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Reading Between the Labels by Rachel Girardi, M. Sc at OH2014
- 1. Reading Between the Labels: outsmarting your groceries Rachel Girardi, M.Sc. Complete Care Coaching 2014
- 2. Complete Care Coaching 2014
- 3. What was ‘healthy food’? Complete Care Coaching, 2012
- 4. Why am I here? Who am I? Complete Care Coaching, 2012 Rachel Girardi, M.Sc Psychology Personal Training Lifestyle Coaching
- 5. Complete Care Coaching, 2012
- 6. Complete Care Coaching, 2012 Where to start Start simple ↓ Start at home & your grocery store/market
- 7. Food Mythbusting 101 • Fat-Free • Low-Cal • Smoothies • Protein, fibre, enriched...oh my! • Gluten Free • But the news (& talk shows) don’t lie, right? Complete Care Coaching, 2012
- 8. Complete Care Coaching, 2012 What’s the deal with fat? The rumour: fat makes you fat The truth: fat has no super fat storage powers Why do we need fat? Not all fats are created equal: - Eat the natural fats, not the ones humans have created
- 9. So what is fat free? Complete Care Coaching 2014
- 10. Low Calorie, Pre-portioned ‘Food’ Complete Care Coaching, 2012 Complete Care Coaching 2014
- 11. The good: you know approximately how many calories you’re consuming...if you have the appropriate serving size The bad: that’s not usually what happens Complete Care Coaching 2014
- 12. And worse.... Complete Care Coaching 2014
- 13. Natural Fruit Smoothies....they’re fruit so they’re a good option, right? Complete Care Coaching, 2012
- 14. • Kale Apple Pineapple and Chia Seed Smoothie Complete Care Coaching, 2012 – 1 cup of kale – 43g sugar • ‘Kale’-ribbean Breeze: ‘Are we sharing the same dream? I hope so because this is the one where the mangoes, passion fruit-mango juice, chia seeds and nonfat Greek yogurt give you all that protein. Then that full cup of kale hands you the energy to make that dream a reality’ – 320% daily Vit A, 230% Vit C – 10g protein, 66g carbs (48g sugar) – 320 calories – 192 from sugar!
- 15. Complete Care Coaching, 2012 • Peanut Butter Moo’d – 770 calories and 108g of sugar • ‘Lean Advantage’ Berry Blend Smoothie – ‘supercharge your workout so you can reach your weight goal’ – 290 calories and 37g of sugar • How can we make them healthier? – Water instead of juice – Berries instead of sherbet or frozen yogurt – Add protein
- 16. Load up on Protein, Fibre & Complete Care Coaching, 2012 “enrichment”
- 17. The Wonders of Wonderbread Unbleached wheat flour = refined white flour. The healthiest parts of the wheat – the bran and the germ – have been removed, and with it, all of the fiber, healthy unsaturated oils, B vitamins, vitamin E (an antioxidant) and other minerals. Oat Hull Fiber: added in processed insoluble fiber from oat hulls (the outer sheath that surrounds the oat groat) - doesn’t include the groat, (the part that contains the nutrient-dense layers – the bran and germ) Complete Care Coaching, 2012 Wonder+ Ingredients: Unbleached wheat flour, water, sugar, oat hull fiber, yeast, soybean and/or canola oil, wheat gluten, salt, natural sour flavour (bacterial culture), soy flour, cultured wheat starch solids, vinegar, soy lecithin.
