A. Often it’s just as hard to put on weight as it is to lose weight, particularly if you come from a family with a tall slender build which you’ve no doubt inherited. On the plus side, as you get older, your skinny build will become an advantage as you’re less likely to succumb to heart troubles or diabetes, conditions which are aggravated by being overweight.

Sugar. It's been labelled "deadly", "addictive", "toxic", "sweet poison" and blamed for the rise in global obesity in recent years." Get rid of the white toxin from your diet and you'll free up your body to drop those excess kilos" (or so say anti-sugar campaigners Sarah Wilson, David Gillespie and Robert Lustig). Here are the three real reasons why I believe quitting sugar helps you lose weight.

Meeting up at the bar or pub? Sharing a drink with friends? These are the times when you notice salty snacks everywhere – potato crisps, corn chips, beer nuts, cashews, pretzels and rice cracker snacks. Salty snacks fly under the radar – no one remembers eating them. Yet they’re a big problem for health and may explain why you can’t lose weight. Here’s my take on them.

I’ve been waiting for the launch of Go Scan for months now, having caught wind of its pending development via occasional whispers on the industry grapevine. So it was great to be invited to the official launch of this new App and get to play around with it for a review here. This is a first for Australia and one I’ll be using from now on.

With their bright colours and pack shots of root vegetables, they scream "healthier snack". But are vegetable chips really better? We did a taste test side by side of two brands of vegetable chips and line them up against your standard salted potato crisp to see how they fare.

Wondering how much fat is in that recipe? Or whether something is gluten-free? Or ok for your partner on a low-salt diet? Here's how we classify the recipes on the Foodwatch site in terms of nutrition. Check out the fat, saturated fat, kilojoules, fibre, GI, carbs, protein ... and allergy listings.

Stevia is a new sweetener that extracted from a plant yet has no kilojoules/calories, does not increase blood glucose levels and does not cause tooth decay. It is 250 to 300 times sweeter than cane sugar but tastes similar - certainly better than the older sweeteners like saccharin or cyclamate with their bitter metallic after-taste.

If you're into healthy eating then you probably check ou food packs for nutrition information. It isn't always clear is it? You may have spotted the %DI on the labels but do you know how to interpret this for you or your children?  The food industry believes many consumers are confused by labelling and has come up with a graphic way of presenting the figures on the front of the pack but I'm not sure it will be all that helpful.