Category: Food

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Here’s What Experts Say about Eating for Comfort vs Enjoyment

If you’re anything like me, you may have a bad habit of eating your feelings. It’s actually a very common thing, but it can be seriously bad for your health if you’re not practicing moderation.

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Experts agree that if we eat for comfort and it becomes a habit, we can hurt ourselves physically from overeating, while also doing emotional damage because we’re using food to avoid facing our feelings.

Karen R. Koenig, an eating psychology expert, blogger and author shared this with Huff Post about comfort food:

“A misleading misnomer if there ever was one, comfort is not something we want to keep associating with food. We want to file food in our brains under nourishment and occasional pleasure. We want to seek comfort through friends, doing kind things for ourselves and engaging in healthy activities that reduce internal distress.”

Sarah Allen, a psychologist who specializes in eating disorders has some additional advice:

“As soon as you start looking for food, stop. Think, ‘Am I hungry? Do I need food in my stomach, or is one of my triggers going off? What do I need right now?’”

But yeah, that’s good and all… but why is it so hard to NOT do those things?

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Susan Albers, author and clinical psychologist, explains the underlying factors.

“When we’re stressed, our bodies are flooded in cortisol. That makes us crave sugary, fatty, salty foods.”

Cortisol is the body’s main stress hormone. It regulates how our bodies process all the macro nutrients we consume (carbs, fats, proteins), so when stress and anxiety enter our emotional equation… we carbo-load like crazy.

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The experts agree that while a hormone like cortisol is a powerful trigger to comfort eat, we need to practice more mindfulness when eating. So instead of letting our mood drive consumption, we need to concentrate on meals, not snacks. Also, emotional eating usually ends up in overconsumption, which means we aren’t even tasting the food we eat. Experience a meal, savor the flavors and understand how you feel when you’re full.

One last bit of advice? Never go cold turkey. People put unrealistic expectations on themselves, which leads to being unable to meet goals. Start off with manageable, achievable goals and then continue to build up to your ultimate goals, whatever those may be.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Basically, enjoy those treats! Because we deserve them. But try to view eating that cookie or candy or baked good or WHATEVER as a way of enjoying yourself, not consoling yourself.

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There is a cafe in Amsterdam…

There is a cafe in Amsterdam where children cook and serve. Kinderkookkafé is a family restaurant that is run entirely by children: they cook, serve, bring the bill and wash up, all with a little help from adults. Parents leave their children in the afternoon and when they come back, they try what the children […]

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Chicken produced in US has…

Chicken produced in US has been banned in the EU since 1997 as it is washed in a strong chlorine solution. The chlorine washing is popular in US due to poor hygiene standards in abattoirs.

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Science Weighs In on When It’s Okay to Grab a Midnight Snack, and When to Say No

If you’re trying to eat healthy, or maybe lose a few pounds, one of the most common things people will tell you is to stop snacking after a certain time – usually after dinner. That means those late night munchies are a strict no-no. But is it really true that we can never give in to those midnight cravings?

First of all, let’s dispel the myth that food eaten after a certain hour always turns into fat, like the your stomach knows how to read a clock. You gain weight when more calories go in your body than go out, full stop. And yet, the participants in multiple experiments have proven that people who tend to eat late at night do tend to gain more weight and keep it on.

So what’s up with that?

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Well, a recent group of studies out of Northwestern University seems to indicate that being a night owl has more to do with nighttime eating and its negative effects – night owls are just more likely to eat late. It’s like this: the people for whom the halfway mark of a normal night’s sleep was between 1am and 5:30am (ie. people with earlier bedtimes) tended to have only a meal after work and nothing before bed, while the people for whom the halfway point of their normal night’s sleep was after 5:30 (ie. night owls) were more likely to have another snack before crawling under the sheets. The second group also often got less sleep than the first.

The studies also noted that people tend to make poorer choices when they’re tired or interested in a television series at the end of the day – we reach for easy things like takeout, chips, or pizzas instead of making the trip or stop at the grocery for proteins and vegetables.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

That said, if you are someone who has the luxury of staying up late and sleeping in, there’s no reason you can’t eat if you’re hungry, even after dinner.

