Nutrition Archives - Page 7 of 9

6 Healthy habits to ride with in 2021

January 25, 2021

Am I the only one who feels like this has been the shortest January lived so far? Very dramatic yes but too short for a January. Oh and less cruel I must say. For me at least. But regardless we move.

This first month has been packed with lots of activities and it could be the reason I feel it is short that one could forget it is the first month of the year. There is always something about the flip of the calendar, there is always a renewed energy to reinvent and re-strategize certain things in life although this year I have heard so many people say they will go slow about it given the way way 2020 turned out. Being an ambassador for healthy living, let me share 6 habits that I would recommend to ride with in this year.

1. Look out for the seasons

Who has heard the notion that eating healthy is expensive? A friend of mine confessed that he would love to eat fruits everyday as recommended but they are just expensive and he cannot keep up. Well guess what, it is just about time you stopped buying expensive health foods that you cannot keep up with and start buying seasonally. An apple a day keeps the doctor away true but if you know you can afford to spend 1000/= for just one apple daily, how about finding out what fruits are in season that time. Is it bananas, mangoes or pineapples? When things are in season, they tend to be more affordable so you will not feel the strain of eating healthy. If peas are not in season and the prices are not favorable, what alternative legume is in season? Buy that and wait for the peas to bounce back. It usually does not take long. One way of knowing whether a particular food item is in season or not, you will see a difference in the prices on the market to what you expect them to be.

2. Embrace variety in your meals

The habit of eating the same exact thing everyday needs to stop, even when this is a healthy choice. Variety is the key of health. Having the same thing every day, week on week is never going to help you reach peak energy levels. I understand that at times this is what we have most available to us but I also cannot ignore the fact that it could be the most convenient choice in terms of cooking. The way this can be beaten is by planning way in advance. This is something we call meal planning where you sit and brain storm on the meals that you plan to have the whole week for yourself together with your family. Variety can be as simple as having beans on Monday with potatoes and dodo to having beans in groundnut paste with rice and Sukuma on Tuesday. When you plan in advance, it helps you to be well prepared rather than trying to figure out what to cook after a frustrating day at work.

3. Look out for interesting healthy recipes

Making healthy meals does not require complicated recipes. The trick is to make the recipe very easy until it becomes a default. Very many times when you talk about recipes, very many people are quick to say that they do not have an oven so those recipes can not work for them. Well just to help us understand, a recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish of prepared food. So looking out for interesting healthy recipes can be as simple as looking at someone cook a particular dish in a different way than you cook it or even trying to cook something a little different from the way you normally do. Some time back I visited a friend and saw the way she cooked her posho (ugali). She added butter and salt as she cooked it and boom I had discovered a new recipe. A healthy one at that because this person had added value to the ordinary dish that I have eaten for most of my life.

4. Band wagon dieting needs to take a rest

Put up your hand if you are currently on a diet because you have seen it being overly advertised online or because your friend said this is the wonder diet to get rid of your tummy.

Many people have fallen victim of attempting to do diets that are not tailored to their nutritional needs only to be disappointed later when it does not work or even harmful to their own health. There is a lady I know who was recently diagnosed with scurvy ( a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin C, characterized by swollen bleeding gums and the opening of previously healed wounds ) and this is because this lady was convinced to do the keto diet as it it would be her ‘wonder drug’ for the tummy she had that had refused to go ever since having her twins. Unfortunately this lady decided to take up this diet and even did not consult a professional and ended up doing it wrong hence falling victim of scurvy. If you must subscribe to a diet, at least reach out to a professional to give you an informed guide.

5. Break a sweat doing something you enjoy

The pressure to stay fit and have a ‘perfect’ shape is real and unfortunately very many people begin an unending journey of things they do not exactly enjoy only to fall out in just a matter of weeks. I for one have been a one embarrassingly unfit human but each time I would try to do exercises, I would give up on day two because by this day every part of my body is screaming in pain. After so many failed attempts, a dear friend of mine suggested that I should try to do dance routines since I love to dance. From the very first day I tried, I knew that this relationship would last. My fitness has greatly improved and it is something that I do without even trying so hard. So how about you look for something you enjoy doing and you shoot two birds with one stone.

6. Your body is not their body

Last but not least, the pain of comparison is not worth it. We have seen people want to alter their bodies for the perfect bodies they have seen on Instagram. I am sorry to break it to you that the bodies you see online are not all a result of healthy eating or exercise. Many of them are a product of filters and body shapers. Let the goal here be to adopt healthy eating habits and lifestyle and like they say, the rest will fall in line. Do not forget to have routine medical checkups rather than waiting when the body is falling apart.

