Category Archives: Diet And Food

Our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrate something deep in the grain, something unadmitted.

The past is entered through creaking iron gates laced with fog.

We who love Joan Didion each have our own, a version that, when we think of her, glides smoothly through the recesses of our minds just as the Monorail circles Disneyland. Most likely this version also includes an image of ourselves, who we were, where we were, when she first imprinted herself on our consciousness, our subconscious when she changed how we see, and, if we write, undoubtedly and most distinctly how we do that as well. Always she returns, circling.

Im 24, riding the L train from Lorimer St. in Brooklyn to Union Square in the city, where Im a junior at Eugene Lang, having transferred from Pasadena City College in Los Angeles, where Im from. I turn pages reverently, gingerly: Slouching Towards Bethlehem. The book has been assigned in my intro to nonfiction class. I stand rocking between the heels and balls of my feet, pulling a slim green peacoat around my small frame, leaning, looking into the darkened tunnel, waiting for train lights to bloom out of the darkness and whoosh to a stop before us, the doors opening onto a florescent city. Eager to sit and read again: a coronet of seed pearls held her illusion veil.

I saw Eve Babitz before I ever laid eyes on her writing. A high school classmate was the daughter of photographer Julian Wasser. I was hanging out at the long defunct Penny Lane on Melrose, it was the late 90s, and the street had become slightly more famous, caught up in the glitz of the television show but still holding on to its punk grunginess. In the middle of the store stood the rotating postcard rack. I stood before it and from a sea of James Dean, Drew Barrymore, Salvador Dal, and Edward Scissorhands emerged Eve, hunched forward, breasts voluminous, hair shrouding her face, playing chess with the then unknown to me Marcel Duchamp. I plucked her from the display. Alexis dad took that, a friend said casually. What? I asked. Yeah, like, a bunch of years ago. Its some writer and a famous artist. I returned the card to its place but never forgot the image. This was the most Babitz way to have first encountered Eve Babitz, through gossip and a tenuous connection to celebrity.

The Stingray, the scarf, the glasses. Bobbed beach hair parted loosely down the middle. Didion was a master of persona. She gave modern women possession over car culture, so that they were no longer just objects in it. Freeways were that cultures veins and escape routes, but where? The beauty and irony in Didions work was that she made Southern California such a delicious velvet coffin that most of her characters had nowhere better to go. In many ways she herself appeared to be without needs, happy only to observe. She hardly seemed to need food, as evidenced by the many profilers who delighted in describing her diet: almonds, a single ice-cold diet coke, cigarettes, slicing edges off slim cucumber sandwiches, sipping, flicking. As Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times in 1979,

Wearing a faded blue sweatshirt over brown corduroy levis, Didion at 44 strikes anyone who sees her for the first time as the embodiment of the women in her novels: like Lily McClellan in Run River, she is strikingly frail (Didion is 5 feet 2, and weighs 95 pounds); like Maria in Play It as It Lays, she used to chain-smoke and wear chiffon scarves over her red hair; and like Charlotte in A Book of Common Prayer, she possesses an extreme and volatile thinness she was a woman with a body that masqueraded as that of a young girl.

Joan was cool to the touch and helped paint a picture of a new Californian, the woman girl or girl woman who was more interested in standing in the corner at a party than in the center of it. Before her eyes, swingers, rockstars, drunk struggling and non-struggling actors soaked up 1960s and 70s reverie, while just outside the tall, wide glass windows, coyotes stalked the Hollywood Hills, traipsing through Beachwood Canyon as lights blossomed below. Bret Easton Ellis pays homage to the same coyotes in Less Than Zero, a book that borrowed heavily from Play It as It Lays detachment, malaise, the time we spend driving L.A.s wonderland of on-ramps and off-ramps, back alleys and city streets, afraid, apparently, to merge.

Like so many, myself included, Ellis tried to capture and emulate the mysterious drama of Didions prose, sun bleached, languorous yet taut. How can one write about L.A. without veering into her territory? She knew L.A. like the back of her hand. Not satisfied with Bukowskis one-trick-pony show of low-lifes, Didion moved through Los Angeles seeking the complete picture, from Malibu to the Ralphs in Hollywood.

Each piece of Joans writing was in service of a larger narrative, this story of the United States, often using California as microcosm for our American ailments. She looked through and under L.A.s facades, revealing the forces that shaped them:

Outside the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica a hard subtropical rain had been falling for days. It scaled still more paint from the faded hotels and rooming houses that front the Pacific along Ocean Avenue. It streamed down the blank windows of unleased offices, loosened the soft coastal cliffs and heightened the most characteristic Santa Monica affect, that air of dispirited abandon which suggests that the place survives only as an illustration of a boom gone bankrupt, evidence of some irreversible flaw in the laissez-faire small business ethic.

That she included women as prominent figures in this narrative, made her writing all the more meaningful, radical.

Babitz was a child of Los Angeles, born to a film composer father and a painter mother. She wrote in a tone that in many ways was the opposite of Didions, even though they shared a love of Los Angeles. If Joan was in the corner smoking and observing, Eve was in the mix, laughing loudly, flirtatiously, but always with a sense of ownership. There is joy and levity in Babitzs writing. She makes you feel like her newest best friend. Despite her insider status she refuses to be a snob, and her openness about the pageantry of Angeleno society is one of her most endearing qualities. She hits the ground running on the first page of Slow Days, Fast Company:

This is a love story and I apologize; it was inadvertent. But I want it clearly understood from the start that I dont expect it to turn out well. Im not going to give you an although I am wry and world-weary, me and Sam have found the answer together which only we share and you cant come in except to press your nose against this book. Its bad luck for one thing. I know this lady who just made a fortune writing about her uplifting redemption, practically, from Falling In Love, and while she was on tour promoting the paperback the light of her heart ran into the night and disappeared off the face of the earth. Besides its being bad luck to even whisper that youre happy, its also not nice basically.

I discovered Babitzs writing after Id aged out of her characters demographic and was taken back immediately to my early 20s, before moving to New York, when I was still a drug-snorting hottie, hanging off bar stools. In those twilight years after high school and before a DUI that forced me to get serious about my future, life was a kaleidoscope of ascending hillsides viewed from jalopies into which my friends and I were stuffed like sardines, dressed in a feathery color wheel of thrift store clothes Id stolen from my job as the manager at the Buffalo Exchange on La Brea. Stumbling into crowded kitchens in search of cigarettes, booze, and warm bodies; shouting into cell phones the size of dildos at the end of the night to see if a friend was going to wake up next to a future member of Maroon 5 or was puking in a bush nearby and needed assistance getting back to the car.

Babitz had done it all, predicted it all. She makes you her uninvited plus one. She introduces you to her many lovers, opens her lingerie drawer and says, dont worry, only ignorant people think sex is taboo. I once wrote a short story about the artist Ana Mendieta that in many ways was influenced by Babitzs insider voice, in which I announced that having big tits at 13 was like getting a chainsaw for Christmas and being asked to carry it around in a bra: I had power but no idea how to turn it on. Babitz understood and utilized this power, as in the famous photograph of her and Duchamp. She understood that women had been reduced to objects and that their bodies were deemed consumables, like products at Ralphs, and yet she did not allow shame or fear to be deciding factors in her life. Instead she openly embraced her sexuality, leaning hard into her eras bohemian ethos. The L.A. women in her books defied classification.

Didion, too, had a knack for attracting the most fascinating and happening people into her orbit. Harrison Ford, still a carpenter, arrives at her home in Malibu to do renovations, stays three months, then explodes into a galaxy far, far away. In Slouching, Joan stumbles upon Sarah, a small child on Haight Street whos just dropped acid, licking her white-lip-sticked lips and turning pages in a childrens book. In a telling scene in her nephew Griffin Dunnes documentary The Center Will Not Hold, he asks Joan what it was like to stumble upon a child on acid. After some thought, replies, It was gold. Even Joans metaphors mine the depths of Californian consciousness.

Didion was a pure Californian, a fifth-generation descendent of manifest destiny. She wrote herself into the fabric of her larger California narrative. Even when she wasnt on the page, her persona loomed over it. When she was present, she was honest about her failings to compartmentalize, realizing that what she had created was in some ways a monster. From Where I Was From:

I began trying to find the point of California, to locate some message in its history. I picked up a book of revisionist studies on the subject, but abandoned it on discovering that I was myself quoted, twice. You will have realized perhaps by now (a good deal earlier than I myself realized) that this book represents an exploration into my own confusions about place and the way in which I grew up, confusion and misunderstandings so much a part of who I became that I can still to this day confront them only obliquely.

Although Babitz stayed mostly within the confines of L.A. County, her pages were full of striking insight. In Eves Hollywood, she announces:

Culturally, L.A. has always been a humid jungle alive with seething L.A. projects that I guess people from other places just cant see. It takes a certain kind of innocence to like L.A., anyway. It requires a certain plain happiness inside to be happy in L.A., to choose it and be happy here. When people are not happy, they fight against L.A. and say its a wasteland.

Despite almost unanimous critical acclaim there is the notion that what Babitz did was more akin to unadorned autobiography than fiction, which negates her very real and profound talent as an imaginative author. She had a gift for uncovering the secret desire for Los Angeles, specifically Hollywood, within its fiercest critics, despite their continual denouncement of the place as culture-less. In fact, she illustrated that Los Angeles was a continuous center of culture, one that had more pull then the Woody Allens of the world were willing to admit. Just as men wanted Babitz, the snobs wanted Hollywood, and she wasnt going to let them forget it.

In 2018, I was finishing edits on my novel Fade Into You, and it was time to accumulate blurbs. My editor asked if Id put together a wish list of authors. Eve Babitz was first on my list. She had opened a space for unabashed smart girls to exhibit their cleverness without putting on airs. As a fellow Angeleno and former wild child, my affinity for her was beyond measure. After long awaiting a response to our inquiry, her publicist informed us that Eve was no longer doing blurbs, but that she wished me and the book well. That quiet blessing was enough.

Each writer tells a story of a changing culture, of changing attitudes toward women, and their influence can be found everywhere. Not content to let stereotypes dictate the female experience on the page, Babitz opened her lingerie drawer so that I could write, and write about the Lolitas of page and screen on my own terms. Didions contribution to the world of letters is indisputable. Having helped usher in what was then called New Journalism, and has now become the Long Form status quo. That fact that we readers are so accustomed to the style of writing Didion helped pioneer speaks volumes to the force of her talent. Disaffected heroines outside in the pool chaise, plotting and painting their toenails; whip-smart journalist driving full-speed through a headlit Mojave, cigarette hanging from a pair of red lips, a soft pack and hardboiled egg by their side. Restless women in the sunshine, with time aplenty. A sports car and a highway out of town, and always coming home; circling.

Nikki Darling holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from USC. Her debut novel,Fade Into You,was published by Feminist Press in 2018, and is currently being adapted into a scripted series. She is completing her second book,The Call Is Coming From Inside the House. She lives in L.A. with her cat, small dog, and partner.

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Diet Coke and a Game of Chess: The Radical Work of Eve Babitz and Joan Didion - lareviewofbooks

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Superfoods, detox, all-natural foods. These are just some of the health buzzwords you've heard either in everyday conversation, on social media and even when food shopping.

The problem with these terms is that they are misleading to consumers and can inadvertently cause harm. In fact, research has shown how easily people believe they're eating healthier because of buzzwords that appear on food labels (e.g. fat-free, all-natural). It's important to understand that many of these terms are marketing tactics that create a "health halo"surrounding certain foods, to make it seem like they're better or safer for you without any clear evidence.

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The aforementioned buzzwords are just some of the ones you may be familiar with. There are many others that are frequently used and misused, and that might be playing tricks on your mind in the grocery store. To start off 2022 on a clean slate, keep reading for a list of some of the worst offenders.

The term "clean eating" is often used in reference to a diet that has minimally processed foods and instead focuses on foods closest to their natural state. It sounds harmless, because aren't we constantly being told to eat more fruits and vegetables?

The problem with this term is that it places foods in "good" and "bad" categories (after all, the opposite of clean is dirty) and indicates that there is a right and wrong way to eat. It also disregards those who don't have access to fresh fruits and vegetables because of where they live and their income level.

Not to mention the vague term is completely made up since there isn't an actual scientific definition for clean eating. It can also lead to an obsession with healthy eating and put vulnerable populations (such as young adults) atrisk for disordered eating. So let's reserve the term clean eating to refer to foods that have been thoroughly washed and cleaned before consumption.

Growing up in a Latinx household, I was exposed to traditional foods that I didn't think much of until I was older. I later learned that some foods I was eating, such as quinoa and chia seeds, were suddenly being labeled "superfoods." Superfood is another term that has no real scientific basis, but is used to describe foods that are thought to have powerful healing properties, like preventing disease or aging.

You may have seen this term splashed across magazine covers, health segments on TV or in your social media timelines. While these foods may provide some health benefits linked to their nutritional content, there isn't enough research to back the claim that a single food can perform miracles like curing someone's illness.

Calling something the next "superfood" has become a popular marketing gimmick in a wellness industry that knows how to target people to make a quick buck. A better option is to make sure your diet includes a wide array of nutritional foods instead of focusing on the latest fad ingredient.

People usually turn to detoxes and cleanses for a quick weight loss fix under the guise of flushing so-called "toxins" out of the body. These can come in the form of detox teas, meal replacement shakes, green juice fasting and other methods that require you to eliminate large food groups and consume very few calories. They may not use the word "diet," but that's exactly what they are, and not a healthy or effective one either.

There is no scientific evidence to prove that cleanses and detoxes work. Instead they're an unsustainable (and even dangerous) method to lose weight or "reset" your body. Isabel Vasquez, RD, LDN at Nutritiously Yours LLC & Your Latina Nutrition says that most of these cleanses may make you feel good initially, but the feeling is short-lived. "These are not sustainable and when we consume excess amounts of certain vitamins, we just excrete them in our urine," she explains.

Instead of going on an extreme cleanse or diet, Vasquez suggests hydrating adequately and adding fruits and vegetables into your diet for digestion and your overall health.

Your body also doesn't need a detox, because your kidneys, liver and other organs help with cleansing on a regular basis. But if you think your organs aren't doing their cleansing duties correctly, it's best to see a doctor who can run tests and give you a proper diagnosis.

Processed foods are products that have been changed (e.g. washed, cut, milled, frozen) or infused with additives to preserve freshness and improve taste. These foods can include a range of items you'd find in your local supermarket, such as cereal, canned beans, milk, fresh fruits and vegetables, olive oil and your favorite cookies.

The issue with the term "processed foods" is that it's generally used as an umbrella term implying everything you eat that's processed is bad for you. Most people, when they think of processed foods, think about fast foods that are higher in calories, fat, sugar and additives.

While it's true that these foods are processed and should be consumed mindfully, some foods need to be processed to preserve their freshness, boost their nutritional value and make them easily accessible. Some processed foods, like frozen fruit or oatmeal, are perfectly safe and healthy to eat in abundance. Being processed isn't inherently bad or good. Therefore you can ease your fears about processed foods and instead enjoy them all in a well-balanced diet.

The terms "cheat day" or "cheat meal" basically mean you're planning on breaking your diet by eating a highly caloric meal or meals that you normally wouldn't have. They sound like harmless terms, but they can ultimately affect your relationship with food. Gabriela Barreto, MS, RD, CDN, CFSC Sports Dietitian and Strength Coach says, "This can set people up for a binge-restricted cycle where they restrict certain foods to only be eaten at a certain time and in a large amount."

Even more concerning is if an individual already has a history of food addiction since it can exacerbate those issues for them. Barreto adds, "This kind of restriction we know doesn't work and by setting unhealthy relationships with foods we are more likely to weight cycle when we can no longer uphold those restrictions."

Instead she recommends eating a balanced diet that includes foods that you enjoy as well as foods that promote health without restriction, learning to listen to your body's needs intuitively, and working on your relationship with food.

