The Many Uses of Vinegar
When I wrote yesterday about being a mosquito magnet, Walzing Australiaquoted a recommendation about drinking vinegar every day to keep the mossies away. It tickled a brain cell, and I googled Vinegar and Health this morning and found pages and pages of information. Vinegar is amazing, even if it is HALF as good as all these articles claim.
From How Stuff Works: The Healing Power of Vinegar
Health Benefits of Vinegar Overview
Vinegar has been valued for its healing properties for thousands of years, and during that time, it has found its way from the apothecary’s shelf to the cook’s pot. Today, it can continue to play that dual role, taking the place of less healthful dietary ingredients and helping to regulate blood sugar levels while entertaining our taste buds with its tart flavor.
There seems hardly an ailment that vinegar has not been touted to cure at some point in history. And while science has yet to prove the effectiveness of many of these folk cures, scores of people still praise and value vinegar as a healthful and healing food. So let’s take a look at the history of vinegar, the healing claims made for it, and what science does and doesn’t have to say about those claims. Along the way, we’ll discover why vinegar deserves a place in every healthy kitchen.
The Healing History of Vinegar
For centuries, people from Asia and Europe have used different types of vinegar to add flavor and zest to their food. Read about how this tangy condiment was first discovered and then developed into a must-have for kitchens around the world. Learn the key ingredient that gives vingear its special sour taste and the basic chemical process used to create it.
Misconceptions About Vinegar’s Health Benefits
Although some people believe vinegar is a miracle cure, it can’t fix everything. Marketers have asserted that vinegar cures diseases such as diabetes, osteoperosis, cancer, and many other disorders. Some even claim that it halts the aging process. Obviously, these claims are exaggerated. Find out what’s being said, and learn the truth about the real nutritional value of vinegar.
How Vinegar Affects Digestion
Although vinegar can’t cure cancer, it can help improve your general health in many ways. Vinegar benefits the digestive system, improving the absorbtion and utilization of several essential nutrients. Learn about the different organ systems that are affected by simply adding vinegar to your diet, and find out how you can improve your health and the taste of your vegetables at the same time.
If you go to the above website, there are additional articles that elaborate on the uses of vinegar. There are so many websites about the positive powers of vinegar!
There are hundreds of articles about the health benefits of vinegar. One of the most comprehensive was at Vinegarbook: Vinegar tips for health where there are topics you can click on to get to the full article, such as Treat Dandruff with Vinegar, Itchy Skin Soothed with Vinegar, Urinary Tract Infections and Vinegar, Soothing Aching Feet with Vinegar and several articles about fighting off colds and sore throats with vinegar. Vinegar has some known anti-fungal properties, and also anti-microbial and antiseptic properties. Fascinating, all from a cheap little bottle of vinegar found on any grocery shelf.
Mosquito Magnet
I am a mosquito magnet. Adventure Man and I go to Africa almost yearly, on safari, sometimes walking, and we love it. But oh, the price I pay! Two or three times a day, I have to tend my wounds – putting antihistimine creams on my bites, which swell and throb and itch until it nearly drives me crazy.
In Tanzania last year, I had no sooner put some serious DEET on when a TseTse fly landed on me and bit me – right where I had just sprayed the repellent!
So every step scientists take to develop a repellent which will truly repel, I applaud.
Mosquitoes Target Exhaled Breath
The mechanism mosquitoes use to zero in on their targets has been discovered by scientists in New York. It is already known that the insects are very sensitive to carbon dioxide in exhaled breath.
Now a team led by Rockefeller University has found that they sense the gas using protein receptors in the structure extending from their jaws.
Writing in Nature, they say the discovery could aid the fight against insect-born diseases, such as malaria.
Read the rest of the article at BBC Health News.
I’m not ready to stop breathing! But maybe they could develop a gum I could chew that would mask the carbon dioxide I exhale?
Oops – Hershey Sponsored the Study?
If you will remember, one of my key themes is “Who sponsors the study?” I love studies, and I also love going behind the scenes to find out where the funding is coming from (ok, ok, grammar-nazis, from where the funding is coming.)
So, checking around for the credentials on my previous story about chocolate being good for your heart, I found the below, which I excerpted from The International Herald Tribune. Let the chocolate buyer beware!
During a talk with analysts in October, the Hershey chief executive, Richard Lenny, called the dark-chocolate category a “major growth platform.” He told of a new Yale study sponsored by Hershey’s, and yet to be put through peer reviews, that found that eating Hershey’s Extra Dark chocolate improved blood pressure and blood flow because of the candy’s level of natural flavanol antioxidants.
