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Archive for August, 2010

Watching your Waist?

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Are you watching your waist or your weight? Even if you are not watching your weight, you need to watch your waist.

According to a report published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, having a large waist size doubled the risk of dying from any cause during the study period compared to those with smaller waists.

“The take-home is that it’s important to watch your waist as well as your weight,” said Eric J. Jacobs, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. “Even if your weight is normal for your height, if your waist size is increasing, if you’re moving to a bigger pant size, that’s a warning sign that it’s time to start eating better and exercising more.”

A waist size of 47 inches or larger for men and 42 inches or larger for women doubled the risk of dying during the study period, compared to those with smaller waists (35.4 inches for men and 29.5 inches for women). Among normal-weight women, the risk of dying increased about 25 percent for each additional four inches of waist size.

Next Food Network Star (spoiler alert)

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

OK, you probably guessed that I was rooting for Herb Mesa to be the winner on the Next Food Network Star. Of course I would root for the chef who was both a) a personal trainer and b) promoting a show about cooking healthy with flavor.

For example, Herb writes in answer to a question about “Food you won’t go near”

Crisco, pre-packaged foods containing trans fats and foods containing high fructose corn syrup.

What’s not to like?

But, Aarti ended up winning, so we’ll just have one less show about healthy cooking — even though that is the only cooking everyone should be doing.

In case you missed it, here’s a link to Herb’s final recipe. I haven’t tried it yet; please let me know if you do.

Tags: Herb Mesa, Next Food Network Star, Recipies
Posted in Nutrition | No Comments »

It may look healthy, but is it?

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Interesting post over at Well in the NY Times.

You may have heard that the White House pastry chef Bill Yosses created new fruit and oat snack bars as a healthier alternative to cookies and other snacks around the white house. All reports are that they are very tasty. Nutritional label

But are they really healthy? They have all sorts of “good” ingredients such as oats and mixed seeds.

Turns out, the bars really aren’t that healthy at 143 calories each. More than most cookies.

This is just another example that healthy ingredients don’t necessarily make healthy food. In the snack bar recipe, you need to add 1/2 cup of honey, 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar and 1/3 cup of maple syrup. Lots of calories right there.

So watch out when you are eating. Know your calories not your food marketing. Remember that Whole Foods sells premium foods, not just healthy foods.

Tags: Hidden Calories, White House
Posted in Nutrition | No Comments »