I am doing beans such a disservice by repeating that rhyme, because they truly are among the best foods around. First the nutrition – they have all sorts of good nutrients, including protein (good for vegetarians like me), folate, fiber, and several different minerals. They’re classified as a vegetable and as a stand-in for meat on the Food Guide Pyramid. And they’re really versatile. You can puree them into a dip, toss them onto a salad, use them in soup, add them to sauce. They’re easy to use straight out of the can, and they don’t cost very much. And if you eat them often, their “side effects” diminish.

The Dietary Guidelines say to eat at least 3 cups of legumes (dried beans, peas, lentils) every week. That’s certainly doable if you’re eating at home. What if you eat out a lot? Using some of the menus that we consulted for the meals in the 400 Calorie Fix and Prevention magazine, I went looking for beans and bean dishes in restaurants. I’ve listed the obvious below. (Au Bon Pain is the clear winner!) Some restaurants may include beans in, say, a salad or a Mexican entrée, but you have to ask.

Fast Food

Chili’s
Black Bean Soup
Black Beans (side)
Southwestern Egg Rolls

Chipotle
Black Beans
Pinto Beans

KFC
BBQ Baked Beans
Three Bean Salad

McDonald’s
Premium Southwest Salad

Mexican (Taco Bell, Qdoba, Chipotle, and friends)
Refried beans

Popeye’s
Red Beans & Rice

Quiznos
Chili (maybe)

Roy Rogers
Baked Beans

Subway
Chili Con Carne

Taco Bell
½ lb. Cheesy Bean & Rice Burrito
7-Layer Burrito
Bean Burrito
Fresco Bean Burrito
Pintos ‘n Cheese

Casual and Sit-down

Atlanta Bread Company
Baja Chicken Enchilada Soup
Classic Beef Chili
Fire Roasted Corn and Black Bean Fiesta Salad
Frontier Chicken Chili

Au Bon Pain
Black Bean and Corn Salad
Black Bean Soup
Curried Rice and Lentil Soup
French Moroccan Tomato Lentil Soup
Hummus and Cucumber
Jamaican Black Bean Soup
Pasta e Fagioli Soup
Red Beans, Italian Sausage and Rice Soup
Southern Black-Eyed Pea Soup
Split Pea with Ham Soup
Vegetarian Chili
Vegetarian Lentil Soup

Chevy’s
Beans a la Charra
Black Beans
Refried Beans
Tostada Salad

Panera Bread
Low-Fat Vegetarian Black Bean Soup

Ruby Tuesday
Garbanzo Beans (Fresh Garden Bar)
White Bean Chicken Chili

A couple of days ago, a friend told me that she couldn’t keep sweets in the house because they set off uncontrolled eating. She wondered if she might be addicted to sugar or carbs. That same day, I came across the summary of a research article that appeared in the journal Nature Neuroscience about signs of fat addiction in a group of obese laboratory rats who were fed a high fat diet. And maybe you’ve heard about people who have undergone gastroplasty – stomach surgery that forces them to eat less – only to develop other “addictions” like smoking, drinking, or gambling.

I don’t know what course of action to recommend if you think you might be addicted to a certain type of food. Working as hard as you can to lose weight and, more importantly, keep it off for a long time, may be part of the answer. In the rat study above, only obese rats showed signs of fat addiction while thin rats did not. Personally, I found it easier and easier to avoid temptation the longer I maintained my weight loss (I gained 40 pounds in high school, lost it by the end of college, and am at about the same weight now).

Overcoming a food addiction is difficult and there’s no denying that sticking with new eating habits is hard. Remember to seek out whatever support maintain a healthier relationship with food, whether that support comes in the form of friends, family, a healthcare professional, books and recipes (like 400 Calorie Fix), or your own inner strength.

[ Photo credit: rallycat! via Flickr]

The last set of Dietary Guidelines, (2005) were great for whole grains. For the first time, they called out whole grains with a specific recommendation – half of all your grain servings should be whole. That means that you should have at least 3 servings of whole grains every day, with a serving being a slice of whole wheat bread, 1/2 cup of whole wheat pasta or brown rice, a 1-ounce serving of whole grain cereal, or something similar.

