Personal Injury Law

Simple Shifts In Diet Begin In Grocery Store

By Jane Akre

Going through a grocery store you should be hearing the theme music from 'Jaws" rather than elevator music, says two food critics.

"Eat This Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide," is a new book by David Zinczenko, the Editor-in-chief of Men's Health magazine, and Matt Goulding, the food and nutrition editor of the magazine.  The two are media savvy with regular television appearances, most recently on the Today show. 

They follow the typical American family in the grocery store where they watch them make some good choices ( frozen berries) and some bad ones (Coke, Mountain Dew).  Just eliminating the soda alone could cause you to lose a pound a week, they say.

The book, largely for the uninitiated to nutrition, tells you how to read labels and eliminate the most egregious offenders in the supermarket from your shopping cart.  

They have chosen 20 food categories to pick on - some are conspicuous calorie bombs, others are junk food masquerading as healthy food.

All 20 might be favorites of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, but they will undermine your efforts to lose weight and feel great in the new year.

First- there are about 50,000 products in the typical grocery store, so feeling a little confused and overwhelmed is natural.

• Healthier choices are generally placed below or above eye level.  Eye level is reserved for those items generally with the most artificial ingredients.
• Speaking of natural- learn the lingo of the grocery industry.  "Natural" may mean nothing. Read the label. You are looking for comparable foods with the highest fiber and lowest sugar and fat.
• Fewer ingredients generally are better foods.
• Example - Wheat Thins versus Triscuit. Both are made by Nabisco, but Wheat Thins have four times the sugar as Triscuit, which has more fiber and offers better nutrition at the same price.
• Example - Hagen Dazs ice cream versus Breyers Mint ice cream. Breyers is made with skim milk and at 150 calories per serving it has 11 grams of fat.   Hagen Dazs has twice as many calories and 19 grams of fat.  That can translate to 16 pounds of additional fat in a year.
• Example - Mayo - Kraft now makes an olive oil mayonnaise in addition to the standard soy oil variety.  Olive oil has half the calories per serving.

Just a little knowledge can help you make better grocery store choices and these authors suggest making slight shifts may deliver the fat reduction you desire without a diet and exercise regimen. #

Full post as published by InjuryBoard on January 05, 2009 (boomark / email).