After successfully forcing NYC restaurants to post calorie counts on menus and to stop cooking with trans fat, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the commissioner of New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is waging a war on salt. A recent New York Times article explains that he's going after packaged food companies and mass-produced restaurant meals. Apparently, they contribute 80 percent of the sodium in the average American diet. Over the next five years, Dr. Frieden aims to cut the level of salt intake by 25 percent.

Is salt so bad for us? Salt, in some people (not everyone) can lead to high blood pressure which is a leading factor in the incidence of heart attack and stroke. At the same time, many scientists do not believe sodium intake is directly related to high blood pressure. In the past, studies comparing hypertensive populations found that those on low-salt diets had more than four times as many heart attacks as those on normal-sodium diets.

Although the health link may not be clear, what's obvious is that excess of most ingredients cannot be healthy. And, foods at fast-food chains, like McDonald's, are outrageously high in sodium. It seems that if dealt with in a reasonable way, Dr. Frieden's goal can be quite progressive. What do you think?

According to Best Syndication News, dog owners are becoming increasingly health conscious when it comes to the diet of their pets. Not only are people shopping at high-end dog shops, be they're even using natural healthy ingredients to bake fresh homemade dog biscuits and cookies for their dogs. Many dog owners are concerned about preservatives and additives that are found in commercial dog treats at the supermarket.

The good news is that there appears to be a growing number of alternatives when it comes to purchasing dog food. You can head to a natural pet health food store or a locally owned pet supply store. Dogs can be allergic to grains too. Purchase gourmet grain free doggie treats that are high in protein and low in carbohydrates. You can even find vegetarian dog snacks that are made with whole fruits and vegetables.

Online, you can purchase all natural pet foods from Only Natural Pet Store or Thrive Foods. Why shouldn't pet owners be concerned with their pets' diet? To me, the trend towards natural pet food makes sense. What do you think?

Are you feeling opinionated on a range of food topics, notably diets? On the website Opposing Views, you have the opportunity to view experts' arguments for and against low-carb diets, caffeine use, biotech foods, and on becoming a vegetarian. Afterwards, you can post your own comments.

There are so many overbearingly opinionated blogs. What a relief to finally find a site where doctors and scientists debate over hot topics. And, rather than totally ignoring what everyone else has to say, it fosters continued discussion with comments. Also, the site provides news headlines dealing with the various questions.

From all the food-related issues that Opposing Views thoroughly covers, I found the topic on caffeine the most interesting. This is no doubt due to my over sensitivity to caffeinated products. Also, increasingly we hear stories in the news stating that coffee can reduce our risks of diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and colon cancer. Just this past January, the media stated that doctors confirmed that while coffee helps fight type two diabetes, caffeine makes it worse. Such a contradictory study gives one an even stronger reason to check out this debate on Opposing Views.

When we learn about nutrition, we tend to focus on calories and vitamins. We're taught about which foods may prevent cancer and help our immune system. We normally concentrate on the physical effects of food on our body. It turns out however that foods have many more properties. According to a recent article from The Economist, foods also affect our cognition. They can enhance our mental health. Not only can certain foods improve our memory, but they can also prevent many of the negative effects of aging and even increase our lifespan.

Dr Fernando Gómez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery and physiological science at the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted research on the way antioxidants and vitamins work with synapses in the brain. Based on his study, below are certain foods that can lead to a healthy brain:

As someone with an insatiable sweet tooth, I was fascinated when I found out that hormones in our body affect how we perceive and crave sweetness. They do this according to our body's nutritional needs. Since I have a pretty bad sweet tooth, does this mean my body needs more of it? Not exactly. A recent article in The Economist explains that scientists have done the first step; they've isolated hormones that affect our palate's sensitivity to sugar.

The reason why this study is so important is because it may lead doctors and nutritionists to find a solution for ways of reducing the desire for sugar-heavy foods, and thus reduce calorie-intake. Yuzo Ninomiya, a neuroscientist at Kyushu University in Japan, researched the effects of leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and metabolism. His results show that when leptin levels are low, we are more sensitive to sugar, which means something tastes sweeter than when our leptin levels are low. The level of the hormone increases over the day. This might explain why we tend to eat lots of sugar in the morning ('cause it tastes so good!).

So, it seems, if scientists can figure out how to raise leptin levels (or at least keep them steady) throughout the day, then all of us sweet-tooth types might have a chance at eating less cake!

