If you are a diabetic or are concerned about your blood sugar levels, then snack time is probably filled with more tough choices than for the rest of the folks. A typical snack from a vending machine is almost guaranteed to send your blood-sugar spiking, so what do you do when you get the 3 p.m. hunger-pangs?

Well, you could try one of the snacks from Prevention magazines list of 9 different snacks that are guaranteed to not send your insulin-levels in a tizzy. While I vehemently oppose any mentions of “fat-fighting foods” (foods cannot fight fat, exercise and activity can), the snacks in this article are quite healthful and will satisfy your hunger until your next meal.

From strawberry frozen yogurt and nut-clusters (spiced!) to peanut butter bars and spinach artichoke dips, this list is diverse enough to satisfy anyone. Give them a try and hit the comments with snack ideas of your own!

What snack do you eat when hunger strikes?

While the world’s abuzz with the super-human and historic achievements of ace American swimmer, Michael Phelps, few know what it took to keep him going at the blistering pace he managed to maintain (8 Gold medals in the Beijing 2008 Olympics in 5 individual and 3 team events).

He not only beat mark Spitz’s 36-year-old record, but he also did it using all 4 swimming strokes (Spitz only swam freestyle and butterfly) and in an era when other countries from around the world can no longer be ruled out as serious contenders (what with Olympic-level training and access to world-class facilities becoming the norm in more and more countries).

So what does it really take? Yes, there’s perseverance, discipline and training, but there is also … nourishment!

Imagine swimming in 17 Olympic-sized races over a period of around 10 days and managing to continue performing at your peak in each of them. What kind of calorie-intake do you think that would require? Well, the answer is: 4000 calories at every meal – that’s what!

Here’s what it takes to keep Phelps going:

His breakfast: a large bowl of porridge; three doorstep-sized sandwiches of white bread, butter, fried egg, fried onion, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise; a five-egg omelette tastefully garnished with parsley; three slices of French toast liberally sprinkled with sugar; three pancakes topped with chocolate chips; and two large cups of coffee.

Next to it is lunch, which consists of 1lb (that’s a very large bowl) of pasta with tomato sauce; two large ham-and-cheese sandwiches with more lettuce, tomato and don’t forget the mayo; plus four bottles of a proprietary high-energy sports drink.

For dinner, it’s another pound of pasta, a large cheese-and-tomato pizza, and another four bottles of the same proprietary high-energy sports drink.

[Via Xinhua]

You can visit the Xinhua news site to actually visually see what these monsters of meals look like. Oh, and don’t even try this at home unless you plan to train and compete like Phelps. His average workout burns about 1000 calories per hour (dedicated joggers, you burn about 400). And he does 5 hours of it every day during peak training not counting his actual swims and cooling-off periods!

So, how healthy is this diet in the long-term? Probably not all that much:

Even though the 23-year-old spends a solid five hours of each day burning off those calories, the diet still seems excessive. Is he following some sort of dietician guru’s programme? Barbara Lewin, a nutritionist who has advised international athletes on their dietary health for almost two decades, thinks not.

“Health-wise, if he were eating like this long-term, he’d probably be having to see a cardiologist regularly,” Mrs Lewin told the BBC.

She recommended cutting out the egg yolks, replacing the white bread with whole-wheat, throwing some fruit and vegetables into the mix, and spreading the food out over the day with regular snacking.

[Via BBC News]

Just goes to show that one’s diet must be a pure function of one’s need. Too much or too little and you’re just setting yourself up for nutritional disaster. Age, gender, physical activity and your own specific plan (fat loss? muscle gain?) – they all play a vital role in determining what and how much you should eat.

In an age when fast-food joints like McDonald’s and Burger King immediately bring to mind a picture of unhealthiness and obesity, the story of a man who actually lost 80 pounds on a “McDonald’s Diet” is a real breath of fresh air.

Chris Coleson, a 42-year old businessman from Virginia, who weighed almost 280 pounds just last December, lost about 80 pounds in just 6 months by eating exclusively at McDonalds!

Chris Coleson tipped the scales at 278 pounds in December. The 5-foot-8 Coleson now weighs 199 pounds and his waist size has dropped from 50 to 36. [MSNBC]

Of course, his diet was not the standard unhealthy fare that one associates with a fast-food joint like McDonald’s. In place of fattening Big Macs and Fries, Chris chose the more healthful choices from the menu like salads and wraps.

