Have a cake and eat part of it too

Several weeks ago after Easter, I came back to the office and found all these plates of sausages,salami, deviled eggs, rolls on our kitchen’s table. Roxanne, my nurse, had her annual Easter Brunch at her house and brought the leftovers to work. Roxanne has always been a generous hostess. Her Easter brunches, with more than fifty guests, have always been a big hit in her neighborhood. She’s a marvelous cook who has, over the years, declined to make her dishes less tasty for the sake of health.

“I can’t help it Dr Tran. It would ruin my dishes without butter. NO, NOPE, not giving up butter!”

Roxanne brought me a beautiful piece of Easter Cake her friend made and cute colorful eggs made out of frosting. I’ve posted a picture at the end of this blog entry.

If you look at this piece of cake closely, you will see a missing corner. Roxanne gave me a perfect piece of cake which I brought home. Within minutes, there was a missing “wedge”.

Health Tip: Eating Cake One Wedge at a Time

Wedging is a technique that my dear husband David uses to “treat” himself to a sliver of cake, without gorging down a huge piece.

When my younger partner Dr Anders Apgar joined my practice, he nicknamed me “Dr Wedge”. He noticed how I would, in between patients, go into the kitchen and make a wedge from a donut, usually brought to us by the drug reps, or from the patients.

By the time the morning was over, I’d eaten a whole donut! I am glad a little bit of sweets would satisfy me. It’s all about portion control, which is one of the tenants of Weight Watchers.

The husband of one of my partner’s patients “tattle tailed” on her the other day, reporting to nurse Cathy that his wife had practically inhaled a dozen donuts all at once!

“A DOZEN donuts? How could you eat a DOZEN donut holes in one sitting?” Cathy was astonished.

“Who said a DOZEN donut holes? She ate a DOZEN REGULAR DONUTS!” The husband responded.

There is a good reason why most pregnant patients do not bring their husbands to the office visits!

Health Tip: Playing Hard to Get with Cake

Here is another trick to avoid overeating these “deadly” simple sugar treats. The second picture at the end of this blog shows a plate with a piece of cake covered tightly with nearly four layers of aluminum foil. It would take too much energy to unwrap it that we wouldn’t bother with it. By making it hard to get into the high calorie part inside of this plate, we avoided eating this whole piece of cake in one day. It takes discipline to stay trim! Indeed, I was too lazy to unwrap this piece of cake that we ended up throwing the rest of it away a few days later.

Health Tip: Swerve Around the Sweet Aisle in the Supermarket

I often advise my patients to avoid buying sweets at the grocery stores to curb sweet craving attacks.

“I can’t help it, Dr Tran, those chocolate bars looked so good!” Some of them would tell me.

J. Paul Sartre, a French philosopher,wisely proclaimed that we are responsible for our actions. If you ran into Sartre at the supermarket checkout counter, he’d wag his finger at you and say, “Those chocolate bars did not jump from the shelves into your cart!”

I couldn’t agree more. Don’t stroll through those aisles!

It’s not like abstaining from fried chicken or chocolate cakes would grant us immortality! It might prevent us, however, from all the unnecessary trips to the doctors to refill our hypertension or diabetes medications. Life is short, why make it even shorter by eating unhealthy foods in massive amount?

Enjoy a sweet treat on and off will not harm us at all. Moderation is key to healthy eating. It is all about common sense!

Health Tip: Make Fresh Meals At Home

The notion of “portion control” is tricky. Portion control does promote moderation. But not all portion controlled products are good for you. I know it’s meal time at work when I see my staff forming a queue in front of the microwave. So many employees bring to work frozen food boxes— a small container of macaroni and cheese or a chicken and green bean dinner with a small slice of Apple crisp.

They may not realize that “portion controlled” frozen foods are processed, full of salt and low quality ingredients.

