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Friday, 29 March 2024

Dietitian On Coronavirus Impact - Part 1

Credit: WAAY ABC Huntsville, AL
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Dietitian On Coronavirus Impact - Part 1
Dietitian On Coronavirus Impact - Part 1

Najahe Sherman is joined by Carmen Moyers, a clinical dietitian with Huntsville Hospital.

Topics discussed include current food shortages in the US and what are proper substitutions for meat in some of our daily diet.

In huntsville, megan, waay 31 news mp.

>> najahe sherman: every night at 6:00 p.m.

We're looking deeper into impact of the coronavirus.

And tonight i m joined by carmen moyers, a clinical dietitian with huntsville hospital.

Thank you for being with us.

>> thank you for having me.

>> najahe sherman: with food shortages and prices on essential products rising some people will have to buy substitutions for their meals, especially for certain types of meat.

What some good substitutions that people can turn to?

>> so any time you go grocery shopping i highly recommend going in with a plan.

Which sounds counter intuitive to having shortages and not really knowing what's going on at the grocery store.

But your plan can be very open to changes.

So for an example a meal plan could be pasta on mondays, tacos on tuesdays and casserole on wednesdays.

And then once you get to the store you can see what kind of pasta do they have and what kind of toppings do they have?

Tacos for tuesday, maybe normally you have ground beef r beef and this time it's going to be fish tacos or fish tacos or bean tacos but you are can almost substitute the ingredient in the framework recipes.

>> good advice.

We're hearing people pick up the trend, meatless mondays and maybe going to at least one day during the week without meat.

Ar there any products that people should maybe avoid for their substitutions?

>> there's not really any particular things to avoid.

As long as you're having a variety of foods, you're going to be getting the nutrition that you need overall.

And there are a lot of options.

You can get canned fish, canned chicken, cheese, eggs, canned beans, dried beans.

My favorite personally is lentils.

I feel those are underutilized.

Seeds, nuts, and nut butters.

And if you want to get adventurous you can go to the vej tear i don't know section and get tofu and some of the meat substitutes.

And those do not taste just like meat so long you approach them as a new food that is going to taste different than something you've had before, you may enjoy it.

And it ads protein and other nutrition to the moles that you have.

>> najahe sherman: that's a great recommendation.

Tofu is a great option and you can srn it to taste however you like.

Do you think people should be -- should expect to make decisions based on shortages for an extended amount of time?

>> ms. moyers: i would just plan on going week to woke.

Right now we go to the grocery store once a week.

We pick up everything that we need for the week.

Honestly, that's not much different than what we were doing before.

And see what's available.

Work with what you've got.

A lot of people also have pantries that have stuff in them they haven't used in six months and you can dig into your pantries and say, hey, let's go like we're on on episode of "chopped" and see what we can full out of our you our pantry.

As long as you're getting enough food in general you're going to be all right.

>> najahe sherman: i like that suggestion.

Have some fun with it.

You know, new research shows a major jump in food insecurity because ofdz pandemic.

Hamilton project, policy research firm, says a survey shows houses with children under 12 nearly one in five children aren't getting enough to eat.

So what are the long-term health impacts of that?

>> ms. moyers: there are a lot of long-term health impacts that are really unfortunate, especially when kids are not able to get their nutrition.

The same goes for adults.

If you're not eating enough your body does some amazing things to keep you going, but it's not always the greatest in the long term.

It will definitely keep you going in the short term.

But it does increase your risk of malknew tritionz which increases your risk of immunity not being as strong, if you were to get sick with any kind of illness.

>> najahe sherman: would including a multi-vitamin into your routine help at all with that?

>> ms. moyers: as long as you don't have contraindications a multi-vitamin isn't a bad thing to include.

Right now people are also panicked buying those so some are hard to find in the imroasry store.

If you choosing a multi-vitamin look at what's in them because a lot of multi-vitamins don't actually have all the vitamins in them like gummies, most people don't know they don't have any iron in them.

And iron is the most common nutrient deficiency for growing children.

>> najahe sherman: good to know.

So what is the proper koch nation of a multi-vitamin we should be looking for?

What component should it have?

>> ms. moyers: as long as it has vitamins and minerals and a variety of those, you should be all right.

It's just some of the gummies are -- they're marketed as multi-vitamins and they do have multiple vitamins in them so it is quite literally a multi-vitamin it doesn't have the common minerals on food nutrition label, vitamin c, vitamin d, iron and calcium.

You see those on mostal your normal nutrition labels.

The reasons those are there is because those are the ones we need to make sure we get enough of.

>> najahe sherman: one of the biggest debates in washington is whether to increase food stamp benefits.

In your experience working with families is the average family on food stamps able to cover their food needs and get the healthy food they need?

>> there are a lot of issues that go into that.

I used to work in detroit and the wic program and i saw offer people's food stamps did not reach the end of the month for a lot of different reasons.

Some of that is education and not knowing how to use your food dollars very well.

Some of that is even if you are on food stamps you're working full time and you don't have time to spend an hour cooking from scratch with the cheapest ingredients.

Or your family didn't teach you how to season all of these different foods and they turn out bland and terrible.

So practicing cooking and practicing those things, it takes a lot of time and education, not everybody has access to.

>> najahe sherman: yes, that's true.

Youtube has been a great resource for that lately.

Coronavirus has affected people's daily routine and whether it's exercising or eating, how can people this circumstance maintain healthy habits?

>> the thing that i would focus on first is stress.

Any way that you can reduce your stress is really important because even if you -- if you are stressing about eating all the right nutrition and getting just the right amount of vitamins of this, that, and the other and bringing your stress levels up here, that's reducing your immune system more than any amount of vitamin c can help with.

Making sure you're not overly stressing about things, especially things you can't handle -- not handle -- things you can't control.

Just letting those go and seeing what you can control.

A lot of the nutrition stuff you can control and you can get affordable versions of fruits, vegetables and try new things.

Add some variety in there.

But it doesn't need to be the point where you're stressing yourself out over it.

>> najahe sherman: yeah, so cut yourself some slack it sounds like you're saying.

A lot of people rely on gyms to get their exercise.

We know they are closed for the time being.

So what are some ways that people can stay active at home or in areas where they feel safe?

>> there are a lot of celebrities that do exercise routines and are streaming those for free right now.

I really love home routines that have different things.

And you don't have to have weights at home.

You can use the canned beans that you bought since there's no -- since you're trying something new.

Use those canned beans as weights and use those exercising at home.

Having a dance party with your kids or something along those lines that is fun and enjoyable and relieves stress instead of making you worry whether you're doing your squats right.

>> najahe sherman: great advice, going bag to having fun, have a dance party with your child at home and they'll enjoy it, too.

We're going to take a quick break now.

Coming up, how local organizations are making sure that

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