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

Maybe you saw the depressing Time Magazine article last August that questioned whether exercise does anything for weight loss. Sadly, the article concluded that most of us either don’t exercise enough or we eat more calories than we burn during activity. I remember reading a study years ago – forgive me for not remembering the exact details – about a group of men who ran the same mileage for a lot of years. Guess what? Their waist measurement still increased and they gained weight. And now, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that it took at least an hour of moderate activity every day to help prevent weight gain in normal-weight, middle-age women.

So can you use exercise to win the battle of the bulge? Absolutely, but …

• Be realistic about how many calories you burned and what that equals in food. The elliptical machine that I was on for 35 minutes today said that I burned about 350 calories. That’s about the calories in a medium-size vanilla cone at DQ. BTW, walking or running burns about 100 calories per mile, a bit less for walking and more for running.
• Pace your eating. You might need to eat a small meal/snack an hour or so before you exercise and then another one after.
• Use exercise to give your motivation a boost. Lots of folks tell me that being active makes them want to eat in a healthier way.
• Work with Mother Nature. Sad but true, your metabolism does slow down as you get older. That means you have to eat less than you did in the decade before.
• Add muscle and add movement. Keep up your muscle mass – it burns more calories than body fat. And move around often during your day rather than staying planted in front of the computer or TV, where your body doesn’t burn many more calories than when you’re sleeping.

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.

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?

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.

The 5-A-Day campaign was a widely publicized effort to get Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables. Certainly 5-A-Day reminders were all around us, especially on bags, signs, and banners in the supermarket. After millions of dollars spent over 20 years, the 5-A-Day folks took a look at how we were doing, and found that we were eating about the same amount of fruits and vegetables as we were eating before 5-A-Day. Promoters of the blood pressure-lowering DASH diet — plenty of fruits and veggies, along with low fat dairy — received similar bad news. Over time, followers of the DASH diet slacked off, even though following the diet helps boost heart health. It takes effort to eat enough fruits and veggies, but it’s not that hard if you have one serving at breakfast and snack plus at least two at lunch and dinner. Remember that soups made with vegetables, bean dishes like bean salad and baked beans, and dishes made with tomato sauce all count.

[ Photo credit: karimian via Flickr ]

My mom has always been a big walker. As a young girl in Germany, she often went on a spazier (pronounced shpahtzeer) with her family. That tradition continued when we were growing up. So I was thrilled to read in Br J Sports Med. that vigorous walking for an hour at least five days can add years of healthy life to older adults.

Several of my friends have become avid walkers after their knees and hips gave out from running. They say that a high intensity walk, sometimes on an incline on a treadmill, maintains their fitness as much as running did. And you burn the same 100 calories or so per mile regardless of whether you’re running or walking. Our mainly sidewalk-free town just opened a one-mile stretch of sidewalk leading into downtown and has plans to add more sidewalks to promote safe walking. I hope other towns do the same.

[ Photo credit: designatednaphour via Flickr ]

On April 7, Good Morning America featured a segment on food label accuracy. The Food and Drug Administration allows a margin of error of 20 percent for each nutrient, meaning that if a food has, say, 2 grams of protein per serving, the actual amount can range from 1.6 grams to 2.4 grams. Not surprisingly, Good Morning American found that some foods exceeded the 20 percent margin.

I don’t object to their findings but I do object to the irresponsible way they reported the information on the Good Morning America website:

The government says trans fats are downright dangerous. The Nabisco Cheese Nips label boasts “0″ trans fat but, according to our test, each serving actually contains about a quarter of a gram of the artery-clogging fat. It’s perfectly legal, but also troubling because the Food and Drug Administration says Americans should try to eliminate trans fat from their diets.”

Yes, Americans should cut back on trans fat, but a quarter gram of trans fat is NOTHING compared to the amount that a person might get in a doughnut or serving of fried chicken.

The website is equally alarmist about the amount of fat in a fat-free cookie:

As for total fat, consider Snackwell’s Devil’s Food Cookies. With “0″ fat listed, they’re supposed to be a guilt-free treat for dieters, but the lab we hired found more than a quarter of a gram of fat in each one-cookie serving.”

Get real. Even if a dieter eats four cookies, the fat totals a mere gram. That’s next to nothing. The article totally misses the mark — Americans need to learn to eat better overall, not stress over a small amount of extra fat in a still-low-fat food.

[ Photo credit: slierk via Flickr ]