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While bars and gels have their place in outdoor excursions, real foods—as close to their natural state as possible—are often more nutritious, satiating, and palatable than their highly processed peers. These simple meals can help you bag a summit or set a PR.

Skiing

Adventure food should check three boxes, according to Lauren Ross, a former college downhill skier and a registered dietitian in Portland, Oregon: it should be filling, packable, and easy to grab. Her go-to for skiing is a bagel with cream cheese piled high with veggies like sprouts and cucumbers. It can be stashed in a pocket and provides plenty of energy (plus a satisfying crunch) without making you sluggish.

Trail Running

Whole-grain berry pancakes are Ross’s snack of choice on a trail run, thanks to their high fiber content, which keeps you feeling full longer. They’re easily digestible at slower speeds, too. The quick energy and sweetness from the fruit—blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries are all fair game—let you leave the sticky syrup at home. 

Cycling

New York triathlete and nutrition coach Lottie Bildirici likes to bring her triple-coconut bread (see recipe below) on rides. The coconut provides healthy fats along with manganese, copper, and iron—good for bones, heart health, and oxygen transport, respectively—while the oat flour delivers long-lasting energy and slow-digesting, soluble fiber.

Hiking

For trail outings, Bildirici prefers a more portable snack, like her cinnamon-oat no-bake cookies. After pulsing dates, raisins, oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, and walnuts in a food processor, she shapes them into discs and stores them in the freezer. The fruit is rich in vitamin B, which helps convert food into energy, while antioxidants and omega-3 fats from the nuts are anti-inflammatory. For the full recipe, visit her blog, Running on Veggies.

For Any Adventure

Bildirici likes her coffee-date bites (recipe also on her blog) for pretty much any outdoor activity. She combines high-protein nuts and dried fruit with roasted coffee beans (for a caffeine kick), vanilla, and cinnamon, then blends them in a food processor, rolls the mixture into one-tablespoon balls, and freezes them for storage. She describes it as “the perfect bite of energy,” suitable for both a before-hike snack and a midday pick-me-up.

Lottie Bildirici’s Triple-Coconut Bread

Ingredients

1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut

¾ cup coconut sugar

2½ cups oat flour

1 teaspoon ­cinnamon

1 teaspoon ­baking powder

½ teaspoon ­baking soda

2 eggs or flax­seed alternative (see below)

1 cup canned ­coconut milk (full fat or light)

Salt to taste

For flaxseed alternative:

Mix two table­spoons of flaxseeds with five tablespoons of water and let sit ten minutes.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and coat a four-by-eight-inch loaf pan with nonstick spray. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, whisk eggs or flaxseed alternative with coconut milk. Fold that into the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Add batter to prepared pan. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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There are worse vices than nut butter. Calorically dense, it makes a great snack for athletes, thanks to ample protein and fat content. The only downside? A 16-ounce jar can cost upwards of $10. Fortunately, you can make it for around half that cost.

Almonds, cashews, and sunflower seeds are all great bases for your nut butter. Don’t be afraid to mix different nuts and seeds, and be sure to get them raw and unsalted. Roasting at home makes them easier to grind, draws out beneficial oils, and deepens the flavor. 

Rachael Hartley, a dietitian from Columbia, South Carolina, likes to blend walnuts with maple syrup, macadamia nuts with coconut flakes, and pecans with pumpkin-pie spice. Here, Hartley shares her foolproof recipe for a classic nut or seed spread. 

Ingredients

3 cups raw nuts or seeds

1 tablespoon peanut or neutral-flavored oil (if needed) 

1 or 2 tablespoons honey, maple syrup, or other sweetener

Salt, cinnamon, coconut flakes, vanilla extract, or cocoa powder to taste

Instructions

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spread the nuts or seeds on a pan and toast until they smell fragrant, about ten minutes, stirring halfway through to keep them from burning. Place in a food processor and mix on high until the texture is smooth and runny, scraping down the sides intermittently and adding a little oil for creaminess if needed. This can take up to ten minutes. Once it’s smooth, blend in the sweetener and the salt and other flavorings to taste. Transfer the butter to a 16-ounce jar and store at room temperature for a week or in the fridge for several weeks.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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Even the laziest cooks can do better than store-bought pickles. With just a little prep work, you can make your own, adding flavor and crunch to salads, sandwiches, and more, while netting health benefits from the produce and the juice. Another bonus: you probably have most of the ingredients already.

Pickle brine, typically made with salt, sugar, and vinegar, brims with electrolytes that can help combat dehydration and cramping, explains Maddie Alm, a registered dietician, runner, and owner of Fueling Forward, a sports nutrition business in Boulder, Colorado. (Alm says you can take a few sips as soon as you feel a cramp coming on, or combine it with some water in place of a sports drink.) And while certain methods of cooking reduce or eliminate water-soluble vitamins in veggies, cold-pickling leaves those intact.

Try your hand at pickling with this quick recipe adapted from the blog of Jennifer Segal, author of the cookbook Once Upon a Chef. You can substitute other vegetables for the classic cukes—cauliflower, peppers, beets, asparagus, and jalapeños work great—and tweak the spices and dill until you land on a ratio you love. 

Ingredients

1¼ cups distilled white vinegar (5 percent acidity)

3 tablespoons kosher salt

2 tablespoons white sugar

2 cups cold water

1¾ to 2 pounds cucumbers, cut into spears

2 tablespoons coriander seeds

6 garlic cloves, peeled and halved

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

16 dill sprigs

Instructions

Combine vinegar, salt, and sugar in a small saucepan over high heat and whisk until salt and sugar are dissolved. Transfer liquid into a bowl and whisk in cold water. Refrigerate. Pack cucumbers into two quart jars and divide the rest of the ingredients evenly between the jars. Completely cover the cucumbers with chilled brine, adding a bit of cold water if you come up short. Cover and refrigerate for at least 24 hours. Makes two quarts. 

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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Often, messages that pose as health promoting are actually the opposite. There are obvious examples, like the doctor pushing an all-meat diet, or the celebrity wellness influencer telling the world that voluntarily getting stung by bees will reduce inflammation. But the more dangerous messaging is subtler, more insidious, and widespread: that fat bodies are inherently unhealthy.

In a recent New York Times article, health columnist Jane Brody points out that Americans have been hit harder by COVID than most other countries, then blames this on our personal health habits, namely diet and exercise. She spends most of the column raising alarm bells about quarantine weight gain, high-calorie foods, and fatness in general. 

In doing so, she’s not promoting healthier habits. The truth is, health and weight are not nearly as entwined as we think they are. (Not to mention there’s far more to America’s COVID crisis than personal health; limited access to health care, systemic discrimination and inequality, and the politicization of the virus have all played huge roles.) Overemphasizing weight loss is stigmatizing and can actually be detrimental to individual health. Here’s why we need to rethink this kind of messaging.

“Fat” Does Not Mean “Unhealthy”

Brody talks of the many people in her life who have “packed on quite a few pounds of health-robbing body fat this past year.” This is an undeniably stigmatizing statement, and it also makes a major assumption that happens to be false: that gaining weight, or being naturally bigger-bodied, is inherently unhealthy. (As a journalist, I’m constantly irritated that other journalists can write things like this without citing a shred of evidence, whereas I have to add an entire paragraph with several citations every time I suggest that weight loss isn’t always a helpful or realistic goal.)

It’s possible to be healthy at a higher weight, just as it’s possible to be unhealthy at a lower one. One 2016 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association even found that Danish adults in the “overweight” BMI category actually lived the longest. Being at a higher weight is associated with a higher risk of certain diseases, yes, but that doesn’t mean someone at a higher weight is necessarily unhealthy. “You absolutely cannot infer health information or information about one’s health behaviors based solely on their weight,” says Mary Himmelstein, a researcher at the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Someone in a thin body may be completely sedentary and eat a diet of mostly processed foods and very few fruits and vegetables, while someone in a larger body might be extremely active and eat loads of nutrient-rich foods.

All of this to say: the relationship between weight and health is far too complicated to make blanket statements like “health-robbing body fat.” Both weight gain and weight loss can be healthful or harmful. It all depends on context.

Eating Well Isn’t Simple

For years, Brody has presented herself as a living example of sustainable weight loss—about 50 years ago, she lost 40 pounds in two years and has kept that weight off since. In this particular column, she offers up her personal eating regimen as the solution to pandemic weight gain (and fatness in general): eat a diet “based primarily on vegetables, with fish, beans, and nonfat milk [as one’s] main sources of protein,” along with a bit of portion-controlled ice cream, the occasional burger, and daily exercise. But while that approach may seem realistic compared to all the fad diets out there, experts warn that it’s not as accessible as Brody makes it sound.

This “I can do it, so can you” attitude is out of touch with many people’s reality, says Jennifer Jackson, a dietitian based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The nonprofit Feeding America estimates that 15 percent of Americans can’t afford enough nutritious food to meet their needs, and Bloomberg reported earlier this year that 12 percent of Americans live in poverty. Stressors like working multiple jobs, raising children (especially as a single parent), lacking health insurance, and living in unsafe neighborhoods also make prioritizing good nutrition more complicated. Health behaviors often have more to do with someone’s privilege than their motivation, Jackson says. 

Even if everyone did eat according to Brody’s recommendations, it doesn’t mean we would all magically be at what Brody and the BMI scale (the height-to-weight ratio used to group people into weight categories) deem a “healthy” weight. “Weight is not simply calories in, calories out,” Himmelstein says. In fact, the body actively resists weight loss: a 2015 literature review published in the International Journal of Obesity explains that the body generally adapts to calorie deficits by burning fewer calories, using less stored fat for energy, decreasing the fullness-signaling hormone leptin, and increasing the hunger-signaling hormone ghrelin. It’s also widely accepted that there’s a genetic component to obesity, and a 2018 review in Current Obesity Report outlines the significant amount of evidence suggesting that stress plays a big role in body weight as well.

“Weight and weight gain are the result of our genetics, our physiology, our environment, our personal stress levels, and our behaviors,” the authors write. Assuming that weight is impacted only, or primarily, by our behaviors, is wildly inaccurate. And maintaining weight loss long-term is even harder than acheiving it in the first place. A 2020 review in The BMJ found that while diets lead to weight loss and health improvements in the first six months, these benefits typically disappear by the one-year mark.

Shame Doesn’t Motivate

Relentlessly encouraging weight loss does more harm than good. “Fat-shaming messaging increases weight stigma, which increases stress and inflammation—which are negative health outcomes,” says Amee Severson, a dietitian and the owner of Prosper Nutrition in Bellingham, Washington. A 2015 study in Obesity, of which Himmelstein was the lead author, found that individuals who reported experiencing weight stigma had higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, than those who did not. Chronically elevated levels of cortisol have repeatedly been linked to an increased risk of many diseases, as outlined in this 2017 review published in the EXCLI Journal. And a 2018 study in Health Psychology, also authored by Himmelstein, found that coping with weight stigma can negatively impact both physical and mental health.

While articles like Brody’s are presumably meant to promote health and healthy behaviors, they actually do the opposite. A small 2014 study of 93 college-age women in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that those who saw themselves as overweight felt “less capable of controlling their eating” and consumed more calories after reading a weight-stigmatizing news article than those who read a non-stigmatizing article. A larger 2017 study in Preventative Medicine found that experiencing weight stigma as an adolescent significantly increased a person’s risk for binge eating and unhealthy weight-control behaviors as an adult. And, as Severson points out, it makes bigger-bodied people less likely to seek out health care, too.

Live and Let Live

No one owes it to the world to be healthy. “I think that every single person has the right to choose how important health is to them,” Severson says. People are allowed to have different values, and healthy behaviors like eating nutritious foods and getting regular movement are not a moral obligation.

Health is personal, and what is considered healthy when it comes to eating and other behaviors varies between individuals. It’s incredibly difficult to give effective health advice to a large audience, but there’s still room for health-promoting messages in the media. We need to think critically about the harm certain messages may cause. Mandating fruits and vegetables for people who can’t afford them is offensive and misguided. Demonizing fat and weight gain is demoralizing and harmful to people who live in larger bodies. We know that shame doesn’t motivate healthy behaviors—and it absolutely harms health.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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Probiotic supplements aren’t just trendy, they’re ubiquitous. You can find bottles of probiotic pills, powders, and liquids for sale at any supermarket, each promoted as a cure for various ills: digestive issues, fatigue, weak immunity, brain fog, and more. While the evidence on these benefits is lacking, the marketing messages are working; the global probiotic market was worth about $49.4 billion in 2018, and forecasting experts estimate it will grow to $69.3 billion by 2023. Prebiotics, the fibers that feed probiotics, have been riding the coattails of this popularity for some time. Now postbiotics—the microbes produced when probiotics eat prebiotics—have hit the scene. They’re being sold as supplements and are starting to make the rounds on nutrition-focused corners of the internet.

The hype around all of these microbes makes sense. Yes, prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics can enhance health by positively influencing the microbiome, a term that refers to the multitudes of microorganisms that live within you, explains Carolina Guizar, a New York–based dietitian and owner of the nutrition-coaching platform Eathority. But as with probiotics and prebiotics, the postbiotic market is several steps ahead of the actual science. 

