Pass the Spuds, Pass Up the Butter
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Pass the Spuds, Pass Up the Butter
Want to tank up on cholesterol-busting complex carbs? Follow these simple tips.
• Try to avoid processed foods, which tend to contain added fat, salt and sugar, advises dietitian Marilyn Guthrie, R.D., manager of health promotion for Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle. So eat baked potatoes instead of potato chips and whole-grain cereals instead of the highly refined, sugary kinds, says Guthrie. (You might also opt for plain white or brown rice instead of preseasoned rice mixes, which can be high in fat and sodium.)
• Make room for fruits and vegetables. Apples, bananas, blackberries, prunes, pears, parsnips, acorn squash, corn and yams are rich sources of complex carbs and fiber. If fresh vegetables aren’t available, opt for frozen-they’re just as high in fiber and nutrients.
• Learn to eat bread (preferably the whole-grain kind) without butter. You might top your morning toast with sugar-free jam or apple butter or even learn to enjoy the delicious simplicity of plain wholegrain bread.
• Jazz up vegetables with herbs instead of butter or cream sauces, says Sue Chapman, executive chef at Skylonda Fitness Retreat in Woodside, California. “Flavor broccoli with rosemary, and bok choy with chopped cilantro, chives or scallions,” she suggests.
• Sprinkle baked potatoes with Parmesan cheese, suggests Guthrie. You might also try nonfat sour cream or a dab of spicy brown mustard or low-fat salad dressing.
• Don’t drown carbo-packed pastas in fatty meat sauces and cheeses. Instead, flavor spaghetti with low-fat tomato sauce or a drizzle of olive oil, fresh garlic and parsley.
Can Pasta Make You Fat? The Facts
A while back you couldn’t turn on the television or pick up a newspaper without being confronted by this ugly little phrase: “Pasta makes you fat.” Well, does it or doesn’t it? Here’s what you need to know.
According to some experts, people who produce too much insulin-the hormone that helps metabolize starches and sugars-may gain weight on a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet. These experts theorize that such “insulin-resistant” people may comprise up to 25 percent of the population.
But other health professionals say that for the remaining 75 percent of us who are not insulin-resistant, whether pasta leads to weight gain depends on how much of it we eat and what we ladle on top of it.
There’s some evidence that a high-carbohydrate diet can raise triglycerides (a type of blood fat implicated in heart disease) and lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the “good” kind) in insulin-resistant people, says Wahida Karmally, R.D., director of nutrition at the Irving Center for Clinical Research at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center
in New York City, a member of the American Heart Association’s nutrition subcommittee and part of a research study examining this issue. But you can’t blame pasta for your excess pounds “unless you eat loads and loads of it,” says Karmally. “It’s the overall carbohydrate intake that counts, not just pasta, or just rice, or just potatoes.”
“You have to distinguish between complex carbohydrates and simple carbohydrates,” says Dean Ornish, M.D., president and director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, and author of Dr. Dean Ornisb’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease. “Complex carbohydrates-fruits, vegetables and grains-do not raise your insulin level and blood sugar.” Dr. Ornish recommends that pasta-lovers avoid sauces and toppings containing fatty ingredients such as butter, oil, cream and sausage.
