Carolyn Gibson - Get the Facts!

The Fat List!

Well it comes as no surprise to me – and I am sure no surprise to anyone reading this blog that the Blacklisted foods on The Fat List, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal include the following foods.

Biscuits, cakes, chocolate, corn chips, doughnuts, energy drinks, luncheon sausage, muesli bars, salami and so it goes on.

In fact the foods listed in the Alternative list are very much Kiwi KISS recommendations and have been for 28 years. With one exception – I do not support the use of artificial sweeteners.

According to the NZ Herald the NZ Medical Journal have created this list to help obese people identify foods that needs to be cut out of their diet.

I can't believe there is anyone out there who could not work out that most of these foods are fattening. Although I must moderate that statement by saying that the marketing of food does misled with banners of 'low fat', no added sugar which suggests this is a healthy low calorie food. What we do need to encourage is the desire to remove and replace these foods with delicious alternatives. That has always been our philosophy at Kiwi KISS and the reason why our success rate is high.

Lack of sleep for children key factor in obesity

New research findings into child obesity found lack of sleep to be a bigger contributing factor than the food the children ate. The study reported a 61 per cent reduction in the risk of being overweight for each extra hour of sleep.

We now need a three prong approach for children's wellbeing:

1. Healthy unprocessed foods
2. Exercise
3. A good night's sleep

Read more here

Marmite Banned In Denmark

Denmark has banned Marmite due to the added vitamins in the product. In 2004 Copenhagen passed legislation restricting the sales of foods with added vitamins.

Read more here

Pick Me!

I had a plan.

I would conduct an Apple Taste Test in the classes to establish which apples had the best crispness, crunch and flavour. And test we did – Cherry Gala, Braeburn, NZ Rose, Granny Smith and Golden Delicious.

The results were non-conclusive and disappointing.

Apples that looked crisp were soft to the bite – apples that were crisp were lacking in flavour. There was no winner.

Question:  What does it take to get a 'perfect' apple?
Answer: A long drive!

I am cooking apples in the class this week so today I drove to an orchard and bought Granny Smith apples that have 'just been picked'. Let me repeat that 'just picked'. And here in lies the problem with apples.

I have been told that Braeburn apples are harvested around mid February ready for the export market. Remaining apples are kept in climate control conditions which will allow the consumer to be supplied with apples between March and November. They may, and I say may, retain their freshness in the coolers but seem to lose it quickly once displayed in the supermarket. Although there does seem to be less internal discolouration than there was a few years back when you cut open an apple to find it brown around the core.

According to a chart I picked up at the supermarket apples are ‘available’ for most of the year. Available and 'just picked' are certainly not the same thing.

An Italian study found that cold storage may affect the health-related properties of apples and that we would need to eat at least two apples, stored for six months or more, to obtain the health benefits provided by 1 freshly picked apple.

When the apples are soft I grate them onto my porridge and top with a drizzle of honey. Stewed apples provide the base of a wonderful winter crumble and wait until you see this week's recipe of Toffee Apples for dessert. YUM.

Justin Newcombe, writing in the NZ Herald (March 26), makes the point that 'if you are sick of eating powdery mush we are sometimes served at the shops, think about planting an apple tree this winter'. I have to agree with him.

Looks like Granny Smith apples win the 'PICK ME' vote this week.

So an apple a day may keep the doctor away but make sure that apple is 'just picked'.

Women Go Naked For WeighIn

It seems that women have some rather interesting ways of weighing themselves on their scales, a recent survey conducted on 3,000 women has discovered:

50% of women surveyed said that they stripped naked before hopping on the scales, in the hope that this might give them an advantage in the weight-loss department.

Four out of every ten women go to the toilet before weighing themselves, 10% try holding their breath as they step on the scales, and 3% of women stand on one leg while weighing themselves in the hope of getting the pounds down according to the research.

Other findings showed that:

• One in five of the women polled admitted to moving the scales around the room in search of a lower reading.
• Up to 80% of women weigh themselves at home alone and do so at least nine times every month.
• Thousands said they will only hop on the scales before a meal for fear that their undigested dinner would add a couple of extra pounds.
• And an astounding three per cent said they always wait until a full moon to weigh themselves in the belief that this is their lightest time of the month.

Haha!  Bet you do at least ONE of the above, which one do you do? :-)

Sources: Belfast Telegraph, The Indian Express, The Daily Mirror

Cutting salt from your diet 'would prevent one fifth of heart disease deaths'

Research has found that heart disease could be cut by almost a fifth if food companies were not allowed to add too much salt to their products.

If manufacturers were banned from adding salt to ready-to-eat meals, cereals, potato chips and sandwiches it would save tens of thousands of lives every year by lowering the number of heart attacks and strokes.

Read more about the study here

Internet May Have Weight-Loss Potential

A recent study has shown that overweight people who regularly used a weight-loss website (such as WeighInOnline) did a better job of maintaining their weight loss compared with people who used the web site infrequently.

Read more about the study here