Putting foods into categories such as "good" or "bad" further contributes to diet culture and causes people to tie the way they eat to their self worth. These terms are also interchangeably used to describe an individual's eating behavior as being bad or good based on what they ate. "Assigning moral value to food only creates more guilt and shame around certain food choices," says Miriam Fried, a NYC-based personal trainer and founder of MF Strong. She elaborates, "Guilt leads to restriction and restriction often leads to unhealthy behaviors around eating and a negative relationship with food."

Although foods are made up of different caloric content, nutritional and flavor profiles, the body uses it all for energy. Some foods do have more nutritional value than others, but it doesn't mean you have to restrict yourself to just those foods. "Can we acknowledge that a piece of broccoli might have more nutrients than a cookie without making the cookie "bad"? Food isn't good or bad, it simply is," Fried points out. The more you understand that all of these foods can fit into your diet, the easier it will be to stop labeling them as good or bad.

When the term "all-natural" is used, it suggests that the food you're eating has been minimally processed and is therefore safer. The truth is this word doesn't determine if a food is safer for us to eat (as we saw above, processing can be a good thing). In fact, the US Food and Drug Administration doesn't even regulate this term.

To date, the organization hasn't established a formal definition for all-natural or natural, though the basic understanding is that it means that nothing artificial or synthetic has been added to a food that normally would not be expected to be in that food, such as dye. The other issue with this term is that it doesn't account for the complex food production and manufacturing process. Importantly, "natural" doesn't equal "organic," which is a term regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture. Foods with the USDA organic label must meet strict requirements surrounding the use of antibiotics, hormones, fertilizers and pesticides during the production process; natural foods do not.

According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, natural products aren't automatically better or safer for you. In some cases, such as in medicine, it might cause greater risk or side effects to take a natural, unregulated product than a federally regulated medication. Therefore, take this buzzword with a grain of salt or get rid of it altogether.

"Chemical-free" is a buzzword that's commonly tied to the saying, "If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it." When the average person uses it regarding food (or other items), they're saying that all chemicals are synonymous with being toxic and unsafe. This is easily debunked because a basic science lesson will teach you that everything that exists around you, including the foods you eatare made up of chemicals.

That doesn't negate the fact that there are toxic chemicals that should be avoided, or that you might want to steer clear from out of caution, a food sensitivity or just personal preference. If you are concerned about ingesting pesticides, for example, you can stick to certified organic produce., But it's impossible to completely avoid chemicals in any food. Blueberries, for example, are made up of chemicals known as anthocyanins, chlorogenic acid, pterostilbene and flavonids.

Without context, these chemicals look like something the average person should fear. The truth is marketing plays a big role in fear-mongering when it comes to our food and it's helpful to have reputable resources at our fingertips to debunk these myths.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

See more here:
8 health buzzwords to leave behind in 2022: Superfood, detox and more - CNET

Debunking some weight loss myths

Here are some common myths about weight loss to forget.

Buzz60

In American culture, it's bad to be fat. Rarely is this more apparent than at the start of the New Year, when diet culture, fatphobiaand capitalism converge. Exploiting body shame and people's desire for renewal, weight loss companies ramp up ads, gyms reduce ratesand diet companies promise to help people realize the elusive goal of weight loss that lasts.

Sociologists and medical professionals who treat patients using a model of health at every size say this yearly cycle underscores society's obsession with thinness and fuels dangerous misperceptions about the relationship between weight and health.

January's anti-fatness may be cloaked in wellness and body positivity, but its core message to potential customersis the same it's always been: their body is not good enough and they have not been disciplined enough to lose weight. Sociologists say this message also suggests weight and health are solely the product of individual choices, rather than the result of sexist, racist and classist systems.

"People are doing this to avoid the social stigma, the economic stigma, the moral stigma of being fat or just not being as thin as they could be," said Natalie Boero, a sociology professor at San Jose State University and author of "Killer Fat: Media, Medicine and Morals in the American Obesity Epidemic." "If it were about health, we would be talking about access to healthcare. We would be talking about the toll of discrimination against fat people in medical settings, as well as in social settings. We would be talking about access to food and activity and education and economic security. We certainly wouldn't just be talking about people above or approaching a certain weight."

Implicit in the barrage of New Year's weight-loss ads is the belief that thinner is healthier. Fatness is threatening,and as some scholars such as Sabrina Strings have found, also linked to anti-Blackness.

Glute pumping, lip plumping: TikTok trends insist the body is always something to improve. At what cost?

"By the early twentieth century, slenderness was increasingly promoted in the popular media as the correct embodiment for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant women. Not until after these associations were already in place did the medical establishment begin its concerted effort to combat 'excess' fat tissue as a major public health initiative," Strings wrote in her book "Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. "In this way, the phobia about fatness and the preferences for thinness have not, principally or historically, been about health. Instead, they have been one way the body has been used to craft and legitimate race, sex,and class hierarchies."

The relationship between weight and health is complex. Natalie Ingraham, a sociology professor at California State University whose research focuses on the intersections of body size, gender, sexuality and health, said when health is defined and measured by medical professionals who tend to be white and male, that can lead to discrimination against certain bodies. The same is true of wellness and nutrition spaces led by white women.

Dr. Gregory Dodell of Central Park Endocrinology in New York City said some medical professionals are questioning body mass index (BMI) as a marker of health. Rather than focusing on the scale, Dodell takes a holistic approach by assessinghis patients' overall health and related behaviors, including exercise and nutrition.

"We know that people can be healthy across the size spectrum," he said. "I have patients that are 'normal BMI' that have type two diabetes. And I have patients that are well above 'normal BMI' that don't have any health problems. If you hide their weight, if you just compared their labs to each other, you'd think the person with the poorer labs was the heavier person. It's not always true."

Dodell is part of a growing community of medical professionals who say the risk of obesity, typically defined by BMI, has been overstated.

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"We don't expect you to be healthy because you weigh 300 pounds, and it seems that you're fighting a battle that you were never meant to be healthy, which is just not true," he said. "I have patients all the time who come in and say they avoid doctors because every time they go for a sore throat, for irregular periods, diabetes all they say is, 'well, you really should lose some weight.' And they've made the assumption that that person is not exercising or not eating healthy when they're actually doing yoga four times a week, meditating and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables. There's so much stigma around weight in our culture."

Goal-setting around health in the New Year isn't inherently problematic, Ingraham said, but goal setting towardweight loss, in particular, is setting people up for failure. Ingraham said research shows 95% of people who diet will gain back their weight.

"It's not that people should never watch what they're eating or never have to change what they're eating. But I think the change towards eating particularly focused on weight loss as the main outcome is just a boulder up the hill and your body's going to fight you back on it. It wants to be at a certain weight, a certain size and it's going to do what it can to stay there," she said.

The buff body type is back in style: On social media, teens find inspiration, dangerous trends

Dodell said people in larger bodies are the ones most likely to have dieted in their lives.

"The most likely outcome of dieting is weight regain, which metabolically is shown to be worse for people because you go into this restrictive state, which gets you into this January lose 30 pounds in 30 days. What happens in February?" he said. "This weight cycling increases inflammatory markers, it increases stress response. It actually may even reset our set point so people not only gain the weight back that they lost, but more. And what does that do to your body? Your body just throws up its hand and is like, 'what am I supposed to do now?'"

Ingraham said not every body can or should be thin, and people have less control over their weight than diet culture would have them believe.

"The language is definitely about willpower, it's about overcoming mental blocks to these things," she said. "Much like a lot of public health messaging, it's very individual-focused. It's about how much individual willpower do you have to eat X amount of calories or X amount of points or whatever your system is. It ignores so many structural things."

While everyone can strive to make healthy choices, sociologists sayweight and health are not determined by individual choices alone.

Rethink your resolutions: Make intentions instead

"That message ignores food deserts and poverty, which is such a huge driver of health issues, because what choices do people really even have to make if they can't access good food and there aren't safe places for them to do outdoor physical activity, or if they will never have the money to join a gym, or they're working 60, 70 hours a week," Ingrahamsaid. "The structural pieces make health really challenging because so much of health status is tied to this intersection of race and class."

