As much as we love spoiling our dogs and treating them as one of the family, the fact remains, they are not human. As such, their digestive systems aren't equipped to deal with the wide variety of foods that humans eat. While they may look forward to a tasty piece of chicken skin or finishing off the remainder of your cake, you aren't doing them any favors in the long term. Aside from that, there are many foods that simply aren't suitable for dogs to eat while others are potentially fatal.

Skinny Chicks Don't Eat Salads

Anyone browsing through the dieting section in a bookstore could be forgiven for wondering how on earth to choose between them?

With the shelves groaning under the sheer volume of diet books, it takes something pretty special to make a book stand out enough to be picked up. In the case of this book, Skinny Chicks Don't Eat Salads, the title is clever, catchy and intriguing. It certainly warrants further investigation.

Mold is something commonly associated with rotting food and there's nothing quite as stomach churning as picking up a piece of fruit to discover it's half covered with a green, furry growth. It seems to get on everything. That half finished cup of coffee left on your desk over the weekend, the stale loaf of bread a few days past its sell by date or a slab of cheese opened a week ago. They've all been attacked by mold. But where did it come from and why does mold develop on food?

With ever increasing levels of obesity in the western world, the calorie count of our food is of paramount importance and something we should all pay heed to. After all, it’s the number of calories we consume that determines our weight. So how can you go about finding the amount of calories in foods?

What’s going on? You’re practically force feeding yourself healthy food in attempts at losing weight, but the pounds won’t budge. Unfortunately, healthy doesn’t necessarily mean low calorie and it’s those calories that are the all important key to losing weight.

It’s unfortunate that many of the higher calorie healthy foods are those we’d quite happily munch on throughout our diet. But these healthy foods often contain either high levels of sugar or fat and therefore are more likely to hinder than help your diet. So if you’re wondering why your weight loss isn’t as fast as you expected, maybe it’s down to eating too many of the healthy, high calorie foods shown here.

Sticking to a diet is tough and one of the hardest challenges we face is when the dreaded hunger pangs strike. Being hungry all the time is one of the main reasons why diets fail. Too often despite our best intentions, we give in to our rumbling stomachs, eat the wrong foods and give up the diet. The good news is you don't ever need to be hungry while on a diet, nor do you have to spend a fortune buying special diet products. There are so many ways of filling yourself up with healthy and nutritious food that's easy to prepare and won't prevent you losing weight. Try some of the following suggestions and make your diet work.

We’re all wising up to the hidden dangers associated with eating a high fat diet. Not only does it lead to obesity, it can dramatically increase our cholesterol levels. Left unchecked, a high cholesterol level means we’re more than twice as likely to suffer from heart disease.

If healthy food tasted great we’d all be whippet thin and the word diet wouldn’t exist! Unfortunately, in the real world the healthiest foods seem to have the nastiest taste. In our attempts at disguising the worst offenders we smother them with sauces, fats and syrups. But all we’re doing is turning a healthy food into an unhealthy one. However, it is possible with a few simple ingredients, to turn healthy foods into gourmet delights while still retaining their ‘healthy’ status. It's not that hard and you'll feel so much better for it. Read here to find how to do it.

No-one enjoys dieting. When it comes to losing weight, we just want to get it over with in the shortest possible time. But choosing the right food to help us on our way isn't always straightforward. Fat-free or low-calorie both sound like good options, but which is best for weight loss? Read on to make sure you don't get caught out.

‘Two for one’, ‘buy one get one free’, ‘all you can eat buffet’. These phrases are part of our everyday lives and they’re all designed to make us buy more. We all love a bargain but when it means we’re eating twice as much food as we should, our health suffers, with obesity the major problem.  We’re literally killing ourselves with overeating. So what’s happening and how are we getting it so wrong when it comes to our portion sizes.

According to nutritionists, dietitians, doctors and food gurus, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Why is this? Quite simply, it’s what we need to refuel our bodies with energy after our overnight fast. Without breakfast, we lack the energy necessary to keep us going until lunch. But with today’s hectic lifestyles, too often we end up rushing out of the door with little more to sustain us than a cup of coffee. What sort of food can you grab and eat when you're in a hurry?

 Generally we all eat too much fat. Overloading on unhealthy fats can lead to weight and heart problems, so what should we do? Eat less fat is the obvious answer. Unfortunately, reducing our fat intake is often easier said than done. Not only do hidden fats lurk in much of our food, our taste buds are accustomed to prefer richer foods. Butter or oil is often used to improve the taste and texture of food, but there are alternative methods we can use without compromising on taste. Read here to find out how to get by with less fat.

Healthy Fats