In the study, 45 people were fed 2.6 ounces, or two servings, of Extra Dark, which also contained 26 grams of fat.
“These results enable us to better communicate with consumers the positive aspects of antioxidants and dark chocolate,” Lenny said.
Such claims are troubling to Mars’s chief scientist, Harold Schmitz, a driving force behind the development of CocoaVia. He said competitors were potentially misleading consumers by talking about antioxidants in chocolate when it was the level of flavanols that really made a difference.
Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that when it came to flavanols, “the marketing is getting ahead of the science.” She noted that two recent studies, including one from Harvard, had found no link between flavanols and any reduced risk of breast cancer or heart disease.
A spokeswoman for Hershey, Stephanie Moritz, denied that the company was exploiting the excitement over flavanols and said that a range of studies had linked dark chocolate to health benefits for the heart.
Bottom line: Sponsored by Hershey’s.
Chocolate: The Newest Truth
I heard this tidbit on today’s Good Morning America – Good news for chocolate lovers!
And Now Some Good News from the AAAS: Chocolate in Medicine, Tractors in Space
By John Tierney From the New York Times blogs.
I just spent five days at the Woodstock of science, the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The theme at this year’s meeting, in San Francisco, was “sustainability” — not the most sprightly topic. But in between the lectures on environmental degradation, there were some cheerier discussions. A couple of my favorites:
The healing power of chocolate. The researchers weren’t quite ready to call chocolate a health food — they cruelly reminded the audience of its fatty content — but they did have good news about the flavanols found in cocoa (particularly some dark chocolates).
Norman Hollenberg of Harvard Medical School has documented that central American Indians who consume large quantities of cocoa have low rates of hypertension and of vascular dementia (caused by restriction of blood flow in the brain). At the AAAS meeting, he reported on a experiment showing people given flavanol-rich cocoa enjoyed a “a significant increase” in cerebral blood flow. “We hope,” he noted, “to explore the potential of flavanol-rich cocoa in preventing or ameliorating the vascular dementias.”
Another researcher, Ian Macdonald of the University of Nottingham, scanned the brains of women who’d been given flavanol-rich cocoa. He found it increased “cerebral blood flow to gray matter.” He and Dr. Hollenberg didn’t urge listeners to go out and gorge on chocolate, but they did raise the possibility of flavanols being used to help aging brains, perhaps being administered in the form of vitamins. Let’s hope these vitamins are the chewable variety.
Heart Attacks in Women
I got this in an e-mail this morning. It was particularly interesting to me that we should not be drinking cold water during or after a meal (we drink iced tea) because it solidifies fats and makes them more harmful. I remember there used to be a syndrome called Fondue Belly in Switzerland, because people would eat cheese fondue (lots of fat there) and drink chilled white wine, and then get terrible stomach aches. As it turns out, a stomach ache is the least of the problems . . .
Here is an article on Heart Attacks “for women”; written by one who had one.
I’ve meant to send this to my women friends to warn them that it’s true that women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing a heart attack…you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor [that we see in the movies]’
Having had a completely unexpected heart attack about 10:30 p.m. with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma which one would suspect might’ve brought it on, it was this past April,’06, about 1-1/2 hours after I’d spent a pleasant 2 hrs. rehearsing with the Note-a-Belles.
I was sitting all snuggly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, “Ah-Ah-Ah; this is the life …. all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.” [Now pay attention to these symptoms]: A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, like when you’ve been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water; that hurried bite seems to feel like you’ve swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion, and it is really awful and so most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn’t have gulped it down so fast; needed to chew it more thoroughly, and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach ….. which doesn’t do much good because your esophagus and throat muscles are in spasms, and it hurts like h _ _ _ to swallow.
This was my initial sensation — the only trouble was that I hadn’t taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m. After that, it had seemed to subside, and the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE(hind-sight: it was probably my aorta spasming), and gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR). This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
AHA!! NOW I stopped feeling being puzzled about what was happening. We all have read and/or heard about**pain in the jaws being “one of the signals” of a heart attack happening, haven’t we??
I said aloud to myself and the cat, “Dear God, I think I’m having a heart attack!” I lowered the footrest, dumping the cat from my lap, and started to take a step but fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, “If this is a heart attack, I shouldn’t be walking ……… into the next room where the phone is, or anywhere else ……. but, on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will know that I need help. And if I wait any longer, I may not be able to get up in moment, or at all.”
