Recipe - Oka-stuffed Chicken Breast with Maple Glaze

This is a delicious recipe I got out of a grocery store magazine. It's a bit of work, but VERY worth it. I served it with garlic roasted baby tri-colour potatoes and fresh from the garden carrots.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 Tbsp Olive oil
1 Spanish onion
225g oka cheese, rind removed, grated
1 Tbsp chopped, fresh thyme
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3 Tbsp Pure maple syrup
1/2 cup reduced sodium chicken broth
1 Tbsp butter

Steps:

1. Heat 1/2 tbsp oil in large saute pan over med-high heat. Add onions and saute until well caramelized (about 15 min). Remove from pan and let cool completely. Measure out 1/2 c cooked onions and finely chop, set aside for sauce.

2. Combine cheese, remaining cooled onions and 1/2 tbsp thyme. Season lightly and mix well.

3. Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Lay chicken breasts, smooth side down, on a cutting board. Cut a pocket in each breast with a sharp knife. Divide cheese and onion filling evenly between pockets. Cover with chicken filet.

4. Heat remaining oil in same saute pan over med-high heat. Season chicken with salt and pepper and sear until golden brown on each side. Place in a roasting pan and cook 30-35 min. Let rest 5 min.

5. Return skillet to med-high heat, pour maple syrup in pan. Stir in broth, remaining caramelized onions and thyme. Bring to a boil and reduce by half. Remove pan from heat, add any juices from the chicken, and swirl in butter. Drizzle sauce over chicken and serve.

Makes 8 servings.

Per serving:

350 Calories
45g protein
15g fat
7g carbohydrate

Label Reading 101

As a society, we are becoming more and more health conscious. More and more people are reading labels. But do you really know what to look for or how to decipher all those numbers? Here's what you need to know to make sense of labels...

In Canada, there are 13 nutrients that must be listed on a label, as well as the Calories and serving size. Let's start at the top...

Serving size: this can be tricky... Serving sizes on nutrition panels are not always a "usual" serving amount. The label may gives nutrition info for 1/2 cup of cereal, but most of us eat at least 1 cup of cereal at a sitting. Remember to do the math. Also, these serving sizes are not always equal to a Canada Food Guide serving. So a "recommended serving" from the manufacturer may be a lot more than Canada Food Guide recommends for portion size.

Calories: Usually the first thing people look at - but not always most important. Where the Calories are coming from are of more importance. The rest of the label and the ingredient list will give you that information.

Fat: The first fat listed is total fat. Total fat is made up of saturated, trans, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Only saturated and trans (the "bad" fats) need to be labelled. A high fat content is not always bad. If the majority of fat is coming from the unsaturated fats, a small portion is good for you. To find out the amount of these "good" fats, use this equation:

Total fat - (saturated fat + trans fat) = unsaturated fat

Cholesterol: Comes from animal products, and is only a big issue if you have high cholesterol or heart problems. Most of our cholesterol is made in the body, and dietary cholesterol only affects it minimally. Saturated and trans fat contribute more to high cholesterol levels.

Sodium: We all get way too much sodium in our diets... the less the better. Try to stick to foods with less than 400mg of sodium per serving.

Carbohydrate: made up of fiber, starch and sugar. Look for items with more than 4g of fiber per serving, and less than 8g of sugar per serving.

Protein: the building blocks for the body.... but more is not always better.

Percent Daily Value: this number shows how much of a certain nutrient a serving gives you, based on a 2000 Calorie diet. It's just another way of listing the nutritional value to put milligrams of a nutrient into a more real world perspective. It gives you an idea of the amount of nutrition that food provides you.

I'll delve more into labels and how to decode the ingredient list on a future post.

Vitamin D

First off, I apologize for not posting as much... my internship has me insanely busy. But, I will try to post when I can for my fellow nutrition keeners.

Vitamin D is a hot topic in nutrition these days. Vitamin D helps with absorption of calcium and phosphorus, and maintaining blood levels of calcium, which is important for healthy bones, teeth, and cartilage. However, recent research is indicating that vitamin D may play an even greater health role by helping to prevent against high blood pressure, cancer, and some autoimmune diseases. High doses of vitamin D are now routinely used to help reduce symptoms of MS.

There are two types of vitamin D, one's found in food, and the other is made in the body when our skin is exposed to sunlight. Both these types are then "activated" in the liver and kidneys.

