December 19, 2011

Healthy for you. Healthy for the earth. Great last minute presents!

Only 6 days left to buy presents! We are hoping we can help with any last minute purchases you need to make. We have put together our best holiday picks. Some are healthy. Some are just great for the earth. Check out gifts from Soda Stream, Hammacher Schlemmer, Nomi Network, Collecion Luna and Unicef.

Healthy for you presents:

Make Soda at Home!

We love the soda stream. Instead of buying tons of Perrier, make it in your home! There is a simple soda maker under $100 and then more expensive versions that go up to a few hundred. The base version looks just great to us.


www.sodastream.ca

It is now too late to buy online but you can buy in stores across Canada and the US.

Still coveting this drink maker.

Healthy Soft Serve !

I fell in love with Hammacher Schlemmer when working in Chicago many years ago. I still have the alarm clock that lights up the room to wake you instead of making an alarming noise (it can make that noise if you need it to. But then really why bother with such a great device?). They now have a wonderful soft serve ice cream maker. All you need is a banana and some other fruit of your choice and volia! Ice cream!!! LOVE IT!
http://www.hammacher.com/Product/Default.aspx?sku=81612&promo=Home-Living-Kitchen-Entertaining&catid=140

Healthy for the earth presents:

I met some amazing women this year. Women who are changing the world through small business supporting those in need.

Buy Her Bag Not Her Body

In a small world moment, I met the wonderful women behind Nomi Network this year after having bought, and raved about, their products last year. Last Christmas I bought my sister a beautiful laptop case while in NYC shopping at the stalls at Columbus Circle. Their products are not only great but help those in need. In love with them and their products. The organization is the Nomi Network- “a non-profit organization working to eradicate sexual slavery and the trafficking of women.” The product line is called “Buy Her Bag Not Her Body”. These bags are made by women who have survived sex trafficking and those at risk of exploitation.

I just visited the website and see they now have ipad cases too! The quality of these products is great. And they are beautiful to boot.

http://www.buyherbagnotherbody.com/

Stephanie Jolluck and Collecion Luna

I am a little in love with all that Stephanie does. She is one of the most passionate women entrepreneur I have ever met. She is committed to her artisans and their families with a single mindedness that is unusual. “A social entrepreneur, Stephanie started her own business at age twenty-six focused on women’s empowerment, alleviating poverty, sustainability, & promoting cultural diversity and understanding. For the past ten + years she has travelled to Guatemala to work directly with the Mayan Indians on a line of textiles created with PURE LOVE from their reclaimed Indigenous clothing using Fair Trade practices.”

Her beautiful bags are available at this link:

http://www.coleccionluna.com/Category.aspx?ID=2

Plumpy’Nut

We have donated to this Unicef’s Plumpy’Nut as a company. I have also bought Plumpy’Nut donations for those friends who live overseas instead of regular Christmas presents. We love that something as simple as peanut butter can bring life saving nutrition to children who are malnourished. peanut butter is high in protein and good fat. It is better than formula that requires clean water (often sorely lacking) to be effective. The peanut butter is shelf stable and ready to eat as is. We are inspired by this simple solution to a devastating issue.

https://secure3.convio.net/uncfca/site/Ecommerce?store_id=1201&s_locale=en_CA&ca_unicef_secure2_iters=1

And if any of these presents can’t arrive in time: print out a great full colour picture and the date that the present will arrive. A great present arriving in a day or two beats nothing under the tree!

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August 23, 2011

Soy myths and reality

The more mainstream soy becomes, the more rumours we hear about soy being bad for us. The main rumour is that soy makes you infertile and grow breasts. The key issue with this theory is that the Chinese have eaten soy for millennia and have absolutely no issues with fertility or men becoming feminized.

Critics then counter and say that is because Chinese people only eat fermented soy. Rubbish. They eat tofu- not fermented soy. Tempeh and natto – fermented soys- are eaten much less often but are held up by the anti soy critics as a staple in the asian diet.

So why the confusion? I think all the pro soy people caused this backlash themselves. They wanted soy to be the holy grail. Good to stop cancer. Good for menopause. No food is going to do all this. And so there was a back lash. The things that the pro soy groups raved about were turned into negatives. In particular, focus has been placed on soy being estrogenic.

