Americans across the board do NOT meet the USDA recommendations outlined in the Food Pyramid. While the merits of the Food Pyramid can be debated, a recent study found the majority of the U.S. population over-consume solid fats (translate to altered fats), sugars and alcoholic beverages.

The study was published in the Journal of Nutrition. Data was obtained from 16,338 persons, aged 2 years and older. Quantities of foods reported on 24-hour recalls were translated into amounts of various food groups using the MyPyramid Equivalents Database.

Usual dietary intake distributions were modeled, accounting for sequence effect, weekend/ weekday effect, sex, age, poverty income ratio, and race/ethnicity.

The Lemming Diet?
Charlie’s not sure he likes that idea.

Surprisingly, age did not seem to be a factor. Eighty percent of those over age 71 and 90 percent of other age groups ate empty calories (junk foods) that exceeded calorie allowance. Okay, I’m not into counting calories…for anyone. BUT the research findings tell us what kinds of foods Americans are eating. We’re not eating whole foods. Is it any wonder we are so sick?

I am especially saddened for our children. What hope is there for them to live a long healthy life, when their parents and grandparents are like lemmings. Yes, lemmings (small rodents). Lemmings migrate when their numbers increase to a point they can no longer survive at their present location. Many perish, because they’re not thinking for themselves. They’re following the mass frantic and single-minded migration across long distances in search of greener pastures. They’re often so focused on moving forward in a frenzied rate, that they can plunge straight off of embankments.

We are like lemmings. Following the culture, even defending and promoting our unhealthy diets, to our ultimate death. If you doubt it, read some of the comments defending fast foods on my “ Happy Birthday to My Happy Meal” blog.

Your family can be healthy. The choice is yours. Or you can be a lemming, following the American food culture to your death.

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In the heat of summer, cool food sounds especially yummy.  Fortunately, the very season that brings on the heat is also responsible for providing us with an abundant supply of fruits and vegetables.

Salads can be prepared, often with little or no cooking, to satisfy the summertime craving for something light and cool. The salads requiring a little cooking can be prepared in the cool of the morning, before it heats up. Another benefit of summertime salad is that you’ve done all the work early, so when you return exhausted from the beach or pool, dinner is ready to serve!

Lentil and 3-Grain Mexican Salad salads are a nice refreshing change from a tossed salad.

If you have a picky eater, be sure to have him/her help you prepare these dishes. Teach older children how to cut veggies. Younger ones can help incorporate ingredients.

Lentil Salad
Ingredients
1 cup green lentils
Salt & pepper
½ onion, chopped
1 rib celery chopped
1 bay leaf
1 small carrot chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
¼ cup chopped parsley
16 ounces vegetable broth
Luke Xavier is having summer fun.

Add in after the salad has cooled:
1 chopped tomato
¼ cup chopped parsley
1 rib celery chopped
Juice from ½ lemon

Method
1. Sauté the onion, carrot, and celery in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the garlic and parsley.
2. Sort and rinse the lentils. Add the lentils and the rest of the vegetable broth to the pot and bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and cook until tender all the way through (Add more water if necessary.), about 45 minutes.
3. Cool the lentil salad. Just before serving, toss the lentils with the lemon juice, salt, and fresh-ground black pepper. Add in chopped tomato, celery and parsley. Stir to combine. If the lentils stick together, add a bit more vegetable broth.

Super-Duper Fast Method for Lentil Salad
Enjoy Lentil Soup One night and Lentil Salad Another

1. Make Lentil Soup. Click Here for the recipe.
2. Scoop out half the lentils with a slotted spoon.
3. Toss the lentils with the lemon juice, salt, and fresh-ground black pepper.
4. Add chopped tomato, celery and parsley. Stir to combine. If the lentils stick together, add a bit more vegetable broth.

3-Grain Mexican Salad
Ingredients
½ cup brown rice
½ cup barley
½ can each red kidney and black beans (or one can of mixed beans), drained
1 cup frozen or canned corn
2½ ounces sliced black olives
1 red or green Bell pepper
½ cup chopped cilantro
½ cup chopped green onions
1 clove finely minced garlic
½ cup red wine vinegar
½ cup olive oil
1 teaspoon chili powder
½  teaspoon each  salt and pepper
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Optional: 2 ounces diced green chilies for a little heat. Garnish with tomato and avocado wedges.

Method
1. Cook the barley and rice in 2 cups of water for about 40 minutes, until the liquid is absorbed.
2. Rinse and drain the beans (and corn if using canned)
3. In a large bowl combine the cooked barley, rice with the corn and beans, chopped onions and Bell pepper.
4. In a small bowl or glass measuring cup, whisk together the vinegar, olive oil garlic, minced garlic, chili powder, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Pour over salad, toss, and refrigerate.

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USDA Certified Organic
To earn the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s organic certification, the land must be free from prohibited substances such as synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, sewage sludge and other toxins as well as genetically modified organisms for at least three years.

If Nonna is grossed out, then Hannah says she’s grossed out, too!