Michael Pollan, author of “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation”, offers valuable advice on why we should cook at home. When cooking at home, Mr Pollan observes, we tend to select the ingredients more carefully. Our foods are more fresh and therefore tend to have less salt or preservatives. We sure have to spend more time cooking and, therefore, have less time for watching TV shows like the Kadeshians. I bet you they aren’t eating frozen food! With all the money we’ve helped them make, I’m sure they have chefs preparing special meals for them so that they don’t look like the 60% of Americans who are overweight!

More Health and Nutrition tips:

– Cancer protective Plant foods (Duke Medicine HealthNews, 2013) According to Stacy Kennedy, MPH,RD,CSO, LDN and senior nutritionist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Carotenoid rich foods such as pumpkins, sweet potatoes, carrots decrease risk of breast, lung and colon cancer, while cabbage, Brussels sprouts and broccoli help protect from stomach, oral cancer, prostate and lung. Cranberries are protective toward colon and lung, and some Leukemia, due to its Benzoic acid. Apples protect against mouth, throat, lung and colon cancer.

– Regular physical activities reduce the risks of dementia by 40% and the decline of thinking skills by 60%, according to a study from Portugal, led by Dr Ana Verdelho, a neuroscientist. Dr Verdelho recommended a regimen of 30minutes exercise three times weekly, especially in those who are at high risk for diabetes, stroke and hypertension.

– For heart health, a brisk walk is as good as a run. In this study consisting of 33,000 runners in runners’ Health Study and almost 16,000 walkers from the National Walkers’ Health Study , Dr Paul Williams of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Dr Paul Thompson of Hartford Hospital show how distance travelled is more important than the time spent exercising in cardiac protection.

Have a great week! Start moving those arms and legs so that you won’t feel guilty “wedging” into your favorite piece of cake, but only one corner at a time! Remember, we are the master of our body. We have control of who or how we want to be, as Albert Ellis once said:

“The best of years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own: You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny”

Like Sartre, Ellis definitely believed you were the one who grabbed those chocolate bars and those soda cans. They did not jump into your shopping cart!

Recipes of the Week

Like my friend and fellow blogger Dr Marsha Seidelman, a well known internist in our area and a great chef, I’d like to share with you some of the snacks I’ve served after our rigorous boot camp sessions. The sandwiches listed below can be prepared the night before any event. Place them on a beautiful plate in rows. Serve with coffee or tea! Eat one bite from each type of English sandwich slowly, and you’d only end up eating half a sandwich. Not bad for the portion control concept!

English sandwiches:

Strawberries “Bites”:
Ingredients:
Fresh strawberries cut in slices
Philadelphia Strawberry flavored cream cheese or plain cream cheese
White bread slices

Spread cream cheese on two slices of white bread (or your choice of bread) and put slices of strawberries in between. Cut the bread slices in six cubes. Serve with milk or tea.

Cucumber Bites:
Ingredients:
Cocktail bread in Pumpernickel or Rye ( Can also be white bread)
Butter Spread or Mayonnaise
A dash of Salt
One English cucumber sliced 1/4 inches width

Spread soft butter or Mayonnaise on two slices of cocktail bread and put slices of cucumber in between. May sprinkle a dash of salt for taste if desire. to have Cucumber “bites”, can use slices of regular bread and cut them in six cubes as described in the Strawberries bites recipe.

Eggs sandwiches:
Ingredients:
4 hard boiled eggs mashed
a teaspoon of Olive Oil
a teaspoon of Mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon of Dijon Mustard
A dash of salt if desired.
Dill sprigs if desired
Pumpernickel or Rye Cocktail bread (or White Bread if desired)

Place the hard boil eggs in a mixing bowl and cut them up into small pieces before mashing them with a folk. I actually found this way less messy and less time to clean than using the food processor! Put the rest of the ingredients in the bowl and mix well. Put egg mixture onto two slices of bread as shown in the other recipes. If using regular bread, cut slices into six cubes as above.

 Enjoy!

Thu