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While the hippo water roller is a form of domestic exercise, it is an absolute awesome invention that helps those who have to transport water manually from a well or other water source more efficiently and safely.

Previously people in African countries carried water balanced on their head with a container that leads to cranial and spinal injuries. The Hippo water roller users a plastic barrel made of polyethylene and is sterilized to allow the safe transportation of up 24 gallons of water which is a much higher incapacity than the previous 2.5- to 5-gallon capacity of more traditional methods.

This had led to very positive results with improving the people living in impoverished conditions to improve their quality of life where previosly there was limited access to water.

This has gained the acceptance of that men who previously viewed the act of retrieving water as not being very masculine. This has given women more time to pursue education and improve their literacy as the traditional form of water retrieval is very time consuming.

A very funny fit the story about how a Fitmate placed the bottle of wine into the fridge before boot camp.

While this may appear to be hard-core, getting home after the boot camp session and having a couple glasses of wine, the weather was predicted at 32°, so she was looking forward to enjoying a nice glass of chilled white wine after work.

It’s great to indulge with the wine or beer however you just have to watch your level of consumption as nowadays a lot of people will have one to two glasses of alcohol, which can get a little bit worrying if you become dependent on this level of consumption on a daily basis.

The recommended drinking guidelines for what constitutes a standard drink is actually quite small relative to the glass size and the quantity being 100ml for a standard drink of wine based on an alcohol content of 13.5%.

Next time you’re looking at enjoying a lovely glass of red or white just remember to monitor your consumption, it’s great to enjoy a glass here and there but be careful it doesn’t turn into a situation of dependency.

With summer just around the corner, and Christmas parties only a few weeks away for some people it’s easy to get carried away and over indulge.

This new video from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) highlights the relationship between the consumption of fast foods and high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart attacks. Look at films like supersize me that are still being referenced about the effects of sustained burger, fries and coke consumption on the body.

While any discussion about McDonalds good or bad does reinforce their brands position as a takeaway food delivery system, it does slowly bring some consciousness to the effects about eating a diet high in fats, sugar and salt.

While McDonalds does have healthy meal options (whether this is healthy is another discussion), most of their in store menu real estate is devoted to fries, burgers, chicken and coke.

I know in Australia that the freeway overpasses have billboards about getting $1.95 burger, I’m still yet to see a billboard that says by an apple for breakfast and get one free.

Whether this has any effect is debatable given Jamie Oliver’s recent documentary into the diets of American children. The carcass of a chicken including bones and other parts of the chicken (apart from the flesh) were blended up and shown to kids, they quickly forgot about the blended chicken bones once it was pressed into a nugget, deep fried and served on a plate.

Like any diet it’s about moderation and the occasional consumption of fast food is ok but this has to be tempered with some guidance, substituting a cooked home meal with burgers, chicken and pizza will not be great in controlling the risk factors for cardiovascular disease and stroke.

This all occurred within a short time period so given the short attention span of the children in Jamie’s doco, it will be interesting to see the effect the campaign has.

While we were boxing, a Fitmate “Tina K” made a funny fitness comment while she was focus padding, she was day dreaming about chocolate.

On average our Fitmates burn between 450-750 calories so based on a 55 gram block of branded chocolate (mmmm, have they reduced the size from 60 grams???) containing 292 calories, this means that for our Fitmate, she will need to work hard for 45 minutes to burn off the chocolate bar.

Chocolate seems to be very popular theme with a Fitmate late year saying that after burning 800 calories during our bootcamp session, that he can now eat a mars bar.
Mmmm, sounds good in theory but why waste all of that hard work by putting back all those calories into the body plus the trans fats as well.

Well if you’re looking for chocolate you cannot beat Belgium, or even better still in Bruges where they have the most amazing selection. So how many squats and burpees will need to be performed if you went crazy in this shop?

Very funny fitness quote this morning about a Fitmate who went to the supermarket and deciding weather to buy the Godzilla style strawberries, her reaction was “eat mutant strawberries or starve” Meaning that there weren’t many other options available.

When we look at today’s strawberries, they are the big, steroid versions from California called the “Albion” which has a patent, “United States Patent PP16228″

I guess when it comes to production, a bigger strawberry means less strawberries per punnet, which means less picking labour and packing labour, less chances of damage while in transit.

The downside is that you have this mutant looking strawberry that has less taste than smaller varieties.

Unfortunately today’s typical strawberry cultivation techniques involve a lot of chemicals if you buy the non-organic variety. Strawberries are in the top 10 of fruit and vegetables most likely to contain pesticides and chemicals.

Consumer magazine, Choice did a study into strawberries in January 2008 and the results were very disturbing with a staggering 11% containing chemical residue above the accepted level as government by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand. Furthermore out of the 27 samples, 63% contained residues from more than one pesticide.

Some of the nasty chemicals included:
Boscalid
Captan
Carbaryl
Chlorpyrifos
Dimethoate
Endosulfan-beta
Iprodione
Pirimicarb
Pyrimethanil

While there are set “safe” limits of chemical residues, maximum residue limits (MRLs), there is some conjecture on whether even consuming these low levels of chemicals in quantity over a long period together with all the other food types containing other chemicals leads to the gradual poisoning of our bodies. Many of these chemicals are NOT removed through the bodies regular processes and build up over a period of time.

Recently a study in Europe has documented the link between phosphates and Parkinson’s disease study so it’s alarming to the extent we have exposure to these chemicals.

So the best thing is to go organic, better still pick your own strawberries with the season commencing in October as strawberries like the more temperate climates of 20º days and overnight temperatures of 10º.