Holiday Gift Guide Edition

Full disclosure: Each of the items I'm mentioning today I purchased myself, use regularly, and love. I was not asked or paid by anyone to provide these reviews. You should know too, that if you use the links to purchase them on Amazon, I will receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you).

The Cookbook: Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi

This past summer I had the incredible fortune to spend two weeks travelling through Israel in celebration of my oldest daughter's bat-mitzvah. If you've never been to Israel, then you probably don't realize that the food there is incredible. Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi's tribute to Israeli cooking, is both beautiful to read and to explore. While we've cooked a good percentage of its meals, with all being incredible, it was only after I returned from Israel that I found what for me is its truest gem. It's Ottolenghi's take on shakshuka.

For those who don't know, shakshuka is an Israeli comfort food. Often consumed for brunch, it's equally adept at serving as a dinner time meal and at its simplest is peppers and tomatoes stewed with a hot middle eastern spice paste, finished by poaching eggs directly in the mixture, and then eaten with crusty white bread.

When we were in Israel, one of the restaurants I needed to eat at was called, "Shakshukia" and the only thing they serve there is shakshuka. It was incredible. And when we got home, and I cooked Ottolenghi's version, it was almost a dead ringer (when made with Ottolenghi's pilpelchuma (which I'd recommend making with Ancho rather than Pasilla peppers and also doing a quadruple batch and then freezing, in 1/8 of a cup measures, the extra which will allow you to make shakshuka with at most 10 minutes of prep time)).

If you do make it, know that you can keep it vegetarian by cooking it as is, or you can, like I learned to do at Shakshukia, add some grilled merguez sausage to it.

Click here to buy for US readers, or click here to buy for Canadian readers.

The Surprisingly Awesome Kitchen Gadget: A Vacuum Sealer

Though it might not seem exciting, I can't tell you how much I love our vacuum sealer. We bought it this year to use in conjunction with the sous-vide setup I received for my birthday, and honestly, I think I've used it every single day since.

Of course its primary function for us is to freshly seal cooked meals (we batch cook so we always have lunch options and quick dinner options at the ready), and because it does so with a vacuum, the foods stay fresh for far longer than if you were to use (like we used to) Ziplock freezer bags. I have read in some places that you can save a great deal of money using a food saver, both in terms of the ability to buy meats on sale and freeze them without worrying about freezer burn, and also in terms of the heat-sealed bags being cheaper than Ziplocks - but I haven't done the math. What I do know though is that a vacuum sealer is more than that, and for chip-aholics like me, it's a great way to reduce my temptation to eat more. What I mean is that heat based vacuum sealers will also re-seal bags of chips (and rice, and spices, etc.). Doing so not only stops me from going back for seconds, it also keeps the chips as fresh as they day they were opened.

If you do buy one, or even if you use Ziplocks, another tip I've got is once sealed, smooth out the contents of the bags so that they're as thin and as flat as you can make them. That way they'll take up far less room in your freezer, and they'll thaw that much more quickly. The link below is to a Foodsaver version, I bought the one from the US link because it's cheaper and I didn't want fancy bells and whistles (and it's been great), but I couldn't find the same one for sale on Amazon Canada.

Because the prices vary regularly, and because there are many makes and models, make sure you hunt around on Amazon before choosing one, and you might also consider buying some discount bulk no-name vacuum sealing bags - so far they've worked well for us.

Click here to buy for US readers, or here to buy for Canadian readers.

The Incredibly Useful Kitchen Gadget: The Instant Pot Pressure Cooker

We bought ours a few years ago and we're using it more and more often and not just for speedier rice, beans, and quinoa. Don't worry about the space it takes up as the Instant Pot actually replaces a whole pile of devices in your kitchen as it is at once a pressure cooker, rice cooker, steamer, slow cooker, and even can be used as a saute pan. The online Instant Pot communities on both Facebook and Reddit are incredibly helpful, and recipe wise, Serious Eats has a pile as well.

Lately we've been using our Instant Pot to take a shortcut with Ottolenghi's shakshuka (using a can of San Marzano tomatoes and then a 45 minute high pressure run through the Instant Pot as opposed to the long simmer recommended by Shakshukia's chef and owner) - a shortcut inspired by this recipe for an almost as good all-day red sauce for pasta. The one thing we have yet to try is the yogurt making feature which I hear is easy and great.

These Instant Pots go on sale regularly, and there are many models, so once again, have a hunt around on Amazon before buying.

Click here to buy for US readers, or here to buy for Canadian readers

The Home Barista: The Breville BES870XL Barista Espresso

I bought this for my wife for her birthday 3 years ago and we've both used it virtually every single day since. Though it's definitely not describable as inexpensive (generally it runs around $500-$600), if over time it precludes your need to buy espressos, cappuccinos, americanos, or lattes at an expensive coffee shop, you may make some of your money back. For us, because we buy green coffee beans in bulk and roast them ourselves, I'm guessing a fancy coffee costs us somewhere on the order of $0.40 each. Multiply their savings over the at least 730 cups we pull a year and that argument about paying for itself probably holds water.

That aside, this thing is an absolute workhorse and it allows for tremendous customization of grind (the built in grinder works great), tamp, and temperature which in turn yields coffee shop worthy cuppas. It's also incredibly speedy. From turning it on, to a double espresso in my hand in just over a minute (and this includes the time it takes for the machine to heat, the beans to grind, me to tamp, and the pour).

Click here to buy for US readers, or here to buy for Canadian readers.

For other ideas, feel free to have a peek at my last year's gift guide which also includes the simple, relatively inexpensive coffee roaster we've been using for the past 4 years now.

Amazing Circle With Disney Gives Parents Internet Peace Of Mind

Do you worry about your kids' online safety and/or fight with them about the time they're connected? I know my wife and I did. At least a bit, and it was getting worse. Our 11 year old had saved up her own money to buy herself a laptop and suddenly she was online all the time. She loves exploring YouTube videos, playing online games, and just plain surfing, and to us it seemed to be getting a bit out of hand.

