Author: Robert

Snack Foods You and Your Diet Can Live With

Which ones should you consume? Let’s ask the consumer experts.

The Achilles’ Heel of many a diet program and weight-loss lifestyle is that treacherous self-indulgence, the snack, whether it be mid-morning, afternoon or late night. Trying to rule snacks out of your life altogether is usually futile and counterproductive, and in fact a notorious diet-killer. Given that reality, the goal becomes to find snack items that minimize the things we do not want, such as calories and sugar and fats, without sacrificing the things we do want, specifically the taste, texture and enjoyment of a genuinely satisfying snack.

Fortunately, Consumer Reports has conducted taste tests of just such items, and while their tastes may not exactly match yours, the odds are you’ll find something here that fills the bill. Herewith, their list of tasty yet relatively healthy nosh items (with calories, total fats and saturated fats per serving).

Crackers: Kashi TLC Original 7 Grain (130, 3, 0); Ritz Reduced Fat (70, 2, 0); Special K Multi-Grain (90, 2, 0); Triscuit Reduced Fat (120, 3, 0.5).

Cheese: Cracker Barrel Natural Reduced Fat Vermont Sharp White Cheddar 2% milk (90, 6, 3.5); Sargento Reduced Fat Sharp Cheddar 2% milk shredded (80, 6, 4).

Chips: Pringles Original 100 Calorie Packs Potato Crisps (100, 5.1, 5); Ruffles Reduced Fat Potato Chips (140, 7, 1).

Snack Mixes: Chex Mix Traditional (110, 3, 0.5); Smart Food Popcorn Clusters (120, 2, 0).

Granola Bars: Quaker Chewy Low Fat Chunk (90, 2, 0.5); Kashi TLC Chewy Honey Almond Flax (140, 5, 0.5)

Appetizers for People Who Rarely Need Appetizers

Meanwhile, KIRO-TV in Seattle put five of the most popular frozen supermarket appetizers to a similar test, scoring them for taste and general appeal. Unfortunately, the rule in most cases was that the higher the score, the higher the caloric, fat, cholesterol and sodium content.

For example, the tasters’ favorite, scoring 95, was T.G.I. Friday’s Buffalo Mozzarella Sticks, which are literally sticks of fried cheese with all the nutritional downside that phrase implies: 80 calories per serving size, along with 4.5 grams of fat, 10 mg of cholesterol and 220 mg of sodium. Actually, this particular appetizer is the lowest in all those categories per serving size, the fatal flaw being that a “serving” consists of just one stick, which is like saying just one potato chip. Good luck with that.

Scoring in the mid-80s were Bagel Bites (serving size 4 pieces) and T.G.I. Friday’s Potato Skins (3 pieces), both of which deliver 210 calories per serving. The Skins are fat-free, while the Bites contain 7 grams thereof, but the Skins pack more sodium and cholesterol, and neither product is helpful to the weight watcher. And the Totino’s Pizza Rolls (6 pieces) are even worse: 220 calories, 11 grams of fat, enough salt to de-ice your sidewalk, and the lowest score at 73.

But it’s not all bad news, thanks to the La Choy Chicken Mini Egg Rolls, which finished a close second with a score of 91, despite containing a mere 140 calories. 4.5 grams of fat and 10 mg of cholesterol per serving. The 460 mg of sodium are on the high end, but the serving size is a generous 6 pieces; limit yourself to 4 and you’ve cut the salt load appreciably.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Okay Snack Foods

It’s The Stuff You Don’t Prepare Yourself That’s The Problem

Just when you thought you had a handle on your daily intake of calories, fats, carbs and cholesterol — now come warnings from health professionals that Americans are getting too much salt in their diets, over 75 percent of it through fast food, junk food and processed food. While that list of the usual suspects calls to mind Whoppers, Tostitos and TV dinners, it also applies to a sneaky number of healthy processed foods of the vegan, organic or low-cal varieties.

The USDA’s position is that a healthy food item should deliver no more than 480 mg of sodium per serving, but plenty of presumably wholesome products do just that. Among the offenders: Annie’s Organic Alfredo Shells and Cheddar (670 mg per serving), Garden Burger’s Flame Grilled Soy Burger (500 mg), Quorn Garlic & Herb Chik’n Cutlets (570 mg), Yves Classic Veggie Brats (840 mg), and even Newman’s Own Organic Marinara Sauce (550 mg).

To guard against your digestive system resembling the Great Salt Lake, two bits of advice: (1) as much as possible, prepare your meals yourself and from scratch, and (2) when buying packaged meals and snacks, ignore the front of the packaging and read the nutritional facts on the back, particularly the sodium number.

Too Much of a Good Thing Means Just That

Being heavily salted isn’t the only way in which healthy foods can turn out to be not completely so. The fact that certain food items are generally “good for us” does not mean in every single case and in any given amount. A few examples:

Fruit juice: A great idea if it’s 100% actual juice from fruits, but read the ingredients list, since a lot of fruit beverages are laced with high-fructose corn syrup or other sugars and can be as little as ten percent pure fruit juice.

