Stripes + floral + bright pink = be still my heart. I absolutely adore how this turned out on Andi last spring (even if she did have to do some last minute substitutions, one pregnancy-related).
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| From just-another-smith.blogspot.com |
I used this outfit as inspiration for wearing my new uber-spring-y cardigan. I mean, the lightweight fabric, light mint-aqua color, the 3/4 length sleeves? It's made for this.
Navy top with light blue/mint stripes (Target), $2.33/wear
Navy paisley skirt (thrifted, Target), $0.75/wear
*Mint-aqua 3/4 sleeve cardigan (thrifted, Studio Works), $5.24/wear
Gold flats (Nordstrom), $2.38/wear
Gold/clear ruffled collar necklace (Target), $2.50/wear
Outfit total: $13.20/wear
I'm glad it's gold flats season because that makes it easy to follow what I like to call the Golden Rule of Three: gold shoes, gold necklace, gold hair. Boom.
This week I'll continue posting some bird photos from our wildlife refuge visit. Here is a very uncooperative tree swallow. As soon as I got this quick snapshot taken, he took off from his perch, started chasing a lady, and quickly mated with her in a tree. He definitely does not have his priorities straight!
In other news...Tam sent this article about the new food nutrition labels, which look like a very nice improvement over the current ones, though I agree that the "added sugars" should be reported in teaspoons (a measure that Americans understand) rather than only grams (a measure that we don't).
I doubt this is going to have a wide impact on obesity rates and all those wonderful Big Good Outcomes that people are hoping for, but I am completely in favor of companies having to disclose what is in their products so that people who wish to do so can make informed choices. The expectation that many people will not base their decisions on the nutrition information is not a good reason for the information not to be available to those who do care.
I do think it's interesting that the sugar industry is virulently opposed to the new sugar labeling. If people's purchases aren't affected by the labels, why do they care so much? Not every player in the food industry opposes it, so I can't believe it's just because it's somehow unreasonably costly for companies to collect the data that goes on the labels, you know?
Of course, we could be wrong about the idea that added sugars are bad for you. (God knows American nutrition researchers have made being wrong their life's work, pretty much--see the whole "fats are bad" movement, for example.) My mom likens these things to the following dialog from Woody Allen's Sleepers:
- Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
- Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Until then, I am glad to know about the added sugar content of the foods I buy. I still remember when I found out how much sugar was in the sandwich bread from Panera--ye gods! I've never eaten a Panera sandwich since then. (I have no idea whether they've reformulated their bread to be less sugar-laden than it was 10 years ago.)
Do you read nutrition labels? Do you make decisions on the basis of the information?
12 comments:
I definitely read nutrition labels and choose accordingly. I know trans fats are about to be banned, but I noticed that once nutrition labels started having to report that information, they started going way down in (or being eliminated from) tons of products (including fast food, since the fast food companies tend to provide nutrition info in line with the laws for packaged goods even though they're generally not required to). So whether many/most consumers use the information or not, clearly food companies think we do, and reformulate accordingly. That should be enough to freak the sugar people out.
What's not so clear to me is whether replacing sugars with other refined carbs is an improvement. For instance, a bunch of cereals now have less sugar (by about 7 grams per serving) than when we were kids, but the nutrition info (carbs, calories) is basically the same otherwise - the sugars were replaced with other simple carbs. There's not much evidence that sugars are worse than other simple carbs (at least according to, e.g., this article).
But I also think this is taking too mechanical a view of nutrition. If the cereals actually taste less sweet, then they probably aren't quite as hyperpalatable as formerly, and that's probably an improvement. People won't want to eat as much of them and won't have as much of a sweet tooth, perhaps.
Of course, some people want to say, like, well Froot Loops are not healthy no matter what, even if you get the whole grain no-artificial-stuff, non-GMO, organic Whatchamacallit Loops from the health food store. It's basically just a bunch of sweetened refined grains. But I think from a population-wide standpoint these changes can make a big difference even if we'd prefer that magically everyone starts serving their kids (and themselves) an actual healthy breakfast.
Sorry, I could ramble about nutrition stuff all day.
Yes, it seems clear that the sugar industry folk think that people will use the nutrition information. The trans fat case is a good example.
Have you tried any of these less-sugared cereals? I have to think that they are less tasty than the Sugar Smacks of yore. (Yep, I'm old enough to remember when they were called Sugar Smacks. My dad loved that stuff but I didn't get to eat it!)
I haven't tried them. I tried to find reviews online earlier, but wasn't able to.
