Weight Management in NYC- Piece of Cake: Part 2

After making my previous analysis on some of the stand out problems with the food supply here in America I thought it was only fair to show the other side of the equation. Being true to myself, whenever I enter a new country, pretty much my first destination is a supermarket. Now some call that uncultured given there are many historical sites I could be walking straight into and learning in. However I believe in being true to yourself, and my passion really does lye in food, nutrition and finding those hidden gems that can make looking after yourself and others a piece of cake!

First thing I noticed was all the high fibre products- HUGE thumbs up from the travelling dietitian! In Australia there are a couple of bars that are classified as being high in fibre that I often recommend to clients, these have 8g of dietary fibre per bar and around 420kJ/100calories. (For those that haven’t seen my supermarket tour, you can check out the YouTube videos here). However when I got here I quickly saw bars up between 9 to 12 grams e.g. gnu, ktime high fibre etc, and it wasn’t just the bars, there were breads, pitas, wraps and cereals that all were achieving these targets which certainly could help someone who wasn’t willing to make the full switch to all natural unprocessed foods to achieve their dietary fibre daily targets.

There are also a number of low fat, high protein organic dairy products- the array of yoghurts and dairy based healthy desserts is unheard of! There are also many non dairy milk based products that also caught my eye, but for someone who is not against dairy I was very pleased to see this, as the low GI and high protein content of these products certainly can help you feel fuller for longer than other refined products!

Smoothie bars with actual healthy options and amazing additions are second to none here! In Australia the market is quite lob sided with ‘Boost’ being the brand that dominates. I once did a menu review for them and found that due to the large serve size, using a traffic light based system, almost every product fell into the RED category as a result of being too high in kilojoules, and from my perspective they were not high enough in protein or fibre to actually keep you full (predominantly made of sugars from their low fat frozen yoghurt that is used + fruit I would predict).

Here on the other hand you have every addition under the sun to add into your already lower calorie version of the drink. As an example I saw organic rice protein, unpasturized coconut water, pomegranate powder, hemp protein powder and the list goes on- now that is something Americans can be proud of having at their disposal!

I have visited huge organic and fresh produce style market stores e.g. dean and deluca- wow! This is like a candy store for healthy adults! The fresh wholegrain sourdough breads, freshly made lean poultry based sandwiches with amazing vegetable fillings, and take away Asian style cuisine was extraordinary! Eataly was another amazing market style venue filled with produce to buy and restaurants to sit at..yum!

There are also calorie counts on lots of restaurant menus (this is only slowly starting to take off in Australia, and mainly at the fast food chains which have come from America). I think its a great help to those that are actually interested! I am not saying that this will stop those who would eat the food either way, but for someone who is making a conscious effort to watch what they are putting into themselves, I think it really is a great thing!

Tracking down ‘The Soup Man’ did take a bit of effort, however yesterday I finally made it, and it was actually sharing a retail space with my beloved ‘Tasti-Dlite’! (perfect!). I can happily say that I felt very content following my meal of vegetable soup, 1/2 turkey sandwich, a bottle of water and tasti-dlite, and all for around $10.00 and a very suitable amount of calories for my body size!

Sustainable/organic and health conscious cafes are certainly appearing as a bit of a trend for lunch goers, which like many of the fast food chains offer calorie counts and explanations of some of the nutritional benefits of the different menu items…I was impressed!

So there you have it, week 1, the pros and cons I have seen so far. Hope you are as excited as me to see what I discover next!

For now…The Travelling Dietitian x