“Filthy conditions at henhouses linked to the egg recall include infestations by rodents, flies, maggots, and wild birds, FDA inspectors report.
“Some of the egg-producing hens were caged above manure pits four to eight feet deep.”
Permission granted: You can officially stop feeling guilty about those little “bad-for-you” habits you can’t seem to break. Turns out, many of life’s greatest indulgences bring big health benefits — helping you stay slim, fight off the blues, and kick disease to the curb.
And we’ve got the 10 best right here, conveniently ranked by Health magazine’s expert panelists. Start at the top of the list to get the most bang for your healthy buck, and keep moving on down to learn how to boost your well-being in the most decadent ways possible.
Here’s the 10 and here’s the link to learn more about the benefits of each.
Pleasure No. 1: Getting your zzz’s
Pleasure No. 2: Playing hooky
Pleasure No. 3: Sexual healing
Pleasure No. 4: A daily chocolate fix
Pleasure No. 5: Girls’ nights out
Pleasure No. 6: Full-fat dressing
Pleasure No. 7: Your morning java
Pleasure No. 8: Getting a rubdown
Pleasure No. 9: Basking in the sun
Pleasure No. 10: Wine with dinner
“Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
[T]he voters at the Zagat Guide recently chose Five Guys as the best burger in the country.
In a survey of 6,500 fast food fans, Five Guys beat out all other burger chains for top honors, followed by In-N-Out — last year’s winner — in second place. Rounding out the top five were, in order, Wendy’s, Burger King then McDonald’s.
Among full-service chain restaurants, Red Robin reigned supreme. The rest of the top five were Stake ‘n Shake, Cheesecake Factory, Ruby Tuesday and Chili’s.
I believe it is Steak ‘n Shake, but no matter. Eat enough of the burgers at any of these places and you might as well drive a stake through your heart.
If you anticipate that you — or anyone close to you — will ever die, you should read Letting Go: What should medicine do when it can’t save your life? by Atul Gawande.
“The CDC has identified salsa and guacamole as two significant sources of food-borne illnesses, according to a new report released today.”
“According to a new study on your ballooning bottom, Colorado, America’s fittest state, has more adult obesity now (19.1%) than Mississipi, America’s fattest state (33.8%), did in 1991 (15.7%).”
What we don’t know may kill us. Sunscreens may be worse than no sunscreen. They’re not as good as they are in Europe. They may cause cancer. They are mislabeled. They may damage the skin.
Hats and long-sleeve shirts anyone?
In popular culture, the Fourth of July connotes hot dogs, hamburgers and cold beer. But the country has changed, and while burgers and hot dogs are still a distinct possibility, so are mofongo and arroz con pollo, or kimchi and kalbi. Cold beer, though, remains universal, and for that we might consider taking a moment to thank the founding fathers of the craft-beer revolution.
A mere 35 years ago, the domestic beer choices on Independence Day weekend were a dismal lot: bland, flavorless mega-brews, with perhaps a few equally uninspiring beers from dying regional breweries. Today, the American beer world is completely different, thanks to some farsighted brewers who envisioned a better future.
The panel tasted 20 American pale ales. …
1. FLYING DOG Flying Dog Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale
2. LONG TRAIL
3. STOUDT’S
4. SLY FOX
5. OTTER CREEK
6. TWO BROTHERS
7. SAMUEL ADAMS
8. DOGFISH HEAD
9. OSKAR BLUES
10. LAGUNITAS
Beers of The Times has the details.
“If you’re cheap and/or lazy and use only water as your windshield wiper fluid, you could increase your risk of contracting Legionnaire’s disease and pneumonia, according to a new study. That’s right, treat your car poorly and it will try to kill you.”
The Consumerist has the details.
I wanted to buy a six-pack of beer in cans yesterday, to drink and throw the empties at the TV if UCLA beat Arizona in softball (as they did).
I find it is increasingly difficult to buy a six-pack; 12-packs are all the rage. And bottles outnumber cans by a large margin. I just wanted a six-pack of cans, but I ended up thinking the best deal was 12 Stella Artois in bottles.
I bring it home, put the case in the refrigerator with a couple in the freezer to speed up the chill. I’m an American; I like my beer cold (even if I bought a Belgian beer).
But I decide to have a Margarita instead.
Later I remember to get the two bottles out of the freezer. That’s when I notice they are not 12 ounces, which is the amount Moses brought down from Mount Sinai as the proper portable package for beer.
No, they are 11.2 ounces.
Eleven. Point. Two.
WTF is this? You can make the OJ containers smaller. You can make the jam jars smaller. You can mess with almost anything.
But you don’t mess with beer.
“WASHINGTON (May 24) — Almost half of the 500 most popular sunscreen products may actually increase the speed at which malignant cells develop and spread skin cancer because they contain vitamin A or its derivatives, according to an evaluation of those products released today. ”
AOL News reporting on study by researchers at Environmental Working Group.
“[O]nly 39 of the 500 products they examined were considered safe and effective to use.”