Boero said the weight loss industry needs people to believe in the myth of self-discipline. Structural realities are not profitable.

"That doesn't sell anything. That doesn't give people a sense of control. That doesn't keep people anxious about where they fit in a social system," she said. "During this pandemic, many of us have felt so out of control, and I think there's a way in which diet companies or various 'wellness companies' or 'body positivity companies' will continue to capitalize on this idea that this is under our control."

The irony, Boero said, is that in the middle of this ongoing pandemic, "we still haven't grasped that our health is about more than our individual behavior."

At the start of the New Year, experts say people who want to renew their focus on health should take time to examine what health means to them.

"Brace for what's coming, know that there's going to be this onslaught of messages in January that you need to reinvent yourself, that there is something wrong with you that needs fixing with a New Year's resolution," Ingraham said. "You can push back on that mentality to say, 'I'm doing OK actually.' Or maybe there is something you're wanting to change about your lifestyle that is in your control, and I think it's OK to set that goal. Just don't let a corporation set it for you."

You may not be able to control your weight, and some medical professionals would argue you may not need to, but you can control eating more vegetables, drinking more water, finding moments to breathe, and exercising in ways that don't feel punishing.

"If we cared about fat people's health as a society, there are a million things that we would do before we shamed people, before we prescribed people diet after diet after diet that frankly ends up draining their systems, likely making people weigh more over time," Boero said. "It's worth asking, 'who benefits from us feeling terrible about ourselves?'"

Read more:
Everything you miss when you think weight loss is about willpower - USA TODAY

What is already known on this topic?

Adequate nutrition and opportunities for early learning are key components of nurturing care for child development in early life.

Considerable literature has examined the associations between child nutrition and development in the first 2 years of life.

Little is known about the role of nutrition in child development in children 3659 months of age.

Dietary diversity was associated with literacy-numeracy development in children aged 3659 months in low-income and middle-income countries, but not with cognitive, socioemotional or physical development.

We found evidence of beneficial associations between child diet and development among subgroups of children: those who received 4 stimulation activities or attended preschool programmes.

In low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), 25% of children 3659 months of age have suboptimal development,1 2 which is associated with lower intelligence later in life.3 Adequate nutrition and opportunities for early learning are key components of nurturing care for early childhood development.46 Child nutrition may affect cognitive development directly through brain development and indirectly by affecting child health, physical activity and caregiver behaviour.79 Directly, deficiencies in protein and energy can affect global and motor function, whereas deficiencies in individual micronutrients (eg, iron, zinc) can affect specific cognitive processes and affective development.9 Indirectly, child diet can influence development by reducing activity, limiting exploration of the environment and reducing initiation of caregiver interactions.8 10 Caregivers who supply less diverse diets may supply less diverse stimulation.11 Conversely, caregivers who supply less diverse stimulation may supply less diverse diets. However, many factors influence child diet, stimulation and development. Therefore, these inter-relationships are important to consider.

Supplementation with individual (eg, iron, zinc) or multiple micronutrients has shown mixed or no effects on child development,12 13 1316 while observational studies generally indicate that better-quality diets are associated with improved child development.7 1622 These differential findings may be because supplementation trials usually consider single micronutrients and observational studies consider both macronutrients and micronutrients. However, most evidence comes from children aged <2 years. Little is known about the association between diet and development among children 3659 months of age in LMICs. Similarly, a few studies have assessed the association between diet and stimulation in children aged <2 years,16 23 but evidence on children aged 3659 months is lacking. Given this limited evidence, our objective was to understand diet as a risk factor for suboptimal development in children 3659 months of age in LMICs, a critical period due to limited resources and interventional support (usually focused on the first 1000 days).

We pooled cross-sectional data from the latest Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for the 15 countries with data on child development, diet and stimulation among children 3659 months of age that were publicly available as of December 2020 (online supplemental table 1). Child development, diet and stimulation for this age group are optional modules and available for a limited number of countries. Child development and stimulation are applied to the youngest child aged 3659 months, and child diet to one randomly selected child in this age group. We excluded Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), which do not collect diet data for children aged 3659 months.

Child diet was assessed using the WHO-UNICEF indicators for dietary diversity score (DDS) and minimum dietary diversity (MDD). DDS was created by summing the number of food groups consumed by the child in the past 24 hours (based on maternal recall). MDD was defined as DDS 4.24 We also created a binary indicator for whether the child consumed animal source foods (ASF, eggs/meat/flesh foods/fish/dairy).

Child development was assessed using the Early Childhood Development Index (ECDI) (additional details in online supplemental methods). The childs mother reported on whether the child can perform 10 developmental milestones (table 1). Online supplemental table 2 shows mean age of children who can and cannot perform each milestone. We constructed indicators for whether children were developmentally on track in each domain and all four domains (overall development).25 Since we were interested in diet as a risk factor, our outcome was off-track development. We also calculated ECDI score as the number of milestones the child passed (range 010).

Developmental milestones included in the Early Childhood Development Index by domain and coding of on-track and off-track development by domain

Stimulation was assessed using the DHS home stimulation module. Mothers reported on whether any adult provided any of six stimulation activities in the past 3 days: reading books, telling stories, naming/counting/drawing, singing, taking the child outside and playing. We summed the total number of stimulation activities (range 06), and defined adequate stimulation as 4 activities, based on prior work from the MICS26 (additional details in online supplemental methods).

We restricted the analytic sample to children 3659 months of age with data on child diet, development and stimulation. DHS calculate child age as the difference between the interview data and date of birth (imputed if incomplete).27 We first examined the association between child diet and stimulation, treating stimulation as the outcome. Then, we examined the association between child diet and development, treating stimulation as a covariate. For binary outcomes, we fit log-Poisson models and calculated unadjusted and adjusted relative risks (RR) and 95% CIs. For count outcomes, we fit a linear model and calculated unadjusted and adjusted mean differences (MD) and 95% CIs. We calculated per cent increase by dividing the MD by the sample mean. Adjusted estimates controlled for household wealth, rurality, size, access to improved sanitation and access to improved water source27; maternal age, education and marital status; child age, sex and early childhood care and education programme (ECCE) attendance, and country and survey year. The models for child development also controlled for the number of stimulation activities. Missing data on any of the confounders (<0.10% of observations) was imputed using mean imputation. All models accounted for clustering and representativeness using the country-specific cluster variables and sampling weights. As a sensitivity analysis, we examined heterogeneity in the associations between child diet, stimulation and development between countries by fitting the multivariable adjusted model separately for each country. In the pooled sample, we also explored whether the multivariable adjusted associations between child MDD, ASF consumption and development differed across household wealth, rurality, household size, access to improved sanitation and access to improved water source; maternal age, education and marital status; adequate stimulation and child age, sex and ECCE attendance. The significance of the interaction was assessed using a Wald test. All analyses were performed in Stata V.16 and a p<0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.28

The analytic sample included 12 126 children 3659 months of age (table 2). Child diet was poor with 18% meeting MDD. Half of children received adequate stimulation and 17% attended ECCE programmes. Child development was suboptimal: 24% of children were off-track in cognitive development, 32% in socioemotional and 87% in literacy-numeracy. Child development did not differ by age group: 3547 vs 4859 months (data not shown).

Household, maternal and child characteristics of the 12 126 children in the analytic sample

Child diet was positively associated with stimulation in unadjusted and multivariable models (table 3). In multivariable analyses, meeting MDD was associated with MD 0.42 (95% CI 0.31 to 0.53) or 13% additional stimulation activities, and ASF consumption with MD 0.25 (95% CI 0.16 to 0.33) or 8% additional stimulation activities. Results were generally consistent by country, although not significant in all countries (online supplemental tables 35).