While the microbiome has been a hot topic among nutrition experts (and amateur enthusiasts) for about a decade, microbiome research is still in the very early stages. A 2018 review of the literature published in the European Journal of Nutrition starts its conclusion with: “The role of the human gut microbiota in health and disease is beginning to be understood.” The authors tell us what we know, which is that the gut microbiome plays a role in mood regulation, cognition, immune function, and digestive health. But they also explain that the details are still unclear: we aren’t exactly sure what the benefits are, how the various microbes deliver them, and whether or not supplements offer any measurable benefits. Here’s what experts have to say about the state of the evidence.

It’s All Connected

We can’t talk about postbiotics without first talking about prebiotics and probiotics, because none of them stand alone. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that live naturally in your microbiome. Your microbiome exists all over your body, but here we’re talking primarily about your gut. 

Probiotics are powerful. A 2019 review in Future Science OA found significant evidence for the digestive benefits of probiotics and promising evidence for their potential impact on mood and mental health. But it’s not as simple as just taking one supplement and expecting something to happen, explains George Weinstock, a University of Connecticut professor and the director of microbial genomics at the Jackson Laboratory, a global nonprofit biomedical research institute. “Probiotics” is an umbrella term for a variety of different bacteria. Roughly 5,000 strains from 1,000 species have been found in the human gut microbiome, although not everyone has all of them. Each strain acts slightly differently and has different potential health benefits.

Probiotics can’t do their thing without the help of prebiotics, a type of fermentable fiber found in plant foods that feed probiotics and keep them alive. Tamara Duker Freuman, a New York–based dietitian and author of The Bloated Belly Whisperer, explains that when probiotics feed on prebiotics, they produce postbiotics, health-promoting by-products called microbial short-chain fatty acids. As with probiotics, “postbiotics” is an umbrella term that encompasses several different microbes, all with different characteristics and potential health benefits.

Skip the Supplements

“Microbiome research really only hit the headlines a little over ten years ago,” Weinstock says. Since then the market has exploded with supplements meant to improve the microbiome, and the public is increasingly interested in how food might affect it as well.

We know that a diet high in plant-based foods is key for the body’s production of prebiotics. “The main sources of prebiotics in the typical American diet are whole-wheat bread, onions, and garlic—but so many other foods contain them,” Freuman says. Many fruits and vegetables contain prebiotics, including apples, pears, mushrooms, artichokes, cauliflower, and jicama. Beans, lentils, barley, and rye also have significant amounts of prebiotic fiber. We need to consume prebiotic fibers regularly to reap their benefits—our bodies don’t naturally house them and can’t produce them. Since they’re so prevalent in common foods, supplements aren’t really necessary.

Probiotics are also present in our foods, primarily in fermented ones like yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, and cheese, and in supplements. But what many people don’t realize is that, generally speaking, probiotics from your diet don’t have a huge impact on your gut microbiome. There are somewhere around 100 trillion bacteria in your gut. “When you take a probiotic supplement or eat a food that contains probiotics, you’re introducing them to a habitat [your gut] that’s already densely populated with microorganisms,” Weinstock explains. A supplement may boast “one billion live probiotics,” but that’s just 0.001 percent of the bacteria already in your gut. Those one billion probiotics have to fight hard to colonize your already-packed microbiome and might end up just passing through your stool.

Weinstock also notes that although labels make it seem like probiotic supplements contain a huge variety and number of beneficial bacteria, this isn’t the case. Practically all probiotic supplements contain bacteria from just two genera: Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. The Food and Drug Administration deems them safe because they’re found in common foods that we’ve been eating for centuries, like cheese. So you’re not really getting any additional benefit from these supplements, because they only contain probiotic strains that are already in your diet.

Countless other potentially beneficial strains and species are being examined. This 2020 review in the International Journal of Microbiology summarizes recent studies looking into various probiotics for potential benefits ranging from diabetes prevention to HIV treatment. Remember, up to 5,000 strains have already been found in the human gut microbiome—but their effect on the body is not yet understood, so they’re not yet approved for sale or consumption. Even when other strains start being approved, you’ll only benefit from supplementation if you’re taking a strain that isn’t already present in large quantities in your gut.

“I don’t typically recommend probiotic supplements,” Freuman says. “There is such limited evidence that they do much of anything to change the microbiome in a meaningful way or contribute to enhanced gut health for most people.” 

The evidence for postbiotic supplements is even more limited. “We don’t have enough information on the safety or efficacy of postbiotic supplements at this time,” Guizar says. 

Freuman explains that a prebiotic-rich diet likely supports the existing probiotics in your gut, helping them to thrive. “If you are truly interested in diversifying your gut microbiome and increasing the abundance of health-promoting species, the research strongly supports that high-fiber diets that contain very diverse types of plant-based foods are a much more effective approach,” she says. 

DIY, Don’t Buy

The short of it is that there’s really no need to think about postbiotics at all. “There is very little research as to whether taking postbiotics in supplement form does anything to enhance human health,” Freuman says. 

That’s not to say that postbiotics aren’t beneficial. We know that these postbiotic microbes are health promoting. But why buy them in supplement form when your body is making them constantly? Part of the benefit of postbiotics likely comes from the prebiotic-postbiotic interaction—the breaking down of ingested prebiotics by health-promoting probiotics, which in itself can help you digest fiber more comfortably. You won’t reap this benefit from a postbiotic supplement. Weinstock adds that many postbiotic microbes are volatile and difficult to preserve on the supplement shelf.

“A much surer way to secure the health benefits of these postbiotics is to simply eat a healthy, diverse, fiber-rich diet,” Freuman says.

Sit Tight

If you’re excited about microbiome research and the potential uses and benefits of prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics, great. So are the researchers and clinicians who study them. But spending lots of time and money on supplements right now is jumping the gun.

“There’s this huge amount of work that has to go into studying our tissues, metabolites, microbes, all of that, to try and correlate them with all different types of diseases,” Weinstock says. Much of what’s being studied, like the effect of the microbiome on neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, will take years to figure out, because these conditions manifest very slowly over time and have to do with things happening inside the body at extremely low levels. Weinstock is hopeful and excited about all of this. “We already have all of these microbes inside of us. We just need to figure out how to access them, how to use them,” he says. But it will take time before we can come to any real, actionable conclusions.

Ultimately, the vague potential of various microbes might be what drives such fanatical interest in them. “People want to feel like they have influence over their health,” Guizar says. No matter that probiotic and postbiotic supplements haven’t been shown to offer any substantial benefit for healthy people, or that the best way to get prebiotics is to eat the same nutritious diet that’s been recommended for decades. There’s so much we don’t know about these microbes. And for many, it’s hard to resist the idea that maybe, just maybe, a certain pill or specific supplement might have benefits beyond what the science currently understands.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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I’ve had a trip to climb Denali on the horizon for two winters now, which means I’ve had more than enough time to prep. Planning the food you’re going to eat is one of the most tedious and critical tasks on a long expedition—and probably one of the most important when nearly every day of that month will be spent exerting massive amounts of energy. Even something as seemingly small as snack choice can take, in my case, almost two years to perfect. It all started with an experiment in the fall of 2019: How many different adventure fuel options could I try before heading to Alaska? That experiment necessitated some organization, so I began logging every snack I’d taken hiking, climbing, skiing, backpacking, and more into a massive spreadsheet I called the Snack Tracker 1000. Along with the name and flavor of the product and a rating based on how much I enjoyed eating it, I would input details from the wrapper: a pile of nutrition facts and the weight of the product. And then I let Google Sheets do its best Jonah-Hill-in-Moneyball impression to spit out a final Snack Value Rating. Here’s what I learned. 

The Starting Point: Breakfast and Dinner

For most trips, including my Denali expedition, breakfast and dinner are fairly predictable. Ideally we’re eating each at camp, which means these meals can be a little more traditional. Our meals—custom designed and dehydrated by Nutrition By Julie—are set up to have everything we need. But throughout the day, while we’re moving and don’t have access to a stove or kitchen, it’s more efficient to throw out the idea of “lunch” in favor of taking in smaller numbers of calories consistently interspersed between our two big meals. That’s where snacks come in. 

What Is the Ideal Snack?

Calories are the obvious place to start when it comes to planning your food for a big mission. Everyone has different caloric needs (one way to calculate yours is by using the MET method)—we decided to shoot for approximately 3,000 calories per day. Our breakfasts and dinners took care of between 1,000 and 1,200 calories each, which meant we had roughly an additional 1,000 calories to slowly take in throughout the day. 

Rebecca Dent, a dietitian for the mountain athlete training program company Uphill Athlete, recommends refueling every 60 to 90 minutes throughout an active day, which is somewhere in the ballpark of 200 to 300 calories at a time—much more than that, and your body will have a hard time processing while you keep moving. 

In terms of the breakdown of those calories, Dent recommends a good mix of both carbohydrates and proteins throughout the day: roughly in a four-to-one ratio. While you’re active, your body will need carbohydrates (and burn them more quickly), but introducing proteins throughout the day, rather than simply resupplying them at the end of the day, will help keep your longer-term energy stores up. 

On an expedition, of course, another critical factor in snacking is how much of these things—calories, carbs, and proteins—you get for the weight you need to carry. For obvious reasons, the more nutrients packed into a set weight, the less you’re going to need to carry, and the more bang you’ll get for your backpack’s buck. 

But at the end of the day, according to Dent, “The most important thing is that when you get out there, you have foods that you’re going to want to eat.” Mixed with vigorous exercise, cold, and elevation, not everything is going to be palatable. “At home, everything tastes good,” Dent said, so she recommends trying all your options out in the field before a big trip. 

How to Calculate It

Step one in using the Snack Tracker 1000 involves trying the food and rating its favorability: How much do I like eating it? Then I input the nutrition facts into their own columns (per package, rather than per serving, to make the math easier), as well as the product’s weight. Here’s where the math starts: dividing the number of calories by the weight gives a relatively simple calories per ounce—the snack’s weight efficiency. The higher the number, the more energy you get for what you have to carry. (For fun, you can do the same math with carbs and proteins to see which items are better at packing each of those nutrients into their size.)

From here, my goal was to see which options best accomplished two things—got as close as possible to that four-to-one ratio, and packed them as efficiently as possible—with the hope that by focusing on those that did the best of each, I could optimize both my nutrition intake and pack weight. I used three formulas to do this:

Nutrient Score=ABS((4/(Carbs/Protein))-1)*100

This spits out a score for each snack that rates it on how close it is to that ideal carbs to protein ratio. A score of zero is a perfect four-to-one. (I used an absolute value fuction here to make sure the value is always positive, to make for easier ranking.)

Caloric Efficiency=(Weight/Calories)*5000

This formula is the same as the calorie efficiency I already calculated, but scaled to roughly match the carb to protein score, and it flips it. The lower the number, the more calorie-dense it is. 

Snack Value Rating=Nutrient Score+Calorie Efficiency

Finally, this Mystery Formula combines the two scores to make the ultimate Snack Value Rating, evaluating how well the foods do both things. 

The Results

Out of the almost 70 snacks I tried, the top choices according to the Mystery Formula are a mix of classic standbys and surprising winners. At the very top of the list are products like Clif’s Nut Butter Bars and Cubes, thanks to a particularly impressive Nutrient Score: both have between 3.7 and 4.6 carbs for every gram of protein. But they’re equally efficient packers. 

Also high on the list are various different chocolate and candy bars like Snickers and Twix, with a grocery store brand 70 percent cacao bar taking the cake. Chocolate like that is particularly calorie-dense and has enough protein (from dairy, and nuts in the case of a Snickers bar) to score well on its Nutrient Score. While you wouldn’t want your snack budget to consist solely of these sweets (they’re loaded with fast-acting sugars and don’t have a lot of the antioxidants and fibers you also need), Dent says you definitely shouldn’t count them out. “Ultimately, it comes back to do you like it and will you eat it,” she said. And in the case of candy bars, the answer is more often yes, making them a great option, especially for high altitude or during high exertion when other snacks might not go down. 

At the bottom of the list are protein-heavy products like jerkys and meat sticks, which score so poorly largely because their overzealous protein content throws their Nutrient Score to the moon. Dent says there’s still a place for them, though. Not only do they add some variety in flavor and texture (making them easier to eat alongside other more homogeneous-textured options), but they can help make up for protein lost in your candy bar selections. Dent suggests pairing them with your carb-heavy snacks: the protein they provide is necessary, but is slower acting and won’t benefit you very quickly. 

In the end, the Snack Tracker 1000 will never be the end-all-be-all solution for adventure snacks. Variety—in flavor, texture, and type—is critical to your nutrition over a long endurance activity. But by training an eye toward the right balance of carbs and proteins as well as the weight of each snack, you’re more likely to get everything your body needs, without breaking under your pack weight.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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Last week the internet mob turned its eye on an unsuspecting subject: oat milk. It started with Twitter user Katherine Champagne, who wrote in a tweet on April 5: “I’m still in awe that Oatly created super sugar grain juice, cut it with canola oil, and then successfully used (amazing) marketing to convince everyone that no, this is Good.” Attached was a screenshot from “Oatly: The New Coke,” an August 2020 story written by Nat Eliason that ran in the Almanack business newsletter. A business writer and digital entrepreneur, Eliason sought to expose Oatly, a wildly popular milk substitute made primarily from oats, for what he claims it really is: junk food.