“may actually increase the speed at which malignant cells develop”
George Johnson – Slate Magazine reports on wireless and the brain. He begins:
Not many people drive all the way to the top of Sandia Crest, 10,678 feet, to hang out by the Steel Forest—the thick stand of blinking broadcast and microwave antennas that serves as a communications hub for New Mexico and the Southwest. But I went there on a dare. For the past few months, I’ve been trying to understand the thinking of some anti-wireless activists who have turned my town, Santa Fe, N.M., into a hotbed for people who believe that microwaves from cell phones and Wi-Fi are causing everything from insomnia, nausea, and absent-mindedness to brain cancer.
“Spend an hour or two in front of the antennas,” I was advised by Bill Bruno, a Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist and self-diagnosed “electrosensitive” who sometimes attends public hearings wearing a chain-mail-like head dress to protect his brain. “See if aspirin cures the headache you’ll probably get, and see if you can sleep that night without medication.”
“It turns out that, at least for smart restaurateurs, making the dining experience ridiculously noisy is good for business: people buy more drinks per hour, and they finish eating and leave sooner.”
The Consumerist has a few more details.
Dehydrated & Freeze-Dried Food
1-year Food Supply For 1 Person
5,011 Total Servings
$799.99 after $200 OFF
A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.
In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.
The food in famous paintings of the meal has grown by biblical proportions over the last millennium, researchers report in a medical journal Tuesday.
Using a computer, they compared the size of the food to the size of the heads in 52 paintings of Jesus Christ and his disciples at their final meal before his death.
If art imitates life, we’re in trouble, the researchers conclude. The size of the main dish grew 69 percent; the size of the plate, 66 percent, and the bread, 23 percent, between the years 1000 and 2000.
“It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier…”
The Well Blog has more.
“[Y]eah, yeah, it probably comes from cows, but where do the cows come from?”
Your milk container should have two numbers. The first indicates the state, the second the dairy. I had to add zeros before the dairy number so that I had four digits in order to make the code work. Your milkage may vary.
Overall well-being, life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment, and basic access based on Gallup-Healthways data from 2009.
Some observations:
Hawaii’s residents had the highest well-being in the nation in 2009, pulling ahead of 2008 leader Utah, and coming in with a new high state Well-Being Index score of 70.2. Utah and Montana are also among the top well-being states in the country, sharing the same score of 68.3. Kentucky (62.3) and West Virginia (60.5) have the two lowest well-being scores, as they did in 2008.
Among the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan areas that Gallup surveyed in 2009, San Jose, Calif., had the highest well-being in the nation followed closely by Washington, D.C., according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Rounding out the top five well-being cities are Raleigh, N.C., Minneapolis, and San Francisco.
Las Vegas ranked last in 2009 in overall well-being among all large cities, defined as those with a population size of 1 million or greater, with Providence, R.I.; Jackson[ville], Fla.; Tampa, Fla.; Louisville, Ky.; and Cleveland just ahead. Tampa, Jacksonville, and Miami gave the state of Florida the negative distinction of having three large metro areas in the bottom 10 in well-being for the year. Detroit, New Orleans, and Birmingham, Ala., round out the list. The regional breakdown in well-being scores is largely consistent with Gallup-Healthways state-level findings, which find higher than average scoring cities in the West and lower than average scoring cities in the South.
Four of the top ten states in church attendance rank among the bottom in well-being.
Three of the top ten states in well-being rank among the bottom in church attendance.
(Though, in fairness, Nevada is low in both and Utah high in both.)
“If the pace of increase in life expectancy in developed countries over the past two centuries continues through the 21st century, most babies born since 2000 in France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the USA, Canada, Japan, and other countries with long life expectancies will celebrate their 100th birthdays.”
“[A] team of microbiologists from Hollins University found that 48% of sodas tested from the fast food fountains contain coliform bacteria, which is typically fecal in origin. And most bacteria found were antibiotic resistant, as icing on the cake.”
And, of course, the ice in many of those soda fountains has already been shown to be nastier than the average toilet.
“I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham.”
Natalie Angier, Plants Want to Live, Too
“But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to ‘committed vegetarians’ and ‘strong ethical vegans,’ we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot.”
Do we know where our food comes from, and how it’s prepared? Do we know what are we eating? It looks like we don’t give a damn. If it’s tasty, then it’s on a table. And how much this cost? Look what people all around the world eat, and how much it costs.
Food Costs All Around The World – Fill Inn
Thanks to Tom for the link. As Tom says, “It’s photos of families from around the world and the food they eat in a month. Note that everyplace in the world has huge piles of vegetables, except the various US entries, which are primarily boxes of carbohydrates.”
How about the Olive Garden’s innocuous-sounding Spaghetti with Meatballs…well, it’s got roughly the same calories and saturated fat as three Quarter-Pounders. Macaroni Grill’s dish is twice as bad — six Quarter-Pounders. So clearly, why not just pull through your local drive-through and order the family, I dunno, a couple of dozen Quarter-Pounder[s] and eat those instead?
Info from the Center for Science in the Public Interest as reported at the mental_floss Blog.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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