That's Fit

Imagine a sliced apple, say the health experts at Canyon Ranch. Leave those slices sitting for a bit and before long, they'll turn brown. Oxidation is the cause. And harmful free radicals are the result. Free radicals pull apart molecules in healthy living tissue and eventually cause the apple to dry and shrivel. They can cause human skin to wrinkle and can cause cancer too.

Now don't forgo apples in your diet -- just don't slice and let them brown. But do let the visual of those brown pieces motivate you to choose a rainbow of colorful, antioxidant-rich plant foods to enrich your diet each day. Here's what you need.

Most alcohol gets burned off during the cooking process. But if you have some recipes that require a cooking wine or liqueur and don't want to risk it on children or less-than-healthy guests, give these simple substitutions a try.

Replace one tablespoon of bourbon or sherry with:

• one tablespoon of apple or orange juice

Replace one tablespoon of coffee liqueur or chocolate liqueur with:

• 1/2 teaspoon chocolate extract or
• 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee in 2.5 teaspoons of water

Just picked up a little recipe card from Kraft at the grocery store today, and thought I'd share it with you. The apple-cheddar stacker recipe offers protein, calcium, fiber, and energy. A decent little snack for the kids or you!

Ingredients:

• 3 oz Kraft 2% Milk Reduced Fat Sharp Cheddar Cheese
• 1 small apple, cut into 24 slices
• 2 tbsp. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 24 TRISCUIT Crackers

An easy way to lose weight is to include more fruits and vegetables in your diet. Produce is famous for jamming massive amounts of vitamins, nutrients and fiber into very few calories. With most produce, you can consume lots of food for a very low caloric price. More bang for your buck that is!

I ask my personal training clients to try to include at least five meals per week consisting of pure produce. No meat. No grains. Most folks eat at least 21 meals per week, so this five meal plan doesn't deter anyone from getting enough protein. What it does do though, is get them to try new fruits and learn new ways to turn veggies into a meal.

Another benefit to this effort is that by keeping a few meals to just produce, you will more than likely be cutting quite a bit of calories out of the day. Over time, the more you rely on fruits and vegetables for snacks and meals, the more likely you'll be to achieve and maintain your ideal weight.

I refuse to serve my kids skinless apples. There's just too much work involved. And there's too much my boys stand to lose if I peel apple after apple. Science backs me up on this one: Some of the most health-protecting antioxidants in fruit are found in the peel, says Susan Percival, Ph.D. and professor of nutrition at the University of Florida.

Before you get your peeler out, take a look at these five fruits with skin that should stay put.

• Apple -- Apple peels have 87 percent more cancer-fighting phytochemicals than the white flesh found inside.

• Cucumber -- Cucumber peels are made of silica, a collagen building block. Eat the skin of one cucumber and you'll get about five milligrams of this good stuff, the exact amount experts suggest eating. Buy organic and you'll avoid the waxy film found on some cucumber skin.
  

• Eggplant -- Eggplant skin contains nasunin, an antioxidant that may prevent brain damage. Potassium and fiber provided too.

• Kiwi -- Chemical compounds found in kiwi skin fight off bugs like staph and E. coli.

• Orange --Don't chomp right into this peel. Just add a little orange zest on salmon and salads and you'll be one step closer to preventing skin cancer.

On April 20, in celebration of the April 22 Earth Day, families nationwide will celebrate our great planet by participating in the Green Apple Festival. If you live near one of these eight cities, you can plug into the music and environmental awareness that will be powering these simultaneous festivities.

Chicago: Lincoln Park Zoo
Dallas: Fair Park
Denver: City Park
Los Angeles: Santa Monica Pier
Miami: Bicentennial Park
New York: Central Park
San Francisco: Golden Gate Park
Washington DC: The National Mall

If you can't attend, do something instead to honor our Earth. Mix it up, like this post recommends. Enjoy a picnic in your favorite local park. Engage in a little eco-running -- tote a trash bag along on your neighborhood jog and pick up any litter you come across. Plant a fruit tree. Start our own compost pile, send a free e-card to friends and family, or simply get outside and marvel at the world around you. And by all means, eat a green apple. It's a Super Food, you know.