May this year be a year of rediscovery in terms of our healthy life styles. We can make healthy fun and enjoyable

Nutrition

Meal planning

November 12, 2020

Meal planning, in simple terms is planning ahead the foods that will be eaten for the next few days

We are in a world that is fast paced, where mummy and daddy are both busy, our household managers also have a lot to deal with in the home and the choice of meals to prepare can become such a hard paper. Amidst hectic weekday schedules, meal prep or meal planning is a great tool to help keep the family on a healthy eating track. Although any type of meal prep requires planning, there is no one correct method, as it can differ based on food preferences, cooking ability, schedules, and personal/family goals. The most I will give in this is a guide and you can take it on from there.

Ever left work late with a growling stomach but little energy to shop and cook? Or even stomachs waiting on you at home? A busy schedule is one of the top reasons why people choose convenient or quick takeout meals, which are often calorie-laden and a contributor to unhealthy eating.

Now, imagine a different scenario where within a few minutes of walking through the door you have a delicious healthy home-cooked dinner for yourself and or family, and perhaps even lunch packed-up for the next day to take with you to work. Amidst hectic weekday schedules, meal prep as many call it or meal planning is such a great tool to help keep us on a healthy eating track. Although any type of meal prep requires planning, there is no one correct method, as it can differ based on food preferences, cooking ability, schedules, and personal/family goals as earlier mentioned.

The benefit of meal planning are immense but I will point the most obvious;

Save money
Save time
Help with weight control, as you decide the ingredients and portions served
Contribute to an overall more nutritionally balanced diet
Reduce stress as you avoid last minute decisions about what to eat, or rushed preparation

Beginning to prep the meals here are some of the things to possibly consider

Discuss with your family what types of foods and favorite meals they like to eat.
Start a monthly calendar (you can do this on a spreadsheet or just a book) to record your meal ideas, favorite recipe sites, and food shopping lists.
Collect healthy recipes. Clip recipes from print magazines and newspapers and save in a binder, copy links of recipes onto an online spreadsheet or better yet you can download a recipe app.
Consider specific meals or foods for different days of the week. Remember Wednesday as Boiled food Day? Some families enjoy the consistency of knowing what to expect, and it can help to ease your meal planning. Examples are Meatless Mondays, Whole Grain Wednesdays, Stir-Fry Fridays, etc.
Start small: Aim to create enough dinners for 2-3 days of the week.

How Meal Planning Saved My Sanity: Lessons (and Recipes) From a Reluctant Meal Planner

Having taken these considerations, let us get started;

Choose a specific day of the week to: 1) plan the menu, whether week by week or for the whole month, and write out your grocery list 2) food shop, 3) do meal prep, or most of your cooking. Some of these days may overlap if you choose, but breaking up these tasks may help keep meal planning manageable.
As you find favorite ‘prep-able’ meals, or your menus become more familiar and consistent, watch for sales and coupons to stock up on frequently used shelf-stable ingredients like pasta, rice, and other whole grains, peas, beans, jarred sauces, healthy oils, and spices.
On your meal prep day, focus first on foods that take the longest to cook: proteins like beans and peas, chicken and fish; whole grains like brown rice, dried beans and legumes; and, roasted vegetables.
Also consider preparing staple foods that everyone in the family enjoys and which you can easily add to a weekday meal or grab for a snack: washed greens for a salad, hardboiled eggs, a bowl of chopped fruit, cooked beans.
If you prefer not to pre-cook proteins, consider marinating poultry, fish, or even beef on your prep day so that you can quickly pop them into the oven or stir-fry later in the week.
Multi-task! While foods are baking or bubbling on the stovetop, chop vegetables and fresh fruit, or wash and dry salad greens for later in the week.
When you cook a recipe, make extra portions for another day or two of meals, or to freeze for a different week. Be sure to date and label what goes in the freezer so you know what you have on hand.
For lunches, get a head-start and use individual meal containers. Divide cooked food into the containers on prep day.

So you may be wondering how to keep produce and precooked food that is to be frozen fresh and tasting as natural as possible? This segment will answer you?

Refrigeration and freezing are an important step to successful meal planning. However, forgotten food such as produce hiding in a drawer or a stew stored on a back shelf in an opaque container for too long can spoil and lead to food waste. The trick is to label all prepped items with a date so that you can track when to use them by. Rotate stored items so that the oldest foods/meals are kept up front. Store highly perishable items like greens, herbs, and chopped fruits front-and-center at eye-level so you remember to use them.

When it comes to freezing, some foods work better than others. Cooked meals tend to freeze well in airtight containers. Foods with high moisture content, such as salad greens, tomatoes, or watermelon, are not recommended as they tend to become mushy when frozen and thawed. Blanching vegetables for a few minutes before freezing can help. However, if the texture of a frozen food becomes undesirable after thawing, they might still be used in cooked recipes such as soups and stews.

