By Kaitlin Walsh

IT’S ON for young and old. December hits and with it the banquets, the buffets, the drinks, the nibbles – the extra salt, extra sugar, extra fat and … extra kilos. Yet it need not be so. Follow this simple guide to eating less to reduce your waistline – and your New Year regrets.

Step one: be mindful of portion size

Research shows that we are inclined to believe that whatever sized meal we are presented is appropriate and many of us will guts the lot on that basis – even if we dimly realise that it looks rather large and tell ourselves that that we will make up for it by eating less at the next meal. This seldom happens and we tuck in next time with just as much gusto. So go small. In a world of upsized everything, it’s time to take a step down and not eat everything on our plates. If it comes with fries, order it without. If it comes with sauce or dressing, order a half portion on the side. Eat slowly and order the small size of everything, whether at the movies, in a restaurant, eating takeaway. Do not be convinced that you are saving money buy buying a bigger sized snack, meal or ‘treat’ – it’s the oldest marketing trick in the book. All it does is get you way more calories than you need – for just a little bit more than you would have spent otherwise. Which makes you a two-time loser.

Step two: focus on your food

It sounds counterintuitive, but many, many studies have shown that the more distracted you are, the more likely you are to eat more, while if you think and focus on your food you may make wiser choices. That’s why TV snacks and cinema buckets of popcorn should sound the alert, loud and clear. You can easily dispose of a packet of Maltesers and a choc and barely realise it. So avoid eating except when your focus is on what and how much. This applies equally to parties where snacks and canapés are being passed around while you chat and charm the other guests. Decide beforehand what you will eat, forego the fried nibblies and nuts and home in on a moderate number of foods that are decent. Scope the canapés or snacks on offer, decide what are the ‘safest’ and literally limit and then count the number of items you eat. And sure, have a couple of less-healthy bits for enjoyment but keep it to just that – a couple.

Step three : beware the buffet

You need to approach a buffet with well planned, military precision. You know that old saying about the ‘dessert stomach’ – that is you may feel more than elegantly sufficed after the main course but can always squeeze in some chocolate? Well, it may have a basis in scientific fact. Increasingly, nutritionists believe that we are programmed to crave and eat a variety of foods to ensure our bodies get the variety of nutrients we need. Hence our ability to load up four plates of different food types at a buffet. Yes – we have all at least seen (if not done) it. Of course evolution is a bit behind the eight ball here having not quite caught up with the variety of foods on offer at almost every turn (have you checked the tuna aisle lately?). So we need to focus on what’s available, what we really want, what is an appropriate serving and stick to a plan. Aim to eat one plate, several different food varieties – and a small dessert if so minded.

Step four: consider the energy load

Take the edge off your appetite with foods that enable you to eat lashings with relatively little calorific expenditure. So remember that you can literally load up on fish, veggies, lean meats (bear in mind that lean protein is great for staving off hunger – giving what we call ‘satiety’) with tasty low calories dips and sauces – which will ‘cost’ you exactly the same of just a tablespoon or so of oil, a single donut or fried item or a handful of salty snacks. Be aware of how much veggie equals how much oil equals how much animal fat equals how much fish and so on so you can make intelligent decisions. To give you an idea, there are four calories in a gram of carbohydrate or protein and nine calories in a gram of fat. These nutrients also differ in how quickly and easily they can be metabolised and burned as energy. Carbohydrates are the quickest and fats are the slowest. So you can eat way more fat, way more quickly – and it takes way longer to burn it off than carbs or proteins.

Step five: get the soup habit

Intersperse your big meals and nights out with some truly lean occasions that will help reduce your overall intake, provide you with high quality nutrients and satisfy your hunger. Yep – we are talking delicious, home made vegetable soup. Saute some onion, carrot, garlic and celery in a spray of olive oil. Add any spices or flavourings you want – a touch of cumin works well – then add stock or water and all your favourite veggies and legumes such as beans, lentils or chick peas. A dollop of tomato paste can add further flavour. Eat up as big as you like and know that you’ve done every bit of yourself a favour. Try that a few times a week to give yourself a break and your body will thank you for it. Keep some frozen stocks on had so you never have an excuse to avoid it and experiment with recipes to ensure you get the variety and enjoyment we all crave.

The sting in the tail is, of course, that if you drink buckets of alcohol as you go, much of the good you do will be undone. As well as the calorie load imparted, being affected by alcohol impairs your judgement and you may well find yourself blissfully uncaring about what you eat. Until the next day – or 3am the following morning.

