The temptations around us

I took the weekend off, as you can see. But now I'm back. Today's topic will cover the food surrounding us on a daily basis ... and how it isn't necessarily good for us.

My office sponsors a "bagel Monday" for everyone as a company perk and a way to welcome us back from the weekend. (My favorite is the cinnamon raisin slathered with about a tablespoon of butter, by the way.) This is a nice thing for breakfast ... if you're not trying to limit the refined white flour in your diet. And, yes, I'm trying to do just that. Refined white flour has very little nutritional value. By the time you see it in it's paper sack in the grocery store, it's had just about every bit of fiber and most all nutrients removed from it.

My problem? When everyone's done with bagels, and the leftovers are sitting in their paper bags on the counter at lunchtime, I can't help myself from taking another one. There are approximately 195 calories in each cinnamon raisin bagel (with, if I'm lucky, 3 grams of fiber). Each tablespoon of butter has about 101 calories (and 14 grams of fat!)

Yes, folks, I'm now completely disgusted with myself.

Anyway ... to go on to healthier topics - because this blog is all about me breaking my bad habits (as well as expounding on food topics that I find interesting) ... did you know that the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of fiber per day for average adults is 35 grams?

To give you an idea of how difficult it is to reach this target, I found a high-fiber cereal (because most are not, with just 2 grams of fiber or less per serving) that contains 7 grams per serving. The highest I've seen is 11 grams, but it didn't look very palatable (and that's key to sticking with it). Think about it. In order to get the RDA of fiber, you have to work fairly hard at it. Most cereals and baked goods many of us buy have so little fiber content that I highly doubt a great many Americans are meeting that 35-gram goal. (Hence that Metamucil bottle on your mom's countertop.) If I had a bowl of the high-fiber cereal with a medium banana sliced over it, I would have 10 grams of fiber (7 for the cereal, 3 for the banana and none for the milk - milk and meats don't contain fiber unless it's added ... which sounds kind of scary, if you ask me).

Okay, so 10 grams is a good start for the day. But now what? Lunch, if it consisted of a ham and cheese sandwich with lettuce, a medium apple and diet cola, would likely only contain 11or so grams of fiber, if you use the right bread: 7 grams of fiber for two slices of high-bran "health" bread (compared with only 1.9 grams for two slices of white, refined flour bread ... oh the wonder of Wonder Bread!), none for the ham and cheese (meat and dairy = no fiber), lettuce gives a very small amount of fiber as 1 cup of boston leaf has .8 grams of fiber in it (and how many people put a cup of lettuce on a sandwich?), and 4 grams of fiber for the apple. (If you're looking for fiber in your diet cola, you have more problems than I can help you solve.)

So, breakfast and lunch now equals 21 grams. Where can I come up with another 14 grams for dinner? I'd have to eat fiber-rich foods to make up for the deficit. I could have a serving of beans for dinner (2/3 of a cup of cooked lentils has 5.5 grams of fiber), chicken (no fiber, sorry), a cup of raw spinach salad (3.5 grams of fiber for the spinach, a big 0 for the dressing), and a half-cup of summer squash (2 grams of fiber) for a grand total of 11 grams.

Hmm. I'm still missing the target by about 3 grams of fiber, but it's close enough. However, see how much work that takes? I don't have time in my day for much else besides work and sleep, and now I have to figure out a daily eating plan. *le sigh* This is probably why I'm always on a diet.

By the way, many thanks to Continuum Health Partners, Inc. for the very informative web site (www.wehealny.org/healthinfo/dietaryfiber/index.html), which enabled me to plan out the above.

See you next time!

Laurie