Tuned in to nutrition with Radio Nutrition

When it comes to diet books, Read Before Dieting is unique.  It's not about any particular diet; it's about getting ready to stick to a diet.  As author Stephanie Karpinske, MS RD notes, you wouldn't move across the country or attempt to run a marathon without plenty of planning and preparation.  So why embark on a weight loss diet without planning?  Yet millions of people do just that every year.  Dive right in, struggle for a few days or weeks, and give up, or gain all the weight back. I interviewed Stephanie Karpinske recently about her vision for the book, and we discussed some of the issues she believes are key to preparing to diet.  Check out the podcast for more of her thoughts on getting into the Diet Mindset. The goal of Read Before Dieting is to give you the tools to prepare to go on a diet and stick with it.  Karpinske has included lots of helpful advice, and worksheets that help you identify potential pitfalls and appropriate changes.  The book guides you through the pre-diet phase, when you try out some of the changes, while easing into the weight loss plan of your choice. This book doesn't advocate for any particular dieting style.  Rather it advocates for preparation.  The changes necessary to lose weight and keep it off shouldn't be taken lightly.  A lifestyle that keeps you slim requires adjustments to your previous norms.  Read Before Dieting can help you make those changes. You can purchase the book at the book website, or through Amazon.

It hasn't been a good week for meat.  One study claimed red meat kills you, and on top of that we have the infamous Pink Slime controversy.   What is this stuff?  Essentially, it's a meat-based filler for... meat.   Apparently meat processors have figu...

Gluten-free wasn't always a popular and well known diet.  Before all the hoopla began, it was known only to those few people diagnosed with celiac disease, unable to tolerate gluten without severe gastro-intestinal effects.  Shelley Case, RD, originally wrote The Gluten Free Diet to help those people, but since then many people who don't necessarily have full-blown celiac disease are following the diet.  The widespread public interest has catapulted Shelley to international fame as a gluten-free expert.  Which she most certainly is.  One look at her book and you realize how much work went into it.  From alternative foods to the details of labeling regulations, GF certifications, product resources and a thorough discussion of whether or not oats are gluten-free, this book is the bible of gluten-free eating. You can purchase Shelley's book at her website, or on Amazon.  The website has lots of information, and you can sign up for the free newsletter.  She promises another edition soon, after the FDA finalizes GF labeling regulations.

Gretchen Vannice, MS RD, is passionate about omega-3 fats.    Her book, the Omega-3 Handbook, reflects her extensive knowledge of the subject and her dedication to educating other healthcare professionals about this very important class of nutrients.  I spoke with her recently about her book, as well as the general topic of omega-3 fats.  As she puts it: "The news is all good about this nutrient".  Check out the podcast for a more in depth discussion. While the book may be intended for professionals, there is plenty of user-friendly advice for informed consumers.  In particular, Gretchen includes valuable tips on omega-3 supplements: choosing good products, reading supplement labels and deciphering how much active ingredient you're actually getting.   She is especially concerned about two groups of people who are at risk for deficient intake  -- vegans/vegetarians and pregnant women.  She cautions that pregnant vegan women have some of the lowest tissue levels of omega-3, and both vegans and pregnant women need to plan in order to consume adequate amounts. The Omega 3 Handbook is available in print, or can be purchased in Kindle, Nook and iBook format.  Good news for non-professionals: Gretchen is writing a book specifically for consumers, and hopes to have it available later this year.

A trip to the grocery store can feel like an assault on common sense for nutrition obsessed people, such as myself. Sometimes the idiotic products and label claims seem to jump right off the shelf. Here are five particularly offensive products you really don’t need.  Check out the podcast for all the details: Fruit by the Foot  - Shockingly, it claims to have actual fruit content: pears from concentrate.  What does that mean?  The rest is additives, flavorings and colorings.  None of which you'd find in actual real fresh fruit. Vitamin Water - No one needs this.  Those few cheap vitamins thrown into Vitamin Water are everywhere - cereals, flour, bars, vitamin pills.  Not to mention in real food, too. Krave chocolate cereal.  Oh, but it's multigrain.  I feel so much better.  Doesn't everyone need a sugary breakfast with a mutigrain Health Halo?  Great way for your kids to start the day. Amp sugar-free, no-calorie "Energy" drink.  Since calories ARE energy, it's anyone's guess where the so-called energy comes from. Emergen-C: "Little packets of Kapow?"  Well, your kidneys probably think so.  No one needs 1000 mg of vitamin C in one dose.  If your kidneys are working OK, most of that vitamin C ends up going down the drain. The podcast concludes with some insights into use of the word "Contains...(nutrient)" you frequently find on the front of food packages.  Is it meaningful, or just a Health Halo?  

