By Marcia Greenblum, MS, RD
April 28th, 2011
Guess what’s in my refrigerator at this very moment? Egg salad! Even though my family didn’t celebrate Easter this week, we did celebrate Passover which required an enormous amount of eggs to add leavening. Eggs during Passover not only represent the promise of new life, which I believe is similar to the Easter celebration but also are the only food that offers so much functionality that they are essential to survive the holiday. This past week I purchased 42 eggs and used 4 eggs to bind together a cauliflower and leek kugel or casserole, 8 eggs to bind and leaven the matzah balls in my chicken soup, 6 eggs to add richness, bind and add leavening for the apple cake, 6 eggs for richness in chocolate brownies, 4 eggs to bind together my breakfast matzah brei pancakes (twice) and 4 more for a matzah pizza and of course a dozen hard cooked eggs for breakfast and snacks.
One would think I’d be tired of eggs by now but, the funny thing is I’m not. In fact, I kind of tired of chicken but because eggs are so versatile, they can be used in so many ways without repeating the same preparation. I love to read recipes that aren’t too complicated and suggest ways to use leftovers in creatively. One such list of recipes can be found at http://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_column/04/5-ways-to-use-leftover-easter-eggs/ which offers suggestions about ways to use the leftover eggs from Easter egg celebrations. How brilliant that every Easter is followed by National Egg Salad Week! Even better, that this works for the leftover eggs from Passover as well.
Tags: eggs, National Egg Salad Week
By Marcia Greenblum, MS, RD
April 22nd, 2011
Like most registered dietitians, I struggle to keep up with scientific developments. So much is controversial and hard to discern the effects of independent variables. I attended the “Great Debate” held years ago at USDA in Washington D.C. where the high carbohydrate diet pattern and the low carbohydrate diet pattern were hotly debated. Poor Dr. Atkins who saw the value of a lower carbohydrate intake in his patients was ridiculed for not having published his clinical findings. However, when the successful findings supporting a low carbohydrate intake began to be published doubters still doubted the findings. I think he was on the right track but the real story is low carbohydrate, high quality protein.
It is easy to feel comfortable supporting the benefits of a high protein breakfast. Susan Dopart in her blog suggests that eating a strong protein breakfast within an hour of waking up can increase your metabolic rate, lower insulin resistance and stabilize blood sugar for the rest of the day. One thing I know from personal experience is that eating an adequate amount of high quality protein at breakfast keeps me from being hungry much longer than the bagel or cereal breakfast I had been consuming daily.
This is very useful when I am traveling for business or exhibiting at conferences and can’t be sure when I will be able to take a lunch break. I am not insulin resistant but have a family history of diabetes and I can feel when my glucose levels are low. High quality protein like that in eggs, milk, cheese and yogurt is my way of keeping an even temper and focus on my activities and preventing myself from eating too many calories or undesirable foods that lack nutrients. This was also demonstrated by researchers at University of Connecticut in a study of “Eating protein-rich eggs for breakfast reduces hunger and decreases calorie consumption at lunch and throughout the day” published in the February 2010 issue of Nutrition Research. Researchers found that men who consumed an egg-based breakfast ate significantly fewer calories when offered an unlimited lunch buffet compared to when they ate a carbohydrate-rich bagel breakfast of equal calories. Ratliff, J., Leite, J.O., de Ogburn, R., Puglisi, M.J., VanHeest, J., Fernandez, M.L. (2010) Consuming eggs for breakfast influences plasma glucose and ghrelin, while reducing energy intake during the next 24 hours in adult men. Nutrition Research, 30, 96-103.
I think it’s time to move on from the high carbohydrate dogma that dietitians were trained to promote and see the value of high quality protein especially at breakfast both for the satiety it provides and the muscle synthesis signaling that helps maintain muscle mass.
Tags: breakfast, eggs, high-quality protein
By Mitch Kanter, Ph.D.
April 21st, 2011
For many years, athletes were advised to consume very high levels of carbohydrates, with little attention placed on the amount and timing of the protein they consumed. Personally I was very much a proponent of this sort of regimen for athletes. I worked in the sports nutrition arena for years, and provided diet and exercise advice to many professional and college athletes.
But times change, and the science supporting carbohydrate as the near-exclusive domain of athletes has changed as well. I’m not suggesting that carbs are no longer considered a key substrate for athletes; quite the contrary, carbohydrates provide the quick energy that athletes need, and they allow athletes to use their other energy substrates (fats and proteins) effectively. But newer research indicates that athletes need more protein than previously believed; about 1.5 to 2 times as much. As we learn more about the role of amino acids as messengers in various metabolic pathways, we’ve come to appreciate the need for protein to provide ample levels of these amino acids to promote, among other things, optimal muscle growth and repair. And newer studies suggest we won’t achieve ample amounts of particular amino acids (e.g., leucine) on RDA-levels of protein. Further, on a more applied note, studies such as those by John Ivy at the University of Texas and others have indicated that an appropriate ratio of carbohydrate to protein (somewhere in the neighborhood of 3:1 carb:protein) may be better at enhancing post exercise recovery than consuming carbohydrate alone.
