Category Archives: Diet And Food

He has one job - to rid Downing Street of mice - but it appearsLarry the catis not up to the task, after he was caught on camera letting a rodent go.

Rather than hunting down the creatures Number 10 said in the past he prefersto take cat naps, but the latest incident confirms he may lack the killer instinct of many politicians who have lived there.

Photographer Steve Back, who captured the incident, said : Larry the chief mouser of Number 10came face to face with a tiny little mouse,which after some play time, got away safely.

The 10-year-old tabby has his own Twitter account with more than 107,000 followers, making him more popular than many MPs.

His Twitter account explained his latest failure to deliver by saying he was playing a tactical game, before claiming he was "on a diet".

It said: My friend @PoliticalPics thinks I look sleepy; Im actually just lulling the mice into a false sense of security...

Larry was recruited from Battersea dogs and cats home during the Cameron years to tackle the rampant mouse problem at the famous address

But after this latest incident,ssome have accused of failingto deliver the results expected of him.

He is one of several Whitehall pets, including Evia and Ossie of the Cabinet Office and dogs Rex and Oscar, who live upstairs at Number 10.

Larrys mousing skills are said to pale in comparison to those of his fellow moggies, Palmerston, who lives atthe Foreign Office, and Gladstone, who minds the Treasury.

David Cameron caused a minor outcry when he left office last year and failed to take Larry with him because he is an official civil servants cat rather than the Prime Ministers personal pet.

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Larry the Cat: Downing Street mouse-catcher caught failing to kill rodent - The Independent

Science Daily

New 'gene silencer' drug reduce cholesterol by over 50 percent Science Daily Researchers from Imperial College London and their colleagues, who conducted the trial, say the twice-a-year treatment could be safely given with or without statins, depending on individual patient needs. Eventually, inclisiran could help to reduce the ... and more »

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New 'gene silencer' drug reduce cholesterol by over 50 percent - Science Daily

You may not walk like an Egyptian, but you might want to eat like a Tsimane.

A study published today in The Lancet says the forager-horticulturist tribe in South America has the lowest reported levels of vascular aging of any population on Earth.

Besides the healthy heart conditions, these indigenous people of the Bolivian Amazon region also have low blood pressure, low cholesterol, and low blood glucose.

The researchers attributed these healthy qualities to the tribes high level of physical activity and its plant-based diet.

They concluded that the lack of this type of activity and diet in developed countries such as the United States should be added to the risks associated with heart problems.

The loss of subsistence diets and lifestyles could be classed as a new risk factor for vascular aging and we believe that components of this way of life could benefit contemporary sedentary populations, said Hillard Kaplan, PhD, senior author and anthropology professor at the University of New Mexico, in a press statement.

Katie Ferraro, a registered dietitian and assistant clinical professor at the University of San Diego and University of California, agrees with the assessment.

We could certainly move in their direction, Ferraro told Healthline. We could look to them as models.

Read more: Why nutrition advice is so confusing

The researchers visited 85 Tsimane villages in 2014 and 2015.

They took CT scans of the hearts of 705 village residents between the ages of 40 and 94.

They checked for hardening of the coronary arteries as well as the villagers height, weight, blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol, blood glucose, and inflammation.

They discovered that 85 percent of Tsimane people had no risk of heart disease. That included two-thirds of the villagers who were 75 years or older.

Another 13 percent of the tribe members had a low risk, while 3 percent had moderate or high risk.

A similar study of 6,814 people in the United States ages 45 to 84 showed that only 14 percent had no risk of heart disease. About 50 percent had a moderate or high risk. Another third had a low risk.

The Tsimane population also had low heart rates and healthy levels of blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol.

This was despite the fact that about half of villagers did show elevated levels of inflammation.

The inflammation common to the Tsimane was not associated with increased risk of heart disease and may instead be the result of high rates of infections, said Dr. Randall Thompson, cardiologist at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute.

The researchers credited the villagers plant-based diet and physical activity level for their health.

They noted that the Tsimane people spend only 10 percent of their waking hours being inactive. That compares with a 54 percent inactivity level in people in industrialized nations.

The researchers said hunting, fishing, gathering, and farming keep the men working six to seven hours a day, and the women working four to six hours a day.

They also noted the Tismane peoples plant-rich diet, which is 72 percent carbohydrates, includes nonprocessed foods such as rice, corn, nuts, and fruits. Their diet is about 14 percent protein, coming from animal meat.

Smoking is also rare in these villages.

Read more: Hold the butter. Its not that good for you

Ferraro said the activity level and the carbohydrate-rich diet were the two factors that stood out in the study.

