Nutrition websites that motivate children to eat healthier and holistically include "The Kids Cook Monday," which is an initiative encouraging families to cook and eat together each Monday with a goal to make Monday family nutrition night. Also there's the Fruits and Veggies Twitter site emphasizing the health benefits of fruits and vegetables.
The site features tweets about the national public health initiative which suggests simple ways to add more fruits and vegetables to your diet for better health. There's also the Healthy Child Twitter site. If you follow that site, you'll find reliable information and safe, non-toxic products so your babies and children can thrive. The site advocates holistic, natural medicine and reducing environmental toxins.
Are you looking for the best nutrition databases online?
If you're looking for a way to scan supermarket food label barcodes into your smart phone, see my other Examiner article, Now you can scan supermarket food label barcodes into your iPhone. When you want a calorie counting diet database, try DietFacts.com. For example, take pumpkin pie.
If you make it at home, you can adjust the calorie content by the ingredients you add. But if you buy a commercial pumpkin pie, you can find out the ingredients and the calorie content of a slice of pie at the diet database online called DietFacts.com.
Restaurant diet facts databases online
When you go on a low or high carb diet, you don't know unless you've been tested how your particular blood, metabolic, and body type will react to a specific diet unless you have a medical professional test your cholesterol, glucose, insulin and blood-pressure levels while you're on the specific diet.
Ask yourself and your doctor this question: "Why is the over-all success rate for low-carb and other types of diets so similar? Could it be that different body types respond individually to diets according to their genetic signatures and expressions as well as lifestyles and exercise patterns?"
Ask yourself what's a particular diet like for the long-term as far as results?
Are you getting bored with eating the foods on the diet you chose? Are you staying too long on a low carb diet or not long enough? Or are you experiencing a stressful metabolic state? Do you feel nausea or are you going into ketosis from your very low-carb diet?
What's the diet like long range? Or would you rather stick to a diet that's pretty much balanced and considered moderate as far as carbs? It all depends on how your individual body reacts to which amount of carbs in what type of balance.
Home-made pie ingredients compared to commercial varieties
For example, take pumpkin pie. When you make it at home, you put in the ingredients you want. When you go out to eat, at the DietFacts.com site, you can select a particular restaurant, its menu item, and see the calories and other information. For example, let's look at the restaurant chain, Hometown Buffet's pumpkin pie. To research it, first click on DietFact.com link for the item, Hometown Buffet Pumpkin Pie.
Commercial pumpkin pies vary in calorie content. Check out the site for restaurant diet facts, such as how many calories in which foods served at specific restaurants. See Nutrition facts and diet information on fast foods and restaurants sites. Also check out the article, Low-Carb Diet, Should I or Shouldn't I?." The article notes, "There is very little evidence on the long-range safety of low-carb diets."
You'll find once slice of pie contains 270 calories. You can see on the label how the total fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrate, dietary fiber, protein, an unofficial points are listed for that one item, one piece of pumpkin pie at Hometown Buffet restaurant chain. The items are then all broken down into percentages of calories from fat, 30%, carbs, 45.9%, and protein, 7.4%. The total is rounded. You can search any particular food item such as pumpkin pie, or any fast food or other restaurant chain item. Or any item on a menu of any of the restaurants listed in the database.
Browse each brand on the diet facts sites
Interestingly, at the DietFacts.com site, you can browse various brands of commercial foods and see what the calorie content and ingredients are in each product listed in the online database. Check out the Search for Food site in the DietFacts database. The brands are alphabetized. Or check out the Info.com site under the title, 'nutrition.'
For example, if you want to look at the calories and ingredients in a particular brand, you'd start at the DietFacts.com site, and search alphabetically for the brand of food or specific restaurant name you want to research. For example, at the link for P.F. Chang's China Bistro.
You can click on this link and see one of five pages of menu items. On the first page, say I want to find out more about one menu item. So I choose the item and click on the menu item I select, such as " Almond Chicken Cashew Dinner, for example. I just click on the link that explains what's in it: stir-fried with bell peppers, onions and mushrooms in a garlic soy sauce.