So remember – intersperse your alcoholic drinks with soda or plain water, go for light beer and remember how good it feels not to be hung over, remorseful or embarrassed the day after a big event. Leave that to somebody else this year.

This is article is courtesy of Super Living. Live and invest with attitude

by Joanna McMillan Price

Life used to be simple. You spread butter on your bread, melted it over vegetables and used it in cooking. Then new research discovered that saturated fat raises our cholesterol and increases our risk of heart disease.

More than 65 per cent of the fat in butter is saturated. Very quickly butter topped the “bad food” list.
Margarine, originally produced as a cheap spread, was suddenly promoted as the healthy choice and sales took off. Then scientists discovered the chemical process used to turn an oil into a spread created a type of fat called trans fat that was even worse than saturated fat.

Margarine was invented by a Frenchman in 1870, although it only became popular during and after the war years. Today, margarine sales far outweigh butter sales, largely because of the perceived health benefits. But can a modern manufactured product really be healthier than the fat made from churning wholesome cow’s milk? As a passionate believer in eating “real” food as much as possible, I struggle with the idea that we can manufacture something that is better for us than a relatively simple food consumed for thousands of years. But I’ll give you the facts and you can make up your own mind.

The saturated fat in butter is not good for us as it tends to raise “bad” LDL cholesterol in blood, increasing our risk of heart disease. Plus, manufacturers of margarines responded quickly to the information on trans fats and produced a new generation of margarines with little or no trans fats.

Because of the oils used to make margarine such as canola, sunflower, olive and soy it’s generally high in healthy mono and polyunsaturated fats, which have the ability to lower LDL cholesterol. In fact, a
US study of 46 families published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that substituting margarine for butter lowered blood cholesterol levels.

Plant sterol margarines, which bind cholesterol in the gut, preventing it from being re-absorbed, take it a step further. Studies have shown that these margarines can be effective in lowering cholesterol. There’s no doubt that if you have pre-existing high cholesterol levels, a plant sterol margarine can help, possibly reducing the need for cholesterol-lowering drugs. The only catch is you have to make sure you use
enough of it — a fairly generous spread on 3-4 slices of bread — and it’s more expensive.

Butter lovers can take heart from the fact that butter contains several essential nutrients — in particular, the fat-soluble vitamins A, D and E. In our obsession with reducing fat, we were actually neglecting these nutrients, though margarines are now fortified with them.

So what will it be — butter or margarine? I’m going to play devil’s advocate and suggest neither. Butter is clearly not the best sort of fat for heart health. Margarine is a modern invention and not a part of traditional diets around the world. An olive oil margarine is not the same as a Mediterranean-style, olive oil-based diet, and an omega-3 enriched margarine is not the same as a diet high in fish and seafood.

Try brushing your bread with olive oil, use a nut spread on toast, spread mashed avocado in sandwiches and cook with olive or other healthy oils. It’s simple, really.

Joanna is a popular media spokesperson and is the resident nutrition expert for the Today show on the Nine Network. She is a health writer for Life etc magazine and writes a regular column “Ask the Food Doctor” for Slimming & Health. Joanna has authored or co-authored a number of books including the internationally published The Low GI Diet and The Low GI Diet Cookbook. Most recently Joanna teamed up with ‘The Food Coach’ Judy Davie and their joint book Star Foods (ABC Books) was released April 2008. Her next book is a must have guide for all women who want to look and feel their best, called Inner Health Outer Beauty. It will be released by Random House April 2009. www.joannamcmillanprice.com

by Catherine Saxelby

Every second week or so, someone asks me the same old question: “Should I avoid carbohydrates after 6pm (or 5pm or 4pm) if I want to lose some weight?” So I thought I’d let you in on what I usually advise and you can pass it along to your friends and family.

Cutting out carbs like potato, pasta or rice with dinner is simply a way of cutting down on kilojoules (calories). That’s all. There’s nothing magical about the timing.

Here’s what you’ll save:
• Cut out a large baked potato and you reduce your dinner intake by 580 kJ (140 cals).
• Cut out a cup of steamed white rice and you’re down 770 kJ (185 cals).
• Cut out a cup of cooked spaghetti and you’re down 840 kJ (200 cals).

So out of a total dinner intake of say 1680 kilojoules (400 cals) for a steak, potato and salad, you can knock off more than 50 per cent if you say “No” to the carbs. That’s why you lose weight!

