This chemical in foods has been shown to cause cancer in mice but more research is needed to determine its risk in humans. Did you know that if clients broil, fry, toast, bake, or barbecue starchy foods, such as bread and potatoes, they can increase their intake of the chemical acrylamide? The more the food browns, the more acrylamide is present.
Evidence shows this fruit is jam-packed with antioxidants and phytochemicals that may help prevent and slow the progression of chronic diseases.
It’s rare to encounter a client or patient who doesn’t enjoy the taste of blueberries (Vaccinium spp). But beyond their tangy sweetness and the fact you can pop them into your mouth one by one or incorporate them into many recipes, blueberries offer a wealth of health benefits.
Blueberries are rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals that research has shown are associated with cardiovascular and cognitive health and cancer and diabetes prevention. Their popularity is on the rise in North America. And the production of fresh and processed blueberries has grown steadily by an average of 20% every two years since 2008.1 Between 2005 and 2012, North America’s blueberry fields increased 74% from 71,075 to 123,635 acres. British Colombia has the most acres in cultivation, while Michigan has been a world leader in production volumes of both fresh and processed blueberries for many decades.
Nutritional Properties and Antioxidant Composition
Dietitians have stressed the importance of incorporating low-fat, fiber-rich, and nutrient-dense foods into their clients’ and patients’ diets for decades. “Everyone should be aiming to reach their recommended amount of fruits and vegetables for optimal health, and blueberries are an easy and delicious way to help you reach your goal. Just 1/2 cup is considered one serving of fruit, and they require no slicing or peeling—plus there’s no waste,” says Joanne Tehrani, RD, communications manager for the US Highbush Blueberry Council. Blueberries are an excellent source of fiber, vitamins A and C, potassium, and folate.2 One cupful contains 14% Daily Value of fiber. Moreover, blueberries are one of the richest sources of antioxidant phytonutrients.3 Blueberries’ diverse range of phenolic compounds, such as anthocyanins, quercetin, kaempferol, myricetin, and chlorogenic acid, contributes to their overall antioxidant capacity.4,5 (Antioxidant capacity, measured by a chemical laboratory analysis technique called oxygen radical absorbance capacity is one of several methods that doesn’t account for bioavailability, distribution, and metabolism of a product’s ingredients.) “Blueberries also have a rich diversity of different anthocyanin species—like 26 different anthocyanins—whereas some other berries may feature only two or three different anthocyanin species,” says Mary Ann Lila, PhD, MS, director of the Plants for Human Health Institute and a David H. Murdock distinguished professor at North Carolina State University, who has spent 18 years studying various Vaccinium species.
Read the full article at Today’s Dietitian…
From October 2014 issue, Vol. 16 No. 10 P. 42; written by Jasenka Piljac Zegarac, PhD. Reprinted with permission.
A diagnosis of pancreatic cancer—the fourth most common cause of cancer death in the United States—can be devastating. Due in part to aggressive cell replication and tumor growth, pancreatic cancer progresses quickly and has a low five-year survival rate (less than 5%).
Blueberries pack a powerful antioxidant punch, whether eaten fresh or from the freezer, according to South Dakota State University graduate Marin Plumb. Anthocyanins, a group of antioxidant compounds, are responsible for the color in blueberries, she explains. Since most of the color is in the skin, freezing the blueberries actually improves the availability of the antioxidants.
Many teens and adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are great athletes. In elementary school, they may not have been good at sitting quietly, but they certainly could excel at sports. Many found exercise had a calming, centering effect. With maturation, exercise still helps them get through their school/workday.
Athletes with ADHD often have trouble organizing an effective fueling protocol, including the basic tasks of shopping for and preparing food, as well as having the right foods available at the right times. This can create problems with low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and hunger that gets disguised as inability to concentrate, stay focused on a task, edginess, hot temper, and reduced athletic performance. Athletes with ADHD often disregard these symptoms, thinking they relate to their ADHD diagnosis, not hunger and poor diet.
Athletes with ADHD often take appetite-killing meds that easily disrupt normal fueling cycles and contribute to fluctuations in energy. Athletes need steady energy to be able to concentrate and perform at their best. Hence, athletes with ADHD need to vigilantly monitor their bodies for early signs of hunger, including feeling fatigued or moody. Some may seek an energy drink such as Red Bull or some coffee, but the solution is not caffeine. They need fuel!
When athletes with ADHD miss meals due to lack of planning, they often end up craving sweets—a sign the body is too hungry and wants a sugar-fix. They can then easily succumb to overindulging in cookies, candy, and other so-called “junk foods.” This may happen at 10:00 pm, after their appetite-suppressing meds have worn off, and this can disrupt normal sleep patterns, as well as kill their appetite for their breakfast and that perpetuates a bad eating cycle.