What I don't really do is use nutrition labels to make large changes in my eating. For instance, I don't use them to conclude that frozen pizzas are nutritionally sub-optimal and thus I will instead eat other things. (I don't need labels for that, exactly.) But I definitely use them to choose between frozen pizzas. Well, maybe not frozen pizzas (unless they have trans fats, which I pretty strenuously avoid), but things that have more nutritional variation, like spaghetti sauces, or jellies, or yogurts, etc.
I guess that's not true - I do sometimes use nutrition labels to find out that a category of food just won't really work for me. For instance I sometimes see drinkable yogurt things (or kefir, which I loved as a kid) in fruit flavors, and I think, maybe that would be a good breakfast food! And then I look and a single serving container has 39 grams of sugar and I'm like nah, guess not.
But things that are already known to be indulgent, like pizzas or donuts, or that I kind of know aren't ideal because they're so processed, like mac and cheese, I am not put off of by nutrition labels.
I'm curious what exactly the added sugar category includes. I mean, sometimes they'll use fruit juices to sweeten things "naturally" but that's still basically sugar... is that considered an added sugar?
I do read the labels, usually to make decisions between different brands/options too. The yogurt thing reminds me that my work just recently started stocking the full-fat plain greek yogurt -- finally! It's like the whole world thinks non-fat sugar-laden (or artificial sugar-laden) yogurt is a good thing or something... my pet peeve.
Jen, that's a great question--and one that Tam posed to me as well in her initial email. It seems completely obvious that added fruit juice is added sugar but it's unclear whether that's how the regulation will work.
Glad to hear that you have a full-fat yogurt option at work. Healthier AND tastier--an improvement on all counts.
I have also used labels to decide between brands/options (I haven't lately because I am eating mostly the same things on a regular basis and I know what's what). But I have also definitely been put off a category of food based on all options being horrible on the label.
Tam, I guess it makes sense that you're more likely to react to the information when it's about a relatively novel product (kefir) and not something you already know (mac and cheese). My experience has been mostly the same, except when I decided I needed to increase or reduce something in my diet and reviewed labels of foods I regularly ate to decide whether they would work.
I don't get the excitement about the new "added sugar" category. At least they're still telling us the total sugars. The article says "For example, in chocolate milk and canned peaches, it was impossible to know how much sugar was naturally occurring (and generally healthy) and how much was added in to boost the taste." I don't think naturally occurring sugar is healthy, though I do think milk and peaches are healthy enough to eat them anyway in spite of the lactose and fructose. And I could get an idea about how much actual milk was in the product by looking at calcium and how much actual peaches are included by looking at fiber.
I don't like that they are removing Vitamin A and C nutrition information "[because] these deficiencies are now rare." Maybe they are rare partly because companies started doing things like adding vitamin C to things that you expect vitamin C to be in, but it isn't (like orange-strawberry-banana juice that's made mostly of apple and white grape juice). Without this on the label, will companies stop adding vitamin C and will that in turn lead to an increase in deficiencies?
What's really news to me is the second article you linked. "The body treats all refined carbohydrates the same, whether they are sugars or grains." I thought there were two kinds of carbs: simple and complex. And I knew that when you refine grains, you lose a lot of the vitamins and fiber. But I've never heard that the remaining complex carbs are as bad for you as sugar.
I feel like one of those does-not-compute robots on Star Trek. It makes no sense that refined complex carbs are just as bad for you (except maybe for your teeth) as simple sugars. Though in my real life, it probably doesn't matter much. I already focus my grocery store purchases on grains that have fiber on the label, if for no other reason than that I don't eat enough vegetables. So I do all my baking with whole wheat flour. And I mix Uncle Sam cereal with yummy cereal, because it has the most fiber I can find (with the possible exception of--oh, what's it called?--that really hard, crunchy fibery cereal). And even my yummy cereal is usually granola (whole oats are in there), though it may be chocolate granola.
And speaking of does-not-compute nutrition news, I'm still re-training myself about milk fat. I buy skim milk because I don't like the flavor of real milk, but I certainly can switch back to full-fat other dairy products, but I keep forgetting.
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Tam, I wonder if mixing kefir with fruit in a blender would be acceptable. Or making pretend kefir with yogurt, fruit, and milk. There's still added sugar (though not by the new nutrition label rules, I assume), but just from fruit and it might be a delicious breakfast food.
And Sally, bummer about Panera bread. I felt similarly about La Madelleine bread after reading about the sodium levels. Yikes. I still eat it when I'm out, but I don't fantasize about buying an extra loaf to bring home.