The following are the recommended times for various cooked foods that offer the best flavors, maximum nutrients, and food safety.

Refrigeration at 40°F or lower
1-2 days: Cooked ground poultry or ground beef
3-4 days: Cooked whole meats, fish and poultry; soups and stews
5 days: Cooked beans; hummus
1 week: Hard boiled eggs; chopped vegetables if stored in air-tight container
2 weeks: Soft cheese, opened
5-6 weeks: Hard cheese, opened

Freezing at 0°F or lower
2-3 months: Soups and stews; cooked beans
3-6 months: Cooked or ground meat and poultry
6-8 months: Berries and chopped fruit (banana, apples, pears, plums, mango) stored in a freezer bag
8-12 months: Vegetables, if blanched first for about 3-5 minutes (depending on the vegetable)

Meal planning could be an ultimate tool to offset time scarcity and therefore encourage home meal preparation, which has been linked with an improved diet quality and good health status overall.

Are you ready to give it a try?

Nutrition

Keto Diet

August 3, 2020

We are in an era where anything and everything can get viral. The internet and social media has fueled this process and many will follow with out even giving it thought. Currently we have so many ladies jumping onto the Keto diet wagon with little or no knowledge about the science behind it. All one knows is it will be solution to weight loss. I will tell you something about this diet and hopefully this will help some one out there make an informed decision.

What is a Keto diet?

A ketogenic diet, normally shortened simply as keto diet is one that is comprised of high fat, adequate proteins and low carbohydrates, what many refer to as carbs. This diet is usually used as medicine for epileptic children although it has become popular for weight loss in these current times. This diet forces the body to burn fats as its primary source of energy rather than carbohydrates.

How a Keto diet works?

I will talk about the way it works first in its primary function which is as medicine in epileptic children.

The body’s primary source of energy from our diet is carbohydrates and this energy is in form of glucose. This glucose is transported around the body and is important in fueling brain function for every human being. So when the primary source is less in the the diet, the body looks for plan B. Through the liver, it converts the fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies are passed into the brain replacing the glucose as the source of energy. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state called ketosis will eventually lower the frequency of the epileptic seizures.

Coming to weight loss, the same analogy is applied, the keto diet forces the body into using a different type of fuel. Instead of relying on the glucose from carbohydrates, it relies on ketone bodies that are produced from breaking down the fat by the liver. So as the body burns the fuel, your body is thought to shed off that excess fat.

Much as this may sound very obvious and a straight forward process, getting the liver to make ketone bodies is tricky:

It requires one to deprive yourself of carbohydrates, fewer than 20 to 50 grams of carbs per day (keep in mind that a medium-sized banana has about 27 grams of carbs).
It typically takes a few days to reach a state of ketosis.
Eating too much protein can interfere with ketosis.

What to eat while on a keto diet

Due to the fact that a keto diet has such a high fat requirement, you must eat fat at each meal. In a daily 2,000-calorie diet, it might look like 165 grams of fat, 40 grams of carbs, and 75 grams of protein.

Some healthy unsaturated fats are allowed on the keto diet like nuts, seeds, avocados and olive oil. But saturated fats from oils (palm, coconut), lard, butter, and cocoa butter are encouraged in high amounts.

Protein is part of the keto diet, lean protein foods as well as protein sources high in saturated fat like beef, pork, name it.

All fruits are rich in carbs therefore they are eaten in small portions. Vegetables are also rich in carbs therefore for this diet vegetables are restricted to leafy greens such as spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, dodo, bell peppers, onions, garlic, mushrooms, cucumber, celery, to mention but a few.

The risks

A ketogenic diet is very high in saturated fats which poses a very high risk for heart related diseases as there is a risk of high cholesterol in the blood.

I have heard of people who have fallen victim of scurvy. This is a deficiency of Vitamin C in the body. If you’re not eating a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, and grains, you may be at risk for deficiencies in micronutrients, including selenium, magnesium, phosphorus, and vitamins B and C. Nutrient deficiency is one the down sides of a keto diet.

Liver problems is another risk that can ensue. With so much fat to metabolize, the diet could make any existing liver conditions worse.

The kidneys help metabolize protein, and the keto diet may overload them resulting to kidney problems. (The current recommended intake for protein averages 46 grams per day for women, and 56 grams for men).

Keto diet is low in fibrous foods like grains and legumes resulting in constipation.

The brain requires sugar from healthy carbohydrates to function. A low-carb diets may cause confusion and irritability there by resulting to fuzzy thinking and mood swings

These risks are not meant to discourage you but rather to know what lays ahead of you, therefore make sure you work with a doctor and a registered dietitian before and as you attempt to use a ketogenic diet.

Before jumping on the Keto diet wagon, read and check with your doctor and dietitian.

