Here are some of the principles I always keep in mind:

Fresh, high-quality ingredients:  Whether it’s our all-natural chicken breasts or ice-packed, never-frozen salmon, I’m always on the lookout for top-of-the-line ingredients.  We offer whole grain pastas, pitas and brown rice.  Not only do they taste better, they’re better for you.  Our vegetables?  Always colorful and picked fresh.  Ifwe need to freeze them, we use the “individual quick freeze” method, which retains optimal flavor and nutritional value.  

Information and balance:  We want you to have the data for good decision-making.  That’s why we make all nutritional information as accessible as possible, including fat, calories, Weight Watchers POINTS, etc.  Each menu includes at least 4 meals that meet American Heart Association recommendations for heart-healthy living.  That said, we always offer our Decadent Molten Chocolate Cakes too, because, a-hem, nobody’s perfect.  In any case, you’ll find all the info you need through the “i” icon on our monthly menu, or if logged in, on the My Cookbook page.  

Portion control:  At a time when portion sizes are inflating as fast as waistlines, our ”dishes” generally provide 6 standard servings as stipulated by FDA guidelines.   Our chicken breasts, for example, are 5oz each… which is what the government recommends.  If you divide your “full” meals into 6 portions (e.g., 5 dinners and 1 leftover for lunch), you know you’re eating the “right” amount of food.

Convenience:  What does convenience have to do with health?  A lot.  Families often make their worst health-related decisions when they feel trapped by their busy schedule (5pm piano lessons, 6pm soccer, 8pm PTA… sound familiar?).  By making our healthy meals convenient too, we enable good decisions even when time is short and the drive-through is beckoning.

I am proud of how Let’s Dish! allows busy families to eat right, on a budget, with limited time.   If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact me through the “comments” section below.

ShareThis

Hey, and here’s something you may not know: The brown rice we now use in Let’s Dish! locations in Maryland and Virginia is a “par-boiled” product, meaning it cooks more quickly than traditional brown rice.  Therefore, the cooking instructions don’t differ from those given for our regular white rice.  Some customers may prefer a fluffier texture to their brown rice (which, as we understand it, traditionally is a bit denser than white rice is supposed to be).  Those customers may add ~5 minutes to the published cooking times to achieve desired fluffiness.  Please note that cooking is part art and part science, so the above should be considered a guideline.  Your results may vary!

Here’s to your health (and great-tasting dishes!)

ShareThis

We hope you found the articles posted this month on Food for Thought helpful towards your own personal heart health. It’s been educational and inspirational for us as well. You can always reread this month’s posts and find new articles to read by visiting our Heart Health and Healthy Living categories.

We will continue this discussion on our blog as we believe one of the core benefits of Let’s Dish! is that you can always have a freezer full of healthy, convenient meals. And, it is certainly our commitment in the mid-Atlantic to continue to develop and offer heart-healthy dishes on our monthly menu and find new ways to help our customers live a healthful lifestyle.

We want to especially thank Catherine Joiner, our registered dietician and American Heart Association liaison, for all of her valuable contributions. She added a tremendous amount to our conversation and we appreciate the time she volunteered on our behalf. We are delighted to share that Catherine has agreed to continue to bring guidance on living a heart healthy lifestyle to Food for Thought; you can find for her past and future posts by clicking on “By Catherine Joiner” after any one of her articles.

And, we very much appreciate our Dish from the Heart authors: Nikki Dungee, Rick Corcoran Sr, and Sheila Ferrell. Your first-hand experiences help to bring home heart disease in a personal and emotional way that can help motivate others to action. Thank you for sharing. As we continue our mission, if any reader of this blog would ever like to share a heart health or healthy living story, please don’t hesitate to email us.

Finally, we want to thank all of you that participated in our heart-healthy initiatives at Let’s Dish! stores in MD and Northern VA this month. We were able to register hundreds of you for the AHA’s Go Red for Women movement in our stores and applaud you for your step toward fighting heart disease. If you didn’t get a chance to join this month, you can always sign up online and take the Go Red Heart Checkup on the Go Red Website.

Look to Food for Thought for more on nutrition, heart health and healthy living. Here’s to your heart!