She noted high-carb diets are generally considered unhealthy in the United States, but thats because Americans tend to get their carbohydrates from processed foods.

The villagers are eating the right carbohydrates, said Ferraro, who teaches a cultural foods class at San Diego State University. Theyre a prescription for heart disease prevention.

Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RD, LD, a licensed, registered dietitian who is a wellness manager at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute, agreed with that assessment.

It shows that having a high-carb diet is not as bad as people think with the key point that their carbs were also loaded with fiber, something the body cannot digest, Kirkpatrick told Healthline. I've always recommended a back to the basics approach to diet and this clearly shows the upside to that.

Both dietitians also pointed to the high activity level as another key.

I think the physical activity factor here is huge, said Kirkpatrick, and for sure corresponds to the new studies showing that inactivity is as risky to health as obesity.

Both acknowledge that Americans arent going to move to a tent in a national park and try to hunt game.

However, they said there are ways people in modern societies can incorporate parts of the Tsimane lifestyle.

One is to significantly reduce the amount of processed foods in the diet.

The mantra of fresh vegetables, fruits, and nuts is applicable here.

The other is to lead a more active lifestyle, even for people who have desk jobs where they are sitting most of the workday.

Ferraro said its a good habit to get up every hour from your desk and be active for 5 to 7 minutes. You can even set a timer to remind you.

That practice will add 45 minutes to an hour of exercise to your day.

Make movement part of your daily routine, she said.

Read more: Children consuming lots more artificial sweeteners

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The Tribal Diet That Could Eliminate Heart Disease - Healthline

President Donald Trumps habit of repeating controversial claims from conservative media outlets and refusing to apologize when hes called out for a lack of evidence is repeatedly landing the White House in hot water, irritating Republicans and alienating foreign allies.

The White House touched off an international incident this week when press secretary Sean Spicer, berating reporters during the briefing on Thursday, cited comments from a Fox News commentator who accused former President Barack Obama of using the British spy agency GCHQ to surveil Trump Tower.

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The Brits were not pleased. The typically close-lipped British spy agency fired off a strongly worded statement, calling the allegation utterly ridiculous. The White House had to try to calm irate British diplomats, with Spicer and national security adviser H.R. McMaster getting an earful from British officials.

It was hardly an isolated incident.

Trump has racked up a series of scandals that have sprung from his apparently voracious consumption of conservative media, both from watching Fox News and from aides sharing with him reports from Breitbart and other right-wing outlets. And as the fallout has spread each time, Trump has refused to admit any wrongdoing.

The president set off a furor in Sweden when he seemed to claim the country had just suffered a terrorist attack a statement that appeared to spring from a Fox News interview with documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz about a crime surge in the country. Swedish officials angrily issued public statements that no such attack had happened.

After Fox News ran a segment about Guantanamo Bay, Trump falsely tweeted: 122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Only a fraction of those detainees were released under Obama; most had been released under President George W. Bush. (Spicer later said Trump obviously was referring to the total released under both presidents.)

And in the biggest doozy, Trump claimed Obama wiretapped his Trump Tower phones an accusation that appears to have been based on a Mark Levin talk radio segment and a short Breitbart article. The allegation has created a major rift with prominent Republicans and put the White House in the awkward position of repeatedly defending it, without providing evidence.

When asked why Trump wont simply back down on evidence-free claims like the wiretapping allegation, one Republican close to the White House responded simply: When has he ever apologized about anything?

Its true that Trump has long avoided the normal rules of political gravity he never apologized, for example, for his claims that Obama was not born in the United States but it remains to be seen whether what worked for candidate Trump can work in the White House.

The White House is discovering that the presidents and his advisers words matter a great deal a fact seen both in the fury of foreign governments at falsehoods and in legal opinions striking down the travel ban and alleging intent to discriminate by pointing to comments from Trump and his aides.

Those around the president, though, have proved more than willing to play along with the presidents theories.

Jobs reports produced by the government may have been phony before, but are to be trusted now that they show job growth under Trump, Spicer has said. The crowds at Trumps inauguration were the biggest ever, period, Spicer declared in one of his first briefings from the White House. And, on Thursday, he read off a series of media reports in an attempt to back up Trumps wiretapping claim none of which did including the report that accused the British government of spying on Trump.

Sean Spicer conducts every press briefing like hes on a hostage video. I mean he essentially has an audience of one, said Rick Tyler, a former communications director for Sen. Ted Cruzs presidential campaign who knows Spicer. [Trump] is just looking to make sure that Sean is out there defending him at all costs. I mean, I couldnt live like that, but he can.