So is it? No soy is not estrogenic. Isolated soy isoflavones can indeed be estrogenic. But this is not what we eat.
This is analogous to saying that too much vitamin A is dangerous and that fish oil contains vitamin A so fish oil is therefore dangerous, despite all of its recognized health benefits.
There are a few key studies where purified isoflavones were injected into rodents that have been cited over and over again. Here are the issues with them:
1. Humans must metabolise soy to extract the isoflavones. In this process, a much lower dosage of isoflavones is ingested by humans.
2. Animals respond to isoflavones differently than do humans.
• These results are not seen in human trials.

Of special interest is soy and breast cancer- particularly, whether soy increases or decreases the risk of breast cancer .
There are two different findings:
• If you have had soy all your life, continuing to consume soy may be protective.
• If you have not eaten soy all your life, moderate soy intake later in life will not increase your risk. (Hilakivi-Clarke L, Andrade JE, Helferich W. Is soy consumption good or bad for the breast? J Nutr. 2010 Dec;140(12):2326S-2334S. Epub 2010 Oct 27.)

So on to the second source of criticism about soy: people say it is hard to digest.
This is in fact true. The whole soybean unprocessed is hard to digest. The carbohydrates in soy are called oligosaccharides and they can cause gas and bloating. I know people who cannot eat soy flour (me included) but soy protein is one of the few proteins that they tolerate very well.

Second, soy contains trypsin inhibitors, which interfere with the digestion of proteins. But trypsin inhibitors are deactivated by cooking, fermentation, soaking, roasting, or sprouting.

So with all of these rumours, why use soy? • Soy is a great whole protein source for people with digestive issues who cannot handle dairy. Rice and hemp protein are good but are not whole proteins. Also, rice protein just doesn’t taste great at present and taste matters.
• Soy is far more friendly to the earth than animal proteins.
• Soy is safer than animal proteins. We have some concerns about animal proteins.
• If animals are fed hormones, how do we know they have not made it into our food? A real and legitimate source of hormones in our food supply – there is a stronger link to dairy and estrogen than soy. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/12.07/11-dairy.html
o If animals have been fed antibiotics, how do we know that we are not eating them?
 The answer is we do not know that we are not eating them. We need to buy organic, grass fed meats and organic milk but you will find that there are no protein bars with these protein sources.

All available evidence indicates that 2 to 3 servings of soy daily is perfectly safe and may actually be beneficial.

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Filed under diets, Easy-to-Digest, gluten, protein bars, soy

July 28, 2011

4 Hour Body, Zoe Harcombe, Dukkan Diet, 17 day diet: Are these new ideas? Revolutionary?

Twice in the last month I have had discussions with friends who each have sworn by their new diets and their new diet gurus. Both of these friends are bright (probably 6 degrees between them) and sceptical and worldly. Each of them was convinced of a new diet I had never heard of. To be clear, I have heard of almost every diet. I have tried Atkins, Zone, South Beach. I tried these for health not weight loss but I know them pretty well.

These are the two diets: The 4 hour body and Zoe Harcombe’s diet.

I needed to know:
• Why were these different?
• Was there something in them that I had never tried or heard?
• Was there some secret key to being healthy that I could learn?

In short? No.

These diets are saying very much the same things as Zone, Atkins, South Beach:
“Reduce refined carbs and sugars. Focus on protein.”

The only thing on which these diets differ is whether they are:
• High fat or low fat
• How much carb they allow? None or minimal? Very limited fruit or none?

Otherwise the plans have you focusing on proteins and vegetables and really cutting back on refined carbs (breads, pasta) and sugars (including fruits).

Read on if you want to see a quick synopsis each diet.

Click here

http://www.thesimplybar.com/weightlossdietcomparison/

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July 12, 2011

Are dried dates good for me?

A great question was posted on a blog this week…”I love this date and nut bar because it has only two ingredients. But I am confused: how can 25 g of sugar be good for me?”

People commented about how simplicity is good for you but the simple answer is:
“25 g of sugar is not good for you”

People seem to think that your body sees dried fruit somehow differently than other sweeteners. But the truth is that 25 g of sugar from any source (sucrose, glucose and fructose) is broken down to glucose in the body. There is no special pathway for “dried fruit” to be broken down.

25 grams of sugars whether from honey or from dates is still 25 grams of sugars.