Associations between child diet and stimulation among children 3659 months of age in 15 low-income and middle-income countries*

Child DDS, meeting MDD and ASF consumption were not associated with overall, cognitive, socioemotional or physical development in multivariable models (table 4). However, higher DDS and meeting MDD were associated with lower likelihood of suboptimal literacy-numeracy development, but the magnitude of these associations was very small. These associations appeared to be largely driven by three countries: Congo, Timor-Leste and Uganda (online supplemental tables 68). In sensitivity analysis in the pooled sample, meeting MDD was associated with MD 0.12 (95% CI 0.01 to 0.23) higher ECDI score, whereas DDS and ASF consumption were not (online supplemental table 9).

Associations between child diet and child development among children 3659 months of age in 15 low-income and middle-income countries*

In addition, we found that the magnitude of the associations between MDD and suboptimal cognitive and literacy-numeracy development was larger among children who received adequate stimulation compared with those who received inadequate stimulation (p values for interaction <0.05) (figure 1, online supplemental table 10). There was evidence of more beneficial associations among children with access to improved sanitation, older mothers, mothers with secondary or higher education and living in richer households (all p values for interaction <0.05). Lastly, ECCE attendance modified the association between MDD and cognitive development (p value for interaction 0.02) with a larger association among children not attending ECCE programmes, and the association between MDD and literacy-numeracy development (p value for interaction 0.02) with larger association among children attending ECCE programmes.

Heterogeneity of the association between child minimum dietary diversity and suboptimal child development by child, maternal and household factors, comparing children who met minimum dietary diversity and children who did not. Displayed are only factors that modified the associations with at least one child development domain, that is, p value for interaction was <0.05. All values are relative risk and 95% CIs. All models applied country-specific cluster variables and sampling weights. Estimates controlled for household wealth, rurality, household size, access to improved sanitation and access to improved water source; maternal age, education and marital status; stimulation; child age, sex and attendance of an early childhood education programme (preschool) and country and survey year.

Likewise, adequate stimulation modified the association between ASF consumption and socioemotional and literacy-numeracy development with the magnitude of the association larger among children who received adequate stimulation (p values for interaction <0.05) (figure 2, online supplemental table 11). Additionally, household wealth modified the association between ASF consumption and literacy-numeracy development with more beneficial associations among children in wealthier compared with poorer households (p value for interaction 0.01).

Heterogeneity of the association between child consumption of animal source foods and suboptimal child development by child, maternal and household factors, comparing children who consumed animal source foods and children who did not. Displayed are only factors that modified the associations with at least one child development domain, that is, p value for interaction was <0.05. All values are relative risk and 95% CIs. All models applied country-specific cluster variables and sampling weights. Estimates controlled for household wealth, rurality, household size, access to improved sanitation and access to improved water source; maternal age, education and marital status; stimulation; child age, sex and attendance of an early childhood education programme and country and survey year.

We found that dietary diversity was positively associated with stimulation, literacy-numeracy development and ECDI score among children 3659 months of age in LMICs, but not with cognitive, socioemotional or physical development. Child and household factors may modify the associations between child diet and development with beneficial associations for children receiving adequate stimulation, attending ECCE programmes and with access to improved sanitation.

Our findings that more diverse child diets were associated with more stimulation build on a limited literature suggesting similar associations in children aged <2 years.16 29 However, evidence suggests that patterns of association differ by setting, age group and season. Specifically, Wachs et al showed that, among children aged 1830 months, Egyptian children who received more diverse diets received more diverse stimulation, whereas Kenyan children who received more diverse diets received less diverse stimulation.29 In rural India, stimulation mediated the relation between dietary diversity and mental development in children aged 1218 months, but not in children aged 611 months.16 However, in a different sample of children aged 1218 months living in the same area, assessed ~1.5 years later in winter, dietary diversity was not associated with development either directly or indirectly through stimulation.23 More research, including longitudinal studies, are needed to understand the relationships between child diet and stimulation, their heterogeneity and the mechanisms behind them.

Prior studies have shown that children with more diverse diets from 6 to 24 months of age have better development outcomes.7 16 1922 Among (pre-)school-aged children, meta-analyses have assessed the association between diet quality and development,17 18 30 but only one included studies among children aged 3659 months.18 A study in Scotland showed that more slow meals (ie, sit down meals; meals with fresh ingredients) were associated with better cognitive performance at ages 3 and 5.31 Additionally, a trial among Indian preschoolers 2949 months of age showed that, compared with placebo, fortification of school meals with multiple micronutrient powders for 8 months improved expressive language, inhibitory control and socioemotional development in low-quality but not high-quality preschools. However, there were no effects on receptive language, fine motor development or visual reception.32 Our findings of limited associations between child diet and development build on this limited literature by providing evidence specific to children aged 3659 months in LMICs. In this age range, childrens brains are no longer developing as rapidly as during pregnancy or earlier in life and nutrient requirements for ongoing brain development processes, such as higher cognitive function (eg, working memory, inhibition), are much smaller.8 33 Thus, in children aged 3659 months, diet may no longer be as important of a predictor of the child development domains we assessed compared with earlier in life. Or it may be too homogenous to capture differences in child development.

The lack of associations between ASF consumption and child development in our study contrasts prior evidence showing ASFs benefit child development among primary school-aged children.8 3437 However, we lacked data on ASF quantity or frequency of consumption. It is possible that neither was sufficient to show an association with child development or that ASF nutrients were prioritised towards other developmental or physiological needs.38

Our analysis of potential modifiers highlighted the role of adequate stimulation, ECCE programmes and improved sanitation. With respect to stimulation, we observed beneficial associations for cognitive and literacy-numeracy development among children with better diets, but poorer socioemotional development among children who consumed ASFs. The latter may be a chance finding given the number of potential modifiers explored. Additional research is needed to confirm this finding and clarify potential mechanisms. With respect to ECCE attendance, in a previous study, the effect of micronutrient fortification on child development in India was modified by preschool quality.32 We lacked data on ECCE quality; however, it was likely highly variable given that we included both urban and rural programmes in 15 countries. Nevertheless, ECCE programmes may influence child development by enhancing learning, identifying and treating learning and behavioural problems39 or serving as platforms for nutrition interventions. Lastly, improved sanitation likely reduces exposure to pathogens and environmental risks contributing to poor child development through persistent immune stimulation and poor gut health.40 Although promising, these findings on potential modifiers should be interpreted with caution, given the wide CIs for many of the subgroups we examined.

There are several important limitations of our study. First, we lacked data on macronutrient and micronutrient intake and only had data on food groups from a single 24-hour period. Prior studies among children aged <2 years suggest that the association between child diet and development may be prospective with better diet in early life predicting improved development in later infancy.41 42 Furthermore, the child diet indicators we used were developed to assess feeding in children aged <2 years and have only been validated for older children in Burkina Faso.43 Lastly, child diet depends on multiple socioecological factors (eg, food security, nutrition knowledge) not collected by DHS that may be important confounders or modifiers. Future research should consider these broader contextual factors in the associations between child diet, stimulation and development. Another limitation is the crude nature of the ECDI, which relies on 10 caregiver-reported items and is therefore limited in its ability to comprehensively assess each domain. Moreover, the ECDI does not assess higher cognitive functions (eg, attention, processing speed), which develop rapidly between 36 and 59 months of age.33 Child diet may be more important for these more rapidly developing domains as demonstrated by the positive effects of micronutrient fortification on inhibitory control in India.32 Furthermore, the literacy-numeracy domain has been criticised for containing more advanced items than comparable development assessment tools for children aged 3659 months; the physical domain contains items that are less advanced than comparable tools.44 These limitations are evidenced in our sample where 87% of children had suboptimal literacy-numeracy development and only 11% had suboptimal physical development. Given these limitations, our results are hypothesis generating and should be interpreted with caution before being replicated using more comprehensive child development assessments. Last, our findings may not be generalisable to all LMICs given the small number of counties with child development, diet and stimulation data for children aged 3659 months.

In conclusion, we showed that child diet was positively associated with stimulation and literacy-numeracy development among children aged 3659 months in LMICs. Child diet was not associated with cognitive, socioemotional or physical development overall, but we found beneficial associations among children receiving adequate stimulation, attending ECCE programmes and with access to improved sanitation. Interventions that address child diet alone may provide limited benefits for child development from 36 to 59 months of age. Future interventions should consider holistic approaches to support child development in the second 1000 days that broadly address child diet, stimulation, ECCE access and other environmental factors.