Today’s podcast is an interview with Rosanne Rust, MS RD LDN who co-authored the book Calorie Counter Journal for Dummies.  She’s also author of Restaurant Calorie Counter for Dummies and Hypertension Cookbook for Dummies. The books are definitely not for dummies of course.  Rosanne and I discussed the reasons for keeping a food journal, and the ways her book can help users learn to be more aware of their food intake, so they can work on meeting goals for weight or health concerns like high cholesterol or high blood pressure. There’s good evidence that people who keep a food journal are more successful at meeting their diet goals.  The problem is that people who are more likely to be successful are typically the ones who are willing to make the effort to keep a journal.  The hard part is convincing unmotivated people to start keeping a journal.  As Rosanne points out, you don’t necessarily have to keep journaling your food intake for years.  A week here, or a few days there might be enough to keep you on track, with the occasional diet tune up. Rosanne has lots of other insights into the process of food journaling, which can help even the unmotivated person get started.  You can find her book at Dummies.com.

Is sugar a drug?  If you struggle with the temptations of the box of doughnuts in the break room or a bag of Snickers in your pantry, you might think so.  Sometimes it's hard to resist sweets, although there are some people who could care less about sweet tastes (they're more likely to love salty snacks like chips).  Recently a researcher suggested sugar sales should be regulated, like alcohol.  Forget about whether this is even feasible (it's not).  Is sugar a drug? Dr. Richard Johnson has done research linking high intake of fructose to elevated uric acid, kidney disease and hypertension.  He's involved with a new study that compares absorption of fructose from high fructose corn syrup (55% fructose) to absorption from table sugar (50% fructose, attached to glucose).  Results showed a slightly higher blood fructose level after subjects drink soft drinks sweetened with HFCS. If not sugar, then artificial sugar?  Speaking of hypertension, another new study suggests high intake of diet soft drinks in linked to an increased risk for stroke. Does a sweet tooth cause people to overeat sweets?  Not according to another new study.  Researchers compared subjects' sweetness perception their food choices and calorie intakes.  Results: no link at all between a person's sweet preferences and total calories, even though subjects agreed that taste of food was an important factor in food choice. Finally, if you're a parent concerned about your child's cholesterol level, check out my interview with Dr. Stephen Daniels, MD, chair of the NHLBI panel that just issued new cholesterol screen regulations for children.

Watching football games, it's hard to ignore the seriously overweight (well, obese actually) NFL players.  Football is now dependent on body size one-ups-manship.  Your guy is 6'5" and 330 lbs?  Ha!  Our guy is 6'8" and 360!  Smaller guys have to run fast, to avoid being crushed.  No wonder concussions are now an NFL priority concern.  While it's admirable that these obese men can still run a bit and make athletic plays with all that extra baggage up front, I'm quite sure it's not healthy in the long run.  A new study supports my suspicion.  It's not about predictable increased risk for heart disease or diabetes.  It's brain function.  Not only are NFL players at heightened risk for concussions, but obese players are at greater risk for impaired cognition later in life, compared to normal weight players. The study identified a group of retired players as either normal weight or obese, using waist-to-height ratio.  The players were also matched for position played, so that an obese player was matched to a normal weight player who was likely to have experienced a similar number of collisions.  Then numerous measurements of brain function were taken, including scans of brain blood flow and tests for memory and cognition. Results: the obese group demonstrated impaired cognitive function.  Accuracy of information processing, reasoning, attention span and memory were all reduced in the obese group.  Scans showed that specific brain areas had reduced blood flow in obese players, significantly the areas of the brain that control information processing.  The researchers had previously shown impaired cognitive ability in obese people who were not professional athletes, as will we general reduced cognitive ability in retired NFL players.  This study shows that adding obesity to the potential ill effects of playing NFL football carries considerable risk.  One possible reason: very large guys hit the ground with extra force, leading to higher risk for brain trauma.  Another possibility: the state of obesity, with extra body fat, causes increased increased inflammation.  Chemicals related to inflammation can damage brain tissue even without the impact of sports.  So while the NFL body size sweepstakes escalates, some players might want to rethink the wisdom of Bigger is Better. Here's a happier, if silly, story.  I wrote last week about Charles Barkley's new gig as celebrity spokesperson for Weight Watchers, and the strategy that uses athletes to sell healthy diet and nutrition to guys.  Even when those guys are just pudgy weekend warriors, they can relate to athletic images.  Now we have Baltimore Raven Ray Rice promoting his chia seed habit.  Chia is another obscure food seed, that happens to have a lot of fiber and a bit of omega-3 fats*, along with some protein and minerals.  Chia isn't that different from other seeds like sesame or flax, but apparently Chia has something those seeds don't have: devoted marketers.  So Mr. Rice is chowing down on chia, which also has laxative effects, and truly believes it's made him a better athlete.  Why am I reminded (again) of Dumbo and the Magic Feather? Well, at least he isn't pushing screwy athletic supplements.  Dr. Oz recently caused a stir after he reported on an investigation of spiked supplements, found to contain traces of pharmaceuticals and banned substances.  This actually isn't anything new: the problem of contaminated supplements has been around for awhile, but the FDA isn't concerned enough to establish any type of oversight  That do-nothing attitude is aided and abetted by certain members of Congress who get money from supplement manufacturers.  Professional athletes must avoid supplements with banned substances, and there are resources for information on products free of contamination.  The average Joe probably doesn't know or care about that.  Since most of the problem supplements are in the weight loss, sports and virility category,

My interview with Lori Reamer, RD, is broken into two parts.  Here is part 2.  We start off talking about the important topic of boundaries, both in fashion and in food.   The idea that there are clothing styles you avoid, because they aren't flattering or comfortable or appropriate is easy to apply to food choices. In case you missed Part 1 of this interview, you can find it here.  

I'm looking forward to reviewing food and nutrition books this year, and I'm starting off with The Food That Fits, a new book by fellow registered dietitian Lori Reamer.  After years of working with fashionable women in need of nutrition advice, she realized that lots of women pay more attention to what they're wearing than what they're eating.  Many of the fashion rules we live by can be applied to our choices in food.  Her book reflects this philosophy, and there are a number of comparisons that might open a few eyes, and create new and improved ways of thinking about food choices. Lori has obviously thought a lot about this concept.  We had a fun discussion about her book and her ideas, all included in the podcast.  For more information about the book, visit  The Food That Fits website.  Lori has lots of fun interactive sections to help you work on your food wardrobe. The podcast of the interview is in two parts.  Find Part 2 here.

Mother Nature's secret weight loss solution: Eat Less. Exercise More. I know, boring.  You were looking for a quick-fix fad diet that screams "Lose 20 pounds by bedtime!", or fat melting herbs or the latest celebrity weight loss secrets.  I did search for those in the magazine section of my local library.  My first thought was this: every January we get these supposedly secret, ground breaking revolutionary weight loss tips from Shape and Redbook and Oprah and so forth.  So where are the thin people?  Is the obesity epidemic going away?  No.  The advice may sell magazines, but it clearly doesn't work. But I did find coverage of success stories.  In People.  The cover story "Half Their Size" highlights people who lost vast amounts of weight by Eating Less and Exercising More.  Even better, the story features people from as far back as 10 years ago, who have kept the weight off by Eating Less and Exercising More.  Permanently.  No magic pills or fad diets.  They cut out bad habits, like gorging on sodas, chips and candy.  They struggled initially with the exercise.  No boo hoo-ing about being victims of the supposed Fat Trap.  It's not impossible to keep the weight off, as Fat Trap whiners would have you believe.  These people are still thinner. Some of these people used diet programs, like Weight Watchers.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Programs like Weight Watchers can make the process of Eating Less/Exercising More easy for some people.  It takes the guesswork out of choosing food and portions.  You don't have to think much about it, which is a huge stumbling block for some dieters.   When nutrition and health experts ranked popular diets this year, Weight Watchers won the Easiest to Follow category.  Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig programs also dish up diet meals.  So if you think an organized program would work for you, one of these might be the ticket.  The drawback: because the programs are so structured, you aren't learning much about how to make wise choices in the real world.  And eventually you'll be back in the real world of big portions and 24/7 ready-to-eat food.  At some point, you need to cultivate self-restraint in order to keep the weight off. It's All About the Calories: A new study reported today focused on weight gain, but the results can apply to weight loss.  Subjects lived in a metabolic clinic, and were fed 1000 extra calories while on 8-week diets that were either low, normal or high protein.  The subjects on the low protein diet gained less weight than those on the high or normal protein diet.  A lot less - only about half as much.  That flies in the face of popular belief that high protein intake minimizes weight gain, or actually helps with weight loss.  However, some of the difference was increased lean body mass in the normal and high protein diet subjects.  So while those people were packing in calories, their bodies were adding muscle in addition to fat.  How does this information apply to weight loss? High protein/low carb diets aren't a magic formula to fight weight.  Eat a healthy balanced diet, with small portions. A junky high carb diet puts on mostly fat weight.  If your food preferences run to soft drinks, candy, pastries, ice cream, chips, snack foods, cookies and fries, you need to clean up your choices if you want to manage your weight.  If you lose weight and go back to eating like that, you'll just regain all the weight.  It's not some inevitable Fat Trap - it's the entirely predictable effect of bad food habits.