- 18. Complete Care Coaching, 2012
- 19. Complete Care Coaching, 2012
- 20. It’s gluten-free so it’s got to be good Complete Care Coaching, 2012
- 21. The Recreator • They won’t have gluten but they will have everything that typically has gluten but has been reformulated to not have it • They have outsmarted gluten! The Natural • The food they eat is naturally free of gluten – and is real, unprocessed food Complete Care Coaching 2014
- 22. The news wouldn’t lie to me....right? Don’t believe everything you read Complete Care Coaching, 2012
- 23. So now what....what should I eat? Complete Care Coaching, 2012 Stick to real food (in other words: avoid boxed/processed foods as much as possible)
- 24. Grocery Shopping 101 Don’t try to talk yourself into anything (a baked lay, is still a lay & a gluten free chocolate chip cookie is still a cookie!) When Shop you around decide the to perimeter indulge: – go out whole & buy food a single city! You serving go there when to you buy want real it....food...don’t right? buy the Costco tub of ice cream & try to save it for a rainy day If you bring it home – you’re eating it •Take time and read the labels – Does it have a label – What are the ingredients? – What are the serving sizes? Complete Care Coaching, 2012
- 25. Complete Care Coaching, 2012 Putting it all together: • Make small, basic changes • Don’t jump at fat-free or low-cal options without further investigation • Be conscious of serving sizes/ingredients • Do your research & read your labels carefully! • Don’t believe everything you read – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! • Your body is literally made of the food you eat. And who wants to be made of junk.....?
- 26. Complete Care Coaching, 2012 Still want more? Rachel Girardi, M.Sc. rachel@completecarecoaching.com www.completecarecoaching.com
Editor's Notes
- We’re all smart and savvy shoppers right? At least we’d like to think so. We march into the grocery store and with discerning eyes look over all of the items to pick the best ones to bring home to our families. All of us are obviously concerned with health otherwise we wouldnt be here, so I’m assuming when you go to the store, you are looking for delicious, cost effective AND healthy options. Right? Ok – but lets all be honest....between the marketing and the constant changes in what constitutes ‘healthy’, how many people get confused as to what really is healthy?
- How can we be blamed? It seems everyday that the world of nutrition is giving us different information about what is and isnt good for us. The issue gets even more challenging when we try to take into consideration foods that will help with fat loss and body composition. Out of curiousity, what are some of the ‘diets’ you’ve tried in the past?
- Even looking over the years things have changed drastically. We had the time of super low fat and high carb in the aerobics days of Olivia Newton John. Then we had the high protein high fat zero carb world of the Atkins diet. Now we are bombarded with pre-portioned convenience foods touting the latest greatest health claims. We’ve got ‘sugar free’, ‘fat free’, ‘gluten free’ and added protein, added fibre and vitamin enriched. It seems like everywhere we look things are being added or taken away at alarming rates! It’s exactly those marketing health claims that I want to take a peek at today. We’re going to look at how food marketing has directed what we consider to be healthy products (and as a result, impact what we buy) We’re going to pick apart some of those products and then give you a solid framework to view the grocery store in a whole new light!
- Before we get into that I suppose I should give you a quick intro as to who I am and why I’m here. Rachel Girardi Background is in psychology but became ill – got thyroid diagnosis but medication could only help so much and doctors couldn’t give me any other answers and I realized I was on my own. I started changing my nutrition and fitness and felt like a new woman. This change in my life made me see what an impact lifestyle habits can have on your health and I realized that I wanted to help other people discover the same things in their lives. So I switched out of my career doing neuropsych assessments and got into personal training and lifestyle coaching and started Complete Care Coaching.