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Interestingly, after I clicked the "I'm not a robot" box to post this comment, I came back to proofread, etc. And now I have the message "Verification expired. Check the checkbox again." Because although I was convincing a minute ago, I may since have turned into a robot.
Debbie, being a robot would make sense of the "does not compute" response :D
I think the whole how-healthy-are-carbs question is confusing. I don't eat a lot of carbs because my blood sugar levels don't like it.
But whole fat milk? That I do like. Other milk is kind of disgusting but whole milk is actually pretty good!
Robert looked up the nutrition info on Panera bread and found that they appear to have moderated the sugar...but now the sodium level is ridiculous. I can't tell whether they have actually increased the sodium or whether I didn't realize about the sodium before because the sugar was so extra-ridiculous.
I don't really like milk. I grew up on powdered skim milk--not Carnation, which is disgusting, but Sanalac, which is, well, better. Or it was, I swear--I remember it tasting the way skim milk from a carton tastes now. When I first tasted regular milk, it tasted like they had mixed in too much powder. Too many flavor crystals! Anyway, yes, I am a weirdo. But I like that skim milk tastes more like water than regular milk does. I like water.
Although I'm thinking I could probably train myself to like higher-fat milk. Maybe I'll try the next step up next time.
I don't notice carbs doing anything bad to my blood sugar levels. I don't even notice a sugar high or sugar crash. (Which could just mean I'm clueless rather than that there are no effects, but either way, they are not strong effects.) (I did notice that I am addicted though--stopping cold turkey gave me headaches.)
And grains are one of my two favorite food groups. So I'm biased to want to think they're healthy.
(Bizarrely, my other favorite food group is dairy: chocolate milk, milk with cookies or cake, hot chocolate, cheese, ice cream, yogurt, sour cream, pudding, and more cheese. Not mouse, though, oddly. Or tres leches cake, really, which one would think might be perfect. French toast is much more perfect.)
Bummer that Panera bread is still unacceptable. Hmm, I now remember how I felt reading the nutrition facts on Schlotzke's sandwiches. Even the tiny regular one is practically a day's calories. I won't say I will never eat one again, but I will say that it has been years.
Debbie, I think "added sugars" really do make a difference. For example, there's absolutely no evidence that eating fruit is bad for people - it seems exclusively associted with good health outcomes. (Assuming you're not allergic to it or something.) That's maybe because in addition to sugars, fruits include fiber and bulk and water and other nutrients our bodies like. (It seems sort of clear, to take a simple example, that it's generally healthier to slice up an apple on your cereal than to sprinkle an equal amount of sugar onto it.)
So say I go buy a can of peaches, knowing that eating fruit is good for me and I don't need to worry about the sugar in fruit. The peaches are packed in 'natural juice'. That's OK, I'll drain them, but was that just regular juice like they had to pack it in something and didn't want it to taste watery? Or is it like concentrated juice that is secretly adding sugars? It's really hard to tell unless I just compare a whole bunch of cans and see which kind has the least sugars.
"Added" sugars also make things hyperpalatable. It's OK with me if a pizza has some sugar from the tomatoes in the sauce, but I won't notice (but do mind) if the crust or sauce is loaded up with sugar just to make me crave more of that pizza next week. So yeah, I mean theoretically I can look at all of the pizzas and try to buy a less-sweet one, but I really don't mind if it just has sweet veggies on top or is more saucy.
And yogurt and milk are good examples too. Both of those contain naturally occurring sugar, but of course I care whether they're also sweetened. I don't think the natural sugars in milk products cause health problems (well, except lactose intolerance, of course) but I don't want to have to walk around with some weird reference values in my mind of how many grams of sugar everything is 'supposed' to contain.
Or say I buy raisin bran and I'm cool with the raisins but I don't want it to be sweetened much otherwise. OK, the box has "sugar" in the ingredients, but so does a Cheerios box, and that shit is barely sweetened (1 gram per serving). Is this raisin bran barely sweetened (just with a lot of sugar from raisins) or does it also have a bunch of sugars? (For that matter, you get the same question with something like dried cherries. They often have sugar added, but how much? It's really hard to tell from the label.)
I do agree that in some cases it doesn't make as much different as people think - like whether you're drinking apple juice or apple 'drink' is probably not that important. They're both just sugar water with minimal nutritional content.
Excellent point, Tam. You've changed my mind and I'm now all for the new added-sugar part of the label. Thanks!
Yay! I wasn't sure you would even come back here to read the responses.
I tend to leave the window open a day or three so I can check back.
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