Here are some simple tips to keep yourself satisfied, sleeping well, and at your desired weight.

#1. Watch your calories.

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Try keeping a log of the calories you eat all day long, and if it’s not too many, it’s fine to have a snack – just try to choose something on the healthier side, and do your best to eat 2 or 3 hours before you plan to go to bed. Otherwise, your digestion could disrupt your sleep and lead to more issues the following day.

#2. Choose your snacks wisely.

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Not only is it important to choose something low in calories if your day is almost done, but choosing something that can help promote sleep – dairy, fish, turkey, bananas, kiwi, cherries, almonds, and honey are all options that offer melatonin and serotonin that can help you snooze through the night.

#3. Do some self-evaluation.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

If you do find yourself wanting to indulge late at night more often than not, you might be looking at some kind of compulsion – overeating can be linked to emotional issues. Check on yourself, and determine whether your desire to eat at night could be feelings-related.

So, it’s not a bad thing to give into your hunger later at night, especially if you’re a night owl. You just need to remember that what we eat and when does affect our ability to get good sleep and keep ourselves on an even keel. Don’t force yourself to go hungry, just be conscious of the choices you’re making and do you!

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10+ Foodies Talk About the WORST Meals They’ve Ever Had

Are you a foodie? I don’t love the term -because I think just about everyone is a foodie to an extent in that everyone loves a great plate of food – but I am definitely someone who goes out of their way to find a great place to eat. Sadly, when the food doesn’t come out the way you’d expect it to, it can be a massive disappointment.

I’m not sure I could have handed any of these experiences, tbh. You?

#1. It used to be great.

“Paid $9 for a tiny burrito that contained a spoonful of rice, two pieces of fried tofu, about a teaspoon of pico and about three shreds of Monterey jack. It was soaked in a sauce that was so spicy I felt it for hours afterwards, and then all over again when it passed through. Absolutely disgusting. I was with a group who insisted that the food would be absolutely delicious. Talked to a relative who knows the area and she said that the restaurant used to be great but had gotten to be terrible within the last year.”

#2. Noped out.

“My aunt made some Hamburger Helper and fucked it up. I will never understand how you can mess up Hamburger Helper. Even my two year old cousin noped out of eating it.”

#3. I tasted tacos for the next two days.

“My husband made tacos. He misread the seasoning instructions and put in 3/4 cup instead of 3 tablespoons. I remember thinking that the mixture looked a lot darker than normal before I took a bite. I seriously tasted tacos for the next two days. He’s not allowed to make tacos anymore without supervision.”

#4. I hate milk.

“Mom made me drink some milk right after I’d eaten a grapefruit and the milk curdled in my mouth. I hate milk.”

#5. Don’t mess around with chicken.

“I got salmonella poisoning from undercooked chicken. After throwing up once I basically dry heaved for a few hours. Also, I had an insanely high fever, like 103/104 and hallucinated that I went to hell. I was dripping in sweat and saw shadowy figures in my peripheral vision dancing around in a circle.

After experiencing that I can totally see why people think they were visited by demons or went to hell. Don’t mess around with chicken.”

#6. She whipped up some food.

“My first time at one of my best friends house, his mom decided to make is a snack while we did homework. She was a single mom for a lot of his upbringing, so she worked all day and was usually not up for cooking lunch/dinner. She wanted to be nice and offer me something though, so she whipped up some food. She served us undercooked whole wheat pasta. She also didn’t have any sauce or topping for it, so she just crumbled some Triscuits over the top of them. My friend was severely embarrassed. His mom has since remarried and has learned much more about cooking food for others.

Edit: a word”

#7. The same damn thing.

“I made a microwaved pizza for myself when they first came out in the late 1980s. I loaded it up with extra cheese.

