Work On It Wednesday
(I, for one, am working on getting new graphics...please bear with me!)
I'm starting a new series called "Work on It Wednesday" aimed at taking my life, piece by piece, and working on it to make it healthier. As I said in my review of Jillian Michaels' Master Your Metabolism, I think when you are given an overwhelming amount of information all at one time, it can be extremely disheartening. It begins to feel like change is not actually possible, because there is so much information and so much to process that you can't possibly make a difference in the world, or even really in your individual life.
Well, I think you (meaning I) can. So each Wednesday, I am going to make that a point - to make a conscious effort to change just one thing about my life or work towards a goal. Whether that be nutritional, environmental, fitness related, or just lifestyle in general, there are many parts of my life that could use improving, so I am going to work on it step by step. I am a very goal oriented person, and I function better when I set out with a specific idea of what I want to do in my mind, so I think that by setting those small stepping stone goals, I can work towards where I really want to be in my life. I discussed in my post about the definitions of healthy, I think life is all about making baby steps towards our ultimate goal. There are few people that can set a goal and then achieve it within days (or weeks, or whatever). And personally, the times that I have set goals and in one great leap achieved them, it meant that I was not setting myself high enough standards. So this series is going to be the opposite - my ultimate goal is to live in a completely green, healthy, environmental friendly, organic way. Certainly, I am not there yet (see the gluttonous pile of Redi-Whip I put on my Angel Food Cake), but I am working towards that goal with baby steps, and it is a journey.
I would love for you to join me on this journey. Part of what I envisioned for Just Add Lauren is a blog where we can come together and share our paths towards a healthier (and thus happier) lifestyle. I want your feedback, your changes, your comments, everything! Let me know what you are doing to improve your life, and I will likewise share what I am doing to improve mine!
Since Work On It Wednesday is a new series, I thought we would start off with some thing relatively easy to work on. Not so much easy in terms of how much you love the food and don't want to give it up, but more so easy in terms of recognizing it in the foods that you are eating and being able to identify it on the nutrition label.
This week, it will be working on removing the artificial sweeteners from you life (eek!) If an effort to eat more whole, fresh, clean foods, artificial sweeteners have been the thorn in my side. As I mentioned in my article about the definition of healthy, for much of my life I defined eating healthy as eating less calories, and in that regard artificial sweeteners are a godsend.
However, with my new definition of healthy in hand, I am working towards eliminating all artificial sweeteners out of my life. You will find the artificial sweeteners labeled on the nutrition panel as saccharin, aspartame (the most common), sucralose (Splenda), neotame (newest version of aspartame), acesulfame, acesulfame K, acesulfame potassium.
Here are just a few reasons to eliminate them from your diet, if you haven't already:
1) Although it seems counter intuitive, artificial sweeteners may actually contribute to weight gain. A study at Purdue University said that rats that were given saccharin gained more weight than rats given sugary foods. It claimed that rats whose diet contained artificial sweeteners experienced a physiological connection between sweet tastes and calories, which in the end drove them to overeat and actually consume more calories than they would have if they had just eaten the sugary food to begin with. Although I am only one person, and certainly this is not a scientific experiment, I have found this to be true in my own life. When I drink something like Diet Coke, I experience very intense sugar cravings for days following. The cravings are extremely hard to satiate, thus I end up eating more sweets and carbs trying to make them go away. This is but one good reason to eliminate artificial sweeteners.
2) The jury is still out on the link between artificial sweeteners and cancer. It seems they go back and forth between whether or not it causes (or at least contributes) to cancer, but I'd rather not take my chances.
3) They are just plain artificial. In my quest to be eating more whole foods, artificial sweeteners have absolutely no place. Eventually, I'm going to Work On eliminating all refined sugars from my life, but I think artificial sweeteners are the first stepping stone toward that goal.
Most Common Foods with Artificial Sweeteners:
Diet Soft Drinks
Chewing Gum
Breath Mints
Some Cereals
Ice Cream Novelties
Jams and Jellies
Nutrition Bars
Ready to Mix Drinks
Ready to Mix Meal Replacements (like Slim Fast)
Pudding
Yogurt (this is a big one in my house...)
Anything that is labeled "sugar free"
Some chewable vitamins
There is much controversy about whether or not artificial sweeteners actually cause anything that I've talked about above. It seems every time I read an article about the topic, there are multiple comments saying that artificial sweeteners are fine, the government has studied them, and we're all overreacting. That's all fine and dandy in my opinion, but this is just a personal choice that I myself am making to remove them from my life. I know that they have negative side effects for me (headaches, excessive thirst, the aforementioned sugar cravings), and since I am making this effort to change my diet, this is something that I want to do for me.
As always, I would love to have you join me on this journey! Are you working on eliminating artificial sweeteners from your own life? What is going to be the most difficult food for you to give up? (Let me just lay it out there - diet coke is it for me!)
Last week, we talked about cutting out artificial sweeteners from our lives in the Work On It Wednesday segment. This week, we're going to take it a bit farther (uh oh!) and tackle High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).
You've probably heard about HFCS in the news lately - it is literally all over the place. From Facebook groups calling for it's complete ban to commercials on TV that defend HFCS as fine in moderation, HFCS seems to be the demonized element of the moment. I'm not going to join in on the hoopla of everything that people have to say about it, but suffice to say that HFCS is not included in certified organic products, which says to me that it is a less than natural ingredient. In my quest for increasing the "whole foods" in my pantry, HFCS doesn't really have a place.
A little background information: HFCS is made by changing the sugar (glucose) in cornstarch into fructose - which is another form of sugar- and then adding that product to more glucose. The end product is a combination of fructose and glucose and is a cheaper sweetener (due in part to the government subsidies on corn), which makes it very desirable for food manufacturers who are looking to increase their profit margin.
People on either side of the HFCS debate have vastly different opinions about how it interacts with your body chemistry. Proponents of HFCS (mostly the Corn Refiners Association) claim that HFCS is nutritionally the same as sugar, and contains the same amount of calories as both sugar and honey. In addition, they claim that HFCS is made from corn, which makes it "natural" (see more about that ambiguous term here).
Those claims may be legally true (ie. it does contain the same amount of calories, and "natural" isn't really legally defined) but there have been ample studies that imply that HFCS may interact with our bodies in ways that are not beneficial, and contribute to some of the problems that we experience. One of the most prevalent claims is that HFCS contributes to the obesity epidemic that the US is currently facing. Over the last 40 years or so, the US has increased it production of HFCS from 3,000 tons to 9, 227,000 tons. Since 1980 it has increased 350% (figures are from Master Your Metabolism). During this same period of time, obesity rates in the US have shot up to the current level of 64% of adults being either overweight or obese. However, just because these two happened simultaneously does not imply that somehow HFCS made everyone overweight, or that there is something inherently wrong with HFCS in small doses (although clearly that is a term that we in the US have trouble wrapping our heads around).
The thing that gets to me about HFCS is not the correlation between its production and obesity rates. There are lots of things that happened during the same period of time that could have also contributed to the rise in obesity rates (women working outside the home more, increase in work hours for people, low fat diet trends, etc). The thing that gets to me about HFCS is the studies that show that it does actually interact in your body in ways that are different from table sugar, which already isn't great for you. According to a recent study from Princeton University, rats that were given HFCS gained significantly more weight than rats that were given normal sugar, even when their overall calorie consumption was the same. They also did a second study on HFCS which monitored weight gain, body fat, and triglyceride levels in rats that had daily access to HFCS. Over the course of the six month study, these rats showed what we call in humans "metabolic syndrome" characterized by abnormal weight gain, an increase in circulating triglycerides, and an increase in visceral fat around the abdomen. Additionally, a study at the University of Pennsylvania found that fructose does not suppress the hormone ghrelin in the same was that glucose does. Ghrelin is responsible for increasing your appetite, so ideally when you eat something, ghrelin levels should decrease, allowing you to feel satiated. By eating things with HFCS in them and not have lowered ghrelin levels, we set ourselves up for constant hunger and insatiable cravings.
Whew! That was a lot of information. All that to say though, that I'm Working On cutting HFCS out of my life. Although the Corn Refiners Association may tell me that it is all natural, I'm not buyin' it! Wikihow has a pretty thorough article about reducing your HFCS intake, but here are a few foods to watch out for in order to reduce your HFCS:
- Breakfast Cereals
- Juice, Soda, Tea
- Bread
- Cookies, Cakes, Crackers (even Wheat Thins!)
- Cottage cheese, yogurt, and sweetened dairy products
- Ice Cream
- Baked Beans
- Jams, Jellies
- Salad Dressing
- Pickles
- Sauces like spaghetti sauce and BBQ sauce
A great rule of thumb with HFCS is that it is usually present in packaged and processed foods - reduced your consumption of processed foods and you virtually guarantee that you are also reducing your consumption of HFCS. Become an avid label reader - one of the good things about trying to reduce HFCS is that it is pretty obvious in the nutritional label of packages. It usually just says "high fructose corn syrup." By reading your food labels religiously, you are not only going to find surprising foods with HFCS in them, and thus be able to eliminate them, but you'll also become more aware in general of the additives and extras in your food.
How are you planning on reducing your HFCS consumption? What was the most surprising food for you to find HFCS in? Do you feel that this is something that should be eliminated from your diet? I would love to hear your thoughts!
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