Ten Nutrition Web Sites
In This Chapter
� Describing nutrition Web sites
� Determining cholesterol and fat counts for common foods
� Developing heart smarts
As with every other list of Web sites I’ve compiled for my For Dummies
books (Nutrition For Dummies and Weight Loss Kit For Dummies, Wiley Publishing, Inc.), if my editors had made this section the Part of 100s, I could have easily met the goal.
When you’re looking for reliable nutrition guidelines and information, the ten Web sites listed in this chapter are the cream of the crop, or better yet, the highest-grade skim milk. Each of the sites is an old friend I’ve come to lean on. Each has something special to offer. If I’ve missed your particular favorite, or you find a site that you think is especially useful, don’t hesitate to let me know, perhaps for inclusion in the next edition of this book. Just e-mail the info to www.dummies.com/register.
In the meantime, eat well and, as the song says, be happy.
Watch out for curves on the information superhighway. For reasons known only to their webmasters, even successful Web sites are susceptible to change without notice. What was there last week can disappear into some parallel Internet universe, never to be found again. If the appearance of a site listed in this book changes, just snoop around the site a bit for the info you need. If the site disappears altogether, try looking up key words, such as USDA or cholesterol, via a universal search engine like www.google.com.
The American Cancer Society
Yes, the American Cancer Society (ACS) Web site is dedicated primarily to infor- mation about cancer: definitions, treatments, research, and support services. Yes, most of the nutrition news you find here is available elsewhere. But this site’s defined focus provides easy access to other cancer-related topics.
Even, yes, again, cholesterol. Try it: Type cholesterol into the search bar on the ACS homepage, and bingo! You’ve opened a grab bag of ACS information about cholesterol’s effect on your body and your risk of various kinds of cancer.
Until now, the ACS was barely a blip on the screen of nutrition sources. Today, with a growing number of well-designed studies to demonstrate that some foods and diet regimens — not to mention some drugs, such as those used to lower cholesterol — may affect your risk of certain types of cancer, the ACS Web site offers solid reporting on this area of nutritional research.
American Council on Science and Health, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest
This two-for-one special gives you nonprofit, consumer-friendly organizations whose Web sites provide news releases, position papers, and highly reliable information about nutrition issues and your health.
Your bonus is that the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) are usually on opposite sides of any nutritional issue. For example, the CSPI spearheaded the drive against the fat substitute Olestra, while the ACSH contended that the substitute was useful in some foods for some people. This kind of disagreement ensures that typing in the same search word or phrase, such as low cholesterol, on both sites provides you with the pros and cons associated with that topic.
Neither site is overly fancy. But both provide straight talk on specific issues, such as which fast foods have the most artery-clogging trans fatty acids (boo) and the least saturated fats (yea) or why tobacco is bad for you (maybe the only subject on which these guys agree).
The sites also feature online membership enrollment and order forms for publications, like the list-filled Nutrition Action Healthletter from the CSPI or the well- sourced and footnoted reports from the ACSH. The ACSH site takes on a cool and calm personality, while the CSPI resembles a hot-button advocate. In practice, both are solid and respectable as all get out.
The American Dietetic Association
The American Dietetic Association (ADA), which shares initials with the American Diabetes Association, is the world’s largest membership association of nutrition professionals. Its Web site is jam-packed with food and diet tips, guidelines, research, policies, and stats.
The ADA homepage displays seven bright green boxes, each labeled with a subject. Food & Nutrition Information has diet tips. Shop Online is a guide to ADA publications. Media is fun if you’re addicted to press releases. Careers & Students, Conferences & Events, Advocacy & the Profession, and Professional Development are clearly for association members.
The most useful choice for folks trying to figure out exactly how to create a cholesterol-busting meal plan may be the button up and to the right that says Find a Nutrition Professional. Click that link, and you get a page asking you to accept the Association’s conditions. Say yes, and you move on to a page where more clicks get you info explaining how to find a dietitian in your area.
If you can bend your brain around the much-too-adorable Net address (Eatright? Give me a break!), this site is a true treasure. And golly gee, who wouldn’t love having a personal dietitian to lead the way through the maze of conflicting fat and cholesterol directives?
The American Heart Association
The American Heart Association (AHA) site is a must-see on any cholesterol tour of the Web. True, most of the info here is geared to reducing the obesity- related risks of heart disease. However, the AHA also dishes up solid advice for anyone looking for basic nutritional information and the lowdown on cholesterol. But boy oh boy, do they make you work to get to it! The multiple clicks will give your clicking finger a charley horse — but your brain (and you heart, of course) will appreciate the exercise.