Who Tracks Organic Farms?
I may have some reservations about “organic” food from Mexico, at least they’re close in proximity to the U.S. Organic acreage in Mexico is said to be monitored by the same American independent third-party certifying agency certifying the operations in the U.S. They are to follow the same Good Agricultural Practices on the farms in Mexico that we do on our farms in the U.S.

While I’m concerned about organic food from Mexico, I wouldn’t believe for a minute that any product from China is truly organic. I watched with interest Washington’s WJLA-TV’s expose on Youtube.

Reporter Roberta Baskin warns, “Buyer beware: When you buy food with a USDA organic label, do you know what you’re getting?” She has a point. The USDA organic label is supposed to mean something.

Foods sold in the U.S. must be approved by the Department of Agriculture before they can display the organic label. The U.S. doesn’t inspect imported foods or foreign farms. It certifies private inspectors to do the job. To complicate matters, the Chinese government does NOT allow foreigners to inspect Chinese farms. Therefore, an extra step is involved for oversight of organics from China. Chinese companies are allowed to inspect Chinese farms, so they subcontract with U.S. accredited agencies. Isn’t that like the fox guarding the hen house?

Organic Foods From China An Oxymoron
Linda Geer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, has been to China. She was interviewed concerning Whole Foods stocking many organic items from China. She told WJLA, “There’s growing concern about the quality of food from China. Already this year the Food and Drug Administration, which checks for food safety, stopped 260 shipments of foods like strawberries contaminated with bad pesticides, bacteria or filth.”

The focus of WJLA’s investigation was Whole Foods, as it has 175 stores and is the nation’s first certified organic grocer. Baskin says, “Just because it’s sold at Whole Foods, doesn’t mean it’s organic, even if it has the USDA Certified Organic Label.”

Dozens of items WJLA found at Whole Foods were imported from China: primarily frozen vegetables: spinach, sugar snap peas, California Blend Vegetables, edamame (I think most edamame is from China, organic or not), asparagus spears as well as other items like peanut butters and pine nuts. How can organic frozen produce be less expensive than grown in the U.S.? In addition, they found that most of “Whole Foods salad bar and hot food bar are NOT organic.”

I don’t shop at Whole Foods, because we don’t have one in the town where I live. I usually get my organic foods at either Vitamin Cottage Natural Foods or Costco. Needless to say, I ran to my freezer and checked the organic items I purchased…they were from Washington, California and Oregon. Whew!

The country of origin isn’t always easy to locate on the package. While I was grocery shopping today, I checked the frozen veggie section at Natural Foods and Costco, since most of the “organic” items from China were found in frozen vegetables. I found that Cascadian Farms and Woodstock Farms uses produce from China in many of their items: Edamame, Asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, tri-cut peppers. All of the organic frozen vegetables and fruit I found at Costco were from the U.S. Red Mill Organic Quinoa, which I normally purchase at Costco, is from Bolivia. This is not a total surprise, because it grows well in high-altitude areas.

Grossed Out
I thought I was grossed out, until this morning when I read  Susan’s reply to Charcie’s email. Susan and her husband lived in Asia from 1992 to 1995. She said: “I can tell you about vegetables grown in China from my experience having lived there. They typically use night soil for fertilizer — this is human excrement. Westerner expats* like us only bought veggies imported from Australia, New Zealand, England, and the U.S. Occasionally, we could not get imported vegetables. If we bought Hong Kong/China grown veggies, we soaked them in water to which Clorox was added to disinfect. Secondly, the Chinese usually don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom. A survey done while we were there revealed that they washed their hands ‘infrequently’.”
(*An expatriate or expat is a person temporarily residing in a country and culture other than their legal residence.)

It’s official. Now, I’m totally grossed out. YUCK-EEE!

You can read the Country of Origin for Whole food Market International Document. It’s interesting as “Do Not Distribute” tops their list. Click Here to download and read it yourself.

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Instead of the announcement to board the plane, the flight attendant notified the waiting passengers the cockpit window needed to be replaced on the 747 parked at our gate. Unusual, I never heard of a flight delayed because of a cockpit window. They “hoped” to have it completed in two hours by 5 PM. The fight was originally scheduled to take off at 4 PM. At best I had an extra hour to wait. At least I had a book to read.

A safe windshield must be important for flight. I wouldn’t want the pilot to be sucked out of the cockpit, leaving passengers clinging onto their seats for dear life.

United kept us updated every 30 to 40 minutes. Of course, we didn’t board at 4 or 5, either. We boarded shortly after 6 and then sat on the plane for an hour waiting for a final check. Reading helped to pass the time. I watched the movie, too.

Katelyn is snacking on real food…snap peas…yum!

Pollan’s premise for healthy eating is evident in the first three sentences in his book, In Defense of Food: “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The opening is brilliant. In the following 227 pages he explains his thesis.

I didn’t agree with everything presented In Defense of Food. But Pollan was right that we don’t eat real food. He is also right in we have managed to divorce “nutrients” from whole food and think it will be as beneficial.