With less than a week until Christmas, the holiday season stress meter is heading off the charts.  Not the time to ponder serious questions of nutrition and diet.  Here's some fun food news to cheer you up: Year End Food Predictions It was barely December 1st when the Year End food trend predictions started rolling in.  Most of the focus is on high end restaurant fare and other gourmet foodie fantasies, but there were a few common themes that might apply to normal people.  Here's a summary: Potatoes: despite attacks from the food police, potatoes will continue to be "in", with personalized french fries the next big thing - customers pick the french fry cut and seasonings.  Burger King has already jumped the gun on this one, with new thicker french fries.  The nutritional impact could be slightly less fat  and calories per serving, since bigger fries have less surface area to pick up fat and salt. Grilled cheese: we've already seen the rise of grilled cheese specialty food trucks.  Now grilled cheese is declared the new hamburger.  If you don't have a food truck, these sandwiches are extremely easy to make at home, and are really fun to personalize.  Use different kinds of cheese or bread, add interesting vegetables (or fruit: pear slices are great on grilled goat cheese), chopped nuts, herbs and so forth.  Even better, grill them in olive oil instead of butter or (gah!) margarine. Healthy kid menus: the National Restaurant Association refers to this trend at least 3 different ways Local and Sustainable food, yada yada yada.  We heard this last year. Comfort food and more snacks, especially snacks tarted up with Health Halo labeling, thanks to some add nutrient.  Tiny desserts tie into the snack trend.  The meatball craze ties in to comfort food.  So does grilled cheese. Social media will increasingly impact where we dine and what we eat.  Food and diet apps will continue to proliferate, but unfortunately no app has been invented that actually tapes your mouth shut when you've eaten too much. Some of the trends are downright silly Foraging?  Honestly, who has time to wander the neighborhood or local creek beds, picking strange plants out of the weeds?  We barely have time to cook grilled cheese.  This is strictly a foodie fantasy, designed to make the 99.999% non-foragers feel guilty. Innards -- kidneys, tongues, hearts and pretty much every part of the animal down to the tip of their toes, or hooves.  Again, not a trend many people are going to jump on, even minus the 'yuck' factor.  If we don't have time to forage, we don't have time to figure out how to make innards taste edible.  Just another foodie fantasy designed to make us order this stuff in a restaurant, because we've been led to believe highly trained chefs know how to cook this stuff, so it must be worth $50 a plate, right? Here are my Top 3 predictions: More eating out and convenience products, because people just don't have the time or skills to cook.  Home cooking increasingly morphs into something like quilting - a nice hobby for leisure time, whenever that is. More use of Health Halo labeling to market marginal or junky food and beverage products. More fad diets in app form.  But unless the app tapes your mouth shut after you've eaten enough, it won't have any effect on weight loss. Animals we eat I found an interesting list in the May 2011 National Geographic: number of animals killed for food in 2009.  Chicken tops the list by far: 52 billion chickens eaten.  That's almost 9 whole chickens for every person on the planet.  Even more surprising, second place went to ducks: 2.6 billion, or almost 1/2 duck per person.  I did the math for all the animals, assuming 6 billion people, so here's your share of animal food for 2009: .00003 (3/100,000th) of a camel .004 of a water buffalo 1/20th of a cow 1/16th of a goat 1/12th of a sheep 1/10th of a turkey 1/5th of a rabbit 1/5th of a pig

