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Does Fat Free Really Mean Free Of Fat?
By: Jerry Byler
Does fat-free really mean free of fat?
Do you know what the words really mean on food labels?
In this article, you’ll discover everything you need to know about how to interpret food labels and make the right food choices.
So what does “fat-free” really mean?
To be labeled “fat-free”, the food must contain less than ½ gram of fat per serving.
To be labeled “Low Fat”, the food must contain 3 grams or less of fat per serving.
To be labeled “Reduced Fat”, the food must be at least 25 percent lower in fat than a comparable food.
To be labeled “Light”, the food must contain 1/3 fewer calories, OR ½ the fat OR 2/3 the sodium of a comparable food (but not necessarily all three!).
Some foods (especially meat and dairy products) appear to have less fat than they really do. For example, if a milk or cheese label reads 2% milk or 2% cheese, this means that 2 percent of the product volume (NOT the calories) comes from milk fat.
You can use a little math to discover how much fat these products actually contain.
First, find the total calories per serving and the fat calories per serving. For example if the total calories per serving are 80 and the fat calories per serving are 50, divide the fat calories per serving by the total calories per serving.
Then, multiply that number by 100 and you’ll have the total percent of fat calories in the food. In this example, 50 fat calories divided by 80 total calories equals .625 times 100 equals 62½%. In this example, nearly 63 percent of the total calories of this food are from fat!
Also, using the math above, you can figure out how much fat that 2 percent milk, 2 percent cheese, 2 percent cottage cheese and lean ground beef contain. You’ll probably discover these foods are mush “fatter” than you realized!
Trans fats should be avoided as much as possible as they can increase your risk of heart disease. Trans fats are also known as hydrogenated fats and are added to many processed foods including most baked foods (crackers, cookies, breads, etc.).
If the food contains trans fats, the ingredient label will usually read: contains hydrogenated oil OR partially hydrogenated oil OR vegetable shortening OR margarine. Avoid these foods like the plague!
By knowing how to read food labels and understanding the word “fat”, you can purchase diet foods more wisely and lose weight successfully.
This article was posted on March 18, 2005
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How to Benefit from the Mind-Body Connection
(excerpt)
You are about to gain insight into the
mind-body connection. The number of
people who truly understand these principles on our
planet are relatively few.
There is an undeniable connection between our minds and
bodies, you can learn
to use this fact to your benefit.
Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of "Love, Medicine and
Miracles" was once a
distraught cancer surgeon until he
began to understand the greater principles
of the mind-
body connection. He felt dragged down by the artificial
barriers
that existed between patient and doctor, and the
helplessness he often felt as
a result of his inability
to effectively serve those patients. Eventually, those
barriers
were disintegrated by Dr. Siegel's recognition
and growing understanding of the
mind-body connection and
how it could serve his patients and himself.
Dr. Siegel, or Bernie as he began to have his patients
refer to him, had some
startling realizations as a cancer surgeon. He found that
there were actually
quite a few people in the world that successfully beat
the statistics on cancer
survival. He began to recognize that a patient's ability
to defeat something as
serious as cancer had to do with the patient's mind and
attitude about their
disease.
If you would like to see the rest of
this article, please go here:
http://www.tobeinformed.com/repository/mind-body.html
copyright 2004 - David Snape
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