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May 11, 2005
Catholic Schoolgirls, Childhood Obesity, Salvation by Quorn
Yesterday I went to a rally in Harrisburg, my state capitol. The rally that immediately preceeded us seemed to involve a lot of school children from Catholic schools. The array of short plaid pleated skirts was truly impressive... VLC and I spent some time thinking about which ones were the cutest and how we could acquire some authentic Catholic schoolgirl outfits of our own. One advantage to doing CR is that you can wear high school girls' clothes well into your thirties... and if that's not an incentive to cut your calories, I don't know what is!
The afternoon took a turn for the grotesque when the school children began eating their lunches on the capitol steps. Suddenly I was surrounded by the obesity epidemic in the making as the children dug into giant hot dogs, potato chips, and chocolate cake with bright white icing. All these cute little kids, elementary to high school age, being poisoned by gak. Many of them were already getting fat, and the thin ones, eating the way they ate yesterday, won't be thin for long.
I felt so sad at the sight of all these children becoming addicted to sugary, high saturated fat foods. What they eat is largely determined by their parents and their schools, and they're learning bad habits from people and institutions they trust. It made me so glad that my mom fed me well when I was little, laying the foundation for later healthy habits. Even when I ate badly, I never ate hotdogs and potato chips on a regular basis!
Even Jay Olshansky would have been with me on this one. Children are getting fatter and sicker and no one seems to be doing anything about it. DISCLAIMER: I do not have children, I do not want children, I do not claim to have any earthly idea how to parent nor would I tell anyone how to raise their children. That being said, there are parents among my faithful readership who often comment that they put effort into feeding their kids nutritious food (hi Danielle!) and I think their kids are the lucky ones. It must be an uphill battle in a world where it's just considered normal to poison children at mealtime and brainwash them into becoming mindless consumers of fast food. But hats off to the parents who fight the fight and feed their kids right!
We had lunch on our journey, and I did okay though not great. We went to a restaurant that had a bunch of salads, so I had a tossed salad that had grilled zucchini and squash as well as the regular lettuce, tomato, etc. It also had some sprinkles of feta, and I had it with just vinegar. I also ate a vinegar marinated portabello mushroom stuffed with crabmeat and pesto. I asked them to hold the havarti cheese, thinking I had enough fat of the unsaturated kind in the pesto and didn't need the extra saturated fat in more cheese. Speaking of marinated veggies, MR's mom has contributed this recipe that strikes me as yummy and CR friendly:
MR's mom says:
I marinate both peppers and 1/4" thick, long slices of zucchini in half olive oil and half either Braggs or light soy sauce or Balsamic vinegar for about half an hour, drain them, then grill them either on the BBQ or my indoor grill. Sometimes I add just a sprinkle of garlic powder or a bit of minced garlic. Using any of these choices, they come out incredibly delicious. I've also done this with asparagus with equally delicious results, although for the outdoor barbie, you need some kind of mesh rack or they fall through the grills.
By the time we got back to my house, VLC and I were starving for our healthy dinner of Carolina barbequed Quorn! We cooked it in the wok with a bag of Trader Joe's bell pepper strips: green, red and yellow. Then we served it with a teaspoon each of flax oil on top, which made it taste incredibly buttery and rich. It was one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. My mom has figured out a website where you can order my barbeque sauce, "Carolina Treet" brand: Carolina Sauce Company. Her favorite brand is Dillard's. Try them both!
VLC and I also ate a giant arugula salad with Trader Joe's Salsa Verde on top, an excellent combination. By giant I mean giant: we split a 420 gram box of baby arugula out of which I had already eaten 100 g, so we had 160 g each of arugula. Delicious! The salsa verde, rather than competing with the smokiness in the arugula, seemed to draw it out.
Meanwhile, I've been having unusual hunger late at night lately, so bad in fact that night before last I woke up in the middle of the night and ate a cup of cottage cheese and twelve olives! While it's good on some level that I'm zoning my midnight snacks, it's kinda scary that I'm waking up hungry. I'm definitely getting to the point where my body is defending the weight I'm at, so hunger is starting to happen anytime I cut down a bit. I still want to cut my calories so I can live long enough to see the dawn of radical anti-aging biomedicine (Click Contribute!) so I can't exactly go eating a 300 calorie midnight snack. I have decided to address this by upping my calories earlier in the day and cutting back on carbs at lunch. I was thinking of cutting back on my dairy, but when I mentioned the possibility of getting less calcium to MR he sounded absolutely terrified -- no doubt visions of my bones falling apart were dancing in his head -- so I decided not to do that. I'm just switching around my meals a bit so that I don't get a giant lunchtime shot of carbs. Today I've packed my brewers yeast soup with one tablespoon of Lewis Labs and a half a cup of eggwhites added for more protein and a teaspoon of olive oil for fat in my lunch box. I'm going to have that with my traditional cottage cheese, but instead of a cup at lunch, I'm going to have a half cup at lunch. I'm adding an afternoon snack of a cup of yogurt with 15 g hazelnuts. Then when I come home I can have another serving of brewers yeast soup with the second tablespoon of Lewis and Labs and some flax oil, and the final half cup of cottage cheese. I seem to react much better to carbs at night than during the day, so I'm just re-distributing my food to make my earlier meals higher protein, lower carb, and save the largest carb hit for dinner. Even that isn't exactly a huge hit of carbs. I also think the nicely Zoned yogurt and nut snack will take the edge off of the hunger later. I guess I am still getting in the Zone here... in spite of my earlier threat that I was heading Atkins-ward. In order to get my calcium through food, I really need to keep the dairy in my diet, and that ups my carbs. So there you go. I continue to Zone my world.
