Chocolate Diet (YUM!) May 4, 2007

The Chocolate Diet is a decreased calorie diet that focuses on the consumption of liquid chocolate diet shakes as a snack. 

Now here’s a diet I wouldn’t mind eating for the rest of my life!

Really, it’s true! There really is such a thing as a chocolate diet! 

Although, its benefits really leave much to be discussed……

  

This is probably the tastiest of the fad diets to come onto the scene.  Since chocolate acts as a vitamin replacement, it does have a fair amount of health benefits, like fighting high blood pressure and preventing heart disease.  

The chocolate diet mainly consists of liquids and people are given a powder or supplement that they usually blend with milk or water. They may also be given pills to take in capsule form. 

The Benefits of Chocolate

New studies have shown that chocolate contains anti-oxidants that help prevent arteries from clogging, so there are some health benefits to eating chocolate.The powder shakes are not meant to replace meals, but are designed to be healthy snacks.

The actual pills are supposed to provide various nutritional benefits such as a boost in metabolism. These, along with a healthy diet, are supposed to stimulate the fat burning process and pave the way towards weight loss. 

Does It Really Work?

However, it’s still questionable as to whether the actual diet will help you achieve your desired results.It’s not clear that chocolate stimulates the metabolism or helps the fat burning process. Beyond that, too much of anything can be bad. While chocolate does have health benefits, a diet with an emphasis in chocolate may not be the best way to lose weight.

All in all, this diet is not really medically proven and is rather a fad than anything else!

Genetically modified foods May 3, 2007

What are genetically-modified foods?

The term GM foods or GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) is most commonly used to refer to crop plants created for human or animal consumption using the latest molecular biology techniques. These plants have been modified in the laboratory to enhance desired traits such as increased resistance to herbicides or improved nutritional content. The enhancement of desired traits has traditionally been undertaken through breeding, but conventional plant breeding methods can be very time consuming and are often not very accurate. Genetic engineering, on the other hand, can create plants with the exact desired trait very rapidly and with great accuracy. For example, plant geneticists can isolate a gene responsible for drought tolerance and insert that gene into a different plant. The new genetically-modified plant will gain drought tolerance as well. Not only can genes be transferred from one plant to another, but genes from non-plant organisms also can be used. Some of the advantages of GM foods are pest resistance, herbicide tolerance, disease resistance, cold tolerance and drought tolerance.

   

So if GM Foods are good then why do people eating GM foods face a risk? Agribusiness has been criticised for pursuing profit without concern for potential hazards, and for failing to exercise adequate regulatory oversight. It seems that everyone has a strong opinion about GM foods.

Allergenicity

Many children in the US and Europe have developed life-threatening allergies to peanuts and other foods. There is a possibility that introducing a gene into a plant may create a new allergen or cause an allergic reaction in susceptible individuals. Allergic reactions in humans occur when a normally harmless protein enters the body and stimulates an immune response. If the novel protein in a GM food comes from a source that is know to cause allergies in humans or a source that has never been consumed as human food, the concern that the protein could elicit an immune response in humans increases. Although no allergic reactions to GM food by consumers have been confirmed, in vitro evidence suggesting that some GM products could cause an allergic reaction has motivated biotechnology companies to discontinue their development. 

Decreased Nutritional Value
A genetically modified plant could theoretically have lower nutritional quality than its traditional counterpart by making nutrients unavailable or indigestible to humans. For example, phytate is a compound common in seeds and grains that binds with minerals and makes them unavailable to humans. An inserted gene could cause a plant to produce higher levels of phytate decreasing the mineral nutritional value of the plant. Labelling of GM foods

Labeling of GM foods and food products is also a contentious issue. On the whole, agribusiness industries believe that labeling should be voluntary and influenced by the demands of the free market. In such cases, one will never know if the food products they buy are genetically modified. Another concern is the acceptable limits of GM contamination in non-GM products? What is the level of detectability of GM food cross-contamination? Scientists agree that current technology is unable to detect minute quantities of contamination, so ensuring 0% contamination using existing methodologies is not guaranteed. Yet researchers disagree on what level of contamination really is detectable, especially in highly processed food products such as vegetable oils or breakfast cereals where the vegetables used to make. Hence, we will never know if our food has been contaminated with GM food.

So we can see that GM foods which have been thought to be harmless might actually have some negative points about them.  

