Nutrition Mini Quiz

By Gwen Schoen

Most of us know that eating fruit is a good boost for your health, but does that mean you should just plop an apple into your lunch sack every day and call it nutrition accomplished? Here's a quiz to find out if you are making the best choices when it comes to fruit.

1. Figs are higher in potassium than bananas.

True or false?

2. Figs are excellent sources of calcium.

True or false?

3. A recent study shows that lychee may help prevent the formation of breast cancer cells due to its powerful antioxidant activity.

True or false?

4. Oranges have more vitamin C than guava.

True or false?

5. Guava can protect against food-borne pathogens such as listeria.

True or false?

6. Apples are high in fiber, which helps lower cholesterol.

True or false?

7. Apples have more fiber than Asian pears.

True or false?

8. Watermelon and papaya are rich sources of lycopene.

True or false?

9. Rubbing a slice of papaya on a sunburn will help your skin to heal faster.

True or false?

Source: May 2008 issue of Prevention magazine

Answers: 1. True; 2. True; 3. True; 4. False; 5. True; 6. True; 7. False; 8. True; 9. True.

Fat In the body

Glucose, the molecule you get by digesting carbohydrates, is the body’s basic source of energy. Burning glucose is easier and more efficient than burning fat, so your body always goes for carbohydrates first. But if you’ve used up all your available glucose — maybe you’re stranded in a cabin in the Arctic, you haven’t eaten for a week, a blizzard’s howling outside, and the corner deli 500 miles down the road doesn’t deliver — then it’s time to start in on your body fat. The first step is for an enzyme in your fat cells to break up stored triglycerides (the form of fat in adipose tissue).

The enzyme action releases glycerol and fatty acids, which travel through your blood to body cells, where they combine with oxygen to produce heat/energy, plus water — lots of water —and the waste product carbon dioxide. As anyone who has used a highprotein/ high-fat/low-carb weight-loss diet such as the Atkins regimen can tell you, in addition to all that water, burning fat without glucose produces a second waste product called ketones. In extreme cases, high concentrations of ketones (a condition known as ketosis) alter the acid/alkaline balance (or pH) of your blood and may trip you into a coma. Left untreated, ketosis can lead to death. Medically, this condition is most common among people with diabetes. For people on a low-carb diet, the more likely sign of ketosis is stinky urine or breath that smells like acetone (nail polish remover).

Fat in the intestines

When the fat moves down your digestive tract into your small intestine, an intestinal hormone called cholestokinin beeps your gallbladder, signaling for the release of bile. Bile is an emulsifier, a substance that enables fat to mix with water so that lipases can start breaking the fat into glycerol and fatty acids. These smaller fragments may be stored in special cells (fat cells) in adipose tissue, or they may be absorbed into cells in the intestinal wall, where one of the following happens:

• They’re combined with oxygen (or burned) to produce heat/energy, water, and the waste product carbon dioxide.
• They’re used to make lipoproteins that haul fats, including cholesterol, through your bloodstream.

Nutrition: Should you eat organic?

Should you eat organic? This being Earth Day and all, I'd love to answer that million-dollar question with a few irrefutable facts (for one side or the other), leaving everyone feeling satisfied that the choice (one way or another) is easy. But the reality is that this simple question has a very, very complex answer.

Taken at face value, the answer is a simple one: For both environmental and health reasons, you should probably eat organic whenever possible. By choosing organic foods, you reduce your intake of pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals (whether as part of the growing process for fruits and vegetables, or as part of the feed for animal-based foods), and you also reduce their use in farming, which in turn helps the environment.

On the other hand, many individuals will choose organic foods based on their perception that they are somehow more nutritious than their non-organic counterparts. At this point, however, there is virtually no evidence that this is the case (note, however, that at least one study has shown an increase in the anti-oxidant content of foods grown in soil that has been organically farmed for several years, leading researchers to speculate that gradual improvements in the soil's quality may eventually get passed into the food over time). And though your tongue may tell you different, there is no solid evidence that organic foods taste any better.

