Publix Helps Us Cook At Home
Through blogging, I became a fan, and then in the way things happen in this wonderful virtual world, a friend of another blogger, John Lockerbie, who writes about many things, my favorite of which is Islamic design. He writes about the architecture, the boats, development in the Gulf, and behind the blogs, we have had our own correspondence.
Recently he commented on the post I wrote about how American health problems are mostly self-inflicted, and could be turned around with proper diet, exercise and preventive visits to the doctor to deter the serious illnesses from showing up. He sent me a reference to a speech made by Jamie Oliver, when he won the TED prize, on changing one small thing in the modern world – teaching us to cook once again in our own homes instead of eating out, eating highly processed, highly salted, highly sugared and highly fatted foods.
There is a Florida chain of supermarkets called Publix, and they are marvelous. Publix is making it easy for people to cook at home. They have a program where they do cooking demos, give out the recipes, and have all the ingredients gathered in one place – at the same price as throughout the store, just located conveniently in this one place – to encourage people to cook at home.
All the ingredients for several recipes:

I find I am enjoying cooking a lot more here, where shopping is so easy and everything looks so good. Oh yes, and the prices are so low!
Foods That HELP You Lose Weight
Wooo HOOOO! Eat AND Lose!
This is from AOL + That’s Fit
7 Foods That Help You Lose Weight
Posted on Mar 18th 2010 12:00PM by That’s Fit Editors
by Melanie Haiken, Senior Editor, Caring.com
Don’t get sucked into the idea that food is your enemy when you’re trying to lose weight. In fact, it’s just the opposite: Befriend the right foods, and the pounds are much more likely to peel off than if you just try to cut calories across the board. Here, seven foods known to nutritionists to boost your body’s fat-burning potential.
1. Oats
Wait a minute; aren’t oats a carb? Yes and no. Oats are a whole grain, and they’re high on what nutritionists call the “satiety index,” meaning oats have tremendous power to make you feel full. Not only that, they’re also high in soluble fiber, so they cut cholesterol and blood fat. Oats digest slowly, so they don’t raise your blood sugar, and they keep you feeling filled up well into the late morning. Old-fashioned steel-cut and rolled oats, with up to 5 grams of fiber per serving, are best, but even instant oatmeal has 3 to 4 grams of fiber per serving.
2. Eggs
Nutritionists have been trying for some years to restore the reputation of the lowly egg. No longer thought to be a cholesterol-booster (eggs contain a different type of cholesterol than that in humans), eggs are a concentrated form of animal protein without the added fat that comes with meat. Dietary studies have repeatedly found that when people eat an egg every morning in addition to (or instead of) toast or cereal, they lose twice as much weight as those who eat a breakfast that’s dominated by carbs.
3. Skim Milk
Studies in reputable publications such as the Journal of Obesity (in addition to the controversial ones funded by the National Dairy Council) show that the combination of calcium, vitamin D, and low-fat protein in skim milk and nonfat yogurt trigger weight loss and help build and maintain lean muscle.
4. Apples
To keep the pounds at bay, eat an apple — or two — a day. Numerous studies have found that eating an apple a half hour to an hour before a meal has the result of cutting the calories of the meal. Why? The fiber in the apple makes you feel full, so you eat less. Recent research suggests eating apples has other benefits, too; the antioxidants in apples appear to prevent metabolic syndrome, the combination of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and prediabetes that tends to accompany thickening around the waist.
5. Red Meat
Not exactly what you think of as a diet food, right? But research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared diet results for women who ate red meat and those who didn’t, and the meat-eaters lost more weight. Experts think the dense protein in lean red meat helps you maintain muscle mass — but of course this assumes you’re exercising to build that muscle.
6. Cinnamon
This simple spice appears to have the power to help your body metabolize sugar, according to surprising data that came out of a USDA study involving diabetics. Eating as little as 1/4 to 2 teaspoons of cinnamon a day was found to reduce blood sugar levels and cut cholesterol from 10 to 25 percent. So add cinnamon to smoothies, sprinkle it on your cereal, or flavor your coffee with it — particularly if you take your coffee with cream and sugar. The cinnamon will boost the health benefits of the coffee while helping your body rid itself of the added sugars.
