Chocolate cheesecake - sugar = happy campers!

So I would like to harp on about sugar again! Or more specifically how the exclusion of sugar is beneficial to your body. If you would like to read my other rantings on sugar please go here, and here, oh and here.
Yesterday I took a chocolate cheesecake to work. Partly out of obligation and partly because if we were going to break out a cheesecake then I was going to make sure it was one that minimised insulin response. I used no sugar and only 1/2 cup of Rice Malt Syrup in the entire cake. The chocolate flavouring is 85% cocoa dark chocolate and cacao powder. The base is hazelnut meal and coconut butter. Is it healthy? Um, yeah not really! Is it diet friendly? Hell no. But is it the sort of treat you can have that doesn't send your blood sugar through the roof and leave you feeling sluggish, sick and craving yet more sweet stuff? Yep! And that was the point! Strangely, and not to blow my own trumpet, but the gang were super impressed and seemed confused by how much they liked something that wasn't sickly sweet. How a one piece could leave them satsisfied and feeling good.
Why so often when we decide to treat ourselves to we go for sugar, refined carbs and bad fats when we can go do just as good a job with the foods we know our bodies handle well?? Cheesecake anyone?

Target 100

It's really fashionable to be concerned about the enviornment these days. You have probably heard the term 'sustainable living' but for all its hype and fancy sustainability isn't all that complicated. Sustainability is our capacity to endure. Sustainable practices are those that combine environmental, social and ecomonic considerations to achieve lasting wellbeing for all of us.

So we may be concerned about the environment and ourselves but a sustainable solution is one that works, one that we can afford and one that promotes the health of you, me, our immediate envirnoment and the world.

Target 100 is an iniative by and for Australian farmers to adopt sustainable farming practices. The discussion that is happening now because of Target 100 is an interesting one. The bigger picture is obviosuly for farmers and supporting organisations to work together to formulate and promote sustainability but you can be involved. Sustainable solutions are not about costing you money or creating upheaval. They are about being thoughtful, considerate and community-minded.

Although the term was never used and the motivation was probably more financial, I grew up in a sustainable envirnoment - nothing was wasted, things were in their simplest form and we worked with the environment rather than against it. I'm grateful for that.

If you are interested head to the website here or do a bit of a search on Twitter using the #wastenot for sustainable ideas you might find interesting, economical and helpful.

So I like to Frappé....

frap·pé

noun

chilled; iced; frozen. verb

I like to frappé. I must say there is something delightfully splendid about taking a few ingredients, whizzing in blender with ice, pouring into a beautiful glass and enjoying on a hot summer's day. 

Ok so I will stop being Nigella and cut to the chase. It's hot! Summer has shown up and suddenly I want cold, sweet things and nothing else will do. The danger is obviously giving into this and becoming a Juice Boost, or worse, McDonald's smoothie/frappé addict! Because having control issues in regards to ingredients does not mix with being such an addict I need to find other avenues to indulge my yearning for sweet, cold things and so,  I like to  frappé.

I plan to bring you lovely concoctions as I create them but this one is my favourite and while I think my blender is quite over blending it,  I am NOT,  over drinking it.  Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 tbsps Cacao powder

1 egg

splash of coconut oil

1 cup of unsweetened almond milk

tsp Rice malt syrup

1/2 cup ice.

Method:

Blend! Blend! Blend!  It really helps the consistency if you have a good blender that can handle crushing ice easily.

This year I am going to master the headstand....

Happy New Year! Well we made it through 2012. The world didn't end. Anybody seen any Mayans and taunted them with, "I told ya so!?"  Yes 2012 is gone and so we ring in a New Year and with it comes the inevitable question of resolutions. I have never bought into the whole resolution concept but 2013 is going to change all that because I have one! Yep this is the year I am going to master the headstand.

I'm dubious. Mostly because my single motivation is just to be able to say I can which let's face is not a good reason. AND it probably raises serious doubts about my commitment to said resolution. Although I just told you and all the other thousands of people who visit these pages so there is the issue of humiliation if we are back here in a year watching the magnificent fireworks and I have to come clean and tell you all I can NOT perform a headstand. Wish me luck!

A headstand is considered to be king of the Yoga poses and if you are not a Yogi I highly recommend you seek the help of a qualified yoga instructor if you want to learn this difficult pose. If you aren't a novice go here for some yoga headstand tips.