It has not only been Spicer forced to try to explain controversial claims. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer in January by saying he was using alternative facts, and touted a terrorist attack that did not happen as a reason for Trumps attempted travel ban. Policy adviser Stephen Miller has claimed that there was mass voter fraud, even though no evidence of that has been presented.

And while reports surfaced on Friday that Spicer had apologized to British officials for repeating the spying accusation, the White House was publicly offered no such mea culpa.

That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox, Trump said at a news conference. And so you shouldnt be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.

A Fox News anchor said later Friday that the network has no evidence of any kind, that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way, full stop.

After the news conference, Spicer pushed back on the idea that he apologized.

"We just reiterated the fact that we were just simply reading media accounts. Thats it, Spicer told reporters. I dont think we regret anything. We literally listed a litany of media reports that are in the public domain."

Especially worrisome, to many, is Trumps seeming lack of desire to distinguish myth from fact.

Donald Trump, like millions of Americans, is susceptible to conspiracy theories, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. He tends to just pick things up from right-wing talk radio and the alt-right if it fits his agenda of the day.

Weve never had a president operate like this. The long-term damage is youre going to get just ravaged in history, Brinkley added.

But for many, especially on the right, Trumps and the White Houses claims carry weight, whether backed up by evidence or not.

Trump essentially has a media company of his own, largely on Twitter, and what he needs to do, or wants to do, is get people to follow him and listen to what he says and believe me and not them, said Tyler. He has to get his audience, his base, to mistrust the media and he becomes, ultimately, their media source.

It is an endeavor in which he has significant help from conservative media outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, the Independent Journal Review and various talk radio hosts.

After the Sweden flub, Breitbart published a piece called Ten Incidents in Ten Days That Proved Trump Right on Swedens Migration Problem.

The White House did not provide a comment Friday, beyond noting that Spicer read Thursdays allegation straight from the Fox transcript.

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Trump's media diet causes global heartburn - Politico

LONDON After several years of restructuring and regulatory pressure, investment banks have reached a turning point after Donald Trump became American president and can look to grow again, according to a study published on Friday.

"The world has turned upside down post the U.S. elections," said the joint annual study by Morgan Stanley and management consultants Oliver Wyman.

"This is the first year since we've been producing this paper that we're looking to see a significant shift to the positive in terms of revenue growth, operational leverage and return on equity," said Magdalena Stoklosa, head of European financials research at Morgan Stanley.

Globally, investment banks have been on an "intensive diet" since 2011 and have shrunk their balance sheets on aggregate by a third, according to the analysis produced in the 7th edition of the "Blue Paper".

With the global economy appearing to be on a stable footing, the Federal Reserve raising interest rates and political rhetoric pointing to a pause on new banking regulation, growth beckons for an industry reshaped by the global financial crisis.

In three years' time, return on equity could reach 13 to 14 percent across the industry from 10 to 11 percent currently, the study said.

Regulatory costs are expected to peak in 2017 and decline by as much as 40 percent by the end of 2020.

However, European banks, lagging in their restructuring programs, are expected to continue to underperform their rivals on the other side of the Atlantic.

U.S. banks could see return on equity rising to 15 percent from 11 percent currently, from a combination of revenue growth and removing costs over the next three years.

European banks are forecast to improve their return on equity to 11.5 percent from 7.5 percent currently, with 75 percent of that uptick driven by cost cutting and only 25 percent by revenue growth.

U.S. banks are sitting on $83 billion of excess capital, which could be used to invest in profitable business lines or paid out in share buybacks or dividends, whilst European banks have a mere $1 billion of excess capital to play with.

Fixed income, currencies and commodities revenues, which faced the brunt of regulation, are forecast to grow 2 percent over the next five years to $119 billion after shrinking to $109 billion from $140 billion over the previous five.

"Unlocking excess capital and collateral turns secular headwinds to tailwinds, powering a sustainable inflection in the global FICC pool for the first time in a decade," the study said.

"Our bull case "Dares to Dream". If the US administrations tax reform, fiscal stimulus, and deregulation agenda is achieved, we would expect much stronger revenue growth and more capital release," the study said.

(Reporting by Anjuli Davies; Editing by Keith Weir)

NEW YORK As success stories go, chef Marcus Samuelssons is as geographically varied and fascinating as they come.

ValueAct Capital raised its stake in Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc, in a move that could provide a confidence boost to the drug company three days after its largest shareholder sold out of the stock.