Concerned, I started looking around for solutions. I bought a new router that supposedly had parental controls, but they were rudimentary, difficult to set up, and glitchy. I explored OpenDNS, which admittedly looks fantastic and powerful but also complicated and confusing. Then I came across Circle with Disney, and after reading the ridiculously glowing online reviews, I ordered one - that was a little over a month ago.

Circle is amazing. It's a small, might as well be magic, $99 box that gives parents incredible control over their children's internet abilities across all of their devices. Set up was a breeze. Plug it in, connect your wireless router to it by following a few simple instructions and you're up and running.

Circle's controls are app based, and are available for both iOS and Android smartphones. With them you can set time limits for specific websites or platforms (eg. Facebook, Minecraft, Netflix, Games in general, YouTube, etc.), overall time limits and bed times, as well as filter content automatically (with filter levels set for Pre-K, Kid, Teen, Adult, or None).

Content filtering is terrific and it gives you nearly complete control allowing you to turn on and off such things as automated ad blocking, Google safe search, YouTube restricted mode, as well as whether or not they're allowed to shop online, use social media, chat, etc. Circle also will provide parents with site visit histories, a categorized pie chart of time spent online, and will allow you, with a click, to completely "pause" your child's entire net access (until she's done cleaning her room for instance).

Here's a brief video from Circle showing off some of these features:



What's especially amazing, is that their internet time and settings are shared by all of your child's devices, so if yours, like mine, use a laptop and an iTouch, they'll both fall under the same umbrella of Circle settings. And Circle even has a built in battery, so if your kid unplugs your Circle, it'll continue to work. And should the battery fully drain, Circle will send your phone a notification. Circle also reports that coming this year will be the ability to extend your child's Circle settings to their cellular data (if they have it) as well, which means that your kids' days of texting and snapchatting all night may be numbered.

When we bought Circle I had a chat with my 11 year old. She agreed that at times she found it hard to tear herself away from the net, and also that it was annoying when I or my wife pestered her to get off or questioned how long she'd been on. I explained to my daughter clearly what Circle did, and how using it might prevent us from getting into irritating arguments about net time and use. I then asked her what time limits and settings she felt were reasonable. She suggested an hour each per day for gaming and YouTube, an internet bedtime of 9:00pm, and no overall limits as she uses the net to do homework and write. We gave her full access to YouTube, but left Google safe search on. We also agreed that if down the road she felt the settings were unfair or unwieldy, that we could revisit and revise them if necessary.

So far, Circle has worked wonderfully and we're seeing my daughter's beautiful face a bit more often, and she's doing more than just playing online on weekends. My only two minor complaints are that as it stands, there's no way to create different settings for weekends vs. weekdays (Circle reports that this will be worked into future app updates), and that games that don't use the net aren't filtered or tracked.

I give Circle with Disney 5 stars. I can't recommend it highly enough.For a one-time cost of just $99 (there are no monthly subscriptions after purchase), I think this little box provides great value, and a huge sigh of relief for parents. If you're interested in one for your family, here's an Amazon Associates link.

[Fellow Canadians - clearly you can buy and use Circle in Canada, but it's a bit more complicated. For some reason the Circle app is not available on the Canadian iPhone app store. Consequently, if you want to use one, you need to set up an American app store account (instructions here) and download the app from there. You'll also have to ship the Circle to the US and arrange for pickup.]

Holiday Gift Guide

I haven't done any reviews for a long time so today I'm reviewing and recommending a bunch of items I love. You should know, that if you use the links to purchase them on Amazon, I will receive a small commission.

The Cookbook: The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, by J. Kenji López-Alt

(Personally purchased)

The second this cookbook was available for pre-order on Amazon, I jumped on it, and it's so much more than just a cookbook. Think cooking meets science. The book has received beyond glowing reviews (like this one in the New York Times) and seems to be on everybody's must buy list - mine included. Not only will Kenji guide you in making incredible food (including beautiful pictures and careful step by step instructions of the techniques required to master a dish), but he'll review the scientific process he applied to perfect each and every one. The book's a monster, and it's a great buy for home chefs new and old (and if you're buying it as a gift, consider buying yourself one too - it's that good).

Here's an here's an Amazon link for the US, and here's an Amazon link for Canada.

The Pleasure Read: Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

(Cristin and I share the same incredible literary agent (Yfat Reiss Gendell) and agency (Foundry Literary and Media) and I was sent a free copy to read. Shortly after I started reading it however, I elected to purchase a Kindle copy)

Dr. Mütter's Marvels is an engrossing read. It tells the tale of Dr. Thomas D. Mütter, a surgeon who practiced his craft just before, and just after, the dawn of anesthesia. Mütter exemplifies what it means to be a caring physician, and reading it left me feeling humbled and awestruck by Mütter's skill, compassion, and genius. The history recalled is amazing - from the fact that nitrous oxide was originally promoted by its inventor as a hangover cure, to the ushering in of its use in anesthesia with the observation made by Massachusetts General Hospital's John Collins Warren, "Gentlemen, this is no humbug".

Aptowicz brings her long dead characters back to life, and in so doing, gives us a glimpse at what might have been with us, had we not the fortune of being born 150 years later. Many of Mütter's quotations resonated with me. Here's one on surgery that might as well be about nutrition,

"It is a surprising as well as humiliating reflection, that even with all this energy and vigor, with all the lights of modern science to guide us, with all the accumulated facts, false as well as true, of the crowd of laborers in the field, there should exist such diversity of opinion on subjects of the most constant observation."

And this one on life as a whole,

"This world is no place of rest. It is no place of rest, I repeat, but for effort. Steady, continuous, undeviating effort."

Here's an Amazon link for the US, and here's an Amazon link for Canada.

The Coffee Roaster: FreshRoast SR500 Automatic Coffee Bean Roaster

(I was given one of these as a birthday present 3 years ago. Have been roasting my own coffee ever since)

I love coffee. Years ago I made the switch to black coffee and along with it, to roasting my own beans. Though there's definitely an investment in buying one of these roasters (they'll run you between $150 and $200), if you've been grinding pre-roasted beans at home, it'll rapidly pay for itself. I buy one 50lb bag of green coffee beans a year (green beans can be stored for up to 3 years before going bad) from Toronto's Green Beanery. By buying in bulk I'm paying, depending on the bean, somewhere between $6-$9/lb - markedly less than the pre-roasted beans I'd be buying - savings that more than cover the cost of the machine within a year of purchase. If you do decide to home roast, buy some bean samplers and play around with times and temperatures. For US readers, Sweet Maria's is a great green bean wholesaler and there's lots of terrific FAQs and how-tos there as well.

