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Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
7 Little Nutrition Facts That Completely Changed the Way RDs Think About Food
In theory, feeding yourself should be one of the easiest things in the world, but in practice, it's not always that straightforward. In a climate rife with conspiracy theories and baseless (and sometimes dangerous) social media trends, the line between true and false, substantiated and shady, can seem increasingly blurry—at least on the surface. If you're not an expert, the constant onslaught of new information can be tough to parse (not to mention overwhelming), so we asked a bunch of registered dietitians to share the top overarching revelations that altered how they thought about nutrition. We're not talking about the latest buzzy science news or fads, but firm, foundational tenets that have endured (and will continue to do so). Here's everything they said—and how you can use their insights to bolster your own relationship with food. When misinformation threatens to drown everything else out, these truths can help cut through the noise, serving as a guiding light that helps ground your everyday eating decisions. You might think of your diet as a tool shaping the way your body looks and acts, but this interpretation overlooks a major piece of the puzzle. Whenever you tuck into a snack or meal, you're fueling your brain as well as your body, Amber Young, MS, RDN, founder of the North Carolina–based practice Redefined Nutrition, tells SELF. Even though your brain only makes up 2% of your total body weight, it accounts for around a fifth of your total energy requirements—needs that also have to be fulfilled by the food you eat, according to Young. Specifically, 'your brain needs around 120 to 130 grams of carbohydrates per day to function optimally,' she says. While this often falls by the wayside in conversations about nutrition that focus only on, say, protein's muscle-building potential, it makes it all the more important to maintain healthy habits like eating regularly and taking in a balance of nutrients. Early on in her career, Vincci Tsui, RD, a certified intuitive eating counselor based in Canada, would recommend that her clients eat whole foods or cook more at home so they had more control over the content of their meals, as she tells SELF. While that advice wasn't bad, she soon realized that many of her clients weren't able to put it into practice, whether due to time limitations, financial constraints, a lack of cooking skill, personal preference, or other reasons. People tend to 'put pressure on themselves to be cooking from scratch,' Tsui says. As a result, folks can experience feelings of inadequacy and even guilt when they fail to meet those lofty expectations. What's more, Tsui also became increasingly aware that the link between such 'healthy' eating habits and better health isn't as clear-cut as it seems. 'Most nutrition research is observational, meaning that we can only determine correlations, not causation,' she says. 'Even though eating more whole foods or home-cooked meals may correlate with better health outcomes, we don't know that food is the cause. It might just be that these eating patterns are just a reflection of higher socioeconomic status, better access, and more privilege.' Developing this awareness helped Tsui 'bring more compassion and flexibility' to her nutrition counseling—taking limiting factors like time and resources into account, and meeting clients where they're at rather than where they would be in an ideal world. Now, she'll often 'push back on that misconception that whole foods or less processed foods are automatically 'better'' when she encounters it in her practice. To the contrary, ultraprocessed foods certainly can be a solid option—which is why SELF decided to include them in our 2025 Pantry Awards. While weight and BMI have traditionally been construed as a measure of how healthy you are, more recent research suggests that the correlation is actually deeply flawed in several ways. Not only can dieting and weight-cycling cause psychological harm 'by promoting a rigid, judgment-based approach to food and eating,' Thanh Thanh Nguyen, MS, RDN, a registered dietitian at Mendinground Nutrition, tells SELF, they may even have negative effects on physical health, too. When Nguyen started digging, she came across a bunch of research that really helped cement her weight-inclusive approach to her own practice, including a 2012 study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine that found adopting healthy lifestyle habits was associated with a significantly lowered risk of premature death regardless of BMI; a 2014 review published in the Journal of Obesity that concluded a weight-inclusive approach was safer for patients and more sustainable over time; and a 2019 article published in the journal Women & Therapy that argued against sizeism and for a weight-inclusive approach to wellness. Reading the research, Nguyen felt so validated. Today, this information helps her support clients who feel like they need to lose weight by any means necessary to improve their health—and challenge that entrenched belief. Rather than focusing on the number on the scale, she'll redirect their efforts toward lifestyle shifts under their control, like adding in movement and eating regularly. Denying yourself food when you're hungry outside of normal mealtimes is actually the harmful habit, according to Young. Even though the division of the day into breakfast, lunch, and dinner might lead you to believe that you should only eat at those set intervals, eating consistently (and in adequate amounts) throughout the day is 'really helpful all around' for our health, Young says. 