In a world full of sweets, it's not easy to avoid them. What are some ways you control your sugar intake?

Yikes.

Officials are investigating 51 cases of salmonella (in 17 different states) that have been reported from customers who have bought Veggie Booty snacks. The company has decided to recall all lots and sizes of the snack food. And yes that includes all codes and expiration dates. The company name is Robert's American Gourmet.

This is a pretty big recall, since this is something that is probably sold in the store where you shop. Customers are urged to throw away the food if you have it in your home and call the company to get your money back.

Granola fans should introduce themselves to Bear Naked granola, if they aren't familiar with it already. The award winning, good-for-you cereal is on of the best selling and best tasting granolas in the country. Made with wholesome, all-natural ingredients, the company's goal is to make sure that their customers enjoy living a healthy lifestyle and eating healthy - starting with granola, of course. Their granolas are hand-crafted in small batches with real whole grains and other "bearly processed and utterly naked ingredients." They have been available in three flavors for a couple of years now: fruit and nut, apple cinnamon and banana nut. This month, the company is rolling out two new flavors, Peanut Butter and Jelly granola and Peak Protein Blueberry Walnut. The peanut butter flavor is designed to taste like one of the most popular sandwiches in the country and to appeal to kids as well as adults. The blueberry flavor is intended to remind eaters of freshly baked blueberry muffins.

Only the blueberry flavor is available at their online store right now, but both should be on store shelves alongside the original flavors within a couple of weeks.

All the campaigns to encourage people to eat healthier are having an impact on mothers, but not necessarily in the way that you might expect. Instead of giving up fried foods or other things deemed to be unhealthy completely, some mums are not changing what they feed their kids - they're just lying about it. A new survey, which was sponsored by the British Potato Council, found that as many as 93% of mothers lie from time to time about what they feed their kids, and they mostly spin the tales to their own mothers and other relatives, since they make up the group that is most likely to criticize parenting choices.

The most commonly made claim is that the kids are not allowed to eat fried foods, followed by telling people that their children "eat mostly fresh food at home." Other untruths include assertions that the kids are only allowed candy at weekends, are never fed frozen food and get all the required servings of fruits and veggies every day.

Some are confused as to what foods are healthy, or simply give up due to lack of time or energy, opting for a TV dinner instead of frozen fish sticks with some fresh veggies. Fortunately, the kids aren't as confused as the parents, so it is possible that the "little white lies" won't be necessary any more. The study also showed that 58% of kids would question their parents about whether given foods were healthy or not, demonstrating that they are becoming more aware of healthy eating issues at a young age and will hopefully want to make better food choices as a result.

At a recent shopping expedition in Los Angeles, I got to taste Xocai (pronounced "sho-sigh") chocolate, which is being marketed more as a health food product than a sweet indulgence. Chocolate is becoming more closely associated with health because of its antioxidant components, and the addition of acai to the chocolate adds the health benefits of the acai berry, now considered to be a super fruit. According to the website, Xocai will give you increased energy, help you sleep better, decrease joint pain, reduce sugar cravings lower blood pressure and cholesterol, reduce allergies and arthritis, and improve diabetic readings.

Good good on all the health stuff, but I was interested in the taste. Each small domed brick piece of chocolate comes wrapped in gold foil, which really makes it look like candy. I love dark chocolate, and the Xocai nuggets have a very high cocoa percentage. However, I have to say that it definitely tasted medicinal, and somewhat powdery. I also didn't feel the antioxidant power of "10 pounds of spinach" that each nugget supposedly has.

Oh well. I think I'd rather eat spinach for antioxidants, and a Teuscher truffle for chocolate.

We've got a lot of sources for recipes on the Internet, from mega-magazine sites to the Food Network to google. The American Institute for Cancer Research can be added to that mix with their Recipe Corner, that features healthy recipes with foods that fight or might prevent cancer or help cancer survivors. For instance, this season, they've got recipes for Crunchy Veggies Wraps and Oatmeal Pancakes.

Another feature is the Health-e-Recipes weekly email that sends recipes right to your inbox. It looks like it's a popular thing, and the recipes must be pretty good, since there are already 10,000 subscribers.

[via: TheCancerBlog]

An article in today's USA Today discusses how dieters face many pitfalls when shopping for diet-friendly foods in the grocery store, because there seems to be some confusion over what constitutes diet-friendly, "health" food.