So if you're looking to reduce the pesticide load for yourself and the Earth, it seems that you have a pretty straightforward choice. But once you start to factor the carbon footprint issue into the picture, things get pretty muddy. Are you better off to choose an organic plum from Chile, or a locally grown, conventionally farmed apple?

The first problem with that question is that there's no clear way to define what "better off" means. Is it better for the environment to use fewer pesticides in farming, but to transport the food by carbon-spewing airplane across many thousands of miles? Or is it better to buy food that may have been exposed to some type of chemical, but has only a few hundred kilometres to travel by transport truck?

And what about other resources not factored into the organic designation, like water and energy use? Perhaps the organic option requires a much greater input of water and fertilizer, or requires vast amounts of energy to produce (as with meats, organic or not)? Suddenly the organic choice doesn't seem so pristine. But the same apply to locally grown foods, and the energy needs for either type of food will increase significantly if the product requires processing before it reaches the shelf. For example, that same locally grown apple might see its carbon footprint increased if it needs to be shipped from Ontario to Quebec and back again to be turned into applesauce.

Before you throw in the towel and say "forget it -- as long as China is opening X number of coal mines per day, then it really doesn't matter what I do anyway, so I'm going to buy a huge T-bone steak and a pineapple from Thailand and not care a hoot about it," remember that these answers are not readily available to the average consumer.
At this point, there really is no way you can know whether the carbon footprint for that bag of organic milk is less than for the non-organic milk, or that the cow was treated better or lived a more fulfilled life. As I said off the top, this is a very complicated situation -- and there are many great minds debating the issue to achieve some level of consensus that will be practical for the consumer.

So, in the interim, what can a savvy, modern-day shopper do? For starters, print and clip the attached sidebar and put it on the fridge:

1. Buy food in season, when you can. And if you have the option, try growing some food of your own.
2. Eat fewer processed foods. They're much more energy efficient to produce and generally better for you.
3. When you do buy food in season, consider freezing some of it, especially if it's a favourite that you eat frequently and have to buy out of season for the rest of the year. For instance, now's the time to start stockpiling blueberries.
4. At the same time, don't go too crazy on the freezing, as a large amount of resources (about 20% of the total energy requirements for a given food, from seed to sewage treatment or compost transport) are spent on household energy use to store and prepare our food; in other words, don't plug in an extra couple of freezers to hold your summer bounty. Also, avoid mega-bulk purchasing, which not only requires extra energy for storage, but tends to lead to overeating and gradual weight gain.
5. Buy only what you need. All of this discussion is moot if you throw out half of your food. That said, don't teach yourself to overeat just for the sake of saving a buck, or because your mom told you to always clean your plate -- just try smaller portions!
6. And if you don't eat everything you buy, at least use a composter or organic waste bin for whatever's left.

• Jennifer Sygo is a dietitian in private practice at Cleveland Clinic Canada, which offers executive physicals, prevention and wellness counselling and personal health care management in Toronto.

Pulling energy from fat

Although fat has more energy (calories) per gram than proteins and carbohydrates, your body has a more difficult time pulling the energy out of fatty foods. Imagine a chain of long balloons — the kind people twist into shapes that resemble dachshunds, flowers, and other amusing things. When you drop one of these balloons into water, it floats. That’s exactly what happens when you swallow fat-rich foods. The fat floats on top of the watery food-and-liquid mixture in your stomach, which limits the effect that lipases — fat-busting digestive enzymes in the mix below — can have on it. Because fat is digested more slowly than proteins and carbohydrates, you feel fuller (a condition called satiety) longer after eating high-fat food.

Understanding how your body uses fat

Here’s a sentence that you probably never thought you’d read: A healthy body needs fat. Your body uses dietary fat (the fat that you get from food) to make tissue and manufacture biochemicals, such as hormones. Some of the body fat made from food fat is visible. Even though your skin covers it, you can see the fat in the adipose (fatty) tissue in female breasts, hips, thighs, buttocks, and belly or male abdomen and shoulders.

Visible body fat

• Provides a source of stored energy
• Gives shape to your body
• Cushions your skin (imagine sitting in a chair for a while to read this book without your buttocks to pillow your bones)
• Acts as an insulation blanket that reduces heat loss

Other body fat is invisible. You can’t see this body fat because it’s tucked away in and around your internal organs. This hidden fat is part of every cell membrane (the outer skin that holds each cell together)

• A component of myelin, the fatty material that sheathes nerve cells and makes it possible for them to fire the electrical messages that enable you to think, see, speak, move, and perform the multitude of tasks natural to a living body; brain tissue also is rich in fat
• A shock absorber that protects your organs (as much as possible) if you fall or are injured
• A constituent of hormones and other biochemicals, such as vitamin D and bile

Facts About Children's Nutrition

Cheryl Forberg offers these facts about children's nutrition. You can also check out her advice/suggestions regarding healthy kids' snacks and exercise routines in the new Kids' Corner section of the Diet Center!

1.On average, children ages 11-18 eat at fast food restaurants twice a week.

2.When children and teens eat fast food, they consume more calories, fat, carbohydrates, added sugars and sugar-sweetened beverages. They also consume less fiber and milk, and fewer fruits and non-starchy vegetables.

3.At least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on most days of the week is the recommended minimum. However, only 23% of children and nearly 40% of adults get no free-time physical activity at all.

4.A national study reports that only 8% of elementary schools, 6.4% of middle/junior high schools, and 5.8% of senior high schools provide daily physical education or its equivalent (150 minutes per week for elementary schools, 225 minutes per week for middle/junior and senior high schools is advised) for the entire school year for students in all grades in the school.

5.Six out of 10 children ages 9-13 don't participate in any kind of organized sports/physical activity program outside of school, and children whose parents have lower incomes and education levels are even less likely to participate. Nearly 23% don't engage in any free-time physical activity.

6.Among children and teens aged 6-19 in the US, 16% (over 9 million) are considered overweight.

7.Among children ages 2-5, the prevalence of overweight has increased from 7% to more than 10% since 1994.

8.The obesity epidemic threatens everyone, but not everyone is equally at risk. Among children and adolescents, obesity is more common among African Americans and Hispanics.

9.Most overweight children have at least one major physiological risk factor (besides overweight) for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol, high triglycerides, high insulin or high blood pressure.

10.Overweight adolescents have a 70% chance of becoming overweight or obese adults. This increases to 80% if one or more parent is overweight or obese.

11.Overweight children are more likely to have abnormally thick heart muscle ue when they become adults, which increases the risk of heart attack and heart failure.

Exercise
Kids may require lots of food fuel to stoke their metabolism, but they still need to be active. An hour of moderate activity each day is recommended. Though some kids love to ride their bikes or play basketball, far too many prefer to plop down in front of the television after school and often, they don't budge til dinnertime. Parents may need to intervene to keep things moving. When kids find activities that they enjoy, they're more likely to stick with it and they'll do it more often.

Here are some tips to keep them moving:
1.Limit their hours of TV or computer games - if they want to watch/play beyond that, have them stand up! (This is especially helpful to kids with weight issues. Standing up burns more calories, and this may make them more inclined to go and do something active rather than standing to watch television)

2.Step it - set a good example and take the stairs when you're together (rather than elevators.)

3.Go for a family walk before or after dinner; in addition to exercise, it's a great way to spend more time together, sharing your news of the day.

4.If it's feasible, encourage them to walk or ride their bikes to and from school.

5.Spend less time at the movies and more time playing soccer or swimming.

6.Involve them in walking the dog, yardwork, housecleaning - anything that's active.

7.A small investment in basic equipment can make a big change. Help your children find a new activity they love: hula-hoop, mini-trampoline, jumprope, kickball, badminton, roller skates, basketball or swimming!

8.Set a good example and be an active parent -- eat healthy and exercise!