So many nutrition bars are based on dates. Why dates? Dates replace sugar as they are very sweet and are almost all sugar to begin with- up to 80% is sugar.
Dried fruits contain more sugar on a per gram basis then fresh fruit, as the water is eliminated from the mix. If you compare an apple to a date- an apple is 13% sugar. A dried date is 64% sugar.

Total sugars
Fresh Fruit
Apples 13.3
Dried Fruit
Dates 64.2
Pure sugars
Sucrose (table sugar) 97
Maple sugar 85.2
Honey 81.9
High fructose corn syrup (42%) 71

http://www.reducetriglycerides.com/reader_triglycerides_low_fructose_fruit.htm

Another way to tell if a food is good for you is to look at the glycemic index, which is a measure of how carbohydrates in a food will affect blood sugar levels. A lower glycemic index suggests slower rates of digestion and absorption of the foods’ carbohydrates releasing glucose more gradually into the bloodstream. It usually equates to a lower insulin demand and may improve long-term blood glucose control and blood lipids.

Glucose has a GI of 100
Sprouted seeds are 15

Dried dates measure in at 70
Coca cola measures in at 70!

If this still seems so counterintuitive, one of the key things to think about is the dehydration process. I found this on another site and thinks it explains it perfectly: “Dried fruits will usually have more calories and natural sugars because the dehydration process removes so much of the water normally found in the fruit. That missing water would normally make the fresh fruit larger than the dried fruit, so there would be more pieces of dried fruit in the same serving size. For example, one grape has seven calories and one raisin has seven calories, however one cup of grapes has about 60 calories, and a cup of raisins has over 400 calories. This doesn’t happen because the raisin company added sugar, it happened because without the water, the raisins take up a lot less space. More raisins fit into one cup so that means one cup of raisins has more sugar and calories than grapes.” http://nutrition.about.com/od/askyournutritionist/f/dried_fruit.htm

In conclusion, if you need to eat a dried fruit and nut bar, think of it as dessert. Better than ice cream for sure.

High GI foodstuff/product

Corn syrup 115 Beer* 110
Glucose (dextrose) 100 Glucose syrup 100
Cola drinks, soft drinks, sodas 70 Corn flour 70
Croissant 70 Dried dates 70
Whole brown sugar 70 Beet, beetroot (cooked)* 65
Maple syrup 65 Marmalade (with sugar) 65
Mars®, Sneakers®, Nuts®, etc. 65 Muesli (with sugar or honey added…) 65
Apricots ( tin/can with syrup) 60 Bananas (ripe) 60
Chestnut 60 Hard/durum wheat semolina 60
Honey 60 Ice cream (regular, with sugar added) 60
Grape juice (unsweetened) 55 Japanese plum, loquat 55
Ketchup 55 Mango juice (unsweetened) 55

Medium Gi foodstuff/product

Brown basmati rice 45 Capellini pasta 45
Al dente spaghetti (5 min cook) 40 Bread, 100% integral flour with pure leaven 40
Brut cider 40 Buckwheat, kasha, saracen (integral; flour or bread) 40
Carrot juice (unsweetened) 40 Coconut milk 40
Oats 40 Peanut butter (no sugar added) 40
Pepino dulce, melon pear 40 Quince (preserve/jelly, without sugar) 40
Quinoa flour 40 Shortbread, spritz biscuit (integral flour, no sugar added) 40
Sorbet (unsweetened) 40 Tahini 40

http://www.montignac.com/en/ig_tableau.php

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Filed under glycemic, low sugar, protein bars

May 2, 2011

New starts – a great place to work

May and it is all about new starts!

I started this business 9 years ago now. Tomorrow we move the office downstairs. This will be the first time that the “office” is not in our living room. When Finbarr first came to Canada, he labelled the bars by hand. We have always had an ongoing argument about Simply Bars all over the house. But now that will change ! (Fin I promise)

And for the first time I am not the only full time employee and I have the awesome and amazing challenge of designing the right work environment!

We’re trying to design a simple way to work that offers the maximum benefit to all employees – enhances their lives and makes work productive and efficient. Rules are great. Bureaucracy? Not so much.

Here are some of the things we are thinking about:

Desks – Option for standing desks and kneeling chairs. The New York Times had a great article outlining how sitting for long stretches is the most unhealthy thing we do. But we don’t have to sit. I am learning to love working standing up.

