A few tips on healthy eating

If your aim is to lose weight and also enhance your all round well-being, among other things you really should follow a thoughtfully planned healthy-minded dietary regime. In a perfect world, this ought to include five helpings of grains and vegetables every day and take in the right proportion of nutrients.

Some low carbohydrate diet pointers:
* Understand the food labels Don't believe sales blurb that claims to be 'low carb' - check the real nutritional information on the rear of the tin or package. A good number of are only slightly lowered and in some instances still greater than a competitors standard brand. In addition, beware of 'low sugar' and 'low fat' labels - 'low sugar' does not always mean 'low carb' - often the carbs are identical.

* Replace sugar with a low carb substitute such as splenda. Many recipes that require sugar can be adapted to use splenda instead. It is much lighter so you will need to do a bit of trial and error and it may not work in every case, but it does bake up nice once you have it cracked.

Lycopene super foods
(includes apricot, red bell peppers & rosehip)

The nutrient lypcopene is a naturally occurring chemical compound and a member of the same group of phytochemicals as carotene. Lycopene is accountable for the red color of quite a few natural foods.

Usefully, unlike most other nutritional compounds, this useful phytochemical does not degrade if cooked, but is noticeably increased in efficacy by cooking.

. Lycoprene's most valuable health contribution is that it is an antioxidant and appears to be an asset in the battle to lower the risks of developing cancer.

This useful phytochemical is the most potent fighter of singlet oxygen, which is correlated with skin aging. It's also believed to slow down the growth of atherosclerosis.