Non-Fish Sources of Omega-3 Fatty Acids

All the way back in January of last year I briefly mentioned Omega-3 fatty acids in my Sustainable Seafood: Salmon post. Well Elle is not a fish fan. And I just haven't eaten much fish in recent months. (The American Heart Association recommends eating fish twice a week.) Our bodies can't make Omega-3 on their own so for Elle, sometimes for me, and for anyone else who doesn't eat fish, here are some other sources of this essential nutrient that plays a role in brain function, reduces inflammation and may lower heart disease risk. 

Flax Seeds

photo from digiyesica on flickr

According to WebMD each tablespoon of ground flax has ~1.8g of Omega-3. I buy the whole seeds because they last longer. If you buy ground, it's a good idea to keep them refrigerated if not if the freezer. I usually grind the whole seeds myself in a small coffee grinder (and then I have to wipe it down because someone else actually uses that for coffee). Grinding it helps give your body a better chance of digesting it instead of the tiny seed passing through whole. You can easily add it to a salad, soup, smoothies, and oatmeal or even throw it in when you're baking bread, muffins, or pancakes. About two tablespoons should be plenty.

Walnuts
This one is a bit more straight forward. Step one: buy them. Step two: eat them. 
This one works fine on its own but of course you can add them to salads or muffins or what not. A quarter cup is a good amount.


Soybeans
Here at Memo to My Health we're still not completely clear ourselves as to how much soy is good to have in your diet and where the boundary is for potentially affecting hormones, but soybeans are a source of ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), a Omega-3 fat that the body can convert into other Omega-3s it may need. ALA is also the source of the Omega-3 in walnuts and flax seeds. The compounds in cold-water fish for Omega-3 are EPA and DHA. 1 cup of soybeans can be an adequate source of Omega-3.


Supplements
There's still so much we don't understand about how we get certain nutrients from foods and all the roles the combination of elements in whole foods play, so it's probably your best bet to get your Omega-3 from a food source. But if you can't or aren't getting enough, you can discuss with your doctor taking a supplement and what quantity is right for you. 


Now the issues with the pills are 1) many are from fish (which may or may not bother you) and 2) a lot of people taking them end up burping a "fishy" taste all day. I've been told that if you buy a high-quality supplement the burping doesn't occur very often. 


I recently got a chance to sample the liquid Total Omega from Barlean's Omega Swirl line at a local health-food store. It was fish-oil-based but I did not experience any fishy-taste or burping in the hours after taking it. In fact, it was orange cream-flavored and was yummy enough that I could see someone getting carried away and taking too much of it. On the flip side, if you go this route, you definitely won't dread taking this daily... unless you hate the taste of orange creamsicals. Barlean's does offer other options though. I can't vouch for their taste because I'd already had my dose of the day in my sample, but in fish-based oils they also have lemon zest, mango peach, and pina colada. What's more, they have three vegetarian Omega-3 options and one vegan Omega-3 liquid. I plan to read more about it and consider it as a possibility for times when I'm not getting my Omega-3s elsewhere.  


All of the quantity recommendations for the foods in this post came from The George Mateljan Foundation. You can read more about which medical conditions there is clinical evidence that Omega-3s ameliorate as well as precautions at The University of Maryland Medical Center. And see answers to some common questions about Omega-3s (the good fat) at The Harvard School of Public Health. 


©2011 Memo To My Health. Please do not republish our content without notifying us and getting permission.

Calorie-Posting Conundrum

photo from bitchcakesny on flickr

This past week U.S. News posted an article about a study published a couple of days ago in the International Journal of Obesity. The researchers were looking to see if posted calorie amounts at fast food restaurants affect how teenagers and the parents of young children order.

The short answer? Not really.

57% of the teenagers noticed the calorie labels, but on average they ordered slightly higher calorie meals when the labels were present. Only 9% of them said they even considered the calorie information when ordering. Now the article doesn't say exactly what the results were for adults outside of mentioning the findings echoed earlier research by the same team. In the earlier research around 25% of adults who noticed the labels said they considered the information when choosing their food.

To some people, I'm sure this says that mandatory calorie-posting at fast food restaurants is a waste of time. But as I touched on in the dietary guidelines section of my last post, I think the posting of calories is a good start but people need context.

 If I had to guess, I'd say a large percentage of those adults who noticed/considered the calorie count just chose one of the items with fewer calories in relation to other items on the same menu. If you tell someone a sandwich is 500 calories - what does that mean to them? Well it seems like maybe a better choice than a 700 calorie sandwich. Does the average person have an idea of how many calories are ideal for them to consume in a day though? Unless they're on a calorie-counting diet, probably not. So 500 could be fine if you think you're supposed to consume 4,000 calories a day. But 1,500 a day? 500 is starting to seem a little high.

And don't forget, unless its posted or you're using equipment with monitoring software built-in, you probably don't know how many calories you're burning a day. Plus if you made food at home earlier, you probably don't know how many calories you've already consumed when you find yourself at the fast food restaurant, so that small bit of info on the sign can't really help you figure out if you're making a choice that's fairly likely to lead to weight gain.

