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Are you among the 25% of adults who have no physical activity in their free time? Consider going for a walk! It's easy and there are so many ways to walk. If you live somewhere with year-round warm weather, take a walk outside. If it's cold outside, you still have lots of options. Some people like to go to the mall and walk indoors, window shopping as they go. Others like to go to a health club and walk on a treadmill. Some like to measure miles or steps by wearing a pedometer or doing laps on the track of a local high school.

You can even walk in the privacy of your own home with a walking DVD. My favorites are any of the walking DVDs by Leslie Sansone. You can walk for 1, 2, 3 or 4 miles with Leslie's DVDs. I've done mine so many times that I have the dialogue memorized, so I mute it and play praise music while I walk. As Leslie says, "Our bodies were made to move." So do something really good for your health - go for a walk!

Each year the American Cancer Society publishes a report on factors that affect cancer risk. Apparently the long-term favorable trends that contribute to declining cancer deaths in the U.S. have stalled. In other words, our habits as Americans are not continuing to improve on lifestyle changes that prevent cancer. Below are a few nutrition-related highlights of the 2008 report.

Weight:
* Obesity is at epidemic levels with about two-thirds of adults being overweight or obese.
* The number of adolescents ages 12 to 19 who are overweight has more than tripled in the last twenty years, increasing from 5% to 17%.

Nutrition & Physical activity:
* Only one in five high school students ate five or more servings of vegetables and fruits a day. For adults, it's worse - only about one in four.
* Almost one in four adults reported having no physical activity in their free time.
* Only about 36% of youth engaged in physical activity for 60 minutes more than five days a week.

According to the May 2008 issue of the Harvard Heart Letter, eating a decent breakfast may reduce your risk for stroke, heart attack and adult-onset diabetes. Apparently a healthy breakfast keeps your blood sugar more stable throughout the day, instead of having larger rises and falls. Keeping blood sugar and insulin release more steady may help decrease blood levels of triglycerides and LDL, also known as "bad cholesterol."

What's the best thing to eat for the morning meal? The Harvard Health Letter suggests fruits, whole grains and lean protein. Whole grain cereals like oatmeal and bran cereal are especially good sources of fiber. It's difficult to get such high fiber content from any other meals. For more information on health benefits of breakfast, see my article published previously in the health section of CBN.com at http://www.cbn.com/health/nutrition/Reinke_breakfast.aspx

Do you shop for groceries? If so, you have a big responsibility because you decide what foods come into your pantry. Your decision-making at the supermarket impacts the health and budget of your family.

Here are a few shopping tips:
1) NEVER go to the supermarket hungry. Your rumbling tummy will impact your decisions and you may buy extra things just because they appeal to you at the moment.
2) Before making your list, check the store flyers to see what's on sale and see what coupons you have in your stash. Make your list and stick to it. Not surprisingly, most impulse buying tends to be junk food.
3) Choose most of your items from the perimeter of the store: produce, dairy, meats, bread. Avoid convenience foods which often contain too much salt, additives and colorings which are not healthful.

With the skyrocketing costs of food, we all need to use our food dollars wisely. Invest in the health of your family by bringing nutritious foods into your home.

You may have heard something in the news about some trans fat being good for you. Let's re-visit trans fat for a moment and clarify what this report actually means.

The trans fat that we normally talk about is harmful and is made by humans. Natural vegetable oils undergo a chemical process called hydrogenation, causing the chemical bonds to change to an unnatural form called "trans."

This "natural" trans fat people are talking about is found in beef and dairy products. It has always been there, we just didn't talk about it because it is natural and not harmful. In fact, a study using rats suggests that it may even be good for you! Not surprisingly, this natural trans fat is not made by humans.

The bottom line? Bad trans fat...made by people. Good trans fat...made by God. So don't worry about the natural trans fat in beef and dairy products. Just forget it's there.

But be ever vigilant about reading labels to avoid trans fat in packaged foods. Any food that contains hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils DOES contain some trans fat, even if the label says "0 grams trans fat." Remember that labeling laws allows manufacturers to say it's zero if it's less than 0.5 grams trans fat per serving.

Coffee creamers are like toothpaste – they "whiten" and there are a gazillion kinds to choose from. You can get creamers that are fat-free or sugar-free or flavored or combinations of fat-free AND sugar-free AND flavored. If you're used to flavored creamers, it can be a hard habit to break. They make coffee taste so good – creamy and sweet, with a touch of vanilla or hazelnut or mocha.

