sprouts

Is "Health Food" Worse for You than Junk Food?

Paul Michael — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 13:00:03 +0000

I've written about the evils of junk food in the past. I have jumped on that bandwagon that is happy to demonize the fast food industry. But after watching a 30-minute TV show on Showtime last week, I'm having something of a paradigm shift. Maybe I've been too hasty.

The Showtime show Bullsh*t! (the real title is not edited) takes a new subject every week and exposes lies, misconceptions, and propaganda on everything from sex and psychics to recycling and yoga.

The episode I happened upon was all about fast food. "This should be good" I thought, "how can they really tell us fast food is good for us?"

Well, they didn't. Not really. But what they did reveal made me shift uncomfortably in my seat. I have been one of those bloggers who was quite happy to attack McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC and all those other household names in the fast food biz.

But when it comes down to it, what exactly have they done wrong?

Ok, let's look at this rationally for a second. The fast food giants make food that is not good for us. That's a fact. They usually don't deny that either, it's not easy to say that a double quarter-pounder with cheese and a pound of French fries is something your body needs. It's a treat. It should be viewed that way. (See also: Fast Food, Slow Food, and Your Dollars at Work)

However, as a treat, what's wrong with it? It's very tasty, it's cheap, there's a lot of it for your money, and you can get it quickly almost any time you want! It seems to me that the fast food industry has given us everything we have asked for as a nation, and we're now telling them off for it.

If a Big Mac cost $10, we'd complain. It's too expensive. If BK made healthy burgers from soy, we'd complain. We want meat, we want taste. If KFC refused to sell fried chicken, and only stocked grilled, we'd complain. We want to make choices, even if they're bad for us. And when we want to make those bad choices, fast food is there.

In a previous article, a long time ago now, I talked about Mindless Eating, a great book by Dr. Brian Wansink. He spends his days conducting experiments that reveal our true relationship with food, and he had some eye-opening things to say about fast food.

In one experiment, Dr. Wansink's lab was set up to resemble a restaurant, and he invited people to come in and try some food. In this case, a delicious chicken corn chowder. Oh, how the participants loved it. So delicious, so home-made, so succulent. They had no clue that the whole meal was made using ingredients from a KFC meal. One person actually quipped, and I'm paraphrasing a little "you can't get something like that from a fast food restaurant." Well, you can. Maybe not as a soup, but it's all exactly the same stuff.

Wansink noted that we have expectations of fast food and the establishments that serve it. Especially the big hitters like KFC and McDonald's. We actually believe that what they're serving is rotten, but it's cheap and it's quick.

But these corporations have spent billions of dollars making food that's tasty. They excel in it. If it wasn't tasty, no one would buy the food and the franchise would die. Yes, it contains salt, sugar, and fat. Yes, it contains preservatives. But it's tasty, it's designed that way.

In another experiment, to test these perceptions again, Wansink brought in two taco salads to two different groups. The first received the salad on a black plastic fast food tray, and were told that it came from a fast food restaurant.

The feedback was not good. The food was fatty and greasy. The dressing was too sweet. It was generally a cheap suckfest of a meal.

Next up, the exact same salad was served on a pristine white plate, along with an accompanying menu from the California Garden Café. The feedback took a huge turn. Now, the food was fresh and delicious. The dressing was lovely. The whole meal was heaven on a platter. But it was the same meal. All that had changed was the perception of the food. And it was enough to make people feel completely different about the meal.

More dangerous than all of that, though, was when they asked the two sets of diners what they thought the calorie count was of the salad. The first group guessed right, with very accurate guesses coming in at the 980-1000 calorie range. Spot on.

But when asked to estimate the meal from the Café, the calorie count dropped. And boy, did it drop. Guesses were around the 450-500 calorie mark, one person said 200! And that's the real danger here.

When we go to a fast food joint, our guard is up. We're primed — the calorie count of the meals is often displayed now — and we generally know that what we're eating is bad for us. When we eat somewhere else, like a "healthy café" or fancy restaurant, we believe we're getting better food and less fat. Not so. Not at all. As they said in the show, you don't see people trying to ban French and Italian restaurants, and yet they serve very fattening meals topped with creams, cheeses, and lots of butter and oil.

The problem here is that we have been selective with our criticism. We have targeted the fast food giants and warned everyone "hey, this stuff sucks, don't eat it!" But that's not going to stop people eating it, or making bad choices. However, we're at least educated about fast food. We know the calories, and the risks. Wansink says that in his experience, people underestimate the calories of a meal at a healthy restaurant by half. The fancy name equates to better food, and better food means less calories. How wrong can we all be?

So, take this as a warning. Fast food is still bad for you in excess, but as an occasional meal it's nothing to be afraid of. What you really need to look out for are the calories you're consuming from places like Whole Foods, Sprouts, and other health food stores and restaurants. The food could be just as bad for you, but you may end up eating twice as much. In effect, you're blinded by the presentation. Calories are calories and saturated fat is saturated fat. Not even a 3-star Michelin restaurant can change that.

This article is from Paul Michael of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Help End Hunger, Get Kindled, and 3 More Positive Web Tips You Should Know About

Linsey Knerl — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:56:31 +0000

There are days when little bits of good news can help undercut the bad. With a recent initiative by Tyson to end hunger, a new super-groovy Kindle-esque iPhone app, and a killer comparison shopping site, there’s good stuff out there. (You just have to know where to find it!)