Eat light at night

However, I do think it’s a really good idea to eat lightly at night. Why? Well, most of us are at our least active in the evening – think of all those reality TV and talent shows we sit and watch – and so we’re less likely to burn off any excess.

BUT there’s no point in eating an unbalanced meal – it only sets you up to pick at chocolate or ice cream later on when you’re still hungry. A steak or fish fillet with non-starchy vegetables like green beans or tomato or a salad (even a large one) is not a balanced meal. It needs some carbs - but just a small portion - and you’ll finish the meal feeling a lot more satisfied. Just half of cup of rice or pasta or a small potato will balance things out nicely. I’ve changed the quantities of carbohydrates I now eat at night in line with this and found it much easier to maintain my weight. I’ve said good-bye to those huge bowls of pasta with fat-free sauce I used to tuck into – and I feel better for it.

If you really want to cut down, ditch the glass (or two or three) of wine you have with your meal. Two glasses of dry wine, red or white, add an extra 1000 kJ (240 cals), much more than a humble spud or spag.

Remember, I’m talking about the usual-sized glasses of wine which average 160 or 180ml, not the small 100ml old-fashioned glass that serves as the official measure of a ‘standard’ drink. This doesn’t exist anymore. These days, no-one drinks from one of those – I still have a small old wine glass of my father’s that I show when I give talks just to illustrate how sizes have increased over the past 10 years.

Catherine Saxelby is an accredited nutritionist and author of 9 books including Nutrition for Life. For more tips and ideas, go to her website at www.foodwatch.com.au

by Matt O’Neill

You want to build a better diet for you and your clients. But will the latest nutrition trends help, or just add to the confusion? Dietician Matt O’Neill separates the positives from the pitfalls.

The obesity crisis is putting the pinch on fast foods and the food industry is scrambling to meet the demands of busy consumers who are demanding quick, healthy options. There is a boom in convenience foods at supermarkets, takeaways and service stations. But convenience and other trends could come at a price.

1. low-carb becomes slow-carb

Market researchers have predicted a peak in the low-carbohydrate craze and a downward trend in sales of low-carb foods. The new trend is “slow-carbs”, based on the concept of the Glycaemic Index (GI). Hungry, frustrated low-carbers are turning to less processed, wholegrain cereals for food, which are filling but not fattening.

• positives

Atkins and the low-carb diet gurus have spawned a whole new range of lower carbohydrate and lean, high-protein foods. If you know what you’re doing, you’ve now got more options to create the diet you want. Carb-reduced pasta, prepackaged “98% fat-free” deli meats and high-protein shakes offer simple ways to cut calories and still eat well. Low GI foods such as porridge, oat bran cereals, yoghurt and others can help you feel full before you eat too much.

• pitfalls

The attraction of low-carb diets won’t dwindle overnight, so there’s still lots of confusion to combat. For example, it’s hard to exercise without enough carbohydrates to keep your glycogen stores fuelled. But you also can’t over-eat or over-drink low GI products just because they have a low GI logo endorsement on the package. Helping clients better manage their hunger and appetite is the key here.

2. fast food becomes low-fat

Morgan Spurlock’s Academy Award nominated “Supersize Me” documentary about the fast food industry was a wake-up call for the multinational burger business. Now major players like McDonalds have introduced lower-fat burgers and salads in response to media pressure and demand for healthier choices.

• positives

Making the change from a regular burger to a lower-fat version will reduce the saturated fat that raises blood cholesterol. Ready-to-eat salads offer a genuine calorie saving and can represent one of the best on-the-go lunch-time options around.

• pitfalls

Some new “less than 10% fat” menu items aren’t necessarily lower in calories. Flatbread wraps, in particular, contain significantly more carbohydrates than burgers with light, fluffy buns and this can cancel out the calorie savings made when cutting the fat. Check the nutrition information to see if you’ve got a good deal for your waist line as well as your heart.

3. bars become a meal

Breakfast and snack bars are the big growth area in convenience foods. They offer fast nutrition for time-poor consumers, even on the way to and from the gym.

• positives

There are a wide range of low-fat, fruit-based snack bars which are much better choices than the three Cs: cookies, cakes and chocolate.

• pitfalls

Although many bars are low in fat, they often contain large amounts of sugar. Some are one-third to half sugar, and this means you won’t save too many calories. And a warning to fitness enthusiasts: swapping processed energy and protein bars for fresh fruit means you’ll miss out on a bundle of health-promoting antioxidants.

