Fantasy Healthball: The Recipes

Go to your local bookstore and check out the diet/health books and you will find a million and one recipes to blindly follow.  At Fantasy Healthball, we are lovers of food so we use recipes all the time.  But people who frequent our site, people like you, like to think about what you put in your mouth.  You want to know what you are eating.  Is it loaded with saturated fat and sodium?  Is it loaded with sugar, or worse yet, artificial sweeteners?  Is it going to put a bulge in your belly or in your muscles? 

Food can do wondrous things.  It can build up a defense against cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses.  It can help your eyesight, give you more energy, flatten your stomach.  The wrong foods can clog your arteries, raise your cholesterol, slow you down, and generally make you look like the Pillsbury dough boy after a few too many sweet rolls. 

Oo oo Poppin' Fresh!

Here is what is different about our recipes.  We are going to give you a recipe, but also talk about what is in it.  How many calories, what types of vitamins and minerals, what substitutions you might make to make it healthier or avoid a food you are allergic to, whether it is best for tailgating or watching the game on TV with friends, those sorts of things.  We also prefer foods that are simple, fresh, letting the wonderful tastes present themselves without a lot of extra foo foo (a technical culinary term meaning glop glop). 

Ooops, now I’ve gone on too long to present our first recipe in this post.  You will have to stay tuned.  Meanwhile, to whet your appetite, take a look at the recipes from one of our own, a Fantasy Healthball player (Cinzia) with her own food site.  We will be posting special Fantasy Healthball recipes from Cinzia, an original Fantasy Healthball player Jen (in features called “Jen’s Fantasy Kitchen”), and others.  In fact, got an idea for a recipe and some thoughts on the healthfulness?  Send it our way and you may be featured as well!  My stomach is growling already.  – Jim Ballard

Diabetes Only Affects the Other Guy

Diabetes only affects the other guy, right?  Right.  Problem is, there are over 23 million other guys.  Take this quick little Fantasy Healthball quiz to find out if you might be next:  1)  Are you getting any younger?  2)  Do you get daily moderate to vigorous exercise?  3)  Is your diet full of fruits, vegetables, and the healthiest foods?  If you answered no to these questions….well, you know. 
 
Recently, I was trying to figure out the number of Americans with type 1 and type 2 diabetes.  It was no easy task because I kept finding different numbers.  I quickly figured out that the reason for the discrepancy was that the number is constantly growing.  Over a million and a half new cases were diagnosed last year bringing the total to over 23 million.  Only 5-10% of those are type 1 diabetes.
 
Michael Krasny at KQED did a great show in diabetes this month which, if you missed, you can HEAR by clicking HERE.  By the way, Krasny is diabetic.

His guest Dr. Ed Gregg said the reason for spike in type 2 diabetes is in part due to increased awareness and detection.  Another huge part of it, though, has to do with weight and obesity trends.  Diabetes trends parallel trends in obesity.  Other factors include:  age, diet, ethnicity, poverty, and related cultural influences of these that affect what people eat and how active they are.  The above map shows the highest risk in the south.  And though I have raved about the healthiness of California in past blog posts, California has a huge increase due to increasing numbers of people in all the above categories.

Type 1 diabetes has increased as well, but the real spike in the US is fueled by the increase to type 2.  Dr. Gregg summarized the difference in type 1 (Jay Leeuwenburg and Jay Cutler) and type 2 like this:  the pancreas of people with type 1 diabetes is not producing any insulin and they need insulin from other sources to survive.  Type 2 is a mixture of body not using its own efficiently and then over time not secreting as much insulin.  Type 1 diabetes is in part an auto-immune response whereas type 2 diabetes has a number of causes but obesity and weight gain over the course of life has greater impact on body’s ability to use insulin efficiently.

What to Do:   First, you can get tested to detect as early as possible.  You should get tested if you are overweight, obese, elderly, others in your family have been diabetic, or you have other medical conditions such as high cholesterol.  One test screens fasting blood sugar.  If the numerical result is between 100 and 125, you are pre-diabetic and already have an increased risk for stroke or heart attack.  Over 125 is diabetic which increases the risk for those, and also kidney failure, blindness, and other things that can ruin your day. 

How to avoid type 2:  If you are pre-diabetic or you think you might be at risk, the doctors recommend losing some weight (starting with 5-10%), go on a lower calorie diet, and increase physical activity.  The CDC recommends a structured program to increase physical activity.  Imagine that, a structured program keeps your head in the game.  Well, we’ve got the game for you.  Hut one, hut two…..  – Jim Ballard

Eat More to Weigh Less, Part II

In our last post we made the case for breakfast.  Let’s sum up:  don’t skip it.  Okay, that said, what to have?  Let’s think about the Fantasy Healthball Food Formation as it relates to breakfast.  Breakfast is a great time for some whole grain cereal.  Gone are the days when you had a choice only between Cheerios or Corn Flakes or some crazy concoction of chemicals, preservatives, sugar, and air known as Super Duper Sugar Fun Puffs.  Now you can find whole grain cereals at most any store.  And they taste good too.  There are now enough to choose from so you can find which you like best. 

