Thriving During the Holidays

Most of us will be travelling home soon and here are 5 nutrition tips to keep you

healthy while eating the foods you love this holiday season.

SLOW DOWN AND SAVOR—

Enjoy your favorite holiday food items slowly. Let your taste buds truly taste all the flavors and textures in the dish. It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to get the message that your stomach is officially “comfortable” so by slowing down you are more likely to eat satisfying amounts. This doesn’t mean you need to stay at the table for hours, but take a “pause” to check-in with your body before going back for seconds–and if you’re still hungry, savor your second serving.

SENSIBLE SERVING SIZES—

Over the holidays, it’s not so much what you eat but HOW MUCH that can impact your health. You can encourage sensible serving sizes by using smaller plates and bowls, especially for holidays foods with maximum enjoyment and minimum nutrition value. Sometimes people feel out of control if they eat multiple plates of food, so try to choose a plate size that represents a healthy portion for your body. 

CONSIDER A LOWER CALORIE DRINK—

There are so many festive and great tasting lower calorie beverages to choose from. Some of my favorites include fun flavored green/white (unsweetened) tea or mineral water with a wedge of lemon or lime. 

STAY ACTIVE OVER THE HOLIDAYS FOR YOUR GENERAL WELL-BEING—

Staying active and exercising regularly over the holidays can help improve your mood and keep your metabolism fired up—but make sure you aren’t using exercise as a punishment or compensation for eating something.

TALK TO SOMEONE—Over the holidays, some people tend to get depressed perhaps because it brings up emotions that they haven’t resolved or worked through—consider talking with someone about your feelings whether it is a therapist, religious advisor or trusted friend.

—ELAINE MAGEE, MPH, RD

WELLNESS AND PERFORMANCE DINING NUTRITIONIST

For more information, contact Elaine:

nutritionist@stanford.edu

Dealing With Food Product Recall

R&DE has a product recall policy in place which is expected of all vendors to ensure that our students have a wholesome food supply. Every week there is a product recall somewhere in the United States. The most recent is the recall of peanut butter manufactured by Sunland Peanut Butter Plant in New Mexico, which does not affect Stanford.

A food recall is a voluntary action by a processor or distributor to protect the public from products that may cause health problems. The recent Food Safety Modernization Act signed into law by President Obama afforded the FDA a new mandatory recall authority. Some of the reasons that necessitate food recall by food processors, manufacturers or distributors include the detection of pathogen in a product that may make consumers sick, presence of a potential allergen in a product and mislabeling or misbranding of food.

R&DE now requires all vendors to notify us within one hour of them becoming aware of a product recall. Vendors will immediately call five R&DE officials including the unit(s) that received the recalled product. The notification will include the product codes to enable managers to pull the product and the class of recall.

CLASS I: There is a reasonable probability that eating the food will cause serious

adverse health hazard or death. 

CLASS II: There is a remote probability of adverse health consequences by eating

the food.

CLASS III: Eating the food will not cause adverse health consequences.

The vendors immediately follow the phone calls with an email that notifies managers of all R&DE dining, catering and retail units and Executive Directors. These officials visit the unit(s) to confirm that the recalled products have indeed been pulled and discarded. One of our responsibilities to you is serving you delicious, healthy and safe food. Food safety is thus priority one. 

—DANIEL ARCHER, MPH, REHS

SAFETY, SANITATION AND

ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE MANAGER

For more info, contact Daniel:

danielea@stanford.edu

Is Caffeine Making You Irritable?

It’s not that caffeine is “bad,” in fact it can be very helpful at times. But there are a few ways that caffeine can contribute to irritability.

COLD TURKEY If you are physically dependent on it and you decide to go off caffeine cold turkey, you will likely get a headache and feel irritable until your body gets used to going without in the morning. So wean yourself off the caffeine over a period of weeks. Go half and half caffeinated and decaf coffee for a couple of weeks, for example, and then go one-quarter caffeinated and three-quarters decaf for another two weeks.

SLEEP DISTURBER Caffeine is a stimulant and will disrupt your sleep if you consume it too late in the day, making you cranky and exhausted the next day. Some people are more sensitive to this than others. You probably know who you are.

SHAKY and LIGHT-HEADED? Caffeine can bring you up with a burst of energy and then throw you down into a spiral of low energy. Some of us are more sensitive to his than others. The way to minimize this is to avoid large doses of caffeine and to consume your caffeine along with a balanced meal or snack.

—Elaine Magee, MPH, RD

Wellness and Performance Dining Nutritionist

For more information, contact Elaine:

nutritionist@stanford.edu

Food Safety: Turkey Time!

Four important food safety issues that must be considered when preparing turkey:

1. Safe thawing: the best way is in the refrigerator—it make take a day or two to thaw. It may also be thawed under cold running water (about 70°F) or in a microwave. Do NOT leave your turkey in the danger zone of 41°F-135°F (e.g. room temperature) for more than two hours.

2. Safe preparation: to prevent cross-contamination, properly wash your hands; and sanitize utensils and work surfaces.

3. Safe stuffing: use a probe thermometer to ensure that the center of the stuffing is cooked to a minimum of 165°F. Better yet, cook the stuffing separately, not in the turkey.

4. Safe cooking: Use a probe thermometer to check the temperature at the meaty portion of the breast, thigh and wing joint to ensure they reach 165°F or above. Once cooked, let the turkey stand for 20 minutes before removing the stuffing and carving.

Divide leftovers into small portions, refrigerate at 41°F or below and use within 3 to 4 days. Discard leftovers that have been at room temperature for more than two hours.

—Daniel Archer, MPH, REHS

Safety, Sanitation and

Environmental Compliance manager

For more info, contact Daniel:

danielea@stanford.edu

Thrive: Boost Your Health with Beans

Where can you get a boost of plant protein, fiber, important antioxidant phytochemicals and carbohydrate fuel—all in one food? BEANS !

Beans give your stomach a sense of fullness during meals and the feeling tends to stay for a long time after as well. And beans tend not to raise blood sugars like other carbohydrate-containing foods, probably due to their impressive doses of fiber and protein.

Beans and legumes are also top performers in R&DE’s Performance Dining Program with suggested activity in 5 themes: Brain Performance, Enhanced Immunity, Anti- Inflammatory, Antioxidant, and Sports Performance.

A half-cup of beans offer:

• 22 grams of carbohydrates

• 8 grams of fiber

• 8 grams of protein

• Key vitamins (folic acid, B vitamins)

• Key minerals (such as potassium, magnesium, calcium and iron.)

Boost your health by enjoying beans in your dining hall—look for them at the salad bar and in the hot foods station several times a week.

—ELAINE MAGEE

STANFORD DINING WELLNESS AND PERFORMANCE DINING NUTRITIONIST

For more information, contact Elaine: nutritionist@stanford.edu

Stanford students battle it out with tomatoes!

Natalya Thakur, Stanford Class of 2015, went with fellow Cardinal friends to the Tomato Battle in Pleasanton, CA last week! Here’s what she had to say about the fun experience:

1) How did you find out about the festival / why did you go?

My friend Martell found out about the festival from a Stanford dining flyer.

2) Who did you go with?

So I went with her [Martell] and two of my best guy friends, Sam and Michael.

3) How was your experience?

The experience was like no other. People were tailgating and dressed in costumes. I got trampled by a stampede of people…and the experience of flinging tomatoes everywhere was more liberating than scary…even though I felt like I was in a real battle. Washing all the juice off was kind of a struggle as hundreds of people waited to hose off…loved it though!

Announcing the Foodstagram competition!

We’re super excited to announce Stanford Dining’s Foodstagram competition! We know many of you already love to take Instagram photos of your daily meals at Stanford, and wanted to feature those on our sites :)

Simply take a photo of a plate of food at Stanford Dining, Instagram it however you like, and submit it to our Tumblr page (stanford-dining.tumblr.com) along with your name and graduation year. The best photos will get featured on our Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr feeds!

Sustainable Food Program: Sustainable Food Recovery

Reducing the amount of food wasted is among the most important initiatives of the Sustainable Food Program. The resulting savings is reinvested into other sustainable initiatives, including the purchase of more sustainably produced food.

One of our many sustainability initiatives includes the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign created in 2008. We moved the compost bins to the front of the tray returns to raise awareness about food waste. Students then had to scrape their own plates and were able to see firsthand how much food was wasted in total by the dining hall residents. Previously, Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) employees would scrape plates in the dish room, which is obscured from the students’ view. We have also implemented common food waste reduction measures such as the voluntary trayless program, down-sizing plates and controlling portion sizes where appropriate.

With respect to pre-consumer food waste, the most important recent step we have taken is to invest in food waste reduction technology, which identifies where, why and by whom food waste is being generated.

But the more interesting work we’re doing is through partnerships with students, with whom we’re collaborating on user-centered design processes for better understanding why students generate waste, and then prototyping design solutions to reduce it. We also have great success in creating opportunities for student volunteers to raise awareness amongst their peers about food waste.

Lastly, our partnership with Stanford Project for Hunger (SPOON) has been invaluable in that nearly 60,000 meals have been diverted from our compost bins to people in need. Although our first priority is to reduce waste in the first place, SPOON is able to elevate much of the waste we do generate to the highest use possible—feeding the hungry.

For more information, visit dining.stanford.edu/sustainable-food-program.