So Long LDL
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Several studies have linked the decreased intake of saturated fat and increased consumption of complex carbohydrates with lower .evels of blood cholesterol. In one study, R. James Barnard, M.D., of .he University of California, Los Angeles, analyzed information on al.nost 4,600 people who took part in the Pritikin Longevity Center’s .ifestyle modification program. Forty percent of these individuals had oeen diagnosed with coronary heart disease, while 43 percent had high blood pressure. These men and women all followed a highcomplex-carbohydrate, high-fiber, low-fat, low-cholesterol diet and exercised each day, mainly walking. After three weeks of this diet and exercise regimen, the men’s total and “bad” LDL cholesterol had fallen 24 and 25 percent, respectively, while the women saw their total and LDL cholesterol decline 21 and 19 percent, respectively.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health branch in Phoenix and the Medlantic Research Foundation in Washington, D.C., put 11 people on one of two diets. The first group followed a diet composed of 65 percent carbohydrates (mostly complex carbohydrates) and 21 percent fat. The second group ate a diet that contained 43 percent carbohydrates and 42 percent fat (mostly saturated fat). Then the groups switched diets. Researchers found that these folks’ total cholesterol was 184 milligrams/deciliter on the high-fat diet, compared with 164 milligrams/deciliter on the carbohydrate-rich diet. Their LDL cholesterol was 125 milligrams/deciliter on the high-fat plan, compared with 108 milligrams/deciliter on the high-carbohydrate program. The probable reason for the decline? “Substituting complex carbs for saturated fat improves the body’s metabolism of LDL, so it’s removed from the blood more rapidly,” theorizes William P. Castelli, M.D., medical director of the Framingham Cardiovascular Institute, a wellness program at Metro West Medical Center in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Complex Carbohydrates
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It used to be that when you wanted to shed a few pounds, you gave up bread, potatoes and pasta. Doctors thought they were fattening. But times have changed, and so has the scientific understanding of carbohydrates: Researchers now know that carbohydrates, the body’s primary source of fuel, can help fill us up without necessarily filling us out. What’s more, some studies have found that replacing saturated fat with a particular kind of carbohydrate-complex carbohydrates, found primarily in grains and starchy vegetables-can help lower blood cholesterol.
So feel free to enjoy that plate of pasta or that slice of fresh-baked bread. Prepared correctly and eaten in moderation, foods high in complex carbohydrates can make low-fat, low-cholesterol eating a breeze. Here’s how to power up your diet while helping to trim down your cholesterol.
Complex Carbohydrates: Simply Delicious
There are two types of carbohydrates: sugars (simple carbohydrates) and starches (complex carbohydrates). Simple carbohydrates are abundant in fruits, vegetables, honey, corn syrup, milk and sugarcane. Complex carbohydrates are found primarily in breads, pastas, rice and other grains, beans and potatoes.
There’s a lot to recommend complex carbohydrates. Starches release their energy more slowly than sugars, making you feel fuller longer. Further, foods high in complex carbohydrates tend to be low in fat and high in fiber-both soluble fiber, which has been proven to lower blood cholesterol, and insoluble fiber, which helps keep you regular and protect against colon cancer.
The government recommends that we eat 6 to 11 servings of reads, cereals, rice and pastas per day. While that may seem like a ot, filling up on complex carbs isn’t as hard as you might think, says Iindy Hermann, R.D., a nutrition consultant in Mount Kisco, New ok. “A couple of slices of toast for breakfast equals two servings,” says Iermann. “If you have a turkey burger for lunch, the bun counts as .’:10ther two servings. The bag of pretzels you have as an afternoon snack may count as two servings, depending on the size of the bag. And a big plate of pasta for dinner might add up to four servings. That’s ten servings right there.”
Getting Enough Chromium
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The Daily Value for chromium is 120 micrograms. The average American man consumes 33 micrograms of the mineral a day, and the average woman, 25 micrograms. “We collected data on 32 people over seven consecutive days, and not one of them averaged even 50 micrograms of chromium over that one-week period,” says Dr. Anderson. Good sources of chromium include turkey ham, grape juice, broc- coli, unpeeled apples, green beans and whole-wheat products. So, apparently, are some breakfast cereals. “Total breakfast cereal is very high in chromium,” says Dr. Anderson. “One serving contains nearly 27 micrograms of chromium, which is probably as much as you’ll get from everything else you eat all day.” But you need to watch the rest of your diet, too, says Dr. Anderson-especially if you have a sweet tooth. Consuming too many highly processed, sugary foods can rob the body of chromium (which is excreted through the urine). According to Dr. Anderson, “Eating lots of simple sugars may also increase your need for chromium supplements because you’re consuming fewer chromium-rich foods. So you need to pay attention to your overall diet as well as to the amount of chromium you’re getting.”
Dr. Anderson recommends taking a multivitamin/mineral supplement containing 50 to 200 micrograms of chromium. “One leading brand contains 100 micrograms of chromium,” he says. “That extra 100 micrograms a day can serve as an insurance policy should there be a deficiency in your diet.” If you have diabetes, you may need even more chromium, says Dr. Anderson-about 400 to 600 micrograms a day. Is consuming this amount of chromium safe? Yes, says Dr. Anderson. “We’ve been studying chromium for decades, and we’ve never documented a single case of a negative effect,” he says. Still, check with your doctor before taking more than a 200-microgram supplement per day.
CHROMIUM
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Some of the most intriguing research in the nutritional fight against high cholesterol has to do with a trace mineral whose name reminds most people of the shiny stuff on the bumpers of cars: chromium.
A STRIKE AGAINST DIABETES
People with diabetes run an increased risk of developing heart disease. For them, chromium may improve glucose tolerance, which is a measure of how well glucose, or sugar, is absorbed into the blood and transported into the cells, according to Richard A. Anderson, Ph.D., lead scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland.
Most people with diabetes have glucose intolerance, a condition in which blood sugar levels are out of control. That’s because insulin, a hormone that helps control blood sugar levels, doesn’t work properly. Chromium particularly benefits people who already have diabetes by making insulin work more effectively.
In one study, Dr. Anderson, a leading expert on chromium, had 17 people-8 of whom had mild glucose intolerance-eat a chromiumpoor diet. After a month, Dr. Anderson divided these people into two groups. While both groups continued on the low-chromium diet, the first group took 200 micrograms of chromium per day. The second group received placebo pills. Five weeks later, the groups were switched, with the first group receiving the placebo pills and vice versa.
The chromium supplements didn’t affect blood sugar levels in the glucose-tolerant folks. But the blood sugar levels of the glucose-intolerant people rose nearly 50 percent less when they were taking chromium supplements than when they didn’t take these supplements. The upshot? Chromium may reverse glucose intolerance, says Dr. An-
derson.
Some studies indicate that chromium, which helps control the way your body uses sugar and fat, may boost the body’s stores of “good” HDL cholesterol. “When people who follow a normal diet-which .ends to be marginally chromium-deficient-consume more chromium, their cholesterol and triglyceride levels benefit,” says Richard A. Anderson, Ph.D., lead scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland, and a leading expert on chromium. What’s more, chromium may help people with glucose intolerance avoid developing non-insulin-dependent (Type II) diabetes. Having diabetes increases the risk of developing heart disease. (See “A Strike against Diabetes.”)
Red-Hot Chili Tips
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When it comes to using chili peppers, you’re limited only by your imagination (and your courage). Here are a few common-and uncommon-uses for these fiery delicacies.
• Spice up a salad with a small amount of chili peppers, suggests DeWitt. If you’re using dried chilies, be aware that they tend to be hotter than fresh peppers.
• Mix a tiny bit of chopped chili peppers into mayonnaise or salad dressing, suggests dietitian Nancy Gerlach, R.D., food editor of Chili Pepper Magazine. Or add cayenne or any type of graund chili pepper to barbecue sauce. “But bear in mind that capsaicin is soluble in oil,” she notes. Translation: The longer chili peppers sit in mayonnaise or salad dressing, says Gerlach, the hotter these condiments will get. So skimp on the amount of chili you use, at least at first.
• Add chili peppers to your homemade chili. “Both the type and amount of chili peppers you use are matters of personal preference,” says DeWitt. “Some people use a base of green chili peppers; others prefer red.” Let your taste buds be your guide, he adds.
• Add fresh or powdered chili peppers to your favorite bread recipe, suggests Gerlach,who uses both chopped green chilies and red chili powder in her homemade loaves. “Chilies give bread a real bite,” she says.
• As odd as it may sound, try adding a small amount of pureed chili peppers to ice cream, suggests DeWitt. “Jalapeno ice cream is one of the more unusual chili pepper dishes,” he says. “It’s quite a sensation-cold and hot at the same time.” (Opt for low-fat or nonfat ice cream, of course.)
Mouth Surfing 101
Just as you wouldn’t jump into a pool without knowing how to swim, you shouldn’t handle-or eat-chili peppers before you know the finer points of going for the burn. These hints can help.
• Chili peppers can burn more than your mouth-they can scorch your skin, too. So after you handle chilies, wash your hands with soap and water before you touch your eyes or face. Better yet, wear gloves while chopping chili peppers, especially if you have a cut on your hand or finger. Also, avoid inhaling the peppers’ fiery fumes:
“The capsaicin can burn your eyes and lips,” says Gerlach.
• It’s simpler to add chili heat to a dish than to subtract it, says DeWitt. “So add the chili peppers carefully and taste as you go,” he cautions. “It’s easy to make the food literally too hot to eat.”
• If you’re unfamiliar with chili peppers, use some commonsense caution. “See how hot the food is before you start wolfing it down,” says DeWitt.
If, despite your best efforts, eating a fiery chili pepper dish leaves you screaming for relief, don’t gulp water-that will spread the capsaicin throughout your mouth, says DeWitt. Rather, drink a glass of milk or eat a few spoonfuls of yogurt. Milk contains a protein called casein that can help smother capsaicin’s flames. Rice, bananas and bread may douse the flames, too.
CHILI PEPPERS
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For some thrill-seeking folks, eating chili peppers is as exhilarating as skydiving or rock climbing. Eyes streaming, noses leaking, these self-proclaimed fire-eaters-who call riding the wave of chili pepper heat mouth surfing-enjoy setting their tongues ablaze. And they never seem to run out of ways to send their mouths into melt- down: Chili aficionados add their favorite pepper to soups, stews, salsas and sauces, roast them and stuff them with cheese, even add them to ice cream.
But those with flame-resistant gullets may actually reap some health benefits from chili peppers. These pungent peppers are high in vitamin A, which is thought to boost immunity and protect against cancer, and vitamin C, which may help deflate blood pressure. Even more significantly, capsaicin-the substance that gives chili peppers their bite-may also help lower triglycerides, a type of blood fat implicated in heart disease. Chili peppers may even reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke by increasing the blood’s ability to break up dangerous clots.
It appears that capsaicin (also used to relieve psoriasis and arthritis pain) may impact more on triglycerides than on cholesterol. But the few studies that have explored the connection between capsaicin and blood fats have yielded intriguing results. When researchers in India fed capsaicin to laboratory rats along with their normal diet, for example, the rodents’ triglyceride levels fell, although their cholesterol levels weren’t affected, Researchers at the Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus also administered capsaicin to rats; these rodents’ triglycerides fell as well.
The best news of all? Despite chili peppers’ fearsome reputation, it’s entirely possible to enjoy their three-alarm flavor without losing taste buds in the process. You just have to know how to handle the heat-and proceed with caution. Here’s how.
Small Peppers Pack Big Heat
There are over 100 kinds of chili pepper, and they’re available in a variety of forms, including fresh, dried and powdered. But when it comes to generating heat, not all chilies are created equal.
You can’t always judge a chili pepper’s heat by its size or color. Generally speaking, the smaller the pepper, the hotter it is: Small, narrow chili peppers, including the cayenne and serrano, pack more capsaicin than larger, milder peppers, such as the poblano and Anaheim.
The jalapeno pepper is one of the most popular chilies in the United States. But while most people consider this plump, bright red or dark green pepper a real stinger, its heat pales in comparison with that of the habafiero, the most blistering chili of all. “It’s the hottest pepper on record,” says Dave DeWitt, author of The Whole Chile Pepper Book. A measurement called the Scoville unit is used to determine the heat of chili peppers, he explains. While the jalapeno pepper averages about 5,000 Scoville units, “a habanera can measure 500,000 Scoville units-lOO times hotter than a jalapeno!” says DeWitt.