I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room, and dialed the paramedics. [ I guess when one reaches them, your address automatically flashes on a screen], and the operator verified my address immediately and asked my symptoms.
I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the **pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn’t feel hysterical or afraid; just stating the facts, She said she was sending the paramedics over immediately; asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to unbolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in. No, I didn’t take an aspirin, as I’m allergic to it, but I did take a [important] 100 mg “magnesium oxide” capsule … which bottle I keep handily in reach on the kitchen counter … which is a small detour on my way to the front door…with about a 3/4 glass of water to get it dissolving ASAP into my bloodstream.
[Important info] ~”Magnesium” relaxes blood vessels, and it dissolves to get them expanded to let blood get through the constriction of the vessels~. I then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness. I don’t remember the medics coming in…their examination…lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance…or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way. But I did briefly awaken when we arrived, and saw that the Cardiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance.
He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like “Have you taken any medications?”) but I couldn’t make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and just nodded off again…not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed two side-by-side stints to hold open my right coronary artery; and now was being taken into the CCU, and looking up at the three anxious faces of my children, Karen, Mark, and Wendy. Since I’d been a patient at St. Jude in 2002 for my TIA treatment, they had my emergency info in their system and had called my kids. I spent two days in CCU, and two in General Ward, and then was discharged.
I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St. Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was all ready to go to the OR in his scrubs and was getting going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and was installing the stints
Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned firsthand, as a Certified Medical Back-Office Assistant in Internal Medicine Clinics, and as one who has lived through a heart attack due to:
*1. Being aware that something very different was happening in my body …not the usual men’s symptoms,… but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act ). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last!) MI because they “didn’t know they were having one, and commonly mistaking it as indigestion”… take some Maalox or other anti-“heartburn” preparation…and go to bed…hoping they’ll feel better in the morning when they wake up….which doesn’t happen.
My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to: *call the paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you’ve not felt before. It is better to have a “false-alarm” visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!
*2. Note that I said **”Call the Paramedics,” Ladies. *TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! **Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER. You’re a hazard to others on the road, and so is your panicked husband/friend who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what’s happening with you instead of the road, and so are your kids or friends a hazard as well. As sure as I sit here, they will get the attention of a cop who will pull you over for speeding — more wasted time.
*Do NOT call your doctor — he doesn’t know where you live and if it’s at night you won’t reach him anyway, and if it’s daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. [He doesn’t carry the equipment that you need to be saved in his car! ] The Paramedics have what you NEED — principally “OXYGEN” …… that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.
*3. Don’t assume that it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count — I did, and do, too. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it’s unbelievably high, and/or accompanied by high blood pressure.) MI’s are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there (and, of course, family genetics can be a factor). I qualify for the latter, and the years 2005 and 2006 have been the most stressful of my life since Jack died in 1981.
4. Read on for the e-mail I received today that prompted my above lecture to you:
SUBJECT: Drinking ice water at mealtime (which I’ve always done until now.)
Noting that neither Urban Legends nor Snopes has anything to say about this one, it could be true.
For those who like to drink cold water, this article is applicable to you. It is nice to have a cup of cold drink after a meal. However, the cold water will solidify the oily stuff that you have just consumed. It will slow down the digestion. Once this “sludge” reacts with the stomach’s hydrochloric acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fats and lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal. (Make it green tea–a great antioxidant!)
A serious note about heart attacks: Women should know that “not every” heart attack symptom is going to be the left arm hurting.
*Be aware of intense pain in the “jaw line”, or even pressure there …… and under the sternum, or “indigestion” symptoms, especially if you haven’t eaten in several hours.
**You may never have the first chest pain during the course of a heart attack, but heaviness /pressure under the sternum is common.
*Nausea and intense sweating are also common symptoms, but not necessarily in the women. 60% of people who have heart attacks while they are asleep do not wake up.
*Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware. The more we know, the better chance we could survive.
Ultrametabolism and Kuwait Diet
I used to be thin. Really thin. Actually, I have been really thin several times in my life, but, *sigh* no longer.
This morning as I was picking up my e-mail, this review on AOL caught my eye. Dr. Mark Hymon is one of the AOL Wellness Coaches, and he has written two books, one called Ultrametabolism, about using your built in genetic strengths to lose weight and maintain the weight loss naturally, and one called Ultraprevention about foods to eat (and not to eat) to contribute to overall wellness and good health.
If you’ve been reading me for a while, you will know that I can be a little cynical.
What I like about Dr. Hymon’s approach is that it makes sense.
