Fruit, whole or as juice, is an indispensible part of a healthy breakfast. Now, it seems, we have to watch out how our juices are packaged if we want to avoid causing the opposite to what we intend.

Scientists University of Copenhagen found that bottles of fruit juice and squash/cordial contain levels of antimony that were 2.5 times higher than deemed safe in drinking water under EU guidelines. In some cases the levels of antimony were ten times higher.

What is antimony? Antimony is often used in the production of PET bottles, the clear plastic bottles in which we like to buy our fruit juices.

The study has now shown that sugary drinks (fruit juices…) can be dangerous if bought and stored in these clear plastic bottles. Other studies have shown that the danger is not only that of cancer but also of disruption to our endocrine system. This means that this causes disruption to the functioning of our body’s own hormones.

Not a pretty picture? See for yourself:

You can read the full article on “Carcinogen antimony found in fruit juices” here.

Definitions and explanations of PET and antimony are most easily accessed at the Wiki articles on PET – Polyethylene terephthalate.

Here is a useful definition of Endocrine disruption and which chemicals cause it.

Healthy breakfast, balanced meals, healthy snacks – are these just slogans that others wield to make us feel guilty? Or do they have solid, scientifically based foundations that can offer us guidance for day-to-day living?

A few weeks ago, …
…at dinner in one of our local eateries, my friend pointed to his plate: “It’s great, this is a balanced meal; carbs, protein, vegetables, fat. Everything the body needs. You should be proud of me the way I’m eating.”
On the face of it, he was right about the pizza in front of him. His pizza did offer all these goodies. Only they weren’t all that good when you looked at them in detail.

Carbs – naturally, the pizza base was carbohydrate but as it was made from refined, white flour, it offered little else but calories as far as nutrition went. No fibre, vitamins or other essential nutrients. Plenty, though, for his spare tyre.

Protein – sure, cheese and pepperoni are protein. But what they brought to the table was a lot of saturated fat, the “bad” high cholesterol stuff that clogs our arteries, which far outweighed the benefits gained from the other nutrients they still contained. Let’s not talk about preservatives, either.

Vegetables – certainly, there was tomato sauce and an infant’s handful of sliced mushrooms and red pepper. It hardly satisfied the need for fibre and other plant based nutrients of the body of a grown man on a daily basis.

Fat – of course, there was plenty. In addition to the fat served up by the pepperoni and cheese, the waiter had sprinkled heart healthy olive oil on his pizza. No wonder that my friend’s wonder wheel weighed in with about 1,500 calories. That is the total daily calorie consumption for someone who wants to lose weight. All that in one meal in front of him, not not counting the wine, crackers, coffee and dessert. Which may explain why he didn’t really like my reply to his ‘balanced meal’ analysis.

The Golden Arches
In the last couple of weeks, the famous golden arches have started advertising massively again that they are now open from 6am to help people get started while still half asleep. I guess you have to be if you go for a Big Mac for breakfast. But does it really give us everything we need to get our day off to a great start?

Whatever your answer to this question, let’s not knock individual brands or types of food. What we need is a guide that tells us what’s what; that tells us reliably what to look out for, what we need, and how to avoid the common pitfalls – in other words, someone who explains Nutrition For Dummies.

Nutrition For Dummies is best used as a reference book to start you off on your journey. For that, it’s unbeatable. Use it as a starting point, and when you feel like it, dig deeper. It’ll pay off. I’ll give you some examples as we go along.

Take water, for instance. Nutrition For Dummies gives us 7 pages for starters. OK, I’ll resist the usual puns here. But after you’ve perused what the author has to say about this vital topic, you can do a lot worse than carry on with “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water” (reviewed a week ago in this blog).

The authors, Carol Ann Rinzler et al., take us through macro-nutrients (carbs, protein, fat, fibre), micro-nutrients (vitamins, minerals) and phyto-nutrients (plant based nutrients we get from fruit, vegetables and herbs). Again, once you’ve satisfied your initial curiosity about, say, fruit and vegetables, you can go on to “What Color Is Your Diet?” which I’ll be reviewing here shortly.

Do you want to know if it’s safe to take supplements? There is a well reasoned chapter on food and dietary supplements, when to take them and when to avoid them. Of course, “if you’re willing to plan and prepare nutritious meals, you can almost always get your nutrients less expensively from a varied and balanced diet. This means plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables, whole-grain cereals, dairy products, meat, fish, and poultry.” Who’d want to argue with the authors about that?

Superfoods are all the rage. Instead of going for the exotic, weird and wacky, you can opt for the home grown variety by following the book (I have the UK edition of Nutrition For Dummies is). Not everything has to come from far away. Apples, yoghurt, salmon, wholegrain seeded bread, and baked beans make up half the list on these isles. I’d better not tell my daughter that baked beans are classed as superfood. She might stop asking for them.

Nutrition For Dummies also has a great index, which is really helpful when you want to get your bearings fast. My recommendation: use it frequently, satisfy your curiosity about one topic or question at a time, and then move on to more detailed explanations elsewhere. Your body will certainly thank you for it.

If people don’t know what’s going on their plates and into their mouths, how can they follow a balanced diet?

Many of us know little about what’s in our food so rely on producers to be transparent on front of pack and responsible in their use of health and nutrition claims, not exploiting our naivety.

Read the full article here.

Occasionally, I’ll invite guest contributions. Today’s post is by Benton Chandrel

It is essential to emphasize the value of breakfast in our everyday lives because breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That’s why those who take that seriously never skip on their breakfast.

Even people who would like to lose weight should eat breakfast because studies have shown that those who don’t eat breakfast in the morning tend to eat a lot more than what their body needs during lunch. But just like any other meal, you should make sure that what you eat in the morning is healthy because you wouldn’t want your most important meal to be composed of nothing but junk food.

Avoid grabbing breakfast from a fast food joint if you’re on the go because these types of foods contain enormous amount of fat. Healthy breakfast foods can be easily prepared and doesn’t have to be time consuming so even a person who’s always on the go in the morning can have a healthy breakfast in the morning. Here are some examples of healthy breakfast ideas:

• A bowl of oats or cereals with fruits or nuts together with skim or low fat milk

• Any whole grain pastries with your healthy spread of choice

• Healthy sandwich

• Fresh fruit smoothies

• Yogurt topped with fruits

• One whole piece of fresh fruit

• Granola bar with low-fat content

These are just some of the many ideas that you can have for breakfast. All of these could be eaten by anyone who’s always in a hurry by the moment they wake up and even for those who don’t want to leave the house in the morning with an empty stomach. These foods are also healthy breakfast foods that could give you energy for your daily morning needs and could keep you in shape at the same time. Remember that breakfast is a very important meal so you should never skip it.

Benton has been writing articles about diet, fitness and weight loss online for nearly 3 years. You can also check out his latest website on polo sweatshirts and polo sweatpants.

Article Source: Ideas For a Healthy Breakfast

What is the first thing you need in the morning?

Water!

Drinking plenty of water is vitally important. Here is why and where it is needed:

Where Water Is Used In The Body

We know the basics:

• Approximately 60 percent of our total body weight is water.
• During an average day in a temperate climate a person loses approximately 2.5 litres of water.
• Loss of water increases during exercise. In this case, relying on thirst alone may be insufficient to prevent dehydration.
• This is particularly true in hot environments – not just hot climates but also in the gym – or for older people over the age of 65.

How much water do you drink every day? A couple of glasses plus some sodas, coffee and fruit juice?

According to Dr. Batmanghelidj, the author of “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water”, this simply is not enough. In fact, it is not just woefully inadequate, it actually lays the foundations for a whole host of diseases. Diseases that are then treated with drugs instead of being prevented by avoiding dehydration.

“Everyone knows that water is ‘good’ for the body, but few seem to understand fully how essential it is to one’s well-being or what happens to the body if it does not receive it’s daily requirement of water.”

“Medical professionals of today do not understand the vital roles of water in the human body: medications are palliatives. They are not designed to cure the degenerative diseases of the human body.”

How can Dr. Batmanghelidj make such a claim?

Trained as a physician in the United Kingdom, he found himself imprisoned in his native Iran in 1979. Without access to medication, he was still able to treat over 3,000 fellow prisoners who suffered from dyspeptic pain with water only. Not only did this discovery save his own life, it also led him to develop his treatment and to the research that resulted in his book, “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water.”

He discusses a dozen or more conditions that we don’t commonly link to dehydration, and he shows convincingly what we can do to avoid them.

His basic prescription is straightforward:

• Your body needs an absolute minimum of six to eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day.
• Alcohol, coffee, tea, and caffeine-containing beverages don’t count as water.
• The best times to drink water (clinically observed in peptic ulcer disease) are: one glass half an hour before taking food ­ breakfast, lunch, and dinner ­ and a similar amount two and a half hours after each meal. This is the very minimum amount of water your body needs. For the sake of not short-changing your body, two more glasses of water should be taken around the heaviest meal or before going to bed.
• Thirst should be satisfied at all times.

Water is the cheapest form of medicine to a dehydrated body.

• A balanced protein intake, sufficient exercise and, most importantly, strict and absolutely regular daily water intake are the most vital and basic anti-ageing precautions.

This summary review gives you the barest outline of the treasures hidden in “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water.” Mosey over to Amazon and browse the book – fortunately, you can do it there for free. Here is the link again: “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water.” Your body, your family and your friends will thank you for it.

In the column immediately to the right of this blog post, you’ll see a box with books that I wholeheartedly recommend. They are some of my favourites. I’ll be reviewing them here not least because they cover topics that are central to our health: Water and Hydration, Heart Health For Everyone, Special Breakfast Recipes, All About Nutrition, Power Shakes and Why They Are Essential, How To Pick The Right Color Fruit and Vegetables.

You can sample these books for free on Amazon: look inside, check the table of contents, scan the index, read sample chapters, and get a good feel for them.

I look forward to sharing these books with you. If you want to see a list of my reviews, simply click on the category “Recommended Reading” in the second sidebar on the right. Enjoy.

You will have noticed that I like Herbalife, at the very latest when you had a look at my recipes on my website.

I also get lots of questions about the company, questions hat are frequently founded on misinformation, rumours and prejudice. Here is an objective answer to all those questions: Jim Cramer, CNBC’s “Mad Money” guy, talks to Herbalife CEO Michael O. Johnson.

Enjoy:

If you have any questions about Herbalife, just ask.

(This is an excerpt from a longer article published by Dr. Mercola)

In today’s modern world of medicine the FDA just will not let companies that sell products make medical claims about them unless they have been tested at great expense, and approved as a drug. But this was not always the case.

In a 1924 booklet published by the Arm & Hammer Soda Company, the company starts off saying, “The proven value of Arm & Hammer Bicarbonate of Soda as a therapeutic agent is further evinced by the following evidence of a prominent physician named Dr. Volney S. Cheney, in a letter to the Church & Dwight Company:

“In 1918 and 1919 while fighting the ‘Flu’ with the U. S. Public Health Service it was brought to my attention that rarely any one who had been thoroughly alkalinized with bicarbonate of soda contracted the disease, and those who did contract it, if alkalinized early, would invariably have mild attacks.”

Recommended dosages from the Arm and Hammer Company for colds and influenza back in 1925 were:

• During the first day take six doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water, at about two hour intervals

• During the second day take four doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water, at the same intervals

• During the third day take two doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water morning and evening, and thereafter half teaspoonful in glass of cool water each morning until cold is cured

Read the full article here.

The number of people being admitted to hospital for obesity in the UK has risen dramatically, by 60 per cent in the last year alone, in part due to surgery now being widely available on the National Health Service (NHS).

There were 8,085 admissions for obesity in 2008/09 in England, up from 5,056 the previous year, and from 1,746 in 2003/04.
These statistics include treatment for breathing problems, type 2 diabetes, circulation or organ failure, or heart disease and also surgical procedures such as stomach stapling.

Tim Straughan, head of the NHS Information Centre, said: “The large increase in admissions for obesity reflects the growing impact that obesity has on the health of our nation as well as the demands it is placing on limited NHS resources.
“However, it also reflects the fact that overweight people are resorting to treatments such as bariatric surgery to tackle their health problems.” Bariatric surgery involves banding part of the stomach to reduce its size or even removing a portion on it.

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said society was after a “quick fix” for obesity. “We no longer try to use diet and exercise as a way of treating this problem. The increasing demand for bariatric surgery is going to put a lot of pressure on the NHS.”

More here…

Many of us can’t resist peeking at that the scales every morning even though we know that this is futile. From water retention to glycogen storage and changes in lean body mass, daily weight fluctuations are normal. Water makes up approximately 60% of total body mass. Normal fluctuations in the body’s water content can send scale-watchers into a tailspin if they don’t understand what’s happening.

Two factors influencing water retention are water consumption and salt intake. Strange as it sounds, the less water you drink the more of it your body retains. The solution is to drink plenty of water.

Excess salt (sodium) can also play a big role in water retention. A single teaspoon of salt contains over 2,000 mg of sodium. Read the labels of processed foods. Their hidden sodium content can be sky high.

Women may also retain several pounds of water prior to menstruation. Pre-menstrual water-weight gain can be minimized by drinking plenty of water, maintaining an exercise program, and keeping high-sodium processed foods to a minimum. You can also add water balancing supplements.

Another factor that can influence the scale is glycogen, our body’s carbohydrate store. This energy reserve weighs more than a pound and it’s packaged with 3-4 pounds of water when it’s stored. When the glycogen supply shrink (for instance when you don’t eat enough carbohydrates), you’ll refuel with carbs and water. It’s normal to experience glycogen and water weight shifts of up to 2 pounds per day even with no changes in your calorie intake or activity level.

It’s best to weigh yourself in the morning because everything you eat and drink will show up on the scales until it is digested and expelled.

On a very low calorie diet that causes you to lose 10 pounds in 7 days, it’s physically impossible for all of that to be fat. What you’re really losing is water, glycogen, and muscle. This brings us to the scales’ sneakiest attribute. It doesn’t just weigh fat. It weighs muscle, bone, water, internal organs and all. When you lose “weight,” that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve lost fat. Losing muscle is nothing to celebrate. Muscle is metabolically active tissue. The more you have, the easier it is to lose weight. If you are exercising and eating right, don’t be discouraged by a small gain on the scale.