BOSTON/LONDON Hedge-fund firm Pine River Capital Management LP is losing two more partners following a difficult year that involved a restructuring and major decline in assets, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

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Investment banks ditch the diet and look to expand: study - Reuters

Runner's World

7 Ways to Add More Vegetables to Your Diet Runner's World You don't need to come up with an entirely new diet when transitioning to a more plant-based lifestyle. Instead, determine the nutritional makeup of the foods you're already eating: What are their macronutrients (carbs, protein, and fat) and ...

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7 Ways to Add More Vegetables to Your Diet - Runner's World

At Cookshop. Photo: Liz Clayman

This week, New Yorker staff writer (and former New York writer) Ariel Levy released her third book, The Rules Do Not Apply a memoir that elaborates on her award-winning essay Thanksgiving in Mongolia. Since the fake blizzard impeded her book-tour plans, she celebrated in New York by cooking chicken cutlets at home, drinking at El Quijote, feasting on chicken wings, and eating two different cakes at the same party. (Spoiler: Carvel ice-cream cake is still good.) Read all about it in this weeks Grub Street Diet.

Thursday, March 9 I started the day with coffee and chia pudding, which Im extremely into. I first had it earlier this winter at my friend Floras restaurant in South Africa, and I couldnt believe something that delicious could be good for you. Heres how you make it: You dump a can of coconut milk into a bowl. Then you put some chia seeds in there. Thats it. You just wait for it to turn into a delicious pudding that you eat with berries or sliced bananas and, weirdly, a little peanut butter. (It sounds gross, I know, but that peanut-butter-and-banana thing is incredibly tasty.)

At about 2 p.m., I had a pathetic lunch, which is pretty standard for me when Im working from home: some slices of turkey, and an orange pepper that I cut up and ate with the last of a container of hummus. It wasnt pretty.

But dinner was good! My cousin Abigail was visiting, and she brought her friend Lisa who has the best Bitmoji avatar Ive ever seen. (She sort of cheated: The last time she got a haircut, she showed the stylist her Bitmoji and was like, Make me look more like that. And did he ever.) I made what I always make: white-bean-and-kale soup from a recipe in The Moosewood Cookbook, to which I add bacon. Sorry, but it just makes it delicious. I served it with a good baguette and lots of pretty radishes. Abigail brought some okay hamantaschen and a lot of great wine; I was ever so slightly hungover the next morning.

Friday, March 10 Made my usual Illy coffee in a blue Moka pot on the stove, and had a little chia pudding. (I make vats of it and keep it in the fridge.) I begin almost every day by drinking my coffee, while I Skype with my special friend, Dr. John, who is taking his lunch break at that time of day in Lagos, Nigeria, where he runs a clinic when hes not here with me in New York.

There was a light snow happening, and it was very pretty watching it through the giant windows at Cookshop. My friend Matt came and met me for lunch. We both had the grilled-chicken salad, which is excellent. I get it a lot (my apartment is only a few blocks away from there). The salad has a lot of toasted pecans on it and Im not that into nuts, so I let Matt eat mine, as well as his. He also ate the little squash bits off my plate when I went to use the restroom, and that was neither authorized nor appreciated.

I had dinner that night at an Israeli restaurant Id never been to before, Bar Bolonat, with Sarah McNally who has a great bookshop in Nolita, where Im giving a reading from my new book in April. We had fried olives to start, and I thought they were good, not great, and that they looked a lot like deer turds. But this fried Japanese eggplant Sarah ordered was really good they make it with harissa and little fried-shallot bits. They do the food family-style there, which is to say that everything comes out as its ready, the assumption being youll share it all. But Sarah is a vegetarian, so there was a regrettably long period during which my hunk of brisket got cold, as we waited for her chickpea gnocchi to show up. (Go ahead, she said. But what am I, an animal?) When I finally got to dig in, the brisket was nice and shred-y like I like it to be, but maybe a tad sweet for my taste. And speaking of sweet, they brought us a dessert on the house: this chocolate pudding with something they called a pretzel tuile for some reason. It just seemed like an extremely thin cookie to me. Tasty.

Saturday, March 11 I made my Illy coffee and took a break from chia pudding because I had some smoked salmon in the fridge, which I ate with scrambled eggs. Delicious. I FaceTimed with my dad while I was eating because he loves lox and eggs, and he used to make it for me when I was a kid, sometimes on weekend mornings.

I didnt have lunch because I knew I was having an early dinner that evening which turned out to be merely the beginning of an epic eating orgy. It all started innocently enough with sushi at my friend Erikas new apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Her twins are 4 years old, so we wanted to have dinner with them before their bath, and that was all well and good.

