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!

Great New Online Comparison App

I just found out about this great new site that lets you compare items in hundreds of catagories.  It's called http://www.findthebest.com/ and I'm sharing because they have an entire section dedicated to health comparisons.  They have things like Diet Plans (which only a handful were medically sound), Snacks, Exercises, Frozen Dinner Nutrition, etc.  Check it out and maybe you'll learn something!

Yeah, There's An App For That

I would say that now I've seen everything, but with the way technology is advancing into new and innovative products for the masses, I'm sure tomorrow I'll see something else that's new and shiny.  But for today I bring you Meal Snap.  Now here's an app that lets you take a picture of your meal with your smartphone and then like magic, Meal Snap with give you an approximate calorie range!  As the article notes, it is a range and not anything exact.  It also doesn't necessarily take portion size or extra ingredients into consideration.  Despite all of this, I think this is a great tool to use when you're eating out and you need to have some idea of the damage you're about to do!  It looks like this is only available on the iPhone, but hopefully they'll expand it to work on Androids and Blackberries as well.  If any of you happen to have an iPhone and try it out, let us know how you like it!