Potato Soup

Here's a potatoes soup I made that turned out pretty good.

2 red potatoes, cupped.
1/2 turnip, diced
1/2 cup chopped cabbage
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 jalapeno, chopped
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 can cream of potato soup
2 tablespoons shredded cheddar

Cook potatoes and turnips in the oil. Don't brown, add a little water after they're coated with the oil.

When potatoes are soft add jalapeno, pepper, onion powder, rosemary, cilantro.

Add a little water, stir well, simmer for a couple of minutes.

Add can of soup with a couple of cans of water. Add cabbage and cheddar. Stir well. Simmer for another 3-4 minutes.

Balance is better than low carb

The online magazine, Diabetic Living, has an article on 1-carb recipes. Most of the recipes are heavy on the pork or beef. That's not always a good thing.

You caloric intake needs to strike a balance between calories from carbs, proteins, and fats. Too much protein can damage your kidneys, too much fat makes you fat and hurts your blood flow. You need to keep the fats down, be careful not to load up on protein, and keep the carbs at a steady level. It's a constant balancing act, requiring much more than just low-carb foods.

So be careful with those high-protein, high-fat menu items that are loaded with beef and/or pork. Low carb isn't always good for you.

But one of the recipes in that article looks like it has a lot of potential.

1 cup chopped carrots
1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), rinsed and drained
1/4 cup tahini (sesame seed paste)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, quartered
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons snipped fresh parsley
Assorted dippers (such as toasted whole wheat pita bread triangles, vegetable sticks, and/or whole-grain crackers)

1. In a covered small saucepan cook carrots in a small amount of boiling water for 6 to 8 minutes or until tender; drain. In a food processor combine cooked carrots, garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, cumin, and salt. Cover and process until mixture is smooth. Transfer to a small serving bowl. Stir in parsley.

2. Cover and chill for at least 1 hour or for up to 3 days. If too thick, stir in enough water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until dipping consistency. Serve with assorted dippers. Makes 2 cups, 16 (2-tablespoon) servings.

A lot of potential here, not just for hummus but for a soup also.

Diet for diabetics

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes I went to a two day class on food for diabetics. Pretty much they spend two days saying "look at the label and see how much carbohydrates is in a serving. If it's more that 15 then that's a lot of carbohydrates, if it's less than 15 then that's low. Low is good, high is bad".

It turns out that's not actually so helpful. It's a nice place to start when menu planning for a diabetic, but it's a long way from getting the job done.

The truth is that we don't really know what an optimal diet is. We learn something new about what might be relevant almost everyday. At least we might learn if we're paying attention closely enough.

Some of the recent news comes from a couple of articles in Journal of the American Medical Association.

Chowing down on lentil soup and pasta seems to be the way to go if you have type 2 diabetes.

A new study found that a diet of "low-glycemic foods" -- such as beans, nuts, peas, lentils and pasta -- was superior to a high-cereal-fiber diet when it comes to lowering blood sugar

Pasta is ext4remeely high in carbs and I'd been taught that I shoulld stay away from foods with very high carb counts. But I guess that's not all there is to is and that some high carb counts are better than others.

Carbohydrates in a low-glycemic-index diet are absorbed through the small intestine and converted to blood sugar at a slower rate than higher glycemic foods, meaning blood sugar is more stable, the researchers said.

Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels, a longer-term measure of blood sugar levels, decreased by 0.5 percent in people on the low-glycemic-index diet, compared with a decrease of 0.18 percent in the alternate group.

The VA has recently moved away from suggesting testing your blood sugar seve3ral times a day to the use of A1c two or three times a year to check blood sugar control. But they hav e done a horrible job of explaining to p0atients why they're doing that.

Target weight

Body Mass Index is a generally accepted way to look at how your height and weight should relate to each other. BMI is the ratio of your weight to the square of your height

An ideal BMI for an adult male is someplace in the range of about 20.7-28.4.

