Healthy Food & Healthy Living by Dr. Ayala

Arugula, spinach, pomegranate and quinoa salad

A seasonal colorful and crunchy salad to decorate your festive table, and it’s also perfect for guests on a vegan and gluten free diet. The recipe is more greens than grain, but you can change the greens to quinoa ratio for a more hearty dish.

 

Ingredients

Salad

½ cup quinoa, rinsed

1 cup water

2 tablespoon finely chopped sweet onion or shallot

2-3 cups baby arugula

2-3 cups baby spinach

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

¼ cup dried cranberries

½ cup pomegranate seeds

2 tablespoons toasted sliced almonds

Crumbled soft goat cheese (optional)

 

Dressing

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

Zest from one lemon

2 tablespoons lemon juice

½ teaspoon honey or agave

Salt and pepper to taste 

 

Preparation 

 

In a small pot bring quinoa and 1 cup of water to a boil. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer for 15-20 minutes, until quinoa starts to get translucent and small curly tails sprout (the tail is the quinoa’s germ). Let cool

Combine the rest of the salad ingredients in a large bowl. Add cooked quinoa 

To make the dressing whisk all the ingredients in a small bowl

Just before serving, pour the dressing, toss, test and correct seasoning and serve immediately.

Enjoy,

Dr. Ayala

Family meals that work: Keep calm and carry a conversation

Gathering around the dinner table and sharing a meal is a cornerstone of healthy living. Families that eat together not only eat better, but are also reaping many psychological benefits. There’s also some evidence that family meals are associated with lower risk of obesity. 

Sharing a communal meal – any meal – is better than grabbing something in front the TV, but if we could identify what’s most important, most protective, in a family meal, this could better guide families towards family meals that work. 

The Family Meals LIVE study is a 2-year study that looks at key risk and protective factors for childhood obesity in the home, and it recruited 120 low–income kids and families from the Minneapolis/St Paul area and recorded family dinners at home for 8 days. The participants all came from families that normally ate family meals together, and were told that the study’s aim was to look at “modern day” dinner and that they should just eat normally. The recordings were then analyzed for interpersonal and food related behaviors, and the findings were published in the Pediatrics journal.

Keep calm and eat in pleasure

The study, led by Jerica Berge, found that the atmosphere around the table mattered. Families that enjoyed the meal, and had warm, calm and positive conversations had a higher tendency for normal weight.

On the other hand, hostility, frequent criticism, shouting, food lecturing (“children in other countries are starving…”) and indulgent and inconsistent parenting were associated with heavier kids.

Overweight kids also had significantly shorter meals – they were shorter by about 5 minutes.

These results held true even after they were adjusted to the parent’s weight.

And a few more observations about how the modern family eats: Almost two thirds of families had an electronic screen on (TV, cell phone, computer, electronic game) during the meal. In most families parents preplated kids’ dish, rather than let the kids fill his own plate or ask him what he wants.

The take home message from this study is simple: Serve a good meal and enjoy it. Dinnertime should be an event we look forward to at the end of each day, a joyful time to reconnect, listen, and be stimulated by food and talk. Although the results of the study are not in any way surprising, I think that too many parents are sidetracked by the belief that if they just reasoned with the kid a bit more, just pushed a little, made a bigger effort, their kids would have better eating habits.

Instead, let's try this: once a healthy meal is on the table consider your job done; you're now a guest at your own dinner party, there to appreciate good food in good company.

I'm pretty sure that when a family has a good time at the dinner table, they’ll tend to linger. 

Dr. Ayala

The soda tax experiment, now underway

Berkeley made history yesterday by becoming the first US city to successfully pass a soda tax. The 1-cent-per-ounce tax, which will cover caloric soda, sports drinks, energy drinks and sweet teas, will take effect Jan. 1 2015. The larger the bottle, the more noticeable the price increase will be. 

The combination of cash-strapped state budgets, the obesity epidemic, and the conclusive evidence tying sugary drinks to this epidemic and to bad health outcomes brought about sugary drink tax initiatives in more than two dozen states, but up until now, all these attempts were fought off successfully by massive spending by the soda industry.

Is Berkeley’s going to pave the way for other cities, as it did before with non-smoking sections in restaurants and curbside recycling?

Time, and I hope, a few careful studies will tell.

Price generally affects purchase decisions and there are many indications that soda sales are very price sensitive. It’s expected that if a tax were high enough, sales of sugary beverages would decrease. Scholars theoretically debate to what extent taxes can affect obesity rates, with some studies concluding that even a modest one would improve public health by reducing obesity, while others contend that unless the tax is significant enough, behaviors won’t change. 

Mexico began taxing soda in January this year. Preliminary findings showed a 10 percent decline in the taxed beverages' sales, and a 7 percent increase in the sales of non-taxes drinks (water, flavored water, milk, 100% juice, diet soda). A survey in August found that the majority of Mexican participants said that they’re drinking less soda, and that they relate sugary drinks with health problems such as diabetes and obesity.

The main argument used in fights against the tax is its regressive nature: A soda tax will affect low-income people more than it would impact higher income households as soda consumption is highest in lower socioeconomic homes and minority groups. On the other hand, low-income people stand to also benefit the most: The health problems caused by obesity fall disproportionately on the poor. The programs that these taxes will fund — be it health insurance coverage, wellness programs, anti-obesity initiatives or subsidies for healthy foods — will also benefit low-income people the most. 

The battles against taxing sugary drink elsewhere were successful in preventing them from becoming law, but by fighting the fight, the soda industry has been also drawing increasing attention to this important health issue. Tax it or not, people are ever more aware that sugary drinks are harmful, and they’re already consuming less of them. 

The Berkeley sugary drinks law might be the experiment that provides the evidence that would justify similar measures in other cities. 

Dr. Ayala

Full disclosure: I’m vice president of product development for Herbal Water, where we make organic herb-infused waters that have zero calories and no sugar or artificial ingredients. I’m also a pediatrician and have been promoting good nutrition and healthy lifestyle for many years.