Rolls, Sponge Cakes, and Biscuits: The Dietary Pros and Cons of Snack Foods

Diet Foods RSS

Diet Foods, Balanced Diet, Instant Recipes

Balanced Diet

Instant Pancake Mix

Diet Foods Home

Why Diet Foods Are A Joke

Tea Tree Oil and a Whole Foods Diet A Complete Cure for Chronic Disease

Weight Loss Diets with Negative Calorie Foods

Atkins Diet Foods A Guide To Low Carb Food Products

How To Diet For Lean Muscle Gains Focus On Vegetables And High Protein Foods

5 Power Foods Of The Mediterranean Diet

Mediterranean Diet Foods

Low Carb Foods what fits in your Low Carb Diet

The Most Nutritious and Tasty Diet Foods

Low Carb Foods Dieting Boon or Rip off

Lawsuits on Foods and Diets

Dieting 101 Choosing the Right Diet Foods

The No White Foods Diet

How To Integrate Convenience Foods Into Your Diet

Good Fat Diet or How to Choose the Best Foods for Your Family

Diet Foods to Avoid When On Any Diet

Pizza French Fries Beer and Other Diet Foods

High Fiber Food Chart Top Foods High in Dietary Fiber

Neuro Toxic Diet Foods The Aspartame Game

High Protein Diet amp Foods For Muscle Building

Commercial snack foods. The bane of dieting, right? Yet so inviting. But we are told they are bad for tryglicerides, those are the real problem, aren't they?. Triglycerides are composed of a molecule of glycerol with three fatty acids attached. (Incidentally, 'Three Fatty Acids' would be a cool name for a rap group).

Yet you can look at a website that produces not snack food, but roll machinery and other bakery equipment, for example, and still get your salivary glands going, you can almost smell the warm sponge cake as it rolls out from the machine in a continuous carpet of pure trygliceride wonder.

So are these molecules really to be considered as the Worst Possible Thing to Put in You? What do triglicerides do anyway?

Triglycerides provide the body with calories to burn for energy (about 60% of our energy needs at rest), and body fat acts as a shock absorber and as an insulator. So, basically, when your trygliceride levels are too high, your body stacks them up as extra padding. Nothing strange, really, that's what the human body's been doing ever since we were only covered by hair and had to prepare for a long winter. We might have evolved technologically, but our metabolisms still work much the same way they 20,000 years ago.

That doesn't mean all our ancestors were obese blimps that rivalled with the mammoths. No way. Another factor whose function was precisely that of counterbalancing the accumulation of tryglicerides was in effect. This important factor has recently disappeared from our modern culture, and that is the main cause of the success and prolification of fat.

This factor was called Muscular Movement.

Think of how little we move with respect to, say, three hundred years ago. Not everybody had a horse back then and walking was the most widespread means of transportation. By walking I mean walking for miles, not just down the block for a bagel.

What about the diets back then? Did they have those horrible sounding chemicals we read as surrogates in 'sugar free' and 'fat-free' products? My guess is that if someone mentioned “Aspartame” back then he would be immediately tried for witchcraft. Incidentally, if you check out recent reviews on artificial sweeteners, you might change your opinion on what the Worst Possible Thing to Put in You is.

No, in those good old days dairy products, teeming with fatty molecules, were all the rage, but people moved their muscles, and by doing so they would burn the excess energy.

So, let's not demonize snack foods, as long as they're made with healthy ingredients, they're perfectly all right, just as long as you take note of the extra energy you're storing and use it, instead of padding yourselves for the winter. A twenty minute jog will do miracles. Any longer and you will actually start burning away some of the older padding. Walk to work, use the stairs and move your muscles, reward yourselves with a snack, It's actually good for your body to go through the energy burning process, as long as your snacking and your excercise balance each other.

Ian Lahey has the Italian equivalent of an MA in Language and Literature, he is currently living in Italy where he runs a small English language school and a second business for his other great love: computers and multimedia. He can be reached at ian@activeonline.it

Dessert Recipes

Finger Millet Health Drinks

Why Diet Foods Are A Joke
Let me tell you something REALLY funny… Really, though, this is a real knee-slapper… It’s about that person who goes out to eat and orders a: -big, juicy cheeseburger -french fries -a side order of mozzarella sticks -with a nice piece of cheesecake for dessert All washed down with their favorite Hollywood diet drink. Wait a minute…. I’m not done laughing. Hold on. Just a little longer. Ok, ok, I’m fine now. I will never understand why people think or feel that ordering a diet drink...Read more

Mediterranean Diet Foods
The remarkable health of the people from the Mediterranean region has always been a wonder to researchers. The people in the Mediterranean region are known to have a very active life style. Of course physical activities is essential for good health, but good health is based on food habits as well. In other words, the Mediterranean diet is a healthy diet rich in plant food; especially grains, cereals, vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes and olives. All ensure good health with less chance to...Read more

High Protein Diet & Foods For Muscle Building
High protein diets have always been popular with athletes. Their popularity increased tenfold during the past 5 years with the introduction of the low carb type diets to the public that include high protein foods. Regular people who do not exercise can eat moderately high protein foods. On the other hand athletes and people on muscle building diets must eat at least 1gram per lb of bodyweight in order to build muscle. A high protein diet is the staple of bodybuilders. Bodybuilding athletes...Read more

Diet - Foods to Avoid When On Any Diet!
Today, there are several diets publicized in books and on the internet, it is difficult to choose. Here we are not going to look at foods to eat but foods to avoid on any diet. A common sense way to understand which diet is best is to see which one fits your own personal choices for life-style and natural (we stress the word, “natural” not synthetic) tastes. We all have our likes and dislikes…many of which from a child passes with us all our lives. Today’s commercial world, and...Read more

Cancer Diet - Include Natural Foods
In any cancer diet, there are many factors to be considered. One is that it is ideal that we get our nutrients from our foods, and that those foods are in as near their natural state as possible. By that I mean foods that have minimum processing. The reason for this is that no matter how clever our scientists are there is still much they have not discovered about the way vitamins and the body interact. Every day we hear they have found either a new nutrient or another factor in how...Read more

Learn Home Improvement through Audio Video Tips