Using the upper end of that range you can estimate a target weight (including a factor for conversion between feet/pounds and metric measurements) as

W = .0404 * H²

where H is your height in inches.

For me, at 68 inches, that gives a target weight of about 186 pounds.

Ideally I think I should probably weigh in less than that, but it provides a good target at the upper range of acceptable weight for me.

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

This guys accent drives me nuts.

One of the things diabetics can do with mashed potatoes is to substitute turnips for about half the potatoes.



When he gets to the part where he mentions adding chopped parsley I was thinking, "cilantro might be a better choice". Then later in the clip he suggests that.

He goes past the roasting garlic quickly. Here's a video that takes a little more time showing you that.

All those carrots

The other day I posted some diet model results that suggested I eat over 30 carrots a day.

I couldn't find anything really wrong with the model logically or mathematically, but 30 carrots a day is clearly just not acceptable.

So I just made a model change to never allow for more than 3 servings per day of anything. Works much better.

A cup of coffee

When I start out the day I take a look at the diet my model is recommending. Since I'm still adding food items, and correcting errors I might have made in nutritional data, and changing prices to reflect current market conditions, the recommendations aren't the same every day, but they're close.

Today the menu was

CarbWatch yogurt	0.77	containers
bananas	0.17	items
scrambled eggs	2.49	items
bread	3.00	slices
apricot	2.07	items
navybeans	2.51	serving
carrot	38.96	items

Of course I'm not going to eat 40 carrots today, and I'm not going to eat 1/6th of a banana. But this model isn't a menu dictator, it's a tool for menu planning.

Today I'll show you a little bit about how to use it as a tool.

While looking over the recommended menu and trying to decide what to have for breakfast I had a cup of coffee. That's not on the menu but I'm going to drink it anyway. Putting 1 cup as a forced lower bound for coffee in the model gives me a different recommended menu for the day.

		after 1 cup coffee	containers
CarbWatch yogurt	0.77	0.68	containers
bananas	0.17	0.98	items
coffee		1.00	cup
scrambled eggs	2.49	2.45	items
bread	3.00	3.00	slices
apricot	2.07	1.34	items
navybeans	2.51	2.55	serving
carrot	38.96	34.74	items

That doesn't really change things all that much, although it is recommending fewer carrots I'm still not going to eat that many. Maybe another cup of coffee will help






items

		after 1 cup coffee	after 2 cups coffee	containers
CarbWatch yogurt	0.77	0.68	.60	containers
bananas	0.17	0.98	1.79	items
coffee		1.00	2.00	cup
scrambled eggs	2.49	2.45	2.41
bread	3.00	3.00	3.00	slices
apricot	2.07	1.34	.61	items
navybeans	2.51	2.55	2.59	serving
carrot	38.96	34.74	30.54	items

I do have some leftover meatloaf in the refrigerator that needs to get eaten. I don't normally make meatloaf, but my girlfriend brought some over the other day (I think she must be of the mistaken impression that she's the beneficiary on my life insurance).

So I reran the model after forcing a serving of meatloaf, to see who eating that for breakfast would effect the menu plan of rh for the rest of the day

Again, a slight chance in composition, but not really a substantive change. Because of my high blood pressure I try to limit my daily caffeine intake to two cups of coffee a day. So it's time to eat something.

		after 1 cup coffee	after 2 cups coffee	after 2 coffee +meatloaf	containers
CarbWatch yogurt	0.77	0.68	.60	0.0	containers
bananas	0.17	0.98	1.79	.58	items
coffee		1.00	2.00	2.00	cup
scrambled eggs	2.49	2.45	2.41	0.0	items
bread	3.00	3.00	3.00	3.00	slices
apricot	2.07	1.34	.61	0.0	items
navybeans	2.51	2.55	2.59	2.72	serving
key lime (juice>				2.72
cheese				1.28	slice
carrot	38.96	34.74	30.54	32.7	items

That's a little better. but Only a little. I'm eating the meatloaf.

