Category Archives: Diet And Food

With spring finally getting off to a solid start, chances are youve noticed the song of the chorus frog, the flight of the question mark butterfly and the blooms of many spring ephemeral wildflowers. Soon, youll notice many more animals emerging from hibernation, including many of Indianas native turtle species.

One of our most beautiful native turtles is the Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina). Found primarily in the central and southern parts of the state, this turtle is almost entirely terrestrial, living out its life in woodlands near small streams and ponds. Sometimes this turtle can be found soaking in streams and ponds to keep cool on the hottest days of the summer. These omnivores have a diverse diet, consisting of fruits, insects, worms, slugs and fungi. They occasionally even scavenge dead animals for a meal.

The Eastern box turtle is a slow growing, long-lived species. They dont reach sexual maturity until at least seven years of age and ultimately dont reach their full size until about age 20. Some individuals may live for 100 years or more. One reason for their longevity is the way they protect themselves from predators and other hazards. Their plastron (belly side of the shell) is hinged like a drawbridge, allowing them to withdraw their head and limbs, pull the plastron shut, and completely cut off access to the outside world (putting the box in box turtle). Sometimes the box turtle will keep their plastron shut during tough environmental circumstances, such as difficult weather or even lack of food availability. In this state, they can slow down their metabolisms and wait for a more ideal time to search for food before they become active again.

Eastern box turtles are protected in the state of Indiana and are listed as a threatened species. Since 2004, it has been illegal to collect box turtles, dead or alive, from the wild in the state of Indiana. However, they still remain vulnerable to illegal collection, predation, habitat loss and roadway accidents. Spring is the time of year when box turtles emerge from their hibernation burrows and become more active. At this time of year, they will begin to actively search for mates. Most box turtles will lay eggs during May and June. As you are out traveling county roads and highways, keep an eye out for turtles crossing roadways to search for mates and to access nesting sites. If you see a turtle in the road, it is best to safely come to a stop, make sure it is safe to exit your vehicle, and carefully move the turtle across the road in the direction that it was traveling. It is safest to handle a turtle by the back edge of the shell, near the back legs. This protects the turtles body from injury and protects you from a potential bite. It is never safe to handle a turtle by the tail or any other limb. If you find an injured turtle, it is generally best to leave it alone if the injury seems minor. Major injuries may require the help of a veterinarian or licensed wildlife rehabilitator. A list of licensed wildlife rehabilitators can be found at http://www.in.gov/dnr/fishwild/5492.htm.

Ashley Holmes is the Montgomery County Extension Educator, Ag and Natural Resource. The office is at 400 Parke Ave., Crawfordsville; 364-6363. She may be reached by email at holmes9@purdue.edu.

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Who is the Eastern box turtle? A spring species highlight - Journal Review

Bubba Watson is still adjusting to dropping 15 pounds. (Getty)

Fans tuning into the 2017 Masters will notice a slimmed down Bubba Watson. According to Golf Week, Watson has lost 15-20 pounds. Watson has a current weight of 172 pounds compared to 190 pounds he weighed at the end of last year.

Watson noted the weight loss was a byproduct of eating healthier not necessarily because he was attempting to lose weight. He explained his new diet to Golf Week.

Oh, everything that tastes good. Actually, Im eating small meals more times. I threw in fish for the first time, a lot of chicken. Normally I dont like eating on the golf course, but we made these little protein balls.

No chips. I havent had a chip probably in three or four months. So its just things like that. The stuff everybody loves? I just cut it out. So Im basically just bitter at the world.

Watson has wondered if the weight loss has impacted his game negatively in the short-term, but told Golf Channel its [the weight loss] is going to help me play a lot longer.

Two years ago, it was Chipotle burritos that Watson claimed helped him at Augusta.

Watson explained on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that he started eating the burritos when his wife was out of town.

Last year, 2014, my wife was there this time. I was like Im going back to the burritos. So I had burritos for another 10 days straight, one or two a day. I won again so I think were going to do that again, Watson told Fallon (via Golf Digest).

Gone are his burrito days, but Watson hopes his new health will help him at Augusta. It is worth noting the burritos did not help him in 2015 as Watson finished 38th. Watson has yet to win during the 2017 Tour and his best finish came at the 2016 Hero World Challenge where he placed sixth.