Predictably, nutrition Twitter went nuts. Plenty of the responses were along the lines of: How dare they market this glorified sugar syrup as healthy! Others were more critical, pointing out that oat milk is far from a “super sugar grain juice” and that most consumers aren’t guzzling the stuff in the quantities (a cup and a half at a time) that Eliason—who has no nutritional education or credentials—suggested in his article. To be honest, after writing about nutrition for a decade, the only thing that surprises me about the controversy is that anyone finds the fact that Oatly is mostly marketing surprising at all.

Eliason’s newsletter story starts by chronicling the long history of brands using misleading health claims to posit that products are better for you than they actually are. He uses the sugar industry, the tobacco industry, and Coca-Cola as examples of this kind of marketing. Then he argues that Oatly is doing the same thing. The article suggests that, like Coke, Oatly is nothing more than a sugar-laden processed drink that has tricked consumers into believing it should be a staple in their diet. He’s right in some ways (more on that later), but there’s a pretty glaring flaw in his argument.

Oatly Is Not Coke

Before we talk about Oatly’s (admittedly sneaky) marketing strategy, let’s get something straight: Oatly oat milk is not nutritionally equivalent to Coke. An eight-ounce serving of Oatly contains 120 calories, 5 grams of fat, 16 grams of carbohydrates (including 7 grams of added sugar), and 3 grams of protein. A 12-ounce can of Coke has a similar number of calories (140), but they come entirely from 38 grams of sugar. Those numbers aren’t even close to equal. Even 12 ounces of Oatly—which Eliason assumes is the amount people put in their morning coffee—contains 24 grams of carbs and 11 grams of sugar. That’s still less than one-third of the sugar in Coke. Saying that the two are equivalent is absurd.

Compare Oatly with 2 percent dairy milk, which has 122 calories, 5 grams of fat, 12 grams of carbs (all from naturally occurring sugar), and 8 grams of protein in an eight-ounce serving. Oatly has less than half the protein of regular milk, about 30 percent more carbs, and a similar amount of fat and calories. And although dairy milk has almost twice as much sugar as Oatly, Eliason claims that the sugar in Oatly—maltose—is significantly worse for you than the sugar in dairy—lactose—because it has a higher glycemic load. “You’re spiking your blood sugar every time you add it to your coffee,” he says.

Just like the marketing tactics that Eliason calls out, the glycemic-load argument falls into the category of true but misleading statements. First, if you’re putting a couple ounces of Oatly in your coffee, you’re only consuming a few grams of sugar and won’t experience any drastic effects. Second, any protein-, fat-, or fiber-containing food will slow the absorption of this sugar. So if you put some oat milk in the coffee that you drink alongside your breakfast, the whole “spiking your blood sugar” thing is a moot point. And to reiterate, even drinking a whole glass of Oatly on an empty stomach wouldn’t have nearly as big an effect on your blood sugar as drinking a can of Coke.

Misleading Marketing Is Nothing New

Oatly may not be Coca-Cola, but it is true that its marketing makes suspect health claims. In 2020, the company tried (and failed) to trademark the phrase “It’s like milk but made for humans” from a campaign designed to convince people that cow’s milk is made for baby calves, and therefore not meant for human consumption. Mothers of many species produce milk specifically to feed their infants. But that doesn’t mean it can’t provide nutrition for other species, too. There is a huge body of evidence supporting cow’s milk for human health, and, most important, unless you’re lactose intolerant, it’s certainly not going to hurt you. 

The brand also goes hard on the fact that its product contains fiber, calling it “the most amazing fiber in the drinkable world.” But Oatly only contains two grams of fiber per serving, about 8 percent of what’s recommended daily for women and 5 percent of what’s recommended for men. That’s nothing to get excited over. Oatly also emphasizes the whole “No GMO” thing, although both the World Health Organization and the Food and Drug Administration have repeatedly confirmed the safety of the GMOs available for consumption.

Oatly isn’t the first health-food company or trade organization to cherry-pick facts in its marketing. Marketers for milk have been doing the same thing for decades; the “Got Milk?” campaign implies that dairy consumption is essential for healthy human growth. In reality, there’s nothing magic about dairy milk; it’s a good source of calcium and vitamin D (which is added during processing), but a person can get these nutrients in other ways: Oatly and other plant-based milks are fortified with both nutrients, for example. Plus, many large studies on dairy consumption are funded at least in part by the dairy industry.

Even fruits and vegetables are marketed with vague and misleading claims. The California Avocado Commission runs ads with slogans like “No wonder it’s good for pregnancy” (because avocados contain folate) and “No wonder it’s good for the eyes” (because avocados contain lutein, a carotenoid that’s linked to improved eye health). Yes, these important nutrients are present in avocados, but they’re also found in similar levels in many other foods.

“Superfoods are often designated as such because of high levels of micronutrients, antioxidants, or other arbitrary characteristics,” says Cara Harbstreet, a registered dietitian and owner of Street Smart Nutrition. That’s what the avocado folks are trying to do. But there’s no clearly defined criteria—like nutrient density or bioavailability—that determines which foods qualify for that label, Harbstreet explains. It’s just good marketing.

So, yes, Oatly markets itself as a super nutritious and game-changing beverage, when actually it’s just another drink. But it’s patently unfair to proclaim that Oatly is the same as Coke. “A statement like this carries similar energy as the statement ‘Sugar is as addicting as cocaine,’” Harbstreet says. Yes, the two substances light up the same pleasure centers in your brain, but so do sex, music, and cute baby animals. And sugar doesn’t meet other addiction criteria, like obsessive substance seeking and increased tolerance. “Both statements sound sensational, elicit fear or mistrust of a product, and make you question what you knew or believed to be true,” says Harbstreet. They’re also both based on half-truths.

It’s All Just Food

Oatly has taken a page out of the age-old food-marketing book by making its product sound more nutritious than it really is. This is a little devious, for sure, but it’s nothing new or unique. It’s how marketers trick us into thinking that certain processed foods should be central to a healthy diet, or that some whole foods are superfoods and thus much better for us than other whole foods. Oatly is no superfood, but it’s also not horribly unhealthy. Nutritionally, it’s fairly similar to dairy milk, and actually has more calcium and vitamin D per cup than the real stuff. For people who choose plant-based diets, that’s pretty great.

At the end of the day, there’s truth on every side of the Oatly argument, but there’s also a whole lot of spin. Your best bet, as always, is to eat a variety of nutritious foods (and some of the not so nutritious ones that you love, too!) and pay as little attention as possible to the way they’re marketed.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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At the bookstore, you’ll find diet and nutrition books lumped together. I get why—they’re all focused on health and eating—but there’s an important distinction between them. 

There are so many dimensions to consider when you think about how eating influences our health. Food nourishes our bodies, but it also plays a role in our social lives, our emotional health, and our overall happiness. Nutrition books explore these things and help us better understand how food affects us, without giving one-size-fits-all advice.

Diet books, on the other hand, tend to ignore the complexities of food. They typically follow the trope of identifying a problem and prescribing the reader a clearly defined solution. There’s no shortage of these books out there, and more just keep on coming; ironically, most of them claim to be the last one you’ll ever need. (The last diet book you read probably is the last one you need, but not for the reasons the author may think.)

Nutrition books may seem less appealing than diet books at face value—they don’t promise to solve all your problems—but they’re far more worthwhile. Read a few and you’ll never want to read a diet book again, you’ll be able to poke so many holes in their empty promises. Nutrition books will give you a better grasp of how food affects your physical, mental, and emotional health. From that understanding, you can then determine what the best way of eating might be for you. 

The following five books are a great place to start. They don’t try to sell you on the supposed virtues or evils of certain foods or nutrients, nor do they suggest that you overhaul your own lifestyle to mimic one from another culture, time, or circumstance. (They also don’t distill complex and systemic food issues down to oversimplified advice like “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”) Instead they’ll teach you why we eat the way we do and how food affects our bodies. Many of them do give some form of how-to-eat advice, but they also talk about policy, history, and the culture of dieting.

1. ‘The Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition,’ by Anita Bean

(Photo: Courtesy Bloomsbury Sport)

There are countless sports-nutrition books out there, but none of them go both as broad and as deep as The Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition. This isn’t some flashy release chronicling an elite athlete’s very particular diet (ahem, TB12) or a manifesto on how (insert fad diet here) is actually the best way to fuel. Instead, it presents the evidence-based concepts of sports nutrition in a way that’s easy to understand but not oversimplified. You’ll come away with a good idea of how to eat for performance and why different foods affect you the way they do, but you won’t feel compelled to redesign your diet or live and die by a set of rules. Author Anita Bean is a renowned sports nutritionist and former competitive bodybuilder who has worked with the British Olympic Association and many professional teams across various sports, and her book is relevant to athletes of all levels.

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2. ‘The Great Starvation Experiment,’ by Todd Tucker

(Photo: Courtesy University of Minnesota Press)

If you’ve heard that “diets don’t work” but you’re not clear on why, start by learning about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. The 13-month clinical study, conducted in the 1940s, followed 36 healthy, young white men through a period of “semi-starvation” and then rehabilitation, documenting not only how their bodies changed but how their mental health deteriorated. The experiment is rightly considered inhumane by today’s standards, although the men’s diets were higher calorie than those recommended by many trendy diets. (They ate approximately 1,570 calories a day over two meals.) In The Great Starvation Experiment, historian Todd Tucker digs into the study and how it affected participants during and afterward.

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3. ‘Intuitive Eating,’ by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

(Photo: Courtesy St. Martin’s Essentials)

The intuitive-eating approach is extremely popular among nutrition experts today, but it’s not a new framework. Dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch first published Intuitive Eating in 1995 after seeing their clients repeatedly try and fail to lose weight and improve their health with traditional diets. Their book encourages reconsidering your own thoughts and feelings about food, diets, and weight. It draws on relatable anecdotes, as well as a significant and growing body of evidence to back up the idea that eating without food rules and abandoning the pursuit of weight loss can improve your health. Even if you’re convinced that intuitive eating isn’t for you, the book offers a new way of thinking about nutrition that might resonate. You’ll gain insight into how and why food restriction often backfires, and learn how to tune into your own hunger cues and cravings.

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4. ‘Gentle Nutrition,’ by Rachael Hartley

(Photo: Courtesy Victory Belt Publishing)

Most of the messages we see around intuitive eating focus on breaking free from food rules and making peace with our weight and our bodies. One aspect that’s central to intuitive eating but isn’t often discussed is what the original Intuitive Eating authors call “gentle nutrition.” Essentially, it’s about leveraging evidence-based healthy eating principles in a way that’s flexible and individualized. Dietitian Rachael Hartley borrows the phrase and expands on the concept in her book of the same name. In Gentle Nutrition, she guides readers through the basics of nutrition without painting any way of eating as right or wrong. Hartley’s approach is rooted in the Health at Every Size framework, which is all about encouraging healthy behaviors and providing quality health care to people of all body sizes, without suggesting weight loss or assuming that a person’s health is determined by their weight. The book is a helpful and empathetic guide to nutrition, and it’s a great alternative to conventional nutrition books for anyone who feels triggered by mentions of weight and weight loss.

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5. ‘Unsavory Truth,’ by Marion Nestle

(Photo: Courtesy Basic Books)

My recommendation of Marion Nestle’s Unsavory Truth comes with a couple disclaimers. Although it’s an eye-opening look at how the food industry influences policy and nutrition research, I warn you not to panic as much about this as the book might encourage you to. It’s unreasonable to think that food companies shouldn’t have a hand in shaping the policies that so directly affect them, and not all industry-funded research is inherently wrong or bad. (Sometimes the only viable way to fund a study is to take industry money.) Plus, the modern food industry isn’t the pure-evil behemoth that it’s often made out to be; it’s because of this food industry that you’re able to conveniently buy all the food you need.

That said, major food companies and lobbyists regularly overstep their bounds. Unsavory Truth will teach you to think more critically about any nutrition information you come across, and it lends some insight into how often evidence is misrepresented or taken out of context. For me, an indirect takeaway of the book was that it’s really up to you to choose how to eat. Many headlines about “superfoods” or very rigid diets are, in fact, sponsored by companies who have a vested interest in getting you to buy these things. It’s best to ignore them and stick to eating a flexible and varied diet filled with plenty of nutritious foods.

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via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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[rdclsuperfoods]

There’s so much hype around air fryers that it’s natural to be skeptical. When Wendy Jo Peterson, a San Diego–based culinary dietitian and cookbook author, was asked to contribute to an Air Fryer Cookbook for Dummies, her first thought was: Do I really need one of those in my kitchen? In the end, Peterson agreed to coauthor the book alongside fellow dietitian Elizabeth Shaw. Now, after testing countless recipes in the most popular air fryers, she thinks home cooks would benefit from having one. 

