Ever eat at Corner Bakery? If you’re cutting your salt, don’t

Life can have unexpected consequences sometimes. Since the New Year began, I’ve been on a cleaning and organizing binge, likely because of Japanese-super-organizer Marie Kondo and her new Netflix series. My wife and I even organized our kitchen junk drawer, usually a no-mans-land of forgotten items.

And in that drawer I found I had an old Corner Bakery gift card. Corner Bakery was an early entrant in the fast casual category of restaurants — places that tried to be a cut above hamburger joints and positioned themselves as healthier with fresher ingredients than tradition fast food.

But as always with such claims, the devil is in the details. Or should I say the salt is the devil in the menu? The reason I never finished using my Corner Bakery gift card was because of the high salt content of most Corner Bakery offerings. So I’ve had this card for years with about $7 left on it to spend.

So I visited the Corner Bakery site today to see if by chance its menu has changed from the high-salt offerings I remembered. Sadly, it has not. It does have some very cool nutrition search functions, including one where you build a meal and another where you can rank all the menu items by salt content (or any nutrition content). Continue reading “Ever eat at Corner Bakery? If you’re cutting your salt, don’t” →

February 28, 2019 0

Getting the salt out — it’s everywhere, here are some examples

Salt has become one of the three evils for my body since my first stent in 2012, and the second in 2016. I’ve redone my eating, cooking and food shopping habits to get the salt out of my diet and seen my blood pressure fall as a result.

Salt can lead to stomach cancer, one more reason to get it out of your diet. — Too much salt will be in processed and restaurant foods for years to come.

Americans eat more than the recommended amounts of salt daily because salt is in almost every food we buy, especially at restaurants, If you don’t believe that, take a look at this WebMD slide show about where salt hides in our foods.

Some, like frozen dinners or processed meats, you might already know about. But what about cereals, juices and canned veggies? Yep, there too. Enjoy and learn from the show…and do pass [up on] the salt.

February 27, 2019 0

Smart shopping in the frozen food aisle

Winter can be a tough time to find fresh fruits and vegetables at a reasonable price, depending on where you live (I’m in the Chicago are and its below freezing as I write this, so nothing is growing here right now except ice patches).

Frozen fruits and vegetables can be an acceptable alternative,m providing you don’t buy offerings that have any added salt, fat and sugar. avoid frozen veggies in sauces, for example.

The Food Network has a handy slide show of 10 Frozen Foods Nutritionists Always Buy. Continue reading “Smart shopping in the frozen food aisle” →

February 26, 2019 0

More bad news for eating processed foods

It’s no secret Americans, particularly Millennials, are turning away from processed foods in droves. Recent earnings woes at processing giant Kraft Heinz point to that as does a weak profit forecast from Coca-Cola.

The perimeter of the supermarket, where fresh fruits, meats and seafood are sold, is becoming the main circuit for shoppers while the central core of most stores, where the higher-margin processed foods sit, is being ignored.

My low-salt, low-fat, low-sugar pantry. Are these healthy? For me, they are. Read every label before buying any food products.

A new study from France adds to the motivation to just shop the perimeter, if you go to mainstream supermarkets at all.

French researchers looked at “the diet of more than 44,000 middle-aged adults over a roughly eight-year period and found that a 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed food consumption was linked to a 14% increase in the risk of mortality,” reports Cooking Light magazine. Continue reading “More bad news for eating processed foods” →

February 25, 2019 0

Say it ain’t so — ginger ale doesn’t calm stomachs????

One of the few things I remember enjoying when I was sick as a child was drinking ginger ale to calm an upset stomach. I had terrible reactions to things like milk and aspirin as a child. Each sent my stomach reeling (you can imagine the details, I’ll leave it at ‘reeling.’)

But then there was ginger ale, tasty, soothing, calming. And I had a crush on the White Rock Ginger Ale girl (New Yorkers will remember that brand).

My mother also believed in the healing powers of ginger ale, always calling for it when she was sick as “bring me the ginger.”