Diets that totally eliminate foods you love just aren’t going to work. Give up pasta for the rest of your life? I don’t think so. But what Dr. Hymon asks us to do is to eat mostly non-processed, or minimally processed foods. He says that the processed foods have components that the body doesn’t even recognize as food, and that’s why after eating things like Twinkies, Mars bars, packaged crackers, etc. we still feel hungry – our bodies don’t recognize what we have eaten as food.
Here is what Dr. Hymon suggests (this is from the AOL Health and Fitness section):
How to use what you eat to tell your DNA how to slim you down and live a healthier life.
Day 1. Clean out your cabinets, refrigerator and freezer. Get rid of packaged items filled with processed fats and sugars. Check the lable – if it says “hydrogenated oil” or “high fructose corn syrum” get rid of it.
Day 2. Go shopping for whole foods. Find a farmer’s market in your area for fresh produce and schedule visits in your calendar weekly or biweekly over the next few months. At the grocery, choose items from the “perishable perimeter” of the store, instead of items in the center aisles where processed foods lurk.
Day 3. Change your oil! Throw out old oils, which can become rancid quickly. Replace vegetable oils like safflower and canola with extra-virgin olive oil and make it your primary oil for cooking and salad dressings.
Day 4. Visit a health food sotre. Leave there with 10 new items you’ve never tried before. Bulk-purchase whole grains, legumes and nuts. Look for new whole grain cereals, breads and snacks without processed additives, fats, sugars or preservatives. And remember: just because it’s in a health food store, doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Read the labels of any packaged foods you buy.
Day 5. Choose Eggs! Choose organic eggs farmed with omega-3 fats. Make yourself a spinach omelet for breakfast. Eggs are a good source of protein. You can enjoy as many as eight a week.
Day 6. Become wild about fish. Find a local fishmonger or educate yourself by talking to your local grocer. Or learn more about which fish are best to eat by visiting www. ultrametabolism.com. Print out a primer to bring with you when you shop.
Day 7. Prepare some healthy snacks for when you’re on-the-go. Pack a small zipper bag with a few servings of almonds or walnuts. One handful equals a serving.
Day 8. Don’t go thirsty. By now, you’ve tossed the sodas. Bring out the blender and learn to make high protein, no sugar smoothies. Experiment with crushed ice and fresh fruits. You can even make frozen nut cubes by soaking nuts overnight, blending them and then freezing them with a bit of water or milk in ice cube trays. Your smoothie will be creamy and full of good fats and proteins.
As I did his online mini-seminar, I found myself thinking “everything this Dr. Hymon is recommending is the way Kuwaitis USED TO eat.” And I also found myself thinking what a wealth of opportunity we are living amidst, here in Kuwait, where we can go to any market and buy FRESH fish, really fresh, right off the boats, in the local fish markets. We can buy fresh meats, and fresh vegetables, lots of them grown right here in Kuwait. We can buy fresh eggs. even fresh chicken when not under threat of Avian Flu. Kuwait is a paradise for exactly this kind of diet.
Not only do we have access to fresh, locally grown foods, but the cost is so much less than processed foods on the shelves. He is talking about lentils and grains commonly available here in those big sacks, down in the Souk Mubarakiyya, as well as in the co-ops and the Sultan Centers.
This isn’t anything new, eating low on the food chain, eating fresh, but it does strike me as a diet that particularly works in Kuwait, and a kind of diet that you can live with for the rest of your life, because it doesn’t make changes in your life that you can’t live with. Like he does tell us to give up soda, one of the main contributors to obesity in the world today. As you get older, carbonated beverages aren’t that hard to give up because they also give you heartburn, so just another reason to steer clear of all those unwanted calories the body can’t identify as food.
He didn’t say anything about chocolate . . . but I have ordered both books from Amazon.com hoping that the dark, semi-sweet, barely processed chocolate that I love will also be “just what the doctor ordered.” Meanwhile . . . I hear a spinach omelet calling my name!
Bacteria Helpful, Not Harmful
You might think I am obsessed with bacteria, but I am not. I think we are overly fearful, and overly protective of ourselves. Washing hands frequently is proven to help prevent frequent colds, but disinfecting our work place, etc. on a daily basis is probably not so productive. This article says, essentially, that we can disinfect all we want; we carry the stuff with us.
