Alternative Foods

How many times a year do you say, "I'm gonna get into shape and eat right!" From there you go to your favorite supermarket and spend twice as much time reading labels in order to reduce your carbohydrate, fat, or sodium intake. Do you actually know what you are looking for? Do you understand what the tongue twister words listed in the ingredients mean, let alone pronounce them.

Let's take butter for example. Butter is known to be high in saturated fat and is loaded with cholesterol so by hearing this we immediately decide to look for an alternative. The butter alternative is margarine. Even some brands of margarine will claim to be heart healthy, low fat and contain no trans fats. Some brands actually print this on the label then they also print in the ingredients something which totally contradicts their claim: "monoglycerites." Since this is a word not normally used in my vocabulary I initiated a little research to find out what it meant: "trans fats!" Trans fats are the worst type of fat to feed our body. Trans fats will coat your arteries with so much plaque it will eventually cause a heart attack from a clog or even stroke if some of this plaque decides to start moving. Sticking moderately to real butter is far better.

My thing is cream for my coffee. For years I've been buying fat free creamer. Now that I think of it, I should have been savvy to lie from the beginning by reading, "fat free creamer." That's like saying, "wet-less water." Just recently I decided to pull out my glasses and read what actually is in the ingredients of my fat free creamer: mono and dyglycerides which are other words for "trans fats." Kind of ridiculous don't you think? A little hint to stick to moderation of the real stuff maybe?

What's happening here is these brands are capitalizing on our fears and manufacturing fat and legally calling it something else. The government does nothing about it because not enough evidence is there to prove their manufactured fats are killing people and or they have not been sued by a good lawyer forcing them to actually call it fat within their ingredients.

It goes back to moderation of the real stuff. Us being a fast food nation has cause us to believe the alternatives are better. And the manufacturers of these alternatives are profiting on our stupidity. They are betting we never read or research their ingredients and up to now, they are winning that bet.

Sugar

One of the most unavoidable foods in our diets is sugar. It's found in most fruits and is a usually an ingredient used to enhance flavor to many of our favorite dishes and or treats. In fact, most often it is commonly associated as the main ingredient in most of our treats whether it be cake, pie, candy or even the healthy alternative being fruit. But how much is enough or too much?

There are many side effects of consuming too much sugar in the short and long term. In the short term you're capable of experiencing symptoms of hyper/hypoglycemia such as shakiness, nervousness, sweating, dizziness or light-headedness, restlessness, confusion, decreased verbal ability, and anxiety. In the long term there is Tooth decay, gum disease, obesity, diabetes and heart disease, a weakened immune system, stress, accelerated aging and reduced cognition. Moderation plays a healthy part in avoiding these type of symptoms and is surely to be a topic for this blog in the very near future.

One of my best rules for consuming moderate amounts of sugar is to try and avoid table sugar or refined white table sugar. The best way to do this is to only ingest fruits as your primary source of sugar. Refined sugars are easy to overdose because they are high doses in small quantity, where fruits tend to contain small doses of sugar in large quantities thus making it hard for you to reach that overdose level because you are too full from consumption. But once again, moderation is key. The holiday treat is unavoidable unless you have superhuman power to resist.

Another important aspect as well as a personal one for me consuming less sugar is the fact that cancer tends to thrive off of sugar. Since I am a cancer survivor, one of the test needed to monitor my remission is called a PET scan. This test consists of injecting a radioactive substance into the bloodstream and passing the body through MRI/CAT scan type of device. This radioactive substance attracts sugar and sugar attracts cancer causing the scan to identify cancer cells if they are present. Keep in mind ingesting sugar is not to be mistaken as a cause of cancer. The fact is, cancer tends to bind and feed on sugar in laboratory tests.

So stop eating sugar? Of course not. Monitor and reduce consumption perhaps. But having knowledge of the many by-products caused by too much sugar is helpful towards reducing your excessive intake of this wonderful ingredient we all love so much.

Cataracts

Every year my employer offers an annual benefits enrollment. This is when all employees make their elections on what type of coverage they are going to have the proceeding year. Our choices are from a wide array of categories such as medical, dental, vision, life insurance, your spouses life insurance, as well as flexible spending - an excellent pre-tax benefit - which is used for out of pocket medical expenses or medical dilemma's not covered by your normal coverage. When we are young, electing insurances other than medical seemed less important. But as we age, certain insurances will be cost saving considerations. One very important insurance is vision when you consider the most performed surgery in the United States is cataract surgery.

