Product Recommendations

CLICK HERE to read my complete review of Susan Albers’ book, 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food, which is posted at my StoppingNation blog.  I really like this book because it’s practical, doable and readable.  Albers has an upbeat, can-do message and she doesn’t fall into the trap of telling us one sad (as

LOW SUGAR: Atkins Endulge is just 17 grams of carbohydrates and 1 gram of sugar. Most snack bars are at least 25 grams of carbohydrates, even the ones that claim to be high protein. Luna, for example, (a popular health food brand for women) is 26 carbs and 11 grams of sugar.

Man made trans fats are harmful because they’re designed to make a product unnaturally hard. The reason peanut butter made with hydrogenated oil doesn’t separate is because it has this hardening agent. Imagine what happens to the cells in your arteries and in your body when they’re constantly exposed to a hardening agent. Yup, they get hard. Just like the peanut butter. And when your cells get hard they become less permeable, and they can’t do their work. Sure, it’s okay to eat a product made with hydrogenated oil once in a while, but danger creeps in when you eat it every single day or frequently, like many kids do with peanut butter for lunch day in and day out.

Many MDs, nutritionists and natural health food experts whole-heartedly recommend agave syrup. It’s well-intended advice, but there is absolutely no advantage or health-based reason to add a high calorie, fiberless, concentrated and processed fructose syrup into your body. Please consider just saying no to agave syrup. It’s the same as saying no to HFCS. By the way, there’s an unsubstantiated rumor floating around on the internet that some manufacturers add high fructose corn syrup to their agave products to make it taste better. Who knows?

Listen up all you sugar-free, low-carb and low-fat people in the world.  You don’t have to do without ketchup any more, and that’s a big woohoo.  The new Heinz Reduced Sugar Ketchup is really an excellent product, and I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up.  So get thee to your pantry and throw out all

The non-stick surface really and truly doesn’t stick, which is great because it enables you to cook with less fat. The pans cook evenly and beautifully, and it only takes about 30 seconds to thoroughly wash them.

Personally, I would not eat this product simply because of the high sugar content, and it isn’t included in The Sugar-Free Miracle Diet. For those who haven’t jumped on the sugar-free bandwagon yet, Nutella should be a once-in-a-while choice and not a daily one — especially for kids. If you’re a die-hard Nutella fan, at least consider using less of it.

Through the magic of legislation, the food manufacturers can claim the food is trans fat free, but when you look at the ingredients list you’ll see words like “partially hydrognated” and “hydrogenated” on both of them. This is the big clue that the product has trans fats. All scientists everywhere universally agree that man-made trans fats are a real killer in the diet. No exceptions. The hydrogenation process hardens the oils into a spread, and these hard molecules are unrecognized and harmful to your body. It wouldn’t be so bad if you ate these foods once in a while, but spreads are something you eat day in and day out. I read a quote once that jokingly referred to spreads as “one molecule away from plastic.”

Zilch Margarita Mix is a decent sugar-free solution. Zilch means no caloric sweeteners, no carbohydrates, and no calories are in the product. The sweetening agent is a little aspartame, which is not my favorite artificial sweetener, but if you’re not overdoing it…

According to a Stanford University School of Medicine study, people who wear a pedometer walk 2,491 steps more than people who don’t. That’s an extra mile a day. Get going!