- We do a mix of personal training, nutrition coaching and lifestyle modifications. Have many clients who deal with anxiety or depression or long term health issues and work with clients all around the world – anything from face to face in a gym to via skype in Finland and South Africa. Our approach is a little different than many of the health practitioners I’ve encountered. Typically, many people in the fitness and nutrition world have a very all or nothing approach but that’s not us. For us, healthy behaviours are on a spectrum – be realistic – move along the spectrum towards healthier behaviours – don’t do everything all at once. Where people run into trouble is they feel that if they don’t do it perfectly there is no point in doing anything at all. What we try to do is meet people where they’re at and make small, impactful and practical changes in their lives. Our motto is ‘Live your best’ – and we want to help clients fit ‘healthy’ into their lives, not try to squeeze them into some unrealistic mold that the fitness world has created for them
- Biggest ‘bang for your buck’ your nutrition affects everything you do – it is the building blocks of your body – everything you eat is literally what your body is made out of – body made of veggies and chicken and fruit and nuts....or a body made of cupcakes and beer? If you want your body to perform – recover from illness, prevent illness in the first place – nutrition is the best (and easiest) place to start making changes Let’s start at home. What is in your cupboards and your fridge that you could change that would give you the biggest benefit for your efforts? - wading through the information – seems like all the time there is conflicting advice about what to follow- less fat, low calories, - goes by decade
- So what we’ve been taught is that fat makes you fat Adding real fat to your meals – increase in calories Actually is very important in weight maintenance and loss Feel full longer Lots of health benefits Absorption of fat soluble vitamins & omega 3 essential fatty acids. - Healthy skin &vision - Improved blood cholesterol levels, blood glucose control, brain, heart, liver, lung, nervous system health. - reduced cancer, heart disease risk, inflammation - Strong cell walls, bones, Immune system. - They can help you burn fat. Satiety – slow absorbing Three main kinds Saturated – animal sources – butter, animal fats monosaturated – avocado, nuts Polysaturated – Omega 3s and 6s – oily fish & vegetable oils Trans-fats – unsaturated fat has hydrogen added to it and it twists Eat natural fats and not man made fats People tend to gain weight because they are eating more calories (from fat, proteins, and carbohydrates combined) than they are burning in a day. In addition, the foods they are eating that make up their daily caloric total often lead to increased fat gain. For example, processed high-glycemic foods like sugar, white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, pasta, bread, etc spike our blood sugar and promote fat creation in the body.
- So fat got a bad rap! A few studies were publicized and fat was considered horrible. So what did the food companies do? They realized this was a great way to make money! Fat free everything!! But there was a problem. Fat is important to selling products because it makes things taste delicious. Fat has this characteristic called ‘mouth feel’ – the way it coats our mouths make it very appealing. The texture and flavour it brings to food is often crucial to the product of choice. So if the food companies wanted to follow the trend of ‘fat-free’ to sell products they had to find a way to make everything still taste like it did before...so if they took out the fat, they had to add in something in it’s place....so what did they add? Sugar. AND other glorious items like flour, thickeners, gums, emulsifiers and salt. So you wind up with a product much more heavily processed and either have the same amount of calories as the original product (just the fat calories are now processed carbohydrate calories) or they have fewer calories but are weighed down with chemicals and artificial flavour agents. Fat free Italian: water, vinegar, salt, sugar, soybean oil, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate, herbs and spices, calcium disodium edta, colour Calories: 5 – 230mg of sodium Olive oil and vinegar -
- Enriched wheat flour, sugar, semi-sweet chocolate, cocoa butter, soy lethicin, soybean oil, dextrose, etc. Created to make us want more of them – chemically Think of fun size halloween candy