As the days get even shorter, sunshine and vitamin D might be on your mind.  As in wishing you had more of both.  Plenty of researchers are thinking D as well. A link between vitamin D and multiple sclerosis has long been suspected, but a clear cause-and-effect relationship was hard to pin down.  Saying people with multiple sclerosis have lower vitamin D levels compared to healthy people doesn't prove anything.  There could be something else about those people that caused lower vitamin D and multiple sclerosis.  Or maybe people who tend to get MS have an aversion to dairy products, which are fortified with D, or avoid sun exposure because they burn easily.  A study from Canada looked at DNA variations in children with MS, and their parents, in an attempt to identify genetic changes that contribute to the disease.  They found one particular gene that affects vitamin D utilization.  Children who inherited the genetic mutation from both parents developed rickets, which is caused by vitamin D deficiency.  Children who got the gene from just one parent had lower vitamin D levels than children without this mutation. Then the researchers studied more than 3000 families that had one child with MS.  In 35 of those families, a parent carried one copy of this mutated gene.  In all 35 of those families, the child with MS had inherited that mutated gene.  This finding makes a pretty strong case that vitamin D has some connection to MS, although it's not the only factor.  Now researchers can better design studies to see whether vitamin D supplements can actually prevent MS. A study from Harvard looked at blood vitamin D levels and risk for pancreatic cancer.  More than 1500 people were followed for 14 years.  Pancreatic cancer patients had significantly lower levels of D, less than 50 nmol/L.  People with levels above 50 had a 30% lower risk, on average.  Vitamin D experts note that the vitamin acts to regulate certain genes that control cell proliferation and programmed cell death, both important factors in controlling cancer.  Will taking vitamin D protect you from pancreatic, or any, cancer?  That hasn't been answered, but it's certainly a good idea to be sure your blood levels are sufficient. Here's a twist on the subject of a vitamin D link to autoimmune disease.  Scientists observing that people with autoimmune disease have low vitamin D might conclude that low vitamin D causes the disease.  A study from California suggests something quite different.  The authors propose that infection with certain bacteria causes vitamin D receptors on cells to malfunction.  Cells can't utilize D properly, and as a result become more susceptible to other infections that cause the observed autoimmune disease syndromes.  Loading on more vitamin D wouldn't help, and might actually make things worse.  Proposed treatment involves removing the offending bacteria, so that vitamin D receptors can function properly.  Probiotics are one possible solution. Finally, a review of stroke risk and various diet factors found that low vitamin D was associated with higher risk for stroke, hypertension and heart disease.  Other anti-stroke nutrients: omega-3 fats and potassium.  Contrary to mythical belief, vitamins C, E, B and A do not protect against strokes.  The best stroke preventive: a Mediterranean style diet, which coincidentally includes lots of fish and fruit, the two foods most closely linked to stroke prevention.  Vitamin D could have an effect on its own, but more likely having sufficient vitamin D is linked to a generally healthier diet and lifestyle.

Here are some new research reports that caught my eye this past week.  Most of them have that weasel word "may" in the title, meaning the results just suggest an effect, and in some cases the suggestion is pretty weak or wishful thinking: 1. "Choline may help protect the brain from effects of aging"  points again to the importance of choline for brain health.  People with higher intakes of choline from food (particularly high in eggs) did better on memory tests.  Brain scans for the high choline group showed less evidence of blood vessel disease.  Why would choline help?  Because it's the precursor to a acetylcholine, a key neurotransmitter.  What this study didn't prove: that choline intake somehow affects development of dementias.  While a decrease in neurons that utilize choline is linked to Alzheimer's and other cognitive impairments, it's not clear that higher choline intake would stave off cognitive problems.  But in case you want to increase your choline intake, the most concentrated source is egg yolk.  The whites have practically none.  So if you think of eating eggs as eating those awful processed egg white products currently popular in restaurants, you aren't getting any choline from those.  Other good sources: animal livers, bran cereal and wheat germ. My verdict: this result has legs, but more data is needed, possibly long term intervention with higher choline intake. 2. "Protein may affect wakefulness and burn more calories".  This one is pretty interesting, although I'm suspicious about one aspect.  The study examined the effect of protein and glucose on orexin neurons, which regulate energy balance and wakefulness.  These neurons secrete a stimulant that boosts wakefulness and energy metabolism.  Glucose has been shown to put the brakes on this stimulant effect.  The researchers administered amino acid mixtures to both brain tissue and live mice, and found that certain of the amino acids activated these neurons, and cancelled out the glucose response.  In other words, eating a low protein, sugary/starchy meal could put you to sleep, while a meal that contains protein could help you stay awake and elevate your metabolism.  I have to wonder if some supplement company is going to get hold of this information and create an amino acid powder that supposedly keeps you awake.  Keep this in mind: the protein can just come from food like dairy, meat, nuts, eggs and beans.  You don't need protein fro special powders, created by chemical extraction and energy-wasting manufacturing processes. My verdict: this study has legs and it's easy for anyone to put it into practice.  It's easy to include protein in your meal, and avoid a lot of sugar and starchy carbs. 3. "Polyphenol-rich juice may boost heart health" was funded by Coca Cola.  Could Coke be developing polyphenol rich drinks, and need some Health Halo marketing buzz?  What exactly is polyphenol-rich juice anyway?   During the study, subjects drank a concoction made up of - you guessed it - chemicals extracted from various juices like citrus, grape and apple, as well as a green tea chemical.  The people drinking this mix showed higher levels of some proteins associated with healthier blood vessels.  However, these particular subjects weren't tested to see if they actually had healthier blood vessels. My verdict: a fishing expedition, looking for stuff to put into a manufactured beverage that gives a Health Halo.  Just drink juice.  Better yet, eat the whole fruit. 4. "Multivitamins may boost alertness and mood for men" funded by Swisse Vitamins Pty Ltd.  Surprise, the subjects in this study took a multivitamin product made by Swisse Vitamins Pty Ltd.  50 older men took either a multivitamin or a placebo for 8 weeks.  No word on their general health and nutrition before this started.  Effects were measured using questionnaires that examine anxiety, stress and mood.  The multivitamin group showed some improvement on the Anxiety and Stress scale,