Nuts: Better than almost any other crunchy and salty snack option, but bear in mind that nuts, even dry-roasted, are little fat grenades. One ounce of almonds, for instance, packs 170 calories and 15 grams of fat, so you’d be wise to limit yourself to around a quarter of a cup a day.

Olive oil: or sunflower oil or avocado oil or nut-derived oil, all of which, however healthy they are compared to palm and corn and other varieties, still deliver 500 calories per quarter cup, so be very stinting; one tablespoon per evening meal is a recommended limit.

Soup: It may be Grandma’s answer to a host of maladies, and an essential comfort food, but it can also be a subtle haven for huge amounts of salt and fat, especially your cream soups. The closer to bouillon, the better.

Energy bars and beverages: These come at the end of the list because that’s where dessert is on the menu, and way too often that’s what these products amount to. Check the energy bar’s ingredients, and if a whole grain isn’t first and sugar isn’t nearly last, it’s really just a candy bar, and to hell with it. Energy drinks, usually just sugar and caffeine with flavoring, should be avoided unless you’re actually going to be burning a huge amount of energy.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Semi-Healthy Foods

America’s Unhealthiest Hamburger Grill: The Battle Is Joined

Looking at the menus you’d think they could settle it with a simple body count.

If you are concerned about your weight and seriously trying to control it, there is a generally accepted list of eating establishments that you do not want to go anywhere near: donut shops, ice cream parlors, bakeries and certain hamburger grills that seem almost pathologically dedicated to fattening up their patrons.

In the latter category, it seemed, until recently, that the current holder of the Unhealthiest Possible Burger Joint title, the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona, could withstand almost any challenge. With its multi-patty Single and Double Bypass Burgers, waitresses in abbreviated nurse’s outfits, and its EKG-themed logo, not to mention its offer of free food to anyone heavier than 350 pounds, it seemed impossible that any eatery could be more enthusiastically and profoundly unhealthy for its customers.

But across the continent, a contender has emerged: the Heart Stoppers Sports Grill of Delray Beach, Florida. True, it doesn’t offer any Bypass Burgers, but it does offer a three-pound Heart Stopper burger, a bedpan filled with Chest Pain Cheese Fries and other items so calorie laden that the menu actually features a warning that “consumption of our food will definitely lead to obesity.” The interior decor includes a defibrillator and a dialysis machine, salt and pepper in pill bottles, and a wheelchair motif.

It’s Like Trying to Decide Who to Root for In “Alien Versus Predator”

Does Heart Attack have reason to worry about the Heart Stoppers challenge to its supremacy? Heart Attack evidently thinks so, strongly enough to have filed a federal lawsuit to prohibit Stoppers from stealing its “medical disaster dining” concept. The Attack lawyer (a bit of a redundancy) says there are 30 similarities between restaurants, and that doesn’t even include the grievous long-range damage they can do to the human body. It does include such elements as the EKG logo, the free eats for 350+ pounders, the nurse outfit waitresses and the medical clinic furnishings.

But hold on, say the Stoppers folks, our theme is way totally different. For one thing, we emphasize the medical theme more. Heart Attack is strictly fat, fat, fat; we have a broader menu with healthier — even vegetarian — options. Moreover, our nurses’ dress more modestly, too, none of Heart Attack’s fishnet Hooters looks. This may not sound like much of a difference to you, or to the judge hearing the impending lawsuit; Heart Attack lawyers already shut down a similar-themed restaurant in Pensacola. All that’s certain right now is that the two contenders for the title of most unhealthy burger grill in the U.S. will run up a fortune in legal bills and be emotionally stressed and distracted for months deciding the issue. Couldn’t happen to a nicer couple.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Dueling Burger Joints

“Sitting Pretty,” It Turns Out, is a Bit of an Oxymoron

Scientists have some bad news. Maybe you should sit down. No, wait, forget that!

Get up! Right now! Yes, you! Okay, finish reading this, but at least do so standing up. And then, if you value your life, get moving! Walk, do knee bends, tap dance, pace, do anything but remain seated. Sitting, it turns out, is not the benign activity it appears to be. According to at least several studies, the more time you spend on your behind, the more likely you are to be fat or have heart trouble or die or all three. Need some further motivation? Maybe the following bits of data will help.

A six-year study of nearly 9,000 Australians, reported online in Circulation, has found that for every hour spent watching TV per day, the watcher’s chances of death due to heart attack rose by 18 percent, and his or her chances of dying, period, went up by 11 percent. Those who watched the tube for four or more hours per day were 80 percent likelier to die of heart disease than those who watched for under two hours daily.

Mind you, it’s not that the quality of the programming is deadly (although you could make a case for that). In fact, a twelve-year study of 17,000 Canadians found the higher risk of death among those who spent more time sitting for whatever reason: be it work, school, driving, reading, balancing the books or video gaming. And neither is this phenomenon due to a lack of exercise; in the Canadian study, even fit and trim gym regulars were subject to the sitting-will-kill-you effect. The determining factor is simply a
matter of prolonged time spent seated.