Just goes to show you one thing: Just like diamonds are found in the dirtiest of coal mines, you can still pull out healthful alternatives from the McDonald’s hat – if you only look hard enough (and are stoic enough to say no the enticing aroma of the fries!)

Yes, the title is a little sensational – but it’s true. As a city, over the past two years, New York’s 5 million residents gained a total of about 10 million pounds – or about 2 pounds each! If you think that does not warrant attention (it’s just a pound a year, after all), then consider this from the New York Times blogs …

[...] the weight gains were particularly concentrated among the heaviest New Yorkers. The city’s rates of obesity and new diabetes diagnoses both increased by 17 percent during the two-year study period, compared with a 6 percent increase in obesity prevalence and no increase in diabetes diagnoses nationally.[NY Times]

“Broad”way indeed!

The city’s Health Commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden is obviously troubled and he does recognize that educating the consumer about cutting down on calorie-consumption is an important first-step toward solving this very real crisis:

“To tackle this problem and help prevent the devastating effects of these conditions, New Yorkers must to take in fewer calories, and to help them do that we must change our environment. Consumers must have calorie information readily available when they are ordering food at chain restaurants …[NY Times]

Too bad his own city is not with him when it comes to providing calorie-information to its citizens. New York’s chain restaurants were supposed to post calorie counts of menu items starting Monday. But the inevitable court-challenge from the New York State Restaurant Association group means that New York cannot enforce this law until April 14th. Why? Apparently some constitutional rights were being infringed!:

[...] the state restaurant association says the rule violates the First Amendment. The group believes it forces businesses to put message on their menus.[AHN]

With things the way they are, is it any wonder that even simple – and potentially life-saving – procedures and regulations take forever to see the light of day?

Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

Finally, an article I have been waiting to read! The prevalence of low-fat, low-calorie, diet and 100-calorie foods had really gotten me thinking: do these things work? Can you become skinny on Diet Coke and Lean Cuisine? “Junk-food dieters fake their way to skinny” attempts to answer just such a question and makes for great reading.

It’s amazing to see the lengths people will go to in order to avoid overeating. Chewing gum, sucking on lollipops, smoking, chugging a Diet Soda all day – each of this is used by different people as an alternative to eating real food. The kicker, of course, is that if the same people ate real (unprocessed) food instead, the proteins, fiber and natural fat would probably have kept them full longer and obviated the need to depend on artificial solutions to hunger-cravings.

Here are the week’s top health and fitness stories:

1. Junk food advert code launched: A global campaign aimed at reducing the marketing of unhealthy food to children has been launched.
2. New method finds networks of genes behind obesity: “Obesity is not a disease that is the result of a single change to a single gene. It changes entire networks,”
3. Diabetes: Of Mice and Men: Destroying killer-T cells is supposed to stop the immune system from chomping up beta cells. In mice, it did. The real shock, however, was that with the killer T-cells eliminated, beta cells apparently regenerated enough to pump out sufficient insulin to
4. 10 diet flubs – and how to fix them: We’ve uncovered 10 sneaky ways your workout, your work habits and even your clothing can undermine your diet, and we devised easy fixes for each.
5. Junk-food dieters fake their way to skinny: According to their credo, low-calorie is good; no-calorie is better – even if the food contains more chemicals than a can of hair spray.
6. Overweight women have worse breast cancer: study: A dangerous type of breast cancer, known as inflammatory breast cancer, was seen in 45 percent of obese patients, compared with 30 percent of overweight patients and 15 percent of patients of healthy weight.
7. Personal Contact Helps Maintain Weight Loss: [...] a new study finds that when people have monthly personal contact with a weight-loss professional, they’re able to keep off more weight.
8. Going green: Tips for eco-friendly exercise: Going green with your workout routine is actually pretty easy to do. Here’s how:
9. Obesity tied to higher pancreatic cancer risk: New research suggests that obesity may raise older adults’ risk of developing pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease.
10. Vitamin D ‘cuts risk of diabetes’: Giving young children vitamin D supplements may reduce their risk of developing type 1 diabetes later in life, research suggests.
11. Boston bans use of trans fat in restaurants: The city’s health board gave final, unanimous approval yesterday to a ban on the artificial substance in french fries, doughnuts, and other dishes made in restaurants and grocery stores.
12. Minimal Exercise Benefits Overweight Postmenopausal Women: Just 10 minutes to 30 minutes of exercise a day can improve the quality of life for sedentary, overweight or obese women, American researchers suggest.

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Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

Ah the French! How we envy their rich foods, fine cheeses, aromatic wines, delectable chocolates and … slim waists? Wait, how is that possible? There must be some mistake! Aren’t rich foods and cheeses and chocolates the very antithesis of a slim waist? Well, not really, as this article points out!

The crucial component of eating – knowing when to stop – is a complex system of several cues a person gets. Some are internal (feeling of fullness, a nausea from overeating, tastelessness after awhile and so on. Others are external: The game is still on! Others are still eating! … etc. And as is by now pretty obvious to the discerning reader, it’s the internal cues that we must train ourselves to react to. It’s also one of the most difficult things to do and something that the French are, apparently, pretty adept at: they simply know when to stop eating!

In a Cornell Food Lab Study, both Parisians and Chicagoans were asked the simple question “How do you know when you are through eating dinner?” The different answers speak for themselves:

The Parisians said they knew they were through when they no longer felt hungry or when the food no longer tasted good to them. Their answers suggested that they’re influenced by internal cues — whether they liked the taste of the food or whether they wanted to leave room for a later dessert — to tell them dinner’s over.
In Chicago, it was a different ball game. The 145 Americans relied on external cues of satiety. They said they knew they were through eating when they cleaned their plate, when everyone else at the table was finished or when the TV show they were watching was over. [MSNBC]

Some of this difference has to do genetics and body weight composition (the heavier folks tended to rely on external cues). But a lot of it has to do with culture and the relationship a group of people have with their food. While we tend to rush around and keep food as an “on the go” commodity and tend to combine the eating of our “fast” foods with other activities, it might benefit us all to take a moment and admire how the French take time out of their day to sit, relax, enjoy and really eat their food.

Therein, in all probability, lies the secret to rich food that still results in healthy bodies.

Here are the week’s top health and fitness stories:

1. Stop when full? You must be French: In deciding when it’s time to push away from the table, it seems that the French may be responding to different eating signals than Americans.
2. Alcohol ‘quickly’ cuts heart risk: New moderate drinkers were 38% less likely to develop heart disease than those who stayed tee-total, a four-year study involving 7,500 people found.
3. Working out? Don’t sweat how much you perspire: “You don’t have to sweat to get a good workout, and exercising in higher temperatures and humidity can be dangerous,”
4. Are fears of a fat planet overblown?: “The obesity epidemic has absolutely been exaggerated,” said Dr. Vincent Marks, emeritus professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Surrey.
5. Inside Info About Eating Out: Letting a restaurant do the cooking for you may be quick, easy and tasty, but it can also mean relinquishing control over what you eat — and even how much.
6. Device helps fat kids cut TV time: A monitoring device that cut TV and computer time in half helped young, overweight children eat less and lose weight
7. Breakfast keeps teens lean: Teenagers who regularly eat breakfast tend to weigh less, exercise more and eat a more healthful diet than their breakfast-skipping peers

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Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

SuperBowl Sunday again! How quickly a year passes! Last year, you read some eating tips for the big game, but some things don’t change during this time of the year. Manning is still the last name of one of the Quarterbacks (last year, Peyton led the Colts to victory – can baby brother Eli do the same thing for the Giants as they take on the Patriots this year?) and SuperBowl Sunday is still the second biggest day of wanton consumption (right behind Thanksgiving Day).

Of course, the eating tips we read last year are absolutely valid even today, but there are a couple of articles with interesting takes on fitness and nutrition before and during the game that warrant our brief attention before we charge off to view the game.

Firstly, Super Bowl shape-up: Get your game on! advises us to start off the day with a little activity ourselves so we get our exercise for the day while having fun doing it. A backyard game of flag football, apparently, does the trick quite well:

Get your buddies together, put on your favorite team jerseys and play some good old-fashioned flag football in the yard. A 150-pound person can burn an average of 576 calories per hour this way! [MSNBC Fit List]

Eat this, not that! 7 Super Bowl swaps meanwhile gives us the ever-useful Eat-This-Not-That take on Super Bowl eating. It starts off with a scary tidbit of information that can be quite unsettling: Americans, it seems, consume about 156 billion calories today! Just follow the pages of simple substitutions of low-calorie swaps for their higher-calorie cousins and you should be just fine by the time it’s the fourth quarter. For example at half-time, having 3 chicken fingers instead of cheese-fries with ranch will give you just half the calories and just a third of fat!

Go Patriots!

