Category Archives: Food

You’re never far from the golden arches

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Image courtesy of bryangeek

Image courtesy of bryangeek

One of the biggest challenges that we face in the modern era when it comes to having a balanced diet is that cheap, unhealthy food is considerably easier to get than the healthier alternatives.  Low-calorie, low-fat,  and nutritious food is frustratingly expensive when compared to the dollar menu at your local fast food chain, and if you’re dieting on a budget those pennies can add up quickly.   What’s worse is that when you are really hungry it sure seems like it’s a heck of a lot easier to run for the border than actually go through the effort of cooking something that is good for you.

Well, it turns out that perception may not be too terribly far from reality in America.  Unless, that is, you literally live in the middle of nowhere.

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Five tips to make game night healthier

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Food! On a Table!

That's a great spread, Mike, but where are we going to put the battle mat? Image courtesy of kweezy mcg

There’s a video out there by a group of comedians known as the Dead Alewives that wonderfully captures my early memories of playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends in my teen years. You probably know the video I’m talking about.  It’s the one that has the line about casting Magic Missile at the darkness. A line that makes my friends and I giggle and repeat the phrase in that voice every time we hear the words “Magic Missile.” ( So much so that Krystalle almost refused to use that spell entirely unless we let her rename it for her character – but I digress.) If you’ve ever played a tabletop RPG you’re likely to find something in that sketch that resonates with your memories of game night, up to and including the iconic “Where are the Cheetos?’ and “Can I have a Mountain Dew?”

Snacking and gaming go hand-in-hand. So much so that the 4th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide mentions the importance of snacks in several places (and stresses that one of the benefits of being the DM is that YOU shouldn’t have to pay for them). The problem is that, as a general rule, the snacks that we commonly associate with game night aren’t really the kind of things you want to eat if you’re trying to be healthy. I love Doritos and Jolt Cola as much as the next gamer, but the hundreds of all night sessions that were fueled by those kind of foods when I was a kid were contributors to the fact that I was over 400 pounds by the time I was 28 years old.

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Denny’s apparently has salty food

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HAMMYAs someone who has the great fortune of living in the Tampa Bay area of Florida I have ready access to what Ronan from VNV Nation refers to as one of the best goth clubs in the country – The Castle.  While I haven’t been in a while, I truly find that one of the greater pleasures in life is to head out there for a late night of dancing, drinking, and socializing with some of the finest people on the planet.

When 2:00 AM rolls around and they kick on the lights, though, I’m seldom in a mood to head home and call it a night.  Several hours of high energy booty shaking mixed with what is often an unwise combination of concoctions puts me in a mood for salty, greasy, goodness.  What better place to quench that desire than a 24 hour Denny’s?

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Five breakfast options for 100 calories or less

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Powdered Toast Man!Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

When it comes to healthy eating battle cries this has to be one of the most common ones. However, despite the scientific evidence proving the statement above to be true quite there are a great deal of people who choose to skip off on breakfast before starting their day. For some folks it is simply because the allure of sleeping an extra 30 minutes is too great to pass up. If you’re trying to lose weight you may skip off on breakfast because you’re not sure of the healthy, low-calorie options that are out there. Many of the popular breakfast options that we’re familiar with such as pancakes, doughnuts, fried eggs, and biscuits with sausage gravy really don’t fall into the “light” category.

Not every breakfast has to be a big bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. If you’re looking for a healthier way to start your day I have five options that may just tickle your fancy.

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Toll House Recalls Cookie Dough

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Image courtesy of SuperFantastic

Image courtesy of SuperFantastic

Ok.  So.  This is a health and fitness blog for geeks, right?  The whole point of this thing is to promote lifestyle choices that will help you live longer and better lives.   That’s why we’re all here.  I get that.  I mean, considering the fact I’m one of the founders one would hope that I grasp the concept of the experiment.

I also understand, however, that there are times when all the good choices in the world get tossed aside and you just have to have something decadent.  Call it a mental health break if you will, but every once in a while even the strongest of us just have to be “bad”.  I get that, too.

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Dieting on a Budget : 100 Calorie M&M Packs

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Pre-Packaged 100 Calorie PacksHealthy food is expensive.  There’s just no two ways about it.  Fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and low-calorie treats are all generally a lot more expensive than a box of Patio Burritos.  Many of the lower income members of society who struggle with their weight simply cannot afford to eat well (and it goes without saying that gym memberships, diet supplements, and pre-packaged meal programs are simply out of the question).  Even those of us who aren’t necessarily struggling to pay the bills have to deal with the fact that our money just isn’t buying as much as it used to, and with all the economic uncertainty that is out there today it just makes sense to save wherever you can.