If you’ve been on the fence about air fryers, it’s probably because you think one of two things: they’re only good for crisping frozen French fries and chicken nuggets, or they’re nothing more than trendy convection ovens. The former is straight-up wrong. The latter concern is true in a sense, as air fryers do rely on convection to “fry” food, but they cook things more quickly than a traditional convection oven because they’re small and take less time to heat up. 

Do you absolutely need an air fryer? Of course not. But if you have $100 and some extra counter space, there’s plenty to be gained from having one. Here’s a little more about how air fryers work, why they’re great, and which ones the experts recommend—plus a few recipes to get you started.

It’s Not Frying, It’s Convection

“Frying is a cooking method that transfers heat to food using a source of fat,” explains Kris Sollid, a dietitian and the director of nutrition communications at the International Food Information Council. Pan-fried food is often cooked in a thin layer of oil, and deep-fried food is fully submerged in it. Air-fried food? It isn’t actually fried at all.

“Air fryers are essentially small convection ovens,” Sollid says. Unlike frying, which uses oil or butter for heat transfer, convection uses a fan to quickly circulate hot air. Air fryers don’t get any hotter than regular ovens (most max out at 400 degrees Fahrenheit), but the rapidly moving air helps wick away moisture, allowing browning and crisping to happen faster and at a lower temperature than it would in a normal oven. Convection ovens do the same thing, but not as efficiently. Air fryers take less time because they’re smaller and their fans spin faster. Essentially, air-fryer technology builds off that of the convection oven but was considered novel enough when air fryers were released in Europe in 2010 to warrant a patent. You can also buy a small convection oven, like this countertop convection toaster oven, which offers the same economy of size and will give you similar results. 

Probably the greatest thing about small-scale convection baking is the ability to cook food that’s still frozen. “I’ll make breakfast burritos, freeze them, and then in the morning my husband puts the frozen burrito right into the air fryer,” Peterson says. The air fryer wicks moisture from the food as it defrosts and cooks, so you end up with a crispy chimichanga-like burrito, not a soggy wrap. It works for frozen meat or vegetables, too.

You Don’t Need Much Oil

Dietary fat is a good thing—it supports cell growth, protects your organs, keeps you warm, aids in nutrient absorption, gives you energy, and is essential for hormone production. But as with most nutrients, experts advise against regularly eating too much of it at once.

When you deep-fry food, a lot of that oil gets absorbed. Exactly how much ends up in your food is hard to quantify; it depends on what you’re cooking, at what temperature, and for how long. Foods with a higher moisture content, like doughnut batter, absorb more oil when fried than foods with less moisture, like potatoes. Higher deep-frying temperatures—say, 400 degrees instead of 325—usually equate to less oil absorption, because there’s more steam pushing to get out and blocking the oil from absorbing into the food. 

This isn’t to say that you should totally avoid deep-fried foods all the time. French fries and doughnuts are delicious, and part of what makes them that way is the oil coating your mouth and enhancing the flavor. But if you’re after the crispy texture of fried food, air-frying can do the trick. 

The bottom line, though, is that air-fried food absorbs less oil. A 2017 study published in the European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology found that air-fried potatoes had, on average, 70 percent less oil than deep-fried potatoes. Of course, air-fried food still contains some fat. That crispy texture comes from heat combined with the fat already present in or on the food, so you do need to add oil to foods that aren’t already fatty, like veggies. You can spritz or brush oil right onto your food, or you can pour it into the air fryer (so that it sits on the bottom, below the shelf with the food) and it’ll circulate. “In most cases, one or two teaspoons is enough,” Peterson says.

Who Needs an Oven?

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of the air fryer, which can also be a drawback, is its size. It’s considerably smaller than an oven, making it a more energy-efficient way to cook small batches of food. The more space you’re heating, the more energy (gas or electricity, depending on how your kitchen is hooked up) you’re consuming. With an air fryer, there’s no need to heat the whole oven—or the whole kitchen as a result—for a few servings of roasted vegetables or a sheet of chicken wings. 

If you’re living in a tiny space where an oven isn’t an option, the air fryer could really come in handy. “We have a camper van, and we’re on solar,” Peterson says. “If we’re in a spot where there are hookups, we use the air fryer a lot.” But there are some downsides. You’ll probably have to cook your food in batches if you’re feeding more than two or three people. Big cuts of meat are off the table. And while it’s possible to bake in the air fryer, you’ll end up with a deep-brown crust that isn’t ideal for many muffins, cakes, or breads.

A Few Great Options

There’s no best air fryer. Peterson and Shaw have different favorites. “You have to find the one that’s best suited for you,” Peterson says.

Cosori 5.8-Quart Electric Hot Oven ($120)

Peterson’s air fryer of choice is this model from Cosori, which I also tested and loved. “I like the shape, the aesthetic, and the fact that the presets were very consistent,” Peterson says. There are presets for various meat, fish, baked goods, and vegetables, and all of them do a good job of properly cooking the foods they’re supposed to. That said, a good recipe should give you specific cooking times and temperatures so you won’t have to rely on the presets.

This air fryer also efficiently crisps food on all sides, since there’s plenty of room underneath and above the basket for air to circulate.

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Aria 5-Quart Ceramic ($100)

Shaw prefers this Aria air fryer. It has a sleek design and creates good airflow to crisp food all over, much like the Cosori model. It also comes in three sizes (three, five, and seven quarts), so you can choose whichever is best for your household.

The Aria has a ceramic interior, which means it doesn’t use Teflon or other nonstick coatings. Although these coatings are largely considered safe, there is concern that as they break down over time and at high temperatures, they can leach trace amounts of toxic polymers into food. If you’re concerned about this, ceramic-coated appliances like the Aria make great alternatives.

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Instant 6-Quart Vortex ($100)

In researching this article, I looked into which air fryers were best reviewed by other experts, and this model by the makers of the Instant Pot got consistently high marks. I’ve used it to cook sweet potato fries, falafel, and chicken wings from scratch, and to heat and crisp frozen chicken nuggets. I love how easy it is to program, how quickly it works, and the fact that it reminds me to turn my food midway through cooking.

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Two Recipes to Get You Started

Both are reprinted with permission from Shaw and Peterson’s Air Fryer Cookbook For Dummies.

Breakfast Chimichangas

Prep time: 10 minutes 

Cook time: 8 minutes

Ingredients

Four 8-inch flour tortillas

1/2 cup canned refried beans

1 cup scrambled eggs (about 2 eggs)

1/2 cup grated cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 cup salsa

Directions

Lay the flour tortillas out flat on a cutting board. In the center of each tortilla, spread two tablespoons refried beans. Next, add one-fourth cup eggs and two tablespoons cheese to each tortilla.

To fold the tortillas, begin on the left side and fold to the center. Then fold the right side into the center. Next, fold the bottom and top down and roll over to completely seal the chimichanga. Using a pastry brush or an oil mister, brush the tops of the tortilla packages with oil.

Preheat the air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the chimichangas into the air-fryer basket seam side down, and air-fry for four minutes. Using tongs, turn over the chimichangas and cook for an additional two to three minutes or until light golden brown.

Serve with guacamole, salsa, and sour cream for a hearty breakfast. You can also vary it by swapping out beans with breakfast potatoes or rice. Serves four.

Pork Schnitzel

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 14 minutes 

Ingredients

4 boneless pork chops, pounded to 1/4-inch thickness

1 teaspoon salt, divided

1 teaspoon black pepper, divided

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

2 eggs

1 cup breadcrumbs

1/4 teaspoon paprika

Cooking spray

1 lemon, cut into wedges

Directions

Season both sides of the pork chops with a half teaspoon of the salt and a half teaspoon of the pepper.

Place the flour on a plate, whisk the eggs in a large bowl, and place the breadcrumbs in another large bowl. Season the flour with the paprika and the breadcrumbs with the remaining salt and pepper.

To bread the pork, place a pork chop in the flour, then into the whisked eggs, and then into the breadcrumbs. Place the breaded pork onto a plate, and finish breading the remaining pork chops.

Preheat the air fryer to 390 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the pork chops into the air fryer, keeping them from overlapping and working in batches as needed. Spray the pork chops with cooking spray and cook for eight minutes; flip the pork and cook for another four to six minutes or until cooked to an internal temperature of 145 degrees.

Serve with lemon wedges. For a complete German meal, add spaetzle and a tossed salad. Serves four.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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[rdclsuperfoods]

Late last year, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey went live on the Freakonomics podcast and claimed that Americans don’t need better access to health care. Instead, he said, “The best solution is not to need health care. The best solution is to change the way people eat, the way they live, the lifestyle and diet.” People weren’t happy. You can probably imagine why: Mackey’s chain is expensive as hell. Eating only whole, nutrient-dense foods is financially (and physically) out of reach for many. In 2020, 15 percent of Americans experienced food insecurity, meaning they were unable to afford enough food to live an active, healthy life.

But Mackey is far from the first to claim that certain lifestyle choices, particularly eating the “right” foods, can ward off or cure health problems. Dr. Oz, a controversial but popular medical doctor whose talk show reached over 20 million people last year, repeatedly touts things like “cancer-fighting superfoods.” He even wrote a bestselling book dedicated to the idea that “simple, healing, wholesome food” is a “remedy for everything from fatigue to stress to chronic pain,” according to the publisher’s summary. And the internet is rife with articles like “10 Amazing Disease Fighting Foods,” from WebMD, and “16 Foods to Cure Common Illnesses,” from the site Active.

At best, these claims blow small bits of evidence way out of proportion—sure, raisins contain nutrients that can contribute to healthy blood pressure, but eating them won’t magically cure hypertension. And at worst, the claims are pseudoscience. Yes, food contributes to health and plays a role in the prevention and management of certain diseases, but food isn’t medicine, and no diet can replace good health care. 

We Can’t Always Control Our Health

Mackey’s statement about diet and lifestyle substituting for health care is based on the wildly inaccurate assumption that our behaviors alone cause our health outcomes. Actually, health behaviors—eating, physical activity, smoking, alcohol and drug use, and sexual activity—are just one of many determinants and account for around 30 percent of a person’s overall health outcomes, according to a 1999 policy paper published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences that’s often cited by health experts and policymakers. Genetics, the environment, and clinical care (which includes medicine) also contribute, but social and economic factors—income, education, social support, and the experience of racism and other stigma—are far and away the most significant factors, accounting for about 40 percent of a person’s health outcomes, according to the same research. 

“Food cannot disrupt the deep impacts of living in chronic poverty or disrupt the physical responses to microaggressions that many minorities face in their daily lives,” says Christyna Johnson, a Dallas-based dietitian. A 2007 paper published in American Psychology describes microaggressions as brief and commonplace indignities directed at people of color that the perpetrators are typically unaware of; examples include a white woman clutching her purse as a Black man approaches, or a store employee monitoring a customer of color more closely. Several studies, including a 2017 analysis in Social Science and Medicine and a 2019 study in Psychoneuroendocrinology, have found that experiencing racial discrimination raises a person’s risk of chronic disease. This likely has something to do with stress. “Racial differences in stress exposure (e.g., experiences of racial discrimination) ... stimulate pro-inflammatory processes that may contribute to differential health outcomes,” wrote the authors of the 2019 study.

Johnson also used to believe that food could act as a person’s best medicine. “But through personal and professional experience, I’ve found this to be at best shortsighted and truly rooted in elitism,” she says. A millionaire CEO of a “healthy” chain telling people that they wouldn’t be so fixated on affordable health care if they would just eat nutritious food (that may or may not be accessible to them) perfectly illustrates Johnson’s point.

Maybe You’re Born with It

Social and economic factors aren’t the only health determinants that are somewhat out of an individual’s control. We all have unique genetic predispositions—some people are simply born more at risk for certain conditions, like heart disease, than others. Environmental factors also play a role. Sunlight, dust, chemicals, metal, plants, animals, and other things we’re exposed to daily can contribute to the onset of pretty much every illness, from kidney disease to infertility to skin cancer. And of course, disease can be random. A 2017 report in Science found that about two-thirds of cell mutations that lead to cancer are caused by random DNA replication errors, while only a third are caused by inherited genes, environmental factors, or behavior. (Although yes, some cancers are more directly linked to behavior; for example, smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer.) Even diseases that are more strongly linked to lifestyle, like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, can occur in people with no known lifestyle risk factors.

All of this disproves the notion that eating a certain way, or a certain food, can eliminate the need for health care and medicine. The fact that disease can (and almost certainly will) occur no matter what you do might be a tough pill to swallow. But Johnson explains that it can also bring relief in that you can stop blaming yourself for your health problems or micromanaging your eating habits in the name of disease prevention.

Nutrition Is Just One Tool

The point here isn’t to totally discredit nutrition. Of course a nutritious diet can positively impact your health! The Dietary Guidelines for Americans state that a healthy dietary pattern is associated with a lower risk of certain chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, bone disease, breast cancer, and colorectal cancer. But they never claim that any dietary pattern alone, like Whole 30 or paleo, can prevent or cure disease. And they never mention superfoods, because these don’t exist—no one food has the power to make or break your health. “Food can be used to prevent onset of a disease up to a certain point,” Johnson says. But again, there are no guarantees because of all the factors at play.

