Pasta Carbonara? Really?

It has been a shocker to me that I can eat up to 300 carbs in a day and not gain weight. We rarely hit that number but our intake thus far has far exceeded the sub-40 carbs that Ed and I generally observed. So, for me, eating a bowl of steaming Pasta Carbonara was definitely the highlight of the experiement so far - and it didn't torpedo our day's goals.

ED

Breakfast

Vanilla Yogurt and Granola

Latte

Lunch

Turkey and Cheese Sandwich on White

Dinner

Whole Wheat Pasta Carbonara with Ham and peas

Total Daily Expenditure:  $10.09

JAMIE

Breakfast

½ Wheat English muffin with Peanut butter

Apple

Latte

Lunch

Turkey and Cheddar on ½ Wheat English Muffin

Carrots and Celery

Prunes

Milk

Dinner

Whole Wheat Pasta Carbonara with Ham and peas

Total Daily Expenditure:  $6.47

CELIA

Breakfast

Apple & Cinnamon Oatmeal

Banana

Milk

Lunch

Turkey on Wheat English Muffin

Carrots & Celery

Grapes

Milk

Dinner

Whole Wheat Pasta Carbonara with Ham and peas

Total Daily Expenditure:  $5.39

Lessons Learned and Observations

On the cost front, we did alright. As a family we kept the daily spend to under $22.00. Ed was at the budget limit because he bought a take out sandwich – proving, again, that it is not an option while Eating in 3D. I know – it takes us a while. Celia rung in at an astounding $5.39 for the day!

Nutritionally, we were all over the place relative to our goals. Ed loaded up on protein but skipped the fruit. I wallowed in cheese, milk, cream and more cheese. Celia over did the sugar but actually fared well overall. Let me say that Pasta Carbonara (recipe below) – of any variety – is ecstasy after days of lean foods. This variety with chunks of ham rather than bacon and peas really hit the spot without totally killing our goals. As a result, we overdid the sodium, cholesterol and calories from fat but it was worth it. All things being equal, our gluttony was still significantly healthier than the average daily intake and everyone was satisfied when the last pea left our bowls. Viva la Italia!

Pasta Carbonara with Ham and Peas

To prepare:  Start with the ham and peas at room temperature. If necessary, warm them in microwave before adding to pasta.

Ingredients (per serving)      

3 oz Ham (84g)

Whole wheat pasta (56g)

Peas (84g)

1 oz Heavy Cream

1 Egg yolk           

1 oz Parmesan Cheese (28)

Estimated Cost: $2.45 per serving

Directions

Prepare pasta per instructions.

Cut ham into small cubes.

Combine cream, egg yolk and cheese in a bowl.

Strain pasta, reserving a little (2-3 tablespoons) of the water.

While the pasta is still hot, return to the pan and add the ham and peas. Quickly add cream mixture and the reserved water. Stir and serve immediately.

Tip:

Serve strawberries in cream for dessert to round out your milk, Vitamin C and fruit goals.

Stealing a page from the Starbucks playbook

To look at today’s charts you might think we have started to get the hang of this. Indeed, we are under budget by $3.20 and we did some things well. Yet – there is obvious room for improvement in retrospect.

ED

Breakfast            

Go Lean Crunch in milk with raspberries

Lunch   

Turkey Sandwich on Wheat with cheese

Green lettuce

Pickle

Coke Zero

Dinner 

Tofu Vegetable (carrots, chard, onion and orange bell pepper) in Trader Joe’s Red Curry Sauce

Rice

Total Daily Expenditure: $7.72

JAMIE  

Breakfast            

Coffee

½ cup Milk

Apple

Lunch   

Starbucks Fruit Nut Cheese Plate

Dinner 

Tofu Vegetable (carrots, chard, onion and orange bell pepper) in Trader Joe’s Red Curry Sauce

Rice

Total Daily Expenditure: $10.79

CELIA

Breakfast            

Apple & Cinnamon oatmeal

Milk

Raspberries (1 oz)

Banana

Lunch   

Turkey Sandwich on Wheat with cheese

Green lettuce

Pickle

Raspberry Tea Snapple

Dinner 

Tofu Vegetable (carrots, chard, onion and orange bell pepper) in Trader Joe’s Red Curry Sauce

Rice

Total Daily Expenditure: $8.30

Lessons Learned and Observations

I am going to table the discussion of the Snapple beverage that Ed bough Celia today for another time. At 52 g of sugar you can see what it did to her chart. Mind you, a glass of milk would have perfected her RDA chart. Eat to the chart!

Anyhoo…

What is that definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different outcome?  What did I think would happen to my budget when I bought a coffee and lunch at Starbucks?

