According to General Mills, sales are up significantly on some popular brands, including baking goods, yogurt, soups, cereal and snack products. Some experts think this is a strong indicator that people are eating out less and opting to enjoy their meals at home instead.

Why do you think this is? If you ask me, there are a couple of factors at play:

• A drop in the economy coupled with rising fuel costs leaves less money in the bank for luxuries like eating out, OR
  
• Perhaps people are wising up and realizing that picking up their meals from a fast food restaurant is doing them no favours health-wise.

I have nothing against the occasional meal out with family or friends, but let's be honest -- cooking your meals at home is the only way to ensure that you're getting the healthiest, most nutritious meals possible. Your thoughts?

(via Diet Blog)

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Nicky Taylor, a mum of three, usually lives on freshly cooked organic foods. So imagine her surprise when she was asked to live on Microwave meals for a month in the interest of research. She recently told her story to The Daily Mail and here's what she had to say about eating out of the box:

Week One: "I quickly realise how much more time I have now that making a meal simply revolves around piercing the film over the dish, putting it in the microwave and waiting a couple of minutes for the ping. But less than a week in, my mood begins to change. I am realising more and more that the portions are tiny. I am also discovering that while some ready meals are very nice, most aren't. Were it not for the fact that, at the end of the week, the scales reveal I have lost 4lb, I would be tempted to give up.

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Weight Loss Dude recently asked the question Do Microwave Ovens Make You Fat? and I think he has a valid point. After all, what do we use microwaves for? Popcorn, frozen pizzas and other convenience foods that aren't good for us. But there's more to it than that -- there are several theories out there that using a microwave on your food destroys the nutrients in your food, and this could perhaps cause your body to store your microwaved food as fat.

I don't know how true this is but I think we all need to practice safe microwaving techniques; the microwave should never replace healthy home-cooking. Reheating healthy left-overs is fine, but make sure to avoid using the microwave for non-nutritious food.

What do you think?

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The demands of our careers and family seem to have lead to the demise of the healthy diet. Now, with no time for cooking and preparing healthy meals, we head for what's convenient -- and more times than not, this is unhealthy, leading to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, among other things.

But what if healthy meals were convenient? Some are -- and they can be found in the frozen foods section of your supermarket. Yes, some frozen entrees are healthy, according to this article from WebMD -- namely the ones with lean protein, veggies and whole grains. And if you're relying on McDonald's to feed your family, they can make a world of difference to your health -- studies show that obese adults who ate prepared meals rather than home-cooked ones were more likely to lose significant amounts of weight.

So how do you know if your frozen meal is healthy? Read the labels. Look for meals that are low in calories, low in fat and -- this one's a biggie -- low in sodium.

What's your favourite frozen meal?

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I was watching TV last night, flipping at high speed through all the channels with my handy-dandy remote, when I remembered the long-ago days requiring an actual walk to the television set for a little channel surfing. It got me thinking about technology, about how the very thing that is revolutionizing the world in so many ways -- think electronic medical records, on-line banking, the fact that I'm publishing this post in cyberspace for all to read -- is also making us one lazy mass of people.

How about automatic garage door openers? Growing up, I remember hustling out of the car, often on cold and snowy days, to manually lift my family's garage door. Once our car was nestled safely inside, the door had to be yanked back down. These days are long gone. Now, I have a button in my mini-van programmed to shoot that garage door up and down at a moment's notice. I don't think I've ever even touched my garage door with my hand.

Sprinkler systems. Remember watering your lawn with a sprinkler attached to your hose and dragging it from place to place until every blade of grass got a drink? Now we have the luxury of sprinklers running on auto pilot. We also have drive-through and drive-up options at almost every restaurant around. We don't even need to exit our cars to collect our carry-out slop. And riding lawn mowers. We're not talking traditional technology here but still, it illustrates my point. I saw a neighbor plowing through his miniature-sized yard the other day on his big and burly John Deere ride-on. Could the 30 minutes it might take to manicure his entire lot of grass be so difficult?

While home-cooked meals are the best for our bodies, sometimes we're just too busy to slave over a stove, and convenience meals take the place of homemade dishes. Avoiding convenience food is sometimes impossible, but that doesn't mean that we have a green-light to make unhealthy choices. Here are some tips for picking convenience foods without doing too much damage to your body:

• Look at the sodium content -- there should be no more than 800 mg per serving
  
• Find something with 8g of fat or less. It should also be trans-fat free
• Be careful about calories too -- there are many frozen meals that have around 250 calories per serving, which is ideal if you're trying to lose weight.

What's your favourite convenience food?