Whether your apple of choice is a Granny Smith, empire, gala, red delicious (which, in my opinion, are ironically the least tasty of all apple varieties, but I digress ...), or McIntosh, it doesn't make too much difference as far as your health goes. The important part, so it would seem, is to make sure that you're eating an apple of any variety. That's because the old adage that "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" seems to be quite true.

Apples contain high amounts of polyphenols, which offer a host of health benefits. Specifically, apple polyphenols were shown in laboratory studies to lower blood cholesterol and also inhibit triglyceride absorption. Such protective effects make apples a powerful fighter against heart disease and diabetes.

Apples make a healthy and tasty snack as-is, but you may also want to try slicing one into sections and dipping them in small amounts of peanut butter. The peanut butter will join the apple's fiber content in making digestion take a bit longer, thereby making you feel satiated for a longer period of time.

Raise your hand if you want your kids to journey through life on a healthful path. Anyone out there who doesn't want a healthy kid? Probably not. And while there are lists and lists of steps out there you can take to prime your kids for a life of good health, you might want to start by considering these five fascinating kid facts. Take action on what you learn if you can. Your child will one day thank you.

• The Trouble with TV

• Misery from Medicine

• Delectable Dinner Dynamics

• Scary Sleep Signs

• Apple Accolades
  

Eating 5 to 6 times throughout the day can sometimes be difficult, especially in the fast-paced, I want things ten minutes ago world in which we live. Try as we might to follow this healthy paradigm, it just sometimes doesn't seem possible. Interestingly enough, it's sometimes not the meals that are hard to schedule, but the healthy snacks that you should be eating in between.

Look, any snack will be a better option than that Snicker's bar from the vending machine. The whole "keeps you satisfied" idea was abandoned eons ago, for it is now well known that the high-GI sugar content will actually cause you to feel lethargic and do little to curb hunger. But, our goal isn't to be just a notch above unhealthy; rather, our goal is to be as healthy as we can. To that end, why not try one of these 150-calorie snacks, suggested by the folks at Fitness Magazine, the next time you're looking to munch on something in between meals.

• 1 medium apple, sliced, with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter
• 3 slices of mini pumpernickel bread with 1 slice of Swiss cheese
• 1 packet of low-sugar oatmeal topped with a hand full of berries
• 1 caramel apple (without nuts)
• Spiced maple yogurt: 6oz of plain yogurt, 1 tablespoon maple syrup and a dash of cinnamon
• 1 cup of chocolate pudding with 1 graham cracker square crushed and sprinkled on top
• 8-ounce serving of V8 with 1 piece of string cheese
• 1 trail mix granola bar
• 4 whole-grain crackers with 1 tablespoon of honey soy nut butter
• 4-ounce cup of mandarin oranges topped with 2 tablespoons of chopped walnuts

Is there any truth to the five-second rule? You know, that guiding principle we use when our food drops to the floor and we pick it right back up and eat it. As long as it hasn't been on the floor for more than five seconds, we're safe. Right?

We actually have longer than five seconds, says Anne Bernhard, assistant professor of biology at Connecticut College, whose students put this rule to the test.

Bernard and her team dropped apple slices, a wet food, and Skittles, a dry food, on a cafeteria floor -- which incidentally had been smeared with E.coli -- and then measured the results. Their conclusion: Moist foods are probably safe for 30 seconds, and dry food can stay on the ground for one minute. And that's with E.coli in the mix.

So the five-second rule appears to be legit -- if you trust this study, that is.