It’s Not Just Residents of Death Row That Have Reason to Avoid the Chair

Scientists seem to have a grip on the mechanism involved: After around four hours of sitting, the muscles go dead, signaling the genes that regulate our body’s fat and glucose to stop producing a key enzyme that sucks fats from the bloodstream, allowing those fats to build up in the arteries. Unfortunately, this meagre knowledge still leaves us looking for answers to several significant questions such as:

• When does uninterrupted sitting become dangerous — at four hours? Three?
• How much total sitting per day is too much?
• What’s worse, four hours of unbroken sitting in one day, or, say, five hours of total sitting with a 30-minute “halftime” activity break?
• Does extended sitting have the same effect on kids?

The experts speculate that small exercise breaks throughout the day might help to reverse this effect, given that the typical exercise pattern — single daily sessions — doesn’t appear to. More research is needed, and in light of a 2003-2004 survey which found that Americans spend over half their waking hours seated, will probably be forthcoming.

In the meantime, we don’t know exactly how much damage is done by how much sitting, but we do know that our bodies were not designed to sit as much as they do, and that the more often a person can get up and move, the better for his or her health and longevity. So get off your butts, America.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Warning: Sitting Too Much Could Kill You

The only reps involved are hand from Doritos bag to mouth and back.

Several studies of late have produced statistics regarding the amount of time American kids spend watching TV, and almost all the numbers are disturbing. A report issued in November by Nielsen, for example, had childhood tube-watching at an eight-year high, with kids aged 2 to 5 putting in 32 hours a week, and those in the 6 to 11 demographic logging 28 hours. These are, of course, hours spent not exercising or being physically active, unless you count snack runs to the kitchen.

Incidentally, it would be nice to interpret these numbers as evidence that while kids aged 2 to 5 don’t get to decide how they’ll spend that time and are largely just plopped down in front of a kind of electronic nanny/playmate, they begin rejecting TV for other activities as they grow older and wiser and more experienced,. Alas, that’s not the case. According to the researchers, the older kids’ reduced TV watching isn’t due to judgment or good taste, but the fact that they’re now in school for those hours.

A Chip off the Old Potato

In any case, this raises the question, “Just where did kids today get the idea they could spend one third of their waking lives sitting on their butts watching the tube?” Easy: From those peerless role models, grownups, who according to a separate Nielsen study, spend an average of 4 hours and 49 minutes per day gawking at the TV. For those of you keeping score at home, that works out to a total of 33 hours and 43 minutes per week per adult, easily topping their offspring.

The Moral is not news, but evidently it needs to be repeated on a regular basis. Most of the difference between a healthy-body-weight child and an overweight or obese child lies in choices made by the parents: what kind and how much food to have available, what kind of time limits they set on sedentary activities (TV, video gaming, Facebook, etc.), and especially the examples they set by their own behavior when it comes to eating and exercise. To paraphrase the old saying: Chunky see, chunky do.

Obesity in Kids: There’s No Silver Lining

Let’s say that you’re the parent of an obese child and you’ve consulted his or her pediatrician and been told that doctors do not usually treat simple obesity in children unless there are other signs of “metabolic syndrome,” such as high blood pressure, blood sugar problems, low levels of good cholesterol and so forth. If so, you may want to refer your child’s doctor to a study released last week by the Nemours Children’s Clinic.

In essence, researchers found that children who are obese at the age of seven run an increased risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease early in adulthood, whether they have any other “syndrome” indicators or not. Indeed, a count of pre-disease indicators in blood tests determined that obese children had ten times the levels as their normal-weight peers, controlled for age and sex. The bottom line is that there is probably no “safe” age at which childhood obesity can be blithely accepted or ignored.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Kid stuff: Why They Watch so Much TV, and Why Their Weight is a Serious Matter

P.E. Classes: A+

Researchers at the University of California’s Berkeley and San Francisco campuses wanted to know which of the various physical activities that adolescents engage in are the healthiest, so they undertook what they describe as “an incredibly comprehensive” analysis of teenagers’ routine daily activities and their Body Mass Index (BMI) and cardiovascular fitness, as measured by how long it took them to walk or run one mile.

They discovered that the strongest and most significant activity linked to low BMI and fast miles was school-based physical education, good old P.E. In fact, of all the physical activities reported, P.E. was the only one that correlated with lowered weight. And not a lot of P.E. either; just 20 minutes of exercise daily during P.E. class was strongly associated with shorter mile times and lower BMI numbers.

Walking to School: C-

One other activity that was significantly associated with cardiovascular fitness was walking to school, but unfortunately, it was also significantly linked to a higher BMI, a seemingly counterintuitive result that the researchers easily explained: kids who walk to school are more likely to stop along the way to buy food, usually of the snack variety, and thus to be overweight. Since “walk to school” has been one of the standard weight-control suggestions for parents of chubby offspring, this creates a bit of a conundrum.

