The Top 5 Foods to Avoid at Timmy's

Most Canadians love Tim Horton's - myself included. But have you stopped to look at what their products contain? I did, and it really surprised me.

So here is my list of the Top 5 foods to Avoid at Tim Hortons:

1. Breakfast Sandwiches - Any of them, on a homestyle biscuit, will earn you 0.5g trans fat. Considering it's encouraged to eliminate consumption of trans fats as much as possible, that's a hell of a lot for one food item. On an english muffin, 0.2g.

2. Iced Cappucinos - A small serving will get you 11g of fat - 6 saturated and 0.4 trans fat, both of which are considered "bad fats". Why? Because there is a lot of cream in there. Get it with milk instead - 1.5g fat, 1g saturated.

A customer favourite that you may want to rethink.

3. Honey Crullers - ALL the donuts and cookies have at least 0.1 g of trans fat, but this one takes the cake with 0.4g.

4. Hot Chocolate - A small. drink has the most sugar of any item on the menu - 38g. Also 6g of fat, 5g saturated and 0.2g trans.

5. "Real" Fruit Smoothies - These are really a travesty, and marketed as a healthy choice, which is severely misleading. It's 1/5 of some kind of alien fruit concentrate mix out of a box, and the rest a beverage base, which is basically sugar and water. Eat a fruit, for gosh sakes! Or go to McDonald's, their's are actually made from fruit. Small with no yogurt 30g sugar, all the way up to large with yogurt 60g of sugar.

Sorry, but what is your definition of "real", Timmy's? SMH!

Need more info? Go to Timmy's official nutition guide or their nutrition calculator.

African Mango Complete

My mom is constantly on a crusade to get me to lose weight. She asked me if I wanted diet pills - I obviously balked at the idea - but she is went ahead anyway and presented me with a bottle of pills the next week anyway. The bottle said "African Mango Complete". I figured, "Oh, why not try it?" - but only after reading the bottle and pamphlet and some research online. All-natural ingredients, blahblah, nothing chemical or strange (well, relatively) in it.

Will these actually work?

The main ingredient in this is African Mango, or Irvingia gabonensis extract. It also has psyllium husk, red clover powder, artichoke leaf extract, and dandelion root extract, all of which togethere supposedly form a potent mixture that claim to burn body fat, control appetite, increase energy, cleanse, detoxify, and lower cholesterol. "Lose 25 lbs. in as little as 4 weeks!" is the bottle's claim.

You take two pills a day, one in morning and one in evening. I read on the Internet to take it before meals, so I took mine a half hour before meals when I could. The main things of the laundry list of claims I'm concerned with are losing body fat and supressing appetite. I've tried these for a few days, and I have to say when it comes to suppressing appetite and my cravings they actually seem to work. I have a terrible sweet tooth, but my sugar cravings are pretty much nonexistant when I take these, and my appetite does seem lower. I really only feel like eating when I'm actually hungry.

Of course, I've only taken these a few days, so I won't make any claims about them yet, except for the few observations I just made. Maybe I'm feeling a placebo effect. I'll update in a few weeks to give my full opinion on these.

Vitamin D Deficiency????

The sun vitamin!

I recently did a full physical at the doc. It went well and he said all was fine with me, a

nd sent me to do some bloodwork. I thought getting pricked with the awful needle was the hard part. Apparently not. :( I got a call on Friday that the doctor wanted to see me to discuss my results. I freaked out all night and all of Saturday! I couldn't even imagine what could be wrong with me. When I finally got there on Sunday (after hours of waiting might I add), the doctor told me I had a Vitamin D deficiency.

I almost cried with relief! All he did was tell me to buy a Vitamin D supplement for the time being and work on incorporating more Vitamin into my diet naturally. And maybe go for a walk and get some free Vitamin D, you know, sunlight.

I'm naturally an indoorsy person. Especially with school. My last semester was absolute hell and with school being my main concern, I definitely let my diet slip! I ate tons of junk - I'm really surprised that's the only thing I'm deficient in.

I shied away from the supplements though. I'm not too fond of pills of any kind. Here's a list of foods rich in Vitamin D:

• Fish (salmon, halibut, tuna)
• Shrimp
• Soy Milk
• Milk
• All Bran Cereal
• Eggs
• Shiitake Mushrooms

And it's summer now, so hopefully I can get off my lazy butt and go outside - my nephew and I will be going to the park a lot more, so I guess that won't be bad. :)