Monica Reinagel - Nutrition Divas Secrets for a Healthy Diet: What to Eat, What to Avoid, and What to Stop Worrying About

What Does an Opera Singer Know about Nutrition?

I WOULDNT NORMALLY recommend taking nutrition advice from an opera singer. You should probably also be cautious about nutrition information dispensed by actresses, fashion models, health-store clerks, aerobic instructors, farmers, and TV chefs, as well. There are a lot of self-taught nutrition experts out there. I know, because I used to be one.

I originally studied music and started my career as a professional opera singer. Like most young opera singers, I supported myself with various day jobs, and one year, I got a job with a publishing company in the research department of their health division. It was a great job; I loved reading about health and nutrition and already knew a fair amount about it. Before long, I was writing short features and fillers for the publications. Within a few years, I had a pretty solid second career going as a freelance health writer. I felt like quite the expert.

That all changed, however, when I went back to school to earn a graduate degree in nutrition. I discovered that much of the information about diet and nutrition in books, magazines, newspapers, and online simply isnt true: Eating smaller meals more frequently does not speed your metabolism; caffeinated beverages are not dehydrating; swapping ground turkey for ground beef is not necessarily a healthier choice! There are myths, lore, and superstitions that have been repeated so many times that no one questions their basis anymore. I learned that many of the most convincing, scientific-sounding arguments about diet are based on misunderstandings or misinterpretations of the evidence. And I realized that people spend a lot of time worrying about things that simply dont matter.

When I started recording my weekly Nutrition Diva podcast in 2008, my plan was to offer some quick and dirty tips on eating healthy but I ended up spending a lot of time debunking myths about nutrition. In fact, its become a bit of a mission for me. In this book, I take a closer look at a lot of popular beliefs, controversies, and urban legends, to see which ones really stand up to scientific scrutiny and which ones you can stop worrying about. Ill let you in on all the secrets about nutrition Ive uncovered and demystify all of the confusing food choices you face every dayfrom what to put in your cart at the grocery store to what to eat for every meal and snack of the day.

The goal of the book is to help you make good choices about what you eat. But youll quickly see that, when it comes to diet, I am neither purist nor perfectionist. The fact is, very few of us make food choices based on nutrition alone. We are also influenced by taste, cost, availability, convenience, and habit. If youre also trying to balance things like environmental impact, social and animal welfare, religious beliefs, and other factors, youll frequently have to pick your priorities and settle for a compromise. Sometimes, you may choose to eat something not because its good for you but because you love it. Or because someone made it for you. Or because its the least of the available evils. I believe that any approach to diet needs to be flexible and realistic as well as science-based.

Finally, I should point out that what we knowor think we knowabout nutrition is constantly evolving. Weighing how all the various aspects of diet, lifestyle, and genetics interact with, compound, or moderate one another is a complex operation. As we get more information and do more research, we sometimes have to revise our positions. Thats why I dont consider this book to be the final word on diet but rather part of an ongoing conversationone which I hope youll be a part of.

The conversation continues through my weekly podcast and newsletter, which youll find at www.quickanddirtytips.com . If you use Facebook or Twitter, search for Nutrition Diva and join me there as well!

HEALTHFUL EATING HAS become a rather complicated business. The sheer number of decisions we have to make every day about what to eat is overwhelming. It starts the moment you wake up: Should you have coffee? Tea? Decaf? Which is the healthiest choice? Its a wonder we ever get anything else done. Im not here to dump another books worth of information into your overcrowded decision-making database. Rather, Id like to help you make sense of all youve heard and read about nutrition, to sort the fact from the fiction, the good information from the bad, and the important things from the stuff thats really not worth worrying about. The idea is to make the business of eating right just a little bit simpler, a little bit saner.

At least half the battle is simply having the right stuff on hand. When healthy foods arent readily available, most of us will take the path of least resistance, which generally leads to a fast-food restaurant, carryout place, vending machine, or the snack cupboard (you know the one I mean). So well begin at the grocery store, where a lot of the most important choices about food happen. Well cover all the basic food types: fruits and vegetables; eggs, dairy, and dairy substitutes; meats and other protein sources; grains, breads, and other starches; fats and oils; and, of course, all those packaged, prepared, and frozen foods. Youll learn how (or whether) these foods fit into a healthy diet, what to look for, and what to avoid.

Choosing healthy foods is a start. But how many times have you come home from the grocery store, unloaded six bags of groceries and discovered that you dont have the ingredients for a single meal? I also have tips to ensure that youll end up with everything you need for healthy meals throughout the week, both at home and on the road.

Once weve stocked the cupboards, the real fun begins. In the second part of the book, Ill take you through all the decisions youre likely to face in a typical day, from what to have for breakfast to whether its ever okay to have a midnight snack. Ive also included many of my favorite healthy recipes. These are the dishes that I make in my own kitchen every weekeverything from on-the-go breakfasts to dinner for company. Now youll not only know which foods are the healthiest choices at the store, youll know what to do with them once you get them home! Ive also included a few sample meal plans at the end of the book that you can use as a quick reference guide.

As the title of the book suggests, my secrets for a healthy diet can be sorted into three broad categories: what you should eat, foods to steer clear of, and things you can quit worrying about. And, really, that last category may be the most important of all. Theres a lot of information out there about diet and nutritionsome of it better than others. But the more information you have, the easier it is to lose track of the things that matter most. And lets be honest: You cant pay attention to everything at least, not for very long. So, in addition to helping you make the best choices at the grocery store and navigate through the many decisions you make throughout the day, my ultimate goal is to help you prioritize the things that will make the biggest difference in your health.

If you want to eat better tomorrow, you need to go to the grocery store today. Unfortunately, grocery stores are not organized with your convenience, pocketbook, or health in mind. In fact, they are carefully designed to get you to spend as much as possible on foods with the greatest profit margin, which are not necessarily the foods that make you healthiest.