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Cooking Light Magazine Review | Magazine & Cookbook Reviews

Looking To Cook Lighter, But Don’t Know Where To Start or Even How To Do It? Cooking Light Magazine Could Be Just The Ticket.

Magazine: Cooking Light
Publisher: Southern Progress Corporation/Time
Price: $4.99 (Newstand)/$18 yearly subscription
Publication Schedule: Monthly (11 issues)

Ratings (1-4 Scale: 1= poor, 2= fair, 3= good, 4= excellent)

Recipe Originality: 4
Directions/Ease of Prep: 4
Overall Content: 3
Design & Visual Appeal: 4
Price/Value: 4
Overall Rating: 3.8

Cooking Light Pros:

• Nearly 100 healthy recipes each month
• Photos accompanying nearly every recipe
• Full-nutritional labeling for each recipe
• Easy recipe index lets you quickly find meals that interest you or fit your schedule
• Good selection of meatless and meat-based recipes
• Tested recipes with clear directions
• Regular tips, tricks and tutorials that can help you become a better cook
• Excellent website that supports the magazine
• Good value from a price perspective
• Good supporting editorial content on nutrition and health news

Cooking Light Cons:

• One-third of the article content is not directly related to cooking (travel, lifestyle, wellness, etc.)
• Exercise advice and routines are kind of fluffy

Cooking Light Magazine Review

Eating healthy and cooking light doesn’t have to mean bland.

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Taking Protein Before Bed? When & What Kind of Protein? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

When is the best time to take protein before bed? And what kind of protein should you take before you sleep?

Dear Fitness Nerd,

How soon before bed should I drink protein? Right before, or a specific number of minutes before before I actually go to sleep? Thanks! — Bob

The issue here is less about the timing of when to take protein before bed, as it is what kind of protein to take before you go to sleep.

You should try to consume your last serving of protein as close to your bedtime as is comfortable for you. Whether that’s a protein shake before bed, or a whole food souce of protein before sleep is up to you.

Some people experience no problems eating and then immediately going to sleep, while other people find sleeping on a “full stomach” uncomfortable. If you find that taking a protein-heavy snack right before bed interferes with falling asleep, then give yourself at least 30-40 minutes between the snack and bedtime.

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Negative Calorie Foods: Fact or Fiction? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

Are Negative Calorie Foods for Real or Just A Bunch of Diet Hot Air? The Fitness Nerd Separates Fact from the Fiction Around Negative Calorie Diets.

Dear Fitness Nerd,

What’s your opinion on negative calorie foods? I’ve read that certain foods like celery require more energy to digest than they provide in calories. Is this true? And if it is, do you have a list of negative calorie foods? Thanks! (Aimee B — Dallas, TX)

Negative calorie foods are one of those dieting concepts that sound so good that you want to believe it’s true.

Just the term “negative calorie foods” conjures up images of eating all you want, and still losing weight. It’s a very powerful promise — and one that fad diet and weight-loss pill marketers rely on on every day to sell you their latest pill, potion or ”weight-loss-secret-revealed” eBook.

Take a look under the hood though, and you’ll find that the concept of negative calorie foods has more in common with a good urban legend than with solid nutrition advice. And like an urban legend, negative calorie foods do have a grain of truth at their center, but that’s about it.

What Is A Negative Calorie?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of negative calories and negative calorie foods, here’s the short version:

The theory is that a negative calorie food is any food that requires more energy to digest than the energy (calories) actually contained in the food. The idea here is that by eating these foods, you can burn more calories than you consume and lose weight more rapidly and efficiently. 

Origins of the Negative Calorie

The concept of negative calorie foods has been around for almost a decade, and has been popularized via two main sources: Internet discussion boards and the 1999 book, Foods that Cause You to Lose Weight: the Negative Calorie Effect, by Neal D. Barnard, M.D. 

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SoLo Low-Glycemic Nutrition Bars | Energy and Protein Bar Reviews

The endorsements for SoLo Nutrition Bars from athletes are impressive, but how does this low-glycemic nutrition bar hold up in the taste and nutrition department? 

SoLo Bar Rating

Scale: 1-5 (1 Being Worst and 5 Being Best)

Flavor: 4
Texture: 3
Nutritional Profile: 4.5
Overall Rating: 3.8

Would You Eat It Again? Yes.