Youtube videos on Dieting April 29, 2007

watch some videos on dieting and post your views…

links:

nice recipes that are healthy not harmful…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi-aSE2YupU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCoJhxDUJAI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQnTj08BPy8

weight loss video log

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBLzNlPnIGM

weight loss and dieting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBu83x4DXbg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsgaOkbdqBQ

New Beverly Hills Diet April 29, 2007

Ever heard of the New Beverly Hills Diet 

Well, if you knew about it, you would certainly know its wrong…it just takes a biology lesson on nutrition in humans to prove it wrong 

The New Beverly Hills diet is basically consuming a single food (eg. grapes) for an entire day. 

Guess what? Look at the mad reasoning behind it…Mazel (the person who has come up with something as stupid as this) advocates a practice she terms “Cautious Combining.” “It is when you eat and what foods you eat together that matters,” she claims. Fruits, for example, contain all of the enzymes necessary to break themselves down into nutrients, and move quickly through the system. Proteins and carbohydrates, however, require special enzymes that slow down the process. Furthermore, enzymes from one food can’t “cross over” to work on other food groups.  

Mazel also states that fat is just another symptom of indigestion, that when food is not properly digested, it “causes fatness.” Well, that is totally wrong because if foods are not properly digested they cannot be absorbed. If they are not absorbed, they cannot be metabolized – into fat or anything else

. Most weird is that she does not even mention exercise as a way to cut down weight. Regular physical activity it crucial for losing and maintaining weight, but the closest Mazel gets to this topic is her admonition to chew food thoroughly. 

Watch out for these crazy health diets. Some of them have been crazily concocted by people like Mazel who do not have any health or nutrition credentials.

This is what I call a harmful diet…people out there are just following it blindly without even knowing how harmful it is to them! Please open your eyes if you ever take up a diet! 

Diet pills- Good or Bad???? April 29, 2007

Diet pills, or anti obesity drugs, are becoming increasingly popular now adays, since they are pretty effective and the results become apparent much faster than if one were to exercise.

However, there has been much speculation over how effective they are, as there are many adverse side effects if comsumed in excess.

I’m sure many of you have seen the news whereby people get sick after comsuming diet pills!

How do they work you ask?

Well, anti-obesity drugs operate by:

• Suppression one’s  appetite
• Increasing the body’s metabolism.
• Interfering with the body’s ability to absorb specific nutrients in food. For examplesome drugs fat breakdown and thereby prevents fat absorption.

As for the negative side effects,

Some of them cause  high blood pressure, faster heart rate, drug addiction, restlessness, agitation, and insomnia.

The limitation diet pills is that we do not fully understand how to modulate appetite.

Any drug that would abolish appetite may carry a high mortality risk and may be unsuitable for clinical use.There has not yet a way to completely erasing this natural habit of protecting excess food stores.

Because of this, anti-obesity drugs are not a practical long-term solution for people who are overweight.

It’s true! I mean, if you look at the news, how many models or actresses have there been who have landed in hospital because of them eating diet pills!

Therefore, there is acutally no hard and fast route to losing weight.The best advice you can get is just to exercise more! Not only does exercise help you to lose weight, it makes one healthy and gives you a great figure! 

Refined carbs vs Unrefined Carbs April 28, 2007

Carbohydrates are our body’s main energy source; and you cannot live without sufficient carbohydrates. It is a mere problem of substituting the right carb, which is unrefined carbs.

Refined, processed, dead, nutritionless carbs from sources like white (or brown) refined sugar, white flour (in many breads, pastas, etc.), highly cooked/fried potatoes without the skin (most of the nutrition in potatoes is in the skin), etc. These “empty” carbs provide only large amounts of calories with little to no nutrition and cause many health problems, including obesity, cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes. It is a good idea for everyone to avoid carbs from these sources, whether or not you are trying to lose weight.

The good carbs? What is actually GOOD for health and losing weight? In short, whole live unrefined foods. All raw fruits and vegetables, whole low-heated or sprouted grains, seeds, nuts, legumes and nutritional herbs.

Yes these all contain carbs and yes, they all contain calories, but these calories come packed with so much nutrition, that you won’t find yourself craving more and more calories in order to fill the nutritional void, as happens when you consume empty calories.  So instead of destroying your body on one of those “high-protein” diets, why not just use the common sense that every one of us has, eat real foods, and avoid fake and processed “foods,” and you’ll be much healthier, happier, and yes, thinner, without the terrible side-effects of these dangerous fad diets.