4. meals become drinks

If you haven’t got time to eat, why not drink your nutrition? Juice and smoothie bars are capitalising on our busy lives, providing liquid meals in a flash. Cafés and coffeebars have an added hook by providing a caffeine fix alternative for ex- and would-be smokers.

• positives

Vegetable juices offer a relatively low-calorie nutrient boost, packed with vitamins and antioxidants. Adding a banana and strawberries to a skimmed milk smoothie can top up your daily fruit serves.

• pitfalls

Fruit juice and dairy drinks can pack a lot of calories that slide down too easily. They enjoy a healthy image, but are not so healthy for our waist lines. Serve sizes, some as large as 800 millilitres can provide more calories than the meal you would’ve eaten. Go easy on these.

5. kids’ food becomes healthy

With up to 25% of children carrying excessive body fat, food companies are offering calorie-conscious kids’ foods at supermarkets and school canteens.

• positives

There’s an increasing range of healthier foods, marketed in interesting and fun ways for our kids. Fat-reduced, tasty savoury snacks, fruit packs and calcium-rich low-fat dairy desserts are good options. Even for adults, these are worth checking out.

• pitfalls

Some food companies continue to promote the idea that simply cutting fat makes food healthy for kids. Promoting a sweet treat as “99% fat free” ignores the high sugar content.

6. food becomes medicine

Health-conscious, or perhaps disease-phobic, consumers are looking for dietary alternatives to medicines to enhance wellbeing. The line between food and drugs has blurred with innovative food products known as “pharmafoods”, “neutrafoods” and just plain “phood” (food and medicine).

• positives

So-called functional foods can offer real benefits, especially for people with specific needs. Products with enhanced levels of omega-3 fats, soluble fibre and a range of phytochemicals (beneficial plant chemicals) offer simple ways to boost the intake of the good nutrients that are often lacking in our diet.

• pitfalls

Without getting the basics of good nutrition right first, navigating through a supermarket that looks more like a drug store could be very confusing. Individual foods won’t offer a quick fix for a poor lifestyle. You can also expect to pay a premium for these food products as food companies try to recoup the costs of developing and marketing new “phoods”.

final thought

Our fast-paced lifestyle is reshaping the way we eat at an alarming rate. To make healthy informed choices, we’ll need to slow down enough to read nutrition information and ask if it’s not available. Helping your clients understand and read food labels will help equip them to eat well into the future.

Matt O’Neill is a top Australian nutritionist and regular on Channel 7’s Sunrise program. You can subscribe to Matt’s free email newsletter, download useful tools or enrol in a course at his website at www.SmartShape.com.au

By Joanna McMillian

A vegetarian diet is generally thought a healthy way to eat — if it’s balanced, at least. Certainly, if you cruise the aisles of any health-food shop, you’ll find a vast array of plant foods, including numerous grains and foods made from grains, but seldom anything that comes from an animal, the clear implication being the latter is not “health foods”. Research tends to support this widespread belief, suggesting vegetarians are less likely to be obese and have less chronic illness such as heart disease.

High-fibre intakes from a diet high in plant food, including whole grains, are generally shown to be beneficial, while a high meat intake has been linked to increased risk of chronic diseases such as colon cancer.

Yet, on the other side of the coin, high- protein/low-carbohydrate diets such as Atkins tell us grains are pretty toxic to us, making us fat and causing or contributing to many of the chronic diseases afflicting the developed world.

No wonder so many of us are confused over what to eat and who to believe. So should we eat grains or not?

The argument against eating grains is primarily one of evolution. Genetically, we have changed little since our hunter-gatherer days. The best evidence shows that at that time, animal foods dominated the human diet. Plant foods, too, were consumed in large quantities, but mostly those that could be eaten with little preparation or cooking. Grains are not easily harvested and can almost never be eaten direct from the plant — they require some kind of processing and/ or cooking to make them edible. Grains did not, therefore, become major dietary players until the dawn of agriculture when humans learned how to grow and harvest crops to support the community.

This process started some 10,000 years ago and from this time grains became an increasingly important part of human diets everywhere. So much so that today grains provide the staple food for many communities worldwide. Indeed, from a purely environmental point of view, we can no longer feed the world’s population on an animal-based diet — we need grains and other plant foods to sustain us.

In evolutionary terms, however, we’re talking about a very short period of time. There is therefore a valid argument that genetically we have not (yet) evolved to cope with the change from a predominantly animal-based to a more grain-based diet.

