Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis…Sounds NEAT October 1, 2007

A really great new concept has come out to help keep us senior folk a little bit fitter and a bit sharper upstairs. Now, I know not everybody has the time or energy to drag their buttocks to the gym a few times a week, but I’ve just read about a nifty little gizmo that helps you get fit by keeping track of exercise challenges you set for yourself.

The games encourage small lifestyle changes and are completely customizable. Basically, this new program works with your Palm Pilot or some other fancy-dancy PDA your son bought you (that you only use for the tip calculator). Have a look at this press release over at medicalnewstoday. It gives you most of the details, but because I’m a nice guy, I’ll save you the trouble and just explain it here.

The technology was developed by a research team at the University of Houston (a fine institution if I do say so myself, go cougars!). Essentially, you wear a small monitoring device during the course of your day and it tracks walking, running, bending over and even little things like toe-tapping. The fancy doctor name for all of this is Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Your movements over the course of the day make a video game character on your PDA perform specific functions and you can compete against your friends as well.

To be honest, I think a lot of seniors would really get a kick out of something like this. Imagine playing a game of golf, but simultaneously having a race to see who could actually walk the furthest while they played? Probably me because my ball spends more time under water than many species of fish. What I really think this would be great for though is ending this chorus of fat children I see every time I leave  my condo. What do they feed children today? Honestly, when you go to a restaurant and you see a parent order food for their kid and they order more food for the child than they do for themselves; does it not occur to you that there’s a huge problem. How has somebody not mentioned that yet? Children are too fat these days. Too much pie. Too much v’deo games.

Maybe the way to get kids to start exercising these days is to incorporate video games into their exercise routine. Maybe thats what it is going to take. Well, I tell you what, this is something I would use and something I could give to that grandson of mine who really needs a sharp kick in the behind if you ask me. Listening to that rap music and such. I guess if it takes video games to make him exercise, that’s what its gonna be. I bet I’d still walk further in a day than him, that’s for sure.

Cool Whip Free is free of everything except high-fructose corn syrup and lies! July 8, 2007

We all remember Cool Whip as a summertime treat riding high on pile of strawberries and pound cake. These days, you’d be lucky to find a strawberry shortcake that wasn’t made in China! Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but you (and Lou Dobbs) get my point. It seems like we all knew Cool Whip couldn’t actually be good for us, which was why our moms only served it every few weeks or so. These days, in our anything-goes dietary culture, Kraft Foods has launched a new type of Cool Whip that is supposedly a lot healthier. They call it Cool Whip Free.

I saw it at the supermarket not too long ago and after having a quick look at the nutritional information, I realized that this Cool Whip wasn’t really free of anything-especially sugar! Am I the only one who finds it aggravating that companies can promote something as healthy or imply a health-benefit with a name when the product isn’t actually healthy?

Although the blogosphere has been pretty quiet about this one I found a post about a very similar experience that somebody over at FitSugar had with Cool Whip Free. “Cool Whip Free may be low in carbs and low in calories, but it is not free of a few things I try to avoid. The top four ingredients are: water, corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable (coconut and palm kernel oils), and high fructose corn syrup.”

The author of that post actually bought the Cool Whip before they took it home and realized that it wasn’t some form of dessert miracle. Her level of disgust rose quickly, it seems.

My favorite touch, however, is the asterisks Kraft added to the right of the ingredient “partially hydrogenated oil.” The asterisk leads me to a little informational gem of a footnote that reads, “Adds a negligible amount of fat.” Thanks, Kraft I feel so much better about the fact that you can use partially hydrogenated oil, keep the amount per serving to below 0.5 gram, and still claim your product is trans fat free.

And besides, have you ever noticed how there’s two ways to say Cool Whip. Some people, us northerners mostly, plainly say Cool-Whip as two separate words. But I’ve noticed that southerners and people from back east have a tendency to kind of link the two words together. I’d never thought anybody else had ever noticed that until I was watching some cartoon show with my irresponsible grandson. Suddenly, I see a baby and a talking dog conversing on something that had been bothering me for the better part of 20 years.

What an age we live in.

 

The Dog Days of Summer mean different dietary choices for Seniors July 7, 2007

With the dog days of summer in full swing, it can be pretty tempting to reward yourself after a long walk in hot weather by picking up some ice cream. Well, according to an article I read this morning in Canada’s Globe & Mail, that ice cream might be doing a lot more harm than good.

It’s always important to make sure that your active lifestyle isn’t undone by your dietary choices. This is especially confusing when of half the ice cream you see in your grocer’s freezer is labeled “Low-fat,” “Non-Fat,” or “Heart-Healthy.” Here’s some of the logistics on ice cream. “Ice cream is made with cream, milk, sugar, flavorings, stabilizers and emulsifiers and ranges in fat content from 10 to 18 per cent.” Unfortunately that just covers the basic run of the mill ice cream that we all remember from our heyday. Today’s ice cream is jam-packed with more chocolate whizz-bangs and candy-coated doo-dads that caloric intake can rise faster than a sugar-rushed six-year old.

This paragraph pretty much sums up the problem.

A half-cup of standard full-fat ice cream like Breyers Classic or Nestlé Parlour contains roughly 140 calories, six grams of fat and 16g (four teaspoons) of sugar. Add-ins such as chocolate chips, fudge, cookie pieces and candy boost the numbers. For example, a half-cup of President’s Choice Pecan Butter Tart has 180 calories, 8 g of fat (6 of them saturated) and 21 g of sugar. The same serving of premium brands such as Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s often hits 300 calories, not to mention as many as 25 g of fat (at least half of them saturated) and 28 g (seven teaspoons) of sugar.

Reading that article in the Globe & Mail really got me thinking about how summer brings about a whole new range of nutrition choices you don’t seem to have to make during the rest of the year (for those of us not living in southern-American retirement communities, anyway). Summer means barbecues, boat rides and a lot of time spent in the heat.

To help you keep your dietary wits about you this summer, I found a great article in the FitSugar Blog that you should print out and take a long look at.