Did you know that apple peels contain about a third of the ascorbate/vitamin C in an apple and up to 40 percent of it's flavonols? Since most pesticide residue is on the skin, if you peel a conventional apple to reduce pesticide exposure, you also lose a lot of nutritional benefit.

To make sure you're getting the nutrients but not the pesticides you can either buy organic apples or wash them with warm water and Veggie Wash.

Yes, you can eat on the go and stay within your calorie budget. Whether you're trying to cut the recommended 500 to 1,000 calories a day from your diet to lose weight, or simply trying to make more healthy eating choices.  Read below for some 400-calorie orders that will help you choose wisely while you're on the go.

Panera Bread's Broccoli Cheddar Soup Calories: 230 Fat: 16 g Sodium: 970 mg Although light on calories, cholesterol and carbs, this soup does contain 45 percent of the daily recommended saturated fat.

Chick-Fil-A's Chargrilled Club Sandwich Calories: 380 Fat: 11g Sodium: 1560 mg This chargrilled sandwich won't break your calorie budget, but don't even look at the sandwich sauces available. The buttermilk ranch and Chick-Fil-A sauces have 110 and 140 calories respectively and will bump up the fat content in your meal to about 34 grams.

Chick-Fil-A's Chargrilled and Fruit Salad With Reduced-Fat Berry Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing Calories: 290 Fat: 8 g Sodium: 1010 mg While other dressings at Chick-Fil-A have up to 160 calories and 17 fat grams per serving, the reduced-fat berry balsamic vinaigrette keeps the chargrilled and fruit salad diet-friendly by adding just 70 calories, 2 fat grams and 150 milligrams of sodium to your total meal.

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Why take loads of vitamins when your daily dose can come from one bottle? FitCelebs Rachael Ray and Owen Wilson get their essential nutrients from MonaVie Fruit Drink, which contains the Amazon rainforest-grown Acai (AH-sci-EE) berry, a superfood rich in antioxidants, vitamins, iron and calcium. Besides reportedly helping to lower cholesterol, the berry also boosts energy naturally and is healthy for your heart.

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A chemical produced in the brain may play a role in regulating appetite and the likelihood of becoming obese, according to a new study. For the study, researchers looked at a group of 33 people who had WAGR syndrome, a genetic condition that occurs in one in 500,000 to a million people. WAGR is an acronym for the symptoms that accompany the condition: Wilms’ tumor (tumor of the kidneys), aniridia (absence of the iris), genital and urinary tract abnormalties, and mental retardation. Some people with WAGR syndrome lack a gene for the brain chemical, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Animal studies have suggested that BDNF may help control appetite and weight. The researchers found that 19 (58 percent) of the 33 study participants had deletions of all or a major proportion of one copy of the gene for BDNF and had correspondingly low blood levels of BDNF. These 19 participants were all obese by age 10 and had a strong tendency to overeat. The participants who had two working copies of the BDNF gene, on the other hand, were no more likely to develop obesity in childhood than the general population and did not report unusually high levels of overeating.

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Hope you enjoy today's links of the day:

• Don't have enough time to bring your lunch to work start a lunch club - Fitsugar
• Try these 7 Fearless Fig Recipes - Yumsugar
• Diary your Fitness Progress - That's Fit
• Top Five Beauty Tips of the Summer - Vital Juice Daily
• Energy Boosting Stretch - Whole Living

Matt Damon's wife Luciana may be pregnant, but it's his expanding waistline that's making all the headlines in Hollywood.

"I think I lost my [Sexiest Man Alive] title," the actor joked to PEOPLE.

But that's no sympathy bump. Damon estimates that he gained between 20 and 30 pounds for his upcoming thriller, The Informant, directed by Steven Soderbergh.

"It wasn't necessarily that I needed to be fat," he said. "It was that I needed to be 'doughy.' "

Photo by WENN

Lactose intolerance--when your body can't digest the sugar in milk--could break your bones some day. In a study of 66 lactose-intolerant people, Israeli researchers found that the volunteers got less than 700 mg of bone-building calcium per day, about half the 1,000 to 1,200 mg recommended daily for healthy bones. Even worse: Scans revealed that many had thinning bones, a risk factor for osteoporosis and fractures. If dairy leaves you gassy, crampy, and bloated, you can avoid a calcium deficit by drinking milk made for people with lactose intolerance, or try yogurt (enzymes in yogurt digest milk sugar for you). Other calcium strategies: Take a supplement, plus 400 IU of vitamin D. Add sardines, almonds, and broccoli for extra calcium.

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Breast-feeding moms who take medicines containing codeine may be unwittingly risking the health of their infant, new Canadian research suggests. The study indicates that a relatively rare genetic predisposition causes some women to metabolize codeine-laced drugs into morphine far faster than normal — possibly harming the infant’s central nervous system in the process. In such cases, the threat of a morphine overdose appears to be reversible if the woman stops taking the medication. However, for mothers with the genetic vulnerability, the unabated ingestion of codeine and gradual build-up of morphine in a baby’s system can prompt extreme sleepiness, abnormal breathing, and even death, the researchers warned. The finding echoes a public health advisory issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2007.

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Shape magazine caught up with tennis star and FitCeleb Maria Sharapova at the launch of her limited edition Canon PowerShot Diamond Collection. Looking sleek in a one-shoulder Lanvin dress, she revealed how she stays fit, what inspires her and why she loves her job. The 21-year-old athlete, who has already won U.S. Open, Wimbledon and Australian Open championships, had hoped to add an Olympic medal to her trophy case, but a shoulder injury forced her to skip the Beijing games. She'll have to sit out the U.S. Open as well, but she's been cross-training to stay at the top of her game while undergoing rehab on her shoulder in Arizona (she's working with top trainer and physical therapist Brett Fischer).

"I've been walking hills a lot and biking a little bit outdoors," says Sharapova. "I don't do heavy weights at all. I go to yoga classes and work on my core."

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Low or high levels of LDL cholesterol are associated with an increased risk of cancer in patients with type 2 diabetes, according to a Chinese study that noted the increasing evidence of an association between type 2 diabetes and cancer risk. The study included 6,107 diabetes patients. None of the patients were taking cholesterol-lowering statins. The researchers found that LDL levels below 2.80 mmol/L were associated with an increased risk of cancers of the digestive organs and peritoneum, genital and urinary organs, and lymphatic and blood tissues. LDL levels above 3.80 mmol/L were associated with increased risk of oral, digestive, bone, skin, connective tissue and breast cancers. The findings suggest “the use of these levels as risk markers may help clinicians to assess their patients more fully and thus to prevent premature deaths in patients who have high risk,” wrote the team from the Hong Kong Institute of Diabetes and Obesity, the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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