Here it is in a nutshell – I’ll type it out so the words might sink in this time – you CANNOT get take out while Eating in 3D. Unless you can find food for about $3.00 you will ruin your daily budget. And if you do find food at that price, it will likely ruin your nutrition numbers (hot dogs, tacos, etc…)

Still, I’m glad that I screwed this up again because my lunch purchase got me thinking. Starbucks makes themed meal plates: Fruit and Cheese, Protein, etc…  These handy little ensembles of 600 odd calories set you back a 5 spot but do a decent job of filling you up with nutritious food. So, while right in concept, the Starbuck’s profit margin is crimping my style.

Centralized planning is the key to societal improvement right? Look what it has done for track homes, hospital food and low-income housing projects. Okay – maybe those aren’t the right examples but when it comes to daily nutrition, this is definitely the way to go. It is evident from my efforts over the past few days that left to willy-nilly meal planning we will continue to fail to meet the daily requirements, blow our budget, or both. I have great control over what the family eats for dinner but I’m finding that we eat fast, fine but not especially nutritious lunches. This is largely to blame for our inability to meet our fruit, vegetable and milk requirements each day. I end up force feeding everyone inexplicable meals of milk-braised kale and apple slices by the end of the day trying to make up for lost lunches.

So I am going to take a page from the Starbuck’s playbook and make my own lunch plates – minus the hefty markup. My goal is to get the following into the family during the noon hour:

·         <20 grams of whole grain

·         1 serving of milk/cheese

·         1 serving fruit

·         1 serving of vegetable

·         1 serving of protein (4 oz)

In doing so, I may even reclaim the hour each evening I currently spend trying to chronicle the flippin’ things that Ed consumes for lunch like M&M inspired trail mix, Hawaiian Pork sandwiches and pickles. Adding up the nutrition in these items is an agonizing necessity of this exercise.

So my “Balance” themed plate might include:

·         1 whole grain slice of bread/bagel/crackers $0.18

·         8 oz of 2% milk $0.17

·         4 oz of cheese $1.32

·         1 cup apple sliced/dried fruit $0.42

·         1 cup carrots/bell peppers/celery $0.25

·         4 oz serving of turkey $1.32

This comes to $3.66 and makes a significant dent in our nutritional deficit come dinner time. I made four at a time in less than 15 minutes so there is no big hit on the time allotment for meal preparation.

I’m feeling pretty crafty tonight.

Oops!

This is definitely trickier than one might think. Constructing a healthy meal is one thing but orchestrating all the moving parts of nutrition and cost across three meals and three people does not happen by chance. With so many tasty good-for-us foods in the house the forces of gluttony kicked in. Here are the results:

ED

Breakfast            

Latte (12oz)

Granola and Milk

Lunch   

Chicken patty sandwich with Cheese on Wheat

Steamed asparagus in milk

Coke zero

Dinner 

Grilled Pork loin

Green Beans, Bell peppers and Onions steamed with Beef broth

Tomato Slices

Brown rice

Total Daily Expenditure: $11.21

               

JAMIE

Breakfast            

Latte (12oz)

Peach

Coffee

Lunch   

Spaghetti with Shrimp Sautéed in Olive Oil

Peach

Milk

Dinner 

Grilled Pork loin

Green Beans, Bell peppers and Onions steamed with Beef broth

Tomato Slices

Brown rice

Milk

Total Daily Expenditure: $12.97

               

CELIA

Breakfast            

Apple & Cinnamon Oatmeal

Banana

Milk

Lunch   

Spaghetti with Shrimp Sautéed in Olive Oil

Raisins

Apple

Grapes

Dinner 

Grilled Pork loin

Green Beans, Bell peppers and Onions steamed with Beef broth

Tomato Slices

Brown rice

Milk

Total Daily Expenditure: $9.79

Lessons Learned and Observations

Wow!  We totally blew the budget today. At first I couldn’t figure out how we’d done it but there were a couple wiley characters hiding among the day’s bites, namely, the orange bell peppers, heirloom tomatoes, grapes and peaches. We belong to a community supported agriculture project (www.bewiseranch.com) which provides us with spectacularly fresh organic produce but, for the purposes of this experiment, I ascribe standard Vons non-sale pricing to all our produce - even veg picked from our garden. Turns out orange bell peppers are worth their weight in gold! $2.19 each and I used three for dinner. Ug! And the 2 peaches that I ate in response to my pitiful fruit performance over the past two days were $0.79 each. Double ug! Unaware of my extravagant ways, I also bought a drip coffee from Panera ringing up another $1.99. Ed ate a serving of last night’s dinner for lunch but washed them down with a Coke Zero bringing his lunch total to $4.34. Ditching the Coke for water or even milk from home would save a dollar or more. Celia squeaked in with 3 cents to spare but her day-long produce smorgasbord of banana, tomatoes, grapes, apple and orange bell pepper totaled $4.74! 

