"Rethink Your Drink"

Recently there is a photo going around the internet and it arrived on my Facebook wall:

I would love to give credit to the creator of this picture if I know him/her.


This is a brilliant way to get a clear idea how much sugar is in the crappy drinks! They should really have shown the sugar content in Ribenna and the Vitamin Water!


For teachers and parents, this is a great activity idea. These are what you will need to prepare:
- kitchen scale
- clear plastic bags
- teaspoons (1 teaspoon = 4 grams)
- huge tub of white sugar


As your children to name one of their favourite drink, get them to read the nutrition table on the packaging and weigh out the amount of sugar contained in the drink into the clear plastic bag. Get them to compare the sugar among their drinks.


You can also check this site out for a list of sugar content in the common drinks in Singapore.

Artificial colouring

I love love love Starbucks' Green Tea Latte, but on my health-conscious days I find it too sweet for my liking and sadly, unlike buying coffee from kopitiam, I can't ask for "siew dai" (less sweet in Hokkien) because apparently it is made with a  pre-mixed formula readily loaded with sugar.


To curb my craving in a healthier way, I decided to try my luck and make my own concoction using my Nespresso machine. I bought a pack of premium grade Japanese green tea powder from the supermarket and added 5 teaspoons of powder (which was meant to make 5 cups of tea) into the steamed milk...


The end result, it tasted absolutely delicious, creamy texture with intense green tea fragrant, but...


It just didn't look like the real deal, see the comparison:

I added more and more and more green tea powder (15 teaspoons in total!) but the colour was not even half as green as the Starbucks'... I gave up.


There is no way that Starbucks could have used pure green tea powder as the cost is too high, so I concluded that they have added colouring (lots of it) into my favourite drink! sigh...


And here is an article that confirmed my suspicion, and to make conscience effort to reduce use of chemicals in their products, Starbucks use insect-based ingredients to make their drink colourful and attractive. I am really not sure if I should be happy to know that the colouring is now more "natural", because given a choice I wouldn't consume insect for its brilliant colour...


The amount of chemicals from artificial favourings, preservatives and colouring we consume daily is horrifying. You just can't run away from it, they are everywhere be it cheap or expensive food sources. These kind of additives are added liberally just to make the products more competitive and lucrative. Many studies show links between consuming food additives to diseases like hyperactivity in children, skin allergies, asthma and even cancers. How can we not fall sick if we keep pumping in harmful chemicals into our bodies?!

Why can't they leave a simple drink to look simply the way it is??

Neurocognitive Updates

I am really very irritated by some inconsiderate idiots who keep advertising their viagra on P-Latte. These people are dumb as Pilates lovers probably don't need viagra!!!! Does anyone know how to stop them from doing it?

I recently attended a neurocognitive conference, the speakers were excellent and shared lots of updates in many area in neurocognitive development. I especially enjoyed the sessions on children's language development, and how nutrition in pre/ post-natal mothers influence baby's brain development.

I am sure most health-conscious people would already have known about the goodness of omega-3 fatty acid (especially in the form of docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA). It is essential in brain development, cognitive functions, and in immune system. There is also evidence that shows DHA dietary supplementation might even protect the brain from trauma and aid in its recovery.

What caught my attention in the conference was, research now proves that exercise can boost the action of DHA supplementation. This is because DHA activates syntaxin 3 and neutrite outgrowth (Dario al, 2006). Gomez (2008) also demostrated how DHA and exercise interact to affect neuronal function in membrane fluidity & gene regulation).

So besides making you feel good, managing your body weight and improving your appearance, exercise can boost your brain power (thus make you smarter) too!

Toxic Chemicals in Plastic Bottles

I have mentioned previously about toxic chemicals that may potentially leached out from baby milk bottles, actually such toxic chemicals can be leached out from other plastic containers that we use everyday.



There are literally plastics everywhere in our city life, and many city dwellers probably can't live without plastics (imagine Great Singapore Sales without the plastic shopping carriers!) We are exposed to vast amount of toxins everyday and they may potentially harm our health, as these toxins can leached out into the food/drink. How many times you heard your friend saying that 'I don't like this, it taste like the plastic bottle ...', while in fact, they are really "drinking" the plastic.



What should we do? It is quite impossible to avoid using plastic all together, but since some plastics are better than other, the very least that we can do is try to lower our exposure to the "bad" ones.



Many plastic containers have triangle symbol on the bottom with a number inside. They are not just meant for recycling only. The number actually tells you the kind fo plastic the container is made of: (http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/environmentinhk/waste/guide_ref/guide_plascod3.html)

Among the 7 categories, No. 3, 6 and 7 is the worst. In my baby milk bottles entry, BPA (an environmental hormone) can be leached out from bottles made of polycarbonate (PC) plastic, which is under No.7 ("Other" category) in the coding system. PC is widely used in colourful clear plastic bottles and many renouned brands like Sigg and Nalgene used to use it in their products.