But then at 8ish, when she put them to bed, I moved on to Park Slope, where my friend Elisa was having people over for her birthday. Thats where the shit hit the fan. She had these incredible chicken wings from a place called Wangs, and I ate somewhere between three and 70 of them. (In my defense, it wasnt just me. None of us could leave those Wangs wings alone.) Plus, she had a Carvel ice-cream cake. I hadnt eaten one since I was 19, when Elisa herself had gotten one for me. Well, theyre as good as ever. To make matters worse, Elisas sister-in-law had baked her this incredible cake, which she served with caramel sauce and fresh whipped cream. It was an absolutely brutal pig-out of a night.

Sunday, March 12 In penitence, I went to yoga at the Shala near Union Square as soon as I woke up on Sunday morning. When I got home, I made a punitive smoothie of kale, yogurt, and frozen berries (heavy on the kale), and I used the last of my Illy to make a little Moka pot of coffee. I talked about the previous evenings face-stuffing on Skype until Dr. J said, Youre boring me to tears. Can we please talk about something else?

I worked in my apartment that afternoon and ate only the most virtuous and rabbitlike snacks: a yellow pepper, some radishes, a couple carrots.

For dinner, I made the rest of the lox and eggs.

Monday, March 13 I was supposed to head to D.C. to do a reading at a venue called Sixth and I, but they canceled because of the dreaded, incoming blizzard. So, suddenly, I had plenty of time to do some cooking, and to use all the food in my fridge that was nearing the end of its life. For instance, I had some chicken cutlets that I made according to a recipe from Lidia Bastianich I saw her do it on Channel 13 years ago, and Ive probably prepared it once every other week ever since: You dredge the chicken in flour, salt, and pepper, and then fry it until its golden brown in olive oil with garlic slivers. Then, you toast some capers and red-pepper flakes in the pan; and for the grand finale, you turn the heat up really high, and throw in some red-wine vinegar that makes a giant, eye-stinging cloud of vapor. Ive regretted making this dish more than once in poorly ventilated kitchens. But on this occasion, it was fine because I remembered to turn on the fan, and there was nobody there to complain about it.

I ate some of the chicken for lunch with a red-cabbage slaw I love, which is really just a sliced-up cabbage soaked in oil, vinegar, and salt. But its so good for you! Tasty, too.

I went for dinner at my friend Deborahs apartment in Tribeca; she made a pasta with sausage and broccoli rabe for me and her kids. She served it with grated cheddar either because youre supposed to or because she was out of Parmesan, I never got to the bottom of that. Then we looked at these beautiful brooms that Deborah had made at a kind of craft camp in North Carolina. It was all very cozy, and I almost slept over, but her son, Nate, scared me by saying Id never get home the next day because of the fake blizzard.

Tuesday, March 14 My book came out! I started the day with my coffee and, of course, chia pudding, watched the blizzard coming down outside, and read my reviews on the interweb.

I ate the leftover Lidia chicken and red cabbage for lunch, and did a little work on this profile Im writing on the novelist Elizabeth Strout. Then at 5 p.m., my friend Adam and I went to walk his dog, Grace, who I really think is extra cute. She looks like shes part schnauzer, part supermodel, and part rat. And shes just the sweetest; nobody can resist her which came in handy because we got cold pretty quickly and ducked into El Quijote for a drink at the bar.

They let Grace sit by our feet, after Adam showed the matre d her bogus service-dog credentials on his iPhone. Adam lives in Chelsea, too, so we often go to El Q. together for a festive drink. We used to eat there pretty often, too, but the only thing I really like are the collard greens, and thats not much of a meal. Anyway, Adam got me a drink to celebrate my book release, and then we thought about going to visit it at the Barnes & Noble near Union Square, but there was just too much snow and slush for that. We said good-bye on the corner of 22nd Street and Eighth Avenue, and I watched Graces cute, little, rat-tailed ass bounce away in the snow.

Just for the heck of it, though, I went by my favorite store in the neighborhood, 192 Books on Tenth Avenue, before I went home. I thought for sure theyd be closed for the snow day, but to my surprise, there was Todd, the owner, shutting up shop just as I got there, and there was my book in the window.

This Avocado Is Actually a Brand-new Dessert From Alex Stupaks Empelln

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The organization delivers meals to the elderly, disabled, poor, veterans, and others unable to leave their homes.

Using the activated charcoal filter also means I dont need to buy plastic filters ever again.

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Nominees include Vivian Howard, Questlove, and Peter Meehan.

