Category: Heart-smart eating

– posts here focus on what we put into our mouths

What overweight women may have in common with drug addicts

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 5 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

My daughter Larissa and I have sometimes marvelled at a very strange packaging concept: re-sealable bags of chocolate chips.   Are there actually people out there, we wondered, who open a bag of these chips, pour out only the 3/4 cup they need for their cookie recipe, and then put the re-sealed bag back into the cupboard?

The August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition will help to explain this odd phenomenon for us. Apparently, some women don’t scarf down the entire bag on the spot – just because it’s been opened! When researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo gave similarly sinful snacks to both overweight and healthy-weight women, the healthy-weight women wanted less of the treat over time, but the overweight women kept wanting more.

In an earlier study, the same research team found that ‘food reinforcement’ (the term used to describe our motivation to eat) decreased in healthy-weight women but increased in overweight women when both groups were asked to consume large amounts of snack foods like M&M candies, potato chips or cookies for days at a time. Women in the overweight group shared characteristics like obesity and diabetes – both serious heart disease risk factors. Continue reading “What overweight women may have in common with drug addicts” →

My favourite recipe for heart-healthy Sushi Pizza

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

When my daughter Larissa flew home to ‘babysit’ me after my heart attack, I could tell that she meant business.  No mother of hers was going to put her through this kind of stressful drama ever again, and the kitchen was where she decided to start in reorganizing my entire life.  The first thing the darling child did was to go through the big pile of printed material about heart-healthy lifestyles that they send you home with from the cardiac ward.  She underlined, she took notes – and then she went to work. keep reading

Improve your heart health – on a budget

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 1 Comment

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Is it possible for us to follow a heart-smart lifestyle and still stay within a tight budget? What if we can’t afford to join a pricey gym? And can those of us counting pennies still afford to purchase those heart-healthy but expensive foods every day? Here are tips from two savvy experts who say YES to all of the above:

According to Canadian dietician Cara Rosenbloom:

“It just takes a little bit of extra planning and a little bit of extra thought to eat healthy while still saving money.”

Rosenbloom’s advice includes: click to continue reading

Food trends: why we eat the way we do

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 5 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

Some anthropologists believe that the evolutionary pressure that led to bi-pedalism (walking on two legs) was just our hairy ancestors’ adaptation to a changing world that required more far-reaching travel in search of food.

We’ve been obsessed with searching for food ever since those hairy ancestors took that first upright walk and dug up some lovely potato-like tubers for dinner.

The trouble is that food trends in the Western world have strayed so far from what our bodies actually need that our heart health is now seriously compromised by what we put into our mouths every day. read more about how food trends have changed