"jelly bean" news and stories

Easter doesn't seem like one of the bigger drinking holidays. Christmas? Sure. Valentine's Day? Sure, especially if you're not with anyone. But Easter? Well, I guess any situation where you have to deal with your family is a situation where you might want to drink.

About.com has a variety of Easter-oriented cocktails, and, of course, they're a little sweeter than many cocktails, in keeping with the holiday. But they aren't for kids!

One of the reasons that nutritionists often recommend that you write down everything you eat is that people tend to underestimate how much they're consuming. Those extra calories, whether 10 or 100 per day, can add up over time if your physical activity levels don't change much. And, unfortunately, those 10 calories can be made up by as something as small as a few grapes and translate into a weight gain of about 1 pound per year. To avoid this, try to be honest about how much you eat and pay attention to what you're eating, even when it's "just one" of something. To give you can idea of how many calories those "ones" can have, here are a few from the Seattle Times:

• One Pringles potato chip - 10 cal
• One McDonald's french fry - 5 cal
• One grape tomato - 1 cal
• One green seedless grape - 4 cal
• One M&M - 4.3 cal
• One Jelly Belly - 4 cal
• One broccoli floret - 0.8 cal
• One baby carrot - 1.25 cal
• One cashew - 8.5 cal

Source

In my everlasting quest to find sports food products that 1) work; 2) taste good;  and -- most importantly -- 3)don't embarass me either while purchasing them or consuming them, I've come to Clif's new Shot Bloks.

The idea here is to avoid messy gels and sticky sports drinks (see my early point about having my foods embarass me), and the Shot Bloks definitely pull that off. A bit like gummi bears, a bit like jello, a bit like jelly beans ... but good for you, definitely good for you: they've got electrolytes, a blend of complex and simple carbohydrates, and -- do you want more? -- they're organic.

Shot Bloks come in five different flavors; of these five, two flavors (Black Cherry and Orange) come with a kick of caffeine.

Truth be told, I like candy and coffee more than I like exercise. But Shot Bloks make me think that maybe, just maybe, everything will work out in the end  ...