What does 50kgs look like?

What does 60kgs look like?
What does 70kgs look like?

If you have ever been on a diet you will know that feeling of trying to get to a magic number on the scales. But that weight on the scale is often a poor indication of your heatlh and how great you are looking. The website  My Body Gallery allows you to punch in your measurements and see other bodies that weigh the same as yours.

Perspective is important. Get some



Juice Boost Protein Balls

Before you go adding Juice Boost's protein balls to your diet thinking they are the convenient answer to your clean eating diet...STOP!!
As with so many things that seem too good to be true the latest snack offering from Juice Boost promises so much but doesn't deliver at least not if you are trying to avoid sugar and eat cleanly.

Boost Choc Protein Balls – RRP $1.50
Ingredient list:
Almonds, coconut, sesame seed, Sunflower seed, Oats, Honey, Whey Protein Concentrate (75% protein), Milk Minerals (Calcium), Vitamin D3)Sugar, Butter, Milk Solids, Cocoa, Sugar, Vegetable Oil, Wheat Flour, Lecathin, Salt.
The Allergen statement contains:
Nuts, Gluten, Soy, Dairy, Added Milk Minerals (calcium).
NUTRITION INFORMATION
Serving Size: 36g
Avg Avg
Qty per Qty per
Serving 100 g
Energy 749kJ 2081kJ
Protein 5.63g 15.64g
Fat, total 13.66g 37.94g
- saturated 6.69g 18.58g
Carbohydrate 10.66g 29.6g - sugars 3.96g 11g
Sodium 56.59 mg 157.19 mg
Dietary Fibre 1.2g 3.1g
Vitamin A 0.06 mcg 0.17 mcg
Vitamin C 0.04 mg 0.11 mg
Calcium 23.70 mg 57.42 mg
Iron 0.36 mg 1 mg

If you want to be healthier, slimmer and hotter you need to get educated about food labels!

It would be great if food that was bad for us just wasn't sold. But let's deal with reality.

Not all products are created equal - there are many ways to manufacture products and there are many ingredients used to make up any one of the products on your supermarket shelf. But the good news is there are also some pretty strict rules about the information we must be provided with. If you understand this, where to find it, and how to interpret it, you have a pretty good shot of consuming food rich in nutrients and free of all the additives. Education! Education! Education!

Let’s go!


There is a government regulation that states that all foods sold in this country must state the ingredients used. Most ingredients list are pretty easy to find and are helpfully titled, ‘ingredients.’ The ingredients list must be in order of volume. So basically if gram for gram there is more flour it will appear first then in descending order the rest of ingredients will follow. Manufacturers aren’t silly, they have heard about you and all your dieting health-conscious friends and they know that being creative with this ingredients list might be the difference between you adding their product to your shopping trolley or not. So they got out their thesaurus and came up with alternative names for ingredients that might not send off alarm bells in your head.
 
Sugar can be found under the following list of names: fructose, lactose, glucose, xylitol, malt/malt extract, dextrose, sorbitol, corn starch, corn syrup surcrose, mannose, mannitol, modified carbohydrate, maltose, raw sugar, brown sugar, golden syrup, honey, white sugar and rice syrup.

Those zany kids writing up the ingredients lists like to be creative and it makes it tough for us less sugar-savvy dieters to know what we are consuming. But make no mistakes these are all sugars and a sugar by any other name will taste as sweet (and have the same negative impact on your poor body).

Here are some more…

 Fat
Beef fat, butter, coconut oil, cocoa butter, copha, diglycerides, dripping, hydrogenated vegetable oil, lard, milk solids, monglycerides, oven baked, palm oil, shortening, tallow

Salt
Celery salt, chicken salt, MSG, rock salt, sea salt, sodium, table salt, vegetable salt

The nutritional panel is also a must on packaging. Nutritional panels list energy per serving and usually per 100g or mls. When comparing one product to another compare the 100g panel. Serving size varies from product to product so you need to watch that.
A nutritional panel will provide information on energy in the form of calories or kilojoules, protein, fat, carbohydrates and sodium. Carbohydrates will be broken down further to indicate how much of the carbohydrates are derived from sugar.

Just like ingredients lists manufacturers will present the information in a way that positively presents their product as well as they can under the regulations.  Fair play, but if we know what we are looking for there is no fooling us.

For more on standards and guides to packaging go here.