As is the case with disease prevention, food plays a supporting role in the management of certain diseases. Medical nutrition therapy (MNT) is “the evidenced-based approach to treating medical conditions with food,” says Clara Nosek, a dietitian based in Modesto, California. Dietitians are trained in MNT, and there are myriad applications for the approach. In some cases, short-term dietary changes can treat an acute (short-lasting and sudden) condition; Nosek gives the example of reducing sodium intake to help reverse edema, which is swelling caused by excess fluid trapped in your body’s tissues. In other cases, long-term dietary changes can help someone manage a chronic (long-term and often lifelong) condition. Johnson points out that those with celiac disease must completely avoid gluten to prevent long-term intestinal damage and other negative side effects. Similarly, someone with diabetes might use diet as part of their strategy to manage blood sugar. Some uses of MNT are even more clinical, like feeding someone through a tube or an IV if they’re unable to consume enough by mouth.

Both MNT and a nutritious diet can help improve health outcomes, but neither is a replacement for health care. (In fact, MNT is typically provided by a dietitian, which means that it’s a form of health care.) The best way to catch and treat potential problems early on is by scheduling regular visits with your primary-care provider.

Literally speaking, food is not medicine. No matter what Dr. Oz might imply in this article, arugula doesn’t “fight” lung cancer and tahini won’t “boost” your immune system. In contrast, medicine does have the power to treat or cure health conditions. Insulin injections are vital in the management of type 1 diabetes, whereas dietary choices can only do so much. Chemotherapy and radiation can treat colon cancer by killing cancerous cells, but a high-fiber diet won’t do anything of the sort and may not even help with prevention. Fruits and vegetables won’t lower your risk of contracting an infectious disease like COVID-19, whereas vaccination will. Diet impacts health, but it isn’t nearly as powerful as medicine when it comes to treating disease.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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[rdclsuperfoods]

Imagine you’re a nutrition expert with an advanced degree and years of research experience. You understand the chemical processes within our bodies and the connection between nutrition and population health. Your job is to communicate what you know with millions of people who don’t understand these things at all.

It’s a huge challenge to turn complex and imperfect nutrition science into simple guidelines. Sometimes it works. For example, thousands of studies linking fruit and vegetable consumption to lowered risk of various diseases have been synthesized into a widely accepted recommendation to eat five servings of them a day. But in other cases, the details get oversimplified in ways that are misleading and ineffective. Case in point: the recommendation to limit empty calories.

While some calories do pack less of a nutritional punch than others, the idea of an empty or useless calorie is an unproductive way to think about food. In fact, some experts believe it might actually do more harm than good. If you’re worried about the so-called empty calories in your diet, or you’re confused about what they actually do, here’s what you need to know.

All Calories Are Nutritious

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched MyPlate, a user-focused online nutrition guide based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. One MyPlate entry described empty calories as calories from solid fats (a.k.a. saturated fats) and added sugars, and advised people to keep these empty calories to a minimum. It gave an oddly specific list of “foods and beverages that provide the most empty calories,” including cakes, cookies, pastries, doughnuts, sodas, energy drinks, sports drinks, fruit drinks, cheese, pizza, ice cream, sausages, hot dogs, bacon, and ribs. The reasoning? These foods contain high amounts of saturated fat and sugar, which “add calories to the food but few or no nutrients,” MyPlate explained. The entry has since been removed, perhaps because many nutrition experts questioned its logic, but the empty-calorie concept is still widely used in nutrition education.

The main problem with the term empty calories is that it’s an oxymoron. No calorie is devoid of nutrients, because calories are nutrients. Specifically, all foods are made up of some combination of the three macronutrients: protein, carbs, and fat. Amy Porto, a dietitian and nutrition professor at Messiah University, clarifies that although foods high in so-called empty calories contain few or no micronutrients—the vitamins and minerals that our bodies need to function properly—they’re still made up of some combination of protein, carbs, and fat. It’s important to make that distinction, because even foods without vitamins and minerals “are providing the body with energy it needs to function,” Porto says. In some cases, these calories are actually the best energy choice.

Carbs Are Fuel

All three macronutrients contain calories, which means all three also provide energy. But as anyone who’s ever trained for a race or participated in sports likely already knows, carbs (which break down to glucose) are the body’s preferred and most efficient source of energy. This is why marathon runners use glucose gels midrun, and why professional athletes drink Gatorade during games.

MyPlate lists sports drinks and added sugar as empty calories because they lack other important nutrients, but that’s exactly what makes them such great fuel. Margaret Ruch, a registered dietitian who specializes in sports nutrition and disordered eating, previously explained to Outside that the lack of other nutrients in these sugary substances means they’re absorbed more quickly into the bloodstream and thus better equipped to provide quick energy. Your digestive system breaks them down with little effort, unlike high-fiber carbohydrates that your gut must work harder to process. Calling them empty calories isn’t accurate; if you’re in need of a pre- or mid-workout boost, they’re incredibly valuable.

All Food Serves a Purpose

The idea of empty calories also perpetuates the misconception that protein and fat from less nutritious foods serve no purpose. That’s just not true—sausages and ribs provide significant amounts of protein, which is essential for building and repairing muscle and other healthy tissues. The protein in these foods isn’t any less equipped to do that than the protein from a skinless chicken breast or whey protein powder. (And it actually does it more efficiently than many plant-based protein sources, which don’t contain all nine essential amino acids.) Likewise, fat from cheese and ice cream plays a role in hormone production and cell growth, and it helps protect your organs (even though it’s mostly saturated). Just because these foods deliver fewer nutrients than more nutritious options doesn’t mean they do nothing for you at all.

It’s Complicated

The idea of an empty calorie isn’t totally bogus. Consuming only soda, doughnuts, and hot dogs could lead to vitamin and mineral deficiencies and would greatly increase your risk of poor health. The evidence clearly shows that a diet rich in nutrient-dense foods—fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, and lean proteins—can improve your health.

What Porto and many other nutrition experts take issue with is how reductive thinking around empty calories is. It’s a blanket term for a wide range of very different foods, which makes it confusing. For example, a soda gets all of its calories from added sugar, so it gives you quick energy but nothing else. But a pizza, which is also designated as a source of empty calories, delivers a combination of carbs, fat, and protein, plus several important vitamins and minerals (albeit in low amounts). Soda and pizza act very differently in your body, so grouping them together doesn’t make sense. 

Porto points out another flaw in the way empty calories are presented: sugar-only processed foods, like soda and candy, are demonized as empty calories, but sugar-only natural foods, like honey and maple syrup, aren’t called out in the same way. She attributes this to the omnipresent belief that natural foods are inherently “good” and processed ones are inherently “bad,” which isn’t true. Whole foods are typically more nutrient dense than processed ones, but that’s not always the case. Honey lacks micronutrients and breaks down in your body just like soda does, natural or not. 

Vague Advice Is Bad Advice

If your goal is to eat a more nutritious diet, the recommendation to avoid so-called empty calories isn’t very helpful. A better recommendation would be to eat more nutrient-dense foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, lean protein sources, and healthy fats, and eat less added sugar and saturated fat. The best way to go about it, though, is to understand that different foods affect our bodies in different ways. High-sugar foods might lack vitamins and minerals, but they’re great for quick energy. Saturated fat can be harmful if you eat too much (the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends limiting saturated fat to less than 10 percent of your total caloric intake, or about 22 grams per day for someone who eats around 2,000 calories), but it isn’t something you need to avoid completely. Processed meats are typically high in saturated fat, but they still provide protein that’s essential to muscle maintenance and repair. 

Simply put, the idea of empty calories is too simplistic to be meaningful. Experts came up with the term as a way to encourage people to eat more healthfully. But in reality, all it does is designate certain foods as “bad” without explaining why or exploring the nuances of how various foods impact our bodies.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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Injury recovery is an uphill battle. You’re burdened by pain, isolated from training partners, inundated with appointments and rehab, worried about your diagnosis (or lack thereof), and sidelined from a sport that you love. On top of all that, you might feel the need to rethink the way you eat, since your level of activity is lower than normal. 

There are conflicting schools of thought when it comes to how to best fuel up while you’re in recovery mode. If you’re training less, it might seem logical that you should be eating less. On the other hand, maybe you’ve heard that you should err on the side of more calories, since even a small nutrient deficit can impede your healing. Research suggests that the sweet spot lies somewhere in the middle. Below, three registered dietitian-athletes share the latest findings in injury nutrition, plus actionable advice, so that food can be an asset and a source of pleasure—rather than a source of stress—during an already trying time.

Eat Enough 

Respect the energy demands of healing. You may be moving less than normal, but the body immediately gets to work after trauma, explains Claire Fudge, an Ironman triathlete, a registered dietitian, and the founder of 4th Discipline Triathlon Nutrition in Birmingham, England. If you’re dealing with an acute injury, your heart rate speeds up in response to tissue damage, pain, and anxiety (which is an immediate psychological response to injury). The site of your injury swells as your blood flow increases and your body ramps up the production of cytokines, a type of protein that helps mediate inflammation. To keep up with all this extra work, your metabolism increases, too. 

“Metabolism can increase 15 to 20 percent with trauma, minor surgery, and the use of crutches,” says Catherine Kruppa, a masters marathoner and registered dietitian who owns Advice for Eating, in Houston. Major surgery spikes it even more. Exact caloric demands depend on the type of trauma and your position in the chain of healing events, but the bottom line is that your body is under stress, and your energy needs likely increased at the onset of injury. Your priority should be getting enough calories to support healing—not limiting your intake because you’re moving less. 

Gaining weight is a common fear among sidelined athletes, but do your best to put that aside. It’s true that eating exactly as you did pre-injury may lead to a change in body composition. In some sports, that could result in a competitive disadvantage upon your return. The natural conclusion for most athletes, then, is to decrease food intake to prevent increased body fat and total mass. But a fixation on weight or leanness can muddy the ultimate goal of healing quickly and completely. As Kelsey Beckmann, an Olympic Trials marathoner and a registered dietitian in Jacksonville, Florida, puts it: “We’re faster when we’re a few pounds heavier than we are when we’re injured.” 

Beckmann encourages injured athletes to keep in mind that marginal differences in body weight are typical across a season for most people, and similar to a postseason break, your body will normalize once you’ve returned to full training. “The single most important nutritional consideration during reduced muscle activity and/or immobility is to avoid nutrient deficiencies,” a 2015 study published in Sports Medicine concluded.

Change Is Good

Just as elite runners eat differently during 100-mile weeks than during taper weeks, your nutritional needs will change throughout a season of injury. There are three widely accepted phases of healing: inflammation, in which your immune system is activated and damage-control cells rush to the injured site; proliferation, which is when your body builds new tissue, restores blood vessels, and covers the surface of any exposed wounds; and remodeling, the period in which the traumatized area matures and regains strength, often leaving a scar in its wake. 

As your body’s natural inflammatory response goes to work during the first few days post-injury, Kruppa suggests eating balanced meals with plenty of whole foods, especially as many fresh fruits and veggies as you can get your hands on. Purported anti-inflammatory foods like turmeric get a lot of buzz, but the bottom line is that a healthy, well-rounded diet is the best culinary defense against inflammation, rather than one specific ingredient. However, there are certain ingredients that promote inflammation. If it doesn’t create too much stress, try to moderate your intake of refined carbs, simple sugars, trans fats, and alcohol.

During proliferation and remodeling, which start around day four and last as long as your injury does, your body is busy replacing damaged tissues with new, healthy ones. Kruppa explains that your goal during this time should still be balanced nutrition, and she emphasizes how crucial it is that you get adequate calories in the form of ample protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats.

Don’t Skimp on Protein

Of the three macronutrients—carbs, fat, and protein—research best supports the role of protein during injury recovery. Whenever a body experiences a health disturbance, such as sickness or inflammation, extra protein is required to maximize muscle protein synthesis. Consume too little of it and your healing will lag, inflammation will increase, and muscle loss may follow. 

Beckmann recommends aiming for one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day while recovering from an injury, so 140 grams for a 140-pound person. Spreading that intake throughout the day is helpful, too—try and sneak a little protein into each meal and snack, and get a final hit at bedtime. A 2016 study published in the journal Nutrients found that eating protein immediately before sleep can stimulate muscle protein synthesis as well as adaptation from that day’s training. Seek out a variety of protein sources, such as ethically sourced meats, dairy products, eggs, beans, tofu, and tempeh. All of these high-protein options are also rich in leucine, an essential amino acid involved in the growth and repair of muscle, skin, and bone.

Carbs and Fat Are Your Friends, Too

The body’s primary fuel source is glucose, one of the simplest types of carbohydrates. Anytime you eat a carb—whether that’s from fruit, bread, or potatoes—your body breaks it down into glucose and either uses it immediately for energy or stores it as glycogen. It’s a critical part of cellular health: glucose gives our cells the chemical energy and heat they need to function, which means it’s also a major player when it comes to recovery. “Not eating enough carbohydrates could prompt us to mobilize our lean body mass—muscle—as fuel,” Beckmann warns. We’re extra vulnerable to losing muscle when we’re injured, so it’s even more important not to skimp.