7. Almonds and almond butter
Another counterintuitive choice; aren’t nuts and nut butters supposed to be incredibly fattening? Well, almonds are calorie-dense, but they also pack a huge nutritional punch — and they’re particularly effective in counteracting cholesterol and triglycerides. One study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that eating almonds was as effective as taking a statin. Spreading almond butter on your morning toast gives you a nice protein boost while preventing the carbs in the toast from spiking your blood sugar.
“Health Care Could be Fixed Overnight . . .”
Today, AOL ran commentaries on American health care and whether the new proposals will make a difference. The comment of one CEO who runs an enormous health provider, caught my eye. As I read it, I thought “he is talking about the USA, but the exact same thoughts apply to Qatar, to Kuwait, to Germany, where an epidemic of self-inflicted health problems is growing wildly.” And it also occurs to me that he is laying the accountability squarely where it belongs – on our shoulders.
David Feinberg, M.D., M.BA.
CEO, UCLA Hospital System
“The debate they’re having now in Washington is the wrong discussion,” says Feinberg. “They’re not talking about health-care reform. They’re talking about health insurance reform. The bill in Congress has nothing to do with health care.” He explains that health care could be fixed overnight if people would stop using alcohol and drugs, eat right and exercise.
“I have 800 patients in this hospital today, and I bet 50 percent of them have illnesses that could have been completely prevented,” Feinberg says. “That situation is not going to get better with a ‘public option.'”
He points out that even people without health insurance can receive care when they need it in the emergency room, and, while it’s not ideal, they’re not being denied care because they don’t have health insurance. “It’s impossible to give high quality, low cost care to everyone. What we need is to decrease demand for health care.”
According to Feinberg, some 75 percent of illnesses are treated at home, whether that’s a bad cold or a sprained ankle, and he says that health-care reform should be focused on home care. “When you compare us to other countries with similar Gross Domestic Products, they spend half what we do on health care because they have a different lifestyle,” he says. “We either need to change our lifestyle, or it’s going to be very expensive.”
“With all due respect,” he adds, “the surgeon general is obese. I don’t think the President of the United States should be solving this.” Rather, he says, each individual needs to come to terms with the fact that eating right, exercising, and avoiding smoking and alcohol will transform not only their own lives but the ever increasing cost of health care in this country.
You can read all the commentaries on AOL Health News. I know most of us in my age group need more exercise (not you, Big Diamond!) and are beginning to stave off the common age-related problems of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, aches and pains, etc. We all KNOW we could be eating better and exercising more. We are smart educated people – but do we do what we know is best for ourselves? NNoooooooooooo!
I see the same epidemic striking in Germany, in Qatar and in Kuwait, people who have enough to eat are eating too much. Yes. Yes. I’m guilty. And I exercise a lot less than I need to. I was so happy to get back into a house, with stairs, so at least I would get the exercise of going up and down stairs a few times a day.
Japan has instituted a national policy of health, measuring citizens waists and penalizing them for carrying too much weight. I will be interested to see how it works out, if it pays off in health benefits and lowered costs down the road. It’s an inspired mandate.
Papaya Fights Cancer
Researchers: Papaya May Fight Cancer
From AOL Health News
By Marrecca Fiore Mar 11th 2010 11:23AM
A study from researchers at the University of Florida finds that papaya has a dramatic anticancer effect against a broad range of lab grown tumors such as those that cause liver cancer and lung cancer.
In a paper published in the Feb. 17 issue of the “Journal of Ethnopharmacology,” University of Florida researcher Nam Dang, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues in Japan say they made a tea using an extract made from dried papaya leaves to fight cancers of the cervix, breast, liver, lung and pancreas. The researchers say the anticancer effects were stronger when cells received larger doses of the tea.
Dr. Dang and his colleagues also documented for the first time that papaya leaf extract boosts the production of key signaling molecules called Th1-type cytokines, which help regulate the immune system. In addition to papaya’s direct antitumor effect on various cancers, the signaling of Th1-type cytokines suggests possible therapeutic strategies that use the immune system to fight cancer, researchers said.
The papaya extract did not have any toxic effects on normal cells, avoiding a common and devastating consequence of many cancer therapy regimens, such as chemotherapy.
