"healthier" news and stories

We've covered a couple of theme park food stories lately, including one where UK parks were visited by a "secret mum" looking for healthy foods and one where Six Flags decided to offer a protein-packed Halloween option to its guests. Now, Disney is looking to make some food changes at their parks - for the better.

The company announced that they would eliminate trans fats from the food at their theme parks, as well as in any Disney licensed food products, and will be instituting a new set of guidelines for offering healthier food options in general:

• Placing a limit on total calories, resulting in smaller portions
• Limiting fat to a maximum of 30 percent of calories for entrees and side dishes, and 35 percent for snacks.
• Limiting saturated fat to 10 percent of calories for main dishes, side dishes and snacks.
• Limiting sugar to 10 percent of calories for main dishes and side dishes, and 25 percent of calories for snacks.

The new guidelines will be phased in gradually over the course of the next few years, although the trans-fats will be eliminated by 2008. There is no telling what effect any of these changes will have on park favorites, like churros, funnel cake and ice cream cones since their nutritional information is unknown at the moment, but it's possible that you might not be able to get some of these treats after next summer.

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Who says that down-home soul food has to be unhealthy by definition? Soul food is about satisfying food that tastes great because it is made with flavorful ingredients and love. Both are things that can carry over to slightly lighter versions of favorite dishes without loosing anything but the fat.

Neo Soul is soul food with a healthy twist, but it is still only a twist because although this is a lower-fat cookbook, the author chooses to include some fat when flavor might suffer - a nice touch that some healthy cookbook authors forget about. Author Lindsay Williams grew up on soul food (he's the grandson of the founder of Sylvia Woods, founder of Silvia's restaurants and known as "the queen of soul food) and turned into a food addict. By tweaking his favorite dishes, he managed to put out some delicious food and loose about 200 pounds at the same time. If you need a little bit of convincing that healthy soul food is still soul food, try his recipe for Oven Fried Chicken before you buy the book.

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It's ok to put a little butter on your corn on the cob and add a bit more dressing to that salad. The nutrients in some vegetables are fat soluble and are absorbed much better by the body when accompanied by a little fat. A study conducted at Ohio State University, found that the absorption of nutrients was not only higher when accompanied by fats, but that it was actually minimized when the fat-free foods were eaten alone.

Previous studies have shown the same results in rats, but this study followed the nutrient absorption of human diets. It was a follow-up to a 2004 study that tracked nutrient absorption when comparing low fat salad dressings to fat-free ones. In this one, salsas and salads were served to participants with and without avocado. Absorption of beta carotene jumped by up to 18 times the amount, and lycopene jumped as much as 7 when the avocado was included, even controlling for the nutrients added by the avocado itself.