Trigger Foods and Their ImpactOne area that people often struggle with when dieting / managing weight is reducing or removing trigger foods. Let's consider trying to eat just one chocolate chippy cookie when the whole pack is available. More than likely, we will eat two, three, maybe more cookies even if we aren’t particularly hungry. The food industry calls this behaviour snacking and has developed thousands of snack foods to encourage us to indulge. There is nothing wrong with eating 5 or 6 times per day if you are hungry and if you are eating the right foods. The behaviour we are addressing is eating when you have an urge or craving but aren’t particularly hungry. Since you have no real hunger, the food has to really appeal to your taste buds or you won’t spend the money buying them or take the time to eat them! Trigger foods also include what is known as "junk foods"; i.e. those that have very little nutritional value. Consider the potatoes used in French fries – they are fried in hydrogenated vegetable oils with beef flavourings and that smell is what draws you into a fast food restaurant. The real money maker in these restaurants is not the fries or the burger but the fizzy drinks which actually have up to 13,000% profit margin on them. A large cola contains 230 calories – take one of those once per day (n addition to your daily calorie requirement) and you will put on up to half a pound a week. So let’s put the calories together for a fast food meal from a generic fast food outlet: Burger – 500 Regular Fries – 200 Drink – 230 Apple pie - -230 Total calories – 1160. Over half the daily requirement for ladies and nearly half for men. So, our defintion of trigger foods are those types of food that we think we love but we actually have dysfunctional love hate relationship with (they make you feel good when you eat them and then you feel guilty after you have eaten them as you know they lead to weight gain). Here is our list of trigger foods - please note that some of this list (e.g nuts, beans, yoghurts etc) are good for you IN MODERATION. Trigger foods 1. Nuts 2. Cheese and pizza 3. Full-fat salad dressing 4. Mayo, marg and butter 5. Fatty red meats and fatty fish 6. Beans, rice potatoes pasta crackers, crisps and bread 7. Frozen yoghurt, ice cream, cakes and pastry 8. Cokes and juices 9. Alcohol Identify your trigger foods from this list and you will see where the hidden calorie foods are that may be sabotaging your efforts to lose weight. Keep this short list in your head or on your fridge door where you will see it if you are looking around for food in the kitchen. 1. Nuts – fine to add to cooking as a flavour enhancer – a small bag of honey roast peanuts – 300 calories and 255 of your RDA fat. 2. Cheese – one slice – 140 calories, hard cheese is up to 80% fat. 3. Pizza – one slice of a 12” pizza AVERAGES 250 CALORIES. (The top calorie on a meat feast pizza was 370 cals per slice). The slice size is 1/8 of a pizza. Eat a whole meat feast pizza and you have 3,000 calories and 176grams of fat over 3 times your RDA. Try high fibre whole–wheat pizza with tomato sauce instead. 4. Salad dressing – both creamy and oil based dressings provide approx 150 calories so avoid them even the low cal ones. Try dressing your salad with balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar or wine vinegar instead. Big key here is make the salad really tasty from the vegetables that you put in so that you aren’t relying on the dressing to give the food it’s flavour. 5. Mayo, marg and butter – 120 calories per tablespoon. Try using a thin layer of salad cream or tomato ketchup on your high fibre bread instead of butter (Less than 20 calories per tablespoon. 6. Fatty red meat and fish – One of the easiest places to reduce a lot of calories is fatty fish and red meats. Fatty cuts of red meat include veal, beef, pork and lamb. Be warned that the dark meat on chicken contains more fat that the white meat. Be wary of portion sizes in restaurants – try to keep the portion size to 3-6oz. Farm raised salmon, trout etc are higher in calories and fat than ocean-caught fish such as tuna and halibut because farm fish get very little exercise! Farmed salmon is the the marbled steak of the fish world with over 800 calories per 8oz serving. 7. Beans, rice potatoes, pasta etc. – we tend to think of these as healthy but a cup of rice, beans pasta etc has 250 calories compared to 40 calories per serving of veg. Easy way to save yourself calories when eating out is to skip the mash/rice and order a double portion of veg instead. Basket of chips – 550 calories. Crisps – 20 crisps can contain as many as 150 calories. 8. Ice cream, cakes and pastries – lots of fat from fat and sugar – even the fat free ones can contain lots of extra calories as they are loaded with sugar. Instead why not drizzle chocolate sauce on fresh strawberries, bananas pineapple etc to satisfy your sweet tooth. 9. Soft drinks and juices – can of coke – over 150 cals. Fruit juices may sound healthy but if you drink a pint bottle that is labelled 130 calories you are actually consuming 260 calories as the 130 cals is PER SERVING i.e half the bottle. Try flavouring water with a small amount of 100% juice or add a dash or slice of lemon. 10. Alcohol – over 200 calories per pint of lager. Cocktails are worse with a margherita containing 350 calories per average serving (not home made measure!). If you are in the mood to drink them try white wine and soda – around 80 calories. Food advertising does not help – psychology is applied to make you want to eat the foods – steak makes you strong, ice cream makes you happy and as for chocolate – that could leave you feeling hot under the collar! A caramel coloured soft drink sweetened with corn syrup is either the real thing or the drink of the next generation. Once you pop you can’t stop. These are carefully researched subconscious messages that are designed to get into your head. Try to reduce your trigger foods – how many calories could you save yourself by choosing vegetables or fruit instead? Trigger foods can have a strong hold on you, it will take time and patience to change them and it will be hard to reduce them so aim for simple changes where possible.
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