The information below is helpful for any athlete – not just those with ADHD…
For most athletes, each meal/food bucket should be the caloric equivalent of two or three slices of pizza. That’s about 500 to 800 calories per bucket (or 2,000 to 3,200 calories per day), depending on your body size, sport, and energy needs. For athletes on appetite-curbing ADHD meds, the breakfast bucket should be the biggest bucket and incorporates some of the lunch calories that will otherwise get left uneaten.
The following sample menu has 4 food buckets that offer a steady supply of energy for an ADHD high school athlete:
| Time | Bucket | Sample meal |
| 7:00 | Breakfast | Bagel + peanut butter + tall glass milk + banana OR 3-egg omelet (lowfat cheese,veg) + toast + fruit Better bet if unable to stomach all of lunch: Bagel & peanut butter + omelet + milk + banana |
| 11:00* | Lunch #1 | Tuna sandwich/whole wheat bread + string cheese + milk |
| 3:00* | Lunch #2 | Pre-exercise: Energy bar + apple Recovery: Dried fruit & nuts + pretzels |
| 7:00 | Dinner | Chicken + brown rice + veggies + milk |
* Remember: If you take ADHD meds, you may not feel hungry but your body still needs fuel. Figure out what you can eat, regardless!
• Eat BEFORE your appetite-killing meds kick in. Again, figure out how to front-load your calories. For example, one athlete with ADHD started eating a hearty sandwich for breakfast. Another enjoyed “planned overs” from dinner the night before. By front-loading, they felt calmer during the day, had better workouts in the afternoon, and were better able to focus on the task at hand.
• Plan to fill your food buckets with foods in their natural state, and limit your intake of highly processed foods. Some health professionals believe additives and food coloring in processed foods can trigger hyperactivity in certain people. Plus, highly processed foods often offer less nutritional value and fewer health benefits. Shop for fresh foods along the outside aisles of the grocery store: fresh fruit, vegetables, lean meats, low fat dairy, and whole grain breads.
• Include a protein-rich food in each food bucket, such as eggs, cottage cheese, peanut butter, lowfat cheese, Greek yogurt, turkey/cheese roll-ups. Again, nothing is wrong with having dinner for breakfast; enjoy that cheeseburger and oven-baked “French fries” and then roll the scrambled eggs and cheese into a wrap for lunch. Protein is satiating and helps stabilize blood sugar. A trail mix made with nuts and dried fruit is another option with compact calories for easy nibbling.
• Make a shopping list before you go to the grocery store, and shop after having eaten a meal. That enhances your chances of choosing more of the best sports foods, and less of the rest. Examples include: orange juice rather than sports drink; oranges instead of orange juice; oatmeal (served with a little honey) instead of frosted flakes (with a lot of sugar); whole-wheat bread rather than white bread; scrambled eggs instead of Eggo waffles; baked potatoes in place of French fries; plain yogurt sweetened with maple syrup instead of pre-sweetened yogurt; trail mix rather than M&Ms; protein bars rather than candy bars.
If you find yourself edgy and unable to focus in the afternoon, experiment with reorganizing your meals and snacks into four (calorically-equal) food buckets and notice the benefits: better focus, fewer cravings for “sweets”—and better performance.
For more information about management of ADHD in kids and adults: http://www.additudemag.com
Reprinted from The Athlete’s Kitchen, August 2014
Copyright: Nancy Clark MS RD CSSD
Boston-area sports nutritionist Nancy Clark, MS, RD counsels both casual and competitive athletes. Her private practice is in Newton, MA; 617-795-1875). For information about her new Sports Nutrition Guidebook, 5th edition, see nancyclarkrd.com. For online education, also see sportsnutritionworkshop.com.
Like it or not, every one of us is getting older, day by day. As a fitness exerciser or an athlete, you might wonder how aging impacts performance—and what you can do to retain youthful fitness. The following information is gathered from a workshop (www.sportsnutritionworkshop.com) presented by Dr. William Evans, an exercise physiologist and expert on aging, muscles, and protein. The following information can help you chart a healthy course into your future.
These powerful compounds may help prevent CVD and cancer and boost cognitive function. Many dietitians are well aware of the benefits fruits and vegetables provide, but few may know the actual names and types of the disease-fighting compounds they contain that are so important for good health.
Despite their apparent leanness, too many active people are discontent with their body fat. All too often, I hear seemingly lean athletes express extreme frustration with their inability to lose undesired bumps and bulges:
Am I the only runner who has ever gained weight when training for a marathon???
Why does my husband lose weight when he starts going to the gym and I don’t?
For all the exercise I do, I should be pencil-thin. Why can’t I simply lose a few pounds?
Clearly, weight loss is not simple and often includes debunking a few myths. Perhaps this article will offer some insights that will lead to success with your weight loss efforts.