I hear the microwave go BING. I pull it out and it flips over onto my hands. I had boiling hot cheese stuck to my fingers. I screamed like a banshee. My mom looked at me like I was some kind of weirdo. And my best friends was there and started laughing at me with blisters forming all over my hands.

A few weeks later I was over at his parent’s place with him. He throws in a microwaveable pizza. I hear BING then him screaming like a banshee. He did the same damn thing.”

#8. I still remember the flavor.

“Probably a tie between the bad tortilla chips that gave me food poisoning and the time my sister tricked me into eating Cat Chow. Decades later and I still remember the flavor.”

#9. Like sweaty balls.

“Back in the days when I used to hate sushi I tried some in Tokyo just for the bragging rights. I don’t know what I ordered but it was slimy and gooey and salty and tasted like sweaty balls. It took all my strength to stop myself from chundering at the table.

Love sushi now so would probably enjoy it if I tried today.”

#10. A near poisoning.

“We travelled to Sicily and decided to get some pizza. Found a really nice place at the beach, where we could watch the sunset over the sea. We ordered our pizzas and everything seemed perfect. Then the pizzas came and my bf tasted his. First he thought his pizza had a funny seasoning and gave it a shot, but after a few bites he said his tongue began to tingle. I tried a few bites myself and it was a really weird sensation in my mouth. Like when something is really spicy, but more in the acid kind of way. So he tried to explain to a waitress something was off with the pizza. There was a huge language barrier, so in the end she took the pizza away and looked quite irritated. My bf decided to walk towards the kitchen because we had the feeling they didn’t understand our complaint. From my point of view, a saw different staff members rushing out of the kitchen, including a cheff, and tried to explain something to my bf in quite a panicky way. Turns out their dishwasher was broken and all the plates where covered with highly concentrated dish soap. Their head chef ate some pizza and had to be picked up by an ambulance, fortunately we didn’t get food poisoning and just left the restaurant with empty bellies.”

#11. I had to excuse myself.

One of my ex boyfriend’s grandmother had the whole family over for dinner one night. She cooked spaghetti and my ex’s mom warned me that it would be terrible. Boy, was she right. His grandmother boiled water, put in the noddles, DID NOT DRAIN THE WATER, and then dumped some salt, pepper, and KETCHUP into the pot and served it. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom so I could dry heave over the toilet.

#12. Disgusting beyond belief.

“I tried to eat andouillette, a kind of pork sausage, while I was in France. It’s notorious there. When I ordered it the server sort of said ‘are you sure?’ It was disgusting beyond belief. I was actually retching.”

#13. To this day.

“Food poisoning Benihana Millburn NJ. Age 16. BRUTAL. Cold sweats when passing any Japanese steakhouses, to this day.”

#14. Like we were eating houseplants.

“I had Chinese take away that was sub-par a couple weeks back. The rice was meh, nothing to write home about.

But then I tried the chow mein. Somehow, it tasted like soil.

I thought my tastebuds were tripping, but my girlfriend then tried hers and, yep: Like we were eating houseplants.

I still don’t understand.”

#15. For the next two years.

“I got food poisoning from a Mexican restaurant. I shit my pants twice, popped a blood vessel in my eye from vomiting so hard, and I couldn’t even think about Mexican food without getting nauseous for the next two years.”

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10+ Simple Hacks That Can Seriously Improve Your Life

We’ve all had those mundane, everyday problems that sometimes get referred to as “first world problems.” You know, things like not being able to get ice cubes into your favorite water bottle or someone stealing a nonfat yogurt you were saving as a treat from the break room. Monsters!

But what if there were a few easy things you can do to eliminate the unnecessary stress in your life? These simple life hacks could make everything so much easier…

1. Why didn’t I think of that in college?

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2. For the absolutely paranoid life-hackers.

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3. Say good-bye to that pesky stem!

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4. Never lose another chip to staleness!

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5. You’ll never smash another finger.

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6. The lunch stealer won’t even think about taking your sandwich again.

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7. A game changer for the tailgate party!