Watson has won two green jackets during his career. He won the Masters in 2012 and 2014.

Thomas Pieters is a sleeper to compete in the 2017 Masters. Learn more about the Belgian golfer who played collegiately at Illinois.

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Bubba Watson Weight Loss 2017: New Diet Slims Down Watson - Heavy.com

April 7, 2017 by Darren Curnoe, The Conversation Human brain connectome illustrating axonal nerve fibers determined by the measured directionality of water molecules inside them (Credit: jgmarcelino from Newcastle upon Tyne). Credit: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

It's the mystery of all mysteries of science. Why is it that humans are so unusual compared to all other life? The key to solving this riddle lies in explaining the evolution of our large brains and exceptional intelligence.

For as long as humanity has been contemplating our existence we must surely have been struck by the fact that we are the only species capable of doing so.

I don't believe it's an exaggeration to say that the evolutionary arrival of humankind some 200,000 years ago was a decisive moment in the long history of the universe. After 14 billion years in the making, and in the blink of an eye of cosmological time, human intelligence arrived and gave the universe the ability to comprehend itself.

Maybe this all seems a little too anthropocentric for your taste? Smacks of literary indulgence on my behalf? Perhaps. But the simple matter is that we can't avoid the fact of human uniqueness, and explaining it is tied to understanding the evolution of our extraordinary brainpower.

The eighteenth century British anatomist and creationist Richard Owen, one of Charles Darwin's foremost foes, thought humans were so unusual that we ought to be classified in our own sub-class the 'Archenecephala' as he dubbed it on account of our highly advanced brain.

It rather conveniently stood us apart from the apes, confirming his view of the specialness of humankind.

By the standards of today's biological classifications this would place us in a position in the tree of life above all of the orders of mammals, making us about as exceptional as the monotremes are to the placentals.

But with the facts of our evolution now well and truly established we have a much better understanding our place in nature, as members of the primate order, and particularly as African Great Apes.

To really understand how the human brain emerged we must first recognise that we share big brains with other primates. It's our evolutionary inheritance, as primates are among the brainiest of all mammals; when taken kilo for kilo against body size. And apes are especially well endowed in the brains department.

Why? Well, this has been a major puzzle for anthropologists for decades, and the most widely accepted explanation has been the cognitive demands placed on us by living in large social groups; the so-called 'social brain hypothesis' or 'Dunbar's Number'.

The main alternative has been that braininess evolved in response to the demands of sex. Polygynandrous species - where males and females have multiple partners in a given breeding season - possess larger brains than those using other systems of mating, such as a harem or monogamy.

Now a new study by Alex DeCasien and colleagues published in Nature Ecology and Evolution has turned the debate completely on its head. They've found that the kind of diet a primate species consumes offers the best explanation for its brain size.

While this idea is not an entirely new one, their work provides strong validation for the diet-brain connection.

When it comes to apes it turns out that fruit eating - the dietary niche present in most living apes and the one our ancient ape ancestors indulged in - is so cognitively demanding that it led to a big evolutionary leap in intelligence when it began.

How come? Well, challenging diets require individuals to seek out or capture food; they have to judge whether it's ready to be eaten or not; and they may even need to extract it, peel it, or process it in some way before it can be ingested.

Sound familiar? It should. Humans have the most specialised and challenging diets of all primates; and I have in mind here hunters and gatherers not urban foodies.

The human dietary niche is exceptionally broad and involves behaviours aimed at not only obtaining food but also making it more palatable and digestible; activities like extraction, digging, hunting, fishing, drying, grinding, cooking, combining other foods to add flavor, or even adding minerals to season or make food safe to eat.

What other species would so gleefully jiggle their jaws on the flames of a Jalapeno or lap up the tongue curling delights of a lemon?

What's more, our large fruit eating ape brains got even bigger late in human evolution because our diets became ever more challenging to obtain and prepare, especially as a result of our ancestor's penchant for eating meat.