Solutions seem elusive. Sending the child to school with no money? The clever child will have stashed some away en route. Declaring convenience stores and fast food outlets near the school “off limits” to students for one hour before and after school? Only if the businesses affected are willing to go along with cutting off one of their steadiest income streams. Accompanying the child to school? Only if you are willing to be resented for the rest of your life for this unthinkable public humiliation. Anyone with an answer is invited to submit it.

They could certainly use one in Manchester.

Coincidentally, among those who may soon be searching for just such an answer are the parents of school kids in Manchester, England, where nearly 20 percent of all 10 and 11-year-olds are dangerously overweight or obese, and where the Health Commission has proposed a ban on all nonresident parking near some 1,100 schools, specifically to prevent parents from driving their children to schools and thereby depriving them of the exercise from walking or bicycling. Some parents are already up in arms at this notion, and if they get wind of the U.C. research findings, they could make the argument that such a ban could only make things worse, weight wise.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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The Importance of Physical Education Classes, and the Hazards That Lurk Between Home and School

At least they certainly got him talking.

It was inevitable, and now it has come to pass. After dozens or more instances of airline passengers being deemed too overweight for one seat and winding up bumped from their flight, we now have our first “celebrity bumping.” The celeb in question: Kevin Smith, actor — primarily playing the character “Silent Bob” — and director of films such as “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy” and “Cop Out,” released this past weekend, taking in a respectable $17 million.

Southwest Airlines Enforces Obesity Policy

It seems that Smith was flying out of Oakland to Burbank after speaking at the Macworld Expo, and knowing himself to be a person of above-average girth, had purchased two seats on his intended Southwest Airlines flight. However, he was also flying standby in hope of catching an earlier flight, and got lucky, or at least half-lucky: a seat became available. But only one, alas.

Smith boarded and made to occupy the seat, but he was told to exit the plane by the pilot, who declared him to be too large for one seat, in accordance with Southwest’s “Customer of Size” policy requiring passengers to fit comfortably in a single seat. Smith was put on a later flight and given a $100 voucher for his trouble, but he was not mollified. He claims that he met Southwest’s size test: being able to put both armrests down and buckle his seat belt. The airline begs to disagree.

“Silent Bob” Makes Noise

Unfortunately, it begs to disagree with a noted film personality whose Twitter page has many thousands of followers, and who began issuing indignant tweets such as, “I’m way fat, but I’m not there just yet,” and “Fair warning folks: If you look like me, you may be ejected from Southwest Air,” as well as “You (Southwest) have messed with the wrong sedentary, processed-foods eater.”

A barrage of angry blowback in the form of supportive tweets and caustic online comments quickly caught the attention of Southwest, which apologized profusely on its own Twitter page, and on its Web site in a statement headed “Not So Silent Bob,” and even directly by phone to Smith. The bad news for Southwest is that Smith is threatening to sue, unless the airline publicly states that he is “not fat.” The good news for the airline is that having voluntarily paid in advance for two seats originally, Smith has essentially admitted that he is. The even better news is that the guy they booted for being too fat is Kevin Smith, and not Michael Moore.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Is “Silent Bob” Too Fat to Fly?

For openers, they have nothing to do with Mick Jagger.

Sarah White posted briefly about this product not long ago, but brisk product sales and ongoing media coverage suggest that consumers might benefit from more extensive information about rocker shoes. For the unfamiliar, these are walking shoes that are augmented to keep the wearer somewhat unstable and off balance, by means of soles that
are either heavily cushioned or padded or curved or molded so as to require the walker to work otherwise relaxed muscles to maintain his or her pace and balance. Some wearers compare the effect to walking on soft sand.

Claims About Rocker Shoes

The specific alleged benefits invariably include increased lower-body muscle tone, but otherwise vary by brand of shoe from fairly modest to bordering on miraculous. The FitFlop and the Reebok EasyTone brands, for example, promise to develop and firm up the leg, calf, thigh, hamstring and gluteus (buttock) muscles, with FitFlops adding the lure of “a workout while you walk.” The MBT, a Swiss import, goes a bit further, claiming to ease arthritis and reduce back pain.

They are mere pikers; however, according to Skechers PR, their Shape-Ups can improve your posture, tone up your abs, help you lose weight, reduce your cellulite, strengthen your back and improve your circulation. Some of the hyperbole accompanying rocker shoes might be amusing, if so many people were not evidently swallowing it and buying these items at a furious clip; Reebok calls the EasyTone its most successful new product in at least five years.

Rocker Shoes Background

These shoes are nothing new, and have been produced for years as therapeutic footwear, designed for specific clinical uses such as physical therapy, rehab from injury, relief from arthritis or other painful foot problems, or to improve posture. Only more recently have they been marketed as a kind of orthopedic wonder shoe.

Does all this muscle toning really take place? Study results conflict, and those showing positive results have all been financed by the shoemakers and were conducted in controlled research settings, sometimes with as few as five people walking just 500 steps. And they’re all short-term, leaving unaddressed the question of whether any muscle toning is permanent or fades when the wearer gets accustomed to the shoes. Also unaddressed is the question of whether a shoe that over exercises some muscles under exercises others in the process.