Japan gets credit for producing the square watermelon in the 1980s but Lee Chong, a self-taught Korean farmer, gets the blue ribbon for devising the very first cubic apple. It took him five years to perfect his square apple -- grown in plastic containers attached to branches of apple trees -- but he's done it.

Fruit may be one of nature's perfect foods -- it's delicious, good for you, and portable -- but for markets with limited shelf space, the irregular packaging of some fruit items can be problematic. Enter the square apple. Presto -- it fits on shelves in a space-optimizing manner.

OK, so there's a not a huge market for Chong's $7 a-pop apple at the moment. But this apple may soon take off in Korea. It'll make for a great gift, says Chong, who believes parents of college kids will gobble up the idea. Korean parents will do anything for their children, he reports -- and definitely if their endeavors are education-oriented.

While this apple will make an appearance in China, there are currently no plans for expansion into the U.S. market.

Give it up for the apple. It not only keeps the doctor away. It also keeps calories away.

A new Pennsylvania State University study shows that the consumption of apples in different forms affects calorie intake. Specifically, people who ate an apple about 15 minutes before lunch consumed almost 190 fewer calories than when they didn't have the apple.

This study of 59 normal-weight men and women suggests that eating something like a low-calories piece of fruit versus something like fruit juice before a meal might be a great strategy for reducing calorie intake.

"It looks like solid fruit is more filling than fruit juice, and people perceive them differently," says one researcher. People look at an apple and look at fruit juice, and they think the apple will fill them up. And it does. And they eat less as a result. And this is why the apple deserves a round of applause.

Each week, we'll be offering original recipes and unique ways to use those Super Foods that pack nutritional power. After all, you are what you eat -- make it count!

We all know the old wives' tale, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," but is it really true?

Well, it is the season, and we are all eating them, so we may as well find out just how good for us apples are.

High in vitamin C and antioxidants and soluble and insoluble fiber, the apple just may keep the cardiologist away, since these nutrients are so heart-protective. Apples even provide some sun protection when you eat them, so avoid a sunburn with an apple snack before you head outdoors and the dermatologist may be a doctor of the past.

Some tips to make sure you are getting the most from the apples you are eating:

I volunteered to bring cut-up fruits and veggies for my first-grader's Fall celebration on October 31. I don't want to be the mom bringing sugar cookies, a bag of fun-sized candy, or ultra-sweet juice. I want to be the mom who entices kids with nutritious options. Can I do it? Joey's teacher isn't so sure. She told me today she wants to offer healthy choices for her students -- but she doesn't think many will opt for what I bring. That's OK. I'm willing to a step into uncharted territory anyway. I tend to think some of the kids may be tempted by my apple slices and grapes, my baby carrots and cherry tomatoes. Call me an optimist.

When my sister shared grapes and cookies for her daughter's preschool birthday party recently, little hands fought for the grapes -- not the cookies. Won't six-year-olds do the same? I can only hope.

What's your vote? Will Joey and his pals reach for the wholesome food, or not?

The notion of all women being an apple or a pear shape is a bit outdated, don't you think? So how many body type are there? 12 according to Brit style experts Trinny and Susannah, there are 12 body types (to see them in pictures, click here):

• Apple: Round all over
• Hourglass: Round on top and bottom, with a tiny waist
• Skittle (American translation: Bowling pin): Small on torso, big in the thighs
• Vase: Like an hourglass but stretched out
• Cornet: Top-heavy, but bottom-thin.
• Lollipop: Big bosom, long legs.
  
• Column: Tall and thin
• Bell: Small on top but quite large on the bottom
• Goblet: Heavy and square in the torso, with long, thin legs.
  
• Cello: Big shoulders and bosom, with even an even larger bottom
• Pear: A small bosom, with the majority of the weight in the hips, stomach and thighs
• Brick: Square, heavy and solid all over.
  

What shape are you? Even though there's all these choice, I still think I'm a pear -- small on top, but carrying a bit of extra weight in the hips, thighs and lower abdomen.