Here's an Amazon US link (sorry, no link for Canada but you can buy at Green Beanery or use the US Amazon link which does ship to Canada).

The Portable Speaker: FUGOO Tough - Portable Rugged Bluetooth Wireless Go Anywhere Speaker Waterproof Shockproof Mud-proof Snow-proof

(Received this speaker for my birthday this year)

I love this portable speaker. The battery life is a ridiculous 40 hours, you can buy an accessory handlebar bike mount (I received one with the gift), it's loud, sounds great, and is virtually bomb proof. Biking with it on my commute to work I'm able to hear both the music and the world around me. We use it at home for impromptu dance parties with the girls as it hooks up via Bluetooth to my smartphone which allows me to stream their favourite songs via Youtube videos. I also use it as an internet radio as once connected to my smartphone, via the free app TuneIn radio, I can listen to radio from anywhere in the world.

Here's an Amazon US link and here's an Amazon link for Canada

The Ultimate Workout Headphones: Jaybird X2 Sport Wireless Bluetooth Headphones

(Received these as a birthday gift two years ago)

I'm so taken with these headphones that I'm reviewing them here a second time. I tried for years to find workout headphones that were comfortable, delivered great sound, and actually stuck in my ears regardless of how hard the workout or the amount of sweat. Then I got the Jaybirds. Not only did they meet all my needs, but they also were Bluetooth headphones that allowed me also to take calls. Truth be told, my experience with the calls feature hasn't been stellar - some connections are great, others less so - but friends who have these headphones as well have told me they've never had a problem so perhaps mine are a bit wonky. At two years old mine are still going strong, but were they to break, I'd spend my own money buying them again in a heartbeat.

Here's an Amazon US link, and here's an Amazon link for Canada.

The Smartphone Sport Armband: Grantwood Technology's TuneBand

(I've bought one for each new smartphone I've ever owned)

If you're looking for a stocking stuffer for the exerciser in your life, or the perfect accessory to go with the Jaybird headphones consider the TuneBand. It's a simple silicon sleeve that securely houses your smartphone while its easily adjustable velcoro armband secures your phone to your arm. I've used one since my first smartphone (the iPhone 4), and I'll likely keep on buying them as phone shapes and sizes change.

Here's an Amazon US link, and here's an Amazon link for Canada.

Guest Post: A Must-Have Supermarket Coupon App

Today's guest post comes from our office's own RD Rob Lazzinnaro who has found this supermarket coupon app to be invaluable, and for the record, he doesn't know the app designers, nor was he paid or asked to write this review.

As an RD I’m always on the lookout for technology that enhances healthy eating and makes it more accessible and attainable. I believe the Flipp app is just that and an excellent example of how technology can indeed help improve food security and health. I have used this app mostly for grocery shopping but it can be used for other essential & non-essential goods. In essence the app is a flyer that takes searching for deals to the next,awesome, level. The weekly savings that Flipp could provide is potentially enormous, granted folks have easy access to grocery stores or good public transportation, which many unfortunately do not.

Flipp is a free download, and once loaded it will ask your location via postal code. It then takes your postal code and compiles a list of all flyers within the selected radius of your location. You now have access to all available grocery stores flyers (of course some grocers will not have flyers) to browse and find deals.

My first recommendation is while browsing a grocery stores flyer to use the discount slider to highlight items in the flyer that are anywhere from 10-50% off (though this doesn't work for every flyer, as the item needs to quote a discount in the stated price for it to be included in the search).

However the more impressive feature is the ability to search a specific food item in all the flyers. e.g. you want to know if there is a sale on oranges, sweet potatoes or avocados at a grocer near you, done:

To take the feature to another level you can even create a grocery list and it will compile the flyers for each individual item, and you can cross items off the list as you get them.

As a final note, I did end up trying the app for other essential kitchenware, such as a slow cooker and food processor and found some great deals! Every kitchen needs the right tools :)

Check it out here!

*Hat tip to my tech savvy wife for finding Flipp, she knows a good app when she sees one.

Holiday Gear Review: The $25 Coffee Maker That'll Free You From Starbucks

3 Aeropresses in action in Vancouver's Revolver Coffee House

[Full disclosure - Not only did I buy this for myself, but I've bought two so that I can have one at home and one at work. No one asked me to write this review.]

It's called an Aeropress and it's amazing.

It makes what some argue to be the world's best cup of coffee, it's dirt cheap, it's bombproof, it travels extremely well, and if used regularly, it'll save you the ridiculous amounts of money and calories that you might otherwise be spending in Starbucks.

It's got such a cult following that there are Aeropress coffee brewing championships held all over the globe exploring the different ways you can use it to brew.

Personally I use the inverted method (as seen in the video below), though I'm not particularly anal about ensuring perfect quantities, timing and temperature and it still tastes great.



I also purchased this 3rd party stainless steel S filter so I never need to buy the paper ones again.

If you'd like one for yourself or as a gift, here's an Amazon Associates link to buy.

Holiday Gear Review: Escali Smart Connect Bluetooth Kitchen Scale

[Full disclosure: I bought this scale myself and am not being paid to review but we do sell them at our office.]

I do love this scale.

As all digital kitchen scales do, this scale can switch from imperial to metric units, has that all important zero button, and doesn't have a ridiculous basket to try to fit things in.

But it also has an app.

The app connects the scale to my iPhone via bluetooth such that when I weigh something on the scale, the app knows, and amazingly, using the app's built in database, I'm able to get a more precise number of calories for whatever item I'm measuring than my eyeballs could afford.