RELATED LINKS:

> Read more posts in on Heart Health and Healthy Living
> For more tips on healthy nutrition, view our segment on NBC 11 (WBAL-TV)

ShareThis

The idea of ”good” and “bad” fats in food is quite confusing.  At Let’s Dish!, our commitment to our customers is that our monthly menu of dinners will always be trans fat free and contain at least four heart-healthy meals. (During American Heart Month, we had thirteen!)  We can offer such heathful choices because of work by our menu development team as well the fact you prepare your meals in our store using many fresh and unprocessed ingredients.  But there is so much more to understand on the different types of fats - and how to identify them.  We turn to Catherine Joiner, our AHA nutritionist, for a tutorial:

There are three main types of fat in our diet - saturated fat, trans fat, and unsaturated fat.

When you hear someone talking about “bad” fat, they are referring to saturated or trans fat. These are the fats that raise bad cholesterol and increase your risk for heart disease.  “Good” fat refers to unsaturated fat, which can help raise good cholesterol, decrease bad cholesterol, and decrease your overall risk for heart disease. A quick way to tell the difference is by looking at them at room temperature. Saturated and trans fat is solid, while unsaturated fat is liquid at room temperature.

Saturated fat typically comes from animal products such as dairy, eggs, meats, and butter. There are also two plant sources of saturated fat, which include palm oil and coconut oil. You can check the ingredients listed on all food labels to see if these have been added to your food. When looking at the Nutrition Facts panel, it is best to choose foods with less than 3 grams of saturated fat per serving. A general rule is to eat no more than 11 grams for every 1,000 calories consumed. If focusing on the numbers seems overwhelming, don’t worry. Shift your focus towards making better choices.

• Choose 1% or skim milk, lite yogurts, and low-fat cheeses.
• Try to limit your intake of whole eggs to no more than 3-4 per week (the yolk is where all of the fat and cholesterol is contained). Instead, choose egg whites or an egg substitute.
• Choose low-fat meats, such as chicken, turkey, and fish. Just make sure to remove the skin of the chicken and turkey before you cook it.
• Limit red meat to no more than twice a week and trim off as much fat as you can before you cook it.
• Lastly, switch to a tub margarine with zero grams of trans fat rather than using butter. If you must use butter (for things other than baking), try a whipped or light butter. These have air or water, respectively, added to them and in turn decrease the amount of saturated fat per serving.

Trans fat is formed when foods are processed. Put simply, liquid oil is processed into solid fat. This was originally done to provide stability to food, as well as give it a longer shelf-life. Unfortunately, we soon found out that trans fat is just as harmful, if not more harmful, to your heart as the saturated fat. The current recommendation is to get no more than 2 grams per day. All Nutrition Facts panels now list trans fat, so it is easy to spot on packaged food items. If in doubt, you can also look for the words “hydrogenated oil” or “partially hydrogenated oil” in the ingredients list. You will never find it in fresh foods.

Use common sense, though, when you are choosing foods with zero grams of trans fat. Remember that food labels are designed to sell the product, not clue you in on the things that may be harmful to your health. So, next time you are tempted to buy those potato chips with big red letters stating, “0 GRAMS OF TRANS FAT!” take a minute to think. It may not be the best choice for your heart healthy diet…sodium and saturated fat may still be an issue.

Unsaturated fat can be divided into monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats:

• Monounsaturated fats help lower LDL cholesterol and raise HDL cholesterol. Sources include olive, canola, and peanut oil, nuts and nut butters, flaxseeds and flaxseed oil, and avocados.
      
• Polyunsaturated fats provide the essential fatty acids, Omega-3 and Omega-6. Omega-3 fatty acids come from foods such as fatty fish (salmon, low-salt canned tuna packed in water, mackerel, herring, and halibut), shellfish, grain products, and some tub margarines and mayonnaises (check the labels to find out). Omega-6 fatty acids are contained in sunflower oil and safflower oil. They tend to increase inflammation in the body, while Omega-3 can decrease inflammation. Polyunsaturated fats as a whole decrease LDL as well as slightly decreaseHDL cholesterol. But, some studies show that they can be protective against insulin resistance, which can help prevent the development of diabetes.

Overall, your aim should be to decrease saturated and trans fats and replace them with a wide variety of mono- and polyunsaturated fat. Remember that whether good or bad, fat is still fat and provides quite a bit of calories in your diet.   Don’t douse your foods with olive oil, just use a moderate amount. And don’t forget that you can always use cooking spray in your pan, so you don’t add anything to your food.   Even with “good” fats, you should always be sensible with your overall intake.