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Ariel Levy Has Discovered That Carvel Cakes Are As Good As Ever - Grub Street

A wide range of women have poor diets in the months leading up to their first pregnancy, according to research published Friday and led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Their food choices, with too many empty calories and too few nutrients, fell far short of national dietary guidelines set to reduce the risk of premature birth, restricted fetal growth, preeclampsia and maternal obesity.

Although none of the women reached the dietary goals, black, Hispanic and less-educated women had a poorer diet than white women and those with college degrees, according to the study, published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

One of the most concerning aspects of the results for me is that one-third of calories from their diets was solid fats and sugars, said nutritional epidemiologist Lisa Bodnar, the lead author.

The recommendation is [no more than] 9 to 13 percent empty calories. These women were consuming three times the recommended amount, Ms. Bodnar said.

The study analyzed the results of questionnaires filled out by 7,511 women in eight U.S. medical centers. They reported on what they ate and drank during the three months around conception. Non-Hispanic white women made up 69 percent of the group; 18 percent were Hispanic and 13 percent were non-Hispanic black women. In education, those with high school or less made up 18 percent of the group; some college, 29 percent; college graduate, 30 percent; and graduate degree, 24 percent.

Top dietary sources for energy were soda, pasta dishes, grain desserts such as cake or cookies, refined bread, and beer, wine and spirits. Soda was the top energy source among women who were non-Hispanic black (8.7 percent), Hispanic (6.2), high school-educated (9.2) or who had some college (7.1). Women with a college or graduate degree got more energy calories from beer, wine and spirits than any other source (5.0 and 5.6 percent, respectively).

Energy from solid fat added up to an average of 18 percent, the study said, with cheese, eggs, egg dishes and pizza the top sources. The top two fat sources were different for black women and women with high school education or less: fatty meat (sausage, hot dogs, bacon and ribs) and cakes and cookies.

Energy from added sugars made up 14 percent of calories on average, and sugar-sweetened drinks soda, sports drinks and energy drinks were the top sources.

All of these women were high in empty calories, low in nutrition and high in added sugars and alcohol, Ms. Bodnar said. We would like the source of their energy to be nutrient-dense food, food with a lot of vitamins and minerals.

Key prenatal nutrients are iron, folate (a B vitamin) and calcium. Iron helps to form hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood. Folate is needed to develop the neural tube, from which the brain and spinal cord form. Calcium builds bones and helps maintain healthy blood pressure.

In the womens diets, the study found primary sources of iron were instant cereals (14.1 percent for the group overall); yeast bread, non-100 percent whole wheat (6.4 percent); pasta dishes (5.4); grain desserts (4.2) and pizza (4.1). Green salad was the only vegetable in the top 10 of the iron category overall (3.9 percent) and higher among white (13.9 percent) and college- and graduate-degree women (14.6 and 16.1). Iron from cereals was higher among women who were black (14.5 percent), Hispanic (13.7), with high school education or less (16.2) and some college (13.2).

Green salad and ready-to-eat cereals were the top two sources for folate for all the groups except black women, where the top two were cereals and orange or grapefruit juice. Reduced-fat milk and cheese were the top two foods serving as calcium sources.

In addition to the higher amounts of sugary drinks, black, Hispanic and non-college-graduate women were lower in their intake of nutrient-dense foods, such as beans, nuts and seeds, seafood, fruits and vegetables.

The diet quality gap among nonpregnant individuals is thought to be a consequence of many factors, the study said, including the access to and price of healthy foods, knowledge of a healthful diet, and pressing needs that may take priority over a healthful diet.

Ms. Bodnar said something positive might be done about womens choice of beverages:

If we can find a beverage that substitutes for soda or alcohol, we'd be finding a simple way to reduce the calories and added sugars. It could have a real impact on obesity in the U.S.

She continued, If we could move people to diet soda, they'd be better off, although there are concerns about the safety of artificial sweeteners.

We would like people to drink more water. The bottom line is, we have to get people to stop drinking not just soda, but energy drinks, sweet tea, fruit juice drinks sometimes they have just as much sugar [as soda].

One limitation of the study, she pointed out, is that people have difficulty recalling what theyve eaten.

Overall, diet is something very hard to measure, she said, adding, however, that the study found that the pregnant womens reports follow national trends for children and non-pregnant adults.

Race/ethnicity and education. Those are really two of the most important factors that show health inequalities, the researcher said, pointing out that non-Hispanic black women and women with lower levels of education have higher risk of poor outcomes for their pregnancies, including a baby more likely to die before the first birthday and problems with growth.