With that in mind were here at ShrinkGeek thought we’d occasionally share some of the ways we have found to eat better and save a few pennies in the process.  Our subject for today is the 100 Calorie M&M Snack Packs.

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When Come Back Bring Pie

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Weebl and Bob are copyright j. picking

Weebl and Bob are copyright j. picking

According to Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich there we must all accept that there are certain inalienable truths :  Prices will rise.  Politicians will philander.  You, too, will get old (and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders).

Oh, and Pie is greater than Cake.

Not many people are aware that Ms. Schmich included that in her original column.  Unfortunately that line was omitted from the printed article by a delusional cake loving typesetter named Gladys who worked for the printers.  It’s true.  My wife told me.  My wife….Morgan Fairchild!  Yeah, that’s the ticket!

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Tips For A Healthier Breakfast

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The BlobBreakfast.  It’s the most important meal of the day.  That’s what they tell us anyway.  I’m not entirely sure who “they” are, really, but I know that from a very early age it seems as though every adult in your life was telling you how important it was that you get in your bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs before heading off to school in the morning.  Heck, they even put it into our cartoons.  If you’re a flannel wearing member of Generation X like me you may recall Timer, a shape changing yellow guy who sang to us about breakfast being so important that we might want to consider things like leftover chicken legs if we were out of eggs.

So yeah.  Breakfast is important.  We all know this.  Thing is, somewhere along the line a lot of us forget it.  The desire to get an extra twenty minutes of sleep in the morning often results in either no breakfast or hitting up your favorite doughnut chain for something that, while delicious, is loaded with calories and very little nutrition.  If you’re trying to improve your health, though, kick starting your day with a nutritious breakfast is an important step on the path of doing so.   Research has shown that people who eat breakfast are “significantly less likely to be obese and diabetic than those who don’t.”

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Free Grilled Chicken Coupon From KFC – Limited Time!

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Grilled ChickenKFC (the company formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken to those of us who can remember when Colonel Sanders was a real person and not a break dancing cartoon) is offerin a limited time coupon in order to promote their latest offering – Grilled Chicken!

KFC has been struggling to find ways to appeal to folks who are trying to be healthy for a long time.   They even had a short-lived campaign in which they actually tried to promote fried chicken as health food.  Actually offering up some low-calorie grilled chicken, however, is a great big step in the right direction in my eyes.

If you’re careful.

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Fresh Pizza From A Vending Machine!

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image (and pizza!) by Gio JL

image (and pizza!) by Gio JL

Our good friend Barb Dybwad over at Obsessable just posted an article that I simply felt a moral obligation to share with you all.  Seems that while visiting a food court here in the States and Italian inventor by the name of Claudio Torghele came up with the utterly brilliant idea to put together a vending machine that dishes out fresh pizza.  Now, the key word I want you all to pay attention to in the previous sentence is “fresh.”  Pizza from vending machines really isn’t a new concept, but this amazing little device actually puts all the ingredients together when you order and bakes the pizza for you in about three minutes.

If you’ve been reading this blog for the last few months (and hey, kudos to you if you have considering that we haven’t really launched yet) you may think that my reaction to this would be something along the lines of “grr!  Yet another example of how they market unhealthy food to the masses!  Fitness Rage!!!”

Well, you’d be wrong.

For one, pizza is just awesome.  There’s no denying that.  But more important than that, if you’re going to have to eat food from a vending machine getting a freshly made and baked pizza with real ingredients is a considerable improvement over a Snickers bar and a bag of Jalapeno Cheetos.

On a social note, it will be interesting to see how this particular device sells in the inventors home country.   It Italy, Pizza is serious business, so much so that they came up with a set of rules to define what is and is not a pizza over there.  They even offer certification if you want to sell Neapolitan Pizza!  In an land that takes Pizza as seriously as France takes Champagne, it’s hard to imagine the Italians are going to sit by and let a machine take over the role of the traditional pizzeria.   Here in America though, where the definition of Pizza is pretty loose (can you say CiCi’s anyone?), I suspect this vending machine will do just fine.