Are Rocker Shoes for You?

If you have to stand for long hours each day, rocker shoes may help to reduce certain muscle aches and stiffness. Otherwise, experts seem highly unimpressed with the whole concept, and estimate its effect on muscle tone to be negligible, and on body weight, even less. Furthermore, the awkward instability of the shoe means you can’t engage in any serious athletic activity while wearing it, which seems to defeat much of the whole “muscle activating” purpose.

On the upside, the mere fact that we are deliberately wearing a shoe designed to activate our muscles may motivate us to pick up the pace and extend the distance when walking. As one exercise physiologist told USA Today, “If you are spending $100 or more on a pair of walking shoes, maybe you’re going to go out and walk more.” Or you could save yourself some money, skip the wonder shoes, and just start walking.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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More Than you Probably Need to Know About Rocker Shoes

Love cops, hate them, I’m not sure it matters, sometimes seeing authority figures with some egg on their face simply provides some much needed schadenfreude. Here are 18 pretty good examples:

Talk About A Sticky Situation

It’s Hard To Respect Your Authority When You Are Driving Such Ridiculous Cars

Right of Way Can Be Tricky

As Can The Difference Between the Accelerator and Brake

Probably A Good Idea To Trust His Instincts

An Internet Classic

Cushy Job

Giant Light Came Out Of Nowhere

To Protect And Serve. Should Throw Something In There About Not Being A Giant Prick.

Things Got A Little Out Of Hand

Justice

The Irony, It Hurts

GPS Can Be Confusing At First

Let me consult my calendar … so confused.

Ask not for whom the Bell trolls, it trolls for thee

Taco Bell may not be the very last fast food franchise you would expect to promote its bill of fare as diet friendly, but it would probably come close.

After all, almost every other item on their menu seems to involve the word “Supreme,” which is evidently shorthand for “extra scoop of sour cream and guacamole.”

And yet, the chain is mounting a TV ad campaign whose theme is that Taco Bell is the weight-watcher’s friend. In at least one commercial, an attractive woman who is purportedly not an actor but an actual Taco Bell patron declares that she has lost such-and-such amount of weight by making the Bell’s low-fat items her fast food staple.

To support this claim, the commercial includes a banner line across the bottom of the screen boasting, “Seven items under 9 grams of fat.”

Even better, it’s drive-through, because who wants to do all that walking from the car to the counter?

Unfortunately for Taco Bell, the spot raises not only one’s suspicions, but certain questions. Such as:

• Is this woman one of those people who have tried several dozen weight loss plans and programs and regimens, each of which has worked beautifully for up to six months before the inevitable backslide to square one?
• Since the commercial doesn’t specify the “seven menu items,” how do we know they’re not including the taco sauce, or for that matter, the napkins, in their count?
• For each Taco Bell weight-loser like this woman, how many commercials could be filmed featuring people who’ve gained such-and-such amount of weight by eating regularly at Taco Bell? Does a ratio of, say, 350 to 1 sound about right?
• Also, we’re talking about seven low-fat choices out of how many total menu items? Again, the 350-to-1 ratio comes to mind.

Good luck to Taco Bell with its new campaign, at least to the extent that people who are going to patronize the chain anyway might now opt for the moderately healthier menu items. Frankly, we’d prefer to see a comeback by the former Taco Bell spokesdog, the “Yo quero Taco Bell” chihuahua.

Alas, we’ve heard a rumor that he died of complications from diabetes.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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The Taco Bell Diet: No, stop laughing, they’re serious

It’s no accident that Scooby Doo’s owners are in such good shape

My very first post for CalorieLab some years back promoted the notion of a canine companion as a potentially valuable weight-loss aid, and urged dieters to make that “extra large dog to go” one of the actual four-legged variety.

Among the suggested advantages:

• Walking the dog each day will be exercise that you probably wouldn’t get otherwise, especially in bad weather or when you don’t really feel like it.
• Time spent walking the dog is time not spent raiding the fridge or cruising the drive-through.
• The calories burned by walking the dog are nothing compared to those burned by chasing or bathing the dog.
• The feel-good warmth supplied by a good dog can diminish the felt need for “comfort food,” generally the most fattening kind.
• The dog owner will often shake off the urge to hit the kitchen for some snacks rather than have to deal with the fixed gaze of a drooling canine.
• And nothing kills one’s appetite, at least temporarily, like cleaning up after one’s dog.

It’s like a personal trainer that wags its tail

Well, it now appears that there may be some empirical and statistical support for my suggestion, at least with regard to dogs and exercise. It seems that some British researchers surveyed 5,000 people and turned up some interesting numbers.

Among them:

• On average, dog owners walk their pooches for up to 30 minutes twice a day, and longer than that three times a week, for a total of some eight hours of exercise per week. By comparison, non-dog-owning gym patrons work out for fewer than two hours a week.
• Those who own dogs exercise as much as six hours a week more than those who exercise on their own at home or in a gym.
• Fully 86 percent of the dog walkers said they enjoyed doing so, compared to just 16 percent who felt that way about their gym workouts.
• Roughly 65 percent of the dog walkers walk their pets even when they’re on a tight schedule, while about 45 percent of the gym users frequently contrive excuses not to work out.