Chili connoisseurs say the habanera’s fire is short-lived. But when your mouth is on fire, a minute or two can seem like an eternity, so try this pepper at your own risk.
To Skin or Not to Skin
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If you consider the crispy, crunchy skin the best part of the chicken, being told not to indulge may leave you feeling deprived. So if you know you’re not going to give up the skin, at least practice damage control.
“If you insist on leaving the skin on, you definitely shouldn’t fry the chicken, which will add more fat,” says Bettye Nowlin, RD., a dietitian in Los Angeles and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. “Instead, you should roast or broil your chicken, keep your portion size small and avoid high-fat foods for the rest of the day.”
If you’re serious about reducing your intake of dietary fat, however, it’s best to avoid the skin altogether, says ‘William P. Castelli, .:vI.D., medical director of the Framingham Cardiovascular Institute, a wellness program at Metro West Medical Center in Framingham, Massachusetts. “Take off the skin and toss it out!” he says. Think of it this way: By stripping off the skin, you’ll slash your intake of saturated fat in half and save yourself some calories in the bargain.
There is some good news about chicken skin, however: Despite what you may think, you don’t have to remove the skin before you cook chicken. Researchers at the university of :’vlinnesota found that removing the skin after cooking rather than beforehand doesn’t affect the fat content of the meat. “The fat that’s in the skin stays there-it doesn’t migrate into the meat,” says dietitian Linda Dieleman, RD., of the University of Minnesota Inter-College Nutrition Consortium in St. Paul.
As a bonus, “leaving the skin on during baking will help keep the chicken moist,” says Lisa Lauri, RD., nutrition consultant at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York.
CHICKEN
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For years, the ultimate in fine dining was a nice, thick, juicy steak. But when doctors started telling us what consuming too much fatty red meat could do to our coronary arteries-and to our heartsmany of us modified our carnivorous ways and started eating more chicken.
“Generally speaking, chicken contains less saturated fat and more polyunsaturated fat than beef,” says Gene A. Spiller, D.Sc., Ph.D., director of the Health Research and Studies Center in Los Altos, California, and author of The Superpyramid Eating Program. Three ounces of lean, broiled filet mignon contains 8.5 grams of fat, 3.2 grams of it saturated. The same amount of skinless chicken breast contains 3.1 grams of fat and less than 1 gram of saturated fat.
But hold on. While eating plates of red meat the size of Idaho isn’t a good idea, all red meat isn’t necessarily bad for you, say experts. Nor is all chicken necessarily good for you: If you’re trying to lower your blood cholesterol, eating three or four pieces of fried chicken is definitely not what the doctor ordered.
To make POUltlY a part of a heart-healthy diet, say experts, you need to choose the right cuts of chicken and prepare them with little or no fat. “Think lean when you put chicken on your table,” says Dr. Spiller.
Poultry Pointers
These suggestions can help you trim the fat-and a significant number of calories-from chicken.
• Buy the leanest birds. Broilers and fryers are lower in fat than roasters.
• Bake, broil or roast chicken. These cooking methods allow the fat to drip off the bird. Frying chicken, on the other hand, adds fat and calories.
• Eat “light.” The white meat portions of a chicken contain less fat than the dark meat, and the breast is the leanest part of the bird:
Three ounces of skinless chicken breast gets 19 percent of its calories from fat, while a whole skinless chicken leg-thigh and drumstickgets a whopping 40 percent of its calories from fat.
• If you can’t resist dark meat, eat smaller amounts of it less often, suggests Susan Kleiner, RD., Ph.D., a nutritionist in Seattle and author of The High-Peiformance Cookbook. While a thigh or drumstick contains more fat than a breast, “dark meat still contains less fat than most beef, relatively speaking,” says Dr. Kleiner.
• Coat a pan or wok with nonfat cooking spray and stir-fry chicken with fresh or frozen vegetables, herbs and spices. Or make chicken fajitas, suggests Janet Lepke, RD., a dietitian in Santa Monica, California, and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. “Saute strips of chicken breast with red and green peppers, onions and tomatoes in a teaspoon of oil with some chicken broth, or saute the strips in white wine and garlic with fajita seasoning,” suggests Lepke. Then stuff the mixture into a soft corn or flour tortilla.
• Microwave skinless chicken breasts and top them with salsa, low-fat spaghetti sauce or lemon-pepper seasoning. (Make sure the chicken is cooked thoroughly.)
• Pass up fast-food fried chicken, which is loaded with sodium, fat and cholesterol. But if you must indulge, stem the damage: Eat one or two pieces of chicken and fill up on vegetables, rice, a baked potato or a salad with low-fat or nonfat dressing, advises Mary Donkersloot, RD., a dietitian in Beverly Hills, California, a spokesperson for the California Dietetic Association and author of The Fast Food Diet.
• Better yet, make your own “fried” chicken in the oven, suggests Evelyn Tribole, RD., a dietitian in Beverly Hills, California, in her book Healthy Homestyle Cooking: Coat skinless chicken breasts with egg whites (not the yolks), a small amount of flour and cornflake crumbs and bake at 375°.
CARROTS
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Crisp and crunchy, carrots may well qualify as the ultimate healthy snack. They’re brimming with beta-carotene and vitamin Cantioxidant nutrients believed to help protect against a variety of ailments, including cancer-as well as with vitamin A. What’s more, these sweet, crunchy veggies are packed with soluble fiber, the kind proven to help deflate blood cholesterol.
More specifically, carrots are rich in calcium pectate, a certain type of soluble fiber that may bestow special cholesterol-lowering power, according to Peter D. Hoagland, Ph.D., a research chemist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dr. Hoagland’s research indicates that calcium pectate helps to bind bile acids, the substances that assist in the digestion of fats and in the transportation of cholesterol out of the bodyA study conducted outside the United States seems to back Dr. Hoagland’s research. Scientists at Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, had five people eat 200 grams of raw carrots (about two carrots) each morning. After three weeks of this morning ritual, the people’s cholesterol levels fell 11 percent. And their cholesterol remained lowered for another three weeks after they stopped eating the daily carrots. Cooked carrots appear to help lower cholesterol just as well as raw carrots, says Dr. Hoagland. “The fiber in cooked carrots seems to have the same ability to bind bile acids as the fiber in raw carrots,” he says. “Calcium pectate still ends up in the gut, where it can interact with bile acids.”
Here’s how to add more carrots to your diet .
• Make sure carrots are fresh. If you’re buying them by the bunch, choose the ones with the freshest-looking tops: The fresher the greens, the fresher the carrots, says Mindy Hermann, RD., a nutrition consultant in Mount Kisco, New York. “If you buy bagged carrots, feel the vegetables through the bag and avoid those that feel flabby
or rubbery,” says Hermann .
• Many experts suggest steaming carrots to preserve their nutrients.
Boiling carrots drains 50 percent of their beta-carotene and 90 per-
cent of their vitamin C.
• Try snacking on prewashed, prepeeled baby carrots. “Try them
with a nonfat dip-nonfat sour cream or yogurt mixed with a dry dip mix,” says Evelyn Tribole, RD., a dietitian in Beverly Hills, California,
and author of Healthy Homestyle Cooking.
• Want to make a dish bursting with fiber and antioxidant vitamins?
“Make a sweet-potato-and-carrot casserole, and season it with a little ginger or nutmeg,” suggests Mona Sutnick, RD., Ed.D., a dietitian in Philadelphia and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Associa-
tion .
• Make roasted carrots, suggests Barbie Casselman, a nutrition con-
sultant in Toronto. Here’s how: Spray sliced carrots with no-stick cooking spray, arrange them on a no-stick baking sheet and bake at 4250 for 20 to 25 minutes. “When you make carrots this way, no one
misses the cream sauce, ,. says Casselman.