 Fast fun fact :

Did you know that the average person in
America is carrying around between 15 and 20 pounds of old, dried, encrusted fecal material in their colon right now?! And did you know that, however much YOU happen to be carrying (maybe less, maybe more), you can lose that weight in just a few minutes by sitting on the toilet after taking a good bowel cleansing formula the night before?

And

personally, i like whole meal bread better! it’s much more tasteful and i like the fibre, rough feeling. call me weird, but it’s an implemented habit to eat wholemeal bread by my mum since young. haha.. ^^

Plus try eating yoghurt with lots of cut strawberries..

very2 good! and healthy too! 

Avocado’s not that bad!! April 23, 2007

Avocado cholesterol diet is beneficial for lowering cholesterol, despite the avocado fat content and carbohydrate. The reason is that avocado is a great source of heart-healthy monounsaturated fat. The avocado fat is a type of fat that may actually help to raise levels of HDL (“good”cholesterol) which actually protects arteries, while lowering levels of LDL (“bad” cholesterol).

You need not worry about the avocado content of fat, as this fat is not harmful nor does it increase your cholesterol levels. To distinguish the types of fat, including avocado fat, you need to understand saturated fats, monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats. Saturated fats, are those types of fat that are harmful and increase cholesterol levels. However, monounsaturated fats(avocado fat is of this type) and polyunsaturated fats, are not harmful and do not increase cholesterol levels. On the contrary monounsaturated fat and avocado fat help lower cholesterol.

 Avocado with chocolate shake (it looks quite gross but it’s supposed to be very delicious)

Why avocado fat lowers cholesterol?

As mentioned above, avocado fat content is the reason to lower cholesterol since it is monounsaturated fat. Another reason is that avocado packs more of the cholesterol-smashing beta-sitosterol (a beneficial plant-based fat) than any other fruit. Beta-sitosterol reduces the amount of cholesterol absorbed from food. So the combination of beta-sitosterol and monounsaturated fat makes the avocado an excellent cholesterol buster. Beta-Sitosterol has an apparent ability to block the bad LDL cholesterol absorption from the intestine, resulting in lower blood cholesterol levels. The Australian study not only reported that eating either half or a whole avocado fruit per day for a month succeeded in lowering cholesterol levels, but at the same time most people in the study lost weight.

INTERESTING FACT:According to a recent study in
Brisbane, Australia reported that eating avocados daily for three weeks improved blood cholesterol in middle-aged women better than a low-fat diet did. The avocado diet reduced total cholesterol 8 percent compared with 5 percent for the low-fat diet. Most important, avocados improved the good HDL-cholesterol ratio by 15 percent.

The daily amount of avocado ranged from 1/2 avocado for small women to 1 1/2 for large women. Expected outcome: By eating avocados, heart patients could cut their risk of heart attack 10-20 percent and death rates 4-8 percent in 3-5 years

http://www.all-about-lowering-cholesterol.com/avocado-cholesterol-and-avocado-fat.html

April 19, 2007

 

 A debate of whether or not avocado should be banned from diets or not is still taking place. Avocado is really a mystery. Some consider it a vegetable, some say it’s a fruit. Whatever it is, i ADORE avocado, despite all the comments people make about its weird  taste. The most common way of eating avocado is to blend it with milk and ice, tadaaa an avocado juice is made. but my mum decided to venture more and challenge my family’s palate. she usually mix it with coconut flesh. as odd as it sounds, its heavenly and sinful, a treat in a hot, scorching day. Yet, in Australia, they have an even more unique way of consuming this fruit. They mash it and mix it with chilli, pepper and salt. making the perfect, healthy dip for nachos. ive tried it myself and it’s nice…! a way healthier alternative compared to mayo or thousand island..

So let’s investigate more about this fruit..

If I were stranded on a desert island and could have only one food, it would be the avocado. The rich, buttery-smooth flesh of an avocado is on a lot of people’s lists as a delicious but fattening treat. It’s true that avocados have a high oil content, but they are also packed with vitamins A, C, and E–primary vitamins in the antioxidant group that protect the cells in human tissue. A high protein content makes avocados a good meat substitute, and unlike animal fat, the fat is not saturated. This is good news for vegetarian. Furthermore, the big surprise in avocados is how high they are in dietary fiber–they have one of the highest fiber contents of any fruit or vegetable.! amazing isn’t it?!