When you view this link, what may come up on the screen are the nutrition facts, for example: Calories: 850, calories from fat: 297. Total fat: 33g, which forms 51% of the meal. Saturated fat, 6 g, which forms 30% of the meal. Total carbohydrates, 57 g, which forms 19% of the meal, and Protein, 77g, which forms 154% of the menu item.
The DietFacts.com database rates this menu item 20 unofficial points, but states that fiber is unknown. Then it gives a breakdown on the menu item of Fat 34.9%, Carbs, 26.8%, Protein 36.2%, and notes that due to rounding, total may not add up to 100%.
The label at the bottom of this information on just one menu item also tells you that one gram of fat equals nine calories, one gram of protein equals four calories, one gram of carbohydrate equals four calories, and one gram of alcohol equals seven calories. It's explained so you can figure out how many grams of protein, carbohydrates, fats, or aclohol equal how many calories each on any food item on any menu or food product.
Holistic eating and/or health-oriented children's nutrition sites on Twitter
School Lunch School Lunch
Healthful meals and nutrition education are available to all children. Alexis Steines 'tweeting.'
letsmove Let's Move!
Official WH twitter account. Comments & messages received through official WH pages are subject to the PRA and may be archived. Learn more http://wh.gov/privacy
healthyschools Healthy Schools
Independent not-for-profit, a voice for people who care about our environment, our children, and education
schoolfoodtrust School Food Trust
Official tweets from the School Food Trust team – news, views and information on good school food and food skills for children.
SchoolFoodFOCUS School Food FOCUS
Nat'l collaborative leveraging the procurement power of large school districts to make school meals more healthful, regionally sourced, & sustainably produced.
TeamNutrition USDA Team Nutrition
Team Nutrition is an initiative of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service to support the Child Nutrition Programs
KidfreshFoods Kidfresh
Healthy Kids’ Meals! Made with 100% natural ingredients, hidden veggies and great taste kids love!
Act4HlthyKids Act4HlthyKids
Schools create healthy kids. We create healthy schools.
lunchboxproject The Lunch Box
The Lunch Box Project Provides Healthy Tools To Help All Schools.
USDANutrition USDAnutrition
FNS provides children and low-income people access to food, a healthful diet, and nutrition education. (Following does not = endorsement.)
Healthy_Child Healthy Child
National nonprofit igniting a movement that inspires parents to protect children from harmful chemicals.
KidsCookMonday The Kids Cook Monday
The Kids Cook Monday is an initiative encouraging families to cook and eat together each Monday. Start your week off right: make Monday family night!
Veggiecation Lisa Suriano
The Veggiecation© Program is a curriculum based nutrition education program that introduces young children to the delicious and nutritious world of vegetables.
FitFactorKids Fit Factor Kids
Sharing news about fitness, health and nutrition for kids, families and teachers. Improving family health through kids exercise DVDs - developed by a PE coach.
ChildNutri Child Nutrition Outr
Focusing on School Breakfast and the Summer Food Service Program in MA
Fruits_Veggies Fruits Vegetables
The Fruits & Veggies—More Matters national public health initiative suggests simple ways to add MORE fruits and vegetables to your diet for better health.
JollyTomato Jeanne Fratello
Finding wholesome, nutritious and fun foods for kids ages 2 to 16. The Jolly Tomato: It's what kids eat.
schoolnutrition School Nutrition
I am a registered dietitian working to create healthier schools!
HealthyChild Healthy Child
Reliable information and safe, non-toxic products so your babies and children can thrive. We advocate holistic, natural medicine and reducing environmental toxi
joannadolgoffmd Joanna Dolgoff MD
Joanna Dolgoff MD is a Child Obesity Pediatrician, Official Spokesperson of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Author of Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right.
Where Can You Get Information on Genetic Testing To Tailor Foods To Your Genetic Expression?
Where can you get genetic testing to see how certain foods or beverages affect your entire body? You might try some of the affordable tests at FamilyTreeDNA.com. For example, a genetic test to see what happens when you drink coffee or other caffeinated beverages or whether you're affected negatively in specific ways from just one alcoholic drink--or even whether you've inherited the longevity genes from that relative who lived beyond a century.