The success of the papaya extract in acting on cancer without toxicity is consistent with reports from indigenous populations in Australia and his native Vietnam, said Dang, a professor of medicine and medical director of the UF Shands Cancer Center Clinical Trials Office.
“Based on what I have seen and heard in a clinical setting, nobody who takes this extract experiences demonstrable toxicity; it seems like you could take it for a long time — as long as it is effective,” he said in a statement.
Researchers exposed 10 different types of cancer cell cultures to four strengths of papaya leaf extract and measured the effect after 24 hours. Papaya slowed the growth of tumors in all the cultures.
In a similar analysis, the team also looked at the effect of papaya extract on the production of antitumor molecules known as cytokines. Because the papaya was shown to promote the production of Th1-type cytokines, this raises the possibility of future use of papaya extract components in immune-related conditions such as inflammation, autoimmune disease and some cancers.
Bharat B. Aggarwal, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, already is so convinced of papaya’s restorative powers that he has a serving of the fruit every day.
“We have always known that papaya has a lot of interesting things in there,” Aggarwal, a professor in the center’s department of experimental therapeutics who was not involved in the UF research, said in a statement.
“This paper has not gone too much into identifying the components responsible for the activity, which is just fine. I think that is a good beginning,” Aggarwal said.
Salwa Road: Getting Worse Before it Gets Better
I have always avoided Salwa any way I could. I might cross Salwa, but only as a last resort. Salwa Road is a death trap, an unlimited speed zone, a cat and mouse game zone, a chicken-game road and a training ground for some of the worst maintained tiny little cars I have ever seen. Between the aggressive drivers with their big attitudes and big cars and the POS cars, it’s a nightmare.
The nightmare is getting worse.
This is from today’s Peninsula:
Salwa Road roundabouts to be converted as tunnels
Web posted at: 3/8/2010 4:58:36
Source ::: THE PENINSULA
DOHA: Several major roundabouts on the Salwa Road — Ain Khalid, Al Aziziya, Central Souq and Qatar Decor — will be converted as tunnels.
The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) will start working on the project by the end of this year, official sources at Ashghal told Al Sharq.
Tenders for the project have already been floated. The project comes as part of the next phase of the Salwa International Road development project.
The project will help overcome the traffic jams on this important road. Conversions and alternative roads will be provided during the work as the roundabouts will be removed completely.
The sources promised that delays like those happened in the case of the February 22 road and Industrial Area intersection will not happen in the case of the new project.
Several nationals and residents were highly critical about the delays in these two major projects. Jabber al Khayareen, owner of a show room on the Salwa road said that they had suffered losses due the long road closure.
The shopkeepers had been complaining about the long closure of the Salwa road but officials were turning a deaf ear to their complains, he said.
He cited the heavy traffic jams at Ain Khalid roundabout after opening the Industrial Area flyover as an example of bad planning. The road which was closed for a long time opened to see heavy traffic from the new flyover to a bottleneck of the narrow road and a small roundabout.
He was also critical about the partial opening of main roads before completion of sideways and roundabouts and related service roads.
Another national, Mohammed al Nuaimi hoped that that new road projects would take into consideration the expansion of the Doha city and the increase in its population.
Yousef Al Sharhani, another national, said there was some improvement in the traffic scenario after Ashghal resumed works on various infrastructural projects and completed some of the major road projects.
AIDs Rate in Some American Cities Higher Than African Rates
Part of the problem, from what I understand, is that people KNOW the risks, and choose to take them anyway. Part of the problem is the percentage of the population that spends time in prison . . .
Epidemic in Some US Cities Worse Than Global Hot Spots
From : AOL Health News
Katie Drummond
Contributor
(March 1) — Despite advances in prevention and treatment, rates of HIV/AIDS in some parts of the U.S. are higher than those in sub-Saharan Africa, say the authors of a recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine.
AIDS advocacy efforts in the U.S. have waned in recent years, after medical innovations helped sufferers live longer, minimized obvious symptoms and alleviated the widespread social panic that characterized the early spread of the disease.
Globally, though, the spread of AIDS has yet to be curtailed: 33 million people are afflicted, including two-thirds of those living in sub-Saharan Africa.