To lose body fat, you must create a calorie deficit. You can create that deficit by 1) exercising, which improves your overall health and fitness, or 2) eating fewer calories.
Even injured athletes can lose fat, despite a lack of exercise. The complaint “I gained weight when I was injured because I couldn’t exercise” could more correctly be stated “I gained weight because I mindlessly overate for comfort and fun.”
Adding on exercise does not equate to losing body fat. In a 16-week study, untrained women (ages 18 to 34) built up to 40 minutes of hard cardio or weight lifting three days a week. They were told to not change their diet, and they saw no changes in body fatness(1). Creating a calorie deficit by eating less food seems to be more effective than simply adding on exercise to try to lose weight.
Athletes who complain they “eat like a bird” but fail to lose body fat may simply be under-reporting their food intake. A survey of female marathoners indicated the fatter runners under-reported their food intake more than the leaner ones. Were they oblivious to how much they actually consumed?(2) Or were they too sedentary in the non-exercise hours of their day?
Wishful thinking. If you are an endurance athlete who complains, “For all the exercise I do, I should be pencil-thin,” take a look at your 24-hour energy expenditure. Do you put most of your energy into exercising, but then tend to be quite sedentary the rest of the day as you recover from your tough workouts? Male endurance athletes who reported a seemingly low calorie intake did less spontaneous activity than their peers in the non-exercise parts of their day(4). You need to keep taking the stairs instead of the elevators, no matter how much you train. Again, you should eat according to your whole day’s activity level, not according to how hard you trained that day.
Often, the more you exercise, the hungrier you get and 1) the more you will eat, or 2) the more you believe you “deserve” to eat for having survived the killer workout. Unfortunately, rewarding yourself with a 600-calorie cinnamon roll can quickly erase in a few minutes the 600-calorie deficit you generated during your workout.
The effects of exercise on weight loss are complex and unclear—and depend on the 24-hour picture. We know among people (ages 56-78) who participated in a vigorous walking program, their daily energy needs remained about the same despite adding an hour of exercise. How could that be? The participants napped more and were 62% less active the rest of their day(3). Be sure to pay attention to your whole day’s activity level. One hour of exercise does not compensate for a sedentary lifestyle
Research suggests exercising four times a week might be better for weight control than six times a week. A study with sedentary women (ages 60 to 74) who built up to exercising for 40 minutes of cardio and weights suggests those who did four workouts a week burned about 225 additional calories in the other parts of their day because they felt energized. The group that trained six times a week complained the workouts not only took up too much time, but also left them feeling tired and droopy. They burned about 200 fewer calories in the non-exercise parts of their day(5). Yes, they were ages 60 to 74, but the info might also relate to you?
Not always. In a 16-month study looking at exercise for weight loss, the men lost 11.5 pounds and the women maintained weight, even though they did the same amount of exercise(6). In another study, men who did an 18-month marathon training program reported eating about 500 more calories per day and lost about five pounds of fat. The women reported eating only 60 more calories, despite having added on 50 miles per week of running. They lost only two pounds(7).
What’s going on here? Well, a husband who adds on exercise will lose more weight than his wife if he’s heftier and thereby burns more calories during the same workout. But, speaking in terms of evolution, Nature seems protective of women’s role as child bearer, and wants women to maintain adequate body fat for nourishing healthy babies. Hence, women are more energy efficient. Obesity researchers at NY’s Columbia University suggest a pound of weight loss in men equates to a deficit of about 2,500 calories, while women need a 3,500-calorie deficit(8). No wonder women have a tougher time losing weight then do men….
If you are exercising to lose weight, I encourage you to separate exercise and weight. Yes, you should exercise for health, fitness, stress relief, and most importantly, for enjoyment. (After all, the E in exercise stands for enjoyment!) If you exercise primarily to burn off calories, exercise will become punishment for having excess body fat. You’ll eventually quit exercising—and that’s a bad idea.
Instead of focusing on exercise as the key to fat loss, pay more attention to your calorie intake. Knocking off just 100 calories a day from your evening snacks can theoretically result in 10 pounds a year of fat loss. One less cookie a day seems simpler than hours of sweating…?
Nancy Clark MS RD CSSD (Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics) counsels casual and competitive athletes in her private practice in the Boston-area (617-795-1875). Her Sports Nutrition Guidebook, Food Guide for Marathoners and Cyclist’s Food Guide all offer additional weight management information. The books are available via www.nancyclarkrd.com. See also www.sportsnutritionworkshop.com.
References:
Are you looking to live longer and improve your quality of life? Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and disability in the United States so by decreasing your risk you can increase your chances of living a longer healthier life. The good news is YOU CAN DO THIS by making lifestyle changes (increasing exercise, improving nutrition, reducing stress, not smoking, etc.). Here are a few simple ways you can decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease by improving your nutrition: