09/23/2017
"The Venerable PB&J"
I was recently ask what my favorite meal was and of course that really depends on how you may be feeling at that given moment. Yet the one thing that came to mind at the time was the venerable yet humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich, though jam is a bit healthier. It’s easy to make the night before work, always tastes great, but is one of the most underrated healthy foods around and with a little imagination can be turned into a health food dynamo!
The first thing you want to do is employ the best high fiber whole grain bread you can find. I use Arnold whole grains bread with omega 3 ALA, flax, sunflower, and sesame seeds. Two slices provide 32g of whole grain for 5 to 6g of fiber in addition to 6g of protein. These two macronutrients are the key to dietary glucose [sugar] regulation in your blood stream and why processed foods, such as plain white bread can be so detrimental to your health and contribute to the development of obesity and subsequent diabetes. Fiber and protein slow down the uptake, or delivery of sugar in the body. This prevents blood sugar overload which if it becomes chronic is diagnosed as diabetes. They also prevent fat accumulation by blunting the release of insulin by the pancreas, a response that normally comes as a result of high blood sugar. Insulin’s job is to remove high levels of glucose out of the blood stream “by any means necessary!” First it escorts it into muscle cells. When they fill up insulin resorts to filling fat cells. Let the obesity begin! As all this madness is going on, the liver is monitoring the situation. If it senses that the pancreas needs “help” removing the blood sugar, it does so by converting blood sugar into cholesterol. This is what is meant by the term “dietary cholesterol”; it’s in response to what you've eaten.
Each slice is only 110 calories and 48 of the 220 are from the high fiber and protein so this is a good thing. Next I use Stonewall Kitchen’s Wild Main Blueberry Jam. This stuff is amazing and when you open the jar its nothing but little beautiful wild blueberries for about the first inch into the jar. I recommend stirring the jam the first time you open it to more evenly distribute the berries. Blueberry are well known for their high antioxidant benefits, nevertheless few people realize the best purveyors of these important micronutrients are wild blueberries. Nevertheless research does show the process of making blueberry and other fruit jams significantly reduces antioxidant levels in these berries often by as much as 50% or more but they still posses favorable Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity [ORAC] values and total antioxidant activity.
My sandwich is a double decker so that means I’m using three slices of bread and two levels for peanut butter and jam. This pumps up the calories to 330 but the fiber is now about 7.5g and the protein about 9g. The peanut butter adds about another 180 to 210 calories but with that comes nearly 2 more grams of fiber and a whopping 7.5 grams of protein. But one serving of peanut butter is also a nutritional power house. Two table spoons convey 3g of natural antioxidant vitamin E, 170 ug of vitamin B6 essential for immune system support, 49 mg of magnesium for strong bones and heart rate regulation, and 208 mg of potassium necessary for successful muscle function including the heart, iron for blood and calcium for bones. Peanut butter also has lots of good heart healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, about 8g and 4.4g respectively and only a smaller amount of saturated fat at about 3.3g, only 3g of sugar, and zero cholesterol. In fact several studies have found a high diet of nuts, including peanut butter, resulted in reduced risk of all cause mortality, peanuts and peanut butter were found to convey the same health benefits of more expensive nuts. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association [2015] looked at 71764 US resident and found “a reduced risk of total mortality of 21%” Furthermore this same study sites previous research “that showed a 15% to 39% reduced risk of total mortality associated with nut consumption.”
The benefit of a double decker is the ability to include a second fruit jam with different health benefits and for me that’s organic strawberry jam. I recommend Crofter’s Organic Strawberry jam with only 30 calories per table spoon at 8g of sugar and 20% RDA vitamin C.
This with my 160 calorie, 30g Premiere Protein drink makes for an awesome lunch that keeps me from snacking the rest of the day. All total this is an 880 calorie lunch that keeps my weight within less than 5 pounds of my 1980 All US Navy Wrestling weight class; 220 lbs! Not bad for 37 years. The secret is monitoring your weight and how what you eat affects it. When I was wrestling at 195 pounds in high school and college I could eat this sandwich AND a regular one with a 16 oz. glass of milk!! Not anymore. You have to balance those things you love to eat with how your body reacts and use exercise to help you maintain control. Eat what you love, find a way to make it healthy, monitor the results, and exercise to make it all work. Enjoy your life!
Luu HN, Blot WJ, Xiang Y, Cai H, Hargreaves MK, Li H, Yang G, Signorello L, Gao Y, Zheng W, Shu X. Prospective Evaluation of the Association of Nut/Peanut Consumption With Total and Cause-Specific Mortality. JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175(5):755–766. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.8347
Luo C, Zhang Y, Ding Y, et al. Nut consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Am J Clin Nutr. 2014;100(1):256-269.
Howard LR, Castrodale C., Brownmiller C., Mauromoustakos A
Jam Processing and Storage Effects on Blueberry Polyphenolics and Antioxidant Capacity†
J. Agric. Food Chem., 2010, 58 (7), pp 4022–4029 DOI: 10.1021/jf902850h