Kitchen – we want to have a fizzy water maker! Always coveted these. Our kitchen will be stocked with fruit, veggies (and yes some Simply Bars). All of us will have our own shelf for our snacks. And we can cook whatever lunch we like (unfortunately there is only one cook amongst us but she just might do this.)

Windows, light, sunshine- light is critical to working well. Our first task is going to be making new big windows downstairs. Bring it!

Open work environment with one closed office for private calls and meeting. 99% of our files and documents are available to everyone. We think that the work environment should be set up the same way.

But that is just the physical structure; there are other things that go into creating the right work environment. These are some of them that we are trying out.

• 3 hours off to vote (top of mind today!)
• Start work at 10 or 11… or 5 am if you prefer. One of us is a late owl. One of us is an early bird. We sometimes are waking up and going to sleep at the same time! It isn’t an issue. We each work when we are most productive. But yes we work and work hard.
• No formal performance reviews. Name 2 things you do well. 2 things you could do better. Be honest. Improve.
• Wellness credits available for everyone for yoga, meditation classes …

Making the very best bars is our number one priority. We are always working to make them better and better. Right now we are working on less and less sugar. We already have the most protein with the least sugar of any natural bar (and least calories). But we are about to do better. Watch for it.

But having the very best place to work is my number two priority. Tina Fey was very honest in Bossypants (READ IT) about how she feels a real responsibility to the cast and crew of 30 Rock. My cast and crew is a lot smaller. But I feel a real responsibility and take great joy and pride in hopefully creating the best work environment possible.

Question for thought: What would you like in the ideal work environment? What work environments have you read about or seen in action that you think are great?

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April 10, 2011

Is there really increasing gluten intolerance?

Are we all just making it up? Adverse to carbs? We don’t think so. It seems that there are a number of plausible reasons why celiac disease and gluten intolerance are increasing.

The first reason is that wheat containing more gluten is being created. Why? Gluten acts like a great elastic band holding food together. It adds spring and texture. So higher gluten breads are preferred from a texture perspective for baking. Many of us remember the gluten-free breads from the 1980′s. They were more like bricks or door stoppers. Not so today. There are amazing gluten free options. My favourites? Breads from Anna (used to be Manna from Anna).

The second reason is that we are just eating more wheat. When I first gave up wheat I was eating a muffin for breakfast, bagel for lunch, cookie as a snack and pasta for dinner. Unhealthy? yes. White on white? yes. Unfortunately, I wish I was alone but I see people doing this all the time. Wheat products are cheap and readily available. The normal North American diet is filled with a ton of wheat products and very little fruit and vegetables.

Eating gluten free for me has meant replacing my white addiction with different colours. I am not a big bread eater any more and eat way more fruits and veggies. So why am I selling Simply Bars? On the road, it is often impossible to find a filling, healthy snack. The Simply Bar is in my car glove box and in my purse. I only have one a day or one in emergencies. They aren’t meals. Meals are leans proteins and veg. Simply Bars are my come to the rescue, fill me up snacks.

So yes it does seem that gluten intolerance and celiac disease are on the rise and genetically modified wheat and our dining habits seem to be two of the key causes.
Cathy

PS- And now a little about my friend Anna. Anna discovered she had celiac disease while teaching in Boston. She uprooted herself to NYC (oh we love New York) and went to the Natural Gourment Cooking School. She started making wonderful, high fiber breads there and has been improving them ever since. Her breads are unique in that they have a wonderful texture and are nutritious (i.e. not white, white, white rice, starch, sugar).

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March 27, 2011

Gluten Freak no more!


We have been told for years that if you don’t have celiac disease, you can’t be gluten intolerant.

For some of us, this was maddening. We don’t have celiac disease but gluten makes us:

    • Feel Tired
    • Feel Sore
    • Have gas and bloating
    • Be constipated or have diarrhea
    • Have a runny nose

And so it was with great relief that a study came out showing that there actually is an immune reaction to gluten in some people who do NOT have celiac disease.

In celiac disease: there is an immune reaction AND the inside of the intestine is dramatically altered (technically the villi is flattened)
In gluten intolerance: there is an immune reaction WITHOUT the intestinal change

So this study is a big deal. We are not crazy. Gluten does make us sick. We need to learn more but for now VINDICATION!!!!!

Watch for the next blogs:

    • Why is there so much gluten intolerance these days?
    • Gluten free is a fad? We don’t think so
    • Details on the study

Cathy Richards
CEO, Chief Enthusiasm Officer

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