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8. There is a future for the CD holder. #Upcycle

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9. Hate throwing away toilet paper rolls? Keep them to start a garden.

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10.  A great way to keep the tooshie warm year round.

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11. Never have another watered-down glass of wine.

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12. Don’t trash your favorite jeans for a faulty zipper.

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13. Genius!

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14. Super smart way to keep your drink cool.

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15. Keep a bag of Doritos in your survival kit!

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Hope these help!

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Behold the “Avozilla:” a Giant Avocado That’ll Make Millennials Go Berserk

The world’s recent obsession with avocados, possibly fueled by the millennial love for avocado toast, might have you thinking they’re a newcomer to the culinary scene, but they’ve actually been around for a long, long time. Avocados are heart-healthy, jam-packed with nutrients, and they pretty much go great with anything.

Basically, the only thing that could make an avocado better is if it were bigger, smoother, or more easily spreadable.

If only…

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

But, hang on. Agriculture heard our wails and has acted benevolently. Giant avocados – called “avozillas” – actually do exist. According to The Guardian Australia, a farm in Queensland is cultivating enormous avocados “as big as your head.” They are, in fact, about four times larger than a normal avocado.

Photo Credit: Peaches Fresh Food

Holy guacamole.

A company in South Africa owns the rights to the variety, which was produced via cross-breeding. Anyone interested in growing their own avozillas must pay to obtain permission and then pay royalties. Currently one farmer in Australia has the lock on a few hundred trees, so the giant fruit (it’s a fruit) is available in a few cities there. They have also exported them to England.

What’s keeping the avozilla from taking over? Ian Groves, the first to have grown them on his Australian farm, believes they may be too niche.

He also told The Guardian, “There is a nursery we buy different trees off, and when we were planting a bunch of avocados 10 years ago, they gave us one as a trial. And after about four or five years, we tried a few of the fruit and thought we’d give them a go. So we planted a small block of about just under 400 trees. They’re coming up to about four years and this is their first production.”

Clearly it takes some forethought to get from idea to table.

Avozillas may not be available everywhere guac fans are, but that hasn’t stopped the internet from falling head over pit for them.

Photo Credit: Instagram

The avozilla’s majesty is inspiring.

Photo Credit: Twitter

And brunch is served.

Photo Credit: Instagram

So, how about it, California and Mexico? Let’s have some avozillas!

We’ll wait.

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There’s A Reason Some People Stay Skinny Despite Eating Like a Horse

Everybody always has that one friend – you know, the one who can take down a whole pizza and some beer all by themselves, then turn around and ask for dessert… all while maintaining their seemingly impossibly svelte physique. Oh, and they don’t work out either. Nope, they just go around eating whatever they like with no consequences at all. No pounds piling on, no ours of atonement at the gym. Must be nice.

Well, you’ll be interested in the results of this study, which claims to have the answers…though they’re probably not going to make you feel any better.

Basically, your body type depends on the genes you were born with far more than on any diet or exercise routine you employ as an adult.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

The new research aimed to pinpoint the genetic architecture of skinniness and severe obesity, and their findings, published in PLOS Genetics, could help explain why some people find staying thin easy while others have the opposite experience.

That is not to say that environmental factors like high-calorie diets or sedentary lifestyles don’t play any role, but obesity, as many people have realized, is more complex than eating too much fast food.

The study leader, Professor Sadaf Farooqi, issued this statement:

“This research shows for the first time that healthy thin people are generally thin because they have a lower burden of genes that increase a person’s chances of being overweight and not because they are morally superior, as some people like to suggest. It’s easy to rush to judgement and criticize people for their weight, but the science shows that things are far more complex. We have far less control over our weight than we might wish to think.”

Photo Credit: Pixabay

No one tell the billion-dollar diet industry that they’re bunk.

Or wait. Maybe we should.

This study included the DNA of around 14,000 people – 1622 thin people, 1985 obese people, and 10433 people with average body mass, and identified the genes linked to slimmer people. Adds researcher Dr. Ines Barroso,

“As anticipated, we found that obese people had a higher genetic risk score than normal weight people, which contributes to their risk of being overweight. The genetic dice are loaded against them.”

