Summer Snacking: How to Eat H... Video Transcript

Participants

Laura Pensiero RD, Heidi Skolnik , David Folk Thomas

Summary

Summertime and the eating is easy... With barbecues and baseball games, the summer months bring their characteristic foods: hotdogs, ice cream, fresh fruit and more. What should you know to keep your diet healthy? Join our panel of experts to find out.

Webcast Transcript

DAVID FOLK THOMAS:  Welcome to our webcast.  I’m David Folk Thomas, and it's summertime.  The eating is easy.  It's sometimes too easy.  We're going to be talking about avoiding traps of summer eating.  I'll tell you, if you live in New York City, one of the traps is going to all of these hot dog stands, Kielbasa stands all over the place.  You can really pack in the calories.  We're going to tell you how to avoid lots of traps of summer eating.

Joining me to help spread the good word, on my left is Laura Pensiero.  She is a culinary consultant.  She has a company in New York called Recipe Works.  She is also the co-author of "The Strang Cookbook for Cancer Prevention."

Next to Laura is Heidi Skolnik.  She is the team nutritionist for the New York Mets baseball team and the New York Giants football team.  She has a company in New Jersey, Nutrition Conditioning.  They are both experts on eating good.  Thanks for joining us ladies.

Let me start off right away with salads.  Everybody knows that salads are good, and it seems like a summertime thing.  What's bad about a salad Laura?

LAURA PENSIERO, RD:  Most of the base ingredients are excellent in salad.  Fruits, vegetables, grain salads, legumes, beans.  Excellent.  It's what we dress them with that tends to be problem, whether it's mayonnaise-based or oil and vinegar based, that's where it catches up with you in calories and fat.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS:  So Heidi, if you're going to have a salad and you think, "Wow, I’m really doing good.  I’m having a salad at this restaurant instead of a delicious steak," what do you do?

HEIDI SKOLNIK, RD:  For example, a Caesar salad.  People think, "Oh this is great.  I’m getting in greens."  But that can have 50 grams of fat in it.  To put that in perspective, a sedentary female may have 40 to 60 grams of fat a day as her total fat budget.  So that can take a good chunk out of your fat budget for the day.  Instead, using more of a vinaigrette, using a mustard-Dijon based salad dressing, using a low fat salad dressing, learning other ways to flavor, would make a big difference.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS:  I notice that some people bring their own salad dressing to restaurants.  Have you seen that?  They'll whip it out of the purse.  Are more and more restaurants carrying low fat dressings?

LAURA PENSIERO, RD:  No.  I don't find that the case.  It's more the in the convenience types of restaurants and the cafes, and cafeteria style, but I think that you can order oil and vinegar often on the side, and just basically season it to your taste.  That's probably a good route to go in some of the more posh restaurants where they don't make the low fat salad dressings in the back.

HEIDI SKOLNIK, RD:  Or get the salad dressing that you like that's full flavor and get it on the side.  That's a very typical suggestion that we hear, but it makes a difference.  You're controlling how much is being put onto the salad.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS:  There is another key.  I see people order on the side and then they get more and more.  They end up with more than what had been put on originally.