Price: $1.99

I’ve had box of SoLo Nutrition Bars sitting in my panty for a couple of months now.

My plan was to include them next round of head-to-head energy and protein bar reviews (which I still plan on doing), but then a week ago before my usual 5K run, I needed a quick pick-me-up.  A protein shake just wasn’t cutting it, so I decided to dig in early and try out one of the SoLo Bars.  Afterall, if they are good enough for Paul Tichelaar, member of the Canadian Olympic Triathalon Team, I figured they’d be fine for my measly little 3.1 mile run.

So I gave in, broke the seal on the box, and grabbed a Chocolate Charger.
.

Who Is SoLo Nutrition?

SoLo Nutrition Bars are manufactured and marketed by SoLo GI Nutrition in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  According to the company’s website, SoLo GI Nutrition is planning on developing a series of low-GI specialty performance foods and snacks, with SoLo Nutrition Bars being the first of these products.

SoLo Nutrition Bars: High Performance Nutrition?

SoLo’s unique claim to fame is that unlike many energy bars, the SoLo bars are formulated to reduce glycemic load on the body. Glycemic load is a measure of how a carbohydrate raises blood glucose (blood sugar) levels.

While this might seem like a marketing hook, there are actually some very solid, practical nutritional reasons why you might want to choose a nutrition and energy bar that minimizes blood glucose spikes. While blood glucose spikes can deliver a quick burst of power, rapid increases in blood sugar levels also have a tendency to cause energy crashes later on — exactly not the thing you want to happen during any type of endurance activity, like running, biking or even working out at the gym.

The manufacturers of SoLo Energy Bars claim that their particular low-glycemic nutrition bars are formulated to have minimal impact on blood sugar levels, providing more sustained energy to power your performance, exercise or endurance activity. They call this “Controlled Energy Response”, which is really just marketese for “slow-burning carbs.”

What you need to understand is that most energy and nutrition bars are extremely high in simple sugars, which make them suitable for post-workout nutrition when insulin sensitivity is increased and the body can more effectively utilize carbohydrates.

However, the high sugar content doesn’t make them as well suited as a pre-workout snack, when complex carbohydrates are the preferred source of sustained energy. And most energy bars are also too high in simple sugars to make them a smart choice for in-between meal snacking at the office. In fact, some “nutrition” bars are so high in sugar, that you’d be just as well off to grab a Snickers bar.

SoLo claims that their nutrition bars cause blood sugar to rise more slowly than the average energy bar, and those levels are sustained for longer periods of time.

According to SoLo’s literature, the first rise in blood sugar with a SoLo Bar occurs over a period of about 60 minutes, and then begins to trail off gradually over 180 minutes.  This is much less pronounced than the spike you see with high-sugar, high-glycemic energy bars, where the initial blood sugar spike takes place in a very short window — typically within 30-40 minutes of ingesting the bar, and then drops back to pre-consumption levels within 60-90 minutes.

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What Are MUFAs? | Ask the Fitness Nerd

What’s a MUFA? The Fitness Nerd explains what this funny acronym means and why MUFAs are suddenly the rage among dieters.

Dear Fitness Nerd:

What are MUFAs? I keep hearing people talk about them, but I still haven’t quite figured out what they are. I know they are a type of fat, but I thought fats were unhealthy and should be avoided. Are they a supplement of some type like CLA? - Kayla R, (West Hollywood, CA)

MUFAs are an acronym for a “monounsaturated fatty acids” — a class of healthy fats found in foods like nuts and seeds, avocados, olives and certain vegetable oils. MUFAs are not typically taken as a supplement (as Conjugated linoleic acid or CLA often is), since they are plentiful in foods. 

MUFAs have gotten a lot of attention recently for three reasons:

1. MUFAs may help you lose weight.

There is some evidence that people who regularly consume MUFAs have lower body fat levels and are more successful at dropping body fat and weight than people who are on low-fat, carbohydrate rich diets.

This research flies in the face of  the conventional-wisdom that drove the low-fat craze of the 80s and 90s, which advised people to reduce their fat consumption as much as possible in order to lose weight, lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of stroke, high-blood pressure and heart disease. The latest research actually suggests that diets which are higher in healthy fats like MUFAs may be more effective at weight-control than low-fat diets.

