Dieting tips

If you wish to become slim and boost your all round health, then, as any dietician will tell you, you really should eat a thoughtfully calculated sensible daily routine. At best, this should include five measures of grains and vegetables each day and also incorporate the right mix of important nutrients.

Some reduced carbohydrate diet tips:
* Use low carb chocolate for cookies and muffins. If you have gone to the trouble of converting your most popular chocolate chip cookie or chocolate muffins recipe using soy flour, you really don't want to mix in those high carbohydrate sugar-rich chocolate. Chop up a reduced carbohydrate chocolate bar into tiny pieces and use that in its place.

* Know what is in your food Watch out for the food label that boasts to be 'low carb' - check the real nutritional information on the reverse of the can or package. Some are only slightly decreased and in some instances still higher than a competitors normal brand. Also, beware of 'low sugar' and 'low fat' labels - 'low sugar' doesn't always mean 'low carb' - often the carbs are exactly the same.

Foods containing lycopene
(includes apricots, red peppers & baby jackfruit)

Lycopene is a natural compound and one of the same family of phytochemicals as carotene. Lycopene is behind the red color of quite a few fruits and vegetables.

Usefully, unlike numerous nutritional compounds, it does not become less effective if cooked but is observably increased in efficacy by the cooking process.

. Lycoprene's main advantage is that it works as an antioxidant and is believed to be of use in the fight to lower the chances of developing cancer.

Lycopene is the strongest quencher of singlet oxygen, which is correlated with skin aging. It is also thought to impede the progression of diseases affecting arterial blood vessels.