Hunter-gatherers typically have a diet comprising between 30% and 80% vertebrate meat, while for chimpanzees it's only around 2%. Instead, chimps get 60% of their diet from fruit, but hunter-gatherers typically obtain only 5% or 6 % (on the odd occasion a lot more) of their nutrition from fruit.

Humans rarely eat raw meat though, and we cook many of our vegetables as well, so even after expending huge efforts to collect it we still have to process much of our food in drawn out ways.

All of this throws up a paradox for us. Why is it that our closest and now extinct relatives, such as the Neanderthals, who were capable of complex behaviours like hunting, cooking and perhaps even cultural activities like art, lacked the smarts to ponder the ultimate questions of life?

Why is it us, and not them, that are capable of pondering and explaining the existence of life and the universe, including human life itself? There is clearly something very unique about human intelligence and a lot more to this evolutionary tale than mere food for thought.

Explore further: Why are primates big-brained? Researchers' answer is food for thought

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Brain size in primates is predicted by diet, an analysis by a team of New York University anthropologists indicates. These results call into question "the social brain hypothesis," which has posited that humans and other ...

Anthropologists have been curious about the evolution of human intelligence for many decades. The main lines of research have involved archaeological finds concerning the use of fire, tools and so on.

A new mathematical model could help clarify what drove the evolution of large brains in humans and other animals, according to a study published in PLOS Computational Biology.

Monkeys known as macaques possess the vocal anatomy to produce "clearly intelligible" human speech but lack the brain circuitry to do so, according to new research.

The brains of wild cats don't necessarily respond to the same evolutionary pressures as those of their fellow mammals, humans and primates, indicates a surprising new study led by a Michigan State University neuroscientist.

Amateur cook-offs like the hugely popular Master Chef series now in its seventh season in Australia have been part of our TV diet for almost two decades.

Walking through a grassy field or forest take a moment to consider what lies beneath the surface. A web of plant roots interacts symbiotically with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi that extend their hyphae from the root ...

Birds show an amazing diversity in plumage colour and patterning. But what are the genetic mechanisms creating such patterns? In a new study published today in PLOS Genetics, Swedish and French researchers report that two ...

A new study of Peruvian frogs living at a wide variety of elevationsfrom the Amazon floodplain to high Andes peakslends support to the idea that lowland amphibians are at higher risk from future climate warming.

Puffin pairs that follow similar migration routes breed more successfully the following season, a new Oxford University study has found.

(Phys.org)A pair of biology professors, one with the University of Illinois, the other with Macquarie University in Australia has proposed in a Perspective piece in the journal Science that the traits we see as instinctual ...

Humans are able to interpret the behaviour of others by attributing mental states to them (and to themselves). By adopting the perspectives of other persons, they can assume their emotions, needs and intentions and react ...

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Agreed. We have no way of knowing whether Neandertals "lacked the smarts to ponder" anything.

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Food for thought? Diet helps explain unique human brainpower - Phys.Org

FOX 32 NEWS - If someone told you that you could increase your memory and decrease your chances of dementia by changing your diet, would you do it?

Rush University researchers say they have developed a diet which is the only one proven to have an impact on Alzheimers disease.

So now, they're asking people to volunteer for a new study to determine just how effective it really is.

Max and Sandy are whipping up brain food. Theyre part of a study to determine how a change in diet can not only help their memory, but decrease their chances of dementia and Alzheimers.

"Watching my mother go through Alzheimers was motivation and I wished back then we had focused on these sorts of triggers."

The triggers are food. Its something that hasn't really been the focus of studies when it comes to our brains and memory. That is until now.

Martha Claire Morris is a Nutritional Epidemiologist and wanted to see how a variation in combining two popular diets - the Mediterranean Diet and the Dash Diet to treat hypertension - would impact brain disease.

"We took the core components of those very well studied diets and then modified each one of their components to reflect what we know about nutrition and brain, said Morris.

And that's when she coined this new diet, the mind diet. In two studies published in 2015, Morris and colleagues found the mind diet lowered the risk of Alzheimers by a whopping 53% in people who followed it rigorously.

And surprisingly, even those who only followed it moderately experienced an impressive benefit.

"People who even scored in intermediate range they had a 35% reduction in the risk of developing Alzheimers disease."