So, as much as possible, try to:

1. Do not re-use plastic water bottles
2. Do not use plastics containers (such as styrofoam box, chicken rice paper wrap, plastic bags) to keep hot food.
3. Transfer food content from canned food once it is opened (as the interior of tin cans are lined with plastic).
4. Use glass or metal containers as much as possible.

Toxic Chemical in Infant's & Children's Feeding Products

A year ago while I was looking for a gift for my baby niece in-law, a doctor friend strongly recommended me to buy a special feeding bottle. The special thing about this bottle was that it does not contain the chemical "bisphenol-A" (雙酚A in chinese or BPA in short) .


Okay, that was the first time I heard about this chemical. I read the brochure and roughly know that it is harmful to health. That's about it.


Now that I am pregnant, I start to pay more attention to the quality and safety of baby products (the melamine milk scandal just make me more paranoid). When I did my baby-stuff shopping in HK (where prices are generally 20% cheaper than S'pore), I realised BPA-free products have come into the mainstream market. Parents are careful in picking up only BPA-free bottles, sippy cups, eating utensils and even toys. A shop owner told me that BPA is a big topic among parents not only in HK, but in Taiwan (click here for a chinese news articleon BPA), Korea and Japan as well.


So why is there little awareness of BPA in Singapore? I asked my friends, the most "kiasu/ 怕輸" full-time-baby-sitting mothers (who only buy the most expensive and best quality products for their babies) about it, none of them heard about such issue.


According to Bisphenol-A Free, BPA is a "hormone-disrupting chemical considered to be potentially harmful to human health and the environment. It has been known that scratched and worn polycarbonate feeding bottles will leach this chemical into liquids."

As usual, depending on who is funding the research, there are conflicting research datas that either support the claim that BPA is toxic or it is not harmful to human health.


While FDA and European authorities are being rather fiddle-minded over the issue, Canada government is a little more decisive and it officially puts BPA under the toxic chemical list.

Though the controversy continues, I am not going wait for few decades for the scientists to be sure and I rather be kiasu to stick to the safe side. Why risk exposing my baby to any known potential harm?!

Luckily I found this excellent "Z Recommends" that gives a comprehensive Report on BPA in Children's Feeding Products. This comes in really handy to help me purchase BPA-free milk pumps, milk bottles, utensils and toys etc for my little prince. I am glad that the expensive Combi training cups that I bought from HK are safe to be used.

Make Your Body Burn More Fat on Its Own!

There are many things in life that doesn't work in the "more-the-merrier" manner, unlike what most people think, dieting and exercise are just two of such examples.

Many overweight people achieved incredible amount of weight loss when they change their lifestyle, that is by eating less and exercise more. But they soon reach a weight-loss planteau, the speed and amount of weight loss start to slow down and even stop. They become so eager to continue losing weight that they stop eating proper meals, and they do cardio exercises like running and biking for few hours, DAILY.

Problem is, what if these people hit another weight-loss plateau? Are they going to increase their exercise duration to 24/7 just to lose extra pounds?! That just doesn't make any logical sense.

What really happen to these people is, as explained by Yahoo Health:

Our bodies are built to survive, so when you exercise for long periods of time (often and consistently) your body thinks it needs to hold on to fat for energy. Doing short (12-15 minute), intense exercise sessions builds strength and burns calories, but not fat, so it “feels safe” using fat stores for energy after exercise.

So if you run everyday for 30 minutes, you are turning your body into a fat-sparing machine. So what is the ideal strategy to keep your body efficient in burning fat and to spare your precious time for social life than to be stuck in endless cardio exercise?

1. Instead of running/biking everyday for 30min, exercise in short, intense bursts (interval training) for effective fat burning after exercise. E.g. Run for 10-15min at 80-85% (depends on your fitness of course ) max heart rate (MHR) instead your normal routine of 30min at 65% MHR

2. Build more lean muscle by increase the amount of resistance/strength/weight training you do. Muscle is ‘metabolically active’ and burns more calories than other body tissue even when you’re not moving. Don't worry, weight training is NOT going to make you look like body builder that easily.

3. Chill on the amount of food you are eating.

Here is a sample five-day/week training schedule for you:

Day 1 Weight training for big muscle groups (Back/Chest/ Legs) and short & very intense cardio training , e.g. 15-minute fast run/walk or fast cycling sprint intervals. Day 2 Moderately long, moderately intense session (30-45 minutes) of strong walking, cycling, or Pilates Day 3 60-90 minutes of a moderately paced walk/hike. Day 4 Short & very intense cardio session, e.g. 15-minute fast run/walk or fast cycling sprint intervals. Day 5 Weight training for big muscle groups (Back/Chest/ Legs) and moderately long, moderately intense cardio (30-45 minutes)

It would be great if you can add on daily Pilates practice to your training scheule too! But remember, more does not equal to better. Make sure you practice Pilates exercises with control and precision. Repetition is never the emphasis in Pilates.

Take a Break, for the better

There were loads of distraction happening end of last year that had quite disrupted my focus on Pilates. I stopped training myself, cut down teaching and also paused P-latte blogging. I was such a bad bad bad girl...

