Sandwiches

I love sandwiches. Ask my family, I always tell them that some left over piece of their meat will make a great sandwich, it's kind of a running joke around our house, especially because I really cannot eat them very often.

Why?

Simple: If you are trying to be lean, bread doesn't belong in your diet. It is processed empty calories for the most part.

However, I am not preparing for a competition right now, in fact, I am trying to gain weight. I don't really like adding fat to my frame, but it's a necessary evil if I want to add muscle.

I am sure you have read people telling you that they have the secret to add lean mass (muscle) and lose fat all at the same time. Don't believe it, if they had that secret, they would be multi-millionaires and wouldn't need to be selling their "revolutionary system" over the Internet for $129.99.

So the way you get bigger is you eat more calories. They should ideally be healthy choices and not garbage though. My current diet allows me to eat more breads and pastas and I am enjoying that part quite a bit.

I am very excited that I discovered a new bread on Friday. I have already had two sandwiches in two days too!

This bread is made by the same company that makes the great whole grain bread I buy, Alvarado Street Bakery. This bread is the Essential Flax Seed bread and it has 100 calories for TWO slices and 18 grams of carbs for TWO slices! That's half of what most breads have! I am in heaven.

Here is what they say about this wonderful organic bread:

Our “Essential” Flax Seed Bread is a great source of Omega 3 and 6. This “Essential” bread has the lowest calories of all our breads, as well as the lowest fat, lowest sodium and lowest carbs. This great tasting bread is available through our on-line store, as well as in supermarkets and natural food stores throughout the country.
 

Ingredients:
Sprouted Organic Whole Wheat Berries, Filtered Water, Wheat Gluten, Sprouted Organic Whole Flax Seeds, Oat Fiber, Cultured Wheat, Organic Dates, Fresh Yeast, Organic Raisins, Soy Based Lecithin, Sea Salt 

The nutrition facts for two slices are:

100 calories

18 grams carbs

5 grams fiber

1 gram sugar

6 grams protein

100 mg sodium

It's almost too good to be true!

David had a sandwich and liked it enough that he said he can eat it all the time.  I am heading out to the store on Monday and getting one more loaf of this great bread. You can order it online if your store doesn't carry it.

What are my favorites? Scrambled egg whites with romaine lettuce; tuna with sprouts and avacado; and peanut butter with no sugar jelly. 

Whole Wheat

I don't eat bread very much, but when I do, I try to eat the dense, grainy breads. The one pictured above is actually made without flour , it is all whole grains. I really enjoy a slice of this on occasion with some sugar free jam or natural peanut butter.

Marion Nestle is a wealth of knowledge, she has a column in the San Francisco Chronicle that I enjoy reading. Recently whe was asked about wheat breads and here is the extremely informative artice she wrote.


Q: I pay $4 for multigrain or whole wheat breads because I've heard white bread isn't as healthy. But when I compare nutrition labels, $2 white breads look much the same. Are they?

A: My Talmudic answer: yes and no. You are asking about commercial sliced breads. Bread may be the staff of life, but you would never know it from reading the ingredient lists of most commercial products.

Commercial breads are indeed much the same, with only a few differences that matter.

To decide whether these have anything in them worth eating beyond their calories, you must inspect labels to make sure the first ingredient is whole grain, the total number of ingredients is small and devoid of unpronounceable chemicals, the fiber content is at least 2 grams per 1-ounce serving and the label says 100 percent whole wheat. Anything less is reconstituted white bread with occasional pieces of the original grain added back.

And then there is taste. Artisanal breads begin with just four ingredients - flour, water, salt and yeast - and turn them into loaves so crusty, chewy and fragrant that you cannot stop eating them. If they have some whole grain in them, even better.

But handmade breads take forever to make and quickly go stale. Commercial bakeries deal with these problems by rushing the bread-making process and compensate for the loss of flavor by adding stabilizers, dough softeners and preservatives, and covering up the chemical tastes with sweeteners. Breads with 30 or more ingredients are not unusual and violate my rule: Never buy processed foods with more than five ingredients.

To compare breads, you must read labels. Bread companies do not make this easy. Some list the serving size as one slice, some two, and their weights can vary by twofold. When you convert everything to ounces, the nutrient content of supermarket breads looks much alike.

An ounce provides 70 to 80 calories, a trivial difference. The grain is what counts.

Wheat grains have three components - the nutrient-rich bran and germ ("chaff"), and the endosperm, which is mostly starch and protein. One hundred percent whole wheat flour contains all three in the same proportion as in the original grains.

White flour contains about 80 percent of the original components. It is mostly endosperm.

Nutrients in the chaff are lost, so bakers are required to replace the five nutrients least likely to be available from other foods: niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, folic acid and iron. The others are not replaced.

Neither is fiber. White flour contains only trace amounts of fiber.

