Showing posts with label Healthy Coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Healthy Coffee. Show all posts
Monday, October 19, 2015
Healthy Habits Global Gourmet Energy Drink
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Healthy Habits Global Gourmet Hot Cocoa
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Healthy Habits Global Gourmet Chai Tea
Friday, October 16, 2015
Healthy Habits Global Gourmet Cappuccino
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Healthy Habits Global Gourmet Blend Coffee
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Healthy Habits Global Gourmet Black Coffee
Saturday, October 3, 2015
SOMETHING BIG IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!
Friday, October 2, 2015
Change Your Eating Habits, Change Your Life
From omnivore to vegetarian: 'No gray area'. By Emanuella Grinberg, CNN
Updated 3:17 PM ET, Thu January 8, 2015
Atlanta Chef Linton Hopkins wanted to eat healthier and lose weight.
As a cancer survivor, he tried all kinds of diets, but the calorie-counting and portion-control did not work for his busy lifestyle, he said.
By comparison, giving up all animal products was easy to understand: "There's no gray area."
Nudged on by his wife, he began experimenting with veganism in June 2014.
Diets can be hard, especially if eating is your livelihood. Surprisingly, perhaps, some in the food world have found the path of least resistance through cutting out meat and, in some cases, dairy and fish.
As their experience shows, changing up your regimen does not have to be an all or nothing proposition. But, if the best diet is the one you can stick to, making a lifestyle change that you believe in might be easier than cutting out one or two things at a time.
Making vegetables 'crave-able'
Vegetable cookery was familiar terrain to Hopkins, a James Beard award-winning Southern chef. Despite the region's reputation for BBQ and fried chicken, Southern food leans heavily on vegetables, even if they are often cooked in fatback or butter.
The vegetable plate at his fine-dining eatery, Restaurant Eugene, consistently receives praise from vegetarians and was named one of the best in the South by Southern Living. It also can be prepared vegan upon request.
To eat vegan at home, the challenge was to create vegetable dishes free of animal fat or flavoring that were as "crave-able as BBQ," Hopkins said. As a chef, he was absolutely willing to take matters into his hands.
Instead of butter, he mastered vegetable stocks and glazes for roasting vegetables. He experimented with essential oils of nuts to bring out flavor in sautéed vegetables.
Within 11 weeks he lost 20 pounds and felt great. But he's a chef and business owner, and he's not running a vegetarian establishment. He still takes bites of meat in his restaurant kitchen to ensure it's up to his standards, especially in new presentations.
"I believe it's my responsibility as chef to taste and ensure flavor is all there," he said. "You can see and hear the flavor in the pan and smell it, but you have to bring all senses to the process."
Still, his regimen at home is influencing his restaurants. At Hopkins' latest outpost, H&F Burger in Atlanta's Ponce City Market, he offers a veggie burger on the menu alongside his famous double-stack burger.
"I never want anyone to feel limited in their ordering experience," he said. "If you come in as vegan or with a wheat allergy, we don't want to make you feel like you only have one thing to order."
Eating 'lean and clean'
For food writers, overeating can be an occupational hazard. That's what drove Washington Post food writer Joe Yonan to become a vegetarian: a desire to eat "lean and clean" at home in response to all the "fat and dirty" eating in restaurants.
While the past few years have brought more interest in plant-based eating, a countervailing trend has been to celebrate meat by using all parts, nose to tail. At the same time, he noticed his freezer was filling up with farmers market meat that he kept saving for a "special occasion," he said.
"That's when I realized something was going on."
After spending a year on leave from the Post to learn about homesteading in Maine, he had a completely new view of food that pushed him to be a full-time vegetarian.
He said he hesitated at first, wary of the label vegetarians have as picky eaters. He also knew some people would question the appropriateness of the editor of a mainstream newspaper food section not being an omnivore.
He considered all the angles and baked them into a 2013 column, "A former omnivore comes out as vegetarian."
Most of the response was positive, he said. As for the skeptics, he assured them his 30 years as a meat-eater would inform his editorial judgment. They could also count on balanced coverage from the rest of the Post staff, which includes a BBQ columnist.
"I don't find the idea of meat to be personally off-putting, I just don't want to eat it," he said. "If there's a meat-centered story I don't consider it any differently than a story about a community garden or making tofu."
If anything, being a vegetarian has made him receptive to a broader range of story ideas in agriculture and food policy.
"I think the section is probably more well-rounded than before," said Yonan, the newspaper's food and dining editor.
