Monthly Archives: July 2015

Beans, beans, the musical fruit ….

Uncategorized

Beans are good.  Beans are nutritious. The MIND diet folks found evidence that beans help delay cognitive decline. But, it is true that beans can cause gas. And, that can cause people to avoid beans.

Ways to prevent gas caused by eating beans.
There seems to be a lot of ideas about this on the web. I am looking for some good research about this.

This is all I have found so far (on the PMC area of the National Library of Medicine) :

Perceptions of flatulence from bean consumption among adults in 3 feeding studies
  One of the conclusions was that “People’s concerns about excessive flatulence from eating beans may be exaggerated.”  But, they also stated that individuals vary in their responses to different bean types.

Efficacy and tolerability of α-galactosidase in treating gas-related symptoms in children: a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trial (α-galactosidase is the active ingredient in Beano).
This is a study to see if Beano-like products work to prevent gas in children. The results indicate that it is somewhat effective.

That was all the publicly available  research I could find. I did find a couple more research articles that showed that Beano like products are effective fo some people. I think they are worth a try.

There are plenty of opinion pieces on the web. This one seems to have some good hints, but beware that it is not based on research.

I read an article by a physician once, but I can’t find it right now.
The gist was that we should eat beans on a regular basis.  That makes us develop an enzyme that helps digest beans.  However, we have to keep eating beans to keep the enzyme going. I will keep looking for that article.

Of course, I am going to eat beans anyway.  Here are some ways I have fixed them in the past, but I need to find more good Ideas for ways to eat beans:
Chili
Garbanzos on salad, roasted garbanzos with chili powder and cumin
Succotash
Pork & beans
Refried beans. I like Old El Paso fat-free
Bean dip
Black beans and rice

Beans are quite calorie-dense.  According to Nutrition Data,  http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/legumes-and-legume-products/4303/2 , 1 cup of canned pinto beans is 215 calories. I try to limit my bean intake to 1/4 to 1/2 cup.  Seems like the problem might be when I eat it in addition to meat.  The best way is to eat it in place of meat.  That’s what we do when we eat chili.  Keeping amounts eaten at one time should help prevent the gas problem, too.

Don’t forsake me, oh MIND diet!

The MIND Diet

What does the MIND diet forsake?  Lots of good foods that are not on the recommended lists.

That doesn’t mean we should stop eating those foods. The foods that are recommended on the MIND diet are ones that research has shown to be helpful in preventing cognitive delay.  That doesn’t mean that other foods do not do that, just that the research has not been done yet.  So, my plan is to eat other “power” foods, as long as they are not on the AVOID list, but not to the extent that I can’t eat the recommended foods (and still stay within my calorie limit). That especially includes foods that have been shown to prevent heart disease, cancer, and osteoporosis. There are foods that do not or have not been shown to affect cognitive decline, but they may still be beneficial for health.

These are some foods that fall in that category:

All other fruits
Avocado (is that technically a fruit?)
Low-fat dairy products — except go light on cheese, darn it!
Coffee
Dark chocolate

Fast Food for the MIND diet

Eating Out

I’m traveling this week and eating lunch mostly at fast food restaurants. That makes it hard to follow any diet, including the MIND diet.  One good thing, though, is that the nutrition info for the chain fast food restaurants is usually available.

This is what I ate yesterday:

Culver’s Strawberry Fields Salad.

Culvers strawberry fields salad

It contained 4 of the 10 foods that are recommended on the MIND diet.  Ingredients are listed here.
Strawberries
Leafy green vegetables (lettuce plus)
Other vegetables (grape tomatoes)
Nuts (pecans)
The only avoid food it contains is bleu cheese.  I wished I had asked to have this left off because I don’t like it much anyway.  I really don’t want to waste my one serving of cheese per week on it.

Also, Culver’s doesn’t have any olive oil-based dressings.  I don’t use much anyway, but I should start carrying my own dressing.

Calorie-wise this salad isn’t too bad : 400 calories and I could have saved 50 by omitting the cheese.  I was glad it had pecans, but there were a lot of them.  Actually, the 160 calories for the pecans probably means it was just an ounce. With those providing protein, I could have cut down some on the chicken. That would have saved me from some of the sodium, too, which was listed as 550 mg.