Data are available in a public, open access repository. The data underlying the results presented in the study are publicly available from the DHS Program (http://www.dhsprogram.com). Registration is required to access the data.

Not applicable.

This study involved human participants. Access and permission to analyse the data was granted by the DHS programme (http://www.dhsprogram.com). DHS data are de-identified secondary data, and the analysis was exempted from full review by the Institutional Review Board of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (protocol number IRB21-0158). Participants gave informed consent to participate in the study before taking part.

We would like to thank all the participants in the studies and the DHS Programme teams that implement, conduct and complete the DHS surveys and make the data available.

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Diet and development among children aged 3659 months in low-income countries - Archives of Disease in Childhood

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Sometimes it's tough to get motivated to work out, you had every intention to work out today but something kept you from accomplishing that task. Work issues, car trouble, relationship troubles, and kid drama are just some of the reasons people use to skip a workout for days, months, or even years. After the avoidance come the excuses, the most popular justification being that they just can't find the motivation. Here's the bad news - being struck with the motivation to exercise is rare. If you're waiting for "a feeling" to get your ass up and into the gym, there's a strong chance you'll be waiting a long time.

With the new year just around the corner, people will head back into gyms, jump face-first into dieting, and hop back on the fitness wagon. This motivation to work out and eat healthier will last about a week for most people. A few months after the calendar turns to a new year, those same individuals will go back to doing the bare minimum with exercise and eating healthy.

Finding the motivation to work out isn't hard. There are countless ways to get motivated, but here are a few ideas that will help give you a kick in the ass when procrastination starts rearing its ugly head.

Procrastination is the killer of all motivation. Thinking ourselves out of a task is the most common reason people avoid tasks because we focus on the entire undertaking and not just one part at a time. Let's use running as an example. If you had to run five miles, your brain would think, "ugh, those 5 miles will suck," and the mind will focus on all of the steps ahead. Instead, focus on one mile at a time. Conquer the first mile and move onto the second, and so on, until the five miles are complete.

An excellent way to combat procrastination is to try the 5-minute rule. If you're unfamiliar with the 5-Minute Rule, it's an amazing motivational trick that works for just about any task. Set the timer on your phone for five minutes and do some form of exercise for those five minutes. It can be anything - push-ups, jumping jacks, jumping rope, running, or even walking. You can stop when the five minutes are up if you still don't feel like working out. At least you accomplished those five minutes. Chances are you're going to keep working out.

The last time you skipped a workout, you probably had what seemed like a perfectly reasonable excuse. All of your workout clothes were dirty, you forgot your sneakers at home, or a Rick & Morty marathon pulled your attention away. In truth, all your excuses are crap and could have been avoided with a bit of preparation.

Take out gym clothes the night before and pack yourgym bag to be ready. Block off a specific time of the day when you're going to work out. Shut off your phone right before so nothing can distract you. Think back to all the reasons you skipped the last workout and put the steps in place to avoid those issues from popping up again. As Benjamin Franklin once quipped, "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail."

Everyone has different reasons for working out and wanting to get into better shape. Better overall health doesn't typically top of the list. People focus on wanting to look better in the warmer months, and the need to wear less clothing rolls around or after a bad breakup or when you catch your reflection in the mirror or out in public and really don't like the body looking back at you.

To motivate yourself to exercise more and work out harder, think about all the times you looked and felt out of shape and then think about the next time you'll be in the situation again. Do you want to feel that way again? Do you want to have to wear a shirt the next time you go to the beach? Do you want to buy new clothes because your old clothes are too snug?

If the visualization trick isn't working, scroll through the photos on your phone or your social media account to find images when you weren't looking and feeling your best. There's no better way to motivate yourself to work out than to put yourself back in the moment when you were feeling less than.

Here's the real truth about why people can't stick with an exercise program, diet, or any self-improvement habit is our inability to create concrete and precise goals. If you're working out just to lose weight, get into better shape, or so that your clothes fit better, your goals are way too vague. If you exercise for a few days and drop two pounds, congrats, you reached your goal. If you work out for two weeks in a row, good job, you're in better shape than when you started. If your clothes fit a little better, well done, but all you really had to do was buy better-fitting clothes.

To get motivated and stay motivated, a person needs a specific goal and date of completion to reach that goal. Sign up for a race. Enter yourself in a fitness competition. Put down the money to do a Tough Mudder or Spartan race. Choose a goal, commit to the plan, and start taking action to reach the goal. To really up the stakes, tell people about the goal. Friends, family, and co-workers will work as motivators towards the goal because you won't want to look like a failure when they ask about your progress.

How many times have you heard people say, "that's it, the diet starts tomorrow" or "next week, I'm going to start going to the gym every day"? How many times did those exact words come out of your mouth? Probably far too many since you're reading this article.

Here's the problem with setting goals in the future - it gives you plenty of time to forget or change your mind. Instead of tomorrow, next week, or when you've got more time, why not start right now? Put on your sneakers and go for a run. Pack a bag and go to the gym. Hell, just drop on the floor and do as many push-ups as possible. Just do something because something is better than nothing.

As with anything, getting and staying motivated to work out takes time and effort. Working out is the first part of a lifestyle change. The second part is evaluating your diet; as they say, abs start in the kitchen. The trick is in maintaining both efforts to get maximum results.

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How To Get Motivated To Work Out When You Dont Want to - The Manual

MERIDEN One of the most popular New Years resolutions is weight loss, but people tend to quickly fall off track.

We spoke with experts in the nutrition and fitness industry to help you set realistic lifestyle goals for 2022.

Carrie Marquardt, health & wellness director for the Meriden-New Britain-Berlin YMCA, said the best way to be successful is to set small goals.

She explained that people start the year wanting to do it all at once, cutting calories, exercising and giving up cigarettes and soda, something that often ends up not being successful.

She suggested starting out with one thing at a time, such as making better choices when its time to eat.

After being successful with the first objective, more goals can be added.

Esmeralda Annie O Farrill is a fitness trainer and CrossFit coach at the Meriden YMCA.

She is also a student at Southern Connecticut State University, with a major in sports science and a minor in nutrition.

O Farrill, who was born in Puerto Rico, said food is a very cultural thing.

You cannot tell a person who grew up eating bread and rice to not eat bread and rice because thats their culture, thats how they relate, she said.

She explained that it is better not to give up on foods but to have a limited amount, depending on each individuals goal.

She said some people try to give up an entire food group, such as carbohydrates, and that doesnt always work out because the body needs those nutrients and people end up having cravings.

For O Farrill, consulting with a professional before making drastic diet changes is important.

O Farrill noted that choosing brown rice instead of white rice, sweet potatoes rather than regular potatoes and whole grain bread instead of white bread, are all small but positive changes people can start to incorporate intotheir diet.

O Farrill said she used to be almost 100 pounds overweight, something she got under control after hiring a personal trainer.

She said those small changes are what started her on the path to becoming a healthier person.

When it comes to supplements, she said people should be careful, do research and consult a professional. In addition, supplements should be consumed along with a healthy diet and exercise.

Dr. William Lunn, a professor at SCSU, is one of the individuals she has been learning from when it comes to supplements and nutrition.

Social media plays a big role in body image. O Farrill said people should be careful not to believe everything they see on social media as influencers are normally just trying to sell a product.

Marquardt said exercising is important but it is better for people to do an exercise they enjoy.

If you like to walk, by all means you should walk, you shouldnt run if you dont want to run, she said. You have to find something that you enjoy doing, that you will stick with.

Exerciseappsand videos can help guide people in a good direction, she said.

Nancy Payne, of Meriden, joined the YMCA in 2014. She said she was one of those people who chose new year's resolutions but didnt manage them properly.

When it comes to fitness and nutrition, she said she has been able to gain healthier habits.

It's a learning curve, she said.

When she joined the YMCA, she was new to Meriden and she wanted to be involved in the community.

She said she joined O Farrills classes, where she told clients about her experience being overweight.