Meeting this recommendation is not as hard as you think if you eat at home or in your office cafeteria. Have a bowl of oatmeal or cold whole grain cereal for breakfast and make your sandwich on whole wheat bread and you’re there without having to think about brown rice or whole grain spaghetti or bulgur wheat for dinner.

But what if you eat out?  The picture is somewhat dim, as we found out when researching the 400 Calorie Fix. Here, a list of some of the chains offering a whole grain or partly whole grain option on the menu, in alphabetical order. Remember to ask for whole grain or whole wheat as it might not be on the menu. And although I’ve put tortilla chips and nachos on the list because they are made from whole grain corn, that doesn’t make them a smart choice!

[ Photo credit: niseag03 via Flickr]

While I was working out at the gym this morning, I caught a commercial for Chili’s new $9.99 fresh pairings. The ad suggested a pairing of an appetizer of what looked like nachos plus a half rack of ribs. Certainly a budget bargain but also a gazillion calories. So I decided to explore a few money-savers at national chains to see if I could even come close to the 400-calorie mark by picking the lowest calorie options, as well as to see how high the calories might go. Keep in mind that you probably need 1,600 to 2,000 calories for the entire day.

So here’s my confession – I don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. According to the soon-to-be-updated Dietary Guidelines, my daily diet should include about 4 1/2 cups, the equivalent of 9 servings. Or about 1/2 cup at breakfast and 2 cups each at lunch and dinner. And as a registered dietitian who rarely dines out, I have no excuse. How about people who eat a lot of restaurant and take-out meals?

When I was working on 400 Calorie Fix, I gathered menus from lots of restaurants. So here are a few different ways to hit the 2-cup mark in a lower calorie, lower fat way; many meals still exceed 400 calories. (I’ve chosen to leave off the fries, which are the most popular vegetable in the US.)You can forget the value or dollar menu; this is strictly an a la carte and more expensive deal.

At McDonalds:

• Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken (320 calories)
• Hamburger (250 calories), Premium Caesar Salad (no chicken) with low fat Italian dressing (150 calories), Apple Dippers (35 calories)

At Roy Rogers:

• Grilled Chicken Filet Sandwich (413 calories), side salad  without dressing (99 calories), baked apples (102 calories), fresh fruit cup (44 calories)

At Boston Market:

• 1/4 White Rotisserie Chicken, no skin (240 calories), fresh steamed vegetables (60 calories), seasonal fruit salad (60 calories)

This past weekend, I ate with my family at Taverna Banfi, the restaurant run by the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. We enjoyed the food but all agreed that portions were too big, certainly not consistent with eating in a 400 calorie way. Just a few standouts – a basket of focaccia, maybe 100 calories per slice, refilled by the wait staff (we finally said no thanks). An overly well-dressed salad, with, say, 2 tablespoons of oil; that’s 200 calories in oil alone. A tasting menu with two entrée-size courses, one of duck and one of short ribs, probably over 500 calories before factoring in side dishes. An appetizer-size portion of pasta that easily topped 500 calories.

So why should restaurants concern themselves with portion size? Because chefs play a huge role in teaching people how much to eat. If you serve too much, diners will eat too much, and think that your portions are okay. How about cutting down on meat and pasta portions, and adding more veggies to the plate instead?

Are full-calorie soft drinks making people fat? The answer is not clear, and it depends on who you listen to. What I can tell you is that soft drinks have calories. And if you’re going to enjoy a soft drink or two in your daily diet, you have to compensate for the calories by cutting back elsewhere. When we developed the 400 Calorie Fix meals, we included very few full-calorie soft drinks. Why? Because even a portion-controlled 100-calorie can of cola is still 100 calories, one-quarter of the calories for the entire meal. Most soft drinks are only about enjoyment since they’re not very filling and often not very nutritious.

Enter the soda tax. New York State and others are considering upping the tax on soft drinks as a way to discourage their use, much like taxes on cigarettes. Will it work? A study in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine found that as soda prices go up, daily intake goes down, and so does body weight. The same held true for pizza. This suggests that a soda tax would cause people to drink less. In a different approach, President Clinton’s Alliance for a Healthier Generation banded together with the American Beverage Association to create school beverage guidelines for schools. Schools now sell almost no full-calorie carbonated soft drinks and kids now drink very few of these drinks at school.