To go fat-free, you can simply use a fat-free creamer. But if you want to give up the saturated and trans fat AND the hard-to-pronounce ingredients in creamers, try flavoring your coffee the homemade way. Use whole milk or light cream for whitening and a drop or two of flavored extract for flavoring. Try vanilla or almond or orange and see which you like best. For mocha flavored coffee, stir in a bit of cocoa powder.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) issued a warning about the fat content of coffee creamers this week. According to the CSPI, the labels on coffee creamers may be leading people to think they are a healthy alternative to plain milk.

Here are a few examples of the fat and calorie content of a 1 tablespoon serving of various coffee whiteners:

Heavy cream = 6 grams fat / 50 calories

Light cream = 3 grams fat / 30 calories

Half & half = 2 grams fat / 20 calories

Creamers (plain or flavored) = 1-3 grams fat / 20-50 calories

Whole milk = 0.5 gram fat / 10 calories

Using regular milk in your coffee is the healthiest option. First, whole milk has only ½ gram of fat per tablespoon, so even a generous serving of 2 tablespoons whole milk gives you only 1 gram of fat. If you use low fat milk, obviously the fat content is even less.

Second, milk is a natural food. Most coffee creamers contain partially hydrogenated oils, which means trans fat. Most also contain sugar or artificial sweeteners. Read the ingredient label on your creamer. You may see names that are hard to pronounce, like polysorbate 60 and sodium stearoyl lactylate.

Real milk or trans fats and chemicals – which would you rather drink with your coffee?

Let's talk some more about trans fat. Some food manufacturers have removed all or most of the trans fat from their recipes. But again, you must read the ingredients label to be sure. If it says "0 grams trans fat," check the ingredients label next. If it says zero grams trans fat but has "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" oils on the ingredients list, it means the food DOES contain trans fat, but it is less than 0.5 grams trans fat per serving.

Remember that if you eat several servings a day of foods that contain 1/4 gram or 1/2 gram, it can add up. We know that trans fat is detrimental to health, but we don't know how much (if any) is an acceptable or safe daily intake.

You're thinking, I have to read every label while I'm shopping? Well, actually it is a good idea. To give you a head start, here are a few foods that often contain trans fat: crackers, cookies, baked goods, salad dressings, french fries, and some ice creams.

When you eat at restaurants or buy baked goods from the bakery in the supermarket, there is often no way to know how much trans fat is in the food. Some fast food chains and even donut chains have eliminated added trans fat from their menu offerings. Check the company website which may post nutrition information for their menus items. I appreciate the restaurants that have removed trans fat from their menus, so they're the ones I'll give my business!

Years ago, when everyone first started worrying about saturated fat and cholesterol, lots of people began eating margarine as a "healthy alternative" to butter. Nutrition experts said that since margarine was made with vegetable oils, it was healthier than butter, which contained animal fat.

I wasn't convinced because I learned about trans fat in graduate school. Very simply, trans fat was a fatty acid molecule that was altered by changing the double bonds between the carbons and adding hydrogen. Thus the term "hydrogenated." In my biochemistry textbook, the resulting fatty acid looked twisted and unnatural.

So even though the experts said to eat margarine, I told everyone in my family to keep eating butter. "Butter is natural," I told them, "just the way God and the cow made it." Well, okay, to get butter you have to churn the cream, but you get the idea. So my family continued to enjoy sweet, creamy butter - in moderation, of course.

Now here we are today, with everyone panicking about trans fat. And we SHOULD panic about it. It is nasty stuff! Thankfully, many food manufacturers are decreasing the amounts of hydrogenated oils in their products. Many products say "0 grams trans fat" on the label. Many of these products are actually trans fat free. However, labeling laws allow for a teeny bit of trans fat to be present even when it says zero grams. So be a savvy shopper and read the ingredients label. (That's the label somewhere on the side of the box that you need a magnifying glass to read.) If the product contains hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, there is still a small amount of trans fat in the food.

Bottom line? In my opinion, butter is a good alternative to margarine when used in moderation. There are other good choices, too, like some of the newer spreads made with olive oil. When in doubt, I always go with the food that is closest to the way God made it. Blessings!

Several years ago, researchers analyzed the consumption patterns of 100 different food items. They found that coffee is the number one source of dietary antioxidants in the American diet. That doesn't mean coffee contains the most antioxidants of all foods and drinks. It means that because Americans drink so MUCH coffee, it ends up providing more antioxidants overall than any other food.

Here are the study's top ten sources of antioxidants in the American diet – because we consume large quantities of these foods and drinks:
1. coffee
2. black tea
3. bananas
4. dried beans
5. corn
6. red wine
7. beer (lager style)
8. apples
9. tomatoes
10. potatoes

The truth is there are many fruits and vegetables that have more antioxidants per serving than some of these foods. Instead of corn and potatoes or apples and bananas, try a new fruit or veggie this week!