- Ok so maybe the pre-packaged boxed items are a dead giveaway that you shouldn’t be eating them. But fruit!! What about glorious fruit blended with healthy yogurt? It’s not as simple as it may seem Now while yes, smoothies do boast some health benefits that the other products we’ve talked about don’t have, I have 2 major problems with them. Calories: There are two ways you can drink a smoothie: as a snack/meal replacement - don’t stay full nearly as long after drinking one as you would if you had had a solid meal - the faster your body digests something the sooner you will feel hungry (*protein and fats digest much more slowly than carbs which is why we always recommend eating adequate protein and good quality fats). - a side to your meal - small drink as a ‘side’ to your meal, alongside a sandwich you’re looking at a lunch that would typically range somewhere around 1000-1100 calories, half of the typical daily recommended value of calories and likely way more than you bargained for (or need in one sitting). Which brings me to my second issue. Where the calories come from: sugar. - say it’s unrefined but who cares? Too much of it and fat storage will happen. In one can of coke there is 39g of sugar. Sounds like a lot right? Absolutely. Given that information, how much sugar would you guess was in a small Acai Super-Antioxidant smoothie from Jamba Juice? 10g? 20g? Not even close. Try 46 grams. - the sugars are from fruit, but at the end of the day your body still processes it as sugar. It’s essentially a vitamin-enriched candy bar – in liquid form. What about their Kale Apple Pineapple and Chia Seed Smoothie? Sounds super healthy right? It’s got a cup of kale in it (yea for veggies!) but you’re also getting 43g of sugar which is more than what adults are recommended to have in an entire day. Even their innocuous sounding 12oz carrot juice boasts an incredible 20g of sugar. The issue I take with these companies is how they advertise their products to be supremely healthy products, yet ignore some major nutritional blunders. Take a peek at some of the marketing they use; it’s no wonder people think they are getting a great bang for their nutritional buck after reading these. At Jamba Juice to promote the “Kale-ribbean Breeze” they ask, “Are we sharing the same dream? I hope so, because this is the one where the mangos, passion fruit-mango juice, chia seeds and nonfat Greek yogurt give you all that protein. Then that full cup of kale hands you the energy to make this dream a reality” courtesy of www.jambajuice.com Loud and clear they tout that 320% of your daily Vitamin A requirement and 230% of your daily Vitamin C requirement are contained in the drink. And what about ‘all that protein’? Last I checked, 10 measly grams of protein is nowhere near a full serving and can certainly not be classified as ‘all that’. What they fail to include in their description is the 66g of carbs (48 of which are sugar) in their promotion. That means that out of the 320 calories in the drink, 192 of them are from pure sugar! That doesn’t sound quite as healthy does it? What about looking at their ‘Lean Advantage’ options? In their Berry Blend smoothie, Jamba Juice tells you to “Blast off with these super-powered berries on your back. Strawberries, blueberries and our berry juice blend team up with our signature Lean Advantage™ Boost to supercharge your workout so you can reach your weight goal.” Last I checked, drinking a small sized beverage with 290 calories and 37g of sugar will not promote any kind of weight loss. I won’t get much into the obviously less-healthy sounding options that these companies actually call ‘treats’, because truly, aren’t they all? But to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with, the Jamba Juice regular size Peanut Butter Moo’d will clock you in at 770 calories and a whopping 108g of sugar. Why not drink 3 cans of coke and call it a day? If you want a special treat, go for it. Just don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking this is a great healthy meal substitute the juice for water ask them to remove the sorbet/frozen yogurt usually included and replace it with berries always pick the small size add protein whenever possible. Booster Juice uses whey protein, but if you’re not sure if your local juice bar has protein (or you can’t digest whey), carry a baggie of your preferred protein powder with you. Most places will let you add it in, and worst case scenario you can add it in yourself afterwards
- I think for the most part, we’ve all come to the consensus that protein is good. Fibre is good. Vitamins and minerals are good. So anything with extra of any of them must also be good!! What does enrichment really mean? Important to look at the ingredients
