Shaw's Helps You Shop Smarter

Shaw's Supermarkets has rolled out a new program in their New England based stores that color code thousands of items in their supermarket based on their nutritional information.  The aim of this system is to help shoppers identify healthy items faster and easier.  For example Dark Orange is for whole grains and Purple is low in calories.  I think this is a fantastic idea and I hope it gets adopted in some form or another in grocery stores across the country (hell, world!).  It can be very tedious walking around the store looking at countless nutritional labels.  This way if I see something new I might want to try, I can know before I even get to it if I should really be eating it or not.

Are Beauty Products Making Us Fat?

According to doctors at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, yes.  They claim that 70% of cosmetics and household cleaners contain a chemical known as phthalates.  This chemical is absorbed by the body and proceeds to disrupt our glands and hormone regulation, thus leading to obesity.  This is news to me, but if this turns out to be true it will throw the beauty and cleaning industries on their heads!


Read the full article here.

Miss America Hopeful - A Former Heavyweight

I just read about Miss South Carolina who in the past few years has lost 110 lbs and is now on the road to a possible Miss America crown.  Inspirational?  Hell yes.  I also love that she lost her weight over a period of 3 years by simply eating well and exercising.  We aren't all 'The Biggest Loser' nor should we be.  With simple lifestyle changes and hard work and a forgiving attitude, you too could be the next Miss America!

Wisdom For Your Holiday Weekend

I thought this blog post over at Huffington Post was quite good.  It talks about the behavioral and psychological issues that can be behind humans having a difficult time losing weight.  As a tease, here is the first line of the blog...which I'm in love with right now.  Enjoy your weekends!

If you gave a test to a million people and three-quarters of them flunked, would you attribute their failure to a lack of willpower or laziness?

Can You Spot 100 Calories?

Take this fun little quiz from Women's Health and see if you can guess which serving size of each food or snack is 100 calories.  They asked which 'Healthy Snacks'...but some of the items you guess are french fries, a whopper, pizza and doughnuts.  I think they should  have stuck with which FOODS are 100 calories.

Post your scores!

Mommy, Am I Fat?

This upsets me greatly.  There is a video and article on abc.com about a 6 year old girl who thinks (because her peers told her she was) overweight.  First off, she's completely average and healthy.  Second of all, she's six!  A six year old shouldn't be worrying about needing to lose weight.  Apparently she isn't the only one.  The article says that nearly half of the kids between the ages of 3 - 6 were worried that they were fat.  I feel like a lot of the kids that are telling other kids they're fat are learning it from their parents.  Of course, kids are also hearing their parents talking about their own insecurities with their bodies and translating to themselves.  For the latter, we really need to watch what we say in front of our kids and leave our own insecurities to ourselves.  For the parents teaching their children to discriminate...well I think that's just plain ignorance.  And that's what I'm hoping to help with here.  Not that I get many readers, but you never know who you'll touch.

New Health Care Prevention Strategy

So the White House announced it's new strategy for prevention in Health Care yesterday.  It is a very broad sweeping initiative that goes outside of the normal areas of health care to include transportation, housing, the workplace and the environment.  You can see an overview here and also download the entire plan.  From what I've ready if we can actually start getting people to think about health and the impacts their seemingly unrelated decisions can make on it, that would be fantastic.  I would never have thought to say 'I'm building a new housing community...are there sidewalks for exercise?  Is it close to shops?'  It makes you think.  There are so many little things we can all do to help with the big picture.  But can we change people enough to have an impact?  What do you think?

New Healthier Oils Coming To You

It looks like scientists have been hard at work.  The folks over at Dow AgroSciences have just announced that they have created the first ever saturated fat free sunflower oil.  This is not only great for just us as consumers using it around the house, but it would be FANTASTIC if companies started using it in their food processes thus eliminating a lot of the saturated fat in their products.  According the the press release:

Omega-9 Sunflower Oil is all natural and can support an all natural package claim, as the oil comes from NEXERA™ seeds which were developed by Dow AgroSciences through traditional plant-breeding. And because the oil has a very high level of  stability, many formulations will not require antioxidants, TBHQ or partial hydrogenation to achieve the desired shelf life allowing for a cleaner ingredient label.

 I say good job science!  If we can start creating better ingredients in a natural and healthy way we can improve ALL of our food offerings, even if it's processed.  All I want to know is when I can find this on my grocery shelves!

Get Spark*D!

The folks over at SparkPeople have rolled out a new program just for diabetics called Spark*D.  I think this is a great addition to their already comprehensive site.  I myself use SparkPeople to track and gain support from other users.  Now maybe I can get my husband, who has diabetes, on the site as well.  If anyone has used this, let me know what you think of it!