Because high-fiber diets promote healthy bowel function and appear to reduce risks of heart disease and bowel cancers, dietary advice is to eat at least three daily servings of whole grains - 3 ounces of 100 percent whole wheat bread, for example.

Food labeling rules do not make it easy to figure out fiber content. Some white breads list 1 gram of fiber, but watch out for serving size. It takes two slices to reach half a gram, which can be rounded up to 1.

Whole wheat bread with 2 grams of fiber per 1-ounce slice may have four times as much fiber as white breads. But watch out for breads listing 3 grams fiber; their slices may weigh nearly 2 ounces.

In response to dietary advice, commercial bakeries have introduced whole grain breads acceptable to white bread eaters. These grind the wheat bran super fine, add extra dough conditioners to keep the bread soft, and toss in some bran or cracked wheat to make the bread look like whole wheat. Check for fiber grams and the position of chaff ingredients on the list. The further down the list, the smaller their contribution.

And where is the Food and Drug Administration to help with whole grains? Alas, the FDA has not set rules for grain content. It permits manufacturers to make statements such as "100 percent whole grain" as long as the statement is true and does not imply that the food is an "excellent source."

The FDA's nonbinding guidance says anything labeled "100 percent whole grain" must contain all three components of the original wheat seed, in proportion.

This regulatory gap permitted creation of the industry-sponsored Whole Grain Council. The council issues a certifying stamp in two forms: 100 percent and Basic. One hundred percent means all grains are whole. But the more prevalent Basic stamp allows refined grains and disproportionate additions of bran or germ.

Marion Nestle is the author of "Food Politics," "Safe Food," "What to Eat" and "Pet Food Politics," and is a professor in the nutrition, food studies and public health department at New York University. E-mail her at food@sfchronicle.com, and read her previous columns at sfgate.com/food.

This article appeared on page K - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/01/FDG51FIMTV.DTL#ixzz11QpVTxO4

Acme Spelt Bread

This is something that I have been looking forward to eating! I don't eat much bread, it's generally not the thing one would want to eat when maintaining a lean  physique.

 I do make exception for this, and a few others like it. I am sure there are several bakeries around that make something like this, but you cannot find it in the grocery store. It's not the same as Ezekiel bread or any other whole grain bread, at least not one that I have found.

This is from Acme Bakery, and I bought it Saturday when we were in Berkeley. You can get it at the Berkeley bakery or their branch in the Ferry Plaza Market in San Francisco, the place I go every Saturday morning after a competition, to eat fish tacos and red wine for breakfast, it's sort of a tradition.

Acme makes a different one everyday few days. This one happens to be spelt. You can see the seeds and nuts in it. It comes in a square loaf about 6 by 6 inches, and is so dense, it is almost like a brick. My favorite is the rye.

These breads are heavy, dense, loaded with whole grain and chewy. The exact opposite of wonder bread.

I cannot have this now, but in 14 days or so I can, so I bought a loaf, David cut it in 1/2 inch thick slices, and wrapped each individually and popped them in the freezer.

After my competition, I will be looking forward to ONE slice of this, toasted, topped with a small amount of chunky peanut butter and low sugar jam. That will be my carb after I train that morning, I will have it with scrambled egg whites and salsa on the side.

If you eat bread, this is the kind you want to try to get to like, the soft, light stuff has no nutritional value, it's empty calories, and lots of them. 

Eat Less, Move More

Don't these look stunning?  I went into this little shop, just to look and smell everything, I walked out and didn't buy a thing. It's not always that easy for me though, it's the deep, dark, rich, gooey chocolate that gets me every time.

I have had a few requests for diets lately, along with the usual, "how do I lose weight?", "what should I do?"

My answer is always the same. Eat less, move more. It's really quite simple.

You need to reduce your caloric intake by 500 calories everyday to lose one pound in a week. That really shouldn't be difficult. If you drink alcohol, drink less. If you drink soda, switch to sugar free. If you eat dessert everyday, stop.

Crackers, bread, butter, cream in your coffee, any and all snacks (packaged) are not your friend when you are trying to lose a bit of the jiggly stuff.

Then, if you start moving a little bit, that only doubles the calorie reduction! So if you start going for a walk every night after dinner AND reducing your daily calories by 500, you will lose even more weight!

Just think what will happen if you go to the gym and actually break a sweat, every single day?!

Start small, make easy changes that you can live with. Switch to no calorie sweeteners, eliminate soda and sugary drinks, use non fat milk, savor a piece of bread and not a loaf of bread, eat a portion of pasta and include vegetables and protein, instead of eating a bowl of pasta as a meal on its own. Use reduced calorie mayonnaise, or replace it with non-fat yogurt. Use low sugar ketchup. Avoid sugary jams, they have low sugar or even no sugar ones that taste fantastic.

Soon, you will really be able to enjoy the special treat you select at the bakery like the ones in my picture above, at least once in a while.   If you want to visit this bakery, it is in Santa Cruz, in the shopping center where The Cellar Door restaurant is located....