A Chunky as Heck Chicken Soup Recipe

I don't share too many recipes on this blog, but tonight I made a chicken soup (originally billed as a stew) for the second time and it was so good I just had to share it! This is a great chicken soup that can be modified in any way that you want. You can change the flavors, the ingredients, the vegetables, the spices - whatever you like! My favorite part about this is that you cook the chicken in the broth which gives it a delicious, rich flavor and then you shred it. I've had some failed chicken soup attempts where you add little chunks of chicken that are hard to get just right. With this recipe you don't worry about the size, just shred it!

Ingredients:
olive oil
around 2 cups of chopped vegetables such as:
   onion
   celery
   carrot
   zucchini
   mushrooms
14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes (try fire roasted for extra flavor)
14.5 ounce can low sodium chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon of each spice such as:
   thyme
   basil
2 chicken breasts with bones and skin (at both my local grocery store and at Trader Joes I've found this in the Kosher meat section)

Directions:
Heat olive oil in a large pot and saute vegetables for approximately 5 minutes. Add entire can of tomatoes, broth, and spices. Submerge chicken and allow to simmer for about 25 minutes (longer if the chicken breasts are thick), turning chicken and stirring occasionally. Remove the chicken from the pot, allow to cool, and discard skin. Shred or chop chicken and discard bones, then return shredded chicken to the pot. Simmer for 10 more minutes, let cool, and enjoy! Serve atop quinoa, couscous, whole wheat noodles, or with a hunk of whole grain bread.

Good Advice from England

This is a cute and creative video showing how our eating and living habits have changed over time and how that can affect obesity rates.

Less Yellow, More Insecurity

Nutrition-related headlines tend to catch my eye, for obvious reasons. Last week there were two headlines that made all the news sources and got lots of media attention - national, local, and social. These headlines differ greatly but both sparked outrage...

Mac N Cheese to Be Less Yellow!

Millions Lose SNAP Benefits 

So, Kraft has agreed to remove some of the artificial yellow food coloring from it's Mac N Cheese (but only some varieties and not yet). Here is the AP News story which also got covered by such news sources as Perez Hilton who proclaimed "It's a good thing AND a sad thing! But mostly good!" People flocked to their facebook pages and twitter accounts to bemoan the loss of the color yellow, many (it seems) not realizing that the yellow dyes are not being removed from the original Mac N Cheese, just some of the kid-focused shapes like Sponge Bob. Others hailed Kraft for listening to the people and making the product more natural, though Kraft denied that implementing the change had anything to do with a Change.org petition.

I love a good bowl of macaroni and cheese as much as the next person (maybe a little bit more) but thought it was really unfortunate for these headlines to be happening on the same day, and for one to seemingly be getting more attention than the other.

One in seven Americans (47 million people) just lost some of their supplemental food money from SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program). Food insecurity is already rampant in America and this decrease in funds just increases that feeling. According to the Food Research and Action Center: 

"The U.S Department of Agriculture estimates that the reduction in benefits amounts to 21 fewer meals per month. Viewed differently, it leaves the average participant with just $1.40 to spend per meal, not enough to sustain health, learning or productive work. And even as these cuts are going into effect and families across the country are trying to figure out how to further stretch their impossibly tight food budgets, Congress is discussing even more drastic cuts to SNAP."

These headlines brought to mind a food drive that my middle school hosted many years ago. The classroom that collected the largest quantity of food got a special prize. The winning group was a class where one boy had gone to Sam's Club and bought a palate of ramen noodles. I'm sure there were a lot of boxes of Mac N Cheese in that drive as well, something else cheap, non-perishable, and to easy to contribute. This connection came to mind because as food stamp benefits decrease, use of places like food banks and other emergency food organizations tends to increase. So maybe the headlines are not so unrelated after all - they could be affecting some of the same people. If SNAP recipients turn to food banks once their supplemental income has run out, what will they find there? Hopefully more than just palates of ramen noodles and still-just-as-yellow Mac N Cheese.

Please consider making a donation to a local food bank during this time or starting a virtual food drive. I won't judge you if you donate ramen or macaroni, but something green (canned vegetables or cash money) might help out a little bit more.