Nutritionally, we are still spiking too high on the sugar arm of the radius chart. Ed didn’t hit his fruit goal, none of us hit our vegetable goal and I still can’t seem to consume whole grains. I blame it on years of eating lo-carb. Bread and pasta scare me. On the up side, we are doing really well on the no-no side of the radius chart (the right). Our calories, fat, sodium, carbs and cholesterol numbers are great.

So my take-away for the day is that there can be too much of a good thing – at least from a cost perspective. We didn’t need all the food we ate (Celia’s 4 servings of fruit), we paid for items we certainly didn’t require (Ed’s Coke and my Coffee) and we consumed expensive foods that, at least not on sale, aren't viable for Eating in 3D.

Back to the drawing board!

Oh Sugar.

Not a bad day over all but check out the spikes that are developing in the direction of sugar. Hmmm.  I'm using a RDA of 40 grams of sugar as our guideline and I'm beginning to see how quickly you can hit this even if you aren't consuming the white granular stuff.

ED

Breakfast            

Latte (12oz)

Granola with Vanilla yogurt and raspberries

Lunch   

Fried pork and Rice

2 apples

Coke zero

Dinner 

Spaghetti with Shrimp in olive oil and fresh basil

Salad greens with Sesame Vinaigrette

Total Expenditure for the Day: $11.64


JAMIE

Breakfast            

Apple

Large coffee (16 oz) with Half & half

Lunch

Medifast Shake

popcorn

Dinner 

Spaghetti with Shrimp in olive oil and fresh basil

Salad greens with Sesame Vinaigrette

Milk (2 cups)

There seems to be a hole in my whole grains.

Total Expenditure for the Day: $8.44

CELIA

Breakfast            

Yogurt Vanilla with 2 bananas

Lunch

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

Apple

Popcorn

Dinner

Spaghetti with Shrimp in olive oil and fresh basil

Salad greens with Sesame Vinaigrette

Milk (1 cup)

Banana

Total Expenditure for the Day: $6.03

Lessons Learned and Observation

We ended the day with a total family expenditure of $26.15. Ed went over when he at the food provided at the office (we still rung up the expense as if he bought it). Takeout simply is not Eating in 3D friendly.

What’s the dealio with sugar? I understand that we aren’t supposed to suck down sodas, consume large amounts of high-fructose corn syrup or even swig natural fruit juices in high volumes. But what about the sugar that we get from eating fruits, vegetables, and drinking milk? Clearly, all fruits aren't the same. Some have more sugar than others. Does that mean that an apple may not, in fact, be quite as good for you as a strawberry? Or, do the other benefits of fruit – even the sugar ones - offset the amount of sugar they contain?

I consulted the Internet on this topic last night and I found an interesting array of experts and lay folks poo-pooing fruit juices but very few comment on the sugars in actual fruit.

One interesting study from a couple year back conducted across the pond suggests that fructose – the sugar found naturally in fruit  - might be more harmful than other types of sugar because it may contribute more heavily (punny) to the 'intra-abdominal fat'  weight around the stomach which is linked to diabetes and heart disease.

Researchers are toying with the idea that the number of calories in food might not be as important as the type of sugar it contains.

So?! Should I be concerned about blowing my 40 g of sugar per day to get my 2 servings of fruit and 3 servings of milk?  Three 8oz glasses of 2% milk + thee apples add up to 75 g – nearly twice the RDA before you’ve eaten any carbs or vegetables. That’s a pickle.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1029501/Can-fruit-make-fat-Natural-sugar-fruit-fuelling-nations-obesity-epidemic.html#ixzz0zTQkH7NB

DAY 1 - How hard can it be?

Okay - here we go! Keep the goal in mind-meet the FDA recommended daily intake without going over $10/person and without spending more than 35 minutes preparing any meal. Here is our first attempt:

Breakfast

Egg on toasted English muffin with Swiss Cheese

Latte (12oz)

Lunch

Mashed Avocado on Wheat Toast

Veggie Drink from Farmer’s Market (8 oz)

Dinner

Roast Chicken Patty on a toasted English Muffin with Mayo and Mustard

Cucumber salad with Greek Yogurt

Braised asparagus in milk and butter

Total Expenditure for the Day: $11.06

Breakfast

Egg on toasted English muffin with Swiss Cheese

Latte (12oz)

Lunch

Mashed Avocado on Wheat Toast

1 cup Clam Chowder (Progresso)