"Factoids" are based on studies - some of which may be controlversial - and results are not intended to diagnose disease or medical conditions, and do not serve the purpose of medical advice. According to the web site of FamilyTreeDNA.com, "They are offered exclusively for curiosity purposes, for example, to see how your result compared with what the scientific papers say. Other genetic and environmental variables may also impact these same physiological characteristics. They are merely a conversational piece, or a 'cocktail party' test, as we like to call it."
Here is a list of what some of the various genetic tests offer in addition to DNA-driven genealogy testing explained at the FamilyTreeDNA.com site
Caffeine Metabolism
According to the results of a case-control study reported in the March 8, 2006 issue of JAMA, coffee is the most widely consumed stimulant in the world, and caffeine consumption has been associated with increased risk for non-fatal myocardial infarction. Caffeine is primarily metabolized by the cytochrome P450 1A2 in the liver, accounting for 95% of metabolism.
Carriers of the gene variant *1F allele are slow caffeine metabolizers, whereas individuals homozygous for the *1A/*1A genotype are rapid caffeine metabolizers. Information on a genetic test to see how you metabolize caffeine can be found at FamilyTreeDNA.com. You can take a genetic test to read about your factoids.
Alcohol Flush Reaction
A condition in which the body cannot break down ingested alcohol completely. Flushing, after consuming one or two alcoholic beverages, includes a range of symptoms: nausea, headaches, light-headedness, an increased pulse, occasional extreme drowsiness, and occasional skin swelling and itchiness. These unpleasant side effects often prevent further drinking that may lead to further inebriation, but the symptoms can lead to mistaken assumption that the people affected are more easily inebriated than others.
Bitter Taste perception
There are several genes that are responsible for bitter taste perception - we test 3 of them. Different variations of this gene affect ability to detect bitter compounds. About 25% of people lack ability to detect these compounds due to gene mutations. Are you like them? Maybe you don't like broccoli, because it tastes too bitter?
Longevity
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and UC Davis have discovered a few genes that extend lifespan, suggesting that the whole family of SIR2 genes is involved in controlling lifespan. The findings were reported July 28, 2005 in the advance online edition of Science.
Muscle Performance
A team of researchers, led by scientists at Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth College, have identified and tested a gene that dramatically alters both muscle metabolism and performance. The researchers say that this finding could someday lead to treatment of muscle diseases, including helping the elderly who suffer from muscle deterioration and improving muscle performance in endurance athletes.
Nicotene Dependence
In 2008, University of Virginia Health System researchers have identified a gene associated with nicotine dependence in both Europeans and African Americans.
Avoidance of Errors
We are often angry at ourselves because we are unable to learn from certain experiences. Numerous times we have made the wrong decision and its consequences were unfavorable. But the cause does not lie only in our thinking. A mutation in a specific gene can also be responsible, because it can cause a smaller number of dopamine receptors. They are responsible for remembering our wrong choices, which in turn enables us to make better decisions when we encounter a similar situation.
Back Pain
Lumbar disc disease is the drying out of the spongy interior matrix of an intervertebral disc in the spine. Many physicians and patients use the term lumbar disc disease to encompass several different causes of back pain or sciatica. A study of Asian patients with lumbar disc disease showed that a mutation in the CILP gene increases the risk of back pain.
Male Pattern Baldness
Researchers at McGill University, King's College London and GlaxoSmithKline Inc. have identified two genetic variants in Caucasians that together produce an astounding sevenfold increase of the risk of male pattern baldness. Their results were published in the October 12, 2008 issue of the Journal of Nature Genetics.
Earwax Type
Whether your earwax is wet or dry is determined by a mutation in a single gene, which scientists have discovered. Wet earwax is believed to have uses in insect trapping, self-cleaning and prevention of dryness in the external auditory canal of the ear. It also produces an odor and causes sweating, which may play a role as a pheromone.
Freckling
Freckles can be found on anyone no matter what the background. However, having freckles is genetic and is related to the presence of the dominant melanocortin-1 receptor MC1R gene variant.
Factoid Bundle Pack
Full range of tests including alcohol flush reaction, avoidance of errors, back pain, bitter taste perception, caffeine metabolism, earwax type, longevity, muscle performance.
Comments