's something we can learn from them for sure. Or make like the French and savour our snacks slowly to get maximum satisfaction out of them. "From the Spanish we can learn to have small portions," says Ratnani. Or snack smart - like they do in South East Asia. "Take Thailand's famous snack - sticky rice with dried prawns, or even their roadside grills," says Bal, referring to tiny controlled portions through the day. "In Singapore I see people eating round the clock, but everything is so cleverly cooked - steamed vegetables, soupy broths, and poached chicken." For Dalmia, Middle Eastern dips "are the most fabulous things to snack on" - she ensures that there's always some in the fridge to prevent her reaching out for the cheese and marmalade.

Nibbles for thought

Some rules for smart snacking: chuck the guilt: Snacking will not make you fat, but bad eating (whether at a snack or at a meal) will. A 100-to-200-calorie snack two to three hours before a meal can take the edge off your hunger and keep you from overeating. Studies show that people who have an afternoon snack score higher on memory and concentration tests than those who have, perhaps, a diet soda.

Read more from the original source:
Munch ado about nothing: How to snack right

Moderately obese people who ate the Mediterranean diet lost more weight than groups of people who followed either a low-fat or a low-carbohydrate diet, researchers reported.

The Mediterranean group weighed almost seven pounds less than they weighed six years earlier. In the low-carb group, the total was 3.7 pounds, and the low-fat group was 1.3 pounds. The Mediterranean diet is one based on the eating habits of people who live in that part of the world -- high in produce, and including olive oil and fish.

The researchers, in a letter published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, collected data from a two-year work-based program called the Dietary Intervention Randomized Controlled Trial. They randomly assigned 322 moderately obese people, most of them men, to the three diet categories. The participants were given education assistance about the diets.

After two years, the average weight loss was 6.4 pounds in the low-fat group, almost 10 pounds in the Mediterranean group and 10.3 in the low-carb group. At that point, 259 people remained in the study.

After six years, 67% had continued with their original diet, 11% had switched to another diet, and 22% were not dieting.

The researchers, led by Dr. Dan Schwartzfuchs of the Nuclear Research Center Negev in Israel, concluded that the workplace intervention had long-lasting, favorable postintervention effects, particularly among participants receiving the Mediterranean and low-carbohydrate diets, despite a partial regain of weight.

mary.macvean@latimes.com

twitter.com/mmacvean

Original post:
Mediterranean dieters kept weight off for six years

Women have come a long way in the past century, from winning the right to vote to gaining ground in the workplace. But "having it all" can sometimes feel like "having to take care of it all," which is why busy women often take unhealthy shortcuts that can lead to serious health problems.

The idea that women can have a career and raise two or three children and look fantastic while doing it, and have a clean home to boot, is unrealistic, says Dr. Annie Nedrow, associate director at Duke Integrative Medicine. Many families have moved away from the typical gender roles, so men and women share household responsibilities. But women still shoulder a lot of tasks, and to save time, they take shortcuts that shortchange their health over the long haul.

What begins as cutting a few corners in your 20s, can become a downward spiral that winds up causing health problems down the road when women are in their 30s or 40s, Nedrow says. "It's a snowball effect that I see all of the time."

Here are the top five ways women cut corners and how it affects their health.

1 Not getting enough sleep. The National Sleep Foundation recommends adults sleep, on average, seven to nine hours per night, but 37 percent of adults in the U.S. report regularly sleeping fewer than seven hours a night, and women are more likely to report difficulties during the day from sleep loss. Lack of sleep has been tied to health problems such as increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, heart attack and stroke, according to a 2009 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the effects of sleep loss.

2 Eating junk food. It's easy to fall into the convenience of buying fast food for lunch and dinner or to raid the vending machines at work for a quick snack. Not only are fast foods typically high in calories and low in nutrients, but research is uncovering evidence that junk food is truly addictive and can lead to inflammation in the body that puts people at higher risk for obesity, heart attack, diabetes and cancer.

A study published in June in the Public Library of Science One journal analyzed the inflammatory responses of rodents fed control diets, a lard-based diet or a "junk-food" diet that consisted of things like cookies and chips. "The diet that consisted of human junk food caused the most inflammation and dramatic metabolic changes," says Liza Makowski, assistant professor of nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and the study's senior researcher. "These animals (on the junk food diet) ate more, gained more weight, and showed more signs of inflammation and more signs of stress in their tissues," Makowski says. In fact, the rats, like people, could not stop eating the junk food.

A 2010 study published in Neuro-science by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute showed for the first time that the same brain chemistry behind drug addiction fuels the compulsion to overeat.

And if that's not enough bad news about junk food, studies also show it can affect your mood. When people regularly eat commercial baked goods like doughnuts or fast foods such as pizza, hamburgers and hot dogs, they are at a greater risk for depression, according to a recent study reported in the journal Public Health Nutrition.

