Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Revealed: How French women stay slim without even trying (and it's a lot easier than you think)

French women appear to be able to maintain their slender elegance
FEMAIL has called on Dr Carrie Ruxton to spill the five simple secrets
Includes eating red meat, taking time cooking and never snacking

PUBLISHED: 09:24 EST, 24 January 2017 | UPDATED: 10:37 EST, 24 January 2017

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For years, our continental neighbours have been applauded as chic, slim and poised - all achieved seemingly without effort.

Even more infuriatingly, French women appear to be able to maintain their slender elegance through everything from pregnancy to old age.

So what are their secrets? FEMAIL has called on Dr Carrie Ruxton to spill the five simple secrets French women swear by for staying trim.

French women - like actress Charlotte Gainsbourg - appear to be able to maintain their slender elegance through everything from pregnancy to old age. Here, Dr Carrie Ruxton spills the five simple secrets they swear by

1. The French say 'non' to snacking on the run, so steer clear of the supersize muffins at your coffee shop and stick to a flat white.

2. Whether it's beef Bourgogne or quiche Lorraine, the French love their red meat. Choose lean pork, beef or lamb and stew slowly with plenty of veg for a warming French dish.

3. French women take time over their main meals and usually share the moment with family or friends. So, junk the sad sandwich at your desk and meet up with colleagues for a healthy salad.

The plan includes eating red meat, taking time cooking and never snacking

4. The French adore home cooking and have a deep suspicion about fast foods. Try to cook at home most nights of the week, even if it's a simple pasta dish, and keep the local takeaway as an occasional treat.

FIVE FRENCH RULES

1. No snacking

2. Embrace red meat

3. Eat socially

4. Avoid fast food

5. Eat seven portions of fruit and veg a day

5. French women eat far more fruit and vegetables than their British counterparts. Aim for at least five portions a day (fresh, frozen, dried) and feel especially virtuous if you get to seven portions.

Sophia Thomas, a 25-year-old Briton who spent four years studying in France, said: 'Everywhere you look in Paris, there are beautiful, slim women.

'Whether it is on fashion billboards or just across the street, you can't escape that supposed perfection.

'Everybody aspires to be some sort of Coco Chanel. She was the epitome of high octane glamour with that perfect rouge pout, peachy cheeks, Breton stripes and flowing pearls.

'It's tough, especially when there are boulangeries on every corner. However, it seems that it's going to take years to shake off that glamourised view of French women, so I guess I'll be passing on that croissant and hot chocolate!'

Friday, January 20, 2017

https://www.graze.com/us/

Thousands of Skittles end up on an icy road. But that's not the surprising part

By Doug Criss, CNN

Updated 11:41 AM ET, Thu January 19, 2017

Spilled red Skittles litter the road in rural Wisconsin.

Story highlights

The spill was actually helpful
We've been feeding candy to our cows

(CNN)This story starts out about Skittles but ends up being about cows.

A rural county in southeast Wisconsin had a sweet, sticky mystery along a highway earlier this week. Hundreds of thousands of red Skittles were found spilled on a road in Dodge County.

"There's no little 'S' on them, but you can definitely smell, it's a distinct Skittles smell," Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt told CNN affiliate WISN.

No one knew where the candy came from or where it was going, but county road crews said the Skittles spill was actually helpful, as the roads in the area have been icy the past couple of days and the thousands of little candies improved traction.

So that's one unexpected silver lining from that mishap.

But the story gets better.

The sheriff's department later found out that the Skittles fell off a truck that was hauling the red candies to be used as cattle feed.

Yes, they're feeding candy to cows -- and they've been doing it for years.

A former farmer told CNN affiliate WBAY that candy makers and bakeries often sell rejects to be used as cattle feed because they provide "cheap carbs."

The practice goes back decades, but it picked up steam in 2012 when corn prices were surging and cattle farmers were looking for a cheaper way to keep their cows and other livestock fed.