Yet there is a major flaw in this argument: while we have eaten grains for thousands of years, overweight and obesity have only become a major problem in the past 50 years. In fact, the exponential rise in obesity is only in the last 20 years. Perhaps the problem lies not in grains per se, but in what we do to them.

When humans started to eat grain foods, we would have ground it roughly between stones to crack the hard outer shell, added water to the resultant mix and then cooked it in some way. Over time, we learned how to use grain to make bread or porridge, or as a thickener in stews. We learned that grains could plump out a meal, making it go a lot further relatively cheaply.

It’s the same story today. Animal foods tend to be much more expensive, while grain foods are cheap and readily available. But we have now learned how to grind them, remove the tough outer husk and polish the grain down to just the starch-rich centre. We can then cook the polished grain to give a fluffy white rice, for example, or grind this starch centre to a fine flour to produce fluffy white breads.

Or we take the fine flour and mix it with fat and sugar to make biscuits, cakes, crackers, breakfast cereals and so on. You can see that, over time and with sophisticated food manufacturing techniques, we have moved further and further away from the grain in its natural state. In fact, all we do is strip the grain of almost all its fibre and micronutrient content and use only the energy-containing part: the starchy centre.

We can measure the effect of this processing on our body. When carbohydrate-containing foods such as grains are eaten, the food is digested and broken down in the intestine to release the individual sugars, principally glucose. These are then absorbed into the bloodstream where the glucose is transported to cells all around the body to be used as fuel or stored for later use. How quickly this happens varies, depending on the food.

This is the basis for the glycaemic index (GI). The GI compares foods, gram for gram of carbohydrate, by directly measuring the rise in blood glucose after eating the food. If we compare directly the GI of grains under increasing levels of processing — ie whole grains, cracked grains, wholemeal flour and so on — to fine flour, we see a step-wise increase in the glycaemic response.

While we have eaten grains for thousands of years, the change in the past 20-50 years has been a dramatic increase in the consumption of processed grains with a high GI. As a result, the rises and falls in our blood glucose levels today are far larger than in the past and our bodies are just not designed to cope with this.

As to whether or not grains are good for us, the answer is clearly dependent on what form the grains are in. The positive research supporting the role of grains in the diet is almost always using whole grains or minimally processed grain products. Similarly, the evidence for consuming low-GI foods grows, supporting the same conclusion. In practice, this means fewer foods made from white flour, including bread, biscuits and cakes, and less polished white rice (at least choose a lower-GI variety). Instead, we can increase our range of grains focusing on those we can consume with minimal processing and/or that have a low GI.

Venture into the health-food aisle of your supermarket and you’ll find many grains that fit the bill. While some may be new to you, interestingly they are almost always part of traditional diets from other parts of the world. Barley, thought to be one of the first grains cultivated, makes a good nutty base for a risotto-style dish. Bulgur is popular in Middle-Eastern dishes such as tabouli. FreekehTM is an ancient Mediterranean grain with more fibre, protein and micronutrients than many others. Rolled oats (even Scotland has its healthy food!) make a nutritious breakfast as porridge or muesli. And quinoa (pronounced keen-wa), a tiny South American grain that was once the food of the Incas, has a high protein content, is nutrient-rich and can be used in a similar way to couscous.

In the bread aisle, look beyond your basic sliced white bread and be adventurous in trying a selection of wholegrain options: European-style grainy breads, rye sourdough, spelt flour breads, mountain bread based on barley, rye or corn, and traditional wholemeal flat breads are all far more nutritious choices. Expand your culinary diversity beyond processed wheat and rice and the bottom line is grains can indeed be a nutritious and delicious part of your diet. We needn’t look as far back as hunter-gatherer time for lessons from the past — we can learn much from the traditional diets of our contemporaries all around the world.

Joanna is a popular media spokesperson and is the resident nutrition expert for the Today show on the Nine Network. She is a health writer for Life etc magazine and writes a regular column “Ask the Food Doctor” for Slimming & Health. Joanna has authored or co-authored a number of books including the internationally published The Low GI Diet and The Low GI Diet Cookbook. Most recently Joanna teamed up with ‘The Food Coach’ Judy Davie and their joint book Star Foods (ABC Books) was released April 2008. Her next book is a must have guide for all women who want to look and feel their best, called Inner Health Outer Beauty. It will be released by Random House April 2009. www.joannamcmillanprice.com

by Dr. Joanna McMillan Price

Soy is a health food right? Beneficial effects of soy have been reported in relation to heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, menopausal symptoms, thyroid function, bone health and even cognitive function. Yet conversely media reports and numerous websites claim exactly the opposite. Frightening headlines touting “the truth about soy” allege soy is toxic to humans and causes numerous detrimental health outcomes including reproductive problems, an increased risk of breast and prostate cancers, decreased immune function, gut problems, and in children early menarche and feminisation of boys. It’s enough to turn you off your soy latte for life. But who do we believe?