Bacteria on our skin natural, so stop obsessing with the hygiene
March 17, 2007
FEAR of common bacteria stoked by incessant advertising of antimicrobial soaps and cleaners may be misplaced. Researchers say that while they have discovered nearly 200 different species of bacteria living on human skin, many of these have evolved along with us for so long that they should be considered part of us – and many are helpful rather than harmful.
Some of 182 species identified on the skin appeared to be permanently in residence, while others were temporary visitors, according to the researchers from New York University School of Medicine.
In research published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr Martin Blaser and his colleagues took swabs from the forearms of six healthy people to study the bacterial populations in human skin – our largest organ.
“We identify about 182 species,” Blaser said in an interview. “And based on those numbers, we estimate there are probably at least 250 species in the skin.
“In comparison, a good zoo might have 100 species or 200 species. So we already know that there are as many different species in our skin, just on the forearm, as there are in a good zoo.”
Bacteria are single-celled micro-organisms believed to have been the first living things on Earth.
While some cause disease, bacteria also reside normally in our bodies, for example in the digestive tract, performing useful chores.
“Without good bacteria, the body could not survive,” added Dr Zhan Gao, a scientist in Blaser’s lab involved in the study.
The researchers noted that microbes in the body actually outnumber human cells 10-to-1.
“Our microbes are actually, in essence, a part of our body,” Blaser said. “We think that many of the normal organisms are protecting the skin. So that’s why I don’t think it’s a great idea to keep washing all the time because we’re basically washing off one of our defence layers,” Blaser added.
It has long been known that bacteria reside in the skin, but Blaser and his colleagues used a sophisticated molecular technique based on DNA to conduct a rigorous census.
The inhabitants proved to be more diverse than had been thought, with about 8 per cent of the species previously unknown, the researchers found.
Some bacteria seemed to be permanent residents of the skin, with four genera – Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Propionibacteria and Corynebacteria – accounting for a bit more than half the population. Others were more transient.
In each person, the population of bacteria changed over time although a core set existed for each.
The volunteers included three men and three women, and the findings suggested the two sexes may differ in the bacteria they tote along.
The researchers previously had studied bacteria in the stomach and esophagus. With this research, they found that the insides of the body and the skin had major differences in bacterial populations.
“Microbes have been living in animals probably for a billion years. And the microbes that we have in our body are not accidental. They have evolved with us,” Blaser said.
Reuters
This article is from The Australian: Health and I found it on Google News.
Even Light Exercise Helps Smokers Quit
This is for my blogging friend Elijah, from Google Health News:
Even short bouts of light exercise such as strolling can help smokers quit by reducing cigarette cravings and withdrawal symptoms, say scientists at the University of Exeter in the UK.
The study is published in the April edition of the journal Addiction.
The scientists suggest that a short session of moderate exercise, lasting for as little as five minutes, is sufficient to reduce cravings for a cigarette.
“People who struggle to give up smoking could make things much easier for themselves by taking just moderate exercise,” said lead author Dr Adrian Taylor of the University of Exeter’s School of Sport and Health Sciences.
“Not only may it help prevent weight gain but it will also help control the cravings and withdrawal symptoms that often lead to relapse,” he added.
With today, 14th March, being National No Smoking Day in the UK, it is expected that one third of UK smokers (around 4 million people) will try to give up and 85,000 will do so for good.
Dr Taylor and his co-authors reviewed 12 studies on the effect of a single session of exercise compared to no exercise on three outcome measures: cigarette cravings, withdrawal symptoms and smoking behaviour. All reported beneficial impact on at least one of the three outcome measures.
The papers they reviewed covered between them nearly 1,400 people who rarely exercised and in all but one study stopped smoking during the period of the experiment.
The participants were assessed while they were doing the exercise using single and multi-item questions on cravings, symptoms of withdrawal and negative affect, the results of which reduced rapidly during exercise and remained reduced for up to 50 minutes afterwards.
Most of the studies on withdrawal symptoms showed a significant reduction in 2 of 6 symptoms: stress, restlessness, irritability, anxiety, tension and poor concentration.
Most of the studies showed increasing reductions in cravings and withdrawal symptoms with increasing duration and intensity of exercise, but even a short 5 minute seated exercise showed beneficial effects.
For the rest of the article, Click here.
Risk Taking Men Found Less Attractive
Risk-taking men ‘not attractive’ from BBC Health News.
Women are not attracted to dare-devil men, US researchers believe.
Men thought the opposite sex would be attracted by risky stunts such as bungee jumping and fast driving, a study of 48 men and 52 women found.
But in contrast, women said it was a turn-off, claiming they preferred more cautious people for partners.