She had about a 1/2 serving of Brussels sprouts in the container with the meatloaf. I ate that also. So, let's rerun the model reflecting the Brussels sprouts, the meatloaf, and the two cups of coffee.















1.43

	after 1 cup coffee	after 2 cups coffee	after 2 coffee +meatloaf	after 2 coffee meatloaf brussels sprouts	containers
CarbWatch yogurt	0.68	.60	0.0	0.0	containers
bananas	0.98	1.79	.58	0.85	items
coffee	1.00	2.00	2.00	2.00	cup
scrambled eggs	2.45	2.41	0.0		items
bread	3.00	3.00	3.00	3.00	slices
apricot	1.34	.61	0.0		items
navybeans	2.55	2.59	2.72	2.56	serving
key lime (juice>			2.72	2.15
cheese			1.28		slice
carrot	34.74	30.54	32.7	31.75	items

I'm going to have to go off into a corner someplace until I figure out why this model keeps telling me to eat so many carrots.

Making mashed poatoes

Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart make mashed potatoes.


I originally saw this clip at Althouse and at The Agitator.

Even Paul McCartney likes mashed potatoes.

100 calories per package is a marketing gimmick, not a diet aid

A press release from the University of Chicago

M&Ms as diet food? 100-Calorie Pack Misconceptions

Beware of mini-packs and mini-foods, especially if you’re a dieter.

Chronic dieters tend to consume more calories when foods and packages are smaller, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. Authors Maura L. Scott, Stephen M. Nowlis, Naomi Mandel, and Andrea C. Morales (all Arizona State University) examined consumer behavior regarding “mini-packs,” 100-calorie food packages that are marketed to help people control calorie intake.

"Interestingly, one group that over-consumes the mini-packs is chronic dieters—individuals constantly trying to manage their weight and food intake,” write the authors.

The researchers believe their research shows that the ubiquitous small packages may actually undermine dieters’ attempts to limit calories. “ On the one hand, consumers perceive the mini-packs to be a generous portion of food (numerous small food morsels in each pack and multiple mini-packs in each box); on the other hand, consumers perceive the mini-packs to be diet food. For chronic dieters, this perceptual dilemma causes a tendency to overeat, due to their emotion-laden relationship with food.”

In a series of studies, the researchers assessed peoples’ perceptions of M&Ms in mini-packs versus regular-sized packages. They found that participants tended to have conflicting thoughts about the mini-packs: They thought of them as “diet food,” yet they overestimated how many calories the packages contained. In subsequent studies, the researchers assessed participants’ relationship with food, dividing them into “ restrained” and “unrestrained” eaters. The “restrained” eaters tended to consume more calories from mini-packs than “unrestrained” participants.

The authors conclude that dieters should keep an eye on small packages: “While restrained eaters may be attracted to smaller foods in smaller packages initially, presumably because these products are thought to help consumers with their diets, our research shows that restrained eaters actually tend to consume more of these foods than they would of regular foods."
Maura L. Scott, Stephen M. Nowlis, Naomi Mandel, and Andrea C. Morales. “The Effects of Reduced Food Size and Package Size on the Consumption Behavior of Restrained and Unrestrained Eaters” Journal of Consumer Research: October 2008.

TV, fast foods, and fat kids

A news release from Lehigh University

Study links fast-food TV ads to childhood obesity

The largest study of its kind found that banning or decreasing fast-food ads during children’s shows could curb the number of overweight kids.




Shin-Yi Chou co-authored the study linking fast-food TV advertising and childhood obesity.
A ban on fast-food advertisements in the United States could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent, according to a new study co-authored by Shin-Yi Chou, the Frank L. Magee Distinguished Professor at Lehigh’s College of Business and Economics.

The study, which is being published this month in the Journal of Law and Economics, also reports that eliminating the tax deductibility associated with television advertising would result in a reduction of childhood obesity, though in smaller numbers.

The study was conducted for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) by Chou and fellow economists Inas Rashad of Georgia State University and Michael Grossman of City University of New York Graduate Center. Each of the co-authors is an economist with NBER.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study measured the number of hours of fast-food television advertising messages viewed by children on a weekly basis.