Dinner

Roast Chicken Patty on a toasted English Muffin with Mayo and Mustard

Cucumber salad with Greek Yogurt
Braised asparagus in milk and butter

Total Expenditure for the Day: $9.68

Breakfast

Go Lean Crunch cereal with ½ cup Milk

Peach

Lunch
Mashed Avocado on Wheat Toast
Vanilla Yogurt (1 cup) with Raspberries (1 oz)
Veggie Drink  (8 oz)

Dinner
Roast Chicken Patty on a toasted English Muffin with Mayo and Mustard
Cucumber salad with Greek Yogurt
Braised asparagus in milk and butter

Total Expenditure for the Day: $9.36



Lessons Learned and Observations

Our first full day of tracking our food consumption was a Sunday so two factors were at play: first, we don’t usually eat so uniformly during the week, and second, Ed and Celia went to the farmer's market which had an interesting impact the day’s totals. Speaking of totals - don't you find it intersting that even trying, we didn't achieve our RDA of the basics (whole grains, milk, fruit, etc...) I admit, I sort of thought eating all this "healthy" stuff and avoiding the crap would automatically do it. It doesn't. This is definitely going to take more engineering than I thought.

The good news is that we had no trouble, as a family, coming in under the $30/day cap that we’ve set. Celia and I were slightly under and Ed was over. For the most part the food was tasty. Ed’s breakfast sandwich was a little bland to which I say – add a condiment! A small squeeze of mayo or dab of mustard is not going to sink us in any dimension.

The veggie drink that Ed bought for he and Celia to share at the farmer’s market is an interesting case study in the nutrition/cost conundrum. Ed’s logic was that a smoothie made of fruits and vegetables would make a good mid-day snack. However, this snack cost $5.00 (or $2.50 each) which is by far the most expensive thing on menu all day. Also, at just 8 oz of produce fluid each, it didn’t really fit the bill as a snack – Celia was hungry for lunch the minute she got home. But the most interesting thing, I think, is that it turned out to backfire a bit. Both Celia and Ed were high on their sugar intake for the day – Celia even more so because she snacked again later on a cup of vanilla yogurt and raspberries.

Hmmm… this brings me to a post topic for next time, how much of a good thing is too much of a good thing? Can you overdo it with the sugar in fresh fruit and vegetables?

Is sitting all day killing you?

The Daily Record of Morristown, NJ, explored the issue of their ever-swelling human mass (not associated with the male cast of Jersey Shore) of this past Sunday. The article, “NJ obesity: Is the tide turning on obesity epidemic?” caught my eye because the title suggests that maybe progress is being. Nah.


The staff writer, Rob Jennings, offered a mild back patting by acknowledging NJ as the 10th least-obese state. But then he offered a dose of reality. The 10th least ugly fish in a barracuda contest is still hideous. Between 1995 and 2009, the percentage of obese New Jerseyans grew from 14.5 percent of adults (one in seven) to 23.9 percent — almost one in four.

One of Jennings’ experts ruminated on a possible underlying cause:

For many adults, a high-tech, overscheduled life is the culprit. "Technology, in many ways, has made us sit back, literally, and participate in society through the Web, through social marketing sites," said Celeste Andriot-Wood, assistant commissioner of the Division of Family Health Services in the state (NJ) Department of Health and Senior Services. Long hours at the office and lengthy commutes take their toll — including fast-food dinners and eating for convenience.

I think the last sentence is going somewhere. It is not the sitting, nor the commute nor the Facebook time that is splaying our collective backsides over our moaning desk chairs. It is the caramel macchiato lattes, Quiznos meal deals, and Big Gulps that keep us company while we limit our movement to our digits.

Dr. Margaret Fisher, chair of the pediatric residency program at The Children's Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center chimes in at one point to remind folks that "Low-income families don't have the same ability to buy fresh fruits and vegetables," said Fisher. "If you look at where the farmer's markets are, they're not in lower-income areas.
Ummm… Irrelevant, Judge! Grocery stores ubiquitously stock fully refrigerated sections of fresh-ish fruits and vegetables. They even have sale prices. Access to organically grown, locally produced food cannot be the life preserve we throw to economically challenged families. That said, I think Mary Finckenor, a registered dietitian at the Cardiac Health Center at Morristown Memorial Hospital, said it perfectly when she attributed "Soda ... and the proliferation of junk food" to this epidemic saying, "It all comes back to availability." On this we agree. If it isn’t nutrition – don’t buy it. When 5:00 hunger hits you in the car – an apple – even with its pesticide-ridden start in life - will start to look as good as a Tastykake (almost.)