Deficiency in North America is rare due to the fact that some of our dairy foods, such as milk, have vitamin D added. However, in many parts of the world (Canada included), we don't get enough sun to produce all the vitamin D we need year round.

Good food sources of vitamin D are:

• Egg yolks


• Mackerel


• Salmon


• Sardines


• Tuna


• Fortified Milk (all milk in Canada)


• SOME yogurts (check the label)

The current recommended intake for vitamin D is 200IU for adults, and 400IU for adults over 50 years of age. However, although most health professionals now agree that this amount is too small, there is a lot of disagreement over what the recommended amount should be.

Fortunately, summer is the best time of year for vitamin D, so get outside and make some!!

Malnutrition Has Two Sides

Obesity and Sleep Deprivation

When it comes to gaining weight, the amount of sleep you get may have a bigger impact than you think. More and more, sleep deprivation is becoming known as a leading predictor of obesity.

It seems in the western culture, sleep has a bit of a bad connotation. Many people feel guilty for getting a full night's sleep, due to pressing deadlines, and endless other time commitments. In the past 40 years, the percentage of the U.S. population (and likely comparable to Canada) who get less than 7 hours of sleep per night has gone from 15.6% to 37.1%. Cutting back on bedtime hours can not only impact your working life and ability to function optimally, decrease the quality of your workouts, hinder stress reduction, and even make you fat!

Not getting your zzz's messes with your hormones that control appetite. Specifically, getting less than 6 hours causes hormones that signal fullness (such as leptin) to decrease, and hormones that tell you to eat (ghrelin) are increased, along with hunger. That said, getting more than 9 hours of sleep per night is also associated with weight gain similar to that of the short sleepers, but to a less degree. Not surprisingly, the snacks of short sleepers are found to be higher in Calories, and slightly higher in carbs.

Short and long sleepers also tend to have higher fasting blood sugars, which amounts to a 2.4 fold higher risk of type 2 diabetes!! Those with Obstructive Sleep Apnea also have a higher risk of metabolic disorders, high blood pressure and heart problems. So there you have it. Now hit the sheets!

Info taken from presentation based on Speigel K et al. Ann Intern Medicine (2004).

Fitness Tip - Triceps

Kalev's Personal Trainer exercise of the Week - Triceps

"The other major muscle group which make the arms look big and fill out your shirt are the triceps. Since the triceps function is to extend the arm we are isolating here with tubing to create the resistance.

Again the key focus in this video is to keep your elbow stationary and close to your head during the entire movement."

Check out the video here!

Alcohol

I don't know many people that don't enjoy a nice glass of vino (or two or three) occasionally. But how much should you really be having?

A little bit of booze is actually not such a bad thing. The American Heart Association recommends no more than 2 drinks per day for men, and one for women (And no, you can't bank your weeks allotment and have 7-14 glasses on Saturday night!). Drinking more than the recommended amounts has the opposite effect, and is detrimental to your cardiovascular health. So what is 'one drink' exactly?

• 12 ounces of beer
  
• 5 oz of wine
  
• 1.5 oz of spirits

However, not all alcoholic bevies are created equal in terms of health or Calories. Alcohol contains 7 Calories per gram (compared to 9 Cal/g for fat, and 4 Cal/g for protein and carbs). That definitely adds up. Unfortunately, alcohol isn't readily usable form of energy for our bodies, so it has to be converted and stored as fat before it can be used. And we all know what happens to fat if we're not burning a ton of Calories - it's staying put! As for health, red wine contains antioxidants, but white wine and many other alcohols are lacking or don't contain any. And let's not forget the mix with your whiskey... adding pop or juice to an ounce of your favourite elixir can add a few hundred Calories to each drink!

So if you're going to partake in some wobbly pops, remember to choose smart, mix with a low-Calorie mix such as soda water, and limit your intake. Be good to your heart and your waistline, and keep the adult beverages to a minimum.

Food of the Week: Margarine

Have you ever wondered what exactly is margarine, and whether or not you should be eating it? Is it better or worse than butter? Today, margarine is available in a wide range of types, low Calorie, low-sodium, non-hydrogenated, with omega-3's, etc, etc. No doubt, it can get a bit confusing even for the nutrition-savy shopper.

Here's the low down on the stuff in the tub...