The reviews on Amazon are few and are mixed. A couple speak to the lack of bluetooth connectivity for the Android app, but according to the comments on the app over at Google Play, this has been fixed. Another was upset that they couldn't find a particular brand of Trader Joe pasta in the database. And I guess that would upset me if I were eating a great deal from boxes and jars, but looking up base ingredients I've yet to come across one the scale didn't already have on hand.

Ultimately this scale is for folks who are calorie conscious who tend to cook from fresh whole ingredients and want an easy and accurate way to account for what they're eating.

If you're interested, at least yesterday, the scale was half price on Amazon at $49.99, and here's an Amazon Associates link to their sale page.

Holiday Gear Review: JayBird BlueBuds X Sport Workout Headphone Nirvana

[Full disclosure - I bought these headphones myself and no one asked me to review them]

I love these headphones.

I've spent years trying out different workout headphones, and over the years they've all disappointed me. Either they weren't sufficiently comfortable, or they would fall out, or their cords would get in the way, or the sound would be lacking.

Well my search for the perfect workout headphone ended when my JayBird BlueBudsX Sport Bluetooth Headphones arrived.

Simply put.

They fit great. They sound great. They never fall out. They have an incredible 8 hour battery life. And I can take phone calls with them if need be.

The headphones come with multiple sizes of ear stays and tips, but I also bought the third party Comply noise isolating memory foam tip replacements for them and this made what was already a great purchase, a perfect one.

If you're looking for a special Christmas gift for a gym rat, look no further.

$130 - and if you'd like, here's an Amazon Associates link to grab a pair.

Is The World's Best Sleep Tracker a Simple Notepad?

Later this afternoon I'll be appearing on CTV's The Social to talk sleep, and part of our chat will be about sleep tracking technology.

Preparing for the show I was provided with two trackers to test drive. One from Beddit, and one from Fitbit.

The Beddit tracker, a thin strip of high-tech sensors that you adhere to your mattress, chats via Bluetooth with your phone and records heart rate, respiration and sleep time. Below is a typical night of mine's Beddit readout:

While it was definitely cool data, where Beddit struggled was in figuring out when I was tossing and turning. Fitbit, a sleep tracker/accelerometer that I wore on my wrist, did that well as it recorded every my arm moved.

As you can see from the Fitbit readout, I'm quite a restless sleeper, but frankly some nights I feel much more rested than others irrespective how much I tossed and turned.

And that's where both of these sleep trackers are lacking as there's no amount of technology that would be able to tell a tracker how sleep subjectively feels.

And that's where a notepad shines. Instead of concerning yourself with respiration, heart rate, or movement, concern yourself with how your sleep felt, and using a notepad beside your bed (or a notepad app on your smartphone), when you wake up each morning, rate your sleep on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10's are mornings you feel terrifically well rested, and 1's are mornings you feel tired and a mess. Combine those numbers with information such as how much caffeine or alcohol you consumed (and when you consumed it - both interfere with sleep), your room's temperature, darkness and noise levels, whether or not you used a screen (phone, laptop, TV) before bedtime, what time you went to bed, whether or not you exercised, whether you used a sleep aid, etc. and suddenly you'll have a low-cost, low-tech tool that will allow you to somewhat objectively figure out what matters to your sleep. For instance happily I learned that cutting out both coffee and alcohol from my life doesn't in fact improve my perceived quality of sleep (meaning I don't have to cut them out), but that my room's temperature is best on the colder side if I want to feel rested.

Gadgets are great, but sometimes old-school is the best way to go.

Road ID: A Simple, Indispensable, Free App for Cyclists, Runners, andHikers

[This is a completely unsolicited and uncompensated review]

Cycling on city streets is a sometimes harrowing experience. While years ago I purchased my own Road ID bracelet so that should something bad happen someone could easily find my brief medical history and emergency contacts, it was only last week that I downloaded Road ID's new self-titled app and took it for a few literal test drives.

The app's purpose is to keep your loved ones appraised of where you are, and in the event of trouble, alert them. By means of email or text message (or both) when setting out on a run, cycle, or hike, the app will send what it calls an "eCrumb" to up to 5 contacts letting them know how long you expect to be out along with a link to where they can track your progress superimposed on a Google map. And if something renders you stationary for 5 minutes, the app will send out a second set of texts and emails to your contacts to let them know you haven't been moving and where you're located (it sets off an alarm before it sends out the alert giving you the option to cancel the alert if you've stopped moving on purpose).

While it's certainly not able to prevent an accident, I'm sure glad it's on and running when I am.

Gadget Review: T-Fal Actifry Family Not So Deep Fryer

Full disclosure: Was provided with a free tester from T-Fal

You know I wasn't always interested in nutrition. In fact I once couldn't have cared less about nutrition which might help to explain why I literally buried two deep fryers consequent to using them so often that they died and it was only at the insistence of my now-wife, then girlfriend, that I didn't replace the second one.

That is not until my parents bought me a T-Fal Actifry (which I reviewed way back when) for a birthday gift.

The premise is simple. It heats up real hot, has a rotating stirring arm, and consequently allows you to "fry" using just a small amount of cooking oil and in so doing, keep calories lower. Think of it like a self stirring wok of sorts.

Well T-Fal's been active and they've made a few newer units. One has dual cooking levels allowing you to cook multiple dishes at once and then there's the one I've been test driving which is a newer and much larger version of mine named the T-Fal Actifry Family (a good thing as my family is newer and larger than when I was gifted that first unit).

This time around I was determined to try to cook more than simply fries as while the unit truly puts baked oven fries to shame (just don't expect them to be as sinfully delicious as genuinely deep fried versions), at $250 a unit, that's an expensive french fry maker.

So I tried a bunch of dishes. I made my girls fried bananas, made some sloppy joes, fried up some chicken wings and drumsticks, and made homemade chicken shawarma.

From that batch I had 3 misses and one home run.

The bananas simply squished too much and the girls didn't find them particularly flavourful. The sloppy joes were a disaster. The turning arm isn't capable of breaking up ground meat so I ended up breaking it up by hand. It also wasn't able to stir together the various liquid ingredients as I added them. It also cooked unevenly with the meat nearest the centre burning some. The chicken was alright, but don't expect to leave the skin on as even if you do, the machine will strip it off during cooking - that said the meat was cooked evenly and was moist - but I'll stick with oven broiling.

