Why you should restock your pantry today

Jolyn Bennett is currently claiming her health do-over.

Jolyn was overweight and struggled with controlling her food intake at frequent happy hours. She unexpectedly learned she had very high blood pressure; check DrOz.com to hear more about her story.

She’s still overweight, but less so, and her blood pressure is now near normal without medication.

Jolyn and I made a deal: If her blood pressure was less than 135/90 in two months and less than 130/85 in six months, she wouldn’t have to go on blood pressure medication. She agreed to go on those to avoid big-league health problems if her readings were greater than what we agreed on.

These action steps that Jolyn and (hopefully) you take are an early version of key points from “This is Your Do-Over,” my new book due out Feb. 24, 2015. In these sneak-peek posts, I’m going to give both you and her a task to accomplish. Do each one, and you’ll set yourself up to rock and roll — and it’s not even hard. Previously, I described these steps: Buy a pedometer; plan who your buddy will be; set goals and choose a mantra; and figure out which day you can devote to your plan, then dump your fridge and go shopping.

Dumping and replacing is such an important step that I’m going to expand on our rule of the “five food felons.”

First, read the ingredient labels on everything — anywhere you stash food. If you find any of the following five food felons, get rid of them. We understand you may not be willing to throw everything out right away (for reasons such as cost or wanting to ease into new foods). However, throwing out as many as possible right away will be the most beneficial for your health and weight loss goals. Cut out the:

Simple sugars and syrups. This includes brown sugar, dextrose, corn sweetener, fructose (as in high-fructose corn syrup), glucose, corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, maltose, lactose, malt syrup, molasses, evaporated cane sugar, raw sugar and sucrose.

Decreasing the amount of added sugars consumed is really important for Jolyn, as added sugars cause abdominal fat to accumulate. They also lead to heart disease, stroke, memory loss, eye loss, amputations and kidney failure, not to mention skin wrinkles. Clearly, this discarding process is important for everyone. When looking at labels — especially packaged items — it’s important to check for fewer than 4 grams of added sugar per serving, or even better, per hour of eating. The Food and Drug Administration is in the process of listing added sugars separately on labels, so staying under the 4 gram cut-off may get easier.

Enriched flours and all flours other than 100-percent whole grain or 100-percent whole wheat. This category includes enriched white flour, semolina, durum wheat and any acronyms for flour that is not whole wheat. These should not be in your kitchen.

To be considered a whole grain, 100 percent of the original kernel (bran, endosperm and germ) must be present. If a grain is refined or enriched, some of the original kernel (along with its nutrients) was removed at some point during processing.

Saturated fat. This includes most four-legged animal fat, milk fat, butter or lard, and tropical oils, such as palm and coconut.

In addition to turning on genes that age our bodies, saturated fats come with amino acids such as carnitine, lecithin and choline that trigger your liver to make inflammatory proteins that cause you to accumulate abdominal fat. That abdominal fat does not sit idle — it produces cytokines (a type of cellular messenger in your immune system) that cause inflammation throughout your body. For packaged items and animal products (cheese, butter, milk, meat, etc.), check the label to ensure there’s no more than 4 grams of saturated fat per serving. Eat only 4 grams from all sources in any one hour.

Trans fat. This includes partially hydrogenated fats, vegetable oil blends that are hydrogenated and many margarines and cooking blends. (If you must, use cholesterol-fighting sterol spreads such as Promise and Benecol.)

It’s important to be especially label-savvy when it comes to trans fat. The nutrition label only needs to list trans fat if a serving contains greater than 0.5 grams, so even if a serving has 0.49 grams of trans fats, the label doesn’t need to list it. To avoid trans fats completely, inspect the ingredient list to see if it contains partially hydrogenated oils — if it does, this is a sign the item has trans fats. The FDA is trying to ban trans fats in the U.S., as Canada already does, so eliminating trans fats may soon be easier.

Depending on your pantry, this process may be a real undertaking, so budget yourself at least an hour to scan labels and make sure you catch even the sneakiest of felons. Now that you know the food felons, move on to these steps:

Make a shopping list of healthy recipes and foods (and the ingredients you need to cook and prepare them so they taste great). Now go to any market, and spend an hour or two replenishing your pantry — reading every label to ensure your choices are felon-free.

While you’re in a shopping mode, and if you don’t have a good kitchen knife, go to a kitchen store and test chef’s knives. Then buy a really high-quality one. (It’s one of the five things to overpay for; the other four are a pedometer, a heart rate monitor, cross-training shoes and a wedding ring.) And if it’s mid-afternoon and you’ve been on your feet for a while, go shoe shopping — your feet will be enlarged from standing, and will match the shoes you need for your daily walks. A specialty running/walking store can help find a shoe that fits your gait and movement patterns to help you avoid injury.

Thanks for reading. Remember these are the views of Dr. Mike Roizen only, and do not necessarily reflect those of any organization that he is or was affiliated with.