The research supports previous studies, which have suggested that though a number of variables dictate weight gain (or loss), your natural metabolism has a lot to do with how you look.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

With obesity posing a huge health risk, particularly in Western countries like the US and the UK, these researchers hope their findings will help doctors and laypeople alike gain a more attenuated understanding of what causes it – and how we can adjust our weight-loss strategies accordingly.

The study might also lead to different approaches in the future, as our science continues to advance. Professor Farooqi suggests,

“If we can find the genes that prevent them from putting on weight, we may be able to target those genes to find new weight loss strategies and help people who do not have this advantage.”

Which is to say, you might be able to find a diet and exercise routine that compliment your genetic makeup, therefore not applying unrealistic standards and goals in each specific case.

We can dream, anyway.

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Pineapples Were Once So Expensive, People Rented Them by the Hour

Pineapples are available almost year-round in most grocery stores across the United States these days, but it wasn’t always this way. Pineapples actually have quite a long and storied history. They weren’t always as readily available as they are today, and much like anything that’s simultaneously desirable and scarce, they quickly became a symbol of wealth and status.

Between the 16th and 18th century in Europe, pineapples were actually so rare that they were put on display like fine works of art. It’s hard to estimate how much a single, whole pineapple would have cost in today’s money, guesses range between $5k-$10k – definitely not chump change for something that would eventually rot. So, why was it that valuable?

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The pineapple is indigenous to South America, which is where Europeans first encountered it. The European royals loved the fruit for its natural sweetness, but having them imported was hit-or-miss. Only the fastest ships (and ideal weather conditions) would deliver the fruit while still edible, while finding a way to grow it back home turned out to be an expensive – and not at all simple – endeavor.

We don’t know who, exactly, was responsible for first growing a pineapple in a non-tropical climate, but the consensus is that it happened in Holland in the late 1600s. The Dutch West India Company had a stranglehold on Caribbean trade that allowed them to import pineapple plants to experiment on, which almost certainly led to them being the first ones to crack the growing-tropical-fruit-in-the-cold problem.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

In fact, Dutch cloth merchant Pieter de la Court invented the hotroom – spaces kept warm and humid – to try and accomplish the task. His design worked, though issues with ventilation, the release of hot fumes, and the stability of soil and air temperatures all presented constant and evolving challenges.

England wanted pineapples, too, and so sent men to Holland in search of the secret to putting the tropical fruit on royal tables on a much more regular basis. It would be many years, however, before a pineapple was grown on English soil – and when it was (around 1715), it was a Dutchman named Henry Telende who accomplished the feat.

His method, which involved a hothouse, special soil, pits lined with pebbles, manure, and tanners bark, was a delicate balance even in the best of times, but once he got it down to a science, more English were able to afford the fruits. But even though pineapples became more available, many nobles still declined to eat something they were spending so much cash on. Instead of serving the fruit to guests, they would display the pineapples around their homes.

For lesser nobles and regular rich people (as opposed to filthy rich people), it became fashionable to rent a pineapple just for a party, then pass it around to others having parties before returning the fruit to the person who could actually afford to eat it (if they so chose).

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The fact that refined sugar was also a rare and expensive commodity only added to the allure of actually eating the fruit. Charles II was said to love pineapple – both because of its sweetness and partly because he thought the fruit looked to be wearing a tiny crown (he referred to it as “King-pine”).

People remained obsessed with the pineapple well into the colonial period, and you’ll see it carved into any number of wooden and stone pieces in both the old and new world. The fruit remained a symbol of wealth, and eventually morphed into a symbol of hospitality as well.

Fun fact: this is why you’ll still find pineapple designs on bedposts, gateposts, bath towels, and other items often left out for guests.

Fun fact #2: in colonial times, serving a pineapple upside-down cake would be a subtle way of suggesting your guests were overstaying their welcome and should make plans to depart.

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