"(It) is a very good way for producers to reduce feed cost, and to provide less expensive food for consumers," said Ki Fanning, a livestock nutritionist with Great Plains Livestock Consulting, told CNNMoney at the time.

Sweet treats

OK, fine, but is mixing in castoff candy, cookies or ice cream sprinkles in the hay fed to livestock healthy for them? (And for us, since we eat them?)

"I think it's a viable (diet)," John Waller, an animal science professor at the University of Tennessee, told Live Science. "It keeps fat material from going out in the landfill, and it's a good way to get nutrients in these cattle. The alternative would be to put (the candy) in a landfill somewhere."

Skittles for cows was a shock to folks up in Wisconsin who saw the sheriff's department Facebook post about the roadway spill.

Some were outraged about it.

"Absolutely gross!" wrote one commenter. "Why are we ok with feeding cows Skittles to fatten them up. Know where your meat comes from people. I hope you're all learned something from this."

But another commenter considered the advantages.

"Strawberry skittles = Strawberry milk."

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

How Much Sugar Is in Your Pizza? Way More Than You'd Think

Shaunacy Ferro

filed under: Food, health

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As researchers and nutrition experts begin to discover—and admit—how bad sugar is for the body, there's more awareness of just how much sugar is contained in some of our favorite foods, even the ones that we think of as savory, not sweet. As Co.Exist reports, Antonio Rodríguez Estrada’s photography project sinAzucar (“sugar free”) aims to illustrate how much sugar is in the food we eat in a way that people understand—with sugar cubes.

Each cube is worth 4 grams of sugar. The World Health Organization and other experts recommend that you only eat about 25 grams of added sugar a day, by some counts. Some health groups allow for a little more, like the UK's National Health Service (30 grams) or the FDA's proposed 50 gram maximum—which may or may not have been influenced by the powerful Sugar Lobby, which has fought anti-sugar research for decades, including opposing the new "added sugars" designation on nutrition labels. From a health standpoint, the less sugar, the better. Ideally, you should really only be eating a little more than six sugar cubes over the course of your day. Some of Estrada's photographs show more than that in just one food.

Depressing as they are, some of the images are pretty obvious. Four Chips Ahoy! cookies (if you can manage to eat just four) have 8 and a half sugar cubes. An approximately 24-ounce Coke from Coca-Cola, one of the greatest targets of the fight against obesity, contains almost 20 cubes’ worth of sugar, by Estrada’s calculations. In the U.S., the biggest size of a McDonald’s soft drink, for example, is quite a bit bigger. Not to mention places like 7-11 that sell 64-ounce cups.

Some of the beverages on the list aren’t necessarily thought of as being as sugary as sodas, but are super-sugary nonetheless, like a Venti Starbucks white mocha, which contains some 20 sugar cubes of sweetness. A Powerade bottle, seemingly a healthier option than a Coke, has 9.5 lumps of sugar. (So if you’re drinking it after you work out, you’re probably undoing that healthy activity.) A flavored Activia yogurt, presumably part of a "balanced breakfast" contains four cubes' worth of sugar.

And some of the other photos might surprise—and terrify—you even more. A frozen barbecue pizza has more than four sugar cubes’ worth (barbecue sauce is notoriously sugary, but a small Domino's pizza has 13 grams of sugar—7 grams in the crust and 6 in the sauce). Just two pieces of toast adds up to a cube and a half.

The images can be a little misleading, though. The two Petit Suisse yogurt cups pictured have three cubes’ worth of sugar, but those are naturally occurring in dairy and don’t have the same health effects as added sugar. The same goes for the seven cubes of sugar in a 100 percent fruit and vegetable juice. Current research doesn’t support an association between obesity and eating naturally occurring sugars in milk and fruit, though many nutritionists recommend you eat sugary foods like fruit whole, rather than juiced, to maintain the benefits of the fruit’s fiber.

If you’re interested in eating less sugar, try The New York Times’ recent interactive quiz, which tests how little sugar you can eat in a day while consuming a selection of common meals and snacks.

