The Next Idea : International Restaurant and Food Consultants: December 2009

Monday, December 21, 2009

The Next Idea, Reports On healthy Eating in 2008

Rosemary is good for your brain

The Next Idea, Restaurant Consultants report that the herb rosemary contains an ingredient that fights off damage to the brain. The active ingredient in rosemary can protect the brain from stroke and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s, and also from normal aging, a collaborative group of researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (www. burnahm.org) say. The ingredient, carnosic acid, protects the brain cells from free radicals. The findings were originally reported in The Journal of Neurochemistry and Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Rosemary comes from a shrubby evergreen bush with needlelike leaves. It has trusses of flowers that can be white, pink, purple or blue. Rosemary derives its name from the Latin rosemarinus, which translates as “dew of the sea.” Rosemary has a long history as a memory aid. It was also used in the past at weddings to symbolize love and loyalty.

Robert Ancill is CEO of Restaurant Consulting Services Group; The Next Idea. http://www.thenextidea.net. For information about Business Plans, Financial Forecasting and general start up advice please visit our site at: http://www.thenextidea.net

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The ”Healh Food” dilema

There’s currently a rising popularity in “healthy” foods, but obesity rates are going up at the same time. Why?

Researchers Pierre Chandon (INSEAD, France) and Brian Wansink (Cornell University) set out to determine why we are eating healthier food and still gaining weight.

Chandon and Wansink found that it’s most likely due to the “health halo effect”, meaning when consumers hear that there’s a fast-food restaurant that has “low-calorie” foods, they overgeneralize that all or most of the foods in the restaurant are “healthy.” And that’s just not the case.

In fact, consumers estimated that sandwiches from “healthier” fast-food restaurants contained 35 percent fewer calories than they actually had. And not only that, but as a result of their underestimation, consumers then felt it was okay to load up on beverages, side dishes and desserts containing up to 131 percent more calories when the main course they ordered was advertised as “healthy” as compared to when it was not.

But in their study, Chandon and Wansink found the sandwiches positioned as healthy already contained 50 percent more calories than the “unhealthy” sandwiches.

What’s a consumer to do? One strategy is to examine whether “low-calorie” claims by restaurants apply to the particular foods you plan on ordering. Learning to think of food in terms of the number of calories rather than whether it is a “good food” or a “bad food.”

Restaurant Consultants, The Next Idea, reported in 2004, that the larger Fast Food and restaurant chain operators, were unlikely to truly recognize the impact their products were having on the population at large. The Next Idea, CEO, Robert Ancill says, ‘since 2004 not too much has changed, and while operators are more inclined to place Healthy Options on their menus, many [operators] still provide over sized portions, questionable ingredients, along with unhealthy desserts and soda drinks’. Ancill goes on to say that; ‘only when restaurant groups demand more from their food vendors, and help educate their customers to eat a balanced meal, will the consumer begin to benefit from Health foods’.

Grape juice: The new red wine?

The Next Idea, Consultants to the Food and restaurant industry reports that concord grape juice stimulates an arterial relaxation effect similar to that credited to red wine, laboratory research has found. The results were presented at the WineHealth 2007 conference in Bordeaux, France. In fact, the grape juice produced a prolonged relaxation effect that red wine has not been cited as stimulating. Researchers say the grape juice causes a vasorelaxation effect by stimulating the production of nitric oxide, which is known to be important in maintaining healthy, flexible blood vessels and helps support healthy blood pressures. The effect of the grape juice lasted for up to six hours, significantly longer than effects noted from red wine. The research seems to point to the benefit coming from the grapes themselves, rather than the alcohol. Concord grape juice is believed to have a blood-pressure-lowering effect, so if you’re looking for an alternative to the red-wine fix, this may be the answer.

Eat your apples and onions

Robert Ancill, CEO of Innovations Food Consultancy, The Next Idea, reports, Apples and onions topped the list of a cancer prevention study. Here’s why: Apples and onions are sources for quercetin, one of the most beneficial of flavenols, and could play a role in preventing and reducing the risk of pancreatic cancer, a study has found. All participants in the study experienced reduced risk, however, smokers who consumed foods rich in flavenols experienced a significantly greater reduction.

Researchers tracked the food intake and health outcomes for 183,518 participants in the Multiethnic Cohort Study for eight years. The study evaluated the food consumption of participants and calculated the flavenol intake (for quercetin, kaempferol and myricetin). The study determined that flavenol intake does have an impact on the risk for developing pancreatic cancer. Smokers with the lowest intake of flavenols presented with the most pancreatic cancer, researchers say. It was also determined that women in the study had the highest flavenol intake (when compared with men), and 70 percent of the intake came from quercetin, which is linked to apple and onion consumption.

Flavenols are found in many plants and found in high concentrations in apples, onions, tea, berries, kale and broccoli. Quercetin is most plentiful in apples and onions.

The research was originally published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.