Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes

What is a Healthy Meal?

I will ask students to collectively choose dietary guidelines that they think are best for our school population. Walter Willet and Michael Pollan focus on a few simple guidelines which I would like students to use as their focus for planning their menu. I have combined what I feel are the most important pieces of the two, as well as what is most easily accessible in terms of the school food menus. Each of these guidelines is extremely important and will play a large part in helping them design healthier menu options for the school. Students will be broken into five groups in order to research these different guidelines. Each group will present their findings to the class, and we will use this information to discuss the current school meal menus.

Eat Fewer Bad Fats and More Good Fats

For the past ten years or so advertisements, doctors and diets have all told us that eating fat is bad. Period. Many foods now have low fat or reduced fat options. It was thought that the more fat you eat the more weight you will gain. Doctors are now finding that this is not true. Your body needs fats in order to operate, so cutting them out of your diet completely is a bad idea. However, you should focus on eating more "good" fats and less "bad" fats. Good fats are fats from plants, nuts and fish. Good fats are also usually liquid at room temperature like olive oils and nut oils. Bad fats are usually solid at room temperature, like animal fats and butter. The absolute worst kind of fat you can eat is trans fat. Trans fat is not found anywhere in nature. Margarine contains trans fats, as does any product that lists "hydrogenated" oils or fats among its ingredients. Trans fats are produced in the industrial process of converting unsaturated fats to saturated fats, or adding more hydrogen (hence hydrogenated). This process of hydrogenating fats changes the chemical state of the fat, and allows it to remain a solid at room temperature. Margarine is a good example of this. However, the body does not get trans fat from any food you would eat naturally and because of this scientists are now finding that it may be one of the leading causes in obesity. Common sense should tell us not to put anything into our bodies that cannot be found in nature, but unfortunately we don't always listen to it - especially when new studies come out stating otherwise. ^{10 11}

Eat More Whole Grains than Refined

Refined-grain carbohydrates came about for the same reason margarine did - convenience. Whole-wheat products include more of the entire grain in them, while anything containing refined flour contains grain, which has already been broken down for the body. While refined grains have a much longer shelf life than whole grains, they are much less healthy for you. The body breaks down whole grains first in the mouth by chewing, and then in the stomach by enzymes. Whole grain foods will keep you full for a longer period of time, and will release the energy they contain more slowly, over time, as your body breaks them down. Refined grains have already been mechanically broken down in production and therefore they travel through your body very quickly, giving you a quick rush of energy, but then your sugar level drops quickly, you experience a low, and you are hungry again a very short time later. A quick and easy experiment students can do to demonstrate this theory is try out different types of bread. I will bring in three different types of bread for students to try: white bread, wheat bread and whole grain bread. I will give each student the same sized piece of each of the three kinds of bread. I will ask students to eat the bread, holding them in their mouths as they chew, and I will prompt students to raise their hands when they taste a change in the bread - usually a sweetness which occurs once the grains are broken down into sugars. I will have students try the bread in order, white then wheat then whole grain. I will prompt them to all begin chewing at the same time, and to raise their hand once the taste of the bread changes (like a sweetness). I will record when hands are raised. The amount of time it takes for each bread piece to go through that change is astonishing. Students will also realize that the white bread practically dissolves in their mouths within seconds, while the other two take much longer to chew before they reach that state. ^{12 13}

Choose Healthier Sources of Protein

The long and short of it is that nuts, beans, fish and poultry all contain less fat than read meat. Because of this you should try to take in most of your protein through those sources, instead of red meat. ¹⁴

Eat Plenty of Vegetables and Fruits but Hold the Potatoes

I'll start by explaining hold the potatoes. Though potatoes are a vegetable they are mostly starch and are digested by the body very similar to the way the white bread is digested. It is because of this similarity to refined grains that you should eat potatoes sparingly. Fruits and vegetables are extremely important in the diet. They contain many vitamins and minerals that your body cannot get from other sources. Fruits and vegetables should be eaten fresh as often as possible because cooking and preserving them can cause them to loose some of their most valuable nutrients. This is a HUGE part of what is lacking in the food provided by the school system. ¹⁵

Eat Less Processed Food

Foods that have been processed often have chemicals added to preserve them. If you look at the nutrition label of a food item in the grocery store it probably contains a list of chemicals that are completely foreign to you. Though most of these are present in small amounts, there is no telling what they may be doing to your body. As mentioned before with wheat, processing it changes the way your body reacts to digesting it. Processed fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, may be missing many of the nutrients that are important to your health. ¹⁶

The next task for the students will be to determine how well the meals that the school offers meet these criteria.