Serious policy discussion needed

Chou and her colleagues found that a ban on fast-food television advertisements during children’s programming would reduce the number of overweight children ages 3-11 by 18 percent, while also lowering the number of overweight adolescents ages 12-18 by 14 percent.

The effect is more pronounced for males than females.

Though a ban would be effective, the authors also question whether such a high degree of government involvement—and the costs of implementing such policies—is a practical option.

Should the U.S. pursue that path, they would follow Sweden, Norway and Finland as the only countries to have banned commercial sponsorship of children’s programs.

“We have known for some time that childhood obesity has gripped our culture, but little empirical research has been done that identifies television advertising as a possible cause,” Chou says. “Hopefully, this line of research can lead to a serious discussion about the type of policies that can curb America’s obesity epidemic.”

The study also found that the elimination of tax deductibility tied to advertising would similarly produce declines in childhood obesity, albeit at a smaller rate of 5-7 percent. Advertising is considered a business expense and, as such, it can be used to reduce a company’s taxable income. The authors deduce that, since the corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, the elimination of the tax deductibility of food advertising costs would be equivalent to increasing the price of advertising by 54 percent.

Such an action would consequently result in the reduction of fast-food advertising messages by 40 percent for children, and 33 percent for adolescents.

A major health epidemic

The study—the largest of its kind to directly tie childhood obesity to fast-food advertising on American television—is based on the viewing habits of nearly 13,000 children using data from the 1979 Child-Young Adult National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, both issued by the U.S. Department of Labor.

A 2006 report issued by the Institute of Medicine indicated there is compelling evidence linking food advertising on television and increased childhood obesity.

“Some members of the committee that wrote the report recommended congressional regulation of television food advertisements aimed at children, but the report also said that the final link that would definitively prove that children had become fatter by watching food commercials aimed at them cannot be made,” Grossman says. “Our study provides evidence of that link.”

Within one generation, childhood obesity has become a major health epidemic in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that, between 1970 and 1999, the percentage of overweight children ages 6-11 more than tripled to 13 percent. Adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19 also saw a significant increase in obesity, reaching 14 percent.

An overweight child or adolescent—commonly referred to as childhood obesity—is defined as one having a Body Mass Index (BMI) at or above the 95th percentile based on age- and gender-specific growth charts. Research indicates that there is an 80 percent chance an overweight adolescent will be an obese adult and that more than 300,000 deaths can be attributed to obesity and weight in the United States every year.

Kroger's CarbMaster yogurt

Actually a "cultured lowfat dairy blend".

It's pretty good though.

A 6 oz. container holds one serving and sells for 44c at the local Dillon's store.

80 calories, 10 from fat
5 mg. cholesterol
80 mg. sodium
90 mg. potassium
12 g. protein
4 g. carbohydrates
1 g. complex carbohydrates

It comes in vanilla, peach, strawberry, and raspberry. The strawberry and raspberry are my favorites.

Body Mass Index

Body Mass Index (BMI) seems to be the international standard for standardizing ideas about weight goals and ideal weight. It a measurement that reflects how well your weight matches to the ideal for your height.

Your Body Mass Index is the ratio of your weight and height. Actually the ratio of your weight to the square of your height. The standard measurements are in metric but you can use pounds and inches for your measurements and multiply the result of your weight divided by the square of your height by 703 for the conversion.

I need to incorporate BMI into my nutritional constraints and objectives for the diet linear programming model I'm working on. I haven't done that yet, but I will.

Pan fried banana

I'm beginning to change my mind about bananas. I used to think diabetics should avoid them (I don't take insulin). But I'm coming around to a different opinion about them more recently.

Here's a quick hot banana dish that has some ingredients in addition to the banana that can be very helpful.