Boston Food Bank: http://gbfb.org/
Feeding America: http://feedingamerica.org/

Hey Restaurants! Where's the (Vegetarian) Protein?

General recommendations are for healthy adults to eat around .8-1g of protein per kilogram of body fat (take your weight in pounds, divide by 2.2, multiply by .8). So someone who weighs 150 pounds would need around 55g protein throughout the day. Most any dietitian that you speak to would suggest that you spread that protein out throughout the day and make sure that each meal has some protein in order to help rebuild and repair your body, as well as to help you feel full after each meal. However, it doesn't have to be spread precisely equally throughout the day by any means. 

I was recently talking with a family member about the fact that when she makes a meatless choice at a restaurant these days it often does not include what you might think of as vegetarian protein, ie: tofu or beans. She was saying this might be a portabella mushroom sandwich with some cheese or an eggplant pasta dish. Is it OK to skip the meat if it also means skipping the protein at a meal? Let's take a look...

Clearly I love eggplant, but this isn't the best option if you're looking for protein

According to the USDA nutrient database (which thankfully is back up and running now that the government has resumed business!) here is the protein in some of these non-meat dishes that restaurants are selling as a complete meal...

Portobella Mushroom
1 cup grilled: 4g protein
Fresh Mozzarella
1oz (about 1/8 of a ball of fresh mozzarella): 6g protein
 Eggplant
1 cup cooked : <1g protein
Cheddar Cheese
1 oz: 7g protein

If the dish comes with some sort of whole grain (brown rice, whole wheat pasta, whole grain bread) that would add some protein to the dish as well. Bottom line? If you want to avoid meat and you're faced with no veggie-protein options, something with mushrooms (and cheese if you're eating dairy) is the better choice than something with just eggplant.

If you think gluten is the culprit...

I don't often get into clinical nutrition in this blog; it's more of a consumer-friendly space for thoughts on eating, nutrition, and exercise that might apply to a diverse range of people. However, I went to a talk yesterday and thought it was worth sharing some advice that I learned.

If you are having stomach pains or other symptoms when you eat products that contain gluten like pasta, bread, soy sauce, muffins, pancakes, beer, wraps, couscous, etc. then you might think to yourself "I'll just try cutting out gluten and see if I feel better." So you cut it out of your diet, you feel better, and just go on living a life of not eating gluten. No problem, right? Wrong. Here are some reasons why you need to see a doctor immediately if you think that you have non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) or celiac disease:

A tart with a crust full of gluten

1. The way that doctors test for celiac is by seeing if your body produces certain autoantibodies via a blood test. You need to have been eating gluten (the equivalent of one slice of bread per day) for around 6 weeks prior to the test for this blood test to give a definitive diagnosis. If you self-diagnose yourself and just avoid gluten for the rest of your life, you'll never know if you have celiac (or will have to start eating gluten-containing foods in order to find out).

2. Why do you need a definitive diagnosis? When the GI doctor asked the group she was presenting to, I raised my hand and guessed "because you don't want someone cutting out entire food groups if they don't have to." It's a very nutrition-focused response and, while true, is not the most pressing reason. The reason someone who suspects celiac should get a definitive diagnosis is because while the treatment of celiac is not eating foods with gluten, the medical care is and follow-up is more complicated. When someone is diagnosed with celiac, their immediate family members also need to be tested because the disease is hereditary; the patient will also need to be followed closely to monitor for thyroid disease and other commonly co-occurring issues.

3. Celiac can have such devastating effects on the body that a gluten-free diet needs to be followed 100% of the time with no exceptions. If you haven't had a diagnosis but just know that avoiding foods with gluten makes you feel better, you might be less inclined to check food labels each and every time and might be OK with a little exception here and there.

Having NCGS or celiac disease is not fun for anyone. But do yourself a favor and get checked out by a doctor sooner rather than later if you suspect that you have either of these diseases - it could save you from needing to bring back symptoms for 6 weeks in order to get tested and it could help your family members to get diagnosed sooner as well. For more information on celiac disease, click here.

Indulgences: "Permissible" or Not?

