Monday, March 25, 2013

Can one small difference on a package make a difference in how you perceive the healthfulness of a food??

Think we're rational decision makers? Check out this post from Fooducate: Healthy Candy Bar Experiment
Take a look at the candy bars above. They are identical except for one small detail in their packaging. The front of pack calorie label is red on one wrapper, green on the other. Obviously there is no difference.

But in a study conducted on close to 100 students at Cornell University, in which they were shown just one of the wrappers, students tended to think that the green labeled candy bar was healthier than the red labeled one. Just another little marketing trick that will no doubt increase sales by a few millions of dollars…

By the way, the current packaging for Twix candy bar is below. Did you notice the color of the calorie information on the bottom left?

Twix Green Calorie Label

Friday, March 22, 2013

I'm mad and you should be too!

Earlier this week, a friend emailed me this report from WWMT:

"New report breaks down health rankings county by county"

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation just published a county by county health ranking.  The report looked at things like rates of childhood poverty, rates of smoking, obesity levels, teen birth rates, access to physicians and dentists, rates of high school graduation and college attendance, access to healthy foods, levels of physical inactivity, and percentages of children living in single parent households.

All that being said, Kalamazoo County ended up coming in #46 out of 82 in Michigan!  Really?!  This is the best we can do?!

We have a GREAT county!  Kalamazoo has 29 parks and linear trails (and perhaps more because this list may not be completely up to date),  6 county parks, numerous city parks, hundreds of miles of sidewalks and bike trails.  Two fabulous hospitals (although you know I am more partial to one than the other ;)  Dozens of professionals to help you create a healthy lifestyle.  Educational opportunities...grocery stores...farmers markets...cooking lessons...an economy that is on the mend (household income is highly related to health outcomes).

But look at what RWJF was measuring:
  • Childhood Poverty
  • Rates of smoking**
  • Obesity levels**
  • Teen birth rates**
  • Access to healthcare professionals
  • Education rates
  • Access to healthy food
  • Levels of inactivity**
  • Single parent households
Now let's just take the ones I **ed .  THESE are ALL items we can do something about ON AN INDIVIDUAL LEVEL!!!  We are in control of almost half of these (I also feel we are able to do something about education rates but just for the sake of argument, let's just go with the **ed ones).

To a great extent, we are in charge of our health.  Sure, there are always those situations that crop up that we can't control -- but these WE CAN.

The fact that Kalamazoo (with its great small towns, festivals, fun city center, great music and arts scene, and I could go on....) is only 46th feels like a personal and professional failure to me!  Kalamazoo county should be at the TOP of that list!  There is no reason it can't be....

Except that you and I are going to need to get to work.  We need to exercise, spend more time in our own kitchens, make use of the great opportunities for education, professional growth, and healthcare.  We need to start taking care of ourselves if we want to improve the health outcomes for our next generation -- they are picking up our habits (both the good ones and the bad ones).  We need to pull our friends and neighbors into our healthy causes -- get outside and play for goodness sake!

I don't like being 46th out of 82.  That's C range -- and for any of you who know me, you know I am  an overachiever A student and I love gold stars!  There are no gold stars for any of us here :( 

But we can get there -- both individually and as a community.  We have a GREAT start and a lot of infrastructure in place to help us on the road to better health.  We just need to make use of it.

So tell me:  Are you with me?  Are you ready to make health a greater priority in your life?  Are you ready to "Love where you live" because it supports greater health?  I am.  Let's get started!!!
 
 

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Food for Thought...

With restaurants portioning out 3-4 times the amount we should be eating (honestly, when's the last time you ate 1/4 of whatever showed up on your plate??), here's a thought about eating out....

Once upon a time, not so long ago, people ate out for a reason. Maybe it was in celebration of an anniversary, a birthday or a promotion. Maybe it was out of necessity to seal the deal with an important prospective client. Or maybe it was the understandable consequence of travel. But one thing's for sure—we didn't used to eat out simply because we could. Eating out was special. --Yoni Freedhoff

Overeating (eating any time you are not actually PHYSICALLY hungry) once in a while is no big deal.  Your body will work hard to stay the same weight -- which, in this scenario means it will ramp up your metabolism to burn off the extra calories you took in.   However, because we overeat all the time (think about the afternoon soda you're drinking because your bored with the project you're working on), the body can't burn off all of the extra calories -- your body has no other choice but to store them.

