One Third Of Women Are Secret Snackers

A third of women eat snacks when no one is watching, a British study has claimed.

According to researchers, embarrassment about the types of food they are eating, as well as the amount they consume, may be the reason for their secret habits.

“The odd snack here and there isn’t a bad thing,” the Daily Express quoted Cathy Kapica, adjunct Professor of Nutrition at Tufts University in Massachusetts, and an adviser to the study, as saying.

“In fact snacks can be an important part of a healthy eating style. [Read more...]

The Top 10 Worst Foods To Eat

Now we are not saying that these types of foods should never pass your lips again, it’s just a heads up on the fact that they shouldn’t feature too heavily in your diet if you want to maintain healthy nutrition and maybe lose a few pounds.

Pork scratchings

(pork rind or crackle)

Heavy and hard, we are talking fatty pig skin deep fried and then doused in salt. Also, if you are lucky you might even get one sporting a few hairs; pig hair is usually removed by quickly burning the skin before it is cut into pieces and cooked in the hot fat. Plus they are not great for your teeth either; we couldn’t get the stats on how many dental injuries have been inflicted by eating these suckers but we are guessing it’s pretty high. [Read more...]

Smoking, Obesity Claiming More Lives In UAE

Non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer are killing more people in the UAE because of unhealthy lifestyle, smoking and fast economic transformation, a national health report said.

Deaths due to heart attacks were way ahead of deaths due to traffic accidents. The other killers were stress and high blood pressure, according to the annual report released by the Ministry of Health yesterday.

Dr Mahmoud Fikri, Assistant Undersecretary of Health Policies Affairs at the Ministry of Health and Chair of Higher National Committee for Diabetes, said: “What really worries us is the less physical activity among adolescents.” [Read more...]

Losing Weight May Not Boost Self-Esteem In Teen Girls

Obese teenage girls, who lose weight, may benefit physically but it does not guarantee that they are going to feel better about themselves, a new study has claimed.

The study, conducted by Sarah A Mustillo from Purdue University, was based on data from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study.

“We found that obese black and white teenage girls who transitioned out of obesity continued to see themselves as fat, despite changes in their relative body mass,” Mustillo said.

“Further, obese white girls had lower self-esteem than their normal-weight peers and their self-esteem remained flat even as they transitioned out of obesity,” she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 17% of American children ages 2-19 are obese. [Read more...]

Recipe Redux: Chicken Dish Modified For Your Health

March is National Nutrition Month, and the focus every year is to stress the importance of making informed food choices and developing both sound eating and physical activity habits. The theme for this year is “Get Your Plate in Shape” and it reinforces the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and reminds consumers about the basics of healthful eating.

As we close out this month and move forward we want to focus on a lifetime of healthier eating and physical activity habits — not just for National Nutrition Month. Using MyPlate as a tool for planning meals coupled with healthful preparation of food will move one on the journey of healthful eating.

Remember that MyPlate is divided into four sections plus a blue circle to the upper right of the plate. Half of the plate includes two sections, fruits and vegetables with the vegetables section being a little larger than the fruits section. The other half of the plate includes two additional sections, the grains and protein with the grains section being larger than the protein section. The blue circle represents dairy. [Read more...]

Watch Your Diet, You Multi-Tasking Women!

She multitasks, balancing the pressures of work, children and home. But the modern superwoman who manages to do it all ends up neglecting her health, too busy to focus on her diet or an exercise regimen.

A busy lifestyle often leads to an erratic diet and international research indicates that women who are too busy to focus on their food intake are more likely to succumb to impulsive eating and spontaneous food purchasing. The result? Extra flab, laziness, diabetes, hypertension and obesity.

According to health expert Swati Srivastava, today`s multitasking woman needs not just a balanced diet and exercise but also health supplements. [Read more...]

Some Diets Do Work, If You Stick With Them

What’s the best diet to lose weight? The one you can stick with. That was the finding from a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Overweight volunteers in this trial lost weight on a variety of diet strategies — high carbs, low carbs, high fat, low fat, high protein, average protein.

And what was the one “major predictor” that guaranteed weight loss in these diet trials? Adherence. In other words, there are a variety of strategies to lose weight. But whatever we decide to do, it seems to be important to stick with it (duh).

That said, some diet strategies — based on research studies — apparently are worth sticking to for the long term more than others. Here are a few examples: [Read more...]