New Balance 740

Hey, FTC.  Yes, I was given these shoes for free.  My opinion of them, though, is still my opinion.

While I was at FitBloggin’, I received a pair of New Balance running shoes- specifically the 740 – described by the company as :

Support, comfort and cushioning all in one training shoe! Great for long distance runners seeking support and some stability, the 740 offers a Medial Post for pronation control.

I admit I wasn’t sure about wearing these – I’m NOT a runner – especially a long distance runner. What would these shoes offer me? What I can say is that these shoes offer me a comfortable shoe.

I first discovered New Balance years ago when i found a (now lost) website that described the best athletic shoes for women to wear based upon their foot shape and activities. I have what I affectionately call “duck feet” – a narrow heel with a wider toe box. This wonderful website told me that I should always try New Balance shoes and they are the only company who designs shoes specifically for duck feet.

I lived in New Balance for years before I had trouble with my feet that meant I couldn’t wear athletic shoes. After the halux rigidus was corrected, I had problems finding New Balance that fit as comfortably as I remembered. I thought it was me.

Apparently it was just the places I was shopping.

These 740s were comfortable from the second I slipped them on. And I discovered a benefit of the stabilization in this shoes: they help my balance.

One thing I completely lost with my halux rigidus was proprioception. A sense of where my foot belongs aligned with my body. My feet tend to wobble back and forth trying to find the balance -the center – the place where they are not turned to the outside or inside too much. I never feel I KNOW where this spot is. When I wear these 740s, I don’t have to do this. My feet are naturally centered.

So even though I’m not a long distance runner, I LOVE my 740s for the most part.  They only thing I’d change about them if I could?  The color.  I hate wearing white shoes and really, really wish I could get some in another color.

No Surprise: High Fructose Corn Syrup makes you fat!

We have all heard that High Fructose Corn Syrup is NOT created equal – that is a major cause of the obesity epidemic in the US (and growing around the world).  While corn manufacturers argue that HFCS is no different than sucrose or glucose, a recent pair of studies on HFCS at Princeton University disproves this.

The two studies found that rats provided with water to which HFCS was added gained more weight than similar rats given sugar water even when they consumed an equal amount of calories.  In a long-term study, those rats consuming HFCS also had significant increase in their abdominal fat and increased triglyceride levels.

High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose are both compounds that contain the simple sugars fructose and glucose, but there at least two clear differences between them. First, sucrose is composed of equal amounts of the two simple sugars — it is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose — but the typical high-fructose corn syrup used in this study features a slightly imbalanced ratio, containing 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose. Larger sugar molecules called higher saccharides make up the remaining 3 percent of the sweetener. Second, as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized.

This creates a fascinating puzzle. The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose. The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered, but may relate to the fact that excess fructose is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles.