Monday, June 13, 2011

Roast Pumpkin, Milk Chocolate and five food habits that age you

Polenta and spinach with toasted sunflower seeds
Food Diary (June 12, 2011)
Breakfast: Missed
Lunch: Polenta and spinach with toasted sunflower seeds
Dinner: noodles, lentils
Baking/sweets: various sweets


Today's Favourite Photo
Roast Pumpkin, Milk Chocolate, Bacon, Nut Butter



Today’s Favourite Blog
Source: Care2
An interesting article on five food habits that age you. “Nutrition, not age, determines the body’s internal chemistry”.

The list of 5 bad habits has the usual suspects such as sugar and carbs. However I found habits 4 and 5 particularly enlightening. Here are the 5 bad habits:
Bad Habit No. 1 — A weakness for fast food. Trans fat is the culprit. Trans fat ages you from the inside out by nibbling away at your telomeres, the caps protecting the ends of your chromosomes.
Bad Habit No. 2 — Giving in to a serious sweet tooth. Excess sugar loiters in the blood and causes trouble by glomming onto protein molecules, an age-accelerating process called glycosylation that causes cellular aging in several ways.
Bad Habit No. 3 — Carbo-loading — even when you’re not training. Refined carbs are simply sugars in disguise. After a meal laden with refined carbohydrates, the body’s blood-sugar levels soar, and the pancreas sprays insulin into the bloodstream to help cells convert the food’s energy (glucose) into fuel. But the body often miscalculates and releases too much insulin because (again) evolution hasn’t kept pace with the modern diet.
Bad Habit No. 4 — Waiting until you’re really hungry before eating. Waiting too long between meals is one of the surest ways to age the body before its time. That’s because hunger pangs can lead to overeating, which may lead to obesity. Don’t wait to eat until you’re ready to chew your arm off; instead, keep a little food in your stomach at all times. Schedule regular snack or meal breaks into your day, and keep a stash of healthy mini-meals available for when you’re on the go.
Bad Habit No. 5 — Eating at your desk — or in the car, or while stressed in any way. Stress hormones  — automatically released by the body under all kinds of stressful circumstances — are antithetical to  digestion in a couple of ways. First, the release of adrenaline and cortisol — “fight-or-flight” chemicals — diverts blood toward your limbs and away from your stomach and intestines, which hinders your intestines’ ability to break down food and absorb nutrients. As a result, digestion grinds to a halt and food ferments, sending unusual metabolites into the bloodstream. Second, stress throws off the gut’s acidity and, therefore, its ability to absorb certain nutrients, such as vitamin B12. By eating when you’re stressed, it’s as if you are damaging your body and locking out the repair crews. And finally, eating while stressed or distracted is also more likely to lead to unconscious eating, meaning you’ll be vulnerable to eating more than you intended or be prone to eating foods you would never have intended to eat under better circumstances.

14 comments:

  1. Number two is the one that's a real kick in the pants. And I am head over heels in love with Today's Photo!

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  2. Oh, waiting till I'm hungry to eat. I've very guilty of that one.

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  3. Drooling over food porn...does that count as a bad food habit? Staring at that chocolate dessert up there certainly won't help me kick my bad habits nos. 2 and 3. Very interesting info, though, I need to pin this up on my fridge :-).

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  4. Wow, I am guilty of bad habits 1,2 and 3. Better I had stopped the 5th habit as I do that a lot in my new work, so now I eat at the pantry while reading blogs of my online friends

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  5. I love that you just mixed the spinach right into the polenta! Delicious!

    Well, I don't really do any of these, except for carb-loading...but even when I'm marathon training, I only carb load on whole grains or sweet potatoes so I suspect that's not exactly what that tip is talking about!

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  6. Thank you for the 5 habits list. Very informative and makes me feel guilty (habit nr 4 occurs too often...).

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  7. Very very informative. Okay, so I might get a passing grade on those rules. My sweet tooth is someting it seems i need to work on! LOL! That roast pumpkin looks amazing

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  8. I just love the look of that chocolate cake. The texture of the frosting looks so unique!

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  9. Well I really liked the look of the polenta with spinach and pumpkin seeds - then i saw the chocolate cake - oh my -
    The points are really good and I realize I am guilty on 3 counts - it helps to be aware!
    Mary

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  10. We are all guilty of them all at one time or another. It gets even harder as we get older and must eat a little less to maintain a good weight. I love the look of the polenta with spinach!

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  11. Foodiva: drooling does not count as a bad habit, as long as it remains 'see no touch'. Its not so bad if its 'see and taste only':)
    Joanne: thats correct, whole grains, complex carbs are excluded

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  12. It took me quite a while to break those habits. ;) Pretty sure I've been guilty of all of those.

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