There is another solution -- eat at home...as the rule, not the exception.  Don't have time?  I don't believe that.  We have exactly as much time as we've ever had -- we just have different priorities.  What are your priorities? 

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Tony Schwartz talks about Mindfulness

Tony Schwartz, from the Energy Project, has a lot of ideas about productivity, creativity, and reenergizing our work.  One of his keys?  Mindfulness......

How to Be Mindful in an 'Unmanageable' World

"I believe this is a very special moment in history, a kind of perfect storm. There is a growing recognition — to borrow language from AA — that our world has become unmanageable." Those words have been reverberating in my head ever since Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, said them over the weekend during the Wisdom 2.0 conference in San Francisco. She was introducing an iPhone app called "GPS for the Soul," which is designed to measure heart rate variability as a window into your stress level at any given moment during the day.
It seemed fitting to me that Arianna described the challenges so many of us face in our work — and in our lives more broadly — by using the language of addiction. Her words rang especially true because I happen in the midst of reading a book by Bryan Robinson titled "Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics."
The addiction of our times is digital connection, instant gratification, and the cheap adrenalin high of constant busyness. The heartening news is that more and more leaders in big companies are beginning to recognize the insidious costs of moving so relentlessly and at such high speeds.
Wisdom 2.0 focused on technology — a primary driver of the increasing unmanageability of our lives. The conference was launched three years ago as a meeting between people from the meditation community and the tech world in Silicon Valley to discuss how to use technology more wisely.
Paradoxically, the most important solution I heard is to use technology less frequently, and more intentionally. Or, as Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT, put it in her talk: "There need to be places in our lives and in our organizations that are device-free zones."
Just below the surface of our shared compulsion to do ever more, ever faster, is a deep hunger to do less, more slowly. I saw proof of that a couple of weeks ago, when I wrote an article for The New York Times titled "Relax! You'll Be More Productive." It focused on the growing scientific evidence that when we build in more time for sleep, naps, breaks, and vacations, we become not just healthier and happier, but also more productive. The piece prompted an avalanche of response, much of it poignantly describing the sense of overwhelm people are feeling at work.
The search to find ways to deal with these issues was evident at Wisdom 2.0. Padmasree Warrior, the chief technology and strategy officer at Cisco, described in compelling detail the behaviors she's built into her life to take her out of rapid-fire analytical, "doing" mode. She meditates for 20 minutes every day. On the weekends, she paints and takes photographs. Even when she tweets, she often does so in haikus — as a way to put herself in a more creative mode.
Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, talked about how compassion has become a centerpiece of his management style. More specifically, he described how compassion requires slowing down and taking the time to truly listen to others. It means understanding where they're coming from, caring about the struggles they're facing, and the baggage they're carrying.
Bill Ford, the executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, talked about the harrowing experience he went through when Ford nearly declared bankruptcy several years ago. Taking time to meditate each day was critical. "The practice of mindfulness kept me going during the darkest days," he said. He also took time each morning to "set an intention" to deal with whatever arose that day with a sense of compassion and kindness.
In my own life, I've found that both my productivity and my sense of well-being depend more than ever on building more time into the day to renew, reflect, and connect with others. Two such experiences at Wisdom 2.0 had to do with taking time to get away from the activity of the conference itself. The first was wandering over to a chill out room sponsored by Google, lying down on a mat next to several others doing the same thing, and taking a nap. When I got up 45 minutes later, I felt refreshed and able to fully reengage in the conference.
My second revelatory experience was a lunch I shared with two new friends who were also attending the conference. We ended up spending more than two hours together, free of digital interruptions, just talking, reflecting, laughing, and hanging out. How often do most of us take the time to truly connect with work colleagues — much less friends — and how much richer are we for it when we do return to our work?
Speed, distraction, and instant gratification are the enemies of nearly everything that matters most in our lives. Creating long-term value — for ourselves and for others — requires more authentic connection, reflection, and the courage to delay immediate gratification. That's wisdom in action.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Think about it....

What are you going to do about it....today?

Can't see the video? Click here!