3 Not exercising. The benefits of exercise have been widely acknowledged. Exercise benefits both mind and body and can actually increase productivity by relieving stress and boosting blood flow to the brain. The "2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans" by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports strong evidence that exercise lowers the risk of early death, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and colon and breast cancer, along with preventing obesity. Physical activity may also improve sleep and reduce depression. In 2011, less than half of women ages 18 and older met the physical activity guidelines for aerobic exercise.

See the rest here:
Stop shortchanging your health

Pitched against two hugely inspiring finalists, Craig Grant had some stiff competition. It is his forensic approach to every aspect of his poultry business, combined with a willingness to work with others to build knowledge and expertise, that marks him out as the winner.

Throw any question at him about his costs of production and he either knows the answer immediately - down to three decimal places in some instances - or can work it out in seconds.

He knows that when you are dealing with 40,000 free-range birds and supplying a major retailer that attention to detail and meticulous record keeping is what keeps you ahead of the game.

In just five years Craig has established a profitable poultry business on the 290ha arable and pig farm run by his father and uncle near Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire.

He runs the family's two 12,000-bird houses on a self-employed basis and also operates his own 16,000 Big Dutchman multi-tier unit which he built in his own right after securing grant funding in 2010. All the houses utilise grain grown on the main farm. Eggs are sold to Morrisons through its local packing station, Farmlay Eggs.

After 10 years travelling the world as an engineer in the oil industry Craig has seen what life is like away from farming and it is evident that it shapes his whole approach.

He says it gave him confidence in working with different people from different cultures and an understanding of how business in general operates.

It means he places a strong emphasis on the need for good communication with his buyer and is constantly looking for opportunities to tweak his system so he can increase efficiency, drive down costs or improve bird welfare.

He is not someone who is afraid to try out new techniques - for example modifying the speed of his egg belts to cut collection times and working with contacts in the feed industry to trial new diets.

"Attention to small details make all the difference with regard to profit at the end of the day," he says. The results are there to be seen - Craig's birds are all laying eight to 10 eggs over target, which translates to extra profit.

Read more here:
You are here

Diet Chef is reminding people of the importance of a healthy diet following new research that has shown eating junk food diet could increase the risk of stroke or death at a younger age.

(PRWEB UK) 5 October 2012

A study conducted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation Centre for Stroke Recovery in Canada suggested people who eat so called cafeteria diets, which are high in calories, sugar, fat and salt, are more likely to suffer a stroke or even die at a younger age.

To conduct the research, rats were given unlimited access to both nutritional food pellets and junk food items like cookies and sausages. They could also choose between water and a 30 per cent sucrose solution, similar to soft drinks.

It was discovered that the majority of rats preferred the junk food and, as a result, they suffered from high levels of cholesterol, blood sugar, obesity and blood pressure after just two months. They presented a combination of these symptoms, often referred to as metabolic syndrome, which is thought to increase the risk of suffering from a stroke.

Dr Dale Corbett, scientific director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation Centre for Stroke Recovery, said: I think we'll soon start to see people in their 30s or 40s having strokes, having dementia, because of this junk food diet. Young people will have major, major problems much earlier in life."

Caron Leckie, Diet Chef nutritionist, comments: The junk food style cafeteria diet is one more example of excess; high calories, high sugar, high fat and high salt. With growing public health concerns such as stroke and metabolic syndrome it is important now more than ever to encourage moderation and balance in our food choices

Diet Chef is a specially designed, delivered meal plan that helps people to lose weight, while ensuring they get all the vitamins and nutrients they need to stay fit and healthy. All meals are prepared by an expert chef, meaning they are calorie and portion controlled, allowing individuals to shed the pounds the healthy way.

Diet Chef carefully counts the calories of all meals so dieters on the plan will be averaging less than 1,200 calories per day. The daily menu allows you to get delicious home delivered food, as well as offering a tasty and varied, healthy balanced plan encouraging dieters to lose weight at a healthy pace.

Those on the diet looking to check their own progress can do so using the weight loss calculator as well as sharing their weight loss success stories via the website or Diet Chef social media channels.

View original post here:
Diet Chef comments on the news that junk food diets dramatically increase stroke risk

5 October 2012 Last updated at 09:48 By Michelle Warwicker BBC Food

In 50 years of James Bond films we are left with no doubt about the hero's love of vodka martinis. In Ian Fleming's books Bond's passion for good food was also apparent. But could 007's diet really sustain his high-action lifestyle?

Bond is a true action man, with a high-energy job, and he needs to fuel the furnace.

Those fit and active on a similar level include royal marines, who get through up to 6,000 calories a day.

But does Bond eat enough of "the right stuff"?

It is 50 years since the first Bond film Dr No was released, and in the recent film Casino Royale, Bond's taste for caviar emphasises the character's world of luxury and fine dining.

But his passion for good food, described in sumptuous detail in Ian Fleming's novels, has never been fully translated in the movies.

So what does he eat in the books?

"He's a great red meat eater," says Edward Biddulph, author of Licence to Cook, a book of recipes inspired by the Bond book series.

"Lamb especially, and beef."

Read more:
The James Bond diet