I read an article recently in the Wall Street Journal that conveyed how more and more companies are creating snack foods out of "healthy" ingredients because consumers are looking for "permissible indulgences." For example, salty fried chips made from sweet potatoes rather than white ones or a  "snack" made of 100% seaweed sheets.

Being a person who craves salty and crunchy, I've tried a number of these products. Seaweed seems like such a great snack food! Until you realize that you just paid at something like $1.00 per wafer thin sheet. True, it was healthy, but the vitamins and minerals it gave you probably would've been cheaper in some other whole form of vegetable and you would've stayed full longer to boot.

I've also fallen victim to items like vegetable chips (usually potato chips with a little bit of color added from other vegetables) and those amazingly delicious crunchy vegetable slices which often don't say, but always are, deep fried (which does make them delicious!).  Sure, they're dehydrated before they are deep fried, but I personally used to always stop at the fact that they're dehydrated thinking that the wonderful food production companies had found a way to extract liquid from vegetables and thereby make them crunchy (without then frying them in oil).

Looks like vegetables, tastes like (and is) fried, salted vegetables (sort of like a potato chip!)

Now, when I say "fallen victim" I don't mean that it was bad to eat these foods. As we try to teach people who need help normalizing their eating, foods are not "good" and "bad." What I think we can classify as good or bad though is the intention behind eating something that is marketed in a certain way, especially if words are used to make it seem healthier when in reality it is not. Do I think that the crunchy vegetable packing needs to say "you may as well eat potato chips" on it? No. But I think that the preparation method should be made explicitly clear by stating, for example: Deep fried green beans, carrots, and beets instead of: Garden Chips. That way the consumer can see that, think to themselves "this might not be healthy enough to become an everyday snack but it looks delicious so I'll try it knowing that it is probably not a magical alternative to an unhealthy snack."

An indulgence should be just that - something that you crave, something that you want. If you have to put the word "permissible" in front of it, that gives control not only to the food but also to the food production companies who want you to think that their product is more permissible than others. Chances are if you're thinking to yourself that something in a permissible indulgence, it's not really an indulgence at all. I've read that for some people, if they deny themselves the food item that they really wanted, they'll end up eating even more of the alternative choice because it will never fully satisfy them in the way that the original item would have; they then end up consuming more calories and being unsatisfied.

... And We're Back! aka Why Not Walk?

I've been thinking a lot about walking recently. Last week I started a new job at a hospital that is 1.5 miles from my new apartment. Google maps told me that it would take me 10 minutes to drive, 15 minutes to talk the bus, 15 minutes to bike, and 30 minutes to walk. Parking is crazy there so driving is out, the bus is crowded at that time of day, and by the time I get my tires pumped and my bike outside it's been more than 15 minutes. So I've been electing to walk there and back, getting a nice 3 mile roundtrip walk in every day. I love it because if I'm too tired to exercise when I get home at least I know that I've been a bit active during the day - and I'm only dependent on my own two feet (plus stop lights!) not on the bus running on schedule or finding a spot for my bike on the crowded racks.

The hospital has a Parking Department where you can get a parking pass, a discounted train pass, and a reimbursement for bike parts/maintenance if you bike to work. But for some reason, they have no monetary incentive for people to walk to work. When you think of how small of a city Boston is, it's sort of silly not to incentivize walking. I'm often struck by how few miles away my destination is (when I type it into my gps and it tells me it will take 45 minutes of sitting in traffic to make it 6 miles for example!).

It's one thing for me to walk myself to my destination - I'm a grown up, I know where I'm going and know not to cross the street outside of a crosswalk. But what about kids who as a population are less active than ever before? I recently read an article that said only 1/3 of students who live within a mile of school walk or bike and less than 3% of students who live within 2 miles of school walk or bike. I also just got an e-mail today from the Alliance for a Healthier Generation about a meeting that they're having to discuss programs like Safe Routes to Schools and Fire Up Your Feet. I think it's great that there are programs out there to encourage kids to walk to school and make it safer to do so, but in a way it's also sad that these programs are necessary.

Let's try to be a good example to everyone around us by choosing to walk next time your GPS tells you that your destination is less than 2 miles away. It'll take you a little over 30 minutes to get there and I bet you'll notice things about your neighborhood along the way that you never saw from you car. Let me know how it goes!