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Posts tagged potato chips

Eat more, weigh less

No, this isn’t about one of those ludicrous diets that proclaims “Eat all you want of your favorite foods and still lose weight!”

U.S. News & World Report’s cover story for March 7 is about “Volumetrics”–the eating plan developed by Dr. Barbara Rolls of Penn State. In a nutshell, Rolls discovered that people tend to eat about the same weight of food every day, and that equal weights of food tend to produce equal satiety. In other words, eating a certain volume of, say, potato chips, produces about the same satiety as eating an equal volume of fruit, vegetables, whatever. But as you already know, the portion of chips has a whole lot more calories and many fewer nutrients than the fruit.

Foods can be categorized by their energy density–calories divided by weight. Water and fiber reduce density, so, for instance, 100 calories’ worth of raisins (a dry food) is much more dense than 100 calories’ worth of grapes. The portion of grapes is also much larger, hence producing greater satiety.

The concept is simple but explaining it is tough. Read the article.

I read Rolls’s original book, The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan, several months ago and thought it made a great deal of sense. I’ve tried to incorporate her principles, which merge nicely with my other dietary goal of eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

The funny part is that the aforementioned book was published in 2000 to–as far as I can tell–little or no fanfare. It certainly never reached the levels of publicity enjoyed by Atkins or the Zone or the South Beach diet books. I suspect it wasn’t well publicized. When I borrowed the hardcover from the library, I almost didn’t open the book because (embarrassing confession here) the cover was so ugly. Obviously, not much effort was put into marketing the book.

Just recently Volumetrics has begin getting lots of publicity because Rolls’s second book, The Volumetrics Eating Plan: Techniques and Recipes for Feeling Full on Fewer Calories, was just published. I’ll buy it. And I highly recommend the first one.

Posted on March 2nd, 2005 under fitness. Tags: Barbara Rolls, dry food, energy density, favorite, Food, potato chips, South Beach. Comments: None

obesity for all ages

Here’s a shocker from MSNBC.com:

Obesity rising sharply among preschoolers
More than 10 percent of children ages 2 to 5 are overweight, the American Heart Association reported Thursday.

I feel fortunate to have grown up at a time when children could play outside more or less safely and when playing outside in dry weather was the expected thing. My mother is a fabulous cook, so we always had good meals. Mom often served desserts and cookies were usually available. But the meals were healthy and the cookie jar wasn’t available to us 24/7. No doubt we burned off our cookies by riding our bikes, climbing trees, and otherwise fooling around outside. We never had potato chips and that kind of junk in the house, and it was a very special treat when Mom or Dad would bring home a six-pack of 7-Up, and we all got to have one.

Of course, we had to participate in gym class at school. I hated every minute because it was usually oriented around team sports. I was always awful at team sports because they require hand-to-eye coordination, and I ain’t got any.

In junior high, when we got into calisthenics, I was reborn. That was something I could do. (Only the softball throw kept me from getting a President’s Physical Fitness patch, or whatever the thing was called.)

Ditto summer track programs, ditto jogging, ditto weight training, which I discovered in college.

The only point to this soliloquy is that I feel sorry for kids who grow up with a steady diet of junk food, passive entertainment in front of the TV, no gym class, no opportunity to discover their own physicality. The odds are against them growing up lean.

Posted on January 1st, 2005 under fitness. Tags: junk food, potato chips. Comments: None