For example, the homepage has 18 subjects you can investigate, ranging from Heart Attack/Stroke Warning Signs at the top to Local Info at the bottom. Click on Healthy Lifestyle (in the middle of the column), and you get several more choices. Pick Diet & Nutrition, and you receive the following six options:
� Dietary Recommendations
� No-Fad Diet
� Nutrition Facts
� Smart Shopping
� Delicious Decisions
� Face the Fats
I’m not saying this isn’t all good stuff. I’m just saying, I’m exhausted. The best bet is simply to noodle around the site.
The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network
The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) is a nonprofit, membership organization (individuals can join for $30 per year) whose participants include families, doctors, dietitians, nurses, support groups, and food manufacturers in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The group provides education about food allergies, as well as support and coping strategies for people who are allergic to specific foods. The site’s best feature, an e-mail allergy-alert system, is free.
Open the FAAN homepage, and you can easily log on to updates, daily tips, newsletter excerpts, and all the usual service-oriented goodies. To start receiving allergy alerts, click on the Special Allergy Alerts link, fill out the electronic form, and zap it off. Performing this quick task connects you to an early-warning system of allergy-linked news and information about product recalls, such as a July 2007 recall of dark chocolate bars whose label didn’t list milk, a potential allergen. This no-nonsense, highly accessible site can help you avoid such incidents.
The Food and Drug Administration
Entering the FDA Web site is like opening the door to the world’s biggest toy store. The virtual shelves contain so much stuff that you hardly know what to grab first. Luckily, all the toys are free in this store. You can linger here happily for days (weeks, years, or maybe forever) following the maze of cross-references and sources.
As you can see by its name, the first concern of the Food and Drug Administration is what you eat. Yes, the homepage offers information
about medicines for people and pets, poisons and their side effects, medical devices (think pacemaker), and FDA field operations (rules and regulations enforcement). They even have a place to report an adverse event (“I took that antibiotic and got hives!”). But for foodies, food is the main event.
To access the food part of the site:
1. Go to the homepage.
2. Click Food in the column on the left side of the page.
Say, “Wow!” What you get is access to a page for the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. Say, “Wow!” again because this covers everything. And I mean everything.
3. Now, browse to your heart’s content.
Food and Nutrition Information Center
The Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) houses one of several nutrition-related data collections in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Library. Like the basic Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Web site (see the preceding section), the FNIC site is chock-full of facts. You can dive in and swim around for hours without coming up for air.
But getting to exactly the info nugget you need can take a couple of clicks. Be patient, it’s worth it. After you get to the homepage, find the link to the resources list. Click on it to bring up a long list of possibilities.
Browse as you please, but click the nutrition and cardiovascular diseases link when you’re ready to fight cholesterol. Up pops a list of, well, resources: books, cookbooks, magazines, and newsletters, all dedicated to teaching you how to plan a diet that lowers your cholesterol and reduces your risk of heart disease. Click on the items that look interesting. Now wasn’t that worth the clicks?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Nutrient Database
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Nutrient Database is the ultimate nutrition chart. Cholesterol, calories, vitamins — you name it, and this site measures it.
The simple fact is that you just can’t plan a low-cholesterol, controlled-fat diet (or any other diet for that matter) without this chart, which serves up nutrition data on more than 5,000 foods and breaks the information down according to different sizes, portions, and different methods of preparation (boiled, broiled, fried, dried, and so on).
Each entry on the list is a snapshot of a specific food serving (“raw apple with skin,” for example) that shows how much the serving weighs and how much of these it contains:
� Calcium
� Carbohydrates
� Cholesterol
� Dietary fiber
� Fat
� Folate
� Food energy (calories)
� Iron
� Magnesium
� Niacin
� Phosphorus
� Potassium
� Riboflavin (vitamin B2)
� Saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fat
� Sodium
� Thiamin (vitamin B1)
� Vitamin A
� Vitamin B6
� Vitamin B12
� Vitamin C
� Water (as a percentage of the serving’s weight) Here’s how to find the food you’re looking for:
1. Type its name into the empty search box and then press Enter.
For example, apple.
2. Ignore the fancy stuff. Scroll down and click something basic.
Up comes a list of possibilities such as “Baby food, juice, apple and grape” or “Baby food, apples and turkey, strained.” In this case, clicking “Apples, raw, with skin” brings up a new screen listing various forms of raw apples such as “100 grams edible portion” or “1 cup, quartered
or chopped” or “1 large (31⁄4" diameter) (approx 2 per pound).”
3. Click the box in front of the serving you prefer and click the Submit button.
There you are — calories and nutrients for one large apple, including cholesterol, dietary fiber, and the different kinds of fats.
The Weight Control Information Network
Weight control is an important path to controlling cholesterol, so the Weight Control Information Network (WIN) site belongs on your must-see list. The homepage for this site, which is maintained by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), gives you access to a database with articles, books, and audiovisual material related to weight loss, plus a wealth of statistics on weight and weight maintenance, and NIH research studies.
In fact, the list of information is so complete you could lose weight just lifting it.
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