Train Inspired

Society Today and Convenience Eating

In today’s society, convenience and easiness seem to be almost everything. Especially in eating and cooking. One of the easiest ways to eat and cook is frozen meals. You buy it, throw it in the freezer until your ready. Then when your ready, you pull it out and pop it in the microwave. And bam! Instant meal.

At first, it may seem like frozen meals are not that bad a choice. I mean their low in calories and easy and the foods in them seem pretty good with veggies and things. It can’t be that bad, right?

Sure they may be low in calories and have vegetables, but what else is really in them. You need to think about more than just calories when you chose what food to eat. You need to be sure and think about what else may be in your food.

Problems with the Easy Way

Preservatives

Most frozen meals are chalked full of preservatives. They have to sit in the store for forever before you buy them. Then they sit in your freezer forever before you eat them. After all that they have to still be good for you to eat them. After all, that’s one of the major selling points of frozen meals; their shelf life.

Sodium

Another thing that frozen meals have a lot of is sodium. Now, there is not necessarily anything inherently bad with salt, but too much of anything is a bad thing. Adding a ton of salt is a form of preservation. So, even if they don’t have a whole lot of the artificial preservatives they may likely have a whole lot of sodium instead.

Sugar

Surprisingly, or not, depending on the meal, frozen meals can also have more sugar than you’d expect. And, of course, we all know processed sugar is not a very good thing. Sugar is also a preservative, like salt. If it doesn’t have artificial preservatives they may sugar as well as salt.

Calories Aren’t Everything

It can be difficult, sometimes, to make the best healthy choices. Something important to remember is that we need to look at more than just calorie count when choosing our foods. Nutrition value and additives are also very important. We need to make sure that our foods don’t have too many harmful chemicals and additives.

Everyone knows that it is important to get enough sleep, but when it comes to actually doing it, it is easier said than done. There can be many problems that get in our way. For some, it can be a problem falling asleep. I know for me falling asleep is not necessarily a problem, but getting into bed on time is a problem. Sometimes it seems like there is just so much work to do. However, no matter how impending your deadlines are and no matter how tight your schedule is our bodies still need rest and sleep. However, sometimes just knowing this does not seem to be enough to help us get more sleep. It may help if we start by looking at why we need sleep and what happens to our bodies when we don’t sleep. Then we may be more motivated to find ways to get enough sleep

Why we should sleep.

Sleep deprivation reduces productivity

Sleep deprivation can hit you hard at work. Employees who sleep less than 7 hours a night are far more likely to miss more days at work and also have less productive days when they are present. (3) This leads to less efficient work on the days that employees are present. It may seem negligible if you miss one or two days here or there, but Hafner, Marco et al added it up in there study and it came out to quite a substantial amount over a year’s time. According to Hafner, Marco et al in the US alone the economy as a whole loses roughly 1.23 million working days a year due to insufficient sleep. (3)

Sleep deprivation increases mortality risk

There are several ways that lack of sleep increases mortality risk. The most direct sleep-related mortality risk is due to a lack of sleep itself and not having enough energy for your body to function. A less direct risk is an increase in automobile accidents. (3) This is due to things like falling asleep at the wheel and the fact sleep deprivation has a similar effect on your reflexes as alcohol does. So, driving tired is almost like driving buzzed. (3)

Lack of sleep can reduce the cognitive ability and raise the risk of dementia

Studies have linked lack of sleep with dementia and vice-versa. Meaning that lack of sleep can be a risk for dementia and dementia can lead to a lack of sleep and a lack of quality of sleep. (4) If we don’t get enough sleep our brains have a harder time doing the work required to process and store or “catalog” our memories. If this work is hampered by the chronic loss of sleep, it follows that our memory processing will be hampered. This would lead to a seemingly impaired memory. (4)

The effects of lack of sleep.

Sleep deprivation impairs emotional processing.

We’ve all been there. We’re sleep-deprived for whatever reason and we feel on edge, snappy and are apt to explode at any moment. There is research to suggest that when you are sleep deprived your threshold for perceiving stimuli as negative and threatening is much lower than when you are properly rested. (1) In one study they had participants rate the pictures of faces that had been morphed between two emotions, the participants were to assign the emotion that they thought was most dominant. (1) When participants were sleep-deprived their accuracy assigning less threatening emotions such as happiness was lowered significantly. Interestingly, though, in this study, the participants did not show a lowered accuracy regarding more threatening emotions such as fear, anger, sadness. (1)

Sleep deprivation impairs judgment and cognitive processing.