Just one more reason to call them our best friends.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Who needs a Stairmaster when you’ve got a Golden Retriever?

How would you like to have this drunken idiot coming at you with nowhere to hide? Maybe this is commonplace in Russia, who knows! Supposedly everyone came through this accident relatively ok, no fatalities.

A classic sign that your diet group needs to lose a bit more

It sounds like some kind of joke that, if Leno or Letterman had told it, would have brought a whole sackful of angry mail from offended persons of weight: “In what could be a serious setback for the company’s image, a Weight Watchers’ clinic held a weigh-in to see how much total weight its members had lost, but when they all got together, before they could start weighing, the floor collapsed.”

Except it’s not a joke. It happened just exactly like that, at a Weight Watchers clinic in Vaxjo, Sweden, last week. No one was hurt, and the plucky (if chubby) Swedes moved the scales to a sturdier setting and commenced with the weigh-in, the results of which were not reported, possibly because the numbers might help explain why the floor gave way.

Actually, the collapse probably had far more to do with dry rot than high fat, but even so, they’ve got to be laughing themselves silly at Lean Cuisine headquarters.

Want to spice up your relationship? Get physical

Meanwhile, back here in the states, various blogs and feature articles and newscasts are giving increasing exposure to the “exercise couple” concept, which promotes the basic theme that romantic partners who work out together not only stay together, but are healthier and safer and sexier in the bargain. A few of the extolled virtues and advantages of perspiring in pairs:

• Most importantly, it’s time you spend in one another’s company, which for many overscheduled couples can be elusive these days.
• It’s also shared activity, with shared goals, elements that go hand-in-hand with bonding.
• Whether you hit the jogging trail or the gym or the pilates mat, the time will go faster when you’ve got company. And you’ll be far less inclined to blow off a run or workout when to do so will disappoint your partner.
• In most cases, you’ll give 10 percent or more extra effort to whatever you’re doing, just to impress or please your partner, than you would on your own.

There’s also a safety factor: whether you’re running in the park or walking from the gym to the car or bus stop after dark, either you or your partner or both of you will be less likely to be targeted for unpleasantness than you would be alone. Not to mention the advantages of a spotter you can trust during strength training.

Speaking of which, couples often differ in their exercise priorities, with one focusing more on cardio fitness and the other on muscle toning. In reality, a complete workout regimen includes both, and by blending your two preferences, you’ll benefit from a more balanced fitness program overall.

Two qualifications, however. Try for as much common ground as possible when making up your list of exercises; your program should be enjoyable for both partners. And for the same reason, don’t make exercising into a competition.

Finally, the killer app: Exercise stimulates the production of chemicals that boost the libido, and regular exercisers in several studies claim to have better and more frequent sex with their partners. And that, of course, is the most satisfying and relationship-enhancing exercise of all.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Weight Watchers’ whoops, and “working out” your relationship

The bad news is that increasingly, boys will be B-O-Y-S

According to two studies in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association, our national overweight and obesity rates have more or less leveled off, which might be cheerier news if that level were not potentially disastrous as it is.

Still, considering that adult obesity rates in the U.S. had soared from 10 to 15 percent in the 1960s to over 30 percent in 1999, data showing that as of 2008 they had risen only 2 or 3 percent more came as a relief to health professionals who expected much worse.

Nonetheless, there is an ominously dark cloud over this positive note, to wit: the one group that displayed the most weight gain was young males aged 6 to 19, 15 percent of whom now register in the 97th percentile weight category, which takes them beyond “obese” or even “morbidly obese” to a state that researchers are loath to even come up with a suitable term for, given that “insanely fat” or “lard with a pulse” would be, however apt, cruel and unseemly.

For the record, Latino and African American boys still have the highest rates of this ultra obesity, but the most marked increase was among their Caucasian peers.

What’s a parent to do? Glad you asked

Coincidentally, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which digests current research results and issues suggestions based thereupon, says that pediatricians and other health professionals should monitor children from the age 6 onward for obesity, and refer those who qualify to the nearest comprehensive weight-management program for kids.

The problem, as one pediatric obesity researcher told USA Today, is that there are millions of obese kids nationwide, but only a few hundred facilities that offer programs meeting the task force’s recommended standards. Which means it is left to the parents to take charge of things in most cases.

The paper asked Trim Kids co-author Melinda Sothern to provide some strategies for those parents to follow, and she offered the following.

• Initiate an “after 8 is too late” rule for after dinner snacking.
• Confine eating to the dining room, kitchen, and/or snack bar with the rest of the house a no-munch zone.
• Make healthy snacks easy to see and reach, and unhealthy ones just the opposite.
• Encourage kids to take an activity break from homework, TV or videogaming every half hour to shoot hoops, toss a football, jump rope or otherwise get the blood moving for a few minutes. Even better, engage in the activity with them.
• On weekends, try to spend half a day in some fairly vigorous family activity, such as cycling, skating (roller or ice), hiking or swimming. Note: kids don’t have adults’ self-discipline or sense of long-range goals, so make your exercise activities fun, the motivation they most relate to.

