FoodBozo.com

Provided by Marie-Andrée Guimont

We all know the drill: during the holidays, we often don’t have the willpower to avoid temptation. But did you know that you don’t necessarily need to put yourself on a super strict diet to get back into healthy eating habits? Because life wouldn’t be half as sweet without all its culinary delights (and their high caloric content), we’ve got a few simple commandments to integrate into your diet and get back on track.

Thou shalt not put sugar in thy coffee. Coffee, minus the little packet of sugar, is an acquired taste. After all, real coffee aficionados sip their espresso without it (often even forgoing milk!).This small action may seem negligible, but it could actually make a huge difference down the line. Here’s a tip: rather than completely eliminating any sweetness in your coffee, replace it with a hint of honey. It’s not as high in calories, but tastes a bit sweeter—plus, it doesn’t contain any additives or preservatives.

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Let’s take a few moments on FoodBozo.com and talk about diets.

In order to have a relevant & fruitful conversation about diets, targeted key questions are needed.

Your FoodBozo staff had fun answering diet & nutrition related questions at the office today. A sample the staff’s responses to the questions are in italics;

• Why do diets work? It’s all about taste.
• Why don’t certain diets work? They’re not nutritionally balanced.
• Have you been on a diet? Which one? Yes. I tried a lot of diets. They include SouthBeach, Atkins, GI, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig. If you can name it, I tried it.
• Do you know someone who has been on a diet? What was the experience like? I have a few friends who tried different diets. Those who hated & found the diet difficult to manage didn’t succeed. Those who enjoyed their diet, healthy eating along with active living, continue to experience success.

Let’s talk diets: why they work (or don’t). Have you been on one? Which one? Know someone who has? What was the experience like?

Seeking answers to these and other guiding questions involves looking at your own dietary history. It also involves finding good sources of information that help clarify the muddy waters & misinformation that swirl around the topic of diets & healthy nutrition.

Diets In Review provides numerous resources to help you achieve optimal diet & health results. There’s plenty of information to help answer some of the burning key guiding questions that you have- those about how to plan for and succeed with your dietary goals.

With a vast recipe database, useful calorie counting diets, resources to kick off your fitness & exercise regimen, Diets In Review places healthy living tools and information directly in your hands.

With Diets In Review, you’ve taken the first step, which is seeking information. Now go on; be well, be healthy, be successful.

Please note, this is a sponsored conversation facilitated by PayPerPost

By David Jones

LONDON (Reuters) – Kraft Foods agreed a recommended deal to buy Cadbury for around 11.9 billion pounds ($19.6 billion), creating the world’s top confectioner after frantic last-minute talks broke an impasse over price.

Kraft’s CEO Irene Rosenfeld had to inject more cash into her bid and drop the number of new Kraft shares in the offer to win over Cadbury Chairman Roger Carr and mollify her top shareholder, billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

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I wonder how many hours it took to carve these watermelons into beautify flowers? Incidentally we are unsure if it should be watermelon or Water Melon.

• Chinese Watermelon art
• Watermelon special fruitcarving site
• How to Carve a Watermelon Sculpture

Provided by EatingWell.com

Coffee lovers may be raising their cups at the growing stream of positive news about their favorite drink. For healthy adults, having two or three cups of joe daily generally isn’t harmful and it may have health perks. Some recent findings even suggest that coffee may help lower the risk of diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

A cup of coffee contains about 1 gram of soluble fiber, the type that can help lower cholesterol, according to a recent report in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Recent Harvard studies, involving more than 193,000 people, found that regular coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of type2 diabetes than those who abstained. The more they drank, the lower their risk.

Despite coffee’s reputation for being bad for the heart, recent epidemiologic studies haven’t found a connection; some even suggest coffee can be protective. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that healthy people 65 and over who drank four or more cups of caffeinated beverages daily (primarily coffee) had a 53 percent lower risk of heart disease than non-coffee-drinkers.

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By Mairlyn Smith, P.H.Ec

Diets don’t work.

Anything that you can go on you can go off.

How many times have you been on a diet? Go ahead take a minute and count them. Then ask yourself this question, “If diets really worked why am I still searching for that magic weight loss plan?”

This year I want all of us, no matter who you are and what your age is, to get off the diet merry-go-round and make the decision to change your eating habits and embrace a new healthier way of living.

Make your New Year’s Resolution or goal to get healthy and you’ll lose weight in the process.

This year I am targeting my peeps – women over forty.

