Despite what many people will tell you, chocolate (white, milk OR dark) & red wine does NOT provide any heart health benefit. There is no doubt that both chocolate & red wine can be incorporated into a healthy eating plan and yes its true both of these items contain antioxidants but in a review of more than 100 studies, there was no cardiovascular benefit shown so if thats the reason you use to justify your consumption – think again as they will only be adding to your total daily calories and probably your wasitline!

A recent newspaper article reported that “food labels are wrong” because the calories listed do not account for the amount of energy used to chew and digest the food and are therefore overestimated. But does it really matter? Simply stating that a food has 20 less calories is hardly going to improve our obesity problem – it just gives people an excuse to eat even more! And anyway of the people that read labels, how many actually understand them?! The food label debate isn’t going away with some suggesting NZ should adopt a traffic light system but I can’t see food manufactures agreeing to that – who’s going to want to put red dots on their product!?!

Detox diets are pretty popular at this time of the year but beware – they are not good for you! They often encourage the elimination of total food groups and can lead to dehydration and altered electrolyte balance and as for the weight loss – well most of it is water, not fat loss which means it is easily regained once the detox in completed. Secondly, it’s a ‘diet’ and diet is just the word DIE with a cross at the end – diets are all about deprivation that can not often be sustained so rather than follow some fad for a couple of weeks, just de-junk and make a sustainable life-style change!

If you haven’t heard already, the AKld city council is planning on closing the Tepid Baths facility for up to 4 years from May next year. There seems to be a hidden council agenda which is behind this badly planned decision to close the Teps, potentially leaving it gathering dust..……

I thought that local governments were meant to promote physical activity! Don’t they know that it promotes health and wellness, not to mention that a lack of it increases the likelihood of weight gain, and I’m sure I don’t need to remind everyone that New Zealand is already the third fattest nation in the OECD!!! Clearly John Banks has rocks in his head because obesity costs the tax payer and ultimately his rate payers hundreds of thousands of dollars every year!

Just because it’s low GI doesn’t mean it is good for you. For example, chocolate is low GI but that doesn’t mean you should eat more if it! Don’t get sucked in by the marketing magic because the GI is only a number and you hardly ever just have sugar – it is normally added to other things, e.g. porridge, baking, milk in coffee, tea etc and all of those other ingredients have an impact on how fast your blood sugars rise. Sugar is sugar – brown, raw, white, low GI or not, it is still sucrose so still provides approx 16 empty calories in every teaspoon!