During this period of time I had a well deserved break when I went back HK for a big family reunion. So now I feel recharged and I have so much to blog about. I believe that it is important to have a break as and when needed, no matter what you are dealing with. In fact one of the most important diet tip I gave to my friends and clients who wanted to lose weight was to take a break from their strict diet, and

"eat your favourite chocolate cake or indulge in something sinful, once a week."

Of course after the indulgence you have to work a bit harder to take those calories off. Some dieters are totally put off by this idea. But most often than not, these are also the dieters who would fail to achieve their diet goals. Many of them are so angry with themselves when they eventually succumb to temptation that they gave up dieting altogether, thinking that they are not fated to succeed in their weight-loss program.

The real logic is, it is easier to stay away from a piece of yummy cheese cake continuously over just a week, than to stay "deprived" over an extended period of time. It is like a marathon runner "strategies" his race by setting various milestones (say every 5km), then conquering them one at a time, before finally crossing the finishing line at the 42km mark. It is really a tough mental game to stay away from tons of diet temptation in our modern living, it's probably wise to recharge your mental power once a week by rewarding yourself with few pieces of beautiful chocolate praline, so that you can win the lifelong challenge of smart-eating.

This is my diet strategy, what's yours?

Reading Food Labels

I always nag my friends on healthy eating (yeah, i know sometimes i'm quite a nuisance :D). On my last supermarket trip with Kelley, I was sharing with her how food labels can help her make food comparison and buy the best (if not only value-for-money) food item!

The food label, though designed in a supposedly easy-to-read manner, all the numbers and values are sometimes confusing for many people. I found a website that gives a simple (and truly easy-to-understand)explanation by providing a good example, comparing two burgers:

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Step 1:
Look at the % Daily Value. Which burger is higher or lower in nutrients?

Step 2:
Check out the nutrients you want more of. At 30% the beef burger packs an iron punch.

Step 3:
Watch out for the nutrients you want less of. The fat and saturated fat are higher in the beef burger. Not great. But the chicken burger has double the amount of salt. That's not so great either.

Step 4:
Ok. If you're looking for iron-rich foods, the beef burger wins. But if you want a lower fat option (and don't mind the double dose of salt) the chicken burger is your champ.

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Have a better picture of how to use the labels now?? :)

KL trip – fighting against Cholesterol

Last week I was in Kuala Lumpur (KL) to for a meeting. My KL colleagues brought me to try various KL's famous dish including the “roast-pork noodles”. This KL style Roast pork had zero resemblance from the HK counterpart; it was totally covered with black sauce, but it is delicious.

I realize KL food is really tasty, but like its many other famous dish, it is usually quite salty and oily. The rich aroma is often created by cooking with a generous amount of lard. I am not too used to it since I have a much lighter taste-bud.

Some people thought it is ok to consume fatty food, as long as they avoid food that is high in cholesterol (the notorious to clog your blood vessels). But what they don’t realize is, only 20% of the cholesterol in the body is ingested from our diet and the remaining 80% of cholesterol is generated by our very own livers, as a response to eating saturated fat.

My mother is one good example. She loves eating soda crackers, thinking that it is healthy because it’s “fortified with calcium” and low in cholesterol. Thus she was extremely shocked and upset to find herself “scoring” badly in her health screening. She is hypertensive and has high cholesterol in her blood. “I don’t eat unhealthily and I don’t even get to enjoy eating crabs and other good food often, so why should I suffered from this kind of “rich-man disease”?! ” she was very frustrated.

In fact, a lot of seemingly “safe” food that emphasize on “Low / No Cholesterol” is actually not heart-friendly at all, and many uninformed consumers suffered from heart problem even though they tried all means to avoid food that is high in cholesterol.

So how to control your cholesterol level? Try these:

1. Cut Fats:

• Avoid all deep-fried food (so eliminate saturated fats)
• Skip the snacks/ biscuits aisles in supermarket as processed foods contain hydropgenated fats. So say no to margarine, pastries, packaged cookies, crackers, potato chips, and other snack foods. (hell that's like more than half the food items in supermarket!)
• Cut down fat intake by removing fats around red meat, chicken/duck skin, full cream diary products.

2. Eat More

• Soy protein (like Tofu)
• Fruits & vegetable (never forget daily your 2+2 servings)
• Fish (such as salmon, mackerel, sardine)
• Oatmeal
• Flaxseed

3. Exercise!

• this can raise your metabolism and burn calories, losing fat weight, lowering total cholesterol, increases the good HDL cholesterol that helps prevent plaque from forming on the walls of the arteries

4. Relax lah!

• Fatigue, anger, and distress can raise your body's adrenaline levels, causing cholesterol to rise.

5. Medication

• Your family doctor may prescribe you Statins, which are able to control an enzyme in the body that is responsible for the manufacture fats. This control process reduces the body's production of cholesterol. Thus help control triglyceride levels, lower LDL or "bad cholesterol," increase the HDL or "good cholesterol," and lower total cholesterol.