A little knowledge

I'm traveling, just landed in Milwaukee. There was a Starbucks, and since I woke up at 4:10 am to get here, I wheeled in for a small back jolt wakefulness before heading to my parade of meetings.

Noshy, I really really wanted a muffin or something (my mouth wanted it, mainly). But there below the muffin label was the calorie count (480 calories!!). That's basically a 2-hours-on-the-treadmill flavored snack!

With that little bit of shock and awe-ful information, I opted for a banana.

Bottom line: If we give people solid, simple health information, they can be empowered to make better informed choices. Net calorie savings, about 400 calories!

Chocolate and "fat bloom" ... it's not what you think

When you hear these two things together -- "chocolate" and "fat bloom" -- you're thinking ... oh I see, I eat chocolate and then my fat blooms.

Actually, fat bloom is like sugar bloom in your chocolate. All it means is that either the fat or the sugar crystallizes together and forms something you can visually see.  

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Your chocolate SHOULD be shiny, and have a snap to it when you break it. 

However, if you have Bloom, it will have a whitish sheen or coating or spottiness to it. It's okay and it doesn't necessarily mean the chocolate has gone bad, although fat bloom is worst than sugar bloom. 

Sugar bloom is the crystallization of the sugar crystals and occurs when moisture hits your chocolate. Very common. Very normal. Fat Bloom happens when the chocolate hasn't been made well (tempered correctly by the manufacturer). 

How can you tell the difference? With a simple test (from the Amano chocolate website, great summary article here)

One way you can easily check to see if a piece of chocolate has undergone sugar bloom or fat bloom is to lick your finger and touch it to the chocolate. If the dusty appearance disappears, then it is sugar bloom. (The moisture on your finger dissolved the sugar crystals on the chocolate.) If the bloom remains, then it is fat bloom.

And, of course, if you don't want to work up your own personal "fat bloom", the bottom line (pun, totally intended) is to eat really good chocolate but eat it in control. 

For more information: Click here to visit Will Clower's website.

Newsflash: Egg White Protein May Help Lower Blood Pressure

Isn't it crazy that we have to "discover" that eggs are good for you? We've been eating eggs forever, and all healthy cultures eat eggs. In fact, the heart-healthiest people on planet earth eat eggs, to the tune of about 1 every single day. And it's not JUST the egg whites, they eat the yolks too. Healthy people.

Crazy right? Haven't those heart healthy people read our theories about how eggs -- and especially their yolks -- are actually harming their hearts? In stead of being so heart healthy all the time, they should hop on the newest trends and start eating Egg Beaters.

I actually like this article because it validates the observations we can all see are true. Egg whites are good for you. Just note, however, that just because egg whites are good for you doesn't mean the whole egg is not.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The Healthy Foods You Should Eat. Every. Day!

You know those little "champagne" mangoes? They're out right now!! 

Go find them. Eat them. You can eat them on a boat, you can eat them with a goat, you can eat them on a train, you can eat them in the rain!! 
If you want to add a wonderful food to your life, which will make you happy every. single. time. it happens, get these little mangoes and slice them up every chance you get.

Here's What You Do
Just take the skin off with a potato peeler. Then, you can cut the meat off with a knife, along the long edge of the seed (it's oblong, meaning that it's wide on one side and skinny on the other). After you've carved off the mango meat off the front and the back side of the seed, you have two choices:

1. trim the bit of meat that remains around the outside of the seed.
2. just chew on it ... for quality control, you know, to, um, make sure it's safe for everyone else, you know.

Use mango as a dessert, use it as an addition to your salad, or add it to avocado/lime/cumin to make the best salsa on the planet!!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

What I Have For Breakfast?

Peanut butter is like blood type O, it goes with everything. It's awesome for a weekday breakfast, along with a piece of fruit: banana, apple, or even a pear (orange is the exception to THAT little rule). 

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The nice thing about the peanut butter, too, is that it helps lower the glycemic index blabbitty blah of the fruit, so your insulin/blood sugar balance stays balanced!!

If I'm not hungry, though, I just have my coffee. Listen, adults shouldn't eat breakfast when they're not hungry, just because someone told them to. Listen to your body.

On the weekend when there's more time, it's egg and something else. Sometimes I'll slice up a tomato to go over the top of the egg, drizzle a dot or two of balsamic + EVOO, S&P. It's easy to do, cheap, and crazy good for you too. 
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
For more information: Click here to visit Will Clower's website.

