Reduced Fat, Or Regular?

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Here are some updates since last time:

- We saw Avatar! Nick and I had not been to the movies (we figured out) in over a year. We felt like old people who had just crawled out from under a cave. We bought snacks (yeah, I had a small popcorn) and even with our 25 dollar gift card we still paid 8 dollars of our own money!! No wonder we never go to the movies. Either way, the movie was fantastic. It was long, but very good.

- Nick's birthday is tomorrow, but we are celebrating tonight with a buffalo style pizza and carrot cake. I'm making the pizza, but I bought the carrot cake from the bakery across the street. I didn't want a full cake in the apartment, so I just bought a piece for us to share (it's HUGE though, so it may as well be an entire cake!). We are then continuing the celebration this weekend, with his family. Lots of birthday cake this month!

Gina's Random Nutrition and Health Tidbit
Peanut Butter; Reduced Fat vs. Regular

• Trying to maintain a healthy weight? Trying to be healthier in general? Buy the reduced fat peanut butter! Or, maybe not. Many clients tell me that they have switched to reduced fat peanut butter in an effort to loose weight or just be healthier. Let's take a look at the nutrition facts for both kinds:

Regular, JIF, Creamy
Reduced Fat, JIF, Creamy

• If you look at the two of these, what do you notice? The reduced fat has the same amount of calories, and it's really calories that you need to watch when attempting to lose/maintain weight, right? Also the reduced fat PB has about 4 grams less fat. But does that make it better? Peanuts contain healthy polyunsaturated fats, so in my opinion the 4 grams less fat isn't so great. The reduced fat peanut butter has only .5 grams less saturated fat, which is actually the fat we want to stay away from. They both have partially hydrogenated oils, which is why I generally choose natural peanut butter.

JIF, All Natural

• Notice anything else about the reduced fat vs. the regular PB? The reduced fat has more carbohydrates and sugar. Both sugar and carbohydrates aren't going to help anyone with their weight loss/maintenance efforts, nor will they help anyone trying to get healthier.

• Oh yeah, one more thing, check out the sodium! There is more sodium (100 mg more) in the reduced fat peanut butter, HA! In my opinion, for a healthy diet, and for healthy weight control efforts, the regular peanut butter is superior to the reduced fat. And, it tastes better :)

The above pictures were from the JIF website

Here is my favorite peanut butter.

Smart Balance came out with a "Great New Tasting!" peanut butter. It no longer tastes and smells like fish! This peanut butter is all natural, and has 20% of the Daily Value of Omega-3 (in the form of ALA) fats.

Coming Up

First I'd like to announce a Tea Exchange being organized by Special K. If you are a tea lover, check it out!

Today I am working, then planning our evening of fun tonight. Basically by fun I mean lots of yummy birthday food, and The Bachelor :). Nick loves the show. How could he not? There are a bunch of "hot" girls running around half-naked all the time. Remember to tell your spouse that if they refuse to watch the show, it may help.
Stay tuned for my next post, which will include a new dinner, a new supplement, and of course some pictures of tonight's delicious eats!
Thanks for reading, and have a great day.