Her recommendation is to eat a minimum of 1.4 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight per day, and aim to get about 40 percent of your total daily calories from carbohydrates. Because you don’t need quick-digesting carbs like bagels and sports drinks to fuel your training, it’s a good time to load up on complex ones like sweet potatoes and whole grains. These offer more nutrients, ample fiber, and longer-lasting energy. And don’t stress too much about a sugar craving. “At the end of the day, our bodies are going to break either type of carbohydrate down to energy, as molecules of glucose,” Beckmann says.

Beckmann endorses a deliberate approach to fat intake while you’re out of commission. “Trans fats, omega-6 fats, and saturated fats are considered pro-inflammatory,” she says. Adding to your body’s natural inflammatory response may be counterproductive—especially in the early stages of healing. But research shows that a diet high in monounsaturated fats and omega-3’s aids with collagen deposition, a key part of the rebuilding process in which tissues gain the strength and structure necessary to absorb impact and force again. Avocados, nuts, seeds, olive oil, and fatty fish are some of Beckmann’s favorite choices for athletes on the mend.

Whole Foods Are Better Than Supplements 

A supplement, by definition, is supposed to be an add-on, not the main ingredient. “If you are eating a balanced diet full of lean protein, healthy fats, dairy, whole grains, and fruits and vegetables, you will be ahead of the game and likely won’t need supplements,” Kruppa says. She recommends leaning on real foods containing the following micronutrients: vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, calcium, magnesium, zinc, and copper. These are largely found in colorful fruits and vegetables as well as in dairy products, nuts, and seeds. Mushrooms, for example, are great sources of copper, which assists with red-blood-cell formation, immune function, and bone health. Legumes contain high levels of magnesium, which plays a role in protein synthesis, circulation, and the absorption and metabolism of calcium and vitamin D.

That said, it’s not always possible to meet your nutritional needs through food alone. With a bone fracture, for instance, Kruppa says that your calcium needs increase to 1,500 milligrams per day, which may necessitate supplementation. For context, a single serving of cow’s milk has 305 milligrams of calcium. In addition, many healthy and injured athletes alike supplement their iron, an essential mineral that helps transport oxygen from your lungs to your muscles and an easy one to run low on—especially if you’re a female endurance athlete. If you think you might be deficient—common symptoms include dizziness, fatigue, and weakness—consult with a doctor and get a blood test before supplementing iron.

Fudge and Kruppa agree that it’s also worth considering supplemental protein, amino acids, and collagen. Leucine, a branched-chain amino acid, stimulates muscle protein synthesis faster than other amino acids. Casein, a milk protein that comes in powdered form and many dairy products, contains all the amino acids your body needs to build and repair muscle. Creatine, an amino acid, may help prevent muscle loss, especially while a limb is immobilized. Whey protein may boost ligament, tendon, and muscle healing when consumed within an hour after exercise or rehabilitation. And collagen, when ingested before exercise with vitamin C, may help with the recovery of ligament and tendon injuries. Consult with your doctor or a nutritionist first to ensure a supplement makes sense for you.

As with most nutritional questions, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. The keys to a good recovery diet are simple: pay attention to what your body needs and wants, make sure you’re getting enough nutrients and calories, and don’t sweat the small stuff. You’ll be back in the saddle before you know it. 

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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To the relief of cooped-up powder hounds everywhere, skiing has proved to be relatively safe during the pandemic, thanks to the abundance of fresh air and natural social distancing on the hill. But one aspect of a day at the resort still poses significant COVID risk: the ski lodge. To avoid crowded indoor spaces, many Outside editors have been trading their slopeside burgers and chicken fingers for meals prepared at home. 

But which brown-bag lunches are best for getting you through a day at the resort? We rounded up the Outside staff’s favorite to-go meals, below, then asked Kristen Gravani, the director of sports nutrition for Stanford University athletes, to weigh in on our choices. Gravani, a former college ski racer, says there are three components of a good to-go meal: 

The right balance of nutrients. Generally, you want your meal to be higher in carbohydrates, with a moderate amount of fat and protein. Carbohydrates are a skier’s main fuel source, and a little fat and protein help stave off hunger longer while providing slowly released energy. (Exact proportions will vary depending on your individual nutrition needs, but typically, the more intense and sustained your ski day is, the more this ratio will skew toward carbs.)

Ingredients that sit well in your stomach. If you know that spicy chili makes you sprint for the bathroom, leave the beans at home. The less your stomach is churning, the more you can enjoy your turns.

Food safety. If you’re carrying a meaty burrito around in your pocket, that’s the ideal habitat for bacteria that causes foodborne illness. Ideally, you want to keep perishable foods cold, or just stick with shelf-stable options. 

With those criteria in mind, here’s what Gravani thinks about Outside editors’ ski-day lunches:

Breakfast Burritos

Pandemic or not, my go-to is a homemade breakfast burrito: a ten-inch tortilla, hash browns, scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese, and green chili. It’s really two meals in one. I eat one half on the drive to the mountain, then wrap the other half in tinfoil and stash it in my jacket for lunch. That, plus an energy bar in reserve—I’m a fan of GoMacro’s maple sea salt flavor—always gets me through the day. —Chris Keyes, editor 

I have two go-to ski lunches, depending on how much I rallied that morning. If I’ve given myself enough time to get a breakfast burrito from my favorite spot in Santa Fe (hello, Betterday Coffee!), I will eat exactly one-third of it for lunch, with a Modelo on the chairlift. (The first third is consumed on the drive up in the morning, and the last third on the drive down at the end of the day.) Betterday burritos are made up of five key ingredients: tortilla, egg, cheese, and chile. Sometimes bacon, too. If my morning is rushed (or my bank account strained), I’ll eat a Perfect Bar for lunch—it’s my favorite on-the-go snack. Its macros are pretty well-balanced, so it feels less like a sugar or protein bomb and more like a meal. I also wash that down with a Modelo. —Abbie Barronian, associate editor 

GRADE: B

“You’ve got really good combinations of carbs, fat, and protein,” says Gravani of the two burritos. The tortilla and hash browns provide a nice boost of carb-based energy, while the eggs and cheese round things out with protein and fat. Gravani thinks the GoMacro and Perfect bars are also solid choices. Food safety in regards to the burritos, however, docks them a grade. “When you put a warm burrito in your pocket, keeping that moderate temperature as it’s cooling down over time puts it at risk for microbial growth,” she says. If you’re going to go with a perishable lunch, it’s better to refrigerate it first. 

Quesadillas

My go-to lift lunch is the eggadilla. First, fry two eggs, making sure to break the yolks so they don’t run all over your gloves when it’s time to eat. Then sauté whatever veg you have on hand—onion, bell pepper, zucchini, etc. Finally, stack your eggadilla on a tortilla, with a layer of cheese on the bottom, your egg and veg in the middle, and another layer of cheese on top, and then add the second tortilla. Heat the whole thing in a large frying pan, or just microwave it. Cut it into quarters, and put it in a Ziploc bag, so you can throw in your pack or even a jacket pocket. It’s portable, squish-proof, delicious, and filling. —Luke Whelan, senior research editor

An excellent ski lunch consists of a few triangle-shaped sections of leftover, cold, homemade quesadilla—I use flour tortillas, sautéed mushrooms, chopped chicken breasts, Mexican-blend cheese, and canned green chile. It carries well, because it’s already flat. I also take along some good salsa in a small, leakproof container. —Alex Heard, editorial director

GRADE: B

“I love the addition of vegetables here,” says Gravani. “Along with that lean protein and carbs, it seems like a nice combination.” The quesadillas, above, have a similar protein-fat-carbs ratio to the breakfast burritos, making them a well-balanced choice for a midday ski meal. But they also lose points for the elevated potential to bring on a bout of foodborne illness.

Frito Pie

I always bring a thermos of good-quality chili, like Annie’s, and a bag of Fritos. When I’m feeling fancy, I’ll top the chili with shredded Tillamook white cheddar. Bonus: it’s gluten-free, which is a must when you have celiac like I do. —Aleta Burchyski, associate managing editor 

My boyfriend and I are known for only bringing Frito pies on backcountry and camping trips. It’s what we ate growing up at the Santa Fe ski area, and we’ve been continuing the tradition during the pandemic. We bring a bag of Fritos, a thermos of hot beef chili, and sometimes also a bag of shredded lettuce and cheese. It’s full of carbs, protein, and salt—what more could you ask for! We accompany the meal with a thermos of hot chocolate or tea. And as any ski day should have, a candy bar will always be on hand. —Petra Zeiler, art director

GRADE: B-

“I give them points for being able to navigate that meal and bring it heated,” says Gravani. And while the macronutrient balance is decent, this meal’s potential to cause tummy troubles warranted a grade reduction. The combo of fat, fiber, and spice can lead to an upset gut. “Especially with beans, it can cause GI distress for some people,” she says. Being at a high altitude doesn’t help the stomach situation either. Some people may have no issue with the magical fruits, and GI problems are very individual, but if you’re unsure about your reaction to beans, you may want to save yourself—and everyone in your group—the trouble. 

PB&J

I keep it simple with an almond butter and jam sandwich, usually on Trader Joe’s Super Grain and Seed bread. I pack on the almond butter, and go light on the jam so it doesn’t get all sticky, and put it in a small Ziploc bag. It’s great fuel, and I can cram it in a ski-jacket pocket and eat it on the lift. It doesn’t matter if it gets smashed. In fact, it tastes better smashed a bit, because the jam marinates the bread. I also always keep some peanut M&M’s or a Kind bar in my pocket for extra fuel when needed. —Mary Turner, deputy editor

PB&J all the way! This sandwich is a classic and might be the ultimate-adventure pocket snack; we even have articles to prove it. But I don’t make just any old PB&J—if it’s going in my pocket, it has to be a “dub” PB&J. Instead of loading up just one side of the sandwich with peanut butter, I prefer to coat each slice of bread with a thin layer of peanut butter, and then add the jelly in the middle. This is key for keeping your PB&J al dente all day, an improved sandwich structure for zero sogginess and better pocket durability for the inevitable yard sale. If you’re looking for something a little more gourmet, just add bacon. —Jackson Buscher, video producer

GRADE: A

It’s hard to beat the humble PB&J. Not only does it meet the right balance of nutrients that you need to keep skiing through the afternoon, but it’s also easy to digest and shelf-stable. Gravani herself likes to pack a PB&J when she hits the slopes. “Having a less heavy lunch, and being able to supplement with some snacks, sets you up to avoid that post-lunch slump,” she says. Chairlift grazing not only reserves more time for skiing but also can keep you energized throughout the day. 

Cold Pizza

During ski season, Friday nights at my house are usually pizza nights. Homemade pies loaded with cheese, veggies, and pepperoni are the ultimate comfort food and the best way to cap off a stressful workweek. The leftovers also make the best ski lunch imaginable. My boyfriend and I always make extra to bring to the mountain the next day. A few slices fit neatly into a Ziploc that lies flat in my jacket pocket, and they’re easy to eat one-handed (and glove-handed if it’s frigid and I’m really desperate). It feels more indulgent than the usual PB&J or energy bar but is still easy to snack on during lift rides without making a mess. Plus, cheese and bread are good endurance fuels, right? —Ariella Gintzler, associate editor

GRADE: B-

A cheesy slice contains more fat than would be ideal midway through a ski day, according to Gravani. That means you may feel sluggish after eating it, as fats tend to sit heavier in the stomach and digest slower than carbs and protein. 

Tortilla Wrap

With a kid at home, I’m all about efficiency on the slopes. My go-to lunch is a simple flour-tortilla wrap with peppered salami, cheddar cheese, avocado, and hot sauce. It’s easy and tidy to eat on the run, but the protein hit gives me sustained energy without bogging me down. —Will Taylor, gear director

GRADE: A-

“I do love that he chose a shelf-stable meat, and the rest of the components are really quality, too,” says Gravani. Salami is still a fatty meat, though, so swapping it out with a low-fat alternative like turkey would make this meal perfect and help avoid post-meal sluggishness.

Cheese and Crackers

Since I won’t be able to treat myself with chicken fingers and ranch dressing this year—the absolute best ski lunch, in my opinion—I’ll be packing my favorite backpacking meal: cheese and crackers. I prefer a solid hunk of cheddar cheese paired with Wasa Multi-Grain crispbread. And I’ll throw in a beef stick or jerky if I get really hungry. —Kelsey Lindsey, associate editor

GRADE: B+

“This one is lower protein and higher fat than is ideal,” says Gravani. Adding in a lean meat like turkey jerky to increase the protein would achieve a better nutrient balance.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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In November, McDonald’s announced plans to roll out plant-based versions of its signature items, including a burger, chicken sandwich, and breakfast sandwich made with plant-based sausage. The new menu, called the McPlant, is hardly a surprise.

