Hi everybody. I'm Catenya McHenry,
communications director of the McCombs School of Business,
and you are joining us today on a talk we're having with one of our professors,
Melissa Epstein, who has just written an op-ed about eating and food.
It's called strategic eating in the age of the coronavirus.
Welcome Marissa to our talk today.
Thank you Catenya. It's great to be here.
Yeah, it's so,
Marissa is a registered dietician and a registered nutritionist.
She has gotten her honors degree in nutrition from here, UT Austin.
She also has an MBA from Stanford, and now she is a director of the UT Nutrition
Institute here at The University of Texas at Austin.
So we are thrilled to have her. Thrilled to have you, Marissa.
You are an incredible asset here at The University of Texas, and she's also
teaching a course called social entrepreneurship in food nutrition and health.
So today let's talk a little bit about your paper.
There are five things in the paper that you think we need to be paying attention
to in the age of the coronavirus.
So, the first one is to separate food and work.
So talk a little bit about that.
I mean, we're all working from home, right?
And we're used to snacking and raised a grazing and we're used to getting in and
out of the kitchen ad hoc.
And now's a real important time to be diligent about how we separate our work
windows throughout the day. Right? Um, if you were in the office,
you wouldn't be officing in the community kitchen, would you now? No,
you'd be in a place where you could work really well.
Where you could stay focused.
And so separating food and work is really important.
So the No. 1 piece of advice here is don't work in your kitchen.
Don't pop your laptop up on your kitchen table. If you have the space,
move it and move it into a different room where you're not looking at that
pantry over the top of your laptop and thinking about snacking.
A lot of that mindless eating can contribute to just unhealthy behaviors and
unnecessary consumption.
I definitely recommend you bring a glass of water at your workstation,
staying hydrated throughout the day, and when you need breaks,
scheduled them in and take a step outside, you know,
you can activate all the vitamin D that your body needs,
to really strengthen your immune system, which is 10 minutes of sunshine a day.
So being in a place where you're intentionally moving to your activities,
you know, if you're working work, if you're eating,
eat and do those things separately to make sure your mind share
was clear and you've got that open runway for doing,
and staying on task.
And No. 2,
you say add eating to your schedule just like you would any other meeting.
Eating has to be something
added into your schedule. And I mean, first of all,
none of us want to watch each other eat on Zoom. So let's just call that out.
The second and a way to escape that is you blocking into your schedule.
Take out just 15, 20 minutes to get yourself out.
Every three to five hours is what your body needs to get from periods of eating
through periods of satiation and then into the next period of eating and is
perfectly timed over the course of the day to give you about three meals and a snack
or five smaller meals over the course of the day, depending on what you prefer,
and lock those times in your calendar.
It's a great time to just get up out of your seat,
avoid that sedentary behavior all day long, moving into the kitchen,
preparing your food. The change of pace keeps your mind alert,
keeps your attention high,
and then you're going to have the energy that you need throughout the day to
keep that brain function optimized.
So I highly recommend being intentional about what you're going to eat.
The other thing you don't want to do is forget to eat over a five-hour
period and then find yourself starving in the middle of the meeting or in the
middle of a task that you've got to complete.
You're not setting your brain up for success there.
So if you set yourself some reminders to get up and go grab some food from the
kitchen,
you'll have the energy that you need to sustain performance throughout the whole
day. And No. 3, you say stay hydrated with food.
This is one thing I didn't think about.
I keep water with me next to my workstation,
but you can also be hydrated through fruits and vegetables.
It's incredible. You know,
your digestive system is working around the clock, and what it does when you eat
fruits and vegetables is break down those really hard fibers that make up the
shells of our foods. You know, the skin of an apple,
the crunchiness of a stick of celery,
all of that is the fibrous material in plants and your digestive tract works
really hard to break those down to get the nutrients that are trapped inside
that water,
tissue and water components of fruits and vegetables into the rest of your body.
So a great way to stay hydrated and instead of pounding water all day long and
rushing to the bathroom every hour is to eat fruits and vegetables.
Your digestive system will, well,
it's like a slow release sort of drip system that will keep those water
molecules from the fruits and vegetables you're eating into moving into your
bloodstream and through the rest of your body.
And you're going to really enjoy the benefits of that.
This is one of the changes you can make right now, and you'll feel it in the next
24 to 72 hours. It's hugely helpful to keep your whole body hydrated.
All right, No. 4, use caffeine strategically.
How many of you are ordering caffeine take out right now? I don't want to know.
So you don't have your daily coffee stop and your daily espresso stuff anymore,
but you do have your coffee machine at home.
Maybe you're making espresso at home too. Caffeine is a diuretic,
meaning that it causes us to lose water. It's also an appetite suppressant.
So not only will it dehydrate you,
if you take too much caffeine in coffee over time,
it will mask your stomach's natural hunger cues.
So while you may feel stimulated from caffeine throughout the day,
you may also be hungry and need food but not realize it until that caffeine
effect wears off and you have a big drop. Everyone, anyone,
if you've ever experienced that 3 p.m. low, and you had caffeine that morning,
it's very likely that you didn't get enough food at lunch.
And so you didn't have the energy from your nutrition really stepping up to meet
your energy needs when the caffeine wore off.
So recommendation here is having a cup of morning coffee,
but avoid that afternoon slump by switching to a big energizing lunch and then
maybe tea,
or sparkling water or another delicious beverage in the afternoon that isn't
coffee.
Yeah. And I bet people are drinking a lot more coffee these days too.
How am I going to survive my home office for one more day?
Right? Is it Monday? What is it? Right.
I know we're all confused about what day it is hitting sanity.
If you have children at home and you know all kinds of things too that you have
to manage just from, from a home standpoint. Yeah,
that coffee can be your best friend.
It shouldn't stand in your way. You know,
this is a time for executives to think about how to strategically set themselves
up for success with the tools at hand and a time and we've got a limited set of
tools while we're constrained and socially isolated.
Now is a great time to build those habits in that nutrition can help you achieve
for maximum performance. And these are,
these are also strategies that are going to translate when you move back into
the office and into the boardroom.
Right? All right, last strategy. Eat to support your brain's performance.
So there are specific foods you can eat that can boost your brain performance, so
talk about that too.
Yes. So your brain has a preference for its energy stores.
It loves to get energy from glucose, which is what we call a monosaccharide.
It's one tiny little component of carbohydrates,
and I know there's a lot of buzz about carbs being bad, but it's not true.
Complex carbohydrates coming from fruits and vegetables, legumes
are really great ways for you to maintain mental energy throughout the day.
Again,
that digestive system spends time breaking down those complex carbohydrates,
glucose moves into your bloodstream at a slower pace when it's accompanied by
fiber in those fruits and vegetables and gets to your brain and keeps it humming
all day long. If you add protein to a complex carbohydrate,
you're going to increase your satiety or that feeling of fullness that you get
from food in between meals.
And that's going to stave off constant snacking throughout the day.
And then finally, if you add healthy fatty acids,
Omega-threes, in particular, from fish nuts and seeds like walnuts and flax,
your brain will achieve better brain function.
So diets that are high in Omega-3 are correlated with better brain function,
information retention and decelerated brain aging over time.
So there's big benefits to strategically choosing those fats along with protein
and complex carbohydrates at every meal. You had me at anti-aging.
Well, thank you so much Marissa. This information is so important and so good.
So thank you so much for joining us today. Marissa's paper is again titled
Strategic Eating and the Age of the Coronavirus. If you'd like more information,
we'll have links there for you. Again, I'm Catenya McHenry and Marissa Epstein.
Thank you for being with us today. We'll see you next time.
Thanks for having me. Sure.