Food List : 5-11--5.FLS
DATE : 05/11/05
Num. Foods : 11
Food #1 : Egg, white, raw, fresh 1.5 cups
Food #2 : oil 2 teaspoons flax, 1 olive
Food #3 : Kale, raw 100 g
Food #4 : lowfat cottage cheese 1 cup
Food #5 : Yogurt, fruit, low fat, 11 grams protein per 8 ounce 1 container
Food #6 : Nuts, filberts or hazelnuts, dried, unblanched 15 g
Food #7 : Brewer's Yeast 2 tbsps
Food #8 : Broccoli, frozen, spears, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 25 cals
Food #9 : Cauliflower, frozen, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 25 cals
Food #10 : Carrots, frozen, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 25 cals
Food #11 : Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, red 6 oz
NUTRIENT TOTALS:
Abs. Values %RDA/SA
Calories 1045.80__cal 52%
Protein 94.83__gm 172% RDA
Total Fat 27.51__gm 42%
Sat. Fat 6.02__gm 30%
Mono. Fat 15.99__gm 55%
Poly. Fat 3.64__gm 55%
Carbohydrate 99.16__gm 33%
Fiber 13.28__gm 44%
Cholesterol 116.98__mg 39%
Vit. A 23063.83__IU 461% RDA
Vit. B6 3.44__mg 215% RDA
Vit. B12 2.74__mcg 137% RDA
Vit. C 199.93__mg 333% RDA
Vit. E 7.26__mg 91% RDA
Thiamine 1.32__mg 120% RDA
Folacin 197.71__mcg 110% RDA
Riboflavin 3.78__mg 291% RDA
Niacin 11.15__mg 74% RDA
Panto. Acid 14.31__mg 286% SA
Calcium 1171.28__mg 98% RDA
Copper 1.84__mg 92% SA
Iron 6.29__mg 42% RDA
Magnesium 228.03__mg 81% RDA
Manganese 3.34__mg 111% SA
Phosphorus 2443.35__mg 204% RDA
Potassium 2749.05__mg 137% RDA
Selenium 156.55__mcg 285% RDA
Sodium 1767.15__mg 74% SA
Zinc 4.49__mg 37% RDA
Tyrosine 6.81__gm 709% RDA
Lysine 12.64__gm 1755% RDA
Phenylalanine 8.01__gm 835% RDA
Leucine 13.76__gm 1433% RDA
Valine 9.88__gm 1176% RDA
Methionine 3.51__gm 1170% RDA
Cystine 1.93__gm 643% RDA
Tryptophan 2.12__gm 1178% RDA
Threonine 7.73__gm 1611% RDA
Isoleucine 8.85__gm 1229% RDA
P:C:F = 36:40:24
Wow, I feel like I'm doing nothing but eating fat all day and I still come out low on fat. How much longer will I be a recovering Priestess of the High Carb Darkness? Will I have some kind of road to Damascus experience where I am blinded by the brilliance of the hazelnuts? That flax oil on barbequed Quorn was pretty close... yet I woke up this morning with my vision intact (good thing as I have to drive to work) and my fat at only 24%.
Maybe I will try Zoning my meals. I know how to do it cause I do it for MR when I cook for him. What's good for the tall one might be good for the tiny one. It just seems like after all the times I've said "I can not be bothered to Zone all my meals," I am getting closer and closer to that point.
I am a little worried about becoming a carbon copy of MR. You'll know it's too late when I start eating six different vegetables in my breakfast and actually liking kefir.
Live long -- live young.
Posted by april at May 11, 2005 7:47 PM
Comments
I hope this doesn't end up sounding like a womens deoderant commercial, but isn't one of the reasons to include vegetables and/or fruits with your meals to keep your pH balanced?
Posted by: Dan at May 11, 2005 5:24 PM
That's dangerously close to what I ended up using in my marinade. Olive oil, basalmic vinegar, and red pepper vinegrette marinade, then coat with a salad topper spice mix. 'Twas yummy indeed.
Posted by: Jacob at May 13, 2005 2:20 AM
GOOD
Posted by: KENNEDY at August 8, 2006 8:56 AM