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Making meals in advance is an absolute necessity for most people when it comes to eating healthy at work. Sure, you can find some healthy restaurant/cafe options for lunch if you're really savvy about it, but who can afford to eat out every day? And even if you can, you probably don't always have the time to sit down and order food. It's a fact -- vending machines and convenience foods have become staples in our diet, both at work and at home. There's just not enough time in the day to be healthy. Or so it seems.

But learning some good techniques, some good recipes, and a good routine for making meals ahead of time to both feed yourself at work and to feed your family on those rushed after-work evenings is a valuable thing, and you may be surprised to find that you really do have the time. Making food ahead of time may sound like a pain at first, but what it really does is give you back control. You pick when and what, instead of having 'convenience' pick it for you at mealtimes when there's nothing ready but microwavable tv dinners or pizza.

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One of the biggest challenges in the fight against breast cancer is getting women in the doctor's office for regular mammograms. Safeway is hoping to help out with this issue by creating an $800,000 digital mobile mammography unit (a van) that will make it easier for women to access screenings. The van can do up to 30 mammograms a day and will begin traveling around the Puget Sound area next month.

This digital "mammogram-obile" isn't the first of its kind -- they're growing more and more popular as a means of encouraging women to comply with one of the best known breast cancer treatment options we have: early detection.

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Do you like those little 100 calorie snack packs all conveniently pre-portioned into single servings? They don't do much for me (I always want more than just one!) but lots of people love them -- so many it has become a $20 million dollar plus per year industry.

Food companies make more money off those snack packs than you might as expect -- as much as 20% more than traditional packages. And although they do make portion control a "no brainer" and they save time (both of which are valuable to people these days) what do you think? Is it worth it to you to pay that much extra or are we all getting ripped off?

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Anything that can make life easier, healthier, and less stressful is definitely worth having as far as I'm concerned. And this 'Apple Jacket' by Jacqueline Dufresne will not only make your life a little brighter by being so darn cute (it's even got a little knitted leaf sticking off the side!) but it will also make it handier to bring a healthy snack along with you in your purse or bag. It offers just enough protection to keep an apple from getting bruised up (or impaled) by your car keys, or an orange from getting everything all sticky with its oily skin.


Via CribCandy

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Not all convenience stores carry them, but if you like slushees check out the Crystal Light variety. Most slushees are full of sugary syrup and are extraordinarily high in calories. Not a great choice! But the Crystal Light slushees found at random convenience stores around the country are a sweet treat with only a few calories per serving. Check em out!

So everybody knows that consistency is the key to lasting and successful weight loss and fitness. Whatever your goals are, intermittent and random efforts here and there aren't going to get you anywhere other than frustrated. You'll feel like you're doing something but you won't see any results, which will then lead you to feel like it's a hopeless cause and give up. At least until the next time you get all revved up and jump in for another effort or two, and the cycle starts all over again.

So how to bust the vicious circle and actually stick with it, permanently? You've got to get addicted. I've been really busy for the last few weeks and my workout routine has kinda gone by the wayside. Well, not kinda, more like totally. Now I won't say that I'm addicted to exercise just yet, but I have definitely missed it! I'm a little surprised by that, to be honest. I just started working out regularly and for real within the last year, so I'm not someone who has always been into it by any means. So I can say, from my own perspective anyway, that it is possible! I'm going to be getting back into my routine by the end of this week hopefully, and maybe I'll end up end up addicted before too long. Here are some tips and tricks to help you on your road to addiction (sounds funny to say with a positive meaning, but its true!):

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I've always known that bananas were healthy, but hadn't thought of them specifically as a good fitness food. But they are actual quite a handy little package of energy and nutrients packed into a convenient ready-to-go wrapper. The natural sugar in a banana will give you a nice energy boost while the fiber fills you up, all with only adding about 100 calories to your daily total.

Plus bananas are high in important nutrients like B6 and potassium, which help with everything from managing blood glucose levels to preventing muscle fatigue. This short article is full of all kinds of interesting facts about this fruit that I hadn't heard before -- like did you know bananas can help relieve morning sickness for some pregnant women? Or that you can even relieve an irritating bug bite just by rubbing a banana peel on it?

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It would be hard to avoid hearing about all the bad publicity that surround trans fats. They've been banned in many places after extensive research has shown that they are linked to many, many unhealthy conditions, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer. But they're far from gone for most of us. In fact, merely heading to your neighborhood convenience store will put you in a danger zone, where many of the items contain trans fats.

This article compiles a list of convenience foods to avoid, in order to avoid trans fats. While not all of these items always contain trans fat, some investigation is necessary to determine whether they do or not. Usually companies will advertise in bold letters across their products, 'Free of Trans Fats!', but consider that they can make this claim even if there is a little bit of trans fat in the products, 0.5g or less to be exact.

I typically consume fresh food, and avoid convenience-store snacks at all costs, so I'm not too worried. What about you?

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