[h/t Co.Exist]

All images courtesy of Antonio Rodríguez Estrada via sinAzucar.

January 18, 2017 - 1:00am

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Soda is top of the shopping list for families on food stamps who spend ONE FIFTH of their allowance on junk foods

The top single purchase made by families on food stamps is soda drinks
America's poorest households also spend 20 cents in every dollar on junk food
Forty cents are spent on basics such as cheese, milk, cereals and beef
Experts point to findings as one of the causes of America's obesity crisis
They are calling for soda and junk food to be exempt from food stamps program
But candy and beverage industries have teamed up to lobby against move

By Hannah Parry For Dailymail.com

PUBLISHED: 10:17 EST, 15 January 2017 | UPDATED: 13:23 EST, 15 January 2017

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Food stamps are a last resort for millions of low income families across America who struggle to put food on the table.

So it may come as a surprise that the top purchase made by food stamps is not food at all; it's soda.

Soda accounts for five percent of every dollar spent in stamps while a whopping 20 percent is spent on junk food that includes 'sweetened beverages, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar'.

Soda (stock image) is top of the shopping list for families on food stamps who spend one fifth of their allowance on junk foods

The United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees the $74billion food stamp program SNAP, found that dairy and processed foods were among the top purchases, the New York Times reports.

Ten cents in every dollar were spent on sweetened beverages which also include juices and energy drinks. With an average family on food stamps receiving around $256, that could mean they could buy 50 cans of soda every month.

While healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, beans, eggs, nuts and seeds were lower down on the list.

The report also noted that families on food stamps typically bought more junk food than those paying for groceries themselves.

For example, among people not on food stamps, milk was the top purchase, followed by soft drinks in second.

Around 23million households receive around $256 in food stamps every month (pictured is an Illinois Link card, an electronic debit-like card used in place of the traditional food stamp)

Many health experts have pointed to the findings as one of the causes of America's burgeoning obesity crisis.

They are now demanding more restrictions on food stamp purchases, so that tax payer dollars are no longer paying for unhealthy food and drinks.

David Ludwig, the director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children's Hospital, said that other government programs such as e the national school lunch program have strict nutrition standards, so there was no reason they couldn't be implemented for SNAP.

'No one is suggesting poor people can't choose what they want to eat,' he said. 'But we're saying let's not use government benefits to pay for foods that are demonstrably going to undermine public health.'

He added that recent evidence had highlighted sugary drinks as one of the most harmful types of unhealthy food, yet soda 'tops the list of reimbursed products in SNAP.'

Around 23million households receive around $256 in food stamps every month.

Several states have been fighting to restrict sugary drinks and junk food from food stamps (an old stamp from 1995)

Several states have been fighting to restrict sugary drinks and junk food from food stamps.

WHAT ARE FOOD STAMPS SPENT ON BY THE DOLLAR?

Five cents on soda

15 cents on junk food and sweetened drinks excluding soda

40 cents of basics such as milk, cheese, and meat

40 cents on cereals and other grains such as, rice, beans and prepared foods

Maine, Minnesota and New York City have all requested to remove the items but were denied by USDA.

The agency said it would consider granting permission for a state or citywide restriction on condition it conducted 'a rigorous pilot study' and also offered food stamp recipients the ability to opt out of the soda restrictions.

'We'd want rigorous evaluation to see what is the impact of such a policy,' he said.

The candy and beverage industries, inlcuding PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Kraft Foods, have previously banded together to oppose restrictions on food stamps.

The government has tried to promote healthier options on food stamps by incentivizing fruits and vegetables.

But a 2014 study by Stanford researchers found that the incentive program would not significantly affect obesity rates, while banning sugary drinks from SNAP 'would be expected to significantly reduce obesity prevalence and Type 2 diabetes incidence, particularly among ages 18 to 65 and some racial and ethnic minorities.'

The report was based on data from a nationwide grocery chain on items bought in 2011.