Healthy News

Who doesn’t love a BBQ? Barbequed meat and grilled veggies tantalize our senses and are the epitomy of summertime. When you hear that bbq’d meat contains carcinogenics, it can be saddening and leave you with the urge to pretend you hadn’t heard. But is it truly safe to do a lot of barbequing?

Experts say that when you grill that meat to a mass of charred flesh, it’s more dangerous than lightly grilling. Varying meats and the temperature as well as the time spent cooking are all risk factors. Cooking the meat with cherries or in certain marinades (such as turmeric or teriyaki) is said to lessen production of some of the dangerous chemicals.

Helpful Resources:
http://www.worldhealth.net/news/barbecue_meat_chemicalsgrilling_and_canc
http://ihealthbulletin.com/blog/2009/07/02/barbecue-tips-how-to-grill-less-cancer-risk/
http://www.usaweekend.com/01_issues/010701/010701eatsmart.html

If you’re looking to gain weight, here are some things you can eat that can help you.

-Switch to whole milk
-Add powdered milk to your foods as a thickening agent and put extra milk powder in shakes and smoothies
-Increase your consumption of nuts. Lots of protein and lots of good fat
-Eat healthy oils like olive oil
-Eat avocados. High calorie & good fat. Bring on the guacamole!
-Trail mix (raisins, nuts, other dried fruit)
-Peanut butter
-Juice. Drink plenty of fruit and vegetable juices

It’s not advisable to simply eat a lot of unhealthy food to help you gain weight as it can result in unhealthy results for your whole body so increase your portions with healthy high calorie foods instead.

I’m a bzzagent. This means that I get to hear about new products and sometimes I get to try them for free. I create buzz (aka bzz) about the product and report back to The Hive to report to the company what people think of their products. It’s pretty cool.

DanActive is a current campaign that I thought was worth mentioning here on this health blog because it contains loads of health benefits such as: LCasei Defensis—which helps to strengthen your natural defenses.

Probiotic yogurt is healthy for your digestive system and your immune system and this is a yogurt drink which makes it easy to grab one for breakfast or as a snack and do your body some good. Flavours are: cranberry raspberry, strawberry, and blueberry and there’s only 90 calories per bottle plus it is low in fat.

Worried you might not tolerate it well due to lactose intolerance?

According to Danone, some people who normally have problems digesting dairy can have an easier time with DanActive due to the fact that “live cultures help break down the lactose”.

Sensa is a new product that’s designed to work naturally with your body so that you are less likely to overeat. That’s the problem with dieting, really—we are only good until we get comfortable with our new size and often the old habits will rebound and before we know it, our scale numbers are creeping upwards again.

This product is said to work to help you naturally be satisfied sooner working with senses like taste and smell. It’s sprinkled on your food as if it is salt and pepper and signals to your hypothalamus so that you don’t overeat. As we wrote about last week, a lot of the food we eat (such as high fructose corn syrup, which exists in a LOT of foods) blocks the hypothalamus’s ability to do its job which results in overeating.

Have you tried Sensa? What were your results?

The hypothalamus tells us when we’re full. Eating certain foods like those with high fructose corn syrup can actually block the hypothalamus so that you overeat before you actually ‘know’ that you’ve had enough.

Read Nutrition Labels!

If you see high fructose corn syrup within the first 5 foods on the food ingredients list, it’s probably a good idea to avoid eating that food (or at least ensure you eat it as a ‘treat’ instead of constantly).

Instead of eating a 100-calorie chocolate bar that’s known as a ‘tease’ leaving you wanting more (how many of you have eaten 2 or 3 instead of one in a sitting? Exactly!) why not find 100-calorie snacks that are: good for you, satisfying and help you lose or maintain weight.

Try snacks such as:
-popcorn. A big bowl can equal 100 cals and get you full plus satisfy that salty/crunchy craving
-raw vegetables and low fat dip
-a bowl of cereal
-crackers and peanut butter
-yogurt
-fruit
-handful of nuts

If you absolutely need to have chocolate or cookies and want to watch your portion size, of course by all means buy a 100 calorie option but the point of today’s post is that by eating healthier on a regular basis you’ll find your cravings satisfied and new acts will quickly become habits and the junk food cravings will become fewer and further between.

Are you listening to your hypothalamus when it tells you that you’re full? A lot of people either don’t give it a chance to communicate with them or eat food that prevents it from doing its job.

A lot of the causes of an unhealthy digestive system result from consuming food too fast. If you are eating on the run all the time and eating mindlessly in front of the TV, you could harm your digestive health and it’ll result in increased portions which could lead to weight gain over time.

Let the hypothalamus tell you when you’re full by taking time to eat. It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to get the message so if you wolf down your food in ten minutes, you’re probably going to be on seconds before your brain has had a chance to say it has had enough after the first plate.

Some foods, like high fructose corn syrup can block messages between the hypothalamus and the brain so could result in your overeating anyway. Reduce consumption of foods with this ingredient; especially when it’s near the top of the ingredient list.

The pomegranate is a fruit getting a lot of attention for its health benefits. It’s increasingly available online in health supplements and mentioned in juicing for good health. Pomegranate benefits are numerous for health. Increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables can give you increased health and longevity.

What does a pomegranate offer your health?

Pomegranate Benefits

Have pomegranate in raw fruit form, use it in juicing and you can even take it in capsules to get the numerous health benefits of this delicious fruit.

There are a lot of fad diets out there. One of the popular ones today is the Calorie Shifting diet. It’s known by many names like the Zig Zag or Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diet and is based on an online e-book that shows you how to switch your caloric intake around so that you don’t plateau and your metabolism will work at a high level.

This diet includes moving calories around, having low calorie days and very high calorie days and is a great way to diet and cheat on your diet at the same time. Some people find that after doing a diet for a while their weight loss slows to a crawl and they have trouble with their last stretch of weight to go. This is the kind of diet that says it can switch things into high gear for you so that you can keep losing at a high rate and get the results you’re hoping for.

With the grapefruit diet from the 1970’s, you eat grapefruit at every meal. Grapefruit can have a big impact on your metabolism. Grapefruit juice can also be helpful but studies show that the maximum benefit for weight loss and good health is from the fruit itself.

Is the grapefruit diet safe?

Of course man cannot live on grapefruit alone but adding grapefruit to your regular diet can be very beneficial with many health benefits and increasing of your metabolism. You need to be extremely careful when taking any medication or supplements while having grapefruit because your metabolism moves so fast that you could overdose on medication. This is especially true with time release drugs because grapefruit will make you metabolise them quickly which could pose a danger to your health.