His evolution connection with traditional eating patterns was quite a stretch. Pollan’s expectation is one day people will evolve to derive nutrients from the foods we regularly eat with ingredients like high fructose corn syrup and bleached white flour. Absurd, if you ask me. (He didn’t ask me.) This logic takes a giant leap of faith, even for those who accept Darwin’s theory of the evolution of plant and animal species. According to Pollan, a lot of people would die in the process (survival of the fittest, I guess). Not reassuring, at least to me. People were designed to eat whole foods. We will never “evolve” to be healthy on engineered foods, no matter what Pollan asserts.

Overall, he writes in a manner that is easily understood and debunks “nutritionism’s” take on food. That is you can take parts of food expecting they will be as beneficial as the whole.  (The evolution premise ends up contradicting his main point. Just goes to show you what lengths some people will go to validate their personal beliefs. Oh well.) He says that nutrient content is not as important as the degree of processing. “A whole food might be more than the sum of its nutrient parts.” Amen to that!

Food is nourishing. What Americans eat is mostly not food. Claims on the package stating the nutritional benefits are misleading at best. Worse, is that we are in denial about the foods we regularly eat and the FDA tells us that some real food is bad for you (i.e.: fat is bad). When you eat real food, you don’t have to worry too much about fat or even calories, because you’re eating food the way it was designed for your body. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist, but it’s an obvious fact nutritionists often overlook.

“Eat food. Not too much. And mostly plants.” Simple enough, yet not so easy if you’re used to consuming the Standard American Diet (SAD). In fact, it can seem impossible, especially if you have a picky eater who thinks all green veggies are yucky. Well, you’re in the right place, because getting kids to eat their veggies isn’t as difficult as you might think. To have a healthy family it takes some determination and a commitment to whole foods. With Baby Bites in a matter of a few weeks your picky eater can be on the road to healthy eating. Click Here to read a synopsis of Baby Bites: Transforming a Picky Eater into a Healthy Eater.

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Dick and I are always mindful of the food we order when we’re out. We do our best to choose the healthiest items on the menu. Even so, after returning home, we both were extremely thirsty and downed a large glass of water. Seems the food was loaded with salt.

Salt is a Vital Nutrient
We need it to live; yet Americans are getting too much salt in their diets. In 1974, men daily consumed 2,780 milligrams of salt, women 1,774. By 2006 salt intake jumped to 4,300 milligrams for men and 3,003 for women.

Samuel & Matthew can’t believe there’s so much to know about salt.

The body needs sodium to function. Excessive sodium intake leads to high blood pressure, which is associated with strokes, kidney damage and congestive heart failure. The National Academy of Sciences estimated that reducing sodium intake could prevent 100,000 deaths a year!

Not Salt All Equal
The standard table salt you buy in the grocery store has been chemically-cleansed. Refined salt has been bleached to look white and treated so it will pour easily. This is also the salt that has been added to all processed foods.

On the other hand, unrefined sea salt from a whole foods store is rich in minerals. It’s naturally complex of sodium chloride, which includes minerals such as calcium and magnesium as well as trace minerals. In the natural form, the body properly utilizes the salt and the minerals help to protect the body from toxins, parasites, bacteria, viruses, and other illnesses. There are over one hundred minerals in unrefined sea salt helping to keep the body in balance.

Shaking the Processed Food Habit
Our excessive salt intake isn’t coming from our salt shakers. Most of it, 77 percent, is from processed foods or food purchased out. Some products are offering lower sodium content. Of course, this is still chemically processed salt. You can find nutritional information for many restaurants (including fast food) online. Not many will take the time to look at nutritional information online before going to a restaurant.

Sixteen food manufacturing companies have committed to join the National Salt Reduction Initiative, (NSRI) a campaign started by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reduce salt content in restaurants and packaged foods in the United States by 20 percent over five years. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration is working on front of the package nutritional labeling. Although, front of the package labeling will only alert consumers to the salt content.

We don’t need to wait five years for food manufactures to reduce sodium. We don’t need front of the package labeling about salt either. When you use natural sea salt at home, will you reduce sodium in your diet and you’ll receive he benefits from the minerals in the salt. When we cook from scratch and eat at home we’ll be healthy.

Three Tips for Salt Usage

1. Use Sea Salt

2. Add salt at the end of the cooking process, as it’ll lose its saltiness.

3. Add less salt when cooking, as most people want to salt the food on their plates. (Some even add salt before tasting it.)

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Nonna Joann on Denver’s Fox 31 News talking about her Happy Birthday to My Happy Meal blog:

Nonna Joann Bruso appears on several local news channels throughout the year. The first three segments are from a recent TV interview on DayStar. Following are short news segments on Fox31 and Denver News. Check back frequently to see her updated segments.

Nonna Joann Bruso on The Denver Celebration TV Show (3 Segments)

Following are videos from other appearances on FOX31 and Channel 2 News.
The first three are with feature reporter Dan Daru on Fox31.
These were shot in Nonna’s kitchen on January 6, 2009.

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