Better health starts with better facts (great infographs!)

Improving your health starts with improving your knowledge.

To that end, I discovered some cool and helpful infographics, revealing information about how, what and when we eat -- and how that affects our health. Designed by Column Five (under Creative Commons), sponsored by MassiveHealth, makers of the Eatery app for the iPhone.

Here are just a few snapshots from the wealth of data they've unraveled. Note: in all examples, there's more data than I'm showing here. Hit the original site if you're a data geek. Or infograph afficianado.

Think that bacon and eggs for breakfast will make you fatter than a bagel with low fat cream cheese? Think again; this chart explains what happens to fat and carbs inside your body:

You've heard that eating breakfast is important; this chart shows the difference in portion size for the rest of the day in breakfast eaters vs. breakfast skippers:

And I've had a theory that the reason any diet works in the beginning is because just about any diet is healthier that a no-holds-barred approach. Turns out the data agrees:

Other charts include:

- What effect your friends' eating habits have on your eating habits.

- What days of the week we tend to eat healthy -- or not.

- How eating at home compares to eating out.

In case you skipped the second paragraph, I'll say it again: There's more data than I'm showing here. Hit the original site if you're a data geek. Or infograph afficianado. Or you just want to improve your health.

Two handy apps for comparing food nutrition info

Have you ever wondered how two foods stack up against each other, nutrition-wise? Here are a couple handy online tools that will help you do just that.

Self Magazine's Nutrition Data

This is an extensive database with great depth of nutrion info on a wide variety of foods. Looking at a single food you can find out how filling it is compared to how nutritios it is, as well as showing you a calorie breakdown for carbs, fats and protein:

Or how complete its nutrient (vitamins and minerals) or protein profile is (i.e, how many essential amino acids its contains). 

There are also detailed lists on where the calories come from, how the carbs break down, info on fats and fatty acids, and more.

You can access all this information for free and without registering. You can also choose to compare two or more foods, but for that, you will need to register. (You will be able to opt out from getting emails sent to you.)

Two Foods

While TwoFoods.com gives you limited control and limited data, it is super simple to operate. Simply type in two food names, and you can find out how they compare in calories, carbs, fat and protein. Say, Wheat Thins vs. Triscuits, for example...

And which is healthier for topping your cracker, low fat cheddar cheese, or low fat cream cheese?

Now you have no excuse for choosing the least healthy between two snack options. (Sorry!)

Seven simple salad dressings

One of the easiest and most delicious things you can do to put healthier food into your body is to learn some recipes for homemade salad dressings. Once you start, you'll probably never buy the bottled stuff again! Homemade dressings just taste so much fresher. And you can be sure there's no corn syrup or {insert evil sweetener of your choice here} in it! I usually use Splenda, but use whatever you want. Most "Lite" salad dressings you buy in the store are low fat, but that just means a higher percentage of the product is carbs, and most likely, sugary ones.

Here are seven of my favorite homemade salad dressings I've posted here in the past. For a healthy body, happy taste buds!

Buttermilk Ranch (made with Greek yogurt)

Creamy Balsamic Vinaigrette

Tex-Mex Dressing (three ingredients!)

Ginger-peanut Salad Dressing

Almost-Panera's Asian Chicken Salad Dressing

Lemon (or Citrus) Poppyseed Dressing

Caesar Salad Dressing

Update: bonus recipe...

Creamy Italian Dressing

Homemade Caesar Salad Dressing (no coddling needed!)

Genuine Caesar dressing involves codding an egg; that is, cooking it till the white is just cooked and the yolk is slightly thickened but still runny. While delicious, that's a little fussy for my taste. Also, there is the risk of salmonella.

I discoverd this Caesar dressing recipe in a Good Housekeeping mag a few years ago. (And just now tracked it down online, here.) It uses mayo (light or egg-free, if you want), in place of the usual eggs. It's a great base, but I love a garlicky 'Caesar, so I've added some fresh garlic and tweaked a few other ingredients.

Here it is: super easy to throw together, but it ranks up there with good restaurant salads. It also makes a nice dip for veggies.

Homemade Caesar Salad Dressing

1/4 c. freshly grated Parmesan
1/4 c. mayonnaise
1 T. fresh lemon juice
1 T (or more?) olive oil
1/2 to 1 tsp. anchovy paste
1 garlic clove, crushed (1 large or 2 medium)
optional - 1/4 to 1/2 t. Dijon mustard
optional - fresh ground pepper to taste

First a tip: I grate the Parmesan first. To avoid a mess on the counter or an extra dirty dish, I place the 1/4 measuring cup in the bottom of my mixing bowl and grate right into that. Sure, some extra will spill into the mixing bowl, but this is a case where exact proportions of ingredients aren't crucial. And a little extra Parm? Never a bad thing!

Then, after dumping and removing the measuring cup, I scoot the grated cheese aside and place all the other ingredients in the void. Whisk those ingredients together, then stir in the cheese. chill for an hour.

Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. If it’s too bland, add more garlic or parmesan. If it’s too sharp, add more olive oil.