"I think people who call themselves omnivores are not as attuned to vegetarian topics as the other way around. I was a meat-eater for long time, I'm familiar with those ingredients and I think now I'm familiar with a new set of ingredients and new trends in a way that I wasn't before."
It's been good for his career, too. He published a cookbook and gets frequent requests for speaking engagements. Most often, the topic of discussion is his shift in perspective, and not being a vegetarian writer.
Focusing on the rest of the plate
"The Flavor Bible" creators Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg also turned their journey from omnivores to vegetarians into a cookbook. But it started on a mournful note.
From 2000 to 2009, the couple lost all their parents to cancer.
After a "hedonistic" three decades chasing food trends, they decided they could no longer ignore the headlines "linking nutrition and wellness," and started paying attention to what they were eating when they weren't "eating professionally," Page said.
They started experimenting in 2012 but they didn't do it overnight, she said. Cheese and eggs were the hardest to give up, and they started out with a lot of quiche and vegetarian lasagna.
Living in New York with access to a wide array of ethnic cuisine made it easier to evolve away from French and Italian-inspired meals toward plant-based Asian and African fare. They discovered they were addicted to "flavor profiles," like the crispiness of bacon or the smokiness of beef, not the actual meat itself.
They've been eating "99% vegetarian" ever since. They eat vegan at home and prefer it in restaurants, but if nothing is available they go for the closest vegetarian option.
Their experiment turned into a lifestyle and the inspiration for their latest cookbook, "The Vegetarian Flavor Bible."
"The truth is once we stopped eating meat all the other ingredients on the plate take on so much more excitement," Page said.
"My dining experience is so enhanced I don't feel like I'm giving up anything."
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Friday, July 10, 2015
Finally A Diet Shake That Really Works!
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
The Quality Of Health Care You Receive Likely Depends On Your Skin Color
Unequal health care continues to be a serious problem for black Americans.
More than a decade after the Institute of Medicine issued a landmark report showing that minority patients were less likely to receive the same quality health care as white patients, racial and ethnic disparities continue to plague the U.S. health care system. That report, which was published in 2002, indicated that even when both groups had similar insurance or the same ability to pay for care, black patients received inferior treatment to white patients.
This still hold true, according to our investigation into dozens of studies about black health across multiple disciplines. More than any other single group, the black community is most likely to have negative health outcomes, including higher rates of breast and prostate cancer, high incidence of HIV/AIDS, higher rates of infant morality -- along with high rates of childhood obesity and asthma in young adults.
According to Karen M. Winkfield, a radiation oncologist and assistant professor in the department of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School, racial disparities in health care and health outcomes exist across almost every single disease or condition.
"In terms of the disparities, it’s universal," she said. "There are disparities across almost every single disease entity."
Behind The Numbers.
Socioeconomic inequality accounts for much of the difference. Twenty-seven percent of people living in poverty are black, and studies consistently show that the least educated and lowest income people are the most likely to be unhealthy.
"Financial status directly impacts health status," Winkfield said. "They are inseparable. That’s the problem in this country -- people make the assumption that people can just do. Well, you can’t. If you don’t have the resources, you’re not going to be able to care for your health in the appropriate way."
This is a Catch-22: People need education and information in order to make these good personal health decisions, two resources that economically disadvantaged individuals are less likely to have. Education is also a factor in making health changes on a community level. It takes education and political connections to effectively lobby local grocery stores to carry fresh fruits and vegetables, or fight to prohibit corner stores from selling tobacco to neighborhood youth.
But inequality alone doesn't account for the difference. Policy can address differences in access and income, but research finds that unconscious racism is far more insidious and harder to legislate against. Fully two-thirds of medical professionals display unconscious racial bias. And research has also shown that racial bias can lead to reduced trust between patients and their doctors, and causes black patients feel less respected by their doctors.
"Layered on top of those social class inequities are racial inequities," said Dr. M. Norman Oliver, director of the University of Virginia Center on Health Disparities. "While a poor, working-class white or a poor Appalachian white might have the same poor health standards as folks in inner-city Baltimore, the population attributable risk of being in that poor status is much higher in the African-American community. That’s a result of that racist discrimination being layered on top of the class inequities that we have."
Closing the gap.
Though the numbers are grim, there are efforts to close these gaps. One initiative outlined in a 2014 New England Journal of Medicine study proved that requiring hospitals to report quality of care reduced racial disparities in health outcomes between 2005 and 2010 in 17 categories, including heart attacks, heart failures and pneumonia. And the Affordable Care Act has started to narrow the health insurance disparity, with the number of uninsured blacks expected to drop from 20 percent to 11 percent by 2016.