Soy is a legume that is fairly unique in the plant kingdom, in that it provides all of the essential amino acids (the building blocks of protein) that humans need. In contrast almost all other plant foods are missing or low in one or more of these amino acids, meaning that vegetarians must consume a variety of plant foods to meet their protein requirements. For this reason soy beans, tofu, tempeh, soy drink and other soy foods have long been a mainstay of vegetarian and vegan diets. But on the whole soy foods have not played a major role in the typical Western diet. In contrast soy is regularly consumed by many Asians at all stages of life from weaning to old age. This difference in levels of soy consumption is what got the ball rolling in soy research. Scientists found that levels of heart disease and many cancers, including breast cancer, were far lower in these soy-eating Asian countries, compared to levels in the West. Numerous studies followed to try to identify what it was about soy that might be protective.

Research has centred on two aspects of soy – soy protein and compounds found in soy called isoflavones. Isoflavones are phytoestrogens (meaning ‘like oestrogen’) and are similar in structure to the hormone oestrogen. These phytoestrogens can act in two ways:

1.    They can act like oestrogen. This may be beneficial during menopause for example, when natural oestrogen levels are dropping. Theoretically consuming sufficient phytoestrogens-rich soy at this time can reduce menopausal symptoms.

2.    They can block the action of oestrogen. This is potentially beneficial in for example breast tissue where oestrogen stimulates growth of both normal and cancerous cells. At least one of the isoflavones in soy, called genistein, has been shown in animal studies to inhibit the development of breast cancer.

Additionally, isoflavones have been shown to be powerful antioxidants and may in this way contribute to protection against diseases including cancer and heart disease.

Soy & heart disease

In 1995 a report was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine that concluded (on the basis of 38 controlled clinical trials) that soy protein significantly reduced blood cholesterol levels, particularly LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol, and triglycerides (another blood fat linked to an increased risk of heart disease).  On the back of this report the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now allows food manufacturers to claim on the labels of low-fat foods containing at least 6.25g of soy protein that soy can help reduce the risk of heart disease.  Many other countries, including the UK, have followed suit but as yet Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) have not approved such a claim here and it is unlikely that they will. A more recent review of the evidence published in the journal ‘Circulation’ earlier this year, suggests that this claim is rather premature. It concludes that soy protein has only a very small effect on LDL-cholesterol, reducing it by a meager 3% or so, while having no effect on triglycerides or ‘good’ cholesterol. Furthermore the studies showing a beneficial reduction in cholesterol used large quantities of soy - ~50g a day. In reality this equates to drinking about 7 cups of soy drink or close to 600g of tofu – every day! You would have to be pretty dedicated to keep up this level of intake. Nevertheless, the authors did recognise that consuming soy foods in place of animal foods (high in saturated fat and cholesterol) should benefit heart and overall health since soy foods are low in saturated fat, a source of healthy unsaturated fats, and rich in fibre and other nutrients. All this research is really telling us that having soy drink instead of milk and the odd tofu burger is not enough to bring down your cholesterol levels. But, choose the tofu burger over a regular burger, and replace the fattier cuts of meat in your diet with tofu or tempeh, and your heart will be thankful.

Soy & Cancer

If soy isoflavones have the ability to block the action of oestrogen, then they can potentially reduce the risk of hormone-dependent cancers such as breast and prostate. Some of the early studies comparing cancer rates across countries showed a benefit of soy consumption, and many soy and health food companies leapt on the results. However the picture is far from clear and a few worrying reports have emerged suggesting that concentrated soy supplements in fact stimulated cancer growth in subjects with existing breast cancer.  Of course this so often happens in nutrition research – scientists think they have isolated the important component of a food and try giving it as a supplement and low and behold the effects are not the same. Try as we might a good diet just cannot be packaged in a pill. There are currently several large scale studies underway to further investigate the role of soy in cancer and until the results are in, we really can’t say.