Here is an article that serves as a basic primer on some of the newer research on protein and exercise. While some of this work is in preliminary stages, and we still have more to learn about the effects of various substrates on exercise performance, suggesting that athletes increase their protein intake a bit (largely through food) is sound advice. Carbohydrates are still important, but the role of protein in physical activity should not be underestimated.
Tags: endurance, exercise, protein
By Mitch Kanter, Ph.D.
April 18th, 2011
I just returned from the Experimental Biology meetings, which were held in Washington D.C. Experimental Biology is one of the largest biology/nutrition research meeting of its kind in the world. It’s an excellent way to stay abreast of current research, a good deal of which will ultimately lead to tomorrow’s health and nutrition recommendations.
At this year’s meeting the Egg Nutrition Center sponsored a symposium on dietary cholesterol. The key issue we delved into at the session was the true health implications of dietary cholesterol, and whether or not the cholesterol that we eat is as harmful as many health care professionals have been suggesting for the past 50 years or so. I was pleased to chair the session. Our four presenters were Dr. Penny Kris-Etherton from Penn State University; Dr. David Katz from Yale University, Dr. Maria Luz-Fernandez from the University of Connecticut; and Dr. Kasey Vickers, a post doctoral research fellow from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the NIH. All four are well published, acknowledged experts in the areas of disease prevention, nutrition, cholesterol metabolism and health.
Among other key points, Dr. Fernandez brought up the fact that the original dietary recommendation for daily cholesterol intake (<300 mg/d) was based largely on extrapolations from animal studies and human epidemiologic data, and that few studies have actually demonstrated significantly adverse health effects when cholesterol is consumed in that range. Dr. Katz made similar assertions, and he indicated that his research has shown that higher than average daily cholesterol intake does not have negative effects on the vasculature or on other markers of cardiovascular disease, even in patients with existing coronary artery disease.
Our ultimate goal is to generate a manuscript based on the presentations that we submit for publication to a medical journal sometime in the near future.
The symposium generated a lot of spirited discussion and questions from the researchers in the audience. All-in-all, it was an informative and enjoyable session that I was happy to have had the opportunity to participate in
Tags: dietary cholesterol, EB, Experimental Biology
By Marcia Greenblum, MS, RD
April 15th, 2011
A week ago I attended a session at the Texas Dietetic Association’s annual meeting. Besides being shocked by the fact that Texas has 18 different local dietetic association’s compared to the one I know and love, the District of Columbia Dietetic Association where nearly all members can make it to a meeting with 30 minutes, I was impressed with the unique structure of the sessions. Every session appeared to be sponsored by some industry however the speakers were professional and credible.
Neva Cochran a registered dietitian from Dallas and I presented a talk titled: “Dietary Fats and Heart Health: Examining the Latest Science and Communicating Dietary Guidance”. We were lucky to have a good lead in from the speaker before us, Jim Painter PhD, RD Chair, School of Family & Consumer Sciences Eastern Illinois University who spoke about the” Top 10 Food to Avoid Heart Disease”. His first comments where that the US Dietary Guidelines had made a mistake about their recommendations regarding limiting eggs to one a day. He felt that eggs were not proven to be a risk factor for heart disease and should not be limited at all.
Needless to say, Neva Cochran’s talk that focused on dispelling nutrition myths including the myth that dietary cholesterol is a proven risk factor for heart disease confirmed what Dr. Painter had said. I followed Neva’s presentation with a look at the scientific developments that led to the incorrect assumption that egg intake increased heart disease risk and a new look at biomarkers for heart disease that RDs should consider when evaluating risk factors for heart disease. I included a slide from my travels in Australia that showed a menu board from a fish and chip shack near Coogie Beach. The menu proudly states that they fry in cholesterol- free cottonseed oil which of course is a highly saturated oil that would be a greater risk factor for heart disease than dietary cholesterol. This is the important point I tried to convey to the audience of about 300 Texas dietitians: that when a substance is removed from the diet, it always has an unintended consequence. In the past, telling the public to avoid eggs led to a misunderstanding that all the essential nutrients in an egg like high quality protein, lutein, choline and vitamin D were not as important as the dietary cholesterol and it would be safer to eat a substitute food that often was a greater risk factor, such as refined grains.
Tags: eggs, FNCE, Food and Nutrition Conference, Texas Dietetic Association