Slice a banana longways in 3 parts. Coat the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil. Bring to a high heat and lay the bananas in the oil. Sprinkle the up side liberally with powdered cinnamon. When slightly browned turn over, sprinkle the other side with cinnamon. When browned remove bananas to a plate and squeeze the juice of a lime over them. Serve hot.

The cinnamon helps in insulin production (and helps cholesterol also). The lime juice acts as both a diuretic which can help control hypertension and to restore depleted potassium. Of course we all know how useful olive oil is.

290 calories, 125 from fat
4mg sodium
2 g. protein
47 g carbs
29 g complex carbs

A reading list

Katsunosuke Mitani and Hirotaka Nakayama (1998). A muliobjective diet planning support system using the satisficing trade-off method. Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, V6, pp 131-139.

George B. Dantzig (1990), The Diet Problem, Interfaces, V20.4, pp43-47

Donald K. Layman, Peter Clifton, Mary C. Gannon, Ronald M. Krauss, and Frank Q. Nuttall (2008), Protein in optimal health: heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

, V87, 15718-15755.

Gabriele Riccardi and A. A. Rivellese (2000), Dietary treatment of the metabolic syndrome - the optimal diet. British Journal of Nutrition, V83, pp S143-S148

Infeasibility

This is a somewhat technical post about he mathematical modeling of an optimal diet, it's not really about food.

A linear programming model is the minimization of the value of a linear function in such a way that the solution still satisfies a collection of linear constrains. In a simple form of the linear formulation of the optimal diet problem we want to

minimize c₁*x₁ + c₂*x₂
such that
p₁*x₁ + p₂*x₂ > 77
x_i > 0 for all i

Where x_i is the quantity of food i (we have two foods to choose from)

c_i is the quantity of carbohydrates contianed in food i (the objective is to minimize this)

p_i is the protein content of food i

and we want to constrain the solution to ensure we have a least the specified level of protein in the diet.

This two variable, one constraint version is pretty easy to solve. Just pick the food that has the highest protein per carb (or lowest carb per protein) and eat as litle of that food as you can and still get enough protein. That's your minimum carbohydrate solution.

I havn't really gotten to the topic of infeasibility yet and the post is starting to get long. So let me just finish off with a specific example and I'll get back to this on another day.

Let's say we have two foods to pick from -- chili and bread. A serving of chili has 18 grams of carbs with 17 grams of protein and a slice of bread has 15 grams of carbs with 3 grams of protein.

Carb per protein for the bread is 15/3 = 5 and for the chili it's 18/17 = 1 (about). The chili is clearly the best choice for this mini-model. Eat enough chili to get the required protein and stop. That's a minimum carb diet that fits the model.

The model is overly simplistic, of course. We'll get to that on another day.

Goal programming

For now I'm going to stick with the linear programming model of the diet problem that I've been talking about

minimize carbohydrates
subject to constraints on
protein
calorie intake
calories from fat
sodium
etc, etc

But there is an alternative modeling technique (which I might try later) called goal programming.

In goal programming I'd want to minimize deviations from goals where the goals are various intake levels of
carbohydrates
protein
calories
calories from fat
sodium

I'm already doing that to some extent in my linear programming model by introducing slack variables to allow for exceeding or falling short of various levels of nutrients and mathematically treating these slack variables as "foods" with very high carb counts. That's just a mathematical modeling trick to allow the solution algorithm to work even in situations where the constraints are at odds with each other and a feasible solution that meets all the constraints can't be found.

So changing the model to a goal programming model rather than a linear programming model isn't going to be a big leap, but I'm not going to do it for a couple of weeks. I'll be thinking about it though.

Today's Food Music

Jimmy Buffet, Cheeseburger in Paradise

Status of the diet model

I've been modifying the minimum carbohydrate diet model I've been working on. Here's what the model looks like now.

Minimize Total carbohydrates
subject to
protein GE 77g
calories GE 1900
calories from fat LE 220
daily cost LE $15
sodium LE 2000
veg GE 5 servings
fruit GE 3 servings
grains GE 3 servings
dairy GE 3 servings