Soy and the Menopause

Many women have sworn that eating more soy foods during the menopausal years has helped to reduce symptoms such as hot flashes and mood swings. However the vast majority of studies have failed to confirm these anecdotal findings. Yet it is interesting to note that the reported incidence of hot flashes differs across countries with varying soy intakes. For example while 70-80% of European women report hot flashes, only 18% and 14% do so in China and Singapore respectively. These differences are perhaps due to the way in which soy is consumed – not as supplements but as key foods in an overall healthy diet.

Soy & Reproductive Health

Reports of girls starting menarche at an increasingly young age and the feminization of our boys and men are among the more horrific of the claims made against soy. The basis for this is legitimate enough – that if infants are fed soy formula and young children consuming soy in an increasing number of foods they are exposed to the effect of an oestrogen-like substance for a far longer period of time. Certainly infants in Asia are rarely given soy formula, but they are fed many soy foods from the age of weaning. These children have no ill effects on their reproductive systems and there seems little concern from soy foods. With respect to soy infant formula, a major study published in 2001 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, followed more than 800 men and women fed soy formula as infants into adult life. They found no significant differences between this group and those fed a cows’ milk formula, including any effects on the reproductive system. That said there are those who seem to believe soy formula is healthier and there is simply no basis for this. The bottom line is breast-feeding infants has indisputable advantages to bottle feeding, but modified cows’ milk formulas are a safe and effective alternative. Soy-based formulas were developed for use in infants allergic or intolerant to cows’ milk and therefore only consider using them if advised to do so by your doctor or health professional.

The Soy Bottom Line

While there seems little evidence to support the alarmist claims of the anti-soy network, neither is there compelling evidence that soy is quite the health food some have cracked it up to be. The traditional Asian diet, rich in soy foods, has been shown to be a healthy diet that undoubtedly plays a role in their low rates of several chronic diseases including heart disease, obesity and certain cancers. What they don’t do is take concentrated soy or isoflavone supplements, nor do they consume a plethora of processed, packaged food marketed as healthy just because it is made from soy, alongside a diet too high in saturated fat, processed foods and so on typical of many Westerners. Traditional soy foods such as tofu, soy drinks made from whole soybeans, tempeh and whole soy beans are healthy additions to your diet, particularly if they replace processed and fatty meats. But there appears to be nothing to be gained, and potentially much to lose, from trying to take the easy route and package soy in a pill.

Joanna is a popular media spokesperson and is the resident nutrition expert for the Today show on the Nine Network. She is a health writer for Life etc magazine and writes a regular column “Ask the Food Doctor” for Slimming & Health. Joanna has authored or co-authored a number of books including the internationally published The Low GI Diet and The Low GI Diet Cookbook. Most recently Joanna teamed up with ‘The Food Coach’ Judy Davie and their joint book Star Foods (ABC Books) was released April 2008. Her next book is a must have guide for all women who want to look and feel their best, called Inner Health Outer Beauty. It will be released by Random House April 2009. www.joannamcmillanprice.com

This article was first published in Life etc

by Catherine Saxelby

Everything in our lives is fast – fast cars, fast trains, fast lanes, fast money, fast broadband and of course fast food. There’s lunch on the run, dinner in under 30 minutes, 2-minutes noodles, take-away to grab and run. Life is rushed and stressful.

When we finally have time to eat, we bolt it down as quickly as we can. Often we multi-task whilst eating – we munch a sandwich at our desk, catch up with the news over dinner or read the paper over coffee and a muffin.

Now there’s a new health concept to re-train yourself to eat slow.  Like the Slow Food movement that’s supporting a return to traditional cuisine, it’s part of the philosophy that food is special and should be enjoyed at leisure to bring out its full satisfaction and flavour.  If you eat at a leisurely pace, you’ll enjoy your food more, have less problems with your digestion and force yourself to slow down. Your health and attitude to life will lift noticeably!

Eating slowly is also one of the most successful techniques to help people lose weight. A recent US study of 30 women showed that eating slowly helped them to reduce food intake by around 275 kilojoules (66 cals) at each meal without any suffering and maximized their food satisfaction scores.

Research shows it takes 15 or 20 minutes for your stomach to signal your brain that it’s FULL, so this technique prevents you overeating without realizing it.  It’s simple. Here’s how to practice it (it helps to do it by yourself the first time):

1.  Sit down to eat and focus on the food in front of you – your goal is to savour each mouthful aiming to ‘extract’ the maximum flavour and satisfaction.