But what might come as a real surprise is news that rates across some parts of the U.S. have yet to decrease. In fact, they’re right up there with the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in global hot spots, where the health scourge continues largely unabated.
Rates of HIV among adults in Washington, D.C., for example, now exceed 1 in 30 — higher than reported rates in Ethiopia, Nigeria or Rwanda. In New York, rates are higher among blacks (1 in 40) and injection-drug users (1 in 8).
In urban areas across the country, 30 percent of men engaging in “sex with other men” are contracting HIV — compared with overall population rates of 7.8 percent in Kenya and 16.9 percent in South Africa.
Groups at a high risk of HIV infection have remained largely unchanged since the 1980s. So what happened to ongoing efforts at prevention and education, which were largely concentrated on those same demographics?
According to the essay’s authors, it’s a question of insular sexual networks rather than individual behaviors.
“Understanding the context and settings in which risk is increased may lead to more robust and effective preventive interventions,” the authors note. The idea hits on some touchy subjects, like the vulnerable demographics of black and Hispanic women, who are more likely to have multiple partners within one community because of the rates of incarceration among men in their social circles.
Those at high risk are also less likely to have access to health care, which means fewer opportunities to learn about or benefit from preventive interventions like HIV tests, anti-retroviral therapy or even condoms.
And AIDS remains an epidemic in the U.S. Low prevalence in most areas is outweighed by the startlingly high occurrence in others.
Potential solutions are nuanced and require out-of-the-box thinking, the essay notes. For example, the authors urge public health officials to shed ideological biases, like an unwillingness to consider needle exchange programs or safe sex in bathhouses. There’s also a need for better understanding of how one’s social circumstances affect HIV education, prevention and rates of infection.
That means everything from addressing the massive incarceration rates among black and Hispanic men to helping women who feel forced into commercial sex because of poverty or drug addiction.
Then there’s the question of how to help groups who have yet to respond to previous efforts. “Research is also needed to identify interventions that will persuade men who have sex with men to undergo HIV testing, facilitate their disclosure of their HIV status to sexual partners and promote negotiations for safer sexual practices,” the essay notes.
Of paramount importance, though, is to acknowledge that AIDS has not gone away. “The time has come,” the authors write, “to confront this largely forgotten and hidden epidemic.”
At the very least, health officials will have more money to take their prevention efforts out of the past and move them into the 21st century. Citing plans to develop “a national HIV/AIDS strategy,” the White House recently announced the first boost in HIV/AIDS investment in nearly a decade.
Keep Another’s Confidence
This is from a wonderful website by by Rick Warren, who writes about the Purpose Driven Life and who sends out daily inspirational messages. I love this one.
Connect be keeping someone’s confidence
by Rick Warren
“A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret.” Proverbs 11:13 (NIV)
If relationships are going to work, we have to be confidential with information.
Are you the kind of person that someone can trust with confidential information? We tend to think of gossip as one of those little sins, a misdemeanor sin. But when God talks about gossip, He puts it on a list with things like sexual immorality and murder.
Why? Because it is incredibly destructive to relationships.
What is gossip? Gossip is talking about a situation with somebody who is neither a part of the solution nor a part of the problem. And if we’re honest with ourselves, what we’re doing is making ourselves feel a little more important at somebody else’s expense. We’re talking about their hurts and their problems, but in a way that makes us feel a little bit superior to them. That’s the danger and the hurt of gossip.
There’s a story in the Old Testament about a family that struggled with gossip. Moses had a sister name Miriam who one day got caught up in gossiping about Moses amidst the rest of the people. God called them together – Moses and Miriam. He spoke with Miriam and told her what she’d done wrong and immediately He gave her leprosy.
But look at what God did next; he invited Moses to pray for Miriam’s healing – to pray for the one who gossiped against him.
Some of you have been deeply hurt by gossip. The story of Moses and Miriam suggests God would say to you, “Pray for that person’s healing, the one who gossiped against you. That way you can be released from the hurt that’s come into your life.”
Perhaps you’re the one whose been gossiping. You’ve been the one talking about other people. This story is in the Old Testament to remind us how serious gossip is, how hurtful it can be to people no matter what side of the situation you’re on.
The truth is, when you keep confidences it makes your relationships healthier. It enables you to keep connecting with others in positive and genuine way.