'Some of my clients might describe something like a brain fog that sets in when they're not eating enough or they're low on carbohydrates,' she adds. If that sounds like you, trying to eat every three to four hours may help keep your mood, focus, appetite, and energy levels stable. Without sufficient food, not only can the hanger rush in, but you'll also miss out on opportunities to make other changes to your diet, like tweaking the macro balance or incorporating a wider array of micronutrients. When you're considering a nutrition change, your first impulse is probably to go big. 'Oftentimes, the instinct is to overhaul or 180-degree our entire diet overnight,' Young says. Tempting as it might be to do a radical about-face, however, try to resist that urge: Those kinds of sudden, dramatic shifts aren't sustainable in the long term and will only make you feel like you've failed. 'It leads to overwhelm and shutdown, and it's really easy to get discouraged,' Young says. Instead, try making smaller tweaks to your diet and lifestyle, and scaling up from there. You might not notice as big of a difference, but on the flip side, you'll be more likely to stick with your new regimen. Some little ways to eat just a little healthier: build in a mid-afternoon snack if you often go long stretches without eating, focus on what you can add to your plate rather than subtract (tossing a handful of chickpeas into a smoothie, for instance), or buying pre-washed or pre-chopped produce to get more veggies throughout the day. Among the big nutrition convos of the day (protein! Food dyes!), fiber often gets lost in the shuffle. Despite its critical role in keeping your gut happy and healthy, and helping you poop on the regular, most people—more than 90% of the population, according to some estimates—don't take in nearly enough. In fact, the estimated average daily intake—16 grams—is around half of the recommended 25 (for women) and 38 (for men), according to the National Library of Medicine. If you, too, find it hard to pack an adequate amount of fiber into your diet, consider taking a pragmatic approach to the problem—'thinking about how to get the best bang for your buck,' Anthea Levi, MS, RD, CDN, a Brooklyn-based health writer and founder of Alive+Well Nutrition, tells SELF. Plant-based foods as a whole tend to be high in fiber, she explains, but some are still 'way better sources' than others, so make a conscious effort to prioritize those that are especially dense in the nutrient. 'One cup of fresh spinach has less than one gram of fiber in it, whereas one tablespoon of chia seeds has four or five grams of fiber in it,' for example, Levi says. Other fiber-rich foods include lima beans, green peas, raspberries, and shredded wheat cereal. By leaning on those, it'll be 'easier for us to hit our [fiber] goals,' Levi says. That's big, because the benefits of fiber can affect your whole body; getting enough can lower your risk for colon cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other serious health conditions (and even premature death). Yes, we know we just said that fiber content is important (and it is!), but at the same time, don't let factors like that completely drown out your other needs. When the exact nutritional breakdown of any product is right there on the packaging, it can be easy to base your eating decisions on calories, macros, or some other nutritional component alone, rather than considering what would truly satisfy you in the moment, Janice Dada, MPH, RDN, a certified intuitive eating counselor based in California, tells SELF. If you see your choice contains more calories or less protein than you expected, for example, you might then second-guess your selection, feeling stressed, anxious, or pressured into opting for a less-fulfilling alternative. Then, you run the risk of 'ending up unsatisfied at the end and still searching for food,' Dada says. Instead, she suggests viewing nutrition info through a neutral rather than a negative lens—treating it not as a critique of your personal dietary choices, but as a helpful guide to maximizing your satisfaction (like knowing what you need to contribute to a snack or meal in order to balance it out or beef it up). Food is more than its nutritional makeup, after all; it can also be a source of joy, camaraderie, cultural connection, and more, and you risk missing out on those non-tangible benefits if you only see what you're eating as the sum of its parts. Related: 7 Gut Health Myths GI Docs and Dietitians Really Wish You'd Stop Believing How Bad Is It, Really, to Eat a Bowl or Two of Cereal for Dinner? How Worried Should I Really Be About Mercury in Tuna? Get more of SELF's great service journalism delivered right to your inbox—for free. Originally Appeared on Self
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
We Asked Dietitians Their Favorite Burger King Order — And They All Said the Same Thing
