I am a wife, mother, teacher and writer and I'm learning to become a healthy eater. Replacing baked goods and salty snacks with fruits and vegetables is a challenge best not undertaken alone, so I've been grateful for the support of the other healthy writers. They’ve been such good role models that I''ve lost ten pounds in the last year.

I figure vegetables have played a vital role in my development as a writer. I needed someone to keep me company for all those hours I spent as a child, sitting alone at the table until I finished my peas. Back then, I made up stories based on the Happy Hollisters series. (You can be sure my mother heard that Mrs. Hollister never made her children stay at the table to finish their peas.) These days, playing with my characters is a reward I enjoy after school and during vacations.

I've always written contemporary and historical romance, but lately I've been inspired by my students to try my hand at middle grade and YA fiction.

• Michelle Butler
• Mary Curry
• Sally Kilpatrick
• Trish Milburn
• Anna Sugden
• Tawny Weber

• Rachel Graves
• Keri Mikulski

 

• I am the mother of 2 grown daughters and a recently acquired dog and cat.
• I’m a three-time finalist in Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart Contest.
• I took time away from fiction writing to complete a double masters degree in Childhood Education and Special Education.
• I’m the kind of reader who will read cereal boxes or grocery store flyers rather than be without printed words.
• My husband and I celebrate our version of date night with weekly trips to our local Barnes and Noble.

Frustration Abounds

Posted by Mary Curry Feb 18 2012, 2:39 am

I’m taking a detour from the normal theme here for a mini-rant and a question.

 

In a sense this is related to the “Everything Bad is Good Again” series because it’s about revisiting things we’ve been told as fact.

 

Today’s source of frustration is about the relationship between salt and high blood pressure.

 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard that salt causes high blood pressure. My mom had high blood pressure almost all of my life so restricting sodium in the diet is something I’ve heard about for a long long time.

 

Except now I read that it’s wrong. And not only wrong but that restricting sodium is actually more dangerous.

How’s this for conflicting information:

Just last January (2011), the New York Times ran an article on healthier eating that included this reference to the   recommendations regarding dietary salt.

Under the guidelines released Monday (1/2011), about half of the populace should consume 1,500 milligrams of sodium or less each day. That includes children, African-Americans and anyone who is older than 50 or has hypertension, diabetes or chronic kidney disease. Everyone else may consume up to 2,300 milligrams, about a teaspoon.

But today I read something that completely contradicted that so I went searching out info and found this:

European researchers found that people with low salt intakes were more likely to die of heart disease than people with higher salt intakes.

That Study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last May, but Harvard nutritionists say the study should be ignored because it contradicts 25 years of research that correlates high salt intake, high blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease.

 

Want to be even more confused?  One of the participants in that study said this:

“Our findings do not support the current recommendations of a generalized and indiscriminate reduction of salt intake at the population level,” said Stolarz-Skrzypek, a cardiologist at Jagiellonian University Medical College in Krakow, Poland. “We believe that the consumers should be informed about risk related to low- or high-salt diet and be free to choose the consumed food. However, our findings do not negate the blood pressure-lowering effects of a dietary salt reduction in hypertensive patients.” (Medicine.Net)

 

So what? Know the risks but lower your salt anyway?

 

And then there’s some more confusion. The same Times article said -

In 2005, the last time the guidelines were revised, the government urged Americans to eat more whole grains and less sugar. It was the first time the guidelines recommended replacing refined grains with whole grains, and it prompted major changes in the ingredients used by food manufacturers.

And CNN reported:

Eating too much sodium can push your blood pressure into the danger zone. Now, researchers are reporting that eating too many sweets–or drinking too much soda–may have a similar effect.

People who consume a diet high in fructose, a type of sugar and a key ingredient in high-fructose corn syrup, are more likely to have high blood pressure (hypertension), according to a new study.

According to what I’m reading today, the reduction of sugar is very important, but supposedly replacing them with whole grains is not really any help. It’s still too many carbs.

 

So what’s a person to do if they’re trying to live a healthy life and eat a healthy diet?

 

Well, I’m not all doom and gloom. 

 

The one consistent report is that our best bet is avoiding highly processed foods and sticking with natural, simple foods like fruits, vegetables, organic, grass-fed meat, grass-fed eggs and butter, etc.

 

So, what do you think?  Does all the conflicting info make you want to scream?  How do you handle it in your diet?

 

 

 

9 Comments

Spicing up your healthy diet with Turmeric

Posted by Mary Curry Feb 11 2012, 1:27 am

I’ve done a few Saturday blogs on spices, but so far I haven’t done Turmeric – mainly because I don’t know much about it. But it’s a spice name that keeps popping up on healthy food lists so I wanted to learn about it. We can do it together. So what is Turmeric? tur·mer·ic/ˈtərmərik/ Noun: [...]

4 Comments

Super Bowl Snacking

Posted by Mary Curry Feb 4 2012, 9:07 am in Giants, Patriots, snacks, Super Bowl, Super Bowl 2012

Any football fans out there?   Are you a diehard Patriots or Giants fan?   Maybe you’re not a football fan at all but just get caught up in all the Super Bowl hoopla. Whether you’re a diehard Patriots or Giants fan or just someone who got caught up in all the Super Bowl hoopla, [...]

13 Comments

Everything Bad is Good Again

Posted by Mary Curry Jan 28 2012, 9:15 am

You know the old adage that if you keep your clothes long enough they’ll come back into style?   Something similar seems to be happening in the nutrition field.   We’re all used to diet fads that come and go – that’s what makes them fads. Some work for a while. Some work for some [...]

1 Comment

Spicing it up – Cinnamon for your Health

Posted by Mary Curry Jan 21 2012, 1:43 pm

In Social Studies, my students read about how explorers from Europe set out to look for a Northwest Passage to the East so they could get all those wonderful spices and bring them home. I remember learning how the spices were used to preserve foods and to mask the bad taste of spoiling food. Today, [...]

3 Comments