The iPhone can now be used as a Kindle (seriously). – The unofficial Apple Weblog verifies that the rumors are true! Hooray for those of you who held back from buying the $300+ Kindle (and possibly the 2^nd generation Kindle 2) but were using an iPhone, anyway. I haven’t purchased an iPhone yet (I’ve been narrowly eeking by without a phone at all), but this gives me one more reason to upgrade. This and the Pandora app will probably seal the deal for me. (Not to mention the fact that illustrations in the iPhone app will be displayed in color. Very groovy.)

Your pledge can feed 140 kids. As part of an impressive initiative by Tyson foods, you can help end hunger. Be one of the 1,000 people that pledges to give, share, or volunteer for the cause, and your pledge will guarantee 35 lbs of food will end up on a truck to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas in Austin during the SXSW ’09 Interactive Festival. Ways to share (which is all you need to do to help the cause) include:

Use the share function on the website.
Follow @HungerPledge on Twitter for updates and use #HungerPledge with your tweets.
Write a blog post about Pledge to End Hunger.
Email the link to your colleagues, family, & friends.
Join the Pledge to End Hunger Facebook cause.
Embed the Pledge to End Hunger Tally widget on your website, blog, or MySpace account.

Plan for the future with a family heirloom. You hear about it all the time: Kids squabbling over who will get the china set when the parents pass away. While we can’t give advice on the family dynamics that can come about during these difficult times, this recent article on Mainstreet.com highlights some tips you should take to ensure that taxes are handled accordingly. The best part of the piece isn’t the financial details, however. It gives creative ideas for passing down heirlooms, even if you don’t have a row to hoe. (Tomatoes, anyone?)

There’s nothing depressing about this meal. If you somehow missed Trent’s roundup of spectacular Depression-era cooking videos (compliments of a lovely 93-year-old Clara), you must stop what you are doing and check them out! Not only are the recipes delicious, they are true to the mission of keeping things simple. (It’s also motivation for those of us who’ve considered video blogging to get up and finally do it. This lady is fantastic!)

All I ever needed to know about growing sprouts, I learned from Jenn Fowler. I admit to over-spending on fancy sprout-growing kits. (Shame, shame.) If you haven’t already fallen victim to unnecessary growing gizmos, or you want to redeem yourself with a no-nonsense, super-affordable method to making your own green edible sprouts in your kitchen, you still have time. Frugal Upstate’s photos and directions are dummy-proof. (Plus, they really make me want to eat a veggie sandwich!)

Beat this! From the makers of the hit website RetailMeNot.com (a favorite among many of us, including Paul Michael) comes an impressive upgrade to comparison shopping. While it’s still in the beginning stages, BeatMyPrice.com is a fun and fairly accurate way to find the lowest price for an item online. What really caught my eye was the way that it suggests coupon codes for the shopping outlets it provides, and it is slowly building a reader-based price guide for each item. I just tried a search for “Salad Spinner” and input a link to one on Amazon for $29.99. The BeatMyPrice.com tool gave me just one other product to choose from, but it happened to be a Wolfgang Puck stainless steel version for just 10 cents less. Bravo!

This article is from Linsey Knerl of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Scrumptious Sprouting for Your Meals

Nora Dunn — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:44:04 +0000

Instead of buying those expensive sprouts in the produce section at the store, did you ever consider making your own sprouts? Sprouting mung beans, alfalfa, broccoli, and even lentils or wheat berries make for some yummy fresh meal ingredients, and at a fraction of the price you would pay for the sprouted stuff.

Just a tiny handful of mung beans (pictured above) can in a few days produce copious amounts of bean sprouts for you to use in stir fries, salads, and even sandwiches.

There are a number methods for sprouting (one of which Philip shared with us in his inexpensive recipe article), but one of the easiest I have experimented goes as follows:

Soak your beans of choice in water for 8-24 hours. I usually let them go for closer to the 24 hour mark, depending on the sprout. Some beans take longer to germinate than others.

After soaking, empty the mixture into a container with holes in the bottom and sides. I tend to use a large yogurt or margarine container into which I have made small puncture holes, but you could also use a strainer or colander depending on the bean. Many other methods promote the use of a glass jar with a modified lid for drainage. I like using plastic containers because they're easy to come by and I can cover them (to guard against hungry critters) and keep them in a dark place.

Twice daily, rinse your sprouts thoroughly. This aides the sprouting process and also helps with rinsing any husks or bitter residue off.

And presto — you have sprouts! Depending on the bean, you will usually have sprouts within 2-3 days.

Experiment with what you want to sprout to find what works best for you. It’s cheap! The small amount of beans you see pictured above cost me about 10 cents, and produced the amount you see in the adjacent container. Sure beats the couple of bucks I would have shelled out for the finished product, and I have a sense of personal pride in my sprouts too!

This is also a great project to get the kids involved in, as we approach the holiday season and kids need some projects to keep them busy.

Here are some sprouting resources (including alternative sprouting methods) for your reading and learning pleasure:

This article is from Nora Dunn of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: