Ever wondered which fruit juices are the healthiest?
No, it hasn’t exactly kept us awake at night either. But, conveniently, researchers at UCLA have given it some thought, and have come up with the eight best ones to get next time you are in a supermarket or cafe.
Most of us usually go for apple or orange, but have you ever considered pomegranate? Again, neither did we.
According to today’s Daily Mail, the natural sugar in fruit is playing havoc with the nation’s waistlines.
Fructose, the natural sugar found in fruit, has been found to make people fatter around the tummy than glucose. According to the Mail, this ‘intra-abdominal fat’ is the most harmful type and is linked to serious problems such as diabetes and heart disease.
Smoothies. Nobody really cared a few years ago, did they?
People were happy to eat actual pieces of fruit, and not whizz them up in a lazy way, or part with an extortionate amount of cash for an exotically-named blend from one of these new juice bars.
Anyway, it seems that the only people who aren’t jumping on the smoothie bandwagon are dentists. Which is surprising, as it could lead many lucrative fillings for them in the future.
Healthy eating can come from the strangest of sources.
Sure, we all know if you eat plenty of fruit and vegetables and cut down on sugary snacks you are on the right track.
But there are foods we just don’t associate with healthy eating. Or, at least, we just didn’t even think about them in the first place.
A study by the University of Arizona and a medical school in Iran has found that asthma sufferers can lessen the effects of their ailment by eating passionfruit.
Asthma currently affects 400 million people worldwide, and asthma attacks can leave people short of breath; sometimes they can even be fatal. The problem is on the increase due to global warming and more traffic on the roads.
The humble passion fruit, which hails from South America and was once seen as an exotic fruit, is now available worldwide.
It might seem glaringly obvious, but the powers that be have gone and announced it anyway. Prohibiting snacks in schools could help to curb unhealthy eating habits within the nation’s kids.
A study at Cardiff University found that this was the easiest method to get kids onto healthier diets. It also discovered that peer pressure is fundamentally important in the way that youngsters choose to eat.
In the year-long scheme, children aged 9-11 from 43 primary schools in deprived areas across South Wales and South West England were analysed.
Italians are losing the taste for pasta as the price of the popular carbohydrate continues to rise.
To make matters worse, other Italian favourites such as bread, fruit and veg are seeing their prices shoot through the roof. It gets worse, though. The Italians, known for their love of quaffing sumptuous wines, seem to be shying away from the vino. Sales of red wine in the country have fallen by 5%.
It may look like the humblest of ingredients that make up your salad bowl – but the tomato is a genuine superhero.
I mean, it even has its very own red cape. Disease and illnesses beware – the red peril is in town.
Not convinced? Well, leading pharmacist is so sure that he has compiled a book highlighting of decades of research into the health-giving properties of the humble fruit. The Red Bodyguard goes at lengths to stress the importance of the humble tomato to our daily diets.
Here’s another addition to the mass of superfood that seems to turn up in our supermarkets every year - red bananas.
These strange fruits are generally smaller than normal bananas, and have a slight raspberry flavour, which actually sounds quite nice. The fruits are imported from Costa Rica and have a big following in the USA. They are also sometimes referred to as Jamaican bananas.
Whether you’re currently trying for a baby, or planning to start soon, it’s a great idea to get your diet in tip-top baby-making shape.
So ditch the junk, the booze and the fags and get munching our top five fertility-boosting foods.
Follow DietPixie’s top five tips and make small, healthy changes that could make a massive improvement to your levels of fertility.
Having fat friends could be making you fat.
Or at least that’s according to a recent UK study, which states humans are subconsciously influenced by the weight of those around them.
Researchers at the University of Warwick into European lifestyles say people tend to gauge how fat they are by comparing themselves to their peers.
So, if most of your mates are fat, your idea of what is overweight is different to those whose mates are all skinny.
Professor Andrew Oswald, who analysed data from 27,000 European adults across 29 countries, said: “Human beings compare themselves among their localised peer group even if they are not conscious of it.”
This, of course, is instead of utilising the usual fail-safes when judging weight, such as scales, how much their bits wobble and what they see when they look in the mirror.
So how does this make you fat? Well, once your ideas of what a fat person actually look like, you start to tell yourself that being 16st and only 5ft 1 is normal.
After all, among your fat friends, you are the one they all call ‘anorexic’ and ‘skinny’.
This, of course, is forgetting one thing: the rest of the world’s population. Yep, if you were to believe this research you would think people blindly stumble around their lives paying little attention to the people in work, people in shops, people in the street. You get the idea.
Not to mention the nasty media. So is Prof Oswald saying we have the intelligence of your average garden snail? Well, maybe.
According to his research people of supposedly higher intelligence - in other words, people with more qualifications (not the most accurate barometer admittedly) – are more likely to think they are overweight than those of the same weight with less qualifications. That is, of course, because they read more books.
So what is the point of this research? Are they asking us to ditch our chubby mates and get rid of the elephant in the room?
Well, maybe not. Rather we can’t stop copying our friends, so if we all lost weight, so would they.
And if we didn’t? Well, Prof Oswald added: “[If fatness levels increase and] we all start copying each other we will end up with quite serious health problems.
“Rising obesity needs to be thought of as a sociological phenomenon, not a physiological one.”
Having fat friends could be making you fat.
Or at least that’s according to a recent UK study, which states humans are subconsciously influenced by the weight of those around them.
Researchers at the University of Warwick into European lifestyles say people tend to gauge how fat they are by comparing themselves to their peers.
So, if most of your mates are fat, your idea of what is overweight is different to those whose mates are all skinny.
Professor Andrew Oswald, who analysed data from 27,000 European adults across 29 countries, said: “Human beings compare themselves among their localised peer group even if they are not conscious of it.”
This, of course, is instead of utilising the usual fail-safes when judging weight, such as scales, how much their bits wobble and what they see when they look in the mirror.
So how does this make you fat? Well, once your ideas of what a fat person actually look like, you start to tell yourself that being 16st and only 5ft 1 is normal.
After all, among your fat friends, you are the one they all call ‘anorexic’ and ‘skinny’.
This, of course, is forgetting one thing: the rest of the world’s population. Yep, if you were to believe this research you would think people blindly stumble around their lives paying little attention to the people in work, people in shops, people in the street. You get the idea.
Not to mention the nasty media. So is Prof Oswald saying we have the intelligence of your average garden snail? Well, maybe.
According to his research people of supposedly higher intelligence - in other words, people with more qualifications (not the most accurate barometer admittedly) – are more likely to think they are overweight than those of the same weight with less qualifications. That is, of course, because they read more books.
So what is the point of this research? Are they asking us to ditch our chubby mates and get rid of the elephant in the room?
Well, maybe not. Rather we can’t stop copying our friends, so if we all lost weight, so would they.
And if we didn’t? Well, Prof Oswald added: “[If fatness levels increase and] we all start copying each other we will end up with quite serious health problems.
“Rising obesity needs to be thought of as a sociological phenomenon, not a physiological one.”
Having fat friends could be making you fat.
Or at least that’s according to a recent UK study, which states humans are subconsciously influenced by the weight of those around them.
Researchers at the University of Warwick into European lifestyles say people tend to gauge how fat they are by comparing themselves to their peers.
So, if most of your mates are fat, your idea of what is overweight is different to those whose mates are all skinny.
Professor Andrew Oswald, who analysed data from 27,000 European adults across 29 countries, said: “Human beings compare themselves among their localised peer group even if they are not conscious of it.”
This, of course, is instead of utilising the usual fail-safes when judging weight, such as scales, how much their bits wobble and what they see when they look in the mirror.
So how does this make you fat? Well, once your ideas of what a fat person actually look like, you start to tell yourself that being 16st and only 5ft 1 is normal.
After all, among your fat friends, you are the one they all call ‘anorexic’ and ‘skinny’.
This, of course, is forgetting one thing: the rest of the world’s population. Yep, if you were to believe this research you would think people blindly stumble around their lives paying little attention to the people in work, people in shops, people in the street. You get the idea.
Not to mention the nasty media. So is Prof Oswald saying we have the intelligence of your average garden snail? Well, maybe.
According to his research people of supposedly higher intelligence - in other words, people with more qualifications (not the most accurate barometer admittedly) – are more likely to think they are overweight than those of the same weight with less qualifications. That is, of course, because they read more books.
So what is the point of this research? Are they asking us to ditch our chubby mates and get rid of the elephant in the room?
Well, maybe not. Rather we can’t stop copying our friends, so if we all lost weight, so would they.
And if we didn’t? Well, Prof Oswald added: “[If fatness levels increase and] we all start copying each other we will end up with quite serious health problems.
“Rising obesity needs to be thought of as a sociological phenomenon, not a physiological one.”
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Send word to dietpixie@googlemail.com and tell us about yourself.
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