It all gets really messy really fast.

We haven't even gotten to the part where your overall health is about so much more than calories. Sigh.

Read the whole article that got me going "Calorie Labels Don't Affect Kids' Fast-Food Choices" and try to think of it as a step in the right direction... on a really long road.

©2011 Memo To My Health. Please do not republish our content without notifying us and getting permission.

Bites of Bittman: So Many Food Topics to Cover, So Little Time

I have so many things I want to write about on here. Literally I have at least 50 topics written down and I'm finding new stuff nearly every day. On Tuesday, I saw Mark Bittman's post on the New York Times Opinionator and proceeded to get more and more excited with each paragraph I read. He covers several topics I've been thinking about and wanting to touch on lately. And while I still hope to write more about them later, I'd like to do a quick rundown now.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 - I have such mixed feelings on this. While there were some certainly-healthier sounding ideas presented, I agree with Bittman that there seems to be too much tiptoeing and lobbying influencing these guidelines. When it comes to people's health, federal guidelines should have the everyperson as the beneficiary without money-making coming into play. Now if only it were that simple...

photo from dullhunk on flickr

I know the exact same rules of eating won't work for everyone - that's why their guidelines and not hard-and-fast rules, but still they seem a little too loose. If you tell someone to eat two to five servings of something - it does them no good if they don't know the practicality of what a serving looks like. It feeds right into the idea of putting calorie info up at every eating establishment - a step forward but without a reference point, useless to most people. I need to actually sit down and finish analysing the report, so more on this at a later time.

Oprah Goes Vegan... For A Week - I missed this episode. A newsletter I subscribe to even gave me the heads up. I'm trying to watch what clips I can and read what happened on her site, but in case you haven't heard, the gist is Oprah and her entire staff ate vegan for a week. Some people liked it. Some did not. Weight was gained. Weight was lost. Bittman notes that it came off like eating vegan meant eating fake-cheese and fake-meat - which is a small can of worms in my book because I see both benefits from and problems with that.

Regardless, if that's what was highlighted and the reasoning for not eating meat wasn't properly explained, viewers are probably going to walk away thinking, "Why should I eat fake cheese instead of real cheese? Real is probably better for you." Bittman does well to point out that just because something can be labeled vegan doesn't mean it's necessarily good for you. Again, hopefully we can devote an entire post to this later.


Wal-Mart Wants You To Eat Healthier/Have Cheaper Produce - When I saw this headline my first thought was to wonder if I can still dislike Wal-Mart to the same degree if they're pushing healthier eating options. Here Bittman raises the issue that someone in the chain has to pay for that cheaper price in one way or another. More reading is needed here as well as a need to wait and see how this all works out. Maybe Wal-Mart saw that scene in Food Inc where the little girl is crying for fresh produce as her mother explains to the camera that chips and soda are more affordable than vegetables. Yeah... probably not.

Read the full Mark Bittman post entitled Is 'Eat Real Food' Unthinkable?

For me, the answer is no. Is it doable? Yes, but there are some out there who make it more difficult for everyone else.

©2011 Memo To My Health. Please do not republish our content without notifying us and getting permission.

Processed Food Land: Adventures in More Questionable Marketing

It's no surprise that Taco Bell may not be the only company with questionable product naming. The Healthy Eats Blog over at Food Network recently posted What's Really in Your Food?, a brief look at a few more food products questionably marketed.

Fast food places using some food-like ingredients doesn't seem like anything new. Some argue it's common knowledge. But is it really? If just one person doesn't know that when you say beef, you mean a little bit of beef and a whole bunch of other stuff, it's not right. And it leads to a slippery slope that could become confusing for more and more people as we just assume everyone knows that when this place calls a food something that's really not what it entirely is.

When a fast food restaurant uses the name "maple syrup" (like in the "What's Really in Your Food?" example), many people will probably take into consideration that there were probably some short cuts taken since the price of the food is so cheap. But will all those same people question a box that says "maple syrup" at the grocery store? Probably some still, but not all. That means a gap for even more people between what they think they're eating and what they actually are.

I'm fairly aware of processed foods and shortcuts and label-reading, yet I was still surprised by the Healthy Eats article's mention of blueberries. They're saying in cereal, some companies don't actually use blueberries despite advertising them. I'm not a really big cereal eater, so I figured that blueberries in cereal were probably just dried blueberries - probably with some preservative - so they could have a long shelf life. But Healthy Eats is saying sometimes they're really starches coated with food dye to resemble the real food.
Ick.

Blueberries (the real kind) from Jeff Kubina on the Wikimedia Commons

So here you are, thinking you're being healthy by having anti-oxidant-containing blueberries, and really you're just eating dyed starch bits.

Super. Let's derail the people who are actually making an effort to pick something healthier by tricking them and depriving them the nutrients they think they're getting.



Check ingredients whenever you can, people. And read, the full Healthy Eats article.

Note: While i think this particular Healthy Eats article has info that's good to know, I don't necessarily agree with absolutely everything they write. So keep that in mind.


©2011 Memo To My Health. Please do not republish our content without notifying us and getting permission.