These improvements, however, have limits. For individuals who didn't benefit from the ACA's expansion of Medicaid, and had to buy health insurance through the health care exchanges, there may be no increase in health care access at all, said Oliver. "It’s a little problematic in that most folks can’t afford anything other than the high-deductible plans," he said. "Even though they have insurance, it doesn’t necessarily increase their access, because they can’t pay for things out of pocket."
One way to combat discrepancies is to clearly identify them. In that spirit, we picked five disease areas representing both chronic and infectious conditions -- childhood obesity, infant mortality, childhood asthma, breast cancer and HIV infections -- to illuminate how much worse outcomes are for African-Americans in nearly every category of health:
Black Women Are More Likely To Die Of Breast Cancer.
The research: As The Huffington Post reported in October, despite advances in medicine over the past three decades, breast cancer survival among black women has not improved at the same rate as it has among white women. Today, black women have a 79 percent five-year survival rate, while white women have a 92 percent five-year survival rate. These numbers are particularly striking because white women have higher rates of breast cancer to begin with.
Why is this happening? Socioeconomic factors including income, education, and occupation can mean fewer resources, less access to quality health care and worse health outcomes. In addition, life-saving clinical trials may be financially impossible for working-class women who can't afford to miss a shift. As it stands, only five percent of clinical trial participants are black. "The advancements in screening tools and treatment which occurred in the 1990s were largely available to white women, while black women, who were more likely to be uninsured, did not gain equal access to these life-saving technologies," Bijou Hunt, an epidemiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago, told Reuters last year.
HIV Diagnoses Are Nine Times Higher In the Black Community.
The research: Of the 46,381 people who received an HIV-positive diagnosis in 2010, approximately half were African-American or Hispanic. People of color were nine times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV than white individuals, and black women were 20 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV than white women.
Why is this happening? Poverty underscores HIV transmissions, since limited access to health care can mean individuals are less likely to be educated about or practice safe sex, less likely to get tested for HIV, and may have less access to antiretroviral therapies than their higher-income counterparts. In addition, the disproportionally high incarceration rate among black men poses an infection risk for the black community. One in seven people with HIV has passed through a correctional facility, where recent reports show that rape and sex between inmates is commonplace.
Real and perceived stigma and discrimination against HIV-positive people of color decreases both the likelihood that individuals will seek treatment and the likelihood that HIV-positive people will be honest with their potential sexual partners about their diagnosis.
The Infant Mortality Rate Is Twice As High For Black Children.
The research: Black children are two times more likely to die during their first year of life than white children. In Washington D.C., which, like many other big cities, has a high percentage of African-American and low-income residents, black infants are almost four times more likely to die before their first birthday.
Why is this happening? Devastatingly high infant mortality rates among people of color make it especially clear that not all groups have benefited equally from 20th-century medical advances. Factors such as poor maternal health, inadequate prenatal care, smoking during pregnancy, lack of education, infection, stress and racism may all contribute to infant mortality.
"We know that one of the leading causes of infant mortality among African-Americans is preterm birth," Michael Lu, an obstetrician-gynecologist and professor at the University of California at Los Angeles told McClatchy DC in 2007 when studies suggested stress may play a role in the long-stubborn mortality discrepancy. "We know that stress is an important risk factor, and it initiates the release of stress hormones leading to preterm birth and increase susceptibility for infection. The question is, do we think racial discrimination and racism is stressful?"
The answer to Lu's question is "yes." While existing peer-reviewed research on the psychological effects of racism on people of color is limited, psychologist Monnica Williams, a professor and director of the University of Louisville’s Center for Mental Health Disparities, believes there is a link between racism and post-traumatic stress disorder. "It’s a natural byproduct of the types of experiences that minorities have to deal with on a regular basis," she said in a New York Times interview in June. "My training and study has been on post-traumatic stress disorder for a long time, and the two look very much alike."
Black Children Are More Likely To Be Obese.
The research: Compared to white children, black children and adolescents are more likely to suffer from obesity, defined as having body-mass indices greater than 30. This is especially troubling because of the myriad long-term health problems associated with obesity, including coronary heart disease, high-blood pressure, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer.