	Fresh Avocado	Butter, Salted	Sour Cream	Cheddar Cheese	Mayonnaise, with Salt
Portion (1 ounce)	2 Tbsp. or 2-3 Thin Slices	2 Tbsp.	2 Tbsp.	1 Slice	2 Tbsp.
Calories	50	204	60	114	109
Total Fat (g)	4.5	23	6	9.4	9.4
Sat Fat (g)	0.5	14.6	3.7	6	1.4
Cholesterol (mg)	0	61	13	30	7
Sodium (mg)	0	164	15	176	199

 SO should we do away with avocado in our diet? no! eat it in moderation and perhaps treat it as a meat-substitute. Plus avocados provide nearly 20 vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, including 4% vitamin E, 4% vitamin C, 6% folate, 4% fiber, 2% iron, 4% potassium, with 81 micrograms of lutein and 54 micrograms of beta-carotene. It’s amazing how this fruit manage to contain this chock-a-block lot of nutrients..!

VLCD April 15, 2007

VLCD-Very Low Calorie Diet 

Something wonderful for overly obese people but something harmful for people who are not suitable for it…

Ever heard of liquid diets?

A liquid based diet that is severely restrictive in energy with an intake of about 800 calories or less per day is considered a very low calorie diet.

What are the benefits?

First, you can lose a lot of weight  Second, its almost like a treatment!!! – it helps improve obesity-related conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. 

Sounds like a miracle right? Sadly, it cannot work on teenage girls who are overly conscious of their body and think they are fat when they are really not. In fact, it can become VERY HARMFUL!!!!! 

First, there is electrolyte and water loss – so if you do it during OBS – you may very well die after hiking… Second, can you believe it??? You are not only losing your fat but also your bones – there is calcium depletion where bone mass is lost. This will increase the risk of osteoporosis! 

Third, it can be really harmful to you if you are a) a child, b) an adolescent c) a pregnant woman and d) someone over 50 years’ old!  Actually, according to some people, VLCD does not even induce permanent weight loss, it’s just temporary. The thing is that teenagers have been copying the adults’ use of VLCD. And they are doing it without a doctor’s supervision. Teenagers using VLCD includes the risk of impairing the child’s growth and this has actually resulted in 60 deaths!!

!Please help spread the word about VLCD and its harmful effects. Exercise is the way to go…  Links:http://www.springerlink.com/content/acqtt87jhp61nx2y/fulltext.pdf

Binge-eating…contd. April 15, 2007

    A few days ago, Helena posted something about a disorder called binge-eating. I found it quite interesting so I read up a bit more about it.

   It takes a combination of things to develop an eating disorder — including a person’s genes, emotions, and behaviors (such as eating patterns) learned during childhood. Some people may be more prone to overeating because of biological reasons. For example, the hypothalamus(the part of the brain that controls appetite) may fail to send proper messages about hunger and fullness. And serotonin, a normal brain chemical that affects mood and some compulsive behaviors, may also play a role in binge eating.

   The major complications of binge eating disorder are the diseases that accompany obesity. These include diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, gallbladder disease, heart disease, and certain types of cancer.

    People with binge eating disorder are extremely distressed by their binge eating. Most have tried to control it on their own but have not succeeded for very long. Some people miss work, school, or social activities to binge eat. Obese people with binge eating disorder often feel bad about themselves, are preoccupied with their appearance, and may avoid social gatherings. Most feel ashamed and try to hide their problem. Often they are so successful that close family members and friends don’t know they binge eat. Even though it is not advisable for people suffering from the disorder to go on strict dieting, as this will eventually cause them to put on weight, weight loss is definitely an important goal for binge-eaters. They can do this by reducing the amount of food that they eat, SLOWLY.

Interesting Facts: -it has been recognized that binge eating is one of the most common disorders, especially in the US.

-Most people with binge eating disorder are obese (more than 20 percent above a healthy body weight). 

-Binge eating disorder affects 2 percent of all adults, or about 1 million to 2 million Americans. -Among mildly obese people in self-help or commercial weight loss programs, 10 to 15 percent have binge eating disorder. Binge eating disorder is slightly more common in women, with three women affected for every two men.

-The disorder affects blacks as often as whites. Obese people with binge eating disorder often became overweight at a younger age than those without the disorder.