The Mind Diet includes eating at least three servings of whole grains, a green leafy salad and one other vegetable every day along with a glass of wine.

It also includes snacking on most days on nuts and eating beans every other day, fish once a week, poultry and specifically berries at least twice a week.

The foods to limit or avoid are butter, cheese, fried or fast foods and pastries and sweets.

This first of its kind study is tracking more than 600 people over 3-years who are 65-85. But Harris says she believes the Mind Diet can benefit almost anyone.

"It's very likely the Mind diet will be a health benefit to adults of any age and even for children. It's just that we just devised the diet and it hasn't been tested, Harris said.

Max and Sandy say they're already feeling healthier.

"This is the way we will probably eat forever"

Researchers are looking for more people to take part in this study.

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New diet decreases your chances of getting Alzheimer's - Fox 32 Chicago

I thought after I reached a certain age I wouldnt have to worry about dieting any more.

I mean, I wouldnt be caught dead in those cute short shorts and halter tops the girls wear these days anyway. Not at my age. So after decades of watching what, how much, and even when I ate, when I turned older, I pretty much devoured whatever I wanted. I figured, as the years crept up, some doctor would put me on a sugar-free, salt-free, taste-free health diet at any time, so enjoy those burgers and cream puffs now.

But my husband suddenly decided he wanted to lose the weight hed accumulated over the years. Hearing that from a gourmet cook was hard to stomach, since Im the recipient of his gastronomic flare and didnt relish to going back to fending for myself. I dont even remember how to cook Top Ramen.

Since my husband knew he couldnt do it on his own, he researched various diet plans and decided to go with the kind that sends you packaged meals and all you have to do is tear them open, add water (or air), and eat your three-quarters cup of reconstituted freeze-dried astronaut-like food. No-brainer. And no-gainer. Just weight loss.

I wanted to support him I know its not easy when one-half of a couple is on a diet and the other eats everything in sight but I decided to let him try it out before I joined him. After all, those all-you-cant-eat packaged diets arent cheap. So on Day One, while he swallowed his mini-shake, munched on his tiny crunchy bar and dissolved his mouthful of chicken soup, I figured Id just cut back on my regular food and do just as well.

Day One was actually exciting. Theres nothing like the feeling of starting a new diet, with all the early morning, not-hungry-yet resolve and energy.

I can do this, I told myself, as I ate half my normal breakfast serving of fruit, bagel, cream cheese, juice, latte and whatever was leftover from lasts night dinner. I allowed myself a mocha frappuccino for lunch no fat, no sugar, no whip, mostly ice with a side of hunger pangs, had some yogurt and nuts for dinner, then went to bed and dreamed about Las Vegas-style resort buffets all night.

Day Two, my husband was still opening packages and eating his quota. Meanwhile, I stepped on the scale and was horrified to find I hadnt lost any weight at all! What was the point? I wondered. All that suffering and nothing to show for it. I gave my diet one more chance and ate crumbs, while my husband enjoyed his packaged food and pretended it tasted like a five-star meal.

By Day Three my husband had lost six pounds and Id gained two. My method obviously wasnt working. My box of packaged food arrives in a couple of days. That gives me plenty of time to eat myself into a stupor before I get to rip open bags of Poultry with Grain, Fish in Sauce and Noodles with Legumes.

Oh well. Hopefully its better than hospital food.

Reach Penny Warner at http://www.pennywarner.com.

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Valley Life: Embarking on my latest culinary adventure a diet - East Bay Times

After dropping 300 lbs., Mama June Shannon is determined to maintainher weight loss by sticking to a healthy diet.

The reality star, 37,had already made one major diet change in 2014 cutting out soda when her daughter Pumpkin suffered a brain injury after the family got into a car crash,and was told by the neurologist she could no longer drink the sugary beverage.

I was drinking three to four Code Reds a day, and I just went cold turkey that day, Shannon tells People Now.

Shannons trainerKenya Crooks suggests swapping soda for fruit-infused water.

For people who dont like to drink water by itself, what weve done is weve thrown some strawberries and kiwi in there, says Crooks. Its really good, and it helps you get it down a whole lot faster.

When Shannon is short on time, she drinks Propel flavored waters as a substitute for her formerly beloved sodas.

Propel has great flavors like Grape and Wild Cherry and Kiwi Strawberry, she says Honestly to me, they taste like soda. If I drink soda right now it would taste like crap.

Crooks also recommends replacing unhealthy sweet treats like cupcakes with watermelon to curb sugar cravings.

The cool thing about watermelon is that its basically 92 percent liquid, he says. It satisfies your sweet tooth, but you can also pee-pee that thing right out!

Instead of reaching for potato chips, Crooks suggestssnacking on apple chips or grapes which have become Shannons go-tosnack.

Grapes are probably my favorite thing, says Shannon, who adds that her daughters prefer snacking on watermelon. The grapes the girls actually like, but the watermelon more so than the grapes.

For anyone who wants to start their own weight loss journey, Shannon offered her advice: Take it one day at a time, she says. Dont ever give up. You dont have to be perfect, just take it at the pace you want to. Its all in moderation, especially the eating!

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Mama June & Her Trainer Kenya Crooks Reveal Her Diet Tricks That Are Helping Her Stay Fit - PEOPLE.com

Companies should prepare for resource issues and other implementation challenges as the clock winds down.

Top Photo Group/Top Photo Group/THINKSTOCK

Revenue Recognition implementation takes a lot longer than people think and Spring will be a critical time. As companies scramble to work on the new standard and focus their time and resources on satisfying the revenue and measurement requirements, many companies are ignoring the disclosure requirements. According to Eric Knachel, senior consultation partner, revenue recognition at Deloitte & Touche LLP, thats a big mistake. FEI Daily spoke with Knachel about the progress thats been made and how to catch up if youve fallen behind.

FEI Daily: We spoke in October about Revenue Recognition readiness after the release of Deloittes Revenue Recognition Roadmap, and, at that time, you shared that you thought most companies are in an assessment phase. What phase do you think theyre in now?

Eric Knachel: Id say there are still many companies in the assessment phase, although I think that a number of them have moved from assessment to beginning the implementation. The thing about the assessment phase is that its pretty broad, you can be in that phase and working at it for a week or months. The reality is, for calendar year-end companies, between October and now there probably hasnt been a whole lot of activity on the new revenue standard, just because its their year-end close. So, there probably hasnt been an enormous amount of progress made in that time. The Spring and Summer become critical time periods.

FEI Daily: If many companies still have a lot of work to do and may not intend to consider the standards new disclosure requirements until early 2018, is that a risky strategy?

Knachel: Its definitely a risky strategy. What weve seen is that the actual implementation takes longer than people imagine, and so as result you run into situations where theres more to do than you actually have time for. As that runway gets shorter, you start making it a lot more difficult on yourself and you may run into resource issues, both internally and externally. External resources will become more difficult to find.

FEI Daily: You also shared that you thought more companies would be going to full retrospective route versus the modified retrospective route. Do you still find that to be the case?

Knachel: Theres probably been a bit of decrease in the number of companies that are doing full retrospective compared to where we were before. The business reasons for why someone would do full retrospective are their peers, investor relations, and the level of work and cost. Those business reasons havent changed. If companies have procrastinated in terms of implementation and were previously on the fence, theyre seeing the clock ticking they saying, Were going to go modified retrospective because, while we didnt think the difference in effort was enormous, there is a difference in effort and our runway is shorter and weve got to get this done.

FEI Daily: Are you hearing different challenges from companies this year versus last year?

Knachel: For some of the companies that have done the assessment and the implementation, theyre moving into the disclosure. Were seeing that that is proving to be a challenge. Most companies are scrambling to work on the new revenue standard and focusing the bulk of their time and resources on satisfying the revenue and measurement requirements, those are the high-profile elements. But in that process, many companies are largely ignoring the disclosure requirements. They may view it as a minor detail that can be dealt with once the standard goes into effect. I think thats a mistake. Waiting for that until the end is proving to be problematic for companies.

FEI Daily: What is your recommendation to companies that have fallen behind when it comes to implementation at this point?

Knachel: Theres no time to lose. Not to suggest that crash diets work, but if you wanted to lose 20 lbs. in the span of six months, and youve gotten to month five and you hadnt done anything, you could arguably get onto a crash diet and lose your 20 lbs. in a month.

Here, theres really not a crash diet available to you. The work is still there and if you didnt do anything in six months, youll have to work a lot harder and be a lot more focused and intense. It probably gets back to resources.

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Spring Will Be Critical For Revenue Recognition Implementation: A Q&A With Deloitte's Eric Knachel - FEI Daily

Patients struggle to get the tests from their local surgery, report shows

Caroline White

Thursday, 06 April 2017

One in four people had either experienced restrictions, or were refused test strips on the NHS compared to one in five people four years ago, finds a report* issued today by the charity Diabetes UK.

The report draws on a UK wide online survey about restrictions to prescribing of test strips and meters, which ran from March to May last year, and generated 1,248 responses.

It shows that more than half (52%) of people experiencing problems getting test strips had type 1 diabetes.

This is of particular concern as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends all adults with type 1 should routinely self-monitor blood glucose levels, testing at least four times a day, says Diabetes UK.

These short-sighted cost savings cause people real anguish and potential financial distress. It also means people are struggling to manage their diabetes which can lead to serious consequences for their health, so we urge people to challenge restrictions and refusals, commented Diabetes UK Policy Manager Nikki Joule.

As well as being vital for people with type 1 diabetes, anyone with type 2 diabetes can benefit from testing so should be supported to do so if it is helping them to better manage their condition, she added.

She suggested that local policies should allow sufficient choice and flexibility for individual circumstances to be taken into account when prescribing test strips and meters for people with either type of diabetes.

The charity has updated its advocacy pack, on how patients can challenge GPs and nurses when faced with test strip restrictions or refusals.

Dr Stephen Lawrence, clinical lead for diabetes for the Royal College of GPs, insisted that as highly trained and skilled professionals GPs would always make the best decision for every patient.

But at the same time, 24 million of the scarce NHS budget is spent on diabetes care every day and it would be irresponsible not to make the most appropriate use of limited resources, he said.

The benefits of self-monitoring blood glucose levels in patients with type 2 diabetes were unclear, and the latest guidance from NICE specifies that most patients do not need to self-test, he pointed out.

Therefore it would be inappropriate to issue self-test strips as a one size fits all, especially when advances in medical treatment and technology are constantly emerging, particularly with newer forms of oral medications that do not cause hypoglycaemia, he said.

He cited a GP initiative in Tower Hamlets which dramatically cut inappropriate use of blood glucose self-monitoring kits among patients with type 2 diabetes without negatively affecting their health.

If thiswas applied nationally, it is estimated that we could safely and responsibly prevent unnecessary testing in 340,000 people, as well as saving 21.8 million of the NHS budget, he said.

Instead, GPs will perform HbA1c tests at set points throughout the year to measure their patients blood glucose level and once these levels have stabilised, the monitoring frequency will be reduced and GPs will then usually offer diet and lifestyle advice to help patients maintain this safe level.

He accepted that people with type 1 diabetes needed to self-monitor to ensure good control of blood glucose levels and help avoid hypoglycaemic episodes. But the frequency of such monitoring will depend on the patients individual circumstances and testing should never be done for the sake of it, he insisted.

* Testing times: restrictions accessing test strips and meters for people with diabetes. Diabetes UK, April 2017.

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GPs increasingly reluctant to give out diabetes test strips, says charity - OnMedica

Allergies and intolerances are an issue for many of us. While some people might simply suffer from an easily avoidable food allergy, another might struggle with multiple different serious allergies. Problems with Hayfever at this time of year are no joke.

Weve rounded up 10 apps that hope to make it a little easier and a little safer to live with whatever youre allergic to.

1. AllergyEats (Free) AllergyEats is a guide to all food allergy-friendly restaurants across the United States. Via sharing of real experiences from other diners, you can quickly find how simple it is to dine somewhere regardless of what allergy you may have. Menus for over 425,000 restaurants are available, along with comments on how things can be adapted. Contact details and OpenTable reservations are also available.

2. Find Me Gluten Free (Free) As the name suggests, Find Me Gluten Free focuses on those with gluten allergies. It offers up local business ratings and reviews, details of gluten-free menus and directions for anywhere you might want to visit. Besides restaurants, it includes details for bakeries and other local firms.

3. AllergyManager (Free) For those suffering from nasal allergies, AllergyManager makes it quick and simple to look up daily pollen counts, 4-day allergy forecasts and tips on how to cope. You can also use it to track your symptoms and severity, making it ideal for reporting back to your doctor.

4. Asthma Ally (Free) Asthma Ally is there to help you figure out what might be triggering your asthma or allergies. It tracks airborne irritants near you such as pollen, dust and the ozone. You can keep a log of daily symptoms before taking approved clinical evaluations each week to figure things out before your next doctors appointment.

5. ContentChecked (Free) Living with a food allergy or intolerance makes it trickier to shop safely for groceries. ContentChecked simplifies the process. Scan a products bar code, and the app will immediately tell you if its safe for your needs. Its particularly useful for those suffering from dairy or nut allergies, given their prevalence in many different products. Its quick, too.

6. First Aid by American Red Cross (Free) In case of an allergy attack, you want to know how best to deal with it. First Aid by American Red Cross offers up simple step by step instructions for what to do in such a situation, amongst many others. With safety tips and videos demonstrating, its wise to consult it just in case, as well as during an episode.

7. WebMD Allergy (Free) WebMD offers a wealth of health information, and its Allergy focused app is just as great. It offers a personalized allergy and weather forecast each day, along with tips customized to your specific allergies. You can track how you feel, while consulting the apps extensive library of allergy articles and videos.

8. NxtNutrio: Healthy Diet & Gluten Free, Allergy, GMO Scanner ($3.99) NxtNutrio is a little old, but its still useful. Simply scan a product barcode, and the app can tell you if a product contains any food allergens, MSG, GMO or gluten. Itll save you from reading labels too deeply, while also informing you of other ingredients you might want to avoid.

9. Zyrtec Allergycast (Free) Zyrtec Allergycast might encourage you to buy Zyrtec products, but its also pretty useful in its own right. It gives you the local pollen index for each day, while reporting on how it might affect you. A 10-day forecast gives you plenty of extensive insight, along with notification alerts for when pollen is high in your area. Its stylishly done.

10. Allergy Journal ($0.99) Feel like you have an allergy or intolerance but cant place what the issue is? Allergy Journal helps you keep track of everything, day by day, allowing you to list when your symptoms go from mild to severe. Collected up together, itll offer some insight into what could be happening and what issues you could be suffering from. Its a real timesaver.

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10 Great Apps for Living with Allergies - Paste Magazine

Neighborhood News is a weekly round-up of some of the news and events happening in Madisons neighborhoods.

Join Dr. Ruddy, of Group Health Cooperative, to learn how to safely and effectively use a healthy diet and natural medicine to improve sleep and increase energy levels. Ruddy will speak at a free program from noon to 1 p.m. Friday at the Monona Terrace. Ruddy is a national board-certified naturopathic doctor. He believes that self-empowerment is key in ensuring the best possible health outcome in each individual. Information: http://www.mononaterrace.com.

Join Madison Parks and UW Space Place for a free introductory workshop on stargazing. The workshop will take place from 8 to 9 p.m. Monday at Elvehjem Park, 1202 Painted Post Drive. UW Space Place will lead the program with a 20- to 30-minute talk about astronomy, followed by telescopes to try out and view astronomical wonders, if the sky is clear. All ages welcome. Advanced registration is required and available online at http://www.cityofmadison.com/parks.

Julie Swanson and Carolyn Micek will host a labyrinth walk at Wingra School, 718 Gilmore St., from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Arrive early if you would like to watch the construction of the labyrinth, made out of rope. Meet behind the school on the playgroupnd. This event is free and all ages are welcome. Donations accepted and will be gifted to Wingra School to support the schools work. Walk will take place in the rain, unless there is lightning or the rain is torrential. For more information, email Julie at jwanson05@yahoo.com. In addition, Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church, 401 S. Owen Drive, will offer an introductory program and walk from 7 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday. For information, call 608-231-4600.

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Program to focus on benefits of healthy eating - Madison.com