Comprehensive Fitness Tracking + Social Interaction

It seems fitness tracker RunKeeper is upping it's game.  Not only can you track your run via an app for your smart phone, but now you can implement other tracking devices and pull together your daily movements, heart rates, sleeping habits and more.  And what's even better is you can compare yourselves to your friends and other users.  I'm personally liking the FitBit which is about the size of your standard money clip.  It senses motion via a 3-D motion sensor and tracks your movements day and night...though I'm not sure how comfortable it would be to sleep with it clipped on, but I'd have to try it.  Granted, this is even MORE money we would have to spend, but it might be nice to have something tracking that for me...since I'm not the best at writing this down for myself.  It will definitely be great for anyone that loves graphs!

Vogue Italia Puts Three Plus-Size Models On June Cover

Huzzah!  This could be the start of something good!

(Although I'm extremely put off by the pose of the model on the right of the cover...)

The Complex System That Is Our Bodies

Another great article I found about how our bodies work and how to work with them in order to keep our weight and health in check.  I like that there are a few small changes you can take from the article that could potentially have a big impact on your weight.  I mostly want to show my husband the section about how the brain doesn't know the difference between walking in the mall while shopping or walking on a treadmill.  He laughed at me when I used to walk in place while watching TV.  I was still moving!

The Loopholes of Food Labeling

There is a great article I found on sparkpeople.com about the standards when it comes to labeling on food.  For instance, you can use the phrase "Made With Whole Grains" as long as there's about a pinch of whole grains somewhere in there.  We've all heard about things being misleading, but I think this is a tad ridiculous.  Read this to make healthier choices for yourself!

Choose My Plate

The new graphic replacing the USDA's pyramid has been revealed today along with a (new?) website, http://www.choosemyplate.gov/.  I really like the new look of the graphic.  It's simple to understand and visually appealing.  I browsed around the site and they also have some really useful tools like a food tracker, foodepedia and meal plans for the likes of preschoolers, moms to be and the general population.  Now, they don't give you recipes, but they do tell you how many cups/ounces/etc you should be getting of a particular food group each week.  This is based on your age, gender, height, weight and physical activity.  I will definitely be checking out the food plan for moms-to-be when I get pregnant.

National Running Day

So it looks like today is National Running Day.  Even though I went Spinning this morning I think I'll go for a short jog/walk this evening!  In honor of today, here are 10 Ways To Celebrate!

New Plate Shaped Design To Replace Traditional Food Pyramid

It looks like the Obama administration will be changing out the old Food Pyramid design with one that shows your food groups and percentages on an actual dinner plate.  I think this will work much better as it will be a real life visual that people can go by.  However, I'll reserve my final decision until it's released this Thursday.  But it makes a hell of a lot more sense to me, especially as a designer.  What do you guys think?

Men Find Women Who've Lost Weight More Attractive...Women Still Think They're Slobs...

Yet another article with some studies.  This one shows how men and women view women that have lost weight.  In good news for us, men seem to view us as more attractive, approachable and creative.  Women on the other hand still find the women undisciplined, unhygienic and slovenly.  So great news for these women's dating lives...not so good news for their friendships.  Have any of you run into anything like this.  Or have you judged any women who've lost weight this way?  Hit the comments!

Exercising Outdoors vs Indoors

Here is an article about how there are studies being down that seem to point to the idea that exercising in the outdoors is better for you than hitting the gym.  They say that it not only revitalizes you more, but it helps your brain decompress more than being indoors or in an urban setting.  Head to the poll and let me know where YOU like to work out.  I know that I would prefer to workout outside, but obviously weather can be factor and also the fact that I'd prefer to workout before the sun comes up and I'm not completely comfortable walking around in the dark alone!

Yet Another Weight Loss Journey Show

Who here has seen the ads for ABC's new show Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition?  I'm pretty much a sucker for watching any weight loss show (though some are much better than others) so I will definitely be watching the first episode of this.  I enjoy the concept of each episode being a journey of 1 year with each participant.  I also like that this takes place during their normal lives (as normal as having a trainer move in with you is) so that we can see people losing weight while still having jobs and families.  Who else is going to watch this?

Your One Stop Recipe Shop

I just found out about this great new recipe search engine called Foodily.  This search engine aggregates recipes from all over the web from tiny little blogs to giants like Food Network.  They then not only spit out the recipe but their own nutritional calculations based on each ingredient.  You can search by ingredient, vague food term (i.e. Mexican dish) and also refine your search with things like 'low-fat' or 'low-carb'.  I think this is fantastic.  I have so many recipes bookmarked all over the damn place that I lose track.  So you can also save favorites or even 'Like' a recipe on Facebook.  I will definitely be utilizing this new search engine, how about you?