What's a meal?  What's a snack?  Everyone is busy all the time.  Traditional families, with one person in charge of planning and preparing meals, are disappearing.  Cooking isn't necessary anymore.  Kids are growing up on random snacks instead of family meals.  According to USA Today, we're living in an Eat What I Want When I Want world.  Is this necessarily a bad thing? The 3-meal-a-day structure isn't written in stone.  Actually it's rather arbitrary.  It's no surprise that kids who snack their way through life will turn into grown-ups who snack their way through the day.  According to the report, restaurants and food service operators are responding to the trend by creating more snack-type foods.  Unfortunately the examples given for those items aren't nutritionally impressive: More variations on chicken nuggets.  Like we all needed more processed chicken-like substance in our lives right?  Wrong. chocolate Special K?  And other sugary fluff cereals munched on all day.  It's cereal, it must be healthy, right?  Wrong. a Maple Bacon Sundae at Denny's.  French toast ice cream at Baskin-Robbins.  Eat dessert but pretend you're eating breakfast, so it must be healthy right?  Wrong. Ritz crackers filled with "cheese" (not really cheese).  Well it tastes like cheese, so it must be healthy, right?  Wrong. Snacking as a way of life doesn't have to be a nutritional disaster.  It can be wonderfully healthy and convenient, depending on what you choose.  Pre-cut fruit and vegetables are pretty convenient and widely available.  Yoghurt and milk come in serving-size packages.  Bagels, rolls, flatbreads, wraps, burritos, sandwiches and even pizza can be fine, or you choose reasonable ingredients.  Unfortunately, what most people learn to use as snack food isn't that great.  The example given for one college student was heavy on refined processed carbs: muffin, sugared cereal, pizza, cookies, fries and tater tots.  I can easily improve on that: heading to class in morning: milk or yoghurt, bran muffin, fruit snack after classes at 2 p.m.: burrito, juice snack at 4 p.m: turkey sandwich on bagel with lots of veggies, cookie after work 11 p.m.: vegetable pizza, juice or milk late night snack: Kashi Go Lean (not paid to say that!) with milk There.  No cooking involved, all quick foods, but vastly better choices than the processed nutrient-free junk.  Of course, what that student will still be missing is any sense of the social interaction people get from sharing a meal together.  While eating alone on the go isn't necessarily unhealthy in a nutritional sense, it's pretty grim as a social experience.  The other problem is this: meals put time constraints on eating.  You start the meal, the food is eaten, then you stop.  No more eating until the next meal.  Back in the dark ages, when families ate meals at home more, there was no obesity epidemic.  You ate food at meals, not all day long.  Calorie intakes were lower.  It takes a lot of personal discipline to put the brakes on snacking when you're just grabbing cereal out of a box, or eating chips out of the package.  So while the Eat What I Want When I Want world can theoretically be organized around healthier choices, the risk is constant excess calories. More on the podcast: a new study on vitamin D and heart disease risk plus a Food and Mood tip from the NIH.