Eating With Heartburn/Acid Reflux

Hide Video Transcript

Video Transcript

Elaine Magee, RD, MPH
Welcome to the Tell Me What to Eat series. I'm Elaine Magee. Today we're talking about GERD, commonly known as acid reflux disease. That's where the valve between the lower end of the esophagus and the stomach weakens and allows stomach acid to back up into the esophagus, causing heartburn. If you have chronic heartburn, you are at risk for GERD and that's a serious issue. The good news is that most of us can control that burning feeling with some minor changes in our diet and lifestyle. Let's start with the foods that you need to eliminate or reduce in your diet: Fried and fatty foods; Drinks with caffeine; Garlic and onions; Peppermint and mint flavoring; Citrus fruits; Tomato products; Chili and spices And don't cry now, but alcohol and chocolate. Does that list sound like torture? It doesn't have to be. Each of those foods can be replaced with something just as tasty. Doesn't this look like fried chicken? Well, it's not. It's oven baked, but it's just as good. It's as simple as taking skinless chicken breasts marinated in a cup of buttermilk, low-fat buttermilk and then coating them in a seasoned flour mixture. You coat it with the Canola cooking spray, put it back in the flour mixture to get a double thickness on the chicken. One more spray and then put it in your pan Let's move on to my no-tomato lasagna. The secret is my low-fat white sauce. You start with a quarter cup of light cream cheese and just a small amount of low-fat milk, about a quarter cup. And we're gonna add a tablespoon of Wondra quick mixing flour. It's just a little bit more forgiving than regular flour. When it gets nice and creamy you can start to add slowly the rest of the milk. Over here in the saucepan, I've melted two tablespoons of butter. We're letting it brown because that brings out all these caramel flavors and impurities in butter that taste really good. Now we're gonna slowly pour in...

: our creamy, white milky sauce. And you're gonna kind of stir continuously until it gets to just the right thickness. Isn't this gorgeous! Now we have this wonderful low-fat white sauce that you can use in fettuccini alfredo, or in our case, a layered lasagna. For WebMD, I'm Elaine Magee.