The home run was the shawarma. The recipe is here but instead of the cumin, nutmeg and cardamom I followed the recipe for the Ras el Hanout from Epicurious for the spicing (the cookbook that came with the fryer called for Ras el Hanout which is how/why I looked it up). We coupled the recipe with homemade hummus and homemade pita and Israeli salad and the result was a unanimous keeper - from my visiting grandmother-in-law to my tiny kids, we all loved it.

At the end of the day I can wholeheartedly recommend the T-Fal Actifry as an awesome gift, and the family unit is really quite large - more than large enough to handle fries for everyone or a dinner stir fry.

I just wish the price were low enough that I could recommend it as a personal purchase - as it is, it's simply too expensive.

Gadget Review: My Month with BodyMedia's LINK Armband

My past 28 days of use summary

A month ago the kind folks from BodyMedia sent me one of their LINK armbands to test drive. I was excited as I'm clearly into collecting and quantifying data - for instance I haven't missed an entry in my food diary for over 2 years and regularly log my workouts on Fitocracy.

I was curious to see if having access to real time activity data would change my own exercise behaviours.

For me the short answer is probably not. I did love the information I got from the LINK, I checked it regularly, but more to see how much I'd done rather than to push myself to do more. I also questioned the data some.

As far as what the LINK tracks it covers calories it thinks you burned, calories you tell it you ate, how long it thinks you were moderately or vigorously active, how many steps it thinks you took and how long it thinks you slept.

My iPhone summary for a particularly active day....and then the chicken wings got me

The LINK armband (it's the one the The Biggest Loser contestants use) sits just above your bicep via a stretchy band with a velcro fastening. It's not water proof so you've got to take it off in the shower and the band does get sweaty with vigorous workouts (but is washable). The other issue I had with it was as a shirt and tie wearing guy. I found it tough to put back on without taking off my shirt.

Tough to put on without taking off shirt

I have to admit, I notice wearing it. When I loosen it to the point of not feeling it periodically I will lose the connection to my arm (it sounds a few notes to say it's signing off) and keeping it tight I definitely feel it all day long and every once and a while the area in contact with the skin gets a bit itchy.

Following the data is easy if you have a Bluetooth enabled Smartphone whereby you simply press a button on the armband and your data will then stream live to your phone. You can also use your phone to upload your data to the website tracker.

Food wise I'm not using their food diary. Instead the LINK syncs with myfitnesspal (my current tracker) which is quite convenient. What I don't find convenient however is that communication is two way in that the LINK tells myfitnesspal that I've burned calories and myfitnesspal then tries to tell me to eat more to make up for them. For folks using a LINK in the context of weight management, this may well inspire, "because I exercised" over-indulgences.

As far as the data's accuracy, I personally think it's overestimating some. While I do workout an average of 4-6x weekly, I'm convinced it sometimes tracks my typing as activity. Apparently I'm not the only one thinking this way as Gretchen Reynold's NYTs piece yesterday speaking to the accuracy of a whole pile of these sorts of monitors references the armband that overestimated typing too.

The price for the unit seems quite fair in and around $100 depending on the retailer, but I am a bit surprised by the monthly fee for the website and app. My understanding is that the website will only provide you with very basic information without a subscription while the app won't work at all. Given the now highly competitive landscape of exercise trackers, and with this one being slightly less wieldy consequent to the armband (rather than a bracelet or something pocketable), I'd expect they'd be better off throwing in as many free bells and whistles as possible.

All in all I'm not sure if this gets my buy recommendation. I say I'm not sure because to be fair, I haven't tried out any other trackers. I think I'd be more comfortable recommending if it weren't for the subscription fees as all of my other complains and issues were minor.

That's my month long data summary up above - now if someone could just teach me how to sleep better.

Gear Review: My Cold Cup - Cheaper and Healthier Than Your Kids' School Milk Program

[Full disclosure - 2 cups provided to me for my kids to test drive]

Ottawa mom and engineer Gwenda Lindhorst-Ko had enough. Her son Jonathan was part of his school's milk program and it was chocolate milk he was drinking. The reason? The white milk didn't taste as good.

Now while many folks (me included) may have just immediately said, "Duh, kids like sugar", not Gwenda, and she wondered whether or not serving temperature may have something to do with it as after all, less than ice cold white milk isn't the best tasting beverage in the world. And she didn't just stop there, she decided to test her hypothesis by engineering and producing a product she's called, "myColdCup".

It's pretty easy to describe. Think a BPA free, stainless steel, 250mL thermos with a freezable insert and a kid friendly, leak proof lid. Basically you freeze the small insert and then snap it onto the inside of the lid, fill your cup with milk (or whatever beverage you want to stay cold) and away you go.

According to Gwenda it'll keep milk at lower than a fridge cold 4 degrees Celsius for 5 hours. According to my kids, "it was really cold, even at the end of the day!". Given it's meant to be carting milk around Gwenda also ensured it was wide mouthed so that it's easy to clean.

While there's definitely an outlay cost ($24.99), given the cost of home poured milk versus school based cartons, it'll pay for itself long before a school year's over.

If you're sick of your kids' school milk program choices and you're looking for an alternative, of if you just want the ability to keep your kids' (or your own) beverages cold, I'd recommend you give myColdCup a good look.

Available for purchase locally in Ottawa, or globally online via www.myColdCup.com

Need Running Motivation? Try the Zombies Run! App (Review)

Now I do love me my Nike +GPS, but when I saw an article detailing the new app Zombies, Run! I immediately wrote the developers and offered myself up as a reviewer (full disclosure, was provided the app freely for review), reason being, I'm a huge fan of the Walking Dead television series and running away from zombies while getting my sweat on sounded too good to be true.

Now the app's pretty steeply priced ringing in at $7.99 and I'll come back to whether or not I think it's worth it at the end, but first, the app itself.

Zombies, Run! is easy to set up - you select the music you want to run to, and whether or not you want zombies to chase you (of course you do!) - and then you slide to run.