Nutrition

Aspiration

May 17, 2020

At what age did you know that when someone is choking, it is very wrong and dangerous to ‘box’ their back as a way of giving them first aid? Do you know that everyone suffers from aspiration at any one time but children especially those with feeding difficulties are most vulnerable?

It was a Saturday afternoon and we had been given the reward of going out to play since we had done all our school homework diligently. Nakimera one of my playmates in our village was the host that day. We played all sorts of games including ‘kakebe’, dodge ball, round game and had succeeded to get ourselves as dirty as possible. And much as we played, so did the hunger pangs dig deep; so when ‘maama Nakimera’ (maama is a term we use to refer to someone’s mother) called us to share a meal, we did not even think twice. The ten of us all run to the papyrus mat to make sure we get a seat on the ‘table.’ In no time, a bright yellow nicely mashed matooke (bananas) all blowing out steam was served with beef in groundnut paste. No sooner had we began eating than Mukasa started coughing so hard. His eyes blew out of his eye balls rolling with tears, as he gasped for breath. “His choking, his choking!!! We all yelled in chorus. ‘Maama Nakimera’ swung into action jumping everything that was in her way as she aimed for Mukasa’s back. She hit his back so hard and did not stop until the piece of meat fell out and that is when we realized we all had held our breathe for so long and we all let out a huge sigh. What should have been a sad moment became a teasing scene as we long bust out laughing and accusing Mukasa for being hungrier than the rest of us. This that happened to Mukasa is what we call aspiration.

It is something that happens to all of us time and again although it is more common among children that are differently able-d and struggle with feeding difficulties.

Signs of aspiration

Wet sounding voice
Runny nose
Choking
Coughing
Difficulty breathing

Coughing and choking during mealtime are often signs that the body is trying to protect the airway from food or liquid. Not at any time should food or liquid be in the airway. It is very dangerous to pat the back of a child chocking, because this may knock food or liquid further into the airway. The recommendation is to make sure the child is upright as you encourage them to keep coughing. If concerns are frequently observed, the child may need to be rushed to a doctor.

The tube for food (esophagus) and the tube for air (trachea/airway) are right next to each other. Safe swallowing depends on perfect timing of each step with effective performance of over 30 muscles and nerves. When the food or liquid enters the wrong tube (airway), aspiration occurs. Signs of aspiration may happen during feeding or right after eating. The signs may depend on the age of the child, how often and how much the child aspirates. Some children who aspirate do not have all the signs, and some do not have any. Something called silent aspiration. Everyone aspirates from time to time, but most people are able to cough to clear the food or liquid out of the airway. Many children with health problems or disabilities may be more at risk for frequent aspiration. If aspiration occurs frequently, in large amounts, or the child is not able to cough sufficiently, it can be very serious and lead to respiratory problems such as pneumonia, dehydration, malnutrition, weight loss and increased risk of illness.

So be ware to watch your child as they feed to trace signs of difficulty and this way further respiratory and nutrition problems can be averted.

Scientist

May 2, 2020

I have always loved biology or say science ever since I began school. When I was choosing out a combination going into my A’level, despite the fact that I had performed pretty well in my Arts subjects, I did not at one time consider them.

Day 14 of #UgBlogMonth tasked me to write which job I would choose to do in this world.

Like I said earlier my love for biology or science will have me doing any job in that line. Thankfully I am doing just that. I am a nutritionist just so you know. The 2018 Global Nutrition Report revealed that the global burden of malnutrition is unacceptably high and now affects every country in the world. Uganda’s adult population face a malnutrition burden. 28.5% of women of reproductive age have anaemia, and 4.7% of adult women have diabetes, compared to 4.4% of men. Meanwhile, 8.6% of women and 1.8% of men have obesity. These are the things excite me.

The best thing I love the most about what I do is patient care. Recently as I checked on my patients given that I cannot get to them in this lock down, one of them was surprised me when his joy for me reaching out to him could not be hidden. If any of you is a medical worker you will know the kind of glow this can bring to your heart and your career as a whole.

The other thing I want to do and should do pretty soon is medical research. While at university we had to submit a research paper on a particular topic. I did a research on the nutrition status of breastfeeding children born to mothers living with HIV/AIDS in Kawaala Health Centre IV. The whole process to do this research was very exciting especially conducting interviews among the mothers.

The ultimate motivation in science is to discover . When a person achieves his or her scientific aim, he or she feels supreme pleasure. In medical science, discovery may directly lead to human welfare through improved disease diagnosis, treatment, and/or prophylaxis or health promotion. The contribution may seem small, but the outcome associated with it may prove to be invaluable and the pleasure experienced by the researcher immense.

Science is something relatable and just doing it fulfills me. If I had to do any job in the world it would deal with health care.