- Unbleached wheat flour = refined white flour. The healthiest parts of the wheat – the bran and the germ – have been removed, and with it, all of the fiber, healthy unsaturated oils, B vitamins, vitamin E (an antioxidant) and other minerals. Germ is 10% fat which may reduce shelf life – refer to dempsters ad for bread that stays fresh for 2 weeks....why do we want this? Sugar Soybean and/or canola oil, soy flour, soy lecithin: This bread is made with not one, not two, but three separate ingredients containing soy. Most soybeans grown in North America (85 per cent of U.S. production) are genetically modified to be more resistant to herbicides, and are then sprayed with massive quantities of these toxic chemicals. Oat Hull Fiber: In order to be able to claim their bread has fiber, the people at Wonder Bread have added in processed insoluble fiber from oat hulls – the outer sheath that surrounds the oat groat. The fiber in Wonder+ White Loaf with Fiber doesn’t include the groat, the part that contains the nutrient-dense layers (bran and germ) with all of the oat’s vitamins, minerals, healthy fats and soluble fiber. -taken part of the wheat and part of the oat to create their own doughy concoction – too much processing fibre per slice 1.5 grams cup of broccoli, which contains 4.7 cup of raspberries, 8g
- NGREDIENTS: Chicory Root Extract, Chocolate Chips with Confectioners Shellac (Chocolate Chips [Sugar, Chocolate Liquor, Cocoa Butter, Dextrose, Milk Fat, Soy Lecithin],Ethanol, Shellac, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Rolled Oats, Crisp Rice (Rice Flour, Sugar, Malt, Salt), Barley Flakes, High Maltose Corn Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Sugar Canola Oil, Honey, Glycerin, Maltodextrin, Palm Kernel Oil, Tricalcium Phosphate, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Nonfat Milk, Peanut Oil, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Natural Flavor, Baking Soda, Color Added, Almond Flour, Peanut Flour, Sunflower Meal, Wheat Flour, Mixed Tocopherols Added To Maintain Freshness Chicory – tough to digest High in sugar
- A few years ago I went gluten free because it was making me sick and I had a very hard time finding commercially produced food that was gluten free. Fast forward to now and gluten-free options are everywhere you look. Going gluten-free is apparently the ‘thing’ to do. Now, for people with celiac disease or issues digesting gluten, this direction is amazing. It allows people more freedom in choosing foods, and ensures their safety. That being said, the massive increase in gluten-free foods is reaching much further than people who need it for health reasons. Somewhere along the line there was a rumour started that gluten-free foods were healthier and would lead to weight loss....uh oh....that rumour mill is going to get us in trouble
- 1) The ReCreator: They are devastated to learn that they can’t have gluten, so to combat that they find every latest and greatest GF product out there. There is no way that they are going to miss out on pizza, pasta, bread, cookies. No way. No how. This person eats more processed food that they know what to do with. They’ve outsmarted gluten by being able to consume everything that they ‘aren’t supposed to have’. Sadly they’re also more likely to fall victim to the same woes as regular processed-nonfood-junkies: feeling tired, carrying extra weight & blood sugar highs and lows. One booth at the expo was selling GF ‘protein granola bars’. I can’t tell you how many times they told me they were healthy within the 5 minutes I stood there. So I grabbed the box to investigate it for myself and sure enough there were more ingredients listed than even I thought was possible. Plus they were loaded with sugar, a crappy and cheap protein supplement and chemicals farther than the eye could see. No thanks. I’ll stick to my steak and veggies. 2) The Natural: Going GF for these folks is a totally different scene. They could care less about GF processed baking products because the food they eat is naturally GF to start with. They watch out for cross-contamination issues and weird little slip-ups where the manufacturer adds unnecessary wheat products (WHY!?!) and sure, there is the odd exception, like using a GF soya sauce but for the most part, none of their groceries say ‘gluten-free’ because in their natural form they already are. These include foods like: fruit, veggies, nuts, seeds, meat and oils. In other words, natural food. Real food. Not a 25 ingredient cakey-bar. Not an artificial cookie. Not a man-made sauce with more chemicals than the average person can pronounce. I once went to see an endocrinologist in my thyroid/hormonal nightmare days, who when I was having trouble controlling weight gain, condescendingly told me that going GF didn’t mean I could gorge on GF cookies and pretzels and expect my weight to stay the same. Well thanks genius. Not so helpful. Never was I so insulted because 1) I know that. 2) I had been GF for over a year and never once ventured into the commercial GF world. I’m a Natural through and through. When I meet a new client who sees me to get help going gluten free I always direct them to become the ‘Natural’. The least processed version of a food is usually the best version. When you need to steer clear of gluten this can sometimes be a challenge, but stick to the ‘good’ stuff. Gluten free or not, cake is still cake.
- Whatever is going on the conveyor belt is going into your body – what do you want your body to be made of