Eating For Health

Recently the walnut industry has been advertising walnuts a lot on TV.    Eat walnuts for heart health, put walnuts on your salad.   Are walnuts good for your health?   Dr. Oz wrote a column with “walnuts: the superfood” and a posted blog post, The Wonderful Walnut .   So why does Dr. Oz and many nutritionists think walnuts are a superfood? Omega-3 fats – these fats are the “good” fats, the fat that is good for our hearts.   Walnuts are full of omega-3’s.   Studies have shown that eating walnuts actually improves heart health.   How?   By lowering the bad cholesterol, LDL and even helping to lower blood pressure.   Omega-3’s are also good for reducing inflammation.   Diabetes – eating walnuts helps lower blood sugar and reduces your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.   ( Nuts Good for Some with Diabetes) .   Eating walnuts 2-3 times a week is helpful in lowering Type 2 diabetes risk.   Vitamin E, manganese, copper – all provided by walnuts What amount of walnuts are go

Recently a relative stated their Fitbit didn’t seem to accurately reflect how many calories they burned up during exercise.   Many calculators I have used do seem to overstate the calories burned in an activity.   Calculators that are simple relying on weight and duration may not be as accurate as calculators that require more input like gender, height and that provide a much broader array of activities.   Some activity calculators are built into apps like Lose It! and others are online stand-alone exercise calculators.   If you want to know how many calories you are burning at the gym, doing routine chores or exercising outdoors here are some calculators to try: Health Status – Calories Burned Calculator – This provides an extensive listing of exercise and common daily activities.   You enter your age, gender, height, weight, and number of minutes for the chosen activity and it estimates calories burned.   As the calculator notes, it takes 3500 calories to burn up one pound