So what should you do? By all means swap full-calorie soft drinks for water, seltzer, or calorie-free beverages. Also be sure to include high-nutrition drinks like milk that supply hard-to-get vitamins and minerals. And there’s nothing wrong with having a full-calorie soft drink on occasion, as long as you keep total calories in mind.

I want to introduce you to three of my friends, all of whom found their own way to lose weight and live a healthier life.

• JS has been through lots of weight ups and downs in the 15 years that I’ve known her. She lost the most weight, close to 100 pounds, with a well-known bar-and-shake program, but when its local center went out of business a couple years ago, so did her weight loss. Since November, JS has been working with me on the 400 Calorie Fix and learning a new way of approaching food by eating balanced and satisfying meals with an appropriate number of calories. I don’t know how much weight she has lost, but she keeps buying pants in smaller sizes.
• LW was about 80 pounds heavier when I met him almost 10 years ago. One day he decided to start eating healthier meals and exercising more. We started seeing LW in the gym every morning on the elliptical machine, working at really high intensity for an hour. And the pounds kept melting off. He never looked back.
• MP decided three years ago that the time had come to lose weight. The combination of too much weight, type 2 diabetes, and a bone and joint disease was wreaking havoc on her feet and making even everyday walking extremely difficult. MP stopped eating “white” foods, not necessarily an approach I would recommend but an easy way to wean herself off processed foods and snacks. Within a few short months, MP’s weight loss helped to stabilize her blood sugar. She no longer needed insulin and her type 2 diabetes disappeared. She is looking forward to walking down the aisle at her daughter’s wedding.

[ Photo credit: mab2143 via Flickr]

When we were researching restaurant meals to include in the 400 Calorie Fix, we were shocked to find that eating the 400 calorie way is virtually impossible when you’re eating out. Portions are too big and they have too much fat – chef friends of mine brag about using butter with abandon. And try finding whole grains or beans on the menu. So I was pleased to read in the LA Times that restaurants are beginning to offer lower calorie fare on their menus. You’ll still find plenty of dishes with almost enough calories for the entire day. When you let a restaurant chef decide what and how much you should eat, weight gain shouldn’t come as a surprise. Here are a few tips for eating out sensibly:

1. Start your meal with a side salad, creamless soup, or bowl of fruit. According to research by Dr. Barbara Rolls, people who start their meal this way end up eating fewer calories.
2. Salad dressing on the side and used sparingly, always. At up to 100 calories per tablespoon, dressing can be the highest calorie part of your meal.
3. Enjoy less than a fist-sized portion of pasta, rice, or potatoes plus a palm-sized portion of meat, fish, or poultry. Take the rest home for tomorrow.
4. Wait at least 10 or 15 minutes before making a decision about dessert. Then order just one, with plenty of spoons.

1. Enjoy a cup of delicious mixed citrus fruits– orange, tangerine, grapefruit, Clementine– for breakfast plus a small carton of plain yogurt and a slice of Tuscan bread toast thinly spread with fig jam.
2. Grab a small sandwich for lunch. Unlike in the US, sandwiches in Florence are small and filled with just enough flavorful meat, cheese, and veggies to be satisfying. Order your choice at Il Due Fratellini, sit on the curb, and enjoy.
3. Make a meal of ribollita, the classic Tuscan winter soup packed with “black cabbage” (also called Tuscan kale), Swiss chard, zucchini, cannellini beans, and pieces of Tuscan bread. After eating it as a starter, I was so full that my meal ended right there.
4. Eat gelato in small sizes. The real stuff– we enjoyed it at Vivoli– is made with just milk, eggs, sugar, and real flavors. Order the smallest size cup, ask for small tasting spoons of a few different flavors, and pick your favorite.
5. Enjoy a glass of Tuscan wine. Chianti, Chianti Classico, and Brunello di Montalcino all are made from the dark, rich Sangiovese grape. A modest glass is only 100 to 150 calories.
6. Walk everywhere. Florence is a surprisingly small and accessible city with historic and gastronomic sites at every turn.