When we are sleep deprived our judgment is significantly lowered, as is our cognitive processing powers. We may look at something square in the face and totally miss it when we are sleep deprived. Studies have been done that showed that, for just one example, NASA engineers who sacrificed sleep to meet deadlines made fatal mistakes in judgment that lead to the tragic loss of the Columbus space shuttle and her crew. (2) Of course, this is just one example. Doctors and nurses who don’t sleep enough can also make fatal mistakes in patient care due to impaired judgment form lack of sleep. (2)

Sleep deprivation impairs learning and next-day memory

Memories get processed by the hippocampus during sleep. If the amount or quality is less than it should be what we learned that day stands a far less chance of being properly encoded. (4) Studies were done focusing on older adults and sleep patterns that showed that when elderly adults did not sleep well their learning capacity greatly diminished. (4) Quality and quantity are important here. An afternoon nap helped these elderly participants some, but it was noticed that a decline in the quality of sleep alone, leaving the quantity where it was, significantly impacted participants next day memories. (4)

How to get enough sleep.

Getting Quality Sleep

Let’s start with getting quality sleep. You may be getting eight hours or more a night, but is it good quality sleep? Even if you are getting the right quantity of sleep, if it’s not good quality you will still experience the symptoms of lack of sleep. So, let’s talk about just a few (and there are many more) pointers to get quality sleep.

• Don’t eat too late. One big thing you need to think about is when you eat. The timing of your last meal plays a bigger role in your sleeping than you might think. Eating too late means that your body will be busy digesting food instead of getting to sleep. An hour or two before bed is usually a sufficient amount of time to lead to good sleep. Both the timing and the type of meal affects your sleep. The type of food, the main macro-nutrient, in the meal may also affect your sleep. High carb versus high protein affects sleep differently. (7,8,9)
• Carbohydrates -V- Protein. As has been stated, the type of food you eat later in the day plays a big role in your sleep as well. There is evidence that suggests that a meal containing the right amount of the right carbs about an hour or two before bed had the best impact on sleep. (7,8) It seems that getting the right kinds of carbs helps you sleep better than a high protein meal.
• Wind Down. It is also important to take time to wind down before going to sleep. This means things like avoiding technology, (6,10) turning the volume down and enjoying quiet and turning down the lights. Quiet activities such as reading (6) often help in the wind-down process. The point is to give your body time to transition from the chaos of the day to a peaceful night’s sleep.
• The Environment. The environment that you sleep in is very important. Is the bed comfortable? Is there too much light? Are the blankets right? What about the temperature? These are all things to think about when trying to get a good night’s sleep. (6)

Getting Into Bed on Time

For some, however, the problem may be getting into bed on time. I know this is my problem, more than getting quality sleep. Sometimes it can seem that there is so much work still left to do once you get to the end of the day.

• Is it really that important? One thing you can try doing is asking yourself “is it really that important, or can it wait until tomorrow?” Sometimes it can feel like a task has to get done right now, but sleep is important too. At the end of the day when it is time to wind down and go to bed, maybe the dished can sit on the counter until tomorrow morning.
• Just two minutes. Could you maybe set a timer and wash the dishes for just two minutes, or maybe five, instead of half an hour? Sure, you won’t get all of them done, but you will have washed some of them. If you set a timer and get two or five minutes worth of work done, you will have at least accomplished something.
• If I’m not asleep in 30 minutes… You could also try making a deal with yourself and say “if I’m not asleep within half an hour I will get up and wash 2-3 dishes and then try to go to sleep again.” Many times you will probably find that you will be asleep within half an hour. It should only take 15-20 minutes to fall asleep. So, if your still awake after half an hour, you probably need to do something anyway. This may be what helps you fall asleep and your sleep will be of better quality. But, you will have gotten into bed and tried. The trick is to keep it short and easy. Don’t try to tackle a big long project, because that will rile you up again when you should be calming down.
• Avoid distractions later in the day. Later in the day, when your tired, getting distracted is much easier. This is when you need to be on your guard the most to avoid distractions. Social media, TV, anything that seems to cause a problem set limits on. Maybe after a certain time no TV or social media, because, two minutes can easily turn into two hours. It may also be a good idea to avoid starting large projects later in the day. We often don’t think of these as distractions, but they can be. A big project may go longer than expected and keep you up longer than you need to be.

Everyone knows they need to sleep, but it is a little less clear what exactly happens to our brains and bodies when we don’t get enough sleep. Sleep can at times be elusive. None the less we still need sleep. Taking a peek into what might be going on inside you when you don’t sleep and realizing what signs and symptoms you experience when you don’t get enough sleep might be good motivation to find ways to get enough sleep. Then maybe it might not as hard as we thought to get the proper amount of sleep every day.

Sugar Controversy

For decades many health experts have been telling people to avoid sugar, and some say to avoid carbs altogether. They’ve cited all kinds of ill effects that sugars can lead to and how many calories it adds to your diet. They’ve talked about diabetes, they’ve talked about how addicting sugar can be. And, these arguments aren’t completely ill-founded, but what’s the answer to all these negative effects of sugar? Is sugar as completely evil as they say, or is the alternative even worse?

Enter Artificial Sweeteners

The answer to these arguments from the food industry was artificial sweeteners. They avoided the calories of natural sugar. They didn’t spike blood sugar as much as natural sugar, so they were “safe” for diabetics. They affected your metabolism differently. By consuming artificial sweeteners you could avoid dental decay. They seemed to be the answer to the ill effects of sugar.

But is it really such a good idea?

It seems to keep going back and forth whether or not artificial sweeteners are good or bad. So, which is it? While it ultimately up to the consumer whether or not an additive is right for them, let’s break things apart here. We have to start by talking about what artificial sweeteners really are.

What are artificial sweeteners?

• Chemicals

Artificial sweeteners are chemicals. Plain and simple. There’s no denying it, no getting around it. The simple fact is that they are man-made chemicals and derivatives. These chemicals are meant to make your food sweeter without using natural sugar.

• Fake Sugar

They’re the pink packets your mom used at the restaurants to sweeten her coffee. They are a man-made replacement for real sugar? But, does it ever turn out good when man starts trying to play God?

The Dangers

• Weight Gain

Artificial Sweeteners have actually been linked to weight gain, believe it or not. Perdue University came out with an article in 2004 (1) which suggests that artificial sweeteners may upset the body’s natural ability to gauge the caloric value of foods. They argue that the body’s natural mechanisms that gauge calorie intake are basically confused (my words, not theirs). Then, when you do eat something with real sugar in it, your body still gauges by the artificial sweeteners and you end up eating more than you would have. What happens is that your trigger for satisfaction is delayed because you body has gotten used to the artificial sweeteners. This, of course, means you actually end up gaining weight, instead of losing it.

• Gut health

There is also evidence that artificial sweeteners can cause disruptions in the natural microbiome of your gut. (2,3) The microbiome is the natural microbes in your gut that help digest food and promote overall health. These are the friendly bugs or probiotics. When the microbiome balance is upset it can negatively affect digestion as well as start a chain reaction of bad health throughout the rest of your body. This disruption of the microbiome can also impede your body’s ability to process fiber, which further upsets digestion.

What You Should Do Instead

• Use Moderation

So, then, what are you supposed to do? If sugar isn’t that great for you and artificial sweeteners are even worse, what now? Really, it’s very simple. Just use moderation. If you enjoy food in moderation and pay attention to serving size you don’t have to worry that much about sugar. The most important thing is just to remember not to go overboard on sugary foods and drinks.

Artificial replacements for food are never the best way to go. Real, whole foods are always much better for your body in the end. The downside to the chemicals of artificial sweeteners outweighs the upside of having fewer calories. In the end, all you have to do is use moderation. While it is best to avoid processed sugar as much as possible, just remember, the artificial alternative is even worse! That’s it for now, catcha next time!

Works Cited

1. Purdue University. “Artificial Sweetener May Disrupt Body’s Ability To Count Calories, According To New Study.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 June 2004. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/06/040630081825.htm>.

2. Suez, Jotham et al. “Non-caloric artificial sweeteners and the microbiome: findings and challenges.” Gut microbes vol. 6,2 (2015): 149-55. doi:10.1080/19490976.2015.1017700

3. Gerasimidis, K., Bryden, K., Chen, X. et al. The impact of food additives, artificial sweeteners and domestic hygiene products on the human gut microbiome and its fibre fermentation capacity. Eur J Nutr (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-019-02161-8