The condition of cataracts effects 3,000,000 Americans annually. This is a condition where abnormal proteins form within the lens of the eye. The cause of cataracts is still very unclear, but few studies point toward lead poisoning among many other culprits such as people working in high altitudes making them more susceptible to a higher exposure of ultraviolet radiation.

As a flight attendant I work in an environment where my risk of developing cataracts is a strong possibility. It is important for me to choose a vision plan, thus protect my pocket book, and provide a means to determine whether I have certain conditions which are detrimental to my vision.

Some eye care professional believe we can reduce our risk by eating foods high in antioxidants and by reducing our sodium intake. Wearing sunglasses can also reduce the amount of ultraviolet exposure to our eyes. Along with causing many other health problems, smoking and high alcohol consumption are considered to be risk factors for developing cataracts.

Treatment for cataracts can range from wearing a more magnified pair of glasses to surgery when it appears the use of glasses is not effective. 9 out of 10 people regain normal vision after this relatively fast and painless surgery while if not normal vision, better vision is a satisfactory result nevertheless.

Fiber

Are you getting enough? Lack of fiber in our diets can lead to many medical complications as we grow older and become less active. As a result of our western culture it's a nutrient which may be hard to adequately maintain without the use of supplements which goes completely against my theory regarding the very topic, "Supplements," when I suggested the use of them as not necessary. This is my only exception to that theory. Most of our westernized fast food restaurants do not offer many foods high in fiber.

Appendicitis, Breast and Colon cancer, Constipation leading to diverticular disease and hemorrhoids, symptoms from diabetes and hypoglycemia, gallstones cause by elevated blood cholesterol levels leading to heart disease, irritable bowl syndrome, obesity, and on a personal level, varicose veins should all be enough reason for us to be aware of our daily intake of fiber. These symptoms and diseases are linked to the lack of fiber in our diets. It's recommended we include 25 - 45 grams of fiber in our dietary intake each day to help ward off some of these diseases and or symptoms.

Some common supplements to achieve an adequate fiber level are: Fiber One, Metamucil, Benefiber, to name a few.

Besides supplements there are still many high fiber foods - avocado's are my favorite high fiber food - if you are willing to take the time to prepare and shop differently from your usual routine:

Grain and Whole Wheat Products
Bagels, Bran Buds, Brown Rice, Buds, Cereals, Granola, Muffins, Pasta.

Fruits
Dried fruits (apricots, dates, prunes, raisins) Apples, Avocado, Bananas, Blackberries, Blueberries, Mango,Oranges, Peach, Pears, Raspberries, Strawberries

Vegetables
Broccoli, Beans, Carrots, Cauliflower, Corn, Green Beans, Green Peas, Greens, Legumes, Peas, Potato with Skin,

Nuts
Almonds, Peanuts

Beans
Black, Chick, Kidney, Lentils, Lima, Pinto, Soy

Stress

So many factors are involved in our daily lives which have the potential to create stress. It may be impossible to live life without some sort of stress since it is subconscious reactionary process. Part of our lives and like anything else which has a positive or negative, a yes and a no, stress is an opposite force to something else. Stress is good or bad depending on what's its catalyst. Stress we want to avoid is when it becomes a precursor to some sort of boiling point which causes a negative response mentally or physically.

The negative factors of stress are caused from your physical environment and eventually transcend toward how your internal factors respond. How you mentally process elements in your daily life will very likely determine your stress level. Chores aren't done? You can be mad about the fact and think of reasons why it is not done and force yourself to be more upset, or you can move on and consider the chore will be done eventually. Being mad or thinking it has to be done "right now" is pointing you in the direction of negative stress. People who strive for perfection tend to be a vortex for stress - this I know this because I'm one of those people.

Not addressing these negative factors will only lead to a bigger problem over time. Some easy road blocks to stress are diet and exercise. As we enter the second half of our lives our changing physiology plays a big part in contributing toward our stress levels because we are constantly learning different ways to cope with the aging process. Diet and exercise are crucial when it comes to coping with so many of our physical changes. There are also other tools which can help with coping with stress and can be accessed through your doctor with medication or through self help books at your local library. Not addressing the issue or being in denial will only send you into depression or ultimately, to your grave.