Official Recommendation From Health Authorities? Take Pills For Life.

When that's all you've got, that's when you know you're lost. 

When your official recommendation (these are from Canada, eh?) defaults to pharmaceuticals over lifestyle changes that free you from those pills, you're committed to Treatment over Prevention. 

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CDA Guidelines (Link To Full Guidelines Here ): All patients with diabetes should start taking statins when they turn 40 and blood pressure drugs when they turn 55, even if they have no other risk factors at the time, according to new Canadian guidelines.

The guidelines also recommend that those over 30 who have had diabetes for at least 15 years also should start on statins, according to Alice Cheng, MD, of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, who is chair of the guideline committee.

Here is my version:
Pills are for sick people. If you are sick, take your meds. However, if you are taking pills,  your body is broken and you should direct your activities to "right the ship" with the goal of being pill-free as quickly as possible, for as long as possible. Here's the logic: if people never ever have to take a pill, then they are healthy. That is our goal. 

Toward this end, all patients with diabetes should be counseled by their physician to eat real food only. Whether at 30, or 40, or 55, patients should be counseled by the physician to eat in control, and control excess eating volume through their behavior. Patients should be counseled by their physician on best-practices to be more active, and control stress. 

The resultant weight loss, glucose control, and cholesterol stabilization should be monitored through subsequent visits. By all means, our official recommendation is to still take the free swag from the pharmaceutical reps, just don't prescribe the products unless the ongoing preventive remedies have failed, and there is no other choice.  

But that's just me. I believe Prevention is cheaper than Treatment. If we get people off meds, some company may lose market share, but patients will be healthier, our health care system will be cheaper. Win, win. 

For more information: Click here to visit Will Clower's website.

Chocolate Made With Fruit Juice Has Half The Fat Content Of Conventional Products

Why mess with my chocolate? Sure you CAN do it, but why?

The cocoa butter they are trying to eliminate helps control cravings by stimulating satiety hormones. That same fat turns out to be heart healthy! See this article from the Cleveland Clinic (http://bit.ly/EpneD)

Better Living Through Chemistry definitely doesn't apply in this case. Just have your solid dark chocolate, have it in control, and your heart (and mouth!!) will be happier for it :)
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Healthiest sources of caffeine ... corrected

This AOL infographic is interesting, but misleading. Of course, plain black coffee is wicked healthy for you, as is Green, Black, and Oolong tea. 

But soda? With its phosphoric acid that can contribute to brittle bones? They list this as "even better". Weird. I'm guessing that this should NOT be on any list that that has the word Healthy in it, unless it is immediately preceded by the word NOT.

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The energy drinks at the bottom are also not recommended, making me wonder just who put this list together. 

Finally, a note about the caffeine content in chocolate. This is a persistent confusion between caffeine itself and theobromine, which is a very similar alkaloid. The pharmacological effects of theobromine are about 100x weaker by comparison (see http://1.usa.gov/12NU0KT). 

For more information: Click here to visit Will Clower's website.

L-Carnitine, Nutrient In Red Meat, Linked With Heart Disease

Does red meat cause heart disease? Who knows? There are associations between high red meat consumption and heart disease, but there could be reasons for that correlation -- it's not so simple to proclaim or even implicate that "Red meat causes heart disease."

All this article does (http://huff.to/10LnQiP) is give a molecular pathway to explain how L-carnitine could, hypothetically, harden your arteries. Whether it's a dietary darth vader for your heart, in vivo, for a person eating a nice filet mignon once per month or even once per week as a part of a normal dietary mix of veg/fruit, is not explored at all. In fact, another weakness in this article is that they talk about high consumption of red meat, but don't say what "high consumption" even means.

The more worrisome part to me is that the mice given the same kind of supplements we sell in, quote, health food stores produced hardening of the arteries -- not some metabolic bi-product that could have a downstream effect if all the variables of all their theories turn out to be correct. Actual hardening of the arteries, to the tune of double, 2x, twice, 100% more actual arterial effects. ... "We saw that carnitine supplements doubled the rates of atherosclerosis in the mice"

I think that if we just ate food, and ate small, the impact of the carnitine on actual artery hardening might not be an issue. But again, that study hasn't been done.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost