This yoghurt tastes like mayonnaise....

Not really. Just a perfect chance to use one of my all time favourite movie quotes courtesy of Spike in Notting Hill. It was with great excitement that my nothing-like-Spike friend Amy V alerted me to the opening of Igloo Zoo in Australia. It's inspired by (read: ripped off from) Pinkberry in the US and it sells delightful frozen yoghurt and a selection of brightly-coloured treats to top it with. I was pleased as unlike ice-cream I can stomach frozen yoghurt.

It pitches itself as a healthy alternative to ice-cream, emphasising its antioxidant content, low-fatness and active cultures. Amy's unbridled excitement was tempered only by a final question to me about whether or not it was really healthy. I felt equal parts pride and guilt at her question - pride that I was her go-to girl for an honest and studied appraisal of the product. Guilt that I may turned my friends to be as cynical as I am.

Igloo Zoo have a very fancy website which is as informative as it is funky. I was able to answer her question from the nutritional information supplied from the site. There have been studies about nutritional labels and how many people have no idea how to read them, even when they think they do. That's mostly because to make a proper assessment you really need to do some reading between the lines, as well as have peripheral knowledge. I won't bore you with a lesson here but have some insights into how I was able to declare Igloo Zoo a good choice as an occaisional treat.

Serving size
Labels usually give info per serve and per 100g. The trouble is, WTF is a serve? These guys were generous enough to point out that a small is one serve, medium is two and large is three serves. Some high school maths and I could properly re-gig the figures for my purposes.

But a new Mexican takeaway joint at my local mall is a good lesson in why all is not as it seems when it comes to serves. They place their nutritional brochure front and centre on the counter. It's an obvious marketing ploy, as in 'We aren't trying to hide anything therefore we must be healthy.' Healthy, I don't know, but faced with other options in the food court I was hoping it would at least be healthier. A quick glance at the brochure led me to believe yes – until I noticed all nutritional info was per 100g. Me: 'How many grams in a burrito?' Teenager behind the counter: 'Er, 200.' Thereby doubling all the figures and quickly demisting my rose-coloured glasses.

Kilojoules v calories
A kilojoule by any other name is a calorie. They are both measurements of energy - one is metric (kJ), the other is imperial (cal). As Australia went all modern and metric in 1966 we're supposed to use kJ. The trouble is the US and the UK are still on calories so both remain in common usage. Damn that imperialistic imperialism. One kJ is 4.184 calories. The number of kJs you need to eat daily is dependent on so many things but should roughly be around 6,500-8,000 for an average-sized woman. For example that might be 1,500kJ for breakfast, 2,500kJ for lunch and 3,000kJ for dinner.

As previously discussed, I'm not a calorie/kJ counter but knowing this makes it easier to understand why you should order a medium at Igloo Zoo, when a large frozen yoghurt has 1,400kJ before you add any of the sugary toppings.

Sugar
Low fat isn't everything when it comes to food. We know Igloo Zoo is 99.4% fat free because their marketing material shouts it at us, so reading that part of the label offers little enlightenment. What they don't print on a sandwich board to put outside their shop, it that a large size, sans toppings, contains about 15 teaspoons of sugar. You can read why I believe sugar is very bad to have in your diet here.

THE VERDICT
I'm not buying into the spin that this frozen yoghurt is a health food. The antioxidant content is not special enough for them to explain it further and the live cultures would be in numbers too small to be useful, not to mention strains that are ineffective. But it is low in fat, decent for kilojoules and as bad for sugar as any sweet treat, and that includes fruit juice. Will I breakfast on it daily? No. But I'll definitely be trying it and hoping it tastes as good as it looks.

Walk this way

Yes I'm still alive and blogging and I hereby promise / threaten to post more regularly. I've also hopped on this wild horse that is the web and will shortly have a pretty website all of my own so am currently embracing all things web. Stay tuned. (Also inspired to post again by my hilarious friends at The Unibrain... you really should follow them.)

I have a somewhat embarrassing confession to make. It seems I took my own advice a little too seriously (the diet another day bit) and managed to stack on a few kgs over the last few months. Blame Europe. Blame Winter. Blame the festive season. Blame the boyfriend. But really it's all my fault for eating and drinking more than my little body needed to actually live. Now I suffer the consequences of a wardrobe that only half fits. Pop... that's the top button of my jeans committing suicide.

But this is a good news story. Still carrying the weight from my last overseas trip in July last year, I recently took off for another sojourn to Mexico and London. Egads! I hear you say...Mexico? London? These are the anti-health food capitals of the world! Not to mention I'd been commissioned to write a story about food in Mexico - so I was legally obligated by the tax office to do as much eating as possible. (For details of my eating you can check out the Sept issue of Women's Health for some of that food porn).

I remind you this is a good news story and the happy development is, that after 3 weeks of eating my way through Mexico, London and LA I came home lighter and more toned than when I left. Not 'oh my god, is that Posh Spice?' thin but reduced enough that I could squeeze myself into a pair of jeans that would not do up before I left.

The reason is very clear. I walked. A lot. I trekked from the ranch to the beach in LA, I walked up pyramids and mountains in Mexico, I traipsed up and down stairs at Tube stations, strolled the length of airport terminals and powered through shopping malls is all places. And I have the blisters to prove it.

I have been reading and writing about the power of walking a lot. Bob Greene, Oprah's trainer and weight-loss guru (er, maybe not the best professional recommendation) says walking is his favourite exercise. The National Weight Control Registry in the US (a massive longitudal study) reports walking is the best way to lose weight and keep it off. And studies of populations who live the longest and healthiest show they are walkers, and not gym junkies.

Now that I'm home and reacquainted with my laptop and the Foxtel remote the temptation is to spend more time on the couch than pounding the pavement. I've been trying my best to go for daily walks and even posted this is the hope for further motivation. When all else fails I typically remind myself that the more I walk, the more I can eat.