Flourish Wellness + Nutrition's Blog

Cosmetics Dirty Dozen

I’ve always wondered if that huge list of ridiculously, long named chemicals on the bottle of moisturizer are bad for me. You wouldn’t eat it, but is it all that much better if you rub it into your skin?

Thankfully, the David Suzuki Foundation has put together a compilation of top chemicals to avoid in their “Dirty Dozen” list for us.

David Suzuki’s What’s Inside Shopper’s Guide

Filling the gut with low/no – cal beverages before eating

A recent study has showed that when on a low calorie diet, a group that had 2 cups of water before they ate their meals lost on average 15.5 lbs. This was an improvement over the other group that was only on the low calorie diet and lost on average 11 lbs. This shows that filling your stomach with water will prompt you to eat less. A similar effect could also be done by filling your plate with vegetables and eating them first. Interestingly, the group that drank water also commented that they felt they were thinking more clearly.

Managing a Picky Eater

Getting your kids to eat healthy to allow them to grow properly and be active is very important. However, try to be as calm as you can around meals and eating. The dinner table can become a war zone if you try to force kids to eat. Continue to make one meal for the whole family. Include at least one food you know your little guy will eat. He may not eat everything, but avoid making separate meals.

Ellen Satter has written many books on this subject and one that is particularly popular is “How to Get Your Kid to Eat… but not too much”. She describes the division of responsibility with meal time as “adults are responsible for what, where, and when children eat; children choose how much and whether to eat”.

Making fruits and vegetables into different shapes or as finger foods can them interesting in other ways may make it more appealing for a picky eater.

As well, make sure that they are not filling themselves on too much milk, juice or water. Toddlers only need about 2-3 cups of milk each day, no more than one small cup of juice per day, and about the same amount of water (depending on heat and activity level)

Other ways to increase nutrition would be to use the purees done with vegetables and add them into things that the picky eater will like. Check out some cookbooks that add things like cauliflower purees to macaroni and cheese. One is “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to get your Kids Eating Good Food” by Jessica Seinfeld.

But otherwise, if you keep offering fruits and vegetables to them and they will come around eventually. It should hopefully should pass over time…

Cutting back on Salt

The Sodium Working Group just released their recommendations to the Canadian Government in hopes of reducing the average person’s sodium consumption from 3400 mg to 2300 mg by the year 2016. The focus will be mainly on packaged foods and dining out as 77% of the sodium consumed is from processed foods.

Look out for changes in package labelling and nutrition information at restaurants, but don’t look too hard for some time. It took 2 and a half years to get the report and without an actual timeline for voluntary changes, it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing much for some time….

Question about Organic vs Local

This question was sent to me through the Nutrifoods Market (www.nutrifoodsmarket.com):

As a mom of a 16 month old, I find myself torn between eating local or organic. I tend to go organic but would love both, obviously. But if I had to choose, which one is better? Local or organic?
Help!
—————————–

My response:
Thank you for your question!
It looks like there are two questions here: to buy local or not, and to buy organic or not? Local foods can be either organic or use conventional methods. And organic foods can be local and not local.

In terms of cost, buying local foods that are in season, are often the same price or even cheaper than ones that are shipped from far away. Stock up when in season, then freeze these to carry you through the winter. I also like supporting our local economy and producers, which helps us in the long term, such as maintaining our local crops for when California cannot produce food because of drought. I’m willing to put in a bit more money now to sustain our producers for later. But that is a topic on itself!

Then you may want to decide between organic and in-organic/conventional foods by their exposure to pesticides. The Environmental Working Group has produced a “Dirty Dozen” list that ranks fruits and vegetables by their exposure to pesticides. You may want to buy organic strawberries as they top the list of worst for pesticides, but may opt to buy conventional onions as they are lower on the list.

You can check the list out here: http://www.foodnews.org/fulllist.php

Good luck!

‘Low Fat’ does not equal ‘Will not make you Fat’

Initially the Nutrition community focussed on fat and how it was contributing to everyone’s expanding waistlines. So the food industry responded by making all sorts of low-fat food products such as low-fat cakes, cookies and ice cream.
Unfortunately, not all low fat foods are low calories. In order to mimick fat and make these new foods taste better, producers added sugar (and artificial sweetners). People tend to eat more thinking that low-fat foods are okay, not knowing that they’ve just replaced fat with an equal amount of sugar. Recent research has shown that we need to now look at how much sugar is being consumed and focus less on fat.
The next time you’re in the dairy section – take a look at the yogurt you buy. Is that low-fat yogurt actually better for you than the usual 2%?

Relaxation

Practicing breathing exercises has been proven to lower blood pressure and stress. While it seems like a simple act, taking a short break every day would then lower your risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer. Using tapes can help to allow you relax and breathe deeply. Give it a try (even here at your desk) before you form your opinion:

Bike to work week

Bike to Work Week runs from May 31st to June 6th. Check out the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition website to learn where the commuter stations are along your route and how you can track the kilometres you put in on your ride.

www.biketoworkmetrovan.ca
www.biketoworkmetrovan.ca/commuter-stations-map

Also check out ways to map your ride along bike paths and with the least amount of elevation change here:
www.cyclevancouver.ubc.ca/cv.aspx

Canadian Milk

Ever wonder what’s in the milk you buy? Well the Canadian Farmers posted a cute video on Youtube to make sure that we know that our milk is from cows without growth hormones and antibiotics. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWw_P_CH638

High Intensity Exercise

More and more the topic of high intensity exercise is coming up. Marc Faktor, Flourish’s consulting Certified Exercise Physiologist suggests short bursts of intense exercise as it has been shown to ”be a powerful and effective training stimulus, as the intensity of training influences the training stimulus to a greater extent than the duration or volume”. An article by the Health & Fitness Journal of Canada outlines what this type of work-out would be for beginner, intermediate and more advanced exercisers. You can see the whole article here: http://www.healthandfitnessjournalofcanada.com/index.php/html/article/viewFile/19/12