That caught Paynes attention and she continued to work with O Farrill, who gave her exercise and nutrition tips. Payne ended up hiring O Farrill as her personal trainer.

Doing that and following what she was telling me, I was able to lose some of my weight, she said and praised O Farrill for helping so many others.

Payne has Puerto Rican parents and she enjoys when her family cooks.

She has learned to ask her family to make healthier choices, such as baking rather than frying.

Michael McDowell, general manager at Club 24 fitness center in Meriden,said one of the most important aspects of health is nutrition, which is why his gym offers nutrition help.

Part of their goal with clients is to have them meet with a trainer to help them set up a personalized plan.

You want to find something that fits you personally, he said.

One of the things that help people who want to start a healthier lifestyle is finding a workout partner or taking a group class where they could meet people with similar goals, he said.

ksantos@record-journal.com203-317-2364Twitter: @KarlaSantosNews

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Meriden fitness and nutrition experts give tips to start a healthy new year - Meriden Record-Journal

Leni Kinzli

How poultry-farming training from the World Food Programme is changing lives

Conflict breeds hunger, it destroys livelihoods, disrupts basic services such as healthcare and education and forces people from their homes.

Mohammed should know he was forced to flee his village in eastern Sudan after conflict broke out in 1994 between the East Sudan Front and the Sudanese Government. Besides our family becoming separated, the most difficult thing was leaving our homes and village and not knowing when we would return, says Mohammed.

The signing of the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement in 2006 brought an end to conflict but not to hunger. Today, Mohammeds village of Tahadai Osis is one of the most food-insecure places in eastern Sudan where over 65 percent of children are affected by stunting (impaired growth and development that children experience from poor nutrition).

By 2014, Mohammed felt safe enough to return to his village. Seven years on, however, he still struggles to make ends meet. I am a simple and man with no [formal] education, and it has been very hard for me to provide for my familys day-to-day needs, he says.

In 2019, the World Food Programme (WFP), with funding from the European Union, launched a project to address the causes of food insecurity and malnutrition in eastern Sudan.

Cash assistance was provided to 350 Tahadai Osis residents in exchange for work on local infrastructure projects such as rehabilitating a school and the schools farm, repairing a solar-powered water tank, building pipelines to connect the village to clean water, and building flood prevention measures such as gabion walls and soil dams.

The community were introduced to poultry farming and educated on the nutritional benefits of eggs which are not traditionally consumed in this region. Some of the eggs are used to make breakfast for children at a nearby WFP-supported school and any surplus is sold, with profits ploughed back into the farm.

Mohammed and his wife Madina have started their own poultry farm which enables them to improve the diets of their three daughters one of whom suffered from malnutrition before the family sought help at a WFP-supported clinic. I cook the eggs for my daughters who really like them, says Madina, We sell any extra eggs which enables us to buy other basic necessities.

Children aged under-5 and pregnant and breastfeeding women are also screened for malnutrition at a WFP-supported clinic in Tahadai Osis. Those affected are provided with nutritional supplements that are packed with vitamins and minerals and rich in protein.

Community volunteers also go door-to-door educating families on the importance of a healthy diet and hygiene measures which help to prevent malnutrition. Volunteers came to my house and taught me about the importance of screening my children for malnutrition and how to prevent it, says Madina. I am now more aware of my familys health and nutrition needs.

Improving the food security of families like Mohammeds has contributed to peace and stability in the region and is encouraging others who fled conflict to return to their villages.

WFP has helped us to establish a foundation for our community to thrive, says Karrar, a poultry-keeper from the village. Access to clean water supports our livelihood activities and we have learnt how to rear chickens and to grow a variety of vegetables which has improved our diets.

WFPs activities in Tahadai Osis village are part of a project entitled Improving nutrition and reducing stunting in eastern Sudan through an integrated nutrition and food security approach. This work has been possible thanks to generous contributions from the European Union and the work of WFPs implementing partner Sudan Vision.

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Sudan: Nutrition lays the groundwork for peace - Sudan - ReliefWeb

CANTONThroughout the holidays, some tend to overindulge in the decadence of all the various treats, telling themselves theyll take off the few extra pounds once the new year begins.

What many dont understand is there are other consequences to not having a healthy diet aside from carrying extra weight.

More: Graham Health Systems Sours honored. Heres why.

Lacey McMahill is an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse and Board Certified Advanced Diabetes Management Education with Graham Health Systems.

She explained the different types of diabetes, If you have diabetes, your blood glucose, or blood sugar levels, are too high. Glucose comes from foods you eat. The cells of your body need glucose for energy. A hormone called insulin helps the glucose get into your cells.

With type 1 diabetes, your body doesnt make insulin. With type 2 diabetes, your body doesnt make as much insulin or use insulin well. Without enough insulin, glucose builds up in your blood and causes high blood sugar levels. High blood sugar levels cause a horde of health-related complications.

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There is also prediabetes. McMahill said those diagnosed as prediabetic have higher than normal blood sugar levels than normal, but not high enough to be diagnosed with diabetes. Those with prediabetes, are more than likely to develop type 2 diabetes.

McMahill said 10.5 percent or 34.2 million of the US population have diabetes, Type 1 diabetes occurs mainly in children and young adults, although it can occur at any age. Type 1 diabetes accounts for 5 to 10 percent of all diabetes in the United States.

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Genetics do appear to play a role intype 1 diabetes, but the cause has yet to be identified, In type 1, the pancreas does not produce any insulin at all, These patients cannot survive without supplementation from an external source of insulin. Type 2 diabetes is much more common and accounts for 90 to 95 percent. Type 2 diabetes primarily affects adults, however recently type 2 has begun developing in children. There is a strong correlation between type 2 diabetes, diet and physical inactivity.

Diabetes has a very of symptoms.

To name a few:

Increased urination, often at night

Increased thirst

Increased hunger and appetite

Unintentional weight loss

Blurry vision

Numbness or tingling of the hands or feet

Fatigue

Dry skin

Skin sores that heal slowly

More infections than usual, especially urinary tract infections and/or yeast infections

According to McMahill a person should contact their doctor if any of the symptoms are present and persistent and/or you have a family history of diabetes, Checking for diabetes is as simple as taking a blood sample to check a random blood sugar level. Further tests can be ordered from there if your provider feels it is necessary, she said.

How important is a patients diet when it comes to managing their diabetes?

So important. The sugar in your blood comes from certain foods called carbohydrates or carbs. Foods that are high in carbs include candy and sweets, sodas, breads, tortillas, beans, potatoes, corn, peas and white rice just to name a few. The more carbs you eat, the higher your blood sugar level will be, said McMahill.

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Further, she explained whether a person has type 1 or 2 diabetes or even prediabetes, making the right food choices is an important way to keep your blood sugar as a healthy level. When you control your blood sugar you lower your chance of having serious health problems from diabetes such as loss of vision and heart problems.

If a person is prediabetic, or are at risk for diabetes, eating foods that keep your blood sugar levels healthy may help prevent type 2 diabetes later on in life.

However, there isnt a specific diet or meal plan that works for everybody, All eating plans for diabetes have a few things in common, including eating the right foods in the right amounts at the right times. I work with my patients to help them develop a way of eating that works with their lifestyle, she said.

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McMahill said shes been working in healthcare for years, My first bedside nursing position was to recover patients who had just had open heart surgery. I saw so many people who may have been able to prevent or delay the need for intervention all together if they were given the right guidance and encouragement. I have always been fond of the preventative medicine approach to helping patients avoid developing conditions and complications before they start. Patients with more education have better outcomes. I also love teaching. I love that warm, fuzzy feeling I get when I see the light bulb turn on. What I most enjoy is celebrating my patients accomplishments with them. This is not an easy condition to manage, but it can be done and I am here to help them every step of the way. My position is one that is also not easily accomplished, and I love a challenge. The prevalence of diabetes is on the rise and more educators continue to be needed.

