Kids on Sweets: Are We Raising a Generation of Sugar Addicts?

by | Sep 11, 2013 | Carbs, Cravings, Sugars | 0 comments

Candy There are few joys in life as sweet as seeing our children smile. Thus, it is with the best of intentions that we cave to pleas for candy and tantrums over French fries in hopes of glimpsing those (rapidly decaying) pearly whites. After all, there are bigger threats to our children, right?

As it turns out, sugar isn’t as harmless as we once thought, at least not in the volume we’re consuming it.

[header 3]A Natural Drive on Overdrive[/header]

Children have a natural penchant for sweets; it’s part of our survival programming. But in this hyper-processed, convenience-obsessed age, that natural drive is now on overdrive. With about one-third of children overweight or obese, childhood obesity has more thandoubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years.

The American Heart Association recommends that children consume 3 to 8 teaspoons of added sugar per day, depending on their age and daily caloric intake. Yet children as young as 1 year already consume three to four times the daily recommendation. By 4 to 8 years old, children are consuming an average of 21 teaspoons of sugar daily, and the average teenager consumes about 34 teaspoons each day — even more than the average adult.

Research has tied high sugar intake to a number of serious health problems, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and tooth decay. Once confined to adults, we’re now seeing the early signs of these conditions in young children. In the early 1990s, Type 2 diabetes accounted for 3 percent of new cases of diabetes in children; by 2004, that number rose to 45 percent.

Moreover, sugar may be addictive. Like cocaine and other drugs, sugar activates the reward system in the brain. Rats hooked on sugar show classic symptoms of addiction, including tolerance, withdrawal and cravings, and have been known to bypass cocaine in favor of their primary drug of choice: sugar.

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Spare Ribs in Masala Sauce

by | Sep 2, 2013 | Diet, High Fat Diet, High Protein Diet, Low carb diet | 0 comments

This Menu is for 6 to 10 people. It is suitable for people on ALL stage of a low carb Program.

Spare-Ribs-in-Masala-Sauce

Ingredients

2 Racks or 3kg Spare Ribs or chops of pork (ask your butcher to cut the meat into single rib portions)
2 heaped tablespoons of parsley
3 tablespoons of oil
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 level tspn of ground fennel
Quarter pint (125ml) of fresh orange juice
Quarter pint (125ml) of chicken stock
3 tablespoons or 50ml masala wine
Salt & pepper to taste

Directions

Rub over each of the ribs with crushed garlic, mix together the parsley and fennel and rub that into the ribs, and then pepper each side of the ribs thoroughly.

Heat the oil in the pan and cook the ribs on both sides until pale brown.

Pour over the stock and then the orange juice, and add in the masala.

Transfer everything into a heatproof oven dish, and cook in the centre of a pre-heated oven at 180°C or Gas Mark 4 for 45 minutes.

Putting it together

When finished, transfer the ribs to your serving dish, skimming off some of the fat from the juices and pour the rest of the juice over the meat.

Garnish with very thinly sliced segments of orange.

This dish goes very well with fried cauliflower and broccoli, or your favorite seasonal vegetables.

Nutritional Value per Serving

Protein 116.2 g               Carbs 5.0 g

Fiber 0.3 g                          Fat 178.0 g

Here’s the link for more delicious and easy to cook FREE low carb recipes

7 Foods You Never Knew Contained Gluten

by | Aug 21, 2013 | Carbs, Diet | 0 comments

Licorice If you have celiac disease — or another condition that requires avoiding gluten — you probably got the basics down pretty quickly. It’s a no-brainer that things like breads, cakes and beer need to be gluten-free to be on your menu.

But gluten can be found in a number of less obvious foods — things like pickles, candy and even meat. What’s more, not all of them are food. Certain vitamins, supplements and even medications may contain gluten, so make sure all of your doctors, not just your gastroenterologist, are in the loop.

Watch out for some unexpected gluten culprits in the grocery store…. Find out here

Belly Fat Tied to Raised Heart and Cancer Risks

by | Jul 29, 2013 | Fats, Weight gain | 0 comments

Belly Carrying too much fat around the abdomen puts people at greater risk for heart disease and cancer compared with people who have a similar body mass index (BMI) but who carry their fat in other parts of the body.

So says a US study published online in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Previous studies have shown that the risk of disease and death linked to obesity or being overweight varies among individuals with the same BMI (body mass index – the ratio of their weight in kilos to their height in metres squared).

Now a new study suggests ectopic fat – that is, fat present where it shouldn’t be, in this case the highly visible spare tyre(s) around the middle – might explain this variation.

We already know that carrying excess fat around the waist can be more dangerous than carrying it elsewhere, such as the hips or the thighs (apple-shaped as opposed to pear-shaped).

But this latest study, from lead author Kathryn A. Britton, instructor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues, is the first to use CT scans to see which specific deposits of excess fat are linked to disease risk.

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Late Bedtimes Linked To Weight Gain In Healthy People

by | Jul 23, 2013 | How Your Body Works, Weight gain | 0 comments

Sleep If you are healthy and go to bed late regularly and you do not sleep enough, your risk of gaining weight is significantly greater than if you go to bed earlier and have a good night’s sleep every night, says a new study published in the journal Sleep.

If you also eat late at night, you will probably put on even more weight, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania added. In fact, they say it is the extra eating among sleep-deprived individuals that appears to be the main reason for the weight gain.

The authors say that theirs is the largest study so far of healthy people, under controlled laboratory conditions, that demonstrates a clear association between very late night sleeping combined with sleep restriction and weight gain.

Andrea Spaeth and team had one group of participants sleeping just from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. each night for five nights running, and compared them to a control group who were in bed from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.

The investigators also found that those who slept much less consumed more food, and therefore calories, compared to the normal-hours sleepers. Meals eaten during the late-night hours had a higher overall fat content than the other meals.

Lead author, Andrea Spaeth, a doctoral candidate in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania, said:

“Although previous epidemiological studies have suggested an association between short sleep duration and weight gain/obesity, we were surprised to observe significant weight gain during an in-laboratory study.”

The experiment was conducted at the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. It involved 225 people aged between 22 and 50 years, all of them healthy and non-obese. They were randomly selected either into the sleep restriction group or control group, and stayed in the lab for up to 18 days.

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Study: Diet to keep Crohn’s disease under control

by | Jul 19, 2013 | Diet, Low carb diet | 0 comments

Stomach Pain The Auckland woman has been suffering from the debilitating bowel disease for the past 20 years. But now she says food is her medicine.

“This is a Mediterranean diet and it’s helped from the point of view of reducing symptoms of Crohn’s. My husband just can’t believe the difference. I have more energy than him now!”

It’s all thanks to technology developed by a group of University of Auckland researchers who believe certain health conditions can be controlled by diet.

“I’d know that having two copies of the T are really going to have trouble controlling their weight,” says Dr Lynn Ferguson.

Dr Ferguson says while you can’t change the structure of your genes, you can switch them on and off with specific food.

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