Our favorite cereal of the moment is Nature Path’s Optimum Power Breakfast, which is found nationwide.  It has 2.5 grams of fat, zero saturated or trans fat, 10 grams of fiber, 0 mg cholesterol, 40 grams of carbs, 8 grams of protein per serving, and it tastes great.  You gotta love the double digit fiber count, nice!  Put some raisins and strawberries on top to boost your fruit intake.  I’m currently going through a phase where I fill up half the bowl with Optimum Power, and then I add a couple tablespoons of wheat bran, a small handfull of organic blueberries, a couple strawberries, a half banana, some apricot and raisins.  What a power packed way to start the day.  I wash that down with some orange juice.  Yum. 

If cereal isn’t your thing, you can use breakfast to get your “meats” group by having eggs or your “milk” group by having yogurt.  Whole wheat toast with a light spread of organic peanut butter?  I always use Oroweat 100% Whole Wheat bread or their new Double Fiber bread which has 6 grams of fiber.   Sounds good to me! 

Low fat milk…..fruit…..fruit juice…..yogurt……oatmeal……all great choices.  Happy breakfast.  — Jim Ballard

Jeff Hagen Gets an “A” on his Diabetes Report Card

I’ve got excellent news to share from my doc!  Yesterday, I had my regular visit.  In order to keep my diabetes in check, every four months I have blood samples drawn and lab-tests completed.  The test results were the best they have been since I was diagnosed with Type-2 Diabetes in 2002.  My blood sugar (Hemoglobin A1c) test was at 6.1%, a full point lower than 16 months ago..prior to starting our work on Fantasy Healthball.   Guidelines I’ve receive from my doctor indicate a treatment goal of < 7.0% for diabetic patients. 

My doctor commented with raised eyebrows when he looked at my scores, “Most patients I have get higher numbers as they age…but yours are going down…whatever you’re doing…keep doing it.”  As you all know, what I’m doing is playing Fantasy Healthball!  Cholesterol and Lipids Panel were also the best in over 6 years.  The life-habits I have been slowly changing are starting to kick-in with real, improved data.  I was losing about a pound a week but have fallen off that average a bit lately.  The snow melt here has me encouraged that I’ll be back on that track or better soon.  However, it is an undeniable fact that I am healthier today than I was a year ago.  Better days are certainly ahead…If you’d like to join the growing number of Fantasy Healthball players, just click here.

Nutrients Made Easy

<Update:  There is still plenty of time to get into the Fantasy Healthball action for 2009.  If you like what you read here, check out our website.  You can take on the NFL pros and use your passion for football to get passion for great health.  Tell your friends and Read more here…>

Nutrients aren’t that complicated to understand.  There are only six classes of them:  carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and water.  To make it even simpler: water, minerals, and vitamins don’t provide calories.  So, at Fantasy Healthball, we pay special attention to carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. 

Fat has more than twice as many calories as protein or carbohydrates, which is why fats should be eaten only sparingly.  You get the calories without the healthy nutrients.  This is really why it is so important to pay attention to what you are putting in your body.  You are going to get calories from most foods and drinks, so you want to keep an eye on whether you are eating low or high calorie foods and how much healthy nutrients are in your food. 

The way to do this is to become a student of nutrition labels.  You should study them like a rookie studies the playbook.  The ingredients most often appear below the “Nutrition Facts” and are listed in the order of quantity.  There is more of the first ingredient than the second, and so on.  If you are trying to cut back on sugar, for example, you want to make sure it is not included in the list or at least listed towards the end.  

Click below on the sample “Nutrition Facts” for a generic bag of barbeque potato chips (from our favorite nutrition facts source).  Notice the high calorie content, the high fats and saturated fats, and the high sodium.  Granted, this is for the whole bag, but you can’t eat just one! 

Watch out for hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats and oils, known as trans fatty acids or “trans fats.”  You want to limit your intake of these.  Trans fats are found at high levels in foods such as French fries, donuts, and vegetable shortening.  You will also want to limit saturated fats such as butter, candy bars, and cake.  As of January 1, 2006, food manufacturers had to include on their nutrition labels the amount of trans fats.  The FDA has required that saturated fats and cholesterol be listed on food labels since 1993.  Saturated and trans fats raise cholesterol in the blood, which contributes to heart disease.  So, if you find yourself eating too much of this kind of food, we recommend choosing the “limit consumption of oils, trans fats, and saturated fats” and the ”eliminate high-fat processed foods and sweets” as part of your seven challenges for the week.  Remember, we are here to help.  Find out more great nutrition info and how you can take on the NFL pros and play Fantasy Healthball!  — Jim Ballard