Reviewed by Dietitian Kelli McGrane, M.S., RDDietitians recommend the Whopper Jr., as it's lower in calories and fat than larger burgers. Adding extra veggies and asking for no mayo are easy ways to add fiber and reduce saturated fat. For a healthy meal at BK, order Jr.- or value-sized menu items, skip the soda fountain and eat to Amber Young, RD, the goal of dining at any fast food establishment is '[finding] the sweet spot between what sounds good and what will help you feel nourished and satisfied.' If Burger King (BK) is on the menu, you may be wondering which item fits Young's criteria. When asked what they choose when rolling up to the drive-thru, the dietitians we spoke with agreed that the Whopper Jr. is their top pick. Here's why. A smaller version of BK's classic Whopper, the Whopper Jr. features a beef patty topped with tomatoes, lettuce, mayo, ketchup, pickles and onions, sandwiched between a toasted sesame seed bun. Here's why it stands out, according to dietitians. 'The Whopper Jr. provides a satisfying burger experience with fewer calories and less fat compared to larger burgers,' says Tara Collingwood, M.S., RDN, CSSD. Here are the nutrition facts for the Whopper Jr: Calories: 330 Total fat: 18g Saturated fat: 5g Sodium: 560mg Carbs: 30g Fiber: 2g Total sugars: 7g Added sugars: n/a Protein: 15g The Whopper Jr. provides 15 grams of protein—not bad for a smaller sandwich. That said, if you're looking for more protein, you can easily order a Double Whopper Jr., which is what Young recommends. 'The double beef patty increases the protein content to about 25 grams,' she says, adding, 'Honing in on protein can be helpful since it's a nutrient that supports fullness, blood sugar stability, and sustained energy.' Hungry for more? If you're looking for an option that's higher in protein (and calories), Sarah Schlichter, M.P.H., RD says the original Whopper can be a relatively healthy option. She notes that the original Whopper provides 31 grams of protein and 670 calories, though you can easily reduce the calorie amount (and saturated fat) by asking for no mayo. The Whopper Jr. contains 560 mg of sodium, while the Double Whopper Jr. has 582 mg of sodium. . This is about half of the sodium content of the original Whopper. While less than many other BK menu items, it's worth noting that 560 mg isn't a low amount of sodium. In fact, a Whopper Jr. contains about 25% of your daily sodium limit. For this reason, it's still a good idea to keep an eye on your sodium intake at other meals that day. The Whopper (and all its variations) comes with tomatoes, onions, lettuce and pickles. However, if you're looking to boost the fiber content further, your options are pretty limited. BK doesn't offer salads or fruit on the side (unless you get a King Jr. Kids Meal, in which case you can go for applesauce). Instead, Schlichter and Young recommend asking for extra lettuce, tomatoes and onions. Heading to BK? If the Whopper doesn't appeal to you, here are some tips for choosing an entree that fits your nutritional goals, yet is still enjoyable to eat: Don't Arrive Super Hungry: If your stomach is grumbling by the time you walk in or drive up, then you may not make the healthiest choice. 'If you've waited too long to eat, then you're probably feeling super hungry and more likely to overorder,' says Vanessa Imus, M.S., RDN. 'This means you might decide you need a large fry when, in fact, a small fry would be sufficient for your burger.' Prioritize Protein and Fiber: Collingwood recommends choosing entrees with a good source of protein, like beef, egg or grilled chicken (if available—typically BK only offers crispy chicken, though you can find grilled alternatives in some areas). Also make sure to up the fiber by choosing items with veggies—lettuce, tomatoes, onion and pickles all count—whenever you can. Ask for Mayo On the Side: To keep saturated fat to a minimum, Collingwood recommends asking for creamy sauces, like mayo, on the side—or nixing them from your order completely. Downsize It: Opting for Jr.-sized burgers and value-sized fries (the smallest size) can help reduce calories and saturated fat while still getting to enjoy the menu items you enjoy. Order Water or Unsweetened Iced Tea: 'Don't waste your calories on sugar-laden sodas or juices,' says Imus. Instead, opt for water or unsweetened iced tea. Eat Slowly: If your eating pace puts the 'fast' in fast food, Imus recommends slowing down and chewing your food thoroughly. Not only will this help with digestion, but by taking a break between bites, you'll have more time to notice when you're full. 'Before ordering, think about how you want to feel after you're done eating—satisfied, not overly stuffed or lethargic,' Imus adds. The next time you're at BK, consider ordering the Whopper Jr.,—an RD-approved pick for its relatively balanced nutritional profile. Depending on your calorie needs and how hungry you are, the Double Whopper Jr. or original Whopper may also be good options. To help cut down on saturated fat and boost fiber intake, dietitians recommend ordering your burger mayo-less with extra veggies. It's also important to keep in mind that if the Whopper Jr. doesn't float your boat, you don't have to go for it. 'It's okay to choose what genuinely sounds good to you,' says Young. By being mindful of your oder—choosing a smaller size or asking for extra veggies, for example—and slowing down when you eat, you can likely fit your favorite BK menu item into an overall healthy diet. Read the original article on EATINGWELL