2. MUFAs may reduce the risk of disease.

A growing body of research shows that MUFAs may not only help people lose fat, but that they also have protective properties that may lower the risk of developing certain diseases, including Type II Diabetes, heart disease, stroke and possibly certain types of cancers. MUFAs are also part of The Portfolio Diet, which is an approach to eating that combines MUFAs with other cholesterol-lowering foods like soy, plant sterols and soluble fiber from things like oatmeal and may reduce blood cholesterol-levels as effectively as prescription statin drugs.

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Skim Milk | Healthy Food of the Day

Learn how adding skim milk to your diet can help you build muscle, strengthen bones and maybe even lose some body fat along the way.

“Milk - it does a body good” has a new meaning for people looking to add muscle, stave-off bone loss and reduce body fat.

A flurry of research — albeit, mostly funded by the dairy industry — over the past few years has suggested that including skim milk or fat-free milk into your diet can actually help you lose weight. But aside from the weight loss claims (which we’ll take a look at later), there are additional reasons that including skim milk in your diet can keep you fit, trim and healthy.

What is Skim Milk?

Skim milk is whole milk from dairy cows that has most or all of it’s fat removed. 

Traditionally, this was done by letting milk settle, and then “skimming” the fat off the top of the milk. What is left is the protein-rich, low-fat liquid below the layer of fat. In modern milk processing, the de-fatting process is done with centrifuges (basically the milk is spun around inside a big stainless steel tank and the fat is separated and drained off.)

Skim milk (also labeled as “fat-free milk” or “non-fat” milk) generally has less than 0.5 percent milk fat. Low-fat, semi-skimmed milk or “1% milk” has between 1 and 2 percent fat. For comparisons sake, whole cows milk has around 3.5 percent fat, or 7.9 grams of fat (4.6 grams of which are the “bad” saturated type of fat) in a 1 cup (16 oz) serving. In terms of calories, whole milk weighs in at 147 calories, in comparison to the 91 calories in skim milk.

Clearly choosing skim milk over whole or even 2% milk makes the most sense from a fat and calorie perspective.

But what about the difference in nutrition between skim milk and whole milk? Does the skimming process remove any nutrients?
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What’s the Best Tasting Protein Bar? | Protein Bar Reviews & Ratings

We Reviewed and Compared Four of the Leading High-Protein Energy Bars to See Which Ones Are Tops in Taste

Protein bars have gone mainstream. No longer found solely in the bottom of bodybuilders’ gym bags, protein bars are now turning up in airplane snack carts, in gas stations, vending machines, party-stores, and even people’s desk drawer at the office. Sales of protein and energy bars have exploded over the past ten years, from $200 million in sales in 1997 to over $1 billion in 2003.

But not all protein bars are created equal when it comes to nutrition and flavor. Despite having lots of protein, many protein and energy bars also come with a hefty serving of sugar, along with a list of arcane ingredients that only a PhD in food science could pronounce and decipher.

The Protein Bar Tasters Challenge 

So I decided to assemble a 13 person team of intrepid taste-testers to discover which of the protein bars were tops when it came to flavor.

For this round of taste testing, we focused on energy bars that had a minimum of 20 grams of protein. Each taster was given a sample of four top protein bar brands, along with a rating sheet for each. The testers were asked to rate the bar on 1-5 scale (with one being “inedible” and five being “yummy”) in two categories: flavor and texture. They were then asked to provide an overall rating, along with any tasting comments.

And then I asked them the ultimate question: “Would ever eat it again?”

Scores are based on an average rating for each category.

The Protein Bars Tested

The brands I chose to review for this round were:

• Met-RX Big 100 Bar (Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough) Meal Replacement Bar
• Clif Builders Cocoa Dipped Double Decker Crisp Bar (Peanut Butter)
• Think Thin Creamy Peanut Butter High Protein Bar
• Detour Carmel Nut Protein Energy Bar from Designer Whey

Who Were the Tasters?

I chose the tasters at random from across the Marketing Team at the office. The sample included a good mix of people who regularly ate energy bars and those who ate them infrequently or never. The sample also was balanced for gender and age. 

So without further ado, let’s take a look at what our tasters found.

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