This salad was a lot better than most of my other choices.

 

Added later: Don’t confuse Culver’s Strawberry Fields salad with a salad by the same name at Wendy’s.  I had it the other day and the strawberries had been frozen! It had sunflower seeds instead of pecans. The apple balsamic vinaigrette was good, though.

“Holy” whole grain foods

Whole Grains

I know that they are not really “Holy,” but the MIND diet folks based their assessment of this ingredient on at least 3 servings per day to award the whole 1 point. That is more than any of the other foods, so it does seem to be pretty important.

I’m going to have to work on this one.  I have spent quite a bit of time on low carb diets. I wouldn’t call the TLC diet that I have been on recently low carb, but by the time I eat its other requirements there are not many calories left for carbs. And now the MIND diet wants me to add  beans and nuts.

The first thing I need to figure out is what qualifies as a whole grain. The MIND diet articles do not give any guidance on this.  I found this great site by the Whole Grans Council that explains this well and seems to be an authority. Actually, I am a little leery, because the members of this group are mostly food vendors that vend whole grain foods so they could be a bit biased. I haven’t found a better authority, though, so for now, this site is my authority.

These are things that I eat already that qualify, according to the Whole Grain Council:
Oatmeal
Oroweat whole grain bread
Grape nuts?  And Kroger Nutty Nuggets
Brown rice
Whole grain rotini and egg noodles
Barley in soup
Corn. Does it really count?  Corn tortillas? corn meal?
Muffins made with whole wheat flour

Occasionally,  I eat:
Quinoa. But haven’t found a way to fix it that we really like
Wild rice
Popcorn

I am going to work on adding to my repertoire.  There are tons of recipes.
Suggestions from the USDA.
The American Heart Association is in favor also, but doesn’t give a whole lot of helpful hints.
Rodale’s thoughts on the subject

How can I tell if foods are really Whole Grains?

1. Look for the Whole Grains Council stamp

2. Review criteria set by the Whole Grains Council

3. Check out other sites that give assessments of foods. For example the Fooducate site (or app).  This is its assessment of Grape=Nuts.

Scientific American has some thoughts on why whole grains are not always healthy.

 

Which vegetables are green and leafy?

Green/Leafy Vegetables

According to the MIND diet article shown below, the participants had to eat 6 or more servings of green, leafy vegetables per week to get the full point for this category.

So what did they consider green, leafy vegetables?

Their chart shows this footnote: “Kale, collards, greens; spinach; lettuce/tossed salad.”

On the other hand, the ‘Other Vegetables’ category has this footnote:;
“Green/red peppers, squash, cooked carrots, raw carrots, broccoli, celery,
potatoes, peas or lima beans, tomatoes, tomato sauce, string beans, beets,
corn, zucchini/summer squash/eggplant, coleslaw, potato salad.”

So, that clarifies it a bit.  I will be back with some recipes for this category.

*Morris, M. C., Tangney, C. C., Wang, Y., Sacks, F. M., Barnes, L. L., Bennett, D. A., & Aggarwal, N. T. (2015). Mediterranean-dietary approach to systolic hypertension diet intervention for neurodegenerative delay diet slows cognitive decline with aging. Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, doi:10.1016/j.jalz.2015.04.011

 

NUTS! I’m afraid to eat NUTS

Nuts, ,

 

Why am I afraid to eat nuts?

Am I allergic to nuts?  No, I’ve never had any allergic symptoms

Am I afraid I will choke on nuts?  No, I know that’s a eager but I have good teeth and I chew them well.

Why then?  It’s because they are so irresistible and calorie-dense. I could eat a whole can of cashews or just about any kind of nuts at one sitting.

cashews

I need some strategies for eating nuts in moderation. I did a little brainstorming and here are some ideas:

  • Mix them into whole grain muffins so that each muffin has a serving
  • Use them in coating on chicken
  • Buy really small snack bags and divvy them out
  • Paste a photo of the fat me on the top of the can
  • Don’t buy too many nuts at one time. Enough for 6 to 7 servings for the week
  • Print out this list of nut nutrients and place it on the cabinet where you store nuts
  • Weigh or measure you serving and put the rest away
  • Find something else to crunch on — celery or carrots?
  • Eat them on oatmeal
  • Make a sign:  it’s NUTS to eat too many nuts.But, how much is a serving of nuts?