McDonald’s is a latecomer to the plant-based fast-food game: White Castle debuted the Impossible Slider in April 2018. Shortly after, Del Taco and Burger King added Beyond and Impossible products to their menus, respectively. Then Dunkin’ released a breakfast sandwich made with plant-based sausage, and KFC and Jack in the Box began rolling out meatless chicken in select markets. These options, part of a massive innovation boom in alternative meat, are engineered to be extremely similar to the meats they mimic. They’re different from old-school veggie burgers, which were just plant proteins like beans or soy in the shape of a small patty. These new products are still made from a mishmash of plant proteins, but they look, smell, cook, and taste like the real deal.

As a nutritionist myself, I find the whole trend a little baffling. The number of Americans who follow a vegetarian diet hasn’t changed much in recent decades. In fact, adult vegetarians in the U.S. dropped from 6 percent of the population to 5 percent between 1999 and 2019, according to a Gallup poll. And while many vegetarians are OK eating food cooked with the same griddles and deep fryers as meat, those who aren’t have voiced concern over the cross contamination that happens at certain fast-food joints. (Many chains include a disclaimer on their website as well as their menu stating that this is the case, so it’s worth looking into or asking a staff member about if this is a deal breaker for you.) Still, vegan and vegetarian options are trending like never before, likely because more customers are interested in eating sustainably.

The number of American adults concerned about climate change is growing dramatically, up from 44 percent in 2009 to 60 percent in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. And 55 percent of respondents in a 2020 Yale University survey reported that they are willing to eat less meat as a way to combat it. If you’re a major fast-food company, that’s a trend worth capitalizing on. 

Is This Fast Food Healthier?

The term “plant-based” often gets an automatic health halo: it reads as synonymous with “good for you,” no matter the context. And when done right, it can be. A 2016 review found that plant-based diets were linked to a lower risk of heart disease and diabetes, because they’re generally low in saturated fat, high in fiber, and nutrient dense. But that’s an entire diet they’re talking about, not a single ingredient or meal. And these new plant-based meats are popular because they are engineered to be as close to the real deal as possible—not just in taste and texture but nutritionally, too.

Both Beyond and Impossible burgers contain 20 grams of protein per four ounces, while the same amount of 85 percent lean ground beef has 21 grams. The plant-based protein comes from a variety of sources—rice, pea, and mung bean protein in Beyond beef; soy and potato protein in Impossible beef. Since protein is important for both performance and general health, the fact that you can get just as much of it from plant-based beef as regular beef is a good thing. 

But there are downsides. Impossible beef contains the same amount of saturated fat as 85 percent lean ground beef: eight grams per four ounces. Beyond recently lowered its saturated fat content, but a serving still contains five grams. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting saturated fat to less than 10 percent of your total calorie intake, or about 22 grams per day for someone who eats around 2,000 calories. Too much saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and stroke, regardless of whether it comes from plants or animals. 

Destini Moody, a dietitian and athletic trainer based in San Francisco, points out that plant-based meat also tends to be higher in sodium than regular meat. The Impossible Whopper has about 10 percent more sodium than its beef counterpart. Even before cooking or seasoning, beef from both Beyond and Impossible has more than 350 milligrams of sodium per four ounces, compared to 75 milligrams in 85 percent lean ground beef. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend consuming less than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day, since too much can contribute to high blood pressure, increasing your risk of heart attack and stroke. “I can’t say that plant-based burgers are a healthier choice than just getting a regular beef burger,” Moody says. 

When it comes to plant-based chicken versus the real thing, Moody explains that it’s likely the same story, since both are breaded and fried. KFC doesn’t list the nutrition information for Beyond Fried Chicken on its website (which is a little odd, as the company lists it for everything else), but according to Prevention, one nugget has 60 calories, one and a half grams of saturated fat, and five grams of protein. It’s hard to compare that to its regular chicken, since KFC doesn’t have chicken nuggets. But one extra-crispy chicken tender (the closest thing on the menu to Beyond Fried Chicken) has 260 calories, two grams of saturated fat, and 19 grams of protein per serving. That means that, per calorie, the plant-based nuggets actually have less protein and more saturated fat than regular chicken tenders. 

Sustainability—and Accessibility—Count

It’s not all bad news. If your main concern is planetary health, plant-based foods are the better choice. Yes, some of the research touting the sustainability of plant-based meat is funded by the same companies that make it, which might overestimate its positive impact. But experts agree that plant-based foods have a smaller environmental impact than animal products, processed or not.

A May 2020 article published in the journal Global Environmental Change looked at data from 140 countries and concluded that a vegan diet has a 70 percent smaller carbon footprint than a traditional diet. Animal products require a lot of resources: about 77 percent of the habitable land on earth is used to raise livestock or grow livestock feed, but those animals make up just 18 percent of the calories produced for human consumption. In order to sustainably feed the growing number of people on the planet, we have to adjust the way we eat.

Plant-based options at fast-food restaurants that actually taste good might help get more people on board with a planet-friendly diet. “Corporations are providing these offerings not only for vegans and vegetarians but for meat-eating customers who are interested in plant-based options as well,” says Taylor Wolfram, a Chicago-based dietitian who specializes in veganism. She points out that Burger King had another veggie burger on its menu for years, but it didn’t taste anything like beef and only existed on the menu so that there was a vegetarian option. “Now that there are beef-like alternatives, I think a lot more meat eaters are going for these options,” Wolfram says. She’s right—MarketWatch reported on a survey showing that 95 percent of people who bought these new plant-based burgers in 2019 were meat eaters.

Impossible Whoppers and McPlant sandwiches also make plant-based eating more accessible to those who rely on fast food for many of their meals, whether that’s due to convenience, price, or preference. On any given day, 36 percent of American adults eat fast food, according to a 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If even a fraction of those 85 million Americans went plant-based for their meal, it could have a significant environmental impact. While these new alternatives typically cost between one and two dollars more than their meat-based counterparts, Wolfram still thinks that they could have a broad enough appeal to create change. If that Impossible Whopper convinces a diehard carnivore to give plant-based options a chance, then that’s certainly something.

It’s Still Fast Food

If you eat fast food often and want to lessen your carbon footprint, plant-based menu items are a good choice. But if you only eat it occasionally, just go ahead and order what you’re craving. Whether they’re made from plants or animals, the menu items at your local McDonald’s aren’t terribly nutritious. And that’s OK. No single food will make or break your diet, and you don’t need to choose the healthiest option every time you eat. A good diet means you’re getting the nutrients your body needs, but it also means you’re eating what you want. Maybe that’s an Impossible Whopper, and maybe it’s a Big Mac. 

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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We’re in the midst of a global pandemic and national political upheaval unlike anything we’ve seen in the past 150 years. Still, wellness influencers, major news outlets, and even the CDC are finding plenty of time to fret about dieting and weight gain. In response, anti-diet nutritionists, therapists, and activists have taken to social media to point out that a too tight grip on your eating habits can cause anxiety and unhealthy patterns that leave you frustrated and physically uncomfortable.

I agree. In April I wrote about how quarantine-induced worries linked to food and exercise can backfire, and why a more relaxed approach to food leads to better health. However, this is easier said than done. Our relationship with weight and diets is complex, and it can be tough to distinguish a healthy habit from an unhealthy one. If you’re working toward a healthier mindset about food, a good first step is to identify your own food rules and then challenge them.

A food rule is any kind of black-and-white thinking about food. Some might be holdovers from a specific diet you’ve tried in the past, like the idea that you should avoid carbs, or that there’s a static number of calories you should eat in a day. Others are extreme versions of generally sound advice, like the idea that you must only eat whole foods, or that sugar and processed goods are explicitly off-limits. 

Some of these ideas are grounded in evidence, but there’s a critical difference between food rules and healthy eating habits. The latter are flexible: you prioritize nutritious ingredients but don’t agonize over what to eat and aren’t stressed if you go a day without vegetables or finish a meal feeling overly full. Food rules are rigid: you have strict parameters around how you should eat, and feel guilty or anxious (or like you need to compensate) when you don’t eat according to that plan. “Following food rules can be physically, mentally, and socially exhausting, which impacts overall quality of life,” says Taylor Chan, a dietitian and certified personal trainer. Here are six new anti-rules to learn in the new year. 

There Are No Bad Foods

Morality has long snuck into the way we talk and think about eating. Look at the way that various foods are marketed: something low in calories, sugar, and fat might be labeled “guilt-free.” High-sugar, high-fat, and high-calorie foods are deemed “sinfully delicious,” an indulgence to feel a little ashamed of. It might seem normal to think of certain foods as good or bad, seeing as how moralizing eating patterns is a natural product of our culture’s fixation on healthy living. But that doesn’t mean it’s helpful, says Chan.

If a certain food is deemed inherently bad, and eating it is bad behavior, it isn’t a huge leap to think you’re a bad person for eating that way. Food quickly becomes a source of stress and shame, rather than nourishment and pleasure. Dalina Soto, an anti-diet dietitian, expertly called out the problem in an Instagram post: you aren’t a horrible person with no self-control because you ate some ice cream; you just ate something delicious because you wanted it. Thinking of it this way makes it easier to let go and move on. The point isn’t that ice cream is nutrient packed or that it should be the cornerstone of your diet—those wouldn’t be accurate or helpful, either! It’s that there’s never a reason to feel guilty about eating, no matter the nutritional value of the food.

Forget About Clean Eating

Clean eating is such a common phrase that it might not raise an eyebrow, but it’s problematic, too. It implies that other foods and ways of eating are dirty, which falls into the same moralizing trap mentioned above. Plus, there’s no real definition of what “clean” means. “People start developing arbitrary rules about their food, which leads to restrictive and unhealthy food patterns,” says Heather Caplan, a dietitian who specializes in intuitive eating and sports nutrition.

There’s evidence to back this up. A 2020 cross-sectional survey of 1,266 young adults published in the journal Nutrients found that over half the participants had heard of clean eating and thought of it as healthy, but that their definitions of clean were all over the place. The researchers pointed out that while clean eating is often portrayed as healthy, it is often linked with disordered eating. It’s a dichotomous way of thinking, “characterized by extreme ‘all bad’ or ‘all good’ views toward food,” the paper states. Additionally, someone can use clean eating to mask behaviors like severe calorie restriction, claiming that they’re avoiding various foods for health reasons when in fact they may have an underlying eating disorder or disordered-eating behaviors. The researchers also found clean eating to be associated with nutritional deficiencies, since restrictive behavior can go undetected and unchecked for so long.

If you want to eat healthfully, a better approach is to prioritize nutrient-dense foods—fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, healthy oils, and lean proteins—without vowing to only eat these foods. It’s a flexible and realistic approach that won’t have you constantly questioning whether certain foods are clean enough or not.

Stop Tracking Your Intake

Religiously counting calories or macros (carbs, fat, and protein) probably isn’t going to have the effect you want it to. One 2013 review of 25 existing studies published in Frontiers in Psychology found that restricted eating habits rarely led to weight loss and, in fact, often corresponded with weight gain. 

There’s no consensus on why exactly this happens, but a 2015 article in the International Journal of Obesity explains that the body is designed to protect against weight loss. Restriction-induced weight loss precipitates physiological adaptations, including fewer calories burned overall, less fat oxidation (converting stored fat to energy), a decrease in the fullness-signaling hormone leptin, and an increase in the hunger-signaling hormone ghrelin. Even if someone who has lost weight successfully manages to override their hunger signals, their metabolism may still be slower than before, making it increasingly harder to keep burning fat. This might be why many dieters don’t see the results they want from calorie counting.

Soto instead encourages an intuitive eating approach: eat what you want, when you want it. Our bodies know to seek out the variety of nutrients that they need to function, and proponents of intuitive eating explain that paying close attention to your cravings will naturally lead to a nutritious diet. When it comes to gauging how much food your body requires, it’s far easier to eat until you’re satisfied than it is to count and track calories.

Don’t Demonize Macronutrients

Popular as the keto diet may be, there’s no evidence that a low-carb diet is any healthier than one that includes a balance of all macronutrients. The same goes for low-fat diets. A 2020 review of 121 previously conducted, randomized controlled trials published in The British Medical Journal found that none of the diets limiting certain macronutrients like carbs or fats are any more effective at improving health than a regular, varied diet.

Still, it’s common to demonize certain carbs or fats, even if you aren’t on a particular diet. Maybe you pass on the bread basket because you don’t want to eat too many carbs, or always use nonstick cooking spray instead of oil because you’re wary of adding too much fat to a meal. Soto says this isn’t necessary. All three macronutrients play an important role in health and function. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend getting anywhere from 45 to 65 percent of your calories from carbs, 10 to 35 percent from protein, and 20 to 35 percent from fat. There’s a lot of wiggle room there. Most people’s intake already falls within these ranges, so striking the perfect balance of macros day after day isn’t something you should overthink.

You Don’t Need to Burn Anything Off

Food is more than just a source of energy, Chan says. “We eat food for so many reasons, and it’s important to honor those,” she says. “We connect with our culture through food, we connect with others over a good meal, and we eat for pleasure and nostalgia, all of which supports overall well-being.” But the idea that you must earn food with a grueling workout is still pervasive.

