Captain Ahab’s BodyBlog

Patti-Jean Naylor, assistant professor of exercise science and physical health education at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada is at this moment crunching the data taken from 500 surveys of children in Grades 4 to 6, before and after their participation in an education program but sweetened drinks.
The education program called Sip Smart! B.C., was an initiative of the government-funded B.C. Healthy Living Alliance, which aims to support healthy eating and exercise.
What the group says is that reducing the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages is quite possibly the single best way to combat the current epidemic of obesity in B.C., where one in 4 kids is classified as overweight or even worse, obese.
The children were selected at random throughout B.C. and were confidentially weighed and their heights recorded to determine their body mass both before and after taking the Sip Smart! B.C. program. They also filled out extensive questionnaires about healthy eating.
“The study is not just about obesity,” says Naylor, adding the program also examines children’s attitudes about their food choices. “What we want to see is that the children have reduced their sugar sweetened beverage consumption.”
Sip Smart! B.C. was first offered last school year at 220 schools and presented to 6000 students. It offered educators two sets of five 40-minute sessions delivered at two grade levels. Beginning next month information kits will be available for teachers to include in their regular health curriculum for the coming school year.
The program provides children with easy to understand facts about the food and drinks they consume - for example, a standard small can of soda contains 10 cubes worth of sugar, (1 cube is equivalent to 1 teaspoon) while a medium slushy has the equivalent of 24 sugar cubes.
Just imagine giving your child 24 teaspoons full of sugar - I don’t think most parents would do that, but then they willingly (but possibly unknowingly) let them drink a slushy or slurpie or whatever name those drinks go by at the local corner store.
Again, would you let your child sit and eat 10 teaspoons full of sugar - probably not - but when you let them have a can of soda that is what they are putting into their body.

Dr. Tom Warshawski, a local pediatrician and chairman of the non-profit Childhood Obesity Foundation said that “children should not have soft drinks at all.”
“In some ways,” Warshawski says, “soft drinks are more insidious than junk food such as potato chips because they don’t make you feel full and you end up consuming more.”
Studies show that 50% of Canadian adolescents drink soft drinks on a daily basis but there are no current studies showing how often or how many of the giant slushy’s are being consumed on a daily basis but hang around your local 7-11 and see the size of these containers that some of these kids are drinking and you might just end up like me, shaking your head and feeling like we are killing our kids slowly with sweetness.

I knew that almonds, walnuts and even pistachios were great “health’ foods, but I had no idea just how great until just recently.
I have written about the benefits of eating a handful of almonds and/or walnuts as a between meal snack, which included helping you get your daily requirement of certain vitamins and minerals as well as being great sources of helpful oils and even protein, but now I find out that they can actually help fight off cancer.
Wow!
As a nut lover this is great news, it’s similar to an ice cream lover finding out that eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s can help you to lose weight. (My wife says,” if only.”)
It seems that almonds, walnuts and even pistachios contain a potent substance named inositol pentakisphosphate, which is easier to digest than to say, but this substance works like crazy to help protect you from certain forms of cancer.
Another great benefit from these three variations of the nut family is that a small handful about half an hour before dinner can help keep your appetite in check and help you not to eat too much. Talk about a triple threat.
So when you are figuring out your daily diet make sure to include a handful (not too many as they are a high calorie food) I would say about 15 to 18 of the little devils as a must have.
For those alergic to nuts there are ways for you to get similar benefits.
The same compound found in nuts is also found in wheat bran and most legumes. Whole grains such as quinoa (pronounced “keen-wa”) kasha, millet, chia and spelt go a long way towards reducing the risk of cancer of the small intestine. With our high meat diets here in North America adding some whole grains like these is definitely a must.
So now you know that there are some actual benefits to being just a little bit nutty.