For more information on fats, visit “Know Your Fats” from the American Heart Association. You can also review some fat-sensible substitutions to help you modify a few of those recipes that may be a little too high in fat.

Catherine Joiner
Cardiac Clinical Dietician

Catherine Joiner, a registered dietician and volunteer for the American Heart Association, joined the Food for Thought blogging team as a guest writer as Let’s Dish! focuses on heart health in February.  If you’d like to ask Catherine a question, please email us or add a comment to any one of her posts.

>  Read all of Catherine’s tips on Food for Thought

ShareThis

Make a list! Before you head to the store, take time to make a list. It will save you time and money.

• List out meal ideas for the week and determine what ingredients you will need to pick up. Make sure your menu includes all of the My Pyramid food groups to ensure that you are eating a wide variety of foods.
• Organize the ingredients according to the section in which they are located in the grocery store. This will prevent you from walking back and forth looking for the items that you need.
• Don’t forget to add some healthy snacks to your list. Everyone enjoys a little boost between meals, so include options such as dried fruit, nuts, unsalted pretzels, or low fat popcorn.

Have a Strategy! Have a plan before you go.

• Leave the decisions to your head, not your stomach! Don’t go grocery shopping when you are hungry. It’s easier to stick to your list when you have something in your stomach, so plan to grab a snack before you go.
• Establish a day and time that is easy for you to move quickly and easily through the store.
• Coupons are a great way to save money and expand your food choices. Use a coupon to experiment with a new meal item you wouldn’t normally purchase.
• If you take your kids with you, use it as an opportunity to teach them about different colors, smells, and types of food. Let them pick out a new food each time you shop, but try to make it a healthy one!

Learn to Read Labels! The Nutrition Facts panel should be your guide to choosing foods. Manufacturer’s are allowed to place numerous claims on food packages, but that doesn’t mean the food is necessarily a healthy option.

Always check the serving size first. All of the information listed on the Nutrition Facts panel is based on if you consume the serving size listed.

• Hit the highlights on the label: look for 0 grams of trans fat, less than 3 grams of saturated fat, a moderate sodium level (see my previous post on sodium), and 3 grams or more of fiber for grain products.
• Compare the labels for different products to see which is the best choice. Also, compare the differences in various versions of foods to see if there is any real benefit to the modified version. For example, a low-sugar product may not have a significant difference in calories when compared to the regular version, and may actually have added fat and sodium to make up for the modification in sugar content.

Learn Tricks Along the Way! Knowing what to look for and how much to stock is essential for making a quick and easy trip to the grocery store. Here are some tips for completing your trip with ease and still make healthy choices along the way:

• Remember that frozen fruits and vegetables are just as good as fresh and they last longer. Stock up when various stores have sales on their frozen produce so you will always have a fruit and vegetable option available. If you want to stock fresh produce, only buy the amount you will eat over a few days to avoid throwing food out and wasting money.
• Look for key words on meat packaging, such as “97% lean ground beef” or “lean ground chicken/turkey.” Keep bags of frozen boneless, skinless chicken breast for a quick, low-fat meat source when time is tight. Buy your meats when they go on sale and remember that they can always be frozen until you are ready to use them.
• Include low-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese in your diet to provide lean protein and plenty of calcium.
• If you choose to include frozen meals in your diet, become familiar with the brands and the amount of fat, calories, and sodium typically contained in each. The brands will vary quite a bit. Be careful, because even if they claim to be lean or healthy, they may still be high in sodium.
• When choosing grain products, look for the words, “100% whole grain.” For example, when choosing bread look for one that says, “100% whole wheat,” on the label rather than just buying a brown-colored wheat bread. Choosing grains with these words on the label guarantees that you will be getting some fiber from that food.
• Don’t forget that including beans and peas, lentils, nuts, and nut butters is a great way to get fiber, protein, and the good fats in your diet. If you are limited on time, use frozen beans and peas.
• If you stock your pantry with canned foods, choose products that say, “No-Salt-Added,” on the label. Most canned vegetables have a salt-free version. If you can’t find the salt-free version, drain the food, rinse it, and cook it in fresh water.

Catherine Joiner
Cardiac Clinical Dietician

Catherine Joiner, a registered dietician and volunteer for the American Heart Association, joined the Food for Thought blogging team as a guest writer as Let’s Dish! focuses on heart health in February. If you’d like to ask Catherine a question, please email us or add a comment to any one of her posts.

> Read all of Catherine’s tips on Food for Thought

ShareThis