More: Graham Hospital School of Nursing site of upcoming accreditation review

McMahill received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from OSF Saint Francis Medical Center College of Nursing in Peoria. She received her Master of Science in Nursing degree with an emphasis in care of the whole family, from birth to death, from Chamberlain University in Downers Grove. She is a certified as a Family Nurse Practitioner by the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. Since that time she has obtained additional specialty certifications as a Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist and as a Board Certified Advanced Diabetes Management Provider to better serve her patients.

Originally from Elmwood, she moved to Canton after meeting her husband and has lived here for the last 11 years, I have really grown to love this community and I wholeheartedly consider it mine now. We have two beautiful children and love spending all of our free time watching them grow, she shared.

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Understanding diabetes. Here's what you need to know! - Canton Daily Ledger

If youre trying to lose weight or just live healthier, starting a new diet can help. The ketogenic (keto) diet has been trending for several years now, due to its success with weight loss and muscle-building. Some have even come to believe that following this diet can aid in preventing or reversing heart failure.

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As we get into the health benefits of the keto diet, heart failure cardiologist and researcher W.H. Wilson Tang, MD, wants you to understand the basics before hopping on this enduring trend.

The keto diet is based on eating little carbs, so the idea is for you to get those extra calories in from protein and fat instead, says Dr. Tang. The key is to eliminate carbs that come from unhealthy options like soda, sweets, white bread, as well as healthy options like fruit, milk, and whole grains, adds registered dietitian Katherine Patton, RD.

Dr. Tang wants you to know that just because youre lessening your carb intake, it doesnt mean youre automatically preventing heart disease with the keto diet.

In fact, you could be facing increased risks of heart disease if not monitored closely by a medical professional.

Our skeletal muscles are fueled primarily by glucose, which is a form of sugar derived from the carbohydrates we eat. On the flip side, our hearts derive up to 70% of fuel from fat, says Dr. Tang.

Ketone bodies are an alternative source of fuel that your liver makes from fat. So, if you want to train your body to switch from using glucose to ketones, you must decrease your carb intake and replace with lean protein and unsaturated fat. This is the essence of the keto diet.

For people at risk of developing heart disease, the success of ketos short-term weight loss can be helpful. When following the keto diet, you tend to feel less hungry therefore, aiding in weight loss.

Other benefits of the keto diet include:

While these short-term benefits can make you feel better, the long-term effects of the keto diet remain unclear.

If youre thinking of starting the keto diet, beware of certain side effects, like:

Because there is no consensus on exactly what the diet includes, this leaves the door open to thinking its safe to live on saturated fats and processed foods, says Dr. Tang.

As for heart-health, the jury is still out on whether or not this diet is actually beneficial.

I do not know of any high-quality dietary studies that consistently show ketosis is helpful in human hearts, says Dr. Tang. However, there have been some exciting new data that may point to potential benefits in subsets of heart failure patients. So, our group and others are actively studying this to see if there is any new dietary intervention opportunity for some patients.

Can the keto diet cause heart issues? Dr. Tang fears some people who have heart failure doing a ketogenic diet might have increased risks of:

In general, if you have heart failure, youre more likely to develop a blood sugar abnormality. And with keto dieters consuming high levels of fat and protein, its hard to determine when it turns from healthy to harmful.

Its possible some patients might benefit from the keto diet, but some might get worse, says Dr. Tang.

Because of the potentially harmful effects of the keto diet on heart patients, Dr. Tang and other heart failure specialists advise taking a less-strict approach.

For heart patients, Dr. Tang (and aligning to the latest clinical guidelines on dietary recommendations from the American Heart Association) recommend:

If youre really determined to follow a strict keto diet, Dr. Tang suggests two natural, safe options for generating ketone bodies. The first is to sleep more, as sleep generates ketosis naturally. The second is to consider reducing caloric intake through intermittent fasting although this still warrants close monitoring by your doctor. It is certainly wise to discuss with your doctor before proceeding, should you choose to pursue a specific diet.

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Is the Keto Diet Heart-Healthy? - Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic

As we celebrate the beginning of a new year, many people often look at making resolutions to improve their health. The best place to start is your diet or way of eating. Its not the easiest place, but the food we take in is information to our cells, our blood, and our organs and if we take in crappy information, we get crappy results.

Humans around the world have had varied diets for millennia. Focusing on dietary ideology is less important than focusing on principles. And the key focus of any dietary strategy should be ensuring what you are eating has the necessary components to support optimal cellular biology.

The good thing is that several different dietary approacheswhen thoughtfully craftedcan give you these components. The study of food and nutrition are complex. First, nutrition research sometimes gets bogged down in too many details. While the molecular biology of food is critical to understand, the epidemiology of food can also help guide us. We also know that people who eat ultra-processed foods, too many Omega-6 fats, and excess sugar tend to have higher rates of chronic disease and early death. We know that including Omega-3 fats, adequate micronutrients and phytonutrients, and antioxidant-rich foods supports longevity.

What could whole-food, plant-based eaters and carnivore devotees possibly have in common? One group eats only plants, and the other only eats meat. But in fact, these dietary ideologies share traits:

Both focus on the nutrient density of food, striving to get as many nutrients as possible from what they eat.

Both eschew processed foods, and in particular, abstain from processed grains, sugar, food additives, and seed or vegetable oils.

Both take a thoughtful approach to food sources and sustainability, with an appreciation of the importance of soil health.

Heres an example of the complexity that makes research and dietary recommendations challenging. Omega-3s can come from various sources: fish, meat, eggs, nuts, seeds, algae. But there are different forms of Omega-3s, and typically, plant sources contain the upstream Omega-3s (like alpha-linoleic acid, ALA) that need to be converted through multiple chemical reactions (enzymes) to the downstream form that is most active (EPA and DHA) for making up cell membranes, and promoting anti-inflammatory reactions. Eating fish or other omega-3-containing animal products will give you straight EPA and DHA, but if youre eating plant-based sources, you are mostly getting upstream ALA and have to convert it.

Heres the catch: converting ALA to EPA requires the function of three sequential enzymes, and these enzymes require regulating nutrient cofactors, including vitamins B3, B6, and C, zinc, and magnesium. So you need to eat targeted, diverse foods to get the vitamin and micronutrient levels to make this conversion possible. Eating plant sources of Omega-3s but being deficient in nutrient cofactors could mean youre missing most of the Omega-3 benefits.

Nutrition research is one of those areas that will never, ever be settled. Were learning more and more about nutrition science every day. But you have to be careful where that science is coming from and who is paying for the studies. Many doctors use bias to make their points meaning they will cherry-pick statistical data to prove their point. Youll find hundreds of studies saying that veganism is best or Paleo is the way to go, or everyone should be eating a raw food diet. Research your diet thoroughly from numerous sources to get a well-rounded point of view.

To choose the best diet or way of eating for your body, consider your preferences and sensitivities first. Do you like meat, fish, grains, and loads of vegetables? Then consider your lifestyle and time needed to grocery shop, prep and cook meals. Luckily, there are lots of healthy meal delivery services for those who are time-crunched these days. I love and use Territory Foods myself when extra busy. You may have to shift your priorities to align with your new lifestyle. Next, consider your health concerns. Do you have an autoimmune disease or family history of an illness youd like to prevent? This will drive your decision.

Whatever dietary protocol you decide, you need to make sure you are getting all of the vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, protein, fiber and micronutrients necessary for optimal health. I recommend my clients get blood work when changing their diet too.

Dont be afraid to make mistakes along the way. I once tried to eat raw foods for a week and had such tummy troubles that I was miserable. Be open to trying new foods and diets, but remember to be in tune with your body and how you feel. Remember, your plan can change too its an evolving process.

Creating your personal diet plan can be fun. Remember to consider your overall health goals, what you want to achieve, take into account your dietary preferences, sensitivities, and one that suits your lifestyle. If your diet isnt sustainable meaning something you can do for the rest of your life then it wont work for you. Try to create a plan or way of eating that works for your body and your lifestyle.

It all comes down to common sense, so we must respect the physiology of the human body to determine what our nutritional needs really are and then tweak for bio-individuality. If you need support, I am here for you at wwwUnlockBetterHealth.com.

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What's the best diet for you? | Health & Food | fairfaxtimes.com - Fairfaxtimes.com