A resource that already exists for women with low incomes is the federally funded WIC program (for women, infants and children). Ms. Bodnar said along with nutritional counseling, women receive food packages that provide a healthy diet.

Moving away from a preference for sugary and salty foods can take time, Ms. Bodnar said. It takes a little while to modify your taste preferences.

Jill Daly: jdaly@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1596.

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Pitt research finds women have poor diets before pregnancy ... - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Trimming the fat in government is great, but you may want to think twice before cutting it out of your diet. For an increasing body of research indicates that a more traditional menu replete with foods such as butter and whole milk is more healthful than the lean fare prescribed during the last few decades.

The latest study concerns one particular disease, cystic fibrosis (CF), and finds that Canadians suffering from it live on average 10 years longer than their American counterparts. Among the reasons for this difference, say researchers, is the high fat diet, emphasizing cheeses, fish and nuts, recommended for Canadians with cystic fibrosis since the1970s, writes CBC News. The United States didnt prescribe the higher fat diet for CS patients until the 1980s.

CF is a serious disease, the result of a defective gene causing a thick buildup of mucus in the lungs, pancreas and other organs, informs the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. CF is progressive and leads to persistent lung infections and limits the ability to breathe over time, the site also tells us.

A quarter century ago, life expectancy for sufferers was only 17; now its 40.6 years in the United States and 50.9 in Canada partially because of the change in diet.

Yet some researchers say that eating more traditional, higher fat foods is beneficial for everyone, contrary to the last few decades diet dogma. This is no surprise. As American Thinkers Dr. Thomas Lifson writes, The advice of the experts has been so frequently wrong that the federal government's dietary guidelines have repeatedly been revised. The food pyramid that recommended lots of grains islong gone, replaced by something calledMyPlatefrom the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Pushed by Michelle Obama, of course formerly our national food scold, and more an impetus for thrown away school cafeteria food than anyone else in the nation's history.

Lifson also points out that as a result of the anti-fat diet dogma, fat-free and low-fat foods have crowded supermarket shelves for decades, even as we get fatter and fatter. I have learned to skip them, not only because they don't satisfy the palate or the sense of hunger, but because I worry about the health effects of whatever is used to substitute for fat.Does it make sense that something the body craves, that nature supplies in abundance, and that traditional cuisines from around the world use is totally bad?

In fact, it may largely be good. The BMJs Open Heart journal published research suggesting that official warnings against the consumption of saturated fats like those found in butter and full-fat milk are based on flawed evidence and should not have been introduced, reported the Telegraph in 2015.

The same year, a book co-authored by a scientist, a nutritionist, and a chef explained how we can load up on butter, cheese and cream, while staying healthy and miraculously losing weight, the Telegraph also informed. It quotes the chef as saying that you have to get comfortable with the idea that everything you thought was unhealthy, is not.

This may sound much like the futuristic 1973 comedy film Sleeper (video below), in which incredulous scientists say that the 1970s notion that deep fat, steak, cream pies, and hot fudge are unhealthful is precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true. But this was art (almost) imitating life.

In 2004s The Inuit Paradox, Discover magazine noted how the Eskimos traditionally had the ultimate unbalanced diet; they had a high-fat, high protein menu consisting of things such as seal, walrus, moose, caribou, and whale blubber and, well, rest assured they dont have 22 different words for vegetable (they hardly ever saw one). Yet their rates of hearts disease and other comfort diseases were extremely low.

Now that theyre living a modern lifestyle and eating fast food, however, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other diseases of Western civilization are becoming causes for concern, wrote Discover.

Yet these problems didnt always plague Western civilization, even though, as the Atlantic pointed out in 2014, its a myth that our ancestors lived mainly on fruits, vegetables, and grains. As the site wrote in How Americans Got Red Meat Wrong, For the first 250 years of American history, even the poor in the United States could afford meat or fish for every meal.

Moreover, not only were fresh fruits and vegetables simply not available outside the growing season, but even in the warmer months, fruit and salad were avoided, for fear of cholera, informed the Atlantic.

In reality, the 19th- and early 20th-century American diet was relatively high in fat, with butter and lard common ingredients. Yet the rate of deaths from heart disease in 1910 was 158.9 per 100,000 persons per year; by 1998 it had risen to 268.2, despite declining saturated fat consumption, wrote The New Americans Ed Hiserodt in the 2012 essay Food Fallacies.

Hiserodt then quoted researcher Dr. Mary Enig, who pointed out in The Oiling of America that myocardial infarction (MI heart attack) was almost nonexistent in 1910 and caused no more than three thousand deaths per year in 1930. By 1960 there were at least 500,000 MI deaths per year in the US.