However, the team from the University of Maine in Orono said those who took risks for the thrill were likely to be respected by fellow men.
Lead researcher Dr William Farthing said: “Men thought women would be impressed by pointless gambles, but women in fact preferred cautious men.”
However, Dr Farthing said women were attracted to men with a high-status, so if the risk-taking meant a man was respected by his friends they could then become attractive.
During the research, reported in New Scientist magazine, the young people were all given a series of scenarios to choose from, including saving someone’s life and fast driving.
The participants were asked to decide which they found more attractive.
The majority of women choose an altruistic action, rather than a thrill-seeking scenario.
Dr David Lewis, a member of the British Psychological Society, said in many ways the findings were not surprising.
“Previous studies have show that women are attracted to someone who acts in an altruistic way. Saving someone’s life shows a degree of empathy and sensitivity, and this is an attractive trait in men.
“On the other hand men see risk-taking as a particularly macho characteristic.
“Social norms are important and our society attaches weight to men expressing their macho qualities.
“But I think what you would find is that as men get older, they become less prepared to take risks.
“When you decide to do something you attach a cost-benefit to it, and when men are older the priorities they place on things change.”
McDonald’s Stock Slides As More Consumers Turn To Food
Satire from The Onion.
January 15, 2003 | Issue 39•01
My comment: One of the really good things about living in Kuwait is the enormous availability of REAL food, freshly prepared, with identifiable ingredients. It’s not such a bad thing to have choices, and fast food has it’s purposes, but – in my opinion – nothing beats REAL food – fresh fresh fish, vegetables straight from the farms, local chickens (yep, even with bird flu) and eggs – we live in the midst of unbelievable abundance.
OAK BROOK, IL—The McDonald’s Corporation announced Tuesday that it will close 175 restaurants and cut nearly 600 corporate jobs, responding to a plunge in stock prices blamed on a depressed economy and rising consumer interest in actual food.
“Though still America’s number-one hamburger retailer,” McDonald’s CEO Jim Cantalupo said, “we have entered a brief period of restructuring due to the steady growth of other convenience eateries and, more significantly, growing competition from producers and distributors of demonstrably nutritive matter, i.e. food.”
In the fourth quarter of 2002, McDonald’s posted the first quarterly loss in its 47-year history. Its stock closed Tuesday at $15.78, a seven-year low for the quasi-food giant.
Analysts attribute the bleak financial picture to numerous factors, including the uncertain economy, poor management, eroding market share, and widespread health concerns about beef—a component sometimes used in the construction of McDonald’s hamburger patties.
“Though well-accustomed to weathering recessions and changing tastes, the Golden Arches may be facing its toughest battle ever, given the surging public interest in leading healthy, active lives and consuming objects that taste at least remotely organic,” analyst Carolyn Moss of Lehman Brothers said. “These days, people seem more interested in eating food than hormone-hybrid lab patties.
The world’s leading purveyor of semi-synthetic digestibles, McDonald’s became a franchise in 1955 and quickly expanded across the U.S., thanks to innovative marketing, low prices, and exemption from FDA regulations, given that its products fall outside the scope of the agency. McDonald’s has proven a popular favorite among busy, on-the-go Americans lacking the time for genuine food.
But for all its financial woes, McDonald’s is optimistic for the future.
“This whole non-reconstituted-food craze will pass,” Cantalupo said. “People have enjoyed our meat-flavored pseudo-patties for decades, and we’re not going to be scared by consumers’ passing interest in burgers that actually taste like an animal, served on bread that’s less than a week old and garnished with ve-ge… ve-ge… ve-ge-tables.”
Said McDonald’s COO Charlie Bell: “We don’t see the burgeoning food industry as a threat, but rather as a public fancy with which McDonald’s can happily co-exist.”
Added Bell: “I even enjoy some food myself here and there. I ate some corn just last weekend.”
In spite of McDonald’s outward optimism, rumors abound that the company is pondering some of its most extreme changes ever. McDonald’s famed management-training facility, Oak Brook’s Hamburger University, is reportedly developing an unprecedented “food studies” program. The facility is also rumored to be adding a research wing to teach culinary fundamentals for eventual incorporation into the McDonald’s business plan.
“The bottom line is, we’re doing fine,” Bell said. “Certainly, as a last resort, we could introduce some recognizably food-like items, perhaps a sandwich made with animal matter and vegetables that have not been shredded, condensed, and flash-frozen to remove all possible nutritional content or general appearance of earthly origin. But I honestly don’t think it will ever come to that.”
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