Trying to compensate with exercise when you feel you’ve eaten too much can have a significant negative impact on your quality of life, Chan says. At worst, it sets into motion a cycle of overeating, compensating, and overeating again. Instead of beating yourself up, or trying to atone for eating more than feels comfortable, just let your body do its thing and digest. You’ll feel fine again soon, and chances are you’ll feel less hungry later on.

Yes, there’s nuance here. Food still fuels movement, and there’s nothing wrong with adjusting your intake accordingly when you’re training. The important thing is to not be too rigid or punish yourself for eating too much. A strict calories-in, calories-out approach to fueling isn’t very effective anyway. There’s strong evidence refuting the popular idea that eating 3,500 calories leads to one pound of weight gain, and equally strong evidence that fitness trackers are notoriously terrible at measuring the actual number of calories burned during a workout.

Be Mindful and Flexible

“Ditching food rules opens the door for nutritious foods, not so nutritious foods, and everything in between to be enjoyed,” Chan says. The goal isn’t to give up on good nutrition but to make it less stressful and more sustainable. If your intention is to feel your best, be mindful of how different foods affect your mood and energy levels. Use that to guide what you choose to eat, instead of sticking to black-and-white rules that set you up for failure.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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Plant-based beef from brands like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods is quickly becoming a new staple. If it’s not already on the menu of your favorite fast-food chain, odds are good that it’s coming soon, and it’s most likely already in the meat section of your local grocery store.

Sure, you might be able to tell the difference between an Impossible burger and one made with Angus beef. But if you’re crumbling the plant-based stuff into a recipe or seasoning it heavily for taco meat or kebabs, you’d probably be able to trick even the staunchest carnivore.

This is by design. Both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have engineered their products to be almost identical to real beef in every sense. Jonathan Valdez, a dietitian and founder of Genki Nutrition, explains that both of these companies’ products are fortified with vitamins and minerals that aren’t naturally found in plant foods but that are typically found in beef, like iron and vitamin B12. Their total and saturated fat content is similar to ground beef that’s 80 percent lean, 20 percent fat. That’s a choice the companies made, not for the sake of nutrition—the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting saturated fat to less than 10 percent of your daily calories, regardless of whether it comes from plants or animals—but so the faux beef better mimics the real stuff. 

Thanks to that careful formulation, you can substitute the same amount of plant-based beef in just about any recipe that calls for ground beef. (Although Valdez warns that plant-based beef is higher in sodium, so you might want to go easy on the salt.) If you’d like to follow a recipe that’s been developed and tested with plant-based beef, here are three to try.

Pineapple Tacos 

“I love this taco recipe, because it’s approachable, bright, and satisfying,” says Jasmine Shimoda, chef and owner of Jewel, a plant-based restaurant in Los Angeles. She explains that imitation ground beef browns in a skillet just like the real stuff and actually packs a tastier punch than most store-bought ground beef, thanks to yeast extract that lends it ample umami flavor. 

Ingredients 

1 tablespoon canola oil

1 pound plant-based ground beef

1 yellow onion, finely chopped 

2 garlic cloves, minced 

2 teaspoons chili powder 

1 teaspoon chipotle in adobo sauce (from a can)

1 teaspoon kosher salt (or less, to taste)

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 

1 cup chopped fresh pineapple

3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice, divided 

1 small jicama, peeled and cut into matchsticks

5 radishes, thinly sliced 

⅓ cup chopped fresh cilantro

1 serrano or jalapeño pepper, seeds removed, thinly sliced 

¼ cup raw red onion, thinly sliced 

1½ tablespoons Vegenaise 

For serving: warm corn tortillas, warm black beans, vegan crumbly cheese, cilantro, lime wedges

Instructions

Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the plant-based beef, and break up with a large spoon or spatula. Spread it out in the pan to ensure the maximum amount of caramelization. Once the plant-based beef is browned, about four to five minutes, transfer to a plate and set aside somewhere warm, leaving most of the fat in the pan. 

Return the pan to the stove. Cook the yellow onion in the remaining fat until translucent, three to four minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and cook for two more minutes, then add the chili powder, chipotle, salt, and pepper, and stir everything together. Turn up the heat to medium-high, and toss in the diced pineapple, cooking for two more minutes until the pineapple is heated through and slightly soft. Add the imitation beef and one tablespoon of lime juice. Stir everything to combine, then remove the pan from the heat. 

Meanwhile, mix together the jicama, radishes, and cilantro, as well as the remaining two tablespoons of lime juice, the red onion, and the Vegenaise in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper.

Assemble tacos by topping tortillas with the beef-pineapple filling, jicama slaw, and garnishes. Serves four.

“Beef” and Barley Stew

This veggie-filled soup recipe puts a spin on classic beef and barley stew, with the addition of chili powder for a pretty serious kick. And instead of hulled barley, it calls for pearl barley, which is softer and cooks more quickly because the tough outer layer has been removed. The recipe is reprinted with permission from Adams Media’s The Spicy Plant-Based Cookbook, a collection of simple dishes flavored with everything from fresh chili to homemade hot sauce. 

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped

2 medium stalks celery, trimmed and coarsely chopped

1 medium carrot, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 medium green bell pepper, seeds and stem removed, coarsely chopped

1 cup water

2½ cups tomato juice (like Mott’s or V8)

⅓ cup uncooked pearl barley

1½ teaspoons chili powder

1½ teaspoons dried parsley

2 bay leaves

1 pound plant-based ground beef

⅛ teaspoon salt

⅛ teaspoon black pepper

Fresh parsley, for garnish

Instructions

Place a large soup pot or stockpot over medium heat, add the oil, and sauté the onion, celery, carrot, and bell pepper until almost soft, about four to five minutes. Add the water, tomato juice, and barley, stirring well to combine, then add the chili powder, parsley, and bay leaves. Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook for 20 minutes. Add the plant-based beef and cook uncovered until the barley is soft, about another five minutes. Season with salt and black pepper to taste.

To serve, remove bay leaves, and ladle soup into bowls. Garnish each bowl with parsley, and serve with crusty bread for dipping. Serves six.

Chiles Rellenos

Traditional chiles rellenos are battered and deep-fried, but San Francisco chef Traci Des Jardins prefers to roast them instead, which means that her version is easier and a little lighter. “Without all that fried batter, you really taste the interplay of the chile and the filling,” Des Jardins says. She included this recipe in Impossible the Cookbook: How to Save Our Planet, One Delicious Meal at a Time, which she helped author.

Ingredients

8 fresh poblano or pasilla chiles 

3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided

12 ounces plant-based beef

½ teaspoon dried oregano

¼ teaspoon ground cumin 

Pinch of ground cinnamon 

Pinch of ground allspice 

Pinch of ground cloves

1 yellow onion, finely diced 

2 cloves garlic, minced 

½ cup canned diced tomatoes, drained

2 tablespoons raisins 

1½ cups chopped fresh parsley leaves (about one small bunch)

¼ cup slivered almonds, toasted 

1 teaspoon sesame seeds, toasted 

Kosher salt and ground black pepper 

Instructions

Preheat a broiler. Place the chiles on a baking sheet and broil, turning every few minutes, until blackened on all sides, about 15 minutes. Transfer the chiles to a large mixing bowl, and cover with plastic wrap or place in a zip-top plastic bag. Let steam for about five minutes to help loosen the skins.

Line a baking sheet with paper towels. Rinse the chiles under water, removing the charred skin. Make a two-inch slit on one side of each chili, so you can open them up a little bit. Using a teaspoon, carefully remove the membrane and as many seeds as possible. Place the chiles on the lined baking sheet. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a skillet over medium-high heat, warm one tablespoon of oil. Crumble the plant-based beef into the skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and cooked through, about three minutes. Add the oregano, cumin, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves, and mix well, then season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

Add the remaining oil to the skillet. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and add the onion, garlic, and canned tomatoes. Cook, stirring, until the onions soften, about ten minutes. Add the raisins, and cook for another two minutes. Add this to the meat mixture, and stir. Set aside one tablespoon of parsley, one teaspoon of almonds, and some sesame seeds for garnish, then add the remaining parsley, almonds, and sesame seeds to the meat mixture. Mix well. 

To assemble, spoon the picadillo mixture into each chile through the slit in the center, filling it as much as possible. Transfer the chiles to another parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast until heated through, 15 to 20 minutes. 

Serve garnished with the remaining parsley, almonds, and sesame seeds. Serves four.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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The COVID-19 pandemic boosted interest in many domestic pastimes, but baking came out on top. Sourdough starters became a kitchen staple, and close-up shots of homemade banana bread had their moment on Instagram. Then there was a run on baking supplies in the spring—when staples like wheat and bread flour sold out, many home cooks turned to alternative flours like oat and quinoa.

But it can be tricky to stick the landing on your homemade baked goods with something like rice or coconut flour. Non-wheat options have different nutritional profiles than wheat flour, and most don’t contain gluten. That’s a great selling point for anyone on a gluten-free diet, but it has a big impact on texture. Gluten gives dough its doughiness, helping it stretch and rise, trapping air bubbles, and making the finished product chewy and fluffy. Don’t fret—as long as you know how your choice can affect density, texture, and moisture, you can make great things with alternative flours.

Whether you’re looking to experiment because of scarcity, a gluten intolerance, or culinary curiosity, here’s a helpful guide to the alternative flour landscape.

Oat Flour

You can buy oat flour at the store or make it yourself by grinding rolled oats to a fine powder in a food processor or blender. Elliott Prag, lead chef at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, explains that oat flour absorbs more liquid than other flours, which makes for drier, denser baked goods. It’s great in pie crusts or granola bars, but you’ll need to add a little extra liquid or fat for moisture. If you’re making bread, cake, or anything that’s supposed to be fluffy, you can’t use only oat flour—the batter or dough won’t rise. But if you still want to add flavor and a crumbly texture, try mixing three parts all-purpose flour with one part oat.

A quarter-cup serving of oat flour has a similar nutritional profile to all-purpose flour. It’s mostly carbs—22 grams—with four grams of protein and two grams of fat. It also packs in three grams of mostly soluble fiber, which gels up when mixed with liquid, slowing digestion and lowering LDL cholesterol (the bad kind).

Almond Flour

While traditional wheat flour is made up of mostly carbs, almond flour is mostly fat: 15 grams of it in a 170-calorie quarter-cup serving. It has fewer carbs and more protein than traditional flour, with six grams of each, and it’s overall more calorically dense. The high fat content keeps things moist but can also weigh things down. Prag recommends doctoring your recipes with ingredients that add rise, like eggs or baking soda, as well as add-ins that can help lend some structure, like bananas. Almond flour is flavorful, making it a great option for a dense, nutty cake or a sweet quickbread.

Coconut Flour

Coconut flour has an even stronger taste than almond, so Prag recommends using it in recipes with complementary flavor profiles, like pineapple upside-down cake or banana bread. While its somewhat high fat content—four grams per serving—makes for denser baked goods, it’s still mostly carbohyrates. Eighteen grams of carbs lend sweetness and starch, so you can still get a cakey crumb when you bake with coconut flour. Just be ready to experiment with extra leavening agents like eggs, baking soda, or baking powder. A 120-calorie quarter-cup serving has four grams of protein, which adds a little bit of chew. One thing to note: all that fat is saturated, which the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting to no more than 10 percent of your total daily calories. That’s about 22 grams for people who eat 2,000 calories per day.

Chickpea Flour

Chickpea flour has traditionally been used in Mediterranean cooking to make carb-rich dishes like socca, a chickpea pancake. These days, people are using it to make all sorts of baked goods—including a mean gluten-free pizza crust. Its high starch content helps bind batters and doughs together, unlike crumbly oat or almond flour. With 120 calories, one gram of fat, 21 grams of carbs, and five grams of protein, a quarter-cup serving is nearly identical to all-purpose flour in terms of calories and macronutrients, but it has the added benefit of five grams of fiber, which is great for digestion and overall health. 

Rice Flour

Kimberly Hansan, who wrote an entire cookbook about rice flour, explains that it has always been a staple in Eastern cultures—it just happens to be booming in Western cooking right now thanks to the rise of gluten-free diets. Rice flour has almost no fat and just two grams of protein—about half of what’s in all-purpose flour. It’s high in starch, with 24 grams of carbs per quarter-cup serving, which means it can bind doughs together and create a chewy texture. While rice flour is traditionally used in dense, flat recipes like scallion pancakes or noodles, it also works for baking since it’s almost flavorless and rises easily. Just be sure to use baking powder or soda to help create and trap air bubbles.

Quinoa Flour 

Although quinoa has been a key part of South American cuisine for centuries, the idea of grinding it into a flour didn’t really take hold until gluten-free diets became popular. It has slightly more fat than all-purpose flour—two grams per quarter-cup serving—but is otherwise similar, with most of its 105 calories coming from carbs. Prag explains that quinoa flour bakes similarly to oat flour, creating a denser, more crumbly texture. You can try mixing all-purpose and quinoa flour in a three-to-one ratio to add nutty flavor to bread without sacrificing that squishy, chewy texture. If you’re working with just quinoa flour, opt for something like muffins or pancakes.  

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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