Here is the nutrition data from Good Housekeeping; it includes romaine and croutons:
4 g. protein
13 g. carbs (w/ croutons; it would be far less without, for those doing low carb)
8 g. fat

photo credit: Tara Donne, via GH

Sugar in food: Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Having been diagnosed at a young age with reactive hypoglycemia, I've long been aware of the fact that modern food products hide alarming amounts of sugar, and conceal sugar in foods you'd never think contain it.


Like in food labeled as "Sugar Free":

Or ketchup:

Britain's FSA (Food Service Authority) defines high-sugar content as being 10%. Heinz Tomato Ketchup contains 23.5%. (British info source. Percentage from Heinz U.S. website.)

The following facts are just a taste (sorry!) of what investigative reporter Michael Moss uncovered in his book Salt, Sugar, Fat, about America's food industry. (Via buzzfeed. More fun facts there!)

The American Heart Association's recommendation for women's sugar intake is just five teaspoons a day. That's half a can of Coke. Or one and a half Fig Newtons.

Another source puts it like this: The American Heart Association recommends that women eat no more than  six teaspoons of added sugars per day or nine teaspoons for men. But, one 20-ounce bottle of soda contains about 16 teaspoons of sugars from high-fructose corn syrup. In other words...

(By the way, Coca-Cola executives refer to consumers who drink more than two or three cans a day as "heavy users.")

And as I said before, sugar is hiding in unexpected places. There's as much sugar in 1/2 cup of Prego tomato sauce as there is in three Oreos.

This fact alone (reported in Moss's book) is particularly telling...

Some packaged food executives don't actually eat the products their companies make.

John Ruff from Kraft gave up sweet drinks and fatty snacks. Bob Lin from Frito-Lay avoids potato chips. Howard Moskowitz, a soft drink engineer, doesn't drink soda.

Go thou and do likewise.

10 things to do with a bacon-weave

My husband once wove some bacon together and draped it over a pork loin (yes, redundant, I know), but I had no idea that the bacon weave was a "thing." 

But it is. A little googling prooves that it most certainly is!

First, the most obvious {forehead smack} use: ensuring that every single bite of your BLT is bacony!

Food blogger SavoryNotes makes a mean bacon weave and takes a mighty-fine pic, above. (But a BLT on white bread -- untoasted?! That ain't right!) Her method involves whiskey and brown sugar. Hmm.

Lifehacker commenter JaySinn divulges his secret for a simple, single-serving bacon weave:

I find 2 slices and a microwave do the job nicely - cut the slices in half, then do a similar weave, but just three parallel and one perpendicular slice woven in the middle. Paper towel underneath and on top, into the microwave for 3-4 minutes and you get a nice crispy square of bacon, that is all stuck together in one easy to apply slice. The microwave method is much faster and you don't have to drain the fat off while cooking as the paper towel absorbs the excess.

The Republic of Bacon claims the best BLT ever, featuring a bacon weave and chipotle mayo. They certainly have a brilliant idea on how to efficiently cut your bacon in half:

Here are just a few of the other, dare I say, stunning things people have done with their carefully woven bacon...

A grilled bacon-weave turkey from BarbequeMaster:

Here is it topping an Easter ham, studded with cloves and glazed with a pineapple-juice/brown-sugar/7UP concoction, from the appropriately named LifeCandy:

The "baco" - a bacon taco - via This is Why You're Fat (also appropriately named):

Bacon weave as a stand-in for pizza crust, via FoodBeast:

In the same vein, bacon-weave as a stand-in for bread, via the DailyBacon:

Have you heard of a fatty? AKA, "bacon explosion." It involves bacon wrapped around sausage and, depending on the recipe, possibly other things. (Ah, America!) Most of the ones I've seen are really too grotesque for me to share here, gentle reader, but if you are made of strong enough stuff, you can find detailed instructions at Grilling24x7:

Things get curioser and curioser...

Bacon-weave-topped apple pie - via Is This Thing On?:

A bacon-weave salad bowl, also via FoodBeast:

And last but not least: Turtle burgers:

No, those aren't actually turtles: the center is hamburger and the legs, heads and tail are hot dogs.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take some Maalox and lie down...

Recipe review: White Bean Chicken Chili

I saw a yummy-looking recipe pinned on Pinterest the other day and thought it sounded like great food for a snow day. But when I looked up the recipe, it didn't sound so great. The recipe was scaled to feed a crowd, and used very little actual chicken.

I still loved the idea, though, so I hit AllRecipes and found this one there.

Photo from AllRecipes.

I made a couple minor tweaks: I only used one can of beans, and skipped the cayenne. I also used already-roasted chicken breasts from Dillon's deli to cut down on some time and effort. (The secret to getting juicy roasted chicken at the grocery store? Pick it up at 3:30 or 4 pm. By 5 or later, they've been sitting under heat lamps too long and have become nasty-dry.)

This was a hit with my husband -- and that's sayin' something, because he is an avowed soup-hater! And he even commented on how good the chicken was. He's not really a huge fan of chicken, either.

I liked it because it was fairly simple to throw together. And yes, yummy! (A tiny bit too spicy for me, but then, I'm a spice wimp.)

If you've already made traditional chili in the last week but you're not out of snow days yet, this is great cold-weather food! White Bean Chicken Chili, via AllRecipes. Husband and wife approved.