2.  Eat with a fork and knife, not your fingers.

3.  Put the fork and knife down between each bite. Have a pause halfway through the meal and ask yourself:  “How full am I now or do I need to eat more?”.

4.  Take small bites and chew well. Aim to chew each mouthful at least 5 times before you swallow.

5. While you’re retraining yourself, don’t eat in front of TV or while you read. It becomes ‘mindless eating’ and you don’t remember what you’ve eaten.

6.  Don’t eat while you walk or shop.

7.  If you have to eat at your desk at work, clear aside a small spot and have your food there, keeping a distance from your computer or paperwork.

Slow eating is one way you can take a stand against life in the fast lane. It will make you feel less stressed, more relaxed and more in tune with your body.  So make your next meal a slow meal and begin to enjoy life again.

Catherine Saxelby is a nutritionist and author of Nutrition for Life. Get more healthy eating tips at www.foodwatch.com.au

by Andrew May

Our modern way of living teaches us that faster is better. Speed is the new king with our lives measured in bits and bytes, and dissected into micro-detail. Is it any wonder our health, performance and relationships begin to suffer?

We are not designed to go flat out around the clock. Life is meant to be a series of sprints interspersed with periods of rest and recovery. Our culture has conditioned us to think that slow is the enemy of achievement, yet as the Slow Movement is showing us, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Slow Movement

The Slow Movement is about slowing down and taking time to enjoy the things that give us pleasure. It’s about reconnecting with food, people and places, but it’s not anti-work or even anti-capitalist. In fact as Carl Honoré says in his book, In Praise of Slow, “The secret is balance. Instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. Sometimes somewhere in between”.

Founded by Carlo Petrini, the movement started in the late 80’s as a foodie fight back against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant on Rome’s Spanish Steps. Slow Food gave birth to Slow Cities, or Cittaslow in Italian. Adhering to the Cittaslow Manifesto, these towns of 50,000 or less embody a way of life that supports slow living; where traditions and conventional ways of doing things are valued.

In Australia, the town of Goolwa was recently named our first Cittaslow, while Bloodwood Vineyard in Orange is now making slow wines. Annually, Canberra also hosts the Slow Festival in celebration of all things, well, slow.

Lessons in slow from Kenya

When I was a middle distance runner in the 90’s, every year we’d get the opportunity to train with Kenyan athletes who would come out to Australia. Each year a different group of athletes would come, and amazingly each year a new champion would emerge from their ranks: the talent pool seemed endless. What did they know that we didn’t?

There’s a phrase in Swahili that sums it up, ‘hapa hapa’. It means slowly, slowly, and that’s exactly the way these high speed Kenyans took things. They listened to their bodies, training when they felt good and taking time off when they needed rest, often for weeks at a time. Looking back on my running career, I really believe I would have run much faster if I’d taken more notice of the Kenyans and trained hard and recovered even harder!

Eight go slow tips

Here are some great ways to apply the slow philosophy:

1. Slow stretching
Try doing a gentle 5 to 10 minute stretching routine before going to bed. Slow your breathing and your heart rate.

2. Slow walking
Emulate my dog, Cougar. Stop and sniff absolutely everything!

3. Slow weekends
Don’t race around trying to see and please everyone. Try shifting back a few gears and getting rid of the weekend to-do list.

4. Slow mini-breaks
Get away for a three day mini-break, but avoid scheduling every waking hour with sightseeing.

5. Slow food
Copy the Italians with a three to five course meal that takes a few hours to get through, washed down with a couple of glasses of hearty vino.

6. Slow gardening
Just stop and smell the roses! Potter in the garden and take stock of the beautiful smells and plants.

7. Slow sex
Tantric sex is not just for hippies and rock stars like Sting. This 5,000 year old discipline advocates slow sex as a way to increase awareness.

8. Slow thinking
Stretch out on the grass and stare up at the clouds. It’s amazing how often the biggest breakthroughs come when you turn off the conscious chatter.

Like to know more?

For more on Slow Movement practise, try Carl Honore’s book, In Praise of Slow – How a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed, or my latest book, Flip the Switch – Why performance increases when you play hard and recover even harder.

Andrew May is is considered Australia’s leading expert on performance and productivity and is the author of the bestselling book, Flip the Switch. Andrew speaks at conferences across the globe, mentors CEO’s and senior managers. He is published throughout national and international media, with regular segments on 2UE radio, Mix 106.5 Body and Soul and Channel Nine’s TODAY show.