So imagine my disappointment when I saw Ginger Ale Isn’t the Key to Calming Your Stomach—Here’s Why.

“One report finally sets the record straight, with the help of a leading gastroenterologist: ginger ale does not calm queasiness or aid other sickness symptoms. It’s ginger that does this best, but ginger and ginger ale are not one in the same,” reports Cooking Light. Continue reading “Say it ain’t so — ginger ale doesn’t calm stomachs????” →

February 24, 2019 0

Ever eat and still feel hungry? This may explain it

Are you full yet? My wife tends to ask me that every time we eat and I usually reply, no, I’m never really full.

Is that really possible or am I just focusing feeling stuffed with being full? As it turns out, apparently you can eat some foods that just leave you feeling hungry. I was intrigued by that idea when I saw this headline 12 Foods That Leave You Hungry on WebMD, so I clicked through to view the list.

my egg white omelet apparently isn;t filling me up.

Of the foods listed, I eat low-fate yogurt and egg whites regularly on advice from various nutritionists I’ve seen since my first angioplasty back in 2012. And doughnuts, french fries and diet soda are on my regular cheat list as well, so that’s five out of the 12. No wonder I never feel full. Check the list to see how many of your favorites are on it. Two I have cut out since 2012 are white bread and white rice.

February 23, 2019 0

Come hear health & wellness coach Michelle Gillespie March 12

Health & Wellness Coach Michelle Gillespie will be leading a healthy-eating tour of Whole Foods in north Evanston Tuesday, March 12 at 6:30 p.m., at a meeting of the North Suburban chapter of Mended Hearts. All are welcome at the free event.

“Those of us dealing with heart issues are almost inevitably told we have to change how we eat. But beyond that, there’s a dizzying array of advice, often conflicting. Michelle will help us cut through all that with some real examples of how to translate advice into good shopping habits,” says John N. frank, founder of the North Suburban Mended Hearts chapter.

Mended Hearts is a national support group for those dealing with heart and artery diseases. The meeting will be at the Whole Foods on Green Bay Road just north of Central Street in Evanston.

February 22, 2019 0

5 Food Trends for 2019 — back to basics

The year may be almost 1.6th over, but we still wanted to report on a prediction for food trends for 2019, so here’s the outlook from the GE Appliances site, of all places. But I suppose who better to predict than a maker of ovens?

A tasty idea, grill fish on a bed of lemon slices. — Pacific Rim Fusion cooking includes lots of seafood.

The first is Pacific Rim fusion which the site defines broadly as cuisines from any country that touches on the Pacific Ocean, from the United States all the way to New Zealand, Japan and their neighbors.

A second trend will be the return of classic cooking techniques while a third is the resurfacing of French cuisine and French cooking techniques (somewhere, Julia Child is smiling.

Another is plant-based eating which has been getting a great deal of press this year.

Sadly, there’s nothing in here about lower-salt, lower-sugar, and healthy fat cooking

February 21, 2019 0

Food Network Magazine: not exactly a no salt, no fat, no sugar recipe haven

I recently subscribed to the Food Network Magazine (it was a Christmas special deal). I’m always scouring food magazines for no salt, no fat, no sugar recipes and thought I might find some in this successful title.

But alas I found little if anything I can eat on my heart-healthy diet. I should have suspected that I suppose.

I used to love watching Food Network cooking shows but have given that up as I came to realize its chefs are addicted to salt, fat and sugar in the recipes they tout.

The same is true of recipes in the magazine. There’s a section called Weeknight Cooking, for example, that has 10-12 entree recipes an issue. These seems to be the only recipes in each issue that list nutrition content. Some aren’t too bad when it comes to salt. One recipe for Chicken with Ginger Beet Noodles, for example, has 605 mgs of sodium a serving. But it also contains 20 grams of fat and 3 grams of saturated fat.

Continue reading →

February 15, 2019 0

Month: February 2019