Of course, the Golden Rule for parents of obese children, when it comes to eating, exercising, and general lifestyle, remains both simple and difficult: set a good example.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Obese American kids: the latest numbers, and advice to parents

“There is ‘good’ fat and ‘bad’ fat — just like there is good and bad cholesterol”

The above statement is from Dr. Konstantinos Manolopoulos of Oxford University, who specifically distinguishes between fat that lies around the midsection –bad– and fat that resides below it — possibly just the opposite. He and his colleagues pored through a number of various studies on the effect of fat on the body, and found that the location of the fat is a vital factor when it comes to its impact on your health.

You could read their report on their findings this week in the International Journal of Obesity, but the betting here is that you will probably be shot out of a cannon before that happens, so here is a quick summary.

Here comes the biology

Stomach fat breaks down much more easily than fat on the derriere or thighs, and in the process it releases cytokines, which promote inflammation and have been linked to heart disease and diabetes. Belly fat has separately been associated with hardening of the arteries, a common precursor of heart trouble.

Fat on the hips, buttocks and thighs, by contrast, seems to actually offer a some protection from the same health problems, by storing fatty acids that would otherwise migrate to such vital organs as the arteries or liver, thereby posing an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes, and by curbing the production of inflammatory and artery-clogging proteins.

The end result of all this biochemistry can be seen in population studies showing that the more fat that individuals have in the caboose area, the lower their odds of developing heart disease and diabetes, and that women, whose bodies tend to store fat in the hip/thigh/kiester area, enjoy far lower rates of heart disease than men.

The bottom line (just because we couldn’t resist using the phrase)

What researchers don’t know is why women’s fat accumulates where it does, or for that matter, why and how any particular body determines where its fat will be concentrated. We know that it’s at least partly genetic, but beyond that, the subject awaits further research — which, given our national obesity and heart disease rates, you can pretty much count on.

In the meantime, our good Dr. Manolopoulos offers the observation that, “celebrities like J-Lo are better role models for women’s health than supermodels who have much less lower body fat.” Of course, if having a body like J-Lo’s were really a practical option, J-Lo lookalikes would number into the millions already, and Weight Watchers would be bankrupt.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Big belly: Bad. Big butt: Bonus!

Better than Florida vote counts, perhaps, but far from exact

As more and more restaurants volunteer, or are required, to post the calorie counts of their various offerings, it is only natural and prudent to wonder just how accurate these postings are. Not that your friendly local drive-through would con you on the numbers, but mass marketing strategies often involve bending the truth a wee bit.

Some nutritionists at Tufts University decided to look into this, and conducted a caloric analysis of menu items from 10 chain restaurants in the Boston area. As a kind of control study, they conducted the same tests on a sample of “diet friendly” frozen supermarket meals from the likes of Weight Watchers and Lean Cuisine.

The general findings: 29 of the fast food menu items tested contained more calories than they claimed, by an average of 18 percent, while the frozen supermarket meals had an average of 8 percent more calories than their labels stated. Individually, the discrepancies ranged from P.F. Chang’s large Sichuan-style asparagus, which had more than twice the 200 calories claimed, to the Domino’s large thin-crust cheese pizza, which actually had one-third fewer calories than the stated 180 per serving.

It may not be deliberate, but that’s not much help if you’re a strict calorie counter

All in all, the results did not particularly trouble the researchers, who ascribed most of the calorie-gaps to normal variations in portion sizes and ingredients, often coming down to a teenage food preparer being a bit heavy handed with the mayo or cheese sauce or gravy.

Fast-food outlets that prepare items to order are especially vulnerable to caloric inconsistency, as are those that use local vendors for bread and dairy and other food items.

As for the frozen supermarket meals, their 8 percent overage is well within the 20 percent range allowed them by the Food and Drug Administration, a fact to bear in mind when comparing such “low-cal” products.

The conclusion of the experts seems to be that all calorie statements, whether on fast-food menus or supermarket packaging, should be regarded merely as approximations. A wise move may simply be to automatically add 10 to 20 percent to any calorie number in question. But if you really want to follow a calorie-certain diet, you’re going to have to prepare the food yourself.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Just how accurate are those posted fast-food calorie amounts?

Possibly the most dangerous question since “Does this make my butt look big?”

Is fatness ugly? This is a question that seems destined to become increasingly significant, controversial and touchy in the future, as more and more Americans cross the threshold from lean and trim to not even close. Indeed, it has already generated some heat for an international dating site which in all seriousness calls itself BeautifulPeople.com, and which recently booted some five thousand of its members out into the virtual street for having “let themselves go” weight-wise over the holidays.

The bootees had evidently posted updated photos showing their current, newly expanded selves, and had been voted off the BeatifulPeople island (whether by ballot or committee or other mechanism is not clear). In any case, the founder of the organization, Robert Hintze, minced no words.