Notice that I said "health" and "diet-friendly," as opposed to simply healthy foods. This is because the article isn't about increasing the proportion of nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables in the diet. It's about how dieters who eat things like YoCrunch's fun yogurts fail to loose weight. YoCrunch is a brand of low fat yogurt that comes with mix-ins that include crushed Oreo cookies, M&Ms and Reeses Pieces.

I'll venture out on a limb here and say that the dieters who believe that eating any product with candy mixed into is a "healthy" thing to eat are fooling themselves. Just because the yogurt is low fat, that doesn't mean that the crushed-up candy is, too. And beyond that, pretending that it is a "health food" is just silly. Is a product like YoCrunch better than, say, a deep fried Snicker's bar? Of course, but if that's your dieting criteria, you might have to reconsider before you actually lose any weight.

Let's face it, all you food-loving, regular meal-eating types reading this site, you are the lucky ones. Most of you are blessed with a stove, maybe some ingredients in your cabinet, a bottle of wine half drunk atop your fridge. But if you're a city guy like me, always on the hustle for a dollar, always one dime short of a cup of coffee, always standing out in the rain in front of a hot food story, watching through rainy windows, then it's all about how to stay full and focused on the street, to not pass out while racing from one job interview to another, how to keep your nutrition at a full gallop while never actually sitting down. 

So God created the food bar! 

I'm sure to the average foodie these things are pox, a blight on nutrition and the gourmand's worst nightmare, but to us who dreamt as children of a future where we could eat candy bars for dinner, the nutrients in chocolate-flavored soy logs, are our life's blood; they keep our blood full of something other than caffeine and nicotine and urban despair. Trapped like jungle rats in a maze of dead-eyed salesman and bloodthirsty wall-streeters on their way to steakhouses and unemployment lines, we duck into the 42nd street bodega and grab our fix to go.

Here are some of the personal favorites:

Would you eat at a restaurant when the purveyor of the foods says “food is overrated”? Not that he is referring to his food, mind you, but to food in general. “Restaurateur, nightlife mogul and celebrity dentist," Dr. Tim Hogle is the man who would rather not eat than eat something that isn’t on his very strict diet, though he owns a series of Miami Beach restaurants. afterglo, his newest venture, does not serve health food per se, but functional foods that are intended to have beneficial effects on the body and not simply to sustain life. Plying food to the body-conscious and sun-bleached crowd can be challenging and the restaurant serves foods that are wild, raw and, of course, organic. Hogle calls it “beauty cuisine,” though the irony of marketing supremely natural foods to a population of plastic people will not escape the notice of some. “Everything has a low GI, is highly alkaline (which reputedly helps regenerate cells) and packed with enzymes, minerals and antioxidants” according to the Independent.

Certainly sounds purposeful, but does someone who eats only for functionality sacrifice taste at his restaurant? Apparently not, since the restaurant has received good reviews. One does have to wonder whether or not Hogle will actually eat everything on his menu.

[Image of afterglo's raw "sushi" via Click Clack]

With news agencies now saying that a major source of salt in daily diets is bread, carb-laden loaves could once again come under fire from nutrition-fanatics. Even though the headlines blame bread, more than 75 percent of all the salt in people’s diets come from processed foods, only a small portion of which are breads. Salt is necessary in bread making, not only for flavor, but because it interacts with the yeast, retarding its growth and producing a better-textured, tastier loaf. One teaspoon of salt weighs just over 2 grams, and organizations like the British government recommend a maximum of 6 grams of salt a day. If a loaf of homemade or non-preprocessed bread has one to three tablespoons of salt in it, there is nothing to worry about unless you are eating multiple loaves of bread on a daily basis.

Some salt is necessary in the diet, serving functions like regulating fluid levels in the body. Do yourself a favor and cut back on the deli meats, don’t just cut back on bread.

Other than the cereal box treat, I've always been curious about the "recipes" that appear on boxes of cereal. Sure, I've seen people make fried chicken with corn flakes, but what about the other stuff?

My box of multi-grain flakes and nuts and fruits has a recipe for muffins. I tried it, but made several adjustments for taste and texture. I had to add more chopped nuts and raisins because let's face it, there aren't that many to begin with in a box of cereal, but other than that, the muffins weren't too bad. You just have to make sure that you crush up the flakes and let them soften before mixing into the batter, for who wants a flaky muffin?!

In the end, they taste okay, and work well if you're on the go, but I think eating cereal in a bowl with milk tastes better to me.