Margarine was invented in the 1800's when Napoleon III offered a reward to the first person who could come up with a suitable substitute for margarine that he could feed to the military and lower classes. Today, margarine is a household staple for many, and is made up of primarily vegetable oils. The margarine crazy took off when we discovered that butter was high in unhealthy saturated fat. So we took healthy vegetable oils and put them through a process called "hydrogenation", which produced what we now know to be even worse... trans fats. So, for a while, margarine was actually worse than butter in terms of health. Since then, nearly all margarines on the shelf are non-hydrogenated, putting them back to par or better than butter in terms of fat.

HOWEVER, although margarine now mainly contains healthier fats, the proportion of fatty acids has been altered, and we're really not sure if that has an effect on the body or not. Possibly, this could be a harmless issue, but no one can say for certain.

My opinion, use unsaturated oils, like olive and canola, as much as you can when cooking. As I've mentioned many a time before, I'm not a fan of foods altered a lot by people in lab coats, so I tend to stray from margarine myself. It may not be my first choice, but please don't buy into those crazy email forwards claiming margarine is the root of all evil, and one molecule away from plastic(though it's good for a laugh).

The fact is, if you have a healthy heart and you're dying for a spread, a thumb tip size spoon of the real stuff (butter) won't hurt. That said, if you've got high blood pressure, cholesterol, or other heart or kidney conditions, low sodium, low fat margarine is your best bet. Of course, always check with your doctor.

I'll leave you with a few last tidbits on the yellow stuff:

• Margarine was actually banned in Canada in the early 1900's.
  


• It was not legal to sell "butter-coloured" margarine in Ontario until 1995.
  


• Margarine is naturally white or near-white in colour, and it was illegal to add artificial colour in many countries for many years, due to pressure on governments by the dairy industry.

Fitness Tip - Infomercials

Infomercials…..could it really be that easy?

It seems these days there are so many new fitness gimics out there it’s hard to stomach as a personal trainer. From infomercials promising a six-pack in 6 weeks by just dancing, to phoney doctors selling weight loss in a pill. Dancing for 15 minutes a day is a great start into fitness but a six-pack you will not get. Magic Pills that make you lose incredible amounts of fat, I think they sell those next to the beans Jack bought.

One thing to remember when analysing these products is, if it is so easy why isn’t everyone walking around with a beach body. The truth is that it takes hard work, dedication to a program, and internal drive to achieve those fitness goals. The great thing about having a personal trainer is that we make sure you are putting in the hard work, we create a program for you to follow which will get you to your goals as soon as possible, and we push you to help you find that inner drive. Even commercials advertising machines promising amazing results, well, you might see initial results but one of the most important aspects of fitness is muscle confusion.

When you workout the same muscle the same way for too long, your body stops adapting and growing, it gets bored. You should be always changing routines, and in certain cases repetitions and sets, every 6-8 weeks. Put time in at the gym, following Canada’s Food Guide for basic nutrition, and being consistent will get you to see the results you are looking for. A combination of weight training, cardiovascular training, and nutrition is the most efficient way to achieve weight loss.

by Kalev Personal Trainer - Alex Jack

www.kalevtraining.com

How much Water do I need?

Here are some quick answers to common questions about water...

1) How much water should I be drinking? The old "8 glasses a day" is severely outdated. Just as everyone needs different amounts of Calories, we also need different amounts of water. In fact, your fluid requirements are directly related to your energy (Calorie) intake. We need 1ml of fluid for every Calorie we eat. So on a 2000 Calorie/day diet, you need about 2L of fluid.

2) What about exercise? Exercise definately increases your requirements... especially if you're exercising in the heat. Read more about exercise hydration here.

3) Does coffee/tea count? In short, yes. Read more on that, here.

4) Do other beverages count? Milk, juice, etc, all count towards your total fluid intake. Fluid is fluid. But watch out for high Calorie and high sugar beverages. If you stray from water, go for beverages that are also high in nutrients, like milk and 100% fruit juice. Most of your fruits and vegetables should be coming from whole foods though, so try to limit juice to 1 cup/day.

5) Is it possible to drink too much water? It sure is. Most people don't need to worry about it, but it can happen. Overhydration messes with electrolytes, and can lead to a lot of the same symptoms as dehydration, such as dizziness.

5) What about sports drinks? As I mentioned here, sports drinks are unnecessary unless you're exercising intensely for over an hour. They are meant to replace fluid and electrolytes lost through sweat, and generally shouldn't be consumed if you're not working out.