In today’s rushed lifestyles, people often find themselves eating out. Unless you’re careful, meals on the fly can pack on weight with hidden calories with hidden health effects.
Unlike food labeling at the grocery store, restaurants aren’t required to tell you what’s in the food you order. When is the last time your waiter stood by your table and recited the fat, cholesterol, sodium, allergic qualities and lactose food contents?
Fatty foods for example are deceptive, but potentially deadly. Sure they often taste great, but unless you work like a lumberjack, they stimulate your body to pack on fat. Fat in turn stimulates clogging of your cardiovascular system making it increasingly difficult for the heart to pump. In addition, extra weight that afflicts the majority of adults today, adds more heart strain and less of a chance to recover from a heart attack. Interestingly, once fat, or adipose cells form, they become somewhat self-perpetuating, increasing your appetite for more fatty foods. One of the many reasons people have so much difficulty loosing weight, is the lingering demand by millions of these hungry fat cells.
What’s one to do? Fight fat! First, skip the appetizers! Many pack fat and will fill you up before your meal arrives. Further, the more appetizers you eat, the less you’ll taste your meal. Your sense of taste and smell are most acute when your hungry, as a stroll by a bakery after a one-day fast, will attest. Ice those fat cells with a glass of calorie-free water instead. Now, watch those salad bars! They are full of all kinds of things that can get you, but most of all FAT hidden in sauces and pasta and potato salads. Choose fresh veggies and fruits instead. American diets are poor in both. The USDA recommends 3 servings of fruit daily. How much do you and your family eat?
Main course. White fish is rich in protein, vital fish oils and low in fat. New England natives were living healthy on fish as their primary protein source for millenniums before the Vikings and pilgrims landed. With so many kinds to choose from and so many ways that it is prepared, fish is becoming ever more popular today. Shellfish too are low in fat, as long as they are prepared sans oil, like steamers.
How is the food cooked? Lower your calories by choosing baked or broiled foods over fried or prepared in cheese or cream sauces. Avoid cream in soups too. Ask for sauces and dressings to be served on the side so that you are in control.
Food that is fat rich won’t make you rich, but health poor – the cruelest form of poverty. The cost of one restaurant meal for two could easily eclipse a weekly grocery bill. If you eat out once a week at a moderately priced restaurant, you’re close to doubling your food bill. What would a quiet meal at home do for your friendships and your family? With so many great recipes, like the quick-to-prepare ones we offer in Ear to the Ground, why not create more of your own masterpieces? At least now you can read the label. Smart eating is like smart investing, it is the learned art of being very picky. Eating less and smarter when your out and more meals at home, what better recipe for both your health and your wealth?
Money, Myths, and Morasses
Curing Our Monetary Malaise
By Steven Wightman, CFP
Investors are mesmerized into markets based on misunderstanding of information and pure myths. During the past ten years millions of investors have lost more than 50% of their savings – largely in retirement funds, according to July 14th article in both the NY Times and the Boston Globe. Why? Because they have been sold a false bill of goods by so-called money experts who were nowhere to be found when markets and the wisdom of their advice collapsed.
Major myths:
If investors could learn a valuable lesson from a meltdown it is not to “pennywise and pound-foolish” as the wise Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine often said. The majority of people continue to loose tens of thousands of dollars each and every year, expose their families and estates to enormous risks. Risk wise, they are not unlike JFK, Jr. flying in the dark with his family on the fateful Martha’s Vineyard trip - but many won’t pay a fraction of what they’re loosing in markets for the unbiased advice of a Certified Financial Planner professional.
Myths make morasses and more asses make myths. Money myths are like religious beliefs: People hold them dearly and reticently closely to their chests – even when their finances are in a death spiral. These common myths are our gossamer wings on which we ride superficially blissful of the growing storm. Instead of carrying us to our desired sunny levels of a secure retirement, they shatter in downdrafts, leaving us and our futures in a free fall. Take a lesson from Shakespeare’s legacy; don’t let your money control you, but take control of your money – and your life. That’s the cure for monetary malaise.
In today’s rushed lifestyles, people often find themselves eating out. Unless you’re careful, meals on the fly can pack on weight with hidden calories with hidden health effects.
Unlike food labeling at the grocery store, restaurants aren’t required to tell you what’s in the food you order. When is the last time your waiter stood by your table and recited the fat, cholesterol, sodium, allergic qualities and lactose food contents?
Fatty foods for example are deceptive, but potentially deadly. Sure they often taste great, but unless you work like a lumberjack, they stimulate your body to pack on fat. Fat in turn stimulates clogging of your cardiovascular system making it increasingly difficult for the heart to pump. In addition, extra weight that afflicts the majority of adults today, adds more heart strain and less of a chance to recover from a heart attack. Interestingly, once fat, or adipose cells form, they become somewhat self-perpetuating, increasing your appetite for more fatty foods. One of the many reasons people have so much difficulty loosing weight, is the lingering demand by millions of these hungry fat cells.
What’s one to do? Fight fat! First, skip the appetizers! Many pack fat and will fill you up before your meal arrives. Further, the more appetizers you eat, the less you’ll taste your meal. Your sense of taste and smell are most acute when your hungry, as a stroll by a bakery after a one-day fast, will attest. Ice those fat cells with a glass of calorie-free water instead. Now, watch those salad bars! They are full of all kinds of things that can get you, but most of all FAT hidden in sauces and pasta and potato salads. Choose fresh veggies and fruits instead. American diets are poor in both. The USDA recommends 3 servings of fruit daily. How much do you and your family eat?
Main course. White fish is rich in protein, vital fish oils and low in fat. New England natives were living healthy on fish as their primary protein source for millenniums before the Vikings and pilgrims landed. With so many kinds to choose from and so many ways that it is prepared, fish is becoming ever more popular today. Shellfish too are low in fat, as long as they are prepared sans oil, like steamers.
How is the food cooked? Lower your calories by choosing baked or broiled foods over fried or prepared in cheese or cream sauces. Avoid cream in soups too. Ask for sauces and dressings to be served on the side so that you are in control.
Food that is fat rich won’t make you rich, but health poor – the cruelest form of poverty. The cost of one restaurant meal for two could easily eclipse a weekly grocery bill. If you eat out once a week at a moderately priced restaurant, you’re close to doubling your food bill. What would a quiet meal at home do for your friendships and your family? With so many great recipes, like the quick-to-prepare ones we offer in Ear to the Ground, why not create more of your own masterpieces? At least now you can read the label. Smart eating is like smart investing, it is the learned art of being very picky. Eating less and smarter when your out and more meals at home, what better recipe for both your health and your wealth?