Why is this happening? Obesity is a tricky and somewhat circular issue. One possible contributing factor to childhood obesity among black children that they are less likely to be breastfed than white children. According to the World Health Organization, formula-fed infants tend to consume higher protein levels, which can lead to weight gain and obesity development later in life. Breast milk also contains important hormones that may contribute to healthy weight balance. Breastfeeding is not, however, always an issue of personal choice. That black women generally tend to make less money and be less well-educated are barriers "because you can't access jobs where you might have a maternity leave, or can negotiate a private space to pump, or feel you are able to nurse at work," Monique Sims-Harper, director of A More Excellent Way Health Improvement Organization and a spokeswoman for the California Breastfeeding Coalition, told the BBC.
Additional factors that can trigger obesity include the lack of access to health foods in low-income communities, limited opportunities for physical activity (people living in high-crime communities may be less likely to let their kids play outside, for example), and a lack of education about nutrition. Bringing the issue full circle, a higher weight is associated with lower earned income, at least among women.
Black Children Are More Likely To Have Asthma.
The research: Black and Puerto Rican children are more likely to have asthma than any other groups. Moreover, black individuals of any age are three times more likely than white individuals to die from asthma.
Why is this happening? Living in poor-quality low-income housing, which could include lead paint and mold, is a likely asthma trigger, a condition that is not limited to city dwellers. African-American children living in Inner-city and rural low-income areas were found to have equally high asthma levels in a recent study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
While there may be a genetic component to asthma, poverty seems to be the overwhelming risk factor. As of 2013, almost a third of people living at the poverty level were black. Poverty can also contribute to other health behaviors that can cause or worsen asthma. According to NPR, "Second-hand smoke is also a risk for children, and poor people tend to smoke more. And people in poverty, no matter where they live, also experience day-to-day stress."
Over the next few months, The Huffington Post will shine a light on racial disparities in health outcomes and care as part of our series, Black Health Matters.
Sugary Drinks May Cause 180,000 Deaths Worldwide
Sugary drinks linked to 25,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. By contributing to obesity and, through that, to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks appears to claim the lives of about 25,000 American adults yearly and is linked worldwide to the deaths of 180,000 each year, new research says.
Removing chocolate milk from schools caused plain milk to be wasted.
Low- and middle-income countries are bearing the brunt of the death toll attributed to overconsumption of sugar-sweetened sodas, sports drinks and fruit drinks, according to an assessment published Monday in the American Heart Assn.'s journal, Circulation. Each year, more than 3 in 4 of the world's deaths attributed to overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages occur in those poor and developing countries.
In Mexico -- a country with one of the world's highest per-capita consumption of sweetened drinks -- about 24,000 adults' deaths in 2010 were attributed to overconsumption of sugar-sweetened drinks. That translated into the highest death rate of the world's 20 most populous nations: 405 deaths per million adults in one year.
The United States ranked second. In 2010, there were 125 deaths per million adults, or about 25,000 deaths total.
To generate those estimates of sugary beverages' health toll, researchers combed through national dietary surveys that captured patterns of beverage consumption in 51 countries from 1980 to 2010. The researchers then mined resource databases to discern the availability and consumption of sugar in 187 countries.
They tallied consumption of drinks, homemade and mass-produced, that deliver 50 calories or more per 8-ounce serving, and did not count 100% fruit juices.
Americans consume too much added sugars, study says, and it's killing us.
They drew from a growing mountain of studies to estimate the contribution of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption to obesity, and of obesity to such diseases as Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancers of the breast, colon, esophagus, gall bladder, kidney, pancreas and ovaries. And finally, they calculated how many deaths from those diseases might have gotten a push from consumption of those sugary drinks.
The result is the first-ever global report on the effect of sugar-sweetened beverages on death rates.
As incomes grow in many developing nations, some are experiencing spurts in obesity that mirror, in compressed form, Americans' four-decade run-up in weight. Many researchers attribute those patterns, at least in part, to increases in their populations' consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, which add calories without improving nutrition.
Fake sweeteners may mess with the way our bodies metabolize sugar.
"This is not complicated," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of Tuft University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and a senior author of the new research. "There are no health benefits from sugar-sweetened beverages, and the potential impact of reducing consumption is saving tens of thousands of deaths each year."
The comprehensive report on sugary beverages and death does not reflect the effect of such consumption on the health of children. It does find chronic disease attributed to sugar-sweetened beverages more common in younger adults than in their elders. That fact is likely to have a major effect on future economies because it imperils the long-term productivity of a key group of workers.
If these young people continue to guzzle sugar-sweetened beverages at their current rate, said study coauthor Gitanjali Singh, the consequences could be dire. Compounded by the effects of aging, this generation's high rates of sugary drink consumption may push its rates of death and disability from heart disease and diabetes even higher than those seen in the current study, said Singh, also of Friedman School.
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