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?