I have not found a good answer to that. The articles about the MIND diet study do not list serving sizes. It looks like 1 oz is a frequent amount for which nutrition data is given, but 1 oz of most nuts contains lots of calories.

I don’t think it relates to serving side exactly, but the USDA says that 1/2 ounce of nuts is an ounce equivalent in the Protein Food Group.

Here is an interesting post about the anti-aging effects of walnuts. It seems to support the MIND diet study’s inclusion of nuts, but does not refer to that study specifically.

One good thing about eating nuts is that you don’t really need a recipe. You can just eat them as they are. However, there are lots of good-looking recipes available.

By the way, Peanuts are not nuts! I didn’t really think so but I did a bit of a search. I think a place called the “Peanut Institute” should know. They say that peanuts are legumes. Does that mean we can count them in our bean intake?

 

 

 

MIND diet going viral??

The MIND Diet

Maybe not quite viral yet, but quite a few sites have written about it. It’s not that I want to lose you, but I thought you might like to read some of them.  I am not sure they all portray the MIND diet accurately.  I will try to come back and provide a brief review of each later.

That’s all for now. I am going to keep working on this list. As I said, I am doing this partly for myself, just to keep focused on this diet. So, this is my place to list other stories about the MIND diet and some of what I think about them.

Y’all Come Back Now!

What is the MIND diet?

The MIND Diet

The MIND diet is a new diet associated with reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. It was developed by researchers at Rush University who style it after the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet, while tailoring the diet more to protection of the brain. They based the modifications on human and animal studies of the effect of nutrition on cognitive decline.

The MIND acronym comes from “Mediterranean-DASH diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay.

The researchers studied relationship of the MIND diet as well as the DASH and Mediterranean Diets to cognitive status of nearly a thousand retirees in the Memory and Aging Project in Chicago over several years. They found that those who followed the MIND diet closely had a 53% in the rate of developing Alzheimer’s Disease and even those who followed it moderately well had a 35% reduction.

The researchers used a questionnaire to ascertain how closely the participants followed the MIND diet. This questionnaire resulted in a maximum score of 15.

This is what you have to eat (and not eat) to get the full 15 points:

This is what you should eat:

  1. Green, Leafy vegetables,  6 or more servings per week
  2. Other vegetables, at least 1 serving per day
  3. Berries, especially strawberries, 2 or more servings/week
  4. Nuts, 5 or more servings/week
  5. Olive Oil, use as primary oil
  6. Whole grains, 3 or more servings/day
  7. Fish, 1 or more servings/week
  8. Beans, more than 3 times/week
  9. Poultry, 2 or more servings/week
  10. Wine, 1 glass/day

This is what you should AVOID (or limit as shown):

  1. Red Meat, not more than 3 meals per week
  2. Butter and Margarine, less than 1 Tablespoon/day
  3. Fast foods & Fried foods, less than once a week
  4. Pastries & sweets, not more than 4 servings/weeks
  5. Cheese, less than once a week

The good news for me is that this is just about what I have been eating anyway.  The biggest problem for me is the cheese limit. Really? Less than once a week?

But, there is always room for improvement.  I will be exploring more details about each of these requirements. That is the main focus of my blog.

References:

Morris, M. C., Tangney, C. C., Wang, Y., Sacks, F. M., Barnes, L. L., Bennett, D. A., & Aggarwal, N. T. (2015). Mediterranean-dietary approach to systolic hypertension diet intervention for neurodegenerative delay diet slows cognitive decline with aging. Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, doi:10.1016/j.jalz.2015.04.011

Morris, M. C., Tangney, C. C., Wang, Y., Sacks, F. M., Bennett, D. A., & Aggarwal, N. T. (2015). MIND diet associated with reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease. Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, doi:10.1016/j.jalz.2014.11.009