“(O)ur members demand that the high standard of beauty be upheld,” he said. “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

Evidently, the concept he’s promoting is that “beauty” is properly defined by those who consider themselves singularly attractive and belong to a club made of people more or less like them. Think “sorority,” but with even more vanity and snottiness. BeautifulPeople.com claims to have around 550,000 members in some 16 nations worldwide, and the rest of us can probably be deeply thankful that they have found each other.

Frankly, we’re surprised nobody’s given him a fat lip

On the one hand, at a time when various “fat acceptance” organizations are becoming increasingly active and vocal, it’s surprising that Hintze’s comment have sparked little, if any, expression of outrage from the defenders of girth. On the other hand, they may simply regard BeautifulPeople.com as too preposterous and irrelevant to take seriously.

Nevertheless, and just in case you’re curious, it may be worth noting that the United States led all pudgy evictees with 1,520, followed by runners-up the UK at 832, and Canada at 533.

For some reason, the entire inane affair calls to mind Groucho Marx’s timelessly sage observation, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)

“Beautiful People” club turns ugly, expels thousands of members for gaining weight

Things get just a bit sourer for the sugar family

The sugar industry seems to be taking a hit from some negative bit of PR almost every day lately, so why should this day be any different? The hit: Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have found that reducing the amount of glucose in the diet might extend the human life span and even reduce the threat of cancer.

Specifically, they found that when given less glucose, normal healthy human cells lived longer, and precancerous cells often died off. Whether this may lead to “a pharmaceutical fountain of youth,” as one medical journalist suggested, is debatable, but in the meantime, the less high fructose corn syrup and other forms of sugar you consume, the better for your cellular longevity.

Which diet is best? Let’s get to the heart of the matter

Also on the “this just in” research front, if you’re trying to decide between a low-carb, high-fat diet on the one hand or a low-fat, high-carb diet on the other, the folks at the Royal Victoria Hospital suggest you lean toward the latter.

Their studies, released in December, find that both diets led to equal weight loss and produced similar physical responses in the dieters, but that the low-carb group wound up with more stiffness in their arteries, which is a bad sign for the health of the dieter’s heart.

High-fat, low-carb diets have legions of devotees, who claim they produce faster weight loss and taste better. However they taste, the Royal Victoria’s Dr. Steven Hunter cautions that, “we now have proof that they do not help people lose weight any faster than more conventional diets, and . . . By advocating low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets as a weapon against obesity and diabetes, health professionals could be contributing to a dangerous rise in cardiovascular disease.”

A chip off the old couch potato

Your humble correspondent was taken aback not long ago upon reading the results of a Nielsen survey which found that American kids in the 2-to-5 age range now watch TV 32 hours a week on average, and those aged 6 to 11 spend 28 hours on average gaping at the tube (the slight reduction due to being in school).

Your h.c. could only shake his head and wonder, how could America’s parents allow this to happen? Then I came across another statistic from the Nielsen survey: the average American adult watches television for four hours and 49 minutes per day, which works out to 33 hours and 43 minutes per week, easily outpacing the kids in sedentary viewing. Question answered.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Glucose and aging; carbs and hardened arteries; and why kids watch so much TV

Feel free to print it out and post it prominently in your kitchen

USA Today just ran its annual week-long Weight-Loss Challenge, with different articles on the subject each day. One feature article was a list of dieting tips from the paper’s health reporter, Nanci Hellmich. There’s nothing groundbreaking on the list, but it’s an excellent encapsulation of the consensus wisdom of a number of experts in the field of health, nutrition and fitness. Here is a summary.

1. As much as you can, clear all the bad, sugary, fat-laden food items out of your kitchen, pantry and fridge. If you need to indulge yourself, make a special trip to purchase your treats.
2. The fewer sugary beverages you drink, the better. The ideal number is zero.
3. Increase your physical activity as much as possible, not so much to lose weight as to keep it off once lost.
4. When dining out, split or share entrees or consume just half and take the remainder home, and ask for the salad dressing on the side and apply it sparingly.
5. Limit the size of portions at home; for example, 3-ounce servings of meat, poultry or fish as entrees, and at breakfast, pancakes no larger than CDs.
6. Emphasize protein; it seems to keep the body feeling full longer.
7. Buy some clothing one size smaller than you presently wear and make it your goal to fit into it.
8. Manage your hunger attacks by not going more than five or six hours between meals and by keeping low-calorie snack items on hand.
9. Get your zzzs; sleep deprivation triggers hunger hormones.
10. Whenever you get a craving for a treat, wait 10 minutes before acting on the impulse; often, it will have passed.
11. Try to pal up with a weight-loss partner and/or supporter for morale boosting and encouragement, ideally a member of your household.
12. Keep a weight-losers journal and write down everything, repeat everything, that you eat, including fluids. Statistically, you’ll lose twice as much weight as you would with no journal.
13. Weigh yourself regularly, several times a week, to monitor how you’re doing and minimize backsliding.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Annual refresher course: Basic success tips for weight-losers