What is so interesting to me is that Islam has the same prohibitions against gossip, called back-biting, and puts a high level of prohibition against it. The prophet Mohammed warned against it repeatedly.
I love it that Rick Warren puts it into context by warning that it destroys relationships.
Thing Younger, Act Younger, BE Younger
A couple of my friends and I were trying to figure out why we were friends. What goes into making friendships? One thing that surprised us was that we tended to choose people with some risk-taking behaviors – people who look ‘normal’ and conservative on the outside, but are thinking outside-the-box on the inside. They are thinking all the time, observing and analyzing and making choices that set them aside from others. For one thing, here we are, all living in Qatar – and that is a choice. Our lifestyles are a choice.
Most of my friends are a lot of fun – you would like them. And it might take you a while to figure out we are all total nerds, very uncool people. One of the very coolest sent me this. On the inside, this woman is into EVERYTHING! On the outside, she obeys the conventions. On the inside, she is thinking all the time. 🙂
This study, from BBC News Magazine is amazing. But don’t believe me! Listen to the broadcast! See the movie! Imagine yourself 20 years younger (please! not those of you in your 20’s!) and start acting YOUNGER!
In 1979 psychologist Ellen Langer carried out an experiment to find if changing thought patterns could slow ageing. But the full story of the extraordinary experiment has been hidden until now.
How much control do you have over how you will age?
Many people would laugh at the idea that people could influence the state of their health in old age by positive thinking. A way of mitigating ageing is a holy grail for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry, but an experiment by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer three decades ago could hold significant clues.
Prof Langer has spent her entire career investigating the power our mind has over our health. Conventional medicine is frequently accused of treating them as separate entities.
“Everybody knows in some way that our minds affect our physical being, but I don’t think people are aware of just how profound the effect actually is,” she says.
In 1979, Prof Langer conducted a ground-breaking experiment – the results of which are only now being fully revealed.
Prof Langer recruited a group of elderly men all in their late 70s or 80s for what she described as a “week of reminiscence”. They were not told they were taking part in a study into ageing, an experiment that would transport them 20 years back in time.
The psychologist wanted to know if she could put the mind back 20 years would the body show any changes.
The men were split into two groups. They would both be spending a week at a retreat outside of Boston.
Ellen Langer in 1979 and today
But while the first group, the control, really would be reminiscing about life in the 50s, the other half would be in a timewarp. Surrounded by props from the 50s the experimental group would be asked to act as if it was actually 1959.
They watched films, listened to music from the time and had discussions about Castro marching on Havana and the latest Nasa satellite launch – all in the present tense.
Dr Langer believed she could reconnect their minds with their younger and more vigorous selves by placing them in an environment connected with their own past lives.
And she was determined to remove any prompt for them to behave as anything but healthy individuals. The retreat was not equipped with rails or any gadgets that would help older people. Right from the off she was determined to ensure they looked after themselves.
One man discarded his walking stick
When they got off the bus at the retreat, Prof Langer did not help the men carry their suitcases in. “I told them they could move them an inch at a time, they could unpack them right at the bus and take up a shirt at a time.”
The men were entirely immersed in an era when they were 20 years younger.
Understandably, Prof Langer herself had doubts. “You have to understand, when these people came to see if they could be in the study and they were walking down the hall to get to my office, they looked like they were on their last legs, so much so that I said to my students ‘why are we doing this? It’s too risky’.”
But soon the men were making their own meals. They were making their own choices. They weren’t being treated as incompetent or sick.
Pretty soon she could see a difference. Over the days, Prof Langer began to notice that they were walking faster and their confidence had improved. By the final morning one man had even decided he could do without his walking stick.
As they waited for the bus to return them to Boston, Prof Langer asked one of the men if he would like to play a game of catch, within a few minutes it had turned into an impromptu game of “touch” American football.
The experiment took the men back to 1959
Obviously this kind of anecdotal evidence does not count for much in a study.
But Prof Langer took physiological measurements both before and after the week and found the men improved across the board. Their gait, dexterity, arthritis, speed of movement, cognitive abilities and their memory was all measurably improved.
