Judi Morrill, Ph.D

I was asked what I thought of banning trans fat in restaurants. I think it’s rather extreme. And why single out trans fat? I think there are much better and easier ways to get us to eat healthier.

Yes, a very common way to get us to eat better is to change the foods we already eat, rather than the harder task of getting us to change our dietary habits, e.g., reduced-fat cheese, baked chips, fat-free cookies. This is sometimes counterproductive. It can give us license to eat more of these foods. Hearing the news that Burger King, KFC, etc., have taken trans fat out of their products, doesn’t this mean that now these products are healthier—and gives us license to eat at these places more often?

What I think would be much better and easier is to have restaurants list the calories next to the prices: Jack-in-the-Box Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger 1090, Burger King Triple Whopper with Cheese 1230, McDonald’s Chicken Select Premium Breast Strips (10 pieces) 1270. We could make better choices, not only of menu items, but might even choose to not eat at these places as often.

What about regular restaurants? It’s very straightforward to estimate calorie content from a recipe (see pp 44-45 in the Are You Eating Right book). Chefs don’t make a dish the same way every time? There could be a disclaimer that the calories could be off by, say, 20%. If the menu says one appetizer is 200 calories, and another is 500 calories, I don’t really care whether the one listed as 200 calories is really 250 calories, and the other is really 450 calories. I just want to know about how much. I might even choose the higher calorie appetizer, and choose a lower calorie dessert—or decide to forgo dessert.

In reality, most restaurant dishes are made about the same way every time. Otherwise, it would be a different dish. When we go back to a restaurant because we love their Eggplant Parmigiana, it’s because it’s the same every time.

Just asking that things be listed is pretty effective. Trans fat is now required on Nutrition Facts labels. Suddenly, we have trans-fat-free Oreos, trans-fat-free chips, even trans-fat-free Crisco. Trans fat has not been banned from these products—just requiring that it be listed did the trick.

I can’t turn down the neighbor Girl Scout who comes knocking on my door, so I buy a box of Thin Mints. My husband also bought a box at his workplace. I open them at school to share so that I won’t eat many. I’m surprised to find that in one box (box 1), the Thin Mints have smooth edges and are in a clear wrapper. The ones in the other box (box 2) have scalloped edges and have a silver-colored wrapper.

Looking closely at the boxes, the cookies are different in the photos and come from different bakers. Also, the box 1 Thin Mints have fewer calories (150 vs. 160 per 4 cookies). It’s too late to count the number in each box, but punching in numbers from the label, it seems that box 1 has 36 cookies, and box 2 has 34. This means a cookie in box 1 weighs slightly less, since both boxes weigh the same. This explains most of the differences in the Nutrition Facts label, but not all, e.g., the slightly smaller cookies in box 1 have slightly more fiber.

A friend of mine helps with cookie sales for her daughter’s troop, so I asked her about this. She didn’t know that one kind of cookie, e.g., Thin Mints, differed, but said that different counties sell different kinds. Indeed, my husband bought box 2 in a different county that also sells oatmeal cookies (not sold in my county). When the neighbor Girl Scout comes to my door next year, I hope she’ll again have the “box 1” kind of Thin Mints.

This week’s Time magazine cover story is: The Global Warming Survival Guide: 51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference. Here are 3 things that surprisingly (to me, anyway) were not on the list:

1. Don’t drink so much bottled water. How lucky we are that, unlike so many in the world, we have clean drinking water piped to our home, school, work, parks…wherever we are. Think of all the energy spent on bottling water, shipping them to the stores, driving them home, then collecting and recycling the empty bottles. Drink tap water. If you there’s something you don’t like about your tap water, see if there’s something you can do about it.

2. Make your next oven a convection oven. A convection oven is simply a regular oven with a fan in it. The fan circulates the heat so that foods cook at a lower temperature and/or in less time. For example, a 12 lb turkey in a regular oven cooks in 3 hours at 325 degrees, but only takes 2-1/2 hours at 300 degrees in a convection oven.

3. Use smaller and lighter towels. Many may find it hard to give up their luxury towels–big and plush. Just a couple of them can be an entire washload. At the other extreme, the typical Japanese bath towel is tiny and thin: just adequate to dry yourself, and the towel dries quickly after you hang it back up.

Driving to classes this morning, I heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech, so gave my classes my spiel about voting. Normally, I only do this before an election because, typically, less than half the students in my classes say they are going to vote.

How did I get from the shootings to voting? My first thought was that it’s incredible to me that we don’t have more gun control when the majority of the population is for it. Then, I thought about how many of my students don’t vote. When asked why, most just shrug their shoulders–like what’s the big deal?

Perhaps more gun control wouldn’t have made any difference in today’s tragedy, but certainly gun control is an issue in campaigns, and today’s tragedy is something college students in particular could relate to.

My spiel about voting? Be informed on at least one candidate or issue on the ballot, and vote only on those candidates or issues. Don’t vote just for the sake of voting. I’m not for election-day drives that harangue people to vote. If people don’t vote because they don’t care and/or aren’t informed about the issues, so be it, but today’s shooting was a reminder that there are issues out there that affect things that my students do care about. I can’t help but remember today my students in the National Guard in the year 2000 who didn’t vote, and never thought that they would be sent to Iraq.

Sunday News Magazines are a popular source of health and nutrition info, and people expect them to be a reliable source. To maintain their appeal, they have to be “lite,” and people often take what’s said at face value in a fast read.

Yesterday’s Parade magazine, for example, says in its “8 Ways to Stay Healthy” that one way is to give blood: a recent study of more than a million Scandinavian blood donors found that giving blood was linked to a lower risk of cancers. So is giving blood one way to stay healthy? The only instance I can think of is if you have the genetic variant for hemochromatosis (the potentially fatal iron-overload disease), where you absorb more iron from your diet than normal and, over the years, accumulate it to toxic levels in various organs. In this case, donating blood (rich in iron) regularly would be healthful because it would regularly rid the body of iron. The main reason why blood donation was linked to lower risk of cancers is probably because people who are regular blood donors have healthier lifestyles.

An article on ways to Ease The Aches of Arthritis says, “Eat foods that reduce inflammation and avoid those that cause it. Red meat and high-fructose corn syrup are loaded with omega-6 fatty acids, which tend to promote inflammation.” In fact, high-fructose corn syrup is fat-free and has no omega-6 fatty acids. The article goes on to say, “to reduce inflammation, consume more foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids such as deep-sea fish, flaxseed, brightly colored fruits, dark-green leafy vegetables, and olive oil.” In fact, deep-sea fish and flaxseed are good sources, but all the brightly colored fruits and dark-green leafy vegetables that I can think of are basically fat-free–certainly not rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Olive oil isn’t a rich source either. Just 1% of its fat is omega-3 (the same as beef fat) and it has 8 times more omega-6 than omega-3.
Be aware that misinformation is common in many popular articles and websites. (The above articles in yesterday’s Parade were written by physicians.)