Here are the week’s top health and fitness stories:

1. Super Bowl excitement may hike heart attacks: For die-hard fans of the New York Giants and New England Patriots, this Sunday’s Super Bowl won’t be just a game. It may be a health hazard.
2. Good food ‘boosts earning power’: Giving babies nutritious food could significantly increase their earning power as adults, new research suggests.
3. You call that health food?: Take a moment and consider this logic: 1. Fat-free foods are healthy. 2. Skittles are fat-free. 3. Therefore, Skittles are healthy.
4. Eating red may prevent dropping dead: Eating red fruits and vegetables may help reduce inflammation which in turn cuts the risk of heart attack, a U.S. doctor says.
5. Eat this, not that! 7 Super Bowl swaps: By the time the final whistle blows at Super Bowl XLII, Americans will have downed 156 billion calories, mostly from pizza, wings, and beer, the unholy trinity of pigskin comestibles.
6. It’s February. How’s that diet coming?: It’s now one month into 2008, and your eating habits may have veered a bit off course. But it’s not too late – just a few small changes can make all the difference.
7. Va. Senate Backs Phaseout of Trans Fats in School Food: The Virginia Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to phase out the use of artery-clogging trans fats in food sold at public schools, from the cheese pizza in the cafeteria to the chips in the vending machine.
8. Super Bowl shape-up: Get your game on!: … choose the right snacks so you can stay “in the game.” Replace regular chips with baked versions, regular beer with lite beer, thick pizza crust with thin.
9. Obesity drug use rises eight-fold: More than 1m prescriptions are made for obesity drugs a year – eight times the number dispensed seven years ago.
10. Inmate discipline faces diet test: A £1.4m study of 1,000 inmates at three young offenders institutions will look at the effect on behaviour of vitamins and other nutritional supplements.
11. Cooking schools targeting trans fats from foods: The movement to ban artery-clogging trans fats from food has a new venue: cooking schools.
12. Sedentary life ‘speeds up ageing’: Leading a sedentary lifestyle may make us genetically old before our time, a study suggests.
13. EU health chief wants food labels to fight fat: The European Union’s health chief wants to introduce tougher food labeling rules to combat the growing problem of obesity across Europe, but is facing stiff political and industrial opposition.
14. Warm-Up Advice From an Ancient Master: We’ve all heard Confucius’s aphorism about the journey of a thousand miles. What I want to know is: Did he actually ever try taking that first step?
15. Diabetes Rates Continue to Soar: The number of Americans being diagnosed with and also living with type 2 diabetes is soaring, presenting a major health and economic crisis for the United States, a new study reports.
16. One Size Does Not Fit All: So how does a young guy seemingly in good health suddenly become such a medical train wreck?
17. Carrots Are Good for Losing Weight: Study after study shows that doctors are often uncomfortable in telling their patients that they need to lose weight.
18. Coffee may make diabetes worse: Daily consumption of caffeine in coffee, tea or soft drinks increases blood sugar levels for people with type 2 diabetes, research suggests.

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[Update: 20-Sep-2009: Dannon has settled the false-advertising lawsuit I wrote about in Feb 2008. Of course, they have denied all claims and have admitted no wrongdoing. The good news is that once the settlement is approved, consumers who purchased their yogurt will be eligible for a $100 rebate depending on how much they purchased. Vindication? Should they do more? Was it the consumers' fault to believe their claims in the first place? Sound off in the comments!]

There was a time (not too long ago) when the only choice you had to make at the Yogurt aisle was “Plain or Flavored?”. Today you are accosted by easily more than 20 varieties including frozen yogurt, live-and-active-cultures-yogurt and even yogurt with fruit on the bottom.

In early 2006 Dannon came up with a brand new type: Probiotics-enhanced Activia yogurt that is supposed to regulate your digestive system and followed it up a year later with their DanActive “dairy-drink” that would strengthen your body’s defense.

Then Dannon was sued:

A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles claims the Dannon Co. Inc., owner of the world’s best-selling yogurt brand, bamboozled tens of thousands of customers into paying extra for Activia and other yogurts falsely touted as offering special nutritional benefits. [ABC News]

What are Probiotics anyway? According to Dannon’s own website, “Probiotics are living microorganisms, usually lactic acid bacteria, that when consumed in sufficient numbers can provide health benefits that go beyond basic nutrition”. In other words, it’s a form of live-and-active-culture called “Bifidus Regularis” that is added to the yogurt with certain characteristics that are supposed to make it extra-beneficial: safe to eat, high shelf-life and presence n enough quantity to be of help.

But what quantities of these cultures are “enough” and what real benefits do they confer?

…medical experts disagree over what the right amounts are and what kind of benefits they could have, according to Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa, an assistant professor of medicine at New York University.
“Probiotic bacteria have only been proven to help with very specific disorders,” she says. “Probiotics is an exciting field, but it is too early to make … general claims like ‘regulates your digestive system.’ That doesn’t mean anything in medical terms.”

So, while it’s probably true that more of the bacteria in this product survive the stomach acids and reach your colon than from regular yogurt (Consumer Reports article), the question is what real effect these bacteria have and is the extra cost worth it? Also note this from Triathlete:
“If you stop eating it, the bacteria levels rapidly return to their normal levels”. (All those opposed to this lifetime commitment speak now or forever just try to be fit!)

And what about DanActive’s claim that it strengthens your body’s defenses? Again, there is no conclusive proof that this is true and in fact according to the ABC News article, a Dannon-funded study itself concurred with this lack of evidence:

…a report issued last year by the American Academy of Microbiology, a report that Dannon helped fund, says, “To date, there is no conclusive evidence that altering the microbiota of a healthy human adult is beneficial.” The report goes on to say that “the efficacy … of probiotic treatments has yet to be determined.”

Now Dannon has a website for everything so there’s one for Activia, one for DanActive, then there’s the Probiotics Center and – surprise! – even one for their “Two Week Challenge” (everyone does these by the way, because apparently consumers just love a good challenge!) But even a cursory glance of these websites (which, by the way are loaded with way more technical information than the average consumer can – or would even care to – understand), brings up so many of the “usual suspects” keywords that their claims begin to sound more and more shaky:

• Activia with Bifidus Regularis is scientifically proven to help with slow intestinal transit when eaten daily for two weeks, as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle. [Activia Site]
• Taken every day, DanActive can help strengthen your body’s defenses. [DanActive Site]
• DanActive is believed to have a positive effect on the balance of your intestinal bacteria. [DanActive Site]

As a consumer, it’s in your best interest to look out for catch-phrases like those highlighted above – for these are the exact phrases companies can later use to wriggle out of taking any responsibility for tall claims. Now, don’t get me wrong – the benefits of active cultures may well be true and present, but claiming conclusive results on as yet unsubstantiated research is certainly not in the best interest of millions of consumers.

Just for kicks (well, not really – I do this for all products), I checked the nutrition and ingredient information for Activia Strawberry Yogurt. Well what do you know? Fructose Syrup, Sugar and modified corn starch must make for some yummy yogurt … with 17g of sugar!

If you haven’t already, read my earlier post from last summer about the Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie yogurt. In that ad, Yoplait claimed that eating yogurt would help you lose weight as long as it was part of a sensible diet and active life. Do you see the pattern? Eat Cheerios, lower cholesterol when eaten as part of a healthy diet and active lifestyle. Eat Special K and lose weight when eaten as part of a healthy diet and active lifestyle. Wait a minute, should we all just skip the extraneous stuff and just eat sensibly and be more active?

Well, I certainly think so!

Yes, we live in a world of high-stress with kids, commutes, pollution and more demands on our time than we can think we can handle. Maybe, just maybe, we can solve this by preventing the causes of this stress rather than rushing out to get the next big (unproven) cure.

Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

Well, it’s finally happened. Fast food is now so entrenched in the daily diets of millions of youngsters, that the BBC reports that children no longer consider it a special treat that should be eaten rarely. The research was done by the British Heart Foundation:

A poll of 500 youngsters also found that 82% do not think of crisps as anything special. More than half do not consider sweets a treat.

Although advertising unhealthy foods to youngsters is already under strict scrutiny in the United Kingdom with many restrictions in place regarding the time and nature of these ads, fast foods are still becoming what is increasingly considered “normal food”.

Here are a few suggestions to make sure this is not happening in your household:

1. Keep the junk out: Having chips, cookies and ice-cream always available at home makes them look like natural foods to the impressionable minds of children.
2. Use the right words: “Fast-food”, “Unhealthy”, “Treat” … whatever words you use to describe undesirable elements in your daily diet, make sure the message conveyed to your kids is clear and consistent: “Don’t expect to have these foods everyday. They are unhealthy. We consider them treats for special occasions.”
3. Make it special:: I always tell my friends that when our family eats ice-cream, we know we ate ice-cream. I mean, it’s not a sad little scoop from a week-old bucket of ice-cream in the freezer. I am talking about freshly-made shakes, splits and sundaes that we reserve for special occasions. Making it special is not only just a healthier way to enjoy it, but somehow, the rarity seems to increase the pleasure one derives from it as well. (If you could just have ice-cream anytime you wanted from the freezer, it’s not going to be so special anymore, will it? Just like for the kids in the U.K. study, it’ll become “normal”)

What other tips do you have to make sure your kids are not making fast-food and other junk foods part of their normal food? Ponder on that while you give the week’s top health and fitness stories a once-over:

1. Finding smart buys at the health food store: The options are amazing: low-fat, creamy Greek-style yogurt made from sheep’s or goat’s milk; kefir and other products with friendly bacteria that improve digestive health and boost immunity;
2. Poor diets ‘kill 3.5m children’: A third of child deaths globally are caused by poor nutrition, experts warn.
3. Strut your stuff: 7 moves for runway legs: Yes, even the hot models hate lunges but the truth is they work — and they work well!
4. Doctors alone can’t solve kids’ weight problems: Weight is a very complex issue, and overzealous efforts to control it can lead to eating disorders, self-image problems, and ultimately, ineffective results.
5. After 30 Years, Glycemic Index Still Fights for Acceptance: The glycemic index tries to gauge how much your blood sugar is likely to rise after eating a particular food. The higher GI score of a food, the more it raises blood sugar
6. Mediterranean diet wards off asthma: Children of women who eat a Mediterranean diet rich in fruits and vegetables while pregnant are far less likely to develop asthma or allergies later in life
7. Crisps ‘not a treat’ for children: Children’s diets are now so poor that more than two-thirds of them do not think fast food is a treat
8. Indians Trade Health for Jobs: “After working, they party for the rest of the time . . . have bad diet, excessive smoking and drinking [...] We don’t want these young people to burn out.”
9. Family meals curb girls’ eating disorder risk: Sitting down for regular family meals may protect teen girls from developing eating disorders
10. Shaping up in ’08? Keep it simple, cheap: If you’ve resolved to make ’08 the year you finally get in shape, you don’t need overpriced gym memberships and overhyped fitness gadgets to reach your goal. Just get moving.
11. Third of adults ‘always dieting’: One in three adults in the UK is now on a permanent diet, a survey suggests.
12. Michael Pollan’s manifesto on eating well: “the genuinely heart-healthy whole foods in the produce section, lacking the financial and political clout of the packaged goods a few aisles over, are mute.”

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Wired Magazine is apparently not just for the technologically inclined any more. Its new issue features something made especially for health and fitness maniacs: Ground Zero of the Obesity Epidemic? The Center of Your Grocery Store informs us that the most healthful of foods in the grocery store can be found right along the outside wall (the periphery).

[Source: Wired]

Put in just a little more thought into this fact and it soon becomes clear why this is so. Think about it: Milk, fresh fruits and vegetables, cold cuts of fresh meat … there’s one all these natural foods have in common. They all need to be kept fresh by refrigeration. Not so for all those processed foods that line up the central aisles: cookies, chips, pastries, snacks … I am sure these could survive weeks without any problem! You already know natural foods are superior for their nutrition content than any processed food could claim to have and so it’s no wonder you always find the smartest shoppers on the periphery of grocery stores.

As for the aisles?

That’s where you’ll find foods with the highest “energy density,” or calories by weight, which makes those aisles ground zero of the obesity epidemic. The Ruffles in aisle 11 pack 10 times as many calories per gram as the apples in produce.[Wired]

But beware, as I recently pointed out, Healthful Food Is Indeed More Expensive and the article (well, paragraph, really) is quick to point that out:

The wholesome stuff isn’t cheap: You’ll pay nearly seven times as much per calorie for a Red Delicious as you will for those potato chips, but your body will thank you for it.

And here’s another interesting bit of trivia that’s somewhat related to this story: it’s a myth that grocery stores keep the milk at the back so that shoppers will have to walk through the entire store to get it and hence be tempted to buy more stuff along the way. The real reason, most of the time, is that it’s more convenient to keep the large refrigeration machinery outside the store at the back and this is why dairy, meats etc. are along the back wall.

Now go on, amaze your friends with this new found knowledge and remember: keep fresh, stay on the outside wall of grocery stores (most of the time atleast!)