He also cites Tim Boyd of the Weston A. Price Foundation, who reminded us, Most people probably dont remember that back in 1962 the American Medical Association declared that the anti-fat, anti-cholesterol fad was not only foolish and futile but also carried some risk. In 1965 the American Heart Association accepted as fact that high vegetable oil intake led to high risk of heart disease.

In this vein, Real Clear Science reported in 2014 that the vegetarian diet is associated with higher rates of allergies, cancer, and mental illness, as well as a poorer quality of life compared to carnivorous diets, according to a new study.

If this is true, however, how did notions to the contrary become food fact? Critics implicate pseudo-science, in particular the Seven Countries Study, initiated in 1956 by University of Minnesota physiologistAncel Keys. It purported to show a direct relationship between a nations fat intake and its rate of heart disease. Yet, says Hiserodt and others, Keys cherry-picked his data to support his hypothesis: While hed actually studied 22 countries, he presented only seven because the data from the rest contradicted his thesis.

Having said this, some perspective is needed. The Eskimos and 19th-century Americans didnt eat processed foods; their fats and protein came from free-range animals, which Discover magazine claims are lower in saturated fats.

Moreover, one obvious question is: If the experts have so often been wrong, why should we listen to the pro-fat experts now?

While experts (a blanket term) have brought us some good things, the reality is that on any issue, there are experts on all sides. Our Supreme Court Justices are all supposedly legal experts, but how many opinions are 5-4?

Thus, while Im not a doctor or nutritionist (I just play one in print), I believe its best to embrace the old adage Everything in moderation. After all, a principle in toxicology tells us, The dose makes the poison. This is why arsenic is allowed in our water in small amounts, and large amounts of water ingested during short periods can kill us (a woman died in 2007 of water intoxication).

The point is that we can all metabolize a certain amount of a given substance, and every single healthful thing (e.g., vitamins) can kill us at a certain dosage. The key is to ingest a food at levels where we can metabolize it and remain healthy over the long term.

Also, this level may be very low for certain processed fare. After all, laboratory formulations arent found in nature and thus can be unusual concoctions to which the human body is unaccustomed.

So with all due respect to the paleo diet, a cavemans menu probably isnt realistic. But eating like an 1880s high-plains cowboy may not be a bad idea.

More:
Experts Again Say High-fat Diet Can Be Beneficial - The New American

What would be the best environment, diet, and hobbies to raise a mathematician? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by Alon Amit, Ph.D in Mathematics, on Quora:

The best environment to raise anyone in is a healthy, loving, caring, and stimulating one. Children have interests and inclinations, and the best thing we can do is help them find what these are, and gently push them to learn and explore them. We should also expose them to as many interesting things as we can, to improve the chances that they find something they truly enjoy and love.

Mathematics is a fine thing to expose a child to, in various ways, at different ages. Some will quickly develop a keen interest in it. Others wont. And that's ok. If your goal is to raise a mathematician and your child doesnt seem interested, you wont raise a mathematician. Or maybe you will if your child discovers math in college. That isn't exactly up to you. You can expand their horizons, but you cant set their path.

If you have a child thats genuinely interested in mathematics, or if you wonder if they are and wish to give it a shot, theres plenty of books, websites, and activities to help with that. Which one is suitable for them depends on too many things, and I cant write down a full list that would cover every scenario. Consider books by Martin Gardner, the wWebsite AoPS, any Math Circles in your area, or games like Set, Tangram, and Castle Logix,. Should a teacher or tutor who know what theyre doing, and of course, if you live in San Francisco, and youre certain your child truly loves math, Proof School.

Kids who love math hardly ever love only math and are often led to discover math through other activities. Try physics, playing a musical instrument, programming, astronomy, language games, robotics, sports stats, science fiction, or anything you have access to that a child may get hooked on. If love or curiosity of math comes out of it, excellent; if not, that's okay as well.

The best diet to raise anyone with is a healthy, balanced nutrition thats mostly real food, and has plenty of plants. Im not aware of any diet that would promote a child becoming a mathematician, and I seriously doubt there is one.

I would cautiously venture that theres little to no commonality between the childhood or adult eating habits of world-class mathematicians likeMaryam Mirzakhani, Ng Bo Chu,Vaughn Jones,Alexander Grothendieck, andRobert Aumann.

This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:

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What Diet, Environment, and Hobbies Can I Provide My Child to Make Them a Mathematician? - Huffington Post