Their blood pressure dropped and, even more surprisingly, their eyesight and hearing got better. Both groups showed improvements, but the experimental group improved the most.
Think younger, feel younger?
Prof Langer believes that by encouraging the men’s minds to think younger their bodies followed and actually became “younger”.
She first published the scientific data in 1981 but she left out many of the more colourful stories. As a young academic, she feared this might taint the experiment and affect the acceptance of the results.
Now after over 30 years of research into the connection between the mind and the body and with the confidence and conviction of a Harvard professor, she feels she has a fuller story to tell.
“My own view of ageing is that one can, not the rare person but the average person, live a very full life, without infirmity, without loss of memory that is debilitating, without many of the things we fear.”
Richard Wiseman, professor of public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, thinks the results of Prof Langer’s experiments are fascinating but the big question is what’s causing them. “I think there could be multiple things going on here and the question is which explanations really hold water.
Why some people age faster than others is mysterious
“Part of it could be self perception, for example if you get people to smile they feel happier. The same could be going on here, by getting people to act younger they feel younger.”
Prof Weisman believes another factor could be motivational, the men are simply trying harder by the end of the week, or it could be similar to hypnotism, where people do better on memory tests because they are told they have a better memory.
Whatever the cause he believes there is a place for the type of positive thinking shown in the study.
“If you take something like heart disease positive thinking can have a role, because while it won’t heal your heart on its own, positive thinking will feed into positive actions like healthy eating or exercise which will help.”
In any event there is likely to be more interest in the 1979 experiment. The retelling of the study has been snapped up by Jennifer Aniston’s new production company, with Aniston tipped to play Prof Langer.
(FIND OUT MORE
Horizon: Don’t Grow Old is available via iPlayer and will be repeated at 0250GMT on BBC One on Tuesday 9 February)
Happiness Wards Off Heart Disease
From a new study found on BBC News comes information that making yourself happy and staying happy can also make you healthier . . .
Happiness wards off heart disease, study suggests
Being happy and staying positive may help ward off heart disease, a study suggests.
US researchers monitored the health of 1,700 people over 10 years, finding the most anxious and depressed were at the highest risk of the disease.
They could not categorically prove happiness was protective, but said people should try to enjoy themselves.
But experts suggested the findings may be of limited use as an individual’s approach to life was often ingrained.
At the start of the study, which was published in the European Heart Journal, participants were assessed for emotions ranging from hostility and anxiousness to joy, enthusiasm and contentment.
They were given a rating on a five-point scale to score their level of positive emotions.
By the end of the analysis, some 145 had developed heart disease – fewer than one in 10.
But for each rise in the happiness scale there was a 22% lower risk of developing heart disease.
The team believes happier people may have better sleeping patterns, be less liable to suffer stress and be more able to move on from upsetting experiences – all of which can put physical strain on the body.
Lead researcher Dr Karina Davidson admitted more research was needed into the link, but said she would still recommend that people try to develop a more positive outlook.
She said all too often people just waited for their “two weeks of vacation to have fun” when instead they should seek enjoyment each day.
“If you enjoy reading novels, but never get around to it, commit to getting 15 minutes or so of reading in.
“If walking or listening to music improves you mood, get those activities in your schedule.
“Essentially spending a few minutes each day truly relaxed and enjoying yourself is certainly good for your mental health and may improve your physical health as well.”
It is not the first study to suggest there is a link between happiness and health.
But Ellen Mason, of the British Heart Foundation, suggested such an association may be of limited value anyway.
“We know that improving your mood isn’t always easy – so we don’t know if it’s possible to change our natural levels of positivity.”
Cardiologist Iain Simpson, of the British Cardiovascular Society, added: “Things like reducing cholesterol and diabetes are more important when it comes to reducing heart disease.
“But at the end of the day it heart disease is still the biggest killer in the UK so anything you can do to help should not be ignored.”
Warming Up in Pensacola
This guy hurts my eyes. I remember reading a book called Almost French, an Australian woman married a French guy, and one morning as she was about to run down to the boulangerie in her sweats, her French boyfriend had a very pained expression on his face and said “Please! Please put on something else! You don’t want to hurt people’s eyes!”
Pensacola is warming. No matter how much Pensacola warms, I think a shirt would be a good idea.