The media is flooded with information for younger women. It’s as if over forty year old females don’t count anymore. Maybe we aren’t quite as cute or have the same taut skin that we used to but baby we still rock.

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With the tragic earthquake & unfolding events in Haiti now fresh in the public’s mind, it’s important to have a plan so that you’re prepared to deal with the difficulties of a natural disaster.

You can be part of the international relief effort be helping out: Support Disaster Relief in Haiti

When a disaster occurs, you might not have access to food, water and electricity for days, or even weeks. Store enough emergency food to provide for you and your family for at least 3 days.

• Store food items that are familiar, rather than buying special emergency food. Consider any dietary restrictions and preferences you may have.
• Ideal foods are: Shelf-stable (no refrigeration required), low in salt, and do not require cooking (e.g. canned fruit, vegetables, peanut butter, jam, low-salt crackers, cookies, cereals, nuts, dried fruit, canned soup or meats, juices and non-fat dry milk).
• Mark a rotation date on any food container that does not already have an expiration date on the package.
• Include baby food and formula or other diet items for infants or seniors.
• Store the food in airtight, pest-resistant containers in a cool, dark place.
• Most canned foods can safely be stored for at least 18 months. Low acid foods like meat products, fruits or vegetables will normally last at least 2 years. Use dry products, like boxed cereal, crackers, cookies, dried milk or dried fruit within six months.
• After a power outage, refrigerated food will stay cold longer if you keep the door closed. Food should generally be consumed within 4 hours. Food in the freezer will normally remain safe for 2 days.

By Sheryl Ubelacker, The Canadian Press

Unless it’s maple syrup, it’s unlikely many Americans could identify an example of truly Canadian cuisine. But it seems one national dish, a belly-busting concoction born in La Belle province, is creating a buzz south of the border.

Poutine – a mixture of French fries, cheese curds and hot gravy – is making it onto menus alongside typical American fare like cheeseburgers and chili dogs.

Thierry Pepin, an actor and model who moved to New York from his native Quebec six years ago, opened a restaurant last summer dedicated to the hearty dish. T-Poutine (the T is for Thierry) is located in the Lower East Side, close to bars and the club scene, and offers 12 different variations of the item on its menu.

“It’s great, but it’s not easy,” says Pepin of the reaction to the calorie-laden creation, often described as a “heart attack on a plate.”

“A lot of Americans haven’t heard about it, are skeptical about it. But the ones that come to the restaurant open-minded, they want to try it. For the most part, they all love it.”

The rib-sticking dish is believed to have originated in rural Quebec in the 1950s, and several communities lay claim as its birthplace. One such tale involves Fernand Lachance of Warwick, Que., who was asked by a customer to add cheese curds to an order of fries and deemed it “une maudite poutine (roughly translated as “an unholy mess”). The addition of gravy came later.

Pepin says many of his customers are New Yorkers who attended McGill University in Montreal and got hooked on poutine. Canadians living in the Big Apple are also regulars, he says.

Now, it seems, poutine is going mainstream. T-Poutine and Pepin were recently featured on ABC News, which took a lighthearted look – replete with Mounties and lots of frozen tundra – at the invasion of this most Canadian of foods into the heart of its southern neighbour.

Poutine is also a big hit in south Florida, where the Grenier family has been serving the dressed-up french fries at their Dairy Belle ice cream parlour/fast-food outlet in Dania Beach for the last decade.

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Only a carefully balanced diet provides all the nutrients that enable us to perform strenuous mental and physical work and remain healthy.

Our bodies need a certain amount of nutrients on a regular basis to be able to function. In order to supply our bodies with these nutrients we need to eat a balanced diet. Eating well helps us to achieve and maintain body compositions that enable us to do strenuous mental and physical work and remain healthy.

Everybody will have a different calorie intake and it will most likely vary from day to day. But it is essential that we give our bodies what they need to function, so we can keep functioning. So, governments, universities, and health centres around the world have developed food guides and food pyramids, in an effort to help people understand how to eat healthily.

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© McNeil Consumer Healthcare, division of Johnson & Johnson Inc. 2010

Not every food comparison is as easy as apples and oranges. The knack for knowing which foods will be best for your family doesn’t always come naturally. Do you know which is healthier – butter or margarine?

The spreadable, edible flavour of butter and margarine make them must-get items on family grocery lists. But the claims of benefits and risks for both butter and margarine have gone from positive to negative and back again so many times, it’s easy to get whipped up into a frenzy of confusion. While some recipes call for one or the other, which will you choose to coat your breakfast toast or to give the savoury sizzle to your grilled cheese sandwich?

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