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What's Your Weakness?


What's Your Weakness  

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Since it seems like quite a few of us are fighting the battle of the bulge, which is it that gets you in trouble the most? What's your favorite? For me I tend to fall on the sweets side, though not so much candy as ice cream-especially Baskin Robbins Peanut butter chocolate. :ph34r:

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I do lust after some women in my heart for brief moments.

Both sweets and salts for me. . . Like you Dan I love peaunt butter/chocolate ice cream, and a lot of other ice creams. . . I have to have a little bit of ice cream in the evenings lately it seems. And I didn't think I liked salty stuff, but I've been having either tortilla chips or pretzels every work day as part of my lunch, and if you let me have my druthers I'd go out to eat at one of the many fantastic Mexican food places here and eat chips and salsa far more and more often than I should.

Late forties. . . food is meaningful as a stress reliever for me I guess, as smoking and drinking hardly ever happen as stress relievers any longer (no smoking at all, a tiny bit of social drinking on occasion). Battling the bulge, neither winning nor losing, just fighting!

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Chocolate-covered pretzels- the best of both worlds! :wub:

Man, I'm dying to find DARK Chocolate covered pretzels somewhere. I'm sure it's been done, but I've never seen them before.

I'm a TOTAL dark-chocolate nut, to the point of prefering bittersweet baking chocolate, over semi-sweet. (But no, even I can't handle unsweetened. Even I have my limits!!).

Dark chocolate, all the way!!!!

semisweet.jpgOT371653t.jpg

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I used to eat way to much sweet stuff - chocolate, biscuits etc. I'd open a packet of biscuits and just would not stop until the packet was empty even though I was feeling increasingly sick.

So 2.5 years back I went cold turkey on chocolate and sweet biscuits. Havn't touched either since and don't miss them.

I still eat the odd piece of cake or pastry; and sometimes buy a few wine gums or liquorice allsorts but my craving for them is well diminished.

Age or self-control? I'm not sure.

*********

Now if I could exert the same discipline over CD buying I'd be in the world's wealthiest lists by next year!

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cnn.gifheader.health.gif

Darker the chocolate, better the benefits?

Study: When it comes to health, all chocolates not the same

Wednesday, August 27, 2003 Posted: 1:16 PM EDT (1716 GMT)

story.chocolate2.jpg

Researchers say eating dark chocolate

raises antioxidant levels, but eating

millk chocolate, or drinking milk with

the confection, provides no benefit.

(AP) -- After a sweaty health club workout, don't kid yourself that the candy bar in your gym bag is health food. Despite the recent buzz over the confection's heart-protecting qualities, new research suggests that not all kinds of chocolate are beneficial.

European researchers say eating milk chocolate, which is most commonly used in candy bars, does not raise antioxidant levels in the bloodstream. They found the same discouraging result among patients who drank milk while eating dark chocolate.

The results suggest that milk and other dairy products somehow discourage the body's ability to absorb the protective compounds in chocolate. Only subjects who ate dark chocolate showed a temporary increase in their antioxidant levels.

Details of the study appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

"This puts in question the possible protective effects of (chocolate) milk shakes or ice cream or other dairy products," said co-author Alan Crozier of the University of Glasgow.

Nor does Crozier endorse the idea that eating dark chocolate is healthier. It still contains plenty of fat and sugar.

"Don't think by eating five or six bars a day you're doing yourself any good," he said.

The blood pressure effect

Cocoa beans contain plant chemicals called flavonoids, a kind of antioxidant polyphenol present in many fruits, vegetables, tea and red wine. Some studies indicate flavonoids protect the heart from damaging effects of unstable oxygen compounds called free radicals that, among other things, can damage blood vessels.

A German study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that eating dark chocolate can lower blood pressure. Other experiments show cocoa flavonoids may reduce harmful blood clotting properties and decrease low-density-lipoprotein (LDL), known as the "bad cholesterol."

The JAMA study involved adults with untreated mild hypertension who ate 3-ounce chocolate bars daily for two weeks. Half of the patients got white chocolate, half got dark chocolate.

Blood pressure remained pretty much unchanged in the group that ate white chocolate, which does not contain polyphenols. But after two weeks, systolic blood pressure -- the top number -- had dropped an average of five points in the dark-chocolate group. The lower, or diastolic, reading fell an average of almost two points.

In 1998, a Harvard study of nearly 8,000 of its male graduates determined that eating the equivalent of few bars of chocolate a month lowered the risk of death by 36 percent as compared to abstainers.

No recommended daily allowance

In the latest experiments, which were conducted without industry funding, Crozier and researchers in Italy first determined the antioxidant levels of dark chocolate and milk chocolate in the lab. Dark chocolate had twice as much, Crozier said, in part because milk chocolate contains only about half as much actual chocolate.

The researchers then gave chocolate bars to seven women and five men who were between 25 and 35 years old. All of the participants were nonsmokers, had normal blood lipid levels, took no prescription drugs or vitamins and were not overweight.

After they ate dark chocolate bars, the antioxidant potential measured in their blood increased an average of 18 percent and remained elevated for three hours.

Lead author Mauro Serafini said the subjects' antioxidant potential did not rise noticeably when they consumed a glass of whole milk with the dark chocolate, or when they ate milk chocolate. He said it's possible that antioxidants bind with milk proteins making absorption more difficult.

Scientists who did not contribute to the research said the protective aspects of flavonoids in chocolate have not been proven.

"I guess this means to be healthy you should eat chocolate with red wine," said Andrew L. Waterhouse, a nutrition professor at the University of California at Davis. "That is, if you believe the antioxidant hypothesis.

"No one has taken flavonoids, given them to people in a controlled scenario and shown that people who take them are more healthy than those who don't," he said.

Dr. Robert H. Eckel, a spokesman for the American Heart Association, said there is not enough information to recommend chocolate as a food that reduces the risk of heart disease.

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What really gets me is that they actually say that there's FOUR servings in these suckers. FOUR servings!! I'm sorry, there's ONE serving! One sit-com's worth of ice cream. And about 200% of your daily sat. fat intake. :rmad:

I don't eat this stuff anymore, but I really loved the "Chubby Hubby"-and now I am one.

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Come on Lon and Jim- you guys are in the land of Blue Bell. Cookies 'n'Cream, Banana Pudding, Pralines'n'Cream....ah, the good old days of carefree living.

Every place I've lived there's been a killin' frozen custard place. Ollie's in DeKalb, IL, Stoddard's in Kent,OH and Sheridan's here in KC. Any of you have a favorite?

Edited by Free For All
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