Foods Affect your Sleep - Eat these Foods to Sleep Better
sleep, food, nutrition, tyramine
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The food you eat not only contributes to the quality of your weight and general health, but also on how well you sleep. Some foods help you sleep better. While others can make sleep difficult or even impossible.
Foods that improve sleep include fruits, green leafy vegetables, whole grain breads and cereals, and mushrooms. Even spices such as dill, sage and basil help with sleep problems.
Drinking milk before bedtime, a common method to aid sleep, is actually effective. Milk actually contains tryptophan, which can be converted to serotonin, the hormone that controls sleep. Honey, turkey, egg whites and tuna also contain tryptophan, which are good night time snacks.
Alternatively, caffeine-rich food and beverages should be avoided right before going to bed. This includes coffee, tea, chocolate, cocoa, soft drinks and some medications. Some foods that are rich in tyramine can also affect sleep. Tyramine actually causes the release of a substance that stimulates the brain keeping you awake. This is found in bacon, cheese, sugar, ham or tomatoes.
Spicy foods, on the other hand, may cause gastrointestinal reflux or heartburn. While sweet or greasy foods can also cause indigestion and bloating. And though alcohol can make you sleepy, it actually upsets sleep patterns later in the night resulting to frequent waking in the night to urinate.
Even how much and when you eat affect sleep patterns. It is best to keep the last meal of the day light. Eating too much or heavy meals before sleeping may cause indigestion, heartburn and discomfort. It is recommended to start with a hearty breakfast, the main meal of the day around noon, and a light supper early in the evening.
You may also take vitamins and supplements to aid sleep. Calcium and magnesium helps induce sleep. Calcium-rich foods include milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, sardines, salmon, broccoli, tofu, egg, and calcium-fortified food. Magnesium ... read entire entry
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on 3/31/2008
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27.7
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Farm Bill Raises Cost of Healthy Food and Lowers Cost of Fatty Foods
farm bill, healthy food costs
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The Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals.
By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.
The government also purchases surplus foods like cheese, milk, pork, and beef for distribution to food assistance programs—including school lunches. The government is not required to purchase nutritious foods.
When the House of Representatives debated the bill in July, PCRM, along with many other health and public interest groups, supported the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment, which was offered by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). This amendment would have limited government subsidies of unhealthy foods, cut subsidies to millionaire farmers, and provided more money for nutrition and food assistance programs for Americans and impoverished children overseas.
Unfortunately, politics doomed the reform effort. At the eleventh hour, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) feared that freshman representatives who voted to cut subsidies might risk losing their seats in farm states in the 2008 elections, endangering the Democratic majority. The reform amendment was defeated 117 to 309.
Nonetheless, Congress did make some modest changes to the Farm Bill’s subsidy programs at the very last minute.
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on 2/18/2008
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3.8
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Many problems with the Food Pyramid
food pyramid
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Americans view the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as the number one reliable resource when it comes to what is healthy and what is not. The USDA believes that the proper diet should be based on a high intake of carbohydrates and a relatively low intake of protein. The RDA for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight. Their reasoning comes from the fact that out of the 300 grams of protein synthesized by the body each day, 200 of those grams are recycled. This is known as the protein turnover rate (Insel, P., Turner, Rd, R. E., & Ross, D. (2004). Nutrition (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Jones and Bartlett.).
One main problem with this approach is that sedentary individuals were used to determine the RDA and they were only concerned with equilibrium nitrogen balance. Nitrogen balance in the body deals with how much protein is being synthesized. Protein synthesis is a term for when the body makes new protein. It is essential for bodybuilders to have a positive protein balance throughout the day. Through the consumption of protein it is possible to achieve a positive nitrogen balance. It is common sense to understand how an athlete, who breaks down more muscle fiber, needs more protein to rebuild their muscle fibers than the sedentary human being. Oddoye and Margen discovered that positive nitrogen balance could be maintained for fifty days if the individual consumed 3x RDA. Fern and colleagues discovered that individuals who consumed 3.3 g versus 1.3 g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight gained more muscle mass. Tarnopolsky and colleagues discovered that consuming more than 2.4 g/kg of protein did not increase protein synthesis (Ivy Ph.D. & Portman Ph.D., 2004, p. 73-74). Lastly, Dr. Peter Lemon in Nutrition Reviews (54:S169-175, 1996) wrote that strength athletes need 1.8 g/kg of bodyweight to maintain positive nitrogen balance (Hatfield, Ph.D., 2004, p. 476). It is true that glucose is the preferred nutrient for muscular contraction, but protein sy... read entire entry
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on 2/6/2008
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5.9
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