Immediately you're immersed in the story line. You're "Runner 5" (why give names to folks who likely won't be around for long), and you've been dropped into the middle of the zombie hordes on your way to Abel Township, a small fortified enclave of living, breathing, non-zombie folk. You've got a radio ear piece, and the comm tower in Abel Township helps to guide you to pick up essential supplies....and of course warns you of upcoming zombie attacks.

There are 25 missions, with each mission lasting roughly 25 minutes of running, but if you're not up to 25 minutes yet, they're subdivided as well and you can pick up nearly where you left off the next time you strap on your shoes. The supplies you pick up during your mission both enrich the story line, and also help you to fortify Abel in the non-running aspect of the app, which allows more survivors to live there.

During each mission it would seem that you have to evade 2-3 different zombie hordes (though perhaps there'll be more in specific missions), which if you're playing the game seriously means forced interval training of roughly minute long zombie-evading sprints. The zombies definitely can get you, though that doesn't seem to end the game, but I think it causes you to drop some of your supplies. The zombie chases work by means of the GPS in the iPhone I suspect by requiring you to sustain a specific percentile increase in speed until you're radio'ed that you've evaded the undead. My last run the zombies came after me just as I was about to start a hill climb and....

The story line's well done and actually quite amusing. If you finish a mission and keep on running the app switches into "radio mode" which will continue to play the music of your choice but will also have cut-ins of equally amusing chatter from the local pirate radio station.

I have a few small quibbles with the app. The volume's a bit wonky in that my music isn't particularly loud compared with the narration so sometimes when the story cuts back in, I have to quickly adjust the volume because it's so damn loud [UPDATE: Realized you can control this setting via the game's setting. Readjusted and it works great!]. It also doesn't seem to remember where I was in my playlist, so going out for my second mission, my playlist began at the beginning again [UPDATE: While it doesn't remember, you can set your playlist to shuffle via the in game settings]. Lastly, if you're accustomed to pacing yourself with music, sometimes the narrations are rather lengthy and may affect your time. But you know what, it's not so difficult to adjust volume, and music wise, I'll just have to remember to run to different albums each time I head out.

So is it worth the comparatively steep $7.99 iTune's cost?

Well what else costs $7.99? A couple of lattes, a fast-food combo, popcorn at the movies, a glossy magazine. I'll often talk about how one of the best ways to help motivate yourself to exercise is to increase exercise's value by tying something enjoyable to it. Given the only way to enjoy the storyline is to run, this fits that bill perfectly and is exactly the sort of app I'd love to see more of.  There's no doubt, it's increased my desire to run.

25 missions, that's over 10 hours of storyline even if I stop before radio mode (which is enjoyable itself). In dollars and cents...or actually cents, that's $0.79 per hour of more enjoyable exercise. [UPDATE: The developers just added 7 additional "supply" missions and a "long run" mode that stretches each mission out to an hour (though then you'd miss the entertaining radio mode banter)]

Seems a downright bargain.

Eat Wise: Dietitians of Canada's new Online Venture. Helpful, Harmful, or Ho-Hum?

So last week I received an email from the Dietitians of Canada promoting their latest venture. It's called "Eat Wise" and it's basically an online searchable database of nutrition fact panels.

So what's it for?

According to the press release it's to,

"make it easier for Canadians to get the nutrition facts on the foods they eat",

and Mary Sue Waisman, the PR and Communications manager of Dietitians of Canada was quoted as saying,

"Whether it’s a fresh apple, apple juice or frozen apple pie, you can get the information you need with just a few ‘clicks’ to help you make informed food choices."

So I decided to put Mary's quote and the site to the test.

Here's what the site taught me regarding fresh apples, apple juice and frozen apple pie (click on the image to enlarge if you'd like):

So what did the site teach me to help inform my food choices?

Fresh apples? Hmm, they really don't contain much of anything, not even vitamins, and wow, they're a lot fewer calories than I thought.

Apple juice? Well a serving apparently is nearly 2 cups, but not quite 2 cups. Gotta remember not to pour that last 27ml.

Apple pie? Great source of iron.

What didn't I learn?

I didn't learn that diets rich in fruits and vegetables have been shown to protect against a myriad of chronic disease, and that apples, given their water content and low energy density, are great in terms of volume based satiety, and that even though they may not be superstars in terms of the meager selection of nutrients Eat Wise scored, their consumption has been linked to health. Nor did I learn that the majority of apples are nearly double the size (and calories) of the "serving" reported by Eat Wise.

I didn't learn that the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Pediatric Society recommend kids younger than 8 have no more than 125ml of juice daily and that drop per drop juice has as many calories and as much sugar as Coca Cola.

I also didn't learn whether or not that apple pie was a large piece or a small piece, or whether compared with other apple pies or home made, it was a good, bad or neutral choice. Interestingly, when I clicked on other apple pies to try to figure that out, serving sizes varied from 164g to 100g, to 156g making actual comparisons quite challenging.

Lastly, while I learned what percentage of my daily recommended value the ten nutritional determinants of food scored provided, glaringly absent was a daily recommended sugar allotment to put that rather important ingredient in perspective.

I think the Eat Wise site is ho-hum, bordering on harmful.

It promotes pure nutritionism and sadly also misinforms by allowing industry based and/or seemingly random portions to be evaluated.

The notion that food is the sum total of its nutrients flies in the face of the fact that virtually everything we understand to be true about the impact of diet on the prevention of chronic disease comes from patterns of whole food consumption, not nutrients.

At the end of this day, I can't imagine who'd find value in this site. If you want pure nutrition data, check out Nutrition Data, where rather than 10 nutritional determinants, they score dozens.

Of course, if you want to know if you're making healthier processed food choices, I'd just stop right there.

Sure it's worth looking at the backs of your packages and getting the least bad options you'll enjoy, but easier still not to worry about nutrients and instead focus on something magical for health - the transformation of raw ingredients. It's called cooking, and it's the very definition of eating wise, and I don't the that the Dietitians of Canada, or anyone else, should be creating products or programs that may lead people to believe that they can do it with boxes.

Walden Farms "Calorie Free" Food Review

Yes, I said "Calorie Free". Not "Fat free", or, "Sugar free" - "Calorie Free", and according to the Walden Farms website, they've been selling "Calorie Free" foods since 1972.

And they have lots of options.

From, "Flavored Chocolate Syrup", to "Peanut Spread", to "Alfredo Pasta Sauce", to "Chipotle Ranch Dressing", there's a zero-calorie condiment for every occasion.

So what's in 'em?

Here are the ingredients for the "Peanut Spread",

"Triple Filtered Purified Water, Cellulose Gum, Salt, Corn Starch, Xanthan Gum, Natural Fresh Roasted Peanut Flavoring, Natural Peanut Extract, Peanut Flour, Caramel Color, Sucralose, Sodium Benzoate"

(You know, for when double-filtered purified water just won't do.)

Clearly Walden Farms is marketing these towards folks worried about calories, and given that I count mine, I was certainly curious what these jars of chemical alchemy tasted like, and so was our office's dietitian Mark.

We both tried the Peanut Spread, Marshmallow Dip and the Raspberry Fruit Spread, while Mark also sampled the Buttermilk Ranch Dressing.

Here are Mark's thoughts, "

I first tried the fruit spread on its own (about a tablespoon’s worth) at room temperature. It was extremely sweet and left a stale-sweet aftertaste that didn’t go away until I munched on some almonds about 30 minutes later. Texture-wise, it looked like any other jelly and it had a maroon colour, which was a little off-putting. I decided to give it another shot over the weekend, this time after it had been refrigerated and on toast with peanut butter. I scooped two tablespoons onto some whole-grain toast and topped it with two tablespoons of natural peanut butter. It didn’t taste any better – still too sweet and it had a lingering, stale aftertaste. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this product as it simply does not taste as good as other jams or jellies.

What pairs well with jam? Peanut butter, of course. I consider myself a pb connoisseur. From natural to chunky, Jiffy to Kraft, I’ve tried them all. With no peanuts in sight, I was curious as to how Walden Farms would pull it off. Opening the jar reveals a butterscotch-coloured gelatin-like substance. I sampled a small amount on the end of a knife. The taste: think super-salty play-doh. And, like the raspberry spread, the taste lingers long after you’ve swallowed. I can’t say that this is the worst peanut butter I’ve ever had because it’s not peanut butter. But it does rank as one of the worst things I have ever tasted.

And lastly the salad dressing. When I eat salads, I like to have a lot of dressing. But dressing is often quite high in calories, so I was excited to try Walden Farms' calorie-free buttermilk ranch dressing. Could I finally douse my salad in dressing without worrying about the calories? Sadly, no. I added it to a salad comprised of lettuce, tomato, green peppers and plain croutons. It poured like traditional dressing and had the standard white-opaque colour of ranch dressing. Where it failed is in the flavour department. I struggle with how to describe the flavour – it tastes like ranch dressing, just really bad ranch dressing. The flavour is flat and it has a chemical-like aftertaste.".

My take on those products? My mouth's still mad at me. Certainly among the very worst things that have ever been in it.

Of all of the products, their Marshmallow Dip was the truest in taste. Still cloyingly sweet. Still a horrible chemical aftertaste. But then so too does actual Fluff.

These products are horror shows in bottles. While I'm all for reducing calories, you need to actually enjoy the foods you're eating, and unless you've got a tongue covered in scar tissue, enjoying these products isn't something I can readily imagine you'll be able to do.

So if you pass by Walden Farms products in the supermarket, please, for the love of all that's holy, don't stop.

My Aquavee swim treadmill review!

Ever hear of Endless Pools?

They're these $5-15,000 pools that you can install or retrofit into your existing pool that allow you to swim against a current. Effectively they allow you to swim endlessly even in your own tiny pool.

Ever hear of Aquavee? It's a $79.99 set of bungee cords, suction cups and an inflatable belt that (cost) effectively allows you to swim endlessly even in your own tiny pool.

I finally hooked mine up this past weekend (dead simple, took all of 1 minute) and am pleased to say, it's worth every penny. Had a 30 minute swim and my only complaint is some chafing from the belt on my right upper abdomen that I suspect was due to one of the suction cups coming loose and me swimming slightly off centre for the last 10 minutes.

Now I'm not a particularly good swimmer (as the video below will attest to), but to my unskilled stroke, it felt pretty much the same as swimming laps in my local community centre.

Would be perfect for travelling too as it would turn small hotel pools into endless ones.

Fabulous product Aquavee - would make a great Father's Day gift.

Here's the $79.99 Amazon link - make sure to select the correct size (S, M or L sized belts).

Here's a video of me using it in my pool (and yes I know I'm a crappy swimmer).

[Update: RD and blog reader Helene emailed me about another product - Stretchcordz that's even cheaper that ties to your pool's ladder. Google it and see if you can find a distributor]

Can a camera replace your food diary?

It works for Javier Garcia, a 28 year old neuroscientist who was recently profiled in the New York Times for photographing every single thing he's eaten over the course of the past 5 years.

Apparently there's a whole lot of folks like Javier out there, so many that I'm starting to receive blind PR pitches from iPhone developers who are creating apps for photographing food diarizing.

One such app is called Thin-cam and basically the premise is that you're less likely to forget what you've eaten if you've photographed it.

The PR pitch came with their handy dandy 10 reasons why it's a good idea and why it's superior to more traditional forms of food diaries (ie. counting calories).

So let me explain succinctly why it's not.

Pretend that times are tough and that you're trying to keep a careful household budget and you've decided that instead of tracking the costs of your purchases you're just going to take pictures of them.

Sound like a good plan?

Javier started his practice after losing 80lbs as a means to try to help himself keep it off. In that sense I can see potential value in that he may well be able to ensure he's not straying from the choices that helping him lose the weight.

Ultimately though, using a photographic food diary may help someone who's not keeping track at all and it may also helpfully augment traditional food diarizing, but it certainly won't supplant actually tracking the currency of weight, calories, in helping you balance your caloric books.

Spend the few seconds to write the foods down as you eat them (and at home ensure you've included measurements) - probably won't take much more time than pulling out your camera, framing your shot and taking it and it'll give you much more information.

T-Fal Actifry hands on review (World's healthiest deep fryer?)

Many months ago I wished I had my hands on T-Fal's Actifry deep fryer which promoted itself as being capable of "frying" 2.2lbs of French fries using a single tablespoon of oil.

Happily my generous parents answered my wish and bought me one for my birthday.

So, was it everything I'd hoped for?

Almost.

There's zero doubt that it makes far, far tastier French fries than our homemade oven baked versions or storebought oven baked.

The fries are very crispy on the outside and soft like a fry should be on the inside, but they're not quite deep fried.

We've been using the Actifry more lately to make sweet potato fries as sweet potatoes are far healthier choices than regular potatoes.

Given the machine's design, it's not going to replace a person's deep fryer for many items other than French and stir fries, but my biggest beef with the Actifry? Cost. The thing's stupidly expensive. $299 for a heated, teflon-coated ceramic pan with a rotating arm? That price puts this item in the realm of gift only where the best gifts are those things you want but could never in a million years justify buying for yourself.

Have you been naughty or nice this year?

The Quantum Scale Review

It's a rarity when an established product gets a useful makeover.

Today's usefully made over product? The scale.

Now I've posted a fair bit about scales over the years. I've talked about scale seduction, scale avoidance and how often you ought to be weighing yourself.

An overarching theme to all my thoughts and comments on scales has to do with the fact that how much you weigh isn't important, what's important is what you're doing about what you weigh. Similarly there are no ideal weights and you shouldn't strive to achieve a specific BMI. Instead you should strive to live the healthiest lives you can enjoy whatever your weight is living that life, well that's what I call your "best weight".

I've watched scales beat people up regularly. Someone's doing phenomenally well, has lost dozens of pounds and then they stand on a scale and it's not down enough, not down at all or slightly up and suddenly they forget about the fact they may be down dozens of pounds and the fact that they're living a healthier lifestyle and instead they focus on that 1 pound gain that suddenly has them feeling like they're failures. Similarly I've had people who just can't get past the actual number on the scale and regardless of how incredibly they're changing their lifestyles for the better, every time they see that number it defeats them.

Enter the Quantum Scale.

The Quantum Scale is a scale built for one and the premise is simple - it doesn't ever tell you your weight. Step on the scale for the first time and internally the scale registers your weight and saves it. Everytime you step on it thereafter it tells you how many pounds up or down you are from when you first stepped on the scale. I love it because it de-emphasizes the what you actually weigh aspect of the equation.

Now it's not perfect, and I've got a few recommendations for the company:

- I recommend they enable a feature that would limit the number of times per day or week that it's used. Stepping on a scale multiple times a day just proves that you're too tied to your scale. Having the option of the scale locking you out and allowing for either a single daily or a single weekly weigh-in would help combat scale addiction.

- I recommended they add a small flashing LED that similarly would go off after a pre-set time of not weighing oneself so as to combat scale avoidance.

- I recommended they increase the width and depth of the scale so as to make it easier for larger folks to stand on.

- I recommend they create a raised, angled or detached readout so that folks who may have difficulty seeing the number can mount it off to one side or have it high enough that they can see the numbers.

Right now the scale is good to up to 330lbs. Hopefully newer versions will have higher weight capacities as well.

Despite those features that I wish were present indeed in my mind this is a quantum leap forward in scale design.

If you want one of your very own you can buy them from their website for $89 and if you add in the code QSXMAS then at least for now you'll get yours for $66.75.

The amazing SnoWovel - an updated review

Long term readers of my blog may recall a post I wrote back in 2007 when I reviewed the first generation of the Wovel - the shovel on a wheel. That's me with that original Wovel at my old home and my old driveway (more on that later).

I loved the original Wovel but had some beefs.

Well sometimes writing a blog has perks as the President of the company that makes the Wovel happened on my post and he asked me if I would be willing to re-review his latest Wovel iteration (I believe it's a 3rd generation product).

I of course said sure.

Now Ottawa's been hit with a bit of snow. We had our first snowfall of the year totalling 20cm and then a second of 5cm a few days later.

I tried the SnoWovel out on both.

My thoughts?

Even though I already thought the original Wovel was great this is a vastly improved product. It's lighter and so it's certainly easier to wield and for me anyhow, its improved adjustability allowed for an easier throw of the snow. Handles now come standard (that was one of my original complaints) and despite having a stupidly large driveway (really stupidly large - it's one of those ones that is both semicircular in front and rectangular on the side towards the garage), I managed with the 5cm snow to wovel it all in about 45 minutes - only 15 mins longer than it would have taken me to snowblow (and I've got a self-propelled 13hp monster) and I imagine at least 3 times as fast as I would have been able to shovel it.

Due to the design I wasn't out of breath, and I wasn't bending over and straining my back. The only muscles that hurt on me were my shoulders which after 45 minutes were definitely burning a bit.

I can't say the same about wovelling the heavy snow. Trying to wovel 20cm of snow was rough and from a gigantic driveway while certainly doable, would likely have taken me 2 hours and truly significant pain in my shoulders. I switched to the snowblower.

An added bonus regarding the new version is it's easily foldable which save space in the off season.

Now it's not a perfect product (no product is). Where I ran into trouble was where cars had hard packed the snow leading up to the garage. Trying to wheel over those spots the SnoWovel would get stuck. That said it didn't take much to get over them and even my snowblower doesn't generally dislodge that tight packing. In fact on the parts of the driveway that didn't have hard packed snow the SnoWovel managed to get right down to the surface whereas the snowblower tended to leave a tiny layer of snow.

Bottom line for me? For light snow under 10cm I plan to use the SnoWovel season long. For heavier snows, I'll stick to the snowblower, of course that's primarily because of just how stupidly large my driveway is. If it were smaller there'd be no reason whatsoever to hire a service or buy a snowblower - it'd be all SnoWovel all the time heavy snow and all.

An already fabulous product made markedly better - what's not to love?

$119.95 on Amazon.com and also available in Canada at the Home Depot (though I couldn't find the Snowovel online, only accessories).

You can visit the SnoWovel's official website here.



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