Meal-Breaks

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There are things to be learned from previous generations about proper food habits and practices. For one, meals break the level of toxins in food back then was virtually negligible. There were no pesticides, insecticides or weird processing techniques that contaminated food or sucked the nutrients out of it. Food back then provided much more nutritional value and much less toxins.

Of course, our life expectancy has risen since then, but so has the prevalence of certain illnesses that were quite rare in generations past. Things like heart disease, cancer and weird nervous system disorders like Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, autism and ADHD were quite uncommon. Most people who survived childhood ended up dying of bacteria, viruses or “old age” — which is usually when an organ just stops working correctly because of natural aging damage to cells. We’ve dealt with bacteria and many viruses, but few people die from “old age” nowadays.

One way in which many people before us practiced good food habits is eating slowly. Their lives would have been very demanding, but not as fast-paced. They probably would have relaxed around a table and chewed their food slowly. This is very important because the more our food is broken down, the easier it is on our digestive system and the more able we are to draw nutrients from it. For example, our saliva actually contains digestive enzymes that start to break down food before it even enters the stomach. When we take our time, the process gets a head start before it even enters the stomach. Chewing the food so much that it practically becomes a liquid is the best course of action.

Also, the rate at which you eat food is important. When you eat food slowly, your stomach is better able to manage it. If you’re late to go somewhere and you down a bunch of food. It’s kind of like piling a bunch of papers on someone’s desk to read through. The stomach becomes overwhelmed and the job isn’t done as effectively. Furthermore, we actually break down food more efficiently when we’re relaxed. If you’re anxious or nervous about something and trying to “wolf it down”, your stomach will not be performing at its best.

You also want to relax after eating a meal. It’s a slightly demanding task to break down food and if you run off to perform heavy physical activity, then you’re sort of making your muscles and your digestive system compete for blood and other resources. The result will be a decrease in efficiency of both your physical output and your digestion.

Some people believe that eating liquids with meals disturbs the digestion process. The argument is that it interferes with the enzyme activity in your saliva, dilutes stomach acid and takes up too much space in the digestive system. This could result in poor break down of food and poor nutrient absorption. The recommendation is to wait at least an hour after eating a meal before drinking a glass of water.

By line: Mark 

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As every softball player knows, proper softball conditioning involves intense physical and mental preparation as well as utmost dedication and love for softball. But do you know that in order to be completely prepared to play the game, you need to have proper nutrition? It is so crucial that without it, you would not be able to play hard and give your best in softball.

Softball is no ordinary sport. You need to have a physically fit body like an well-oiled machine so that you would be able to play all for hours on end. In order to do so, you need to rest breaks regularly so, that there is enough energy to sustain your body during such strenuous activity. Otherwise, you would have no energy left even before the game ends.

Try to compare your body to a car. A car without gas can never run as fuel is its energy source. The same goes for the body. Food is what sustains our body to run. We can’t expect our bodies to function well if we skip meals or do not eat at all. So, even if we have busy schedules due to school or work, we need to ensure that we eat regular and well-balanced meals.

For instance, before a softball tryout, you need to do preparation work in order to make the list. Here are some suggestions that you can follow. You need to eat a well-balanced dinner as well as breakfast even if you do not feel like eating. It is important to pack in as much energy as you can so that your mind and body would stay sharp and alert. At the same time, you can pack a light snack consisting of tuna sandwich and water, for example, and bring it with you at the tryout. Eat it during a break so, you would be able to replenish whatever energy your body expelled.

Other than ensuring that you eat regular meals, you need to monitor what you eat in order to determine if you have the right eating habits. If you have good eating habits, you would be able to stay physically and mentally active all day long. On the other hand, if you have poor eating habits, you would often feel tired and spent even if the day has not ended yet. In addition, with poor eating habits, you would be more susceptible to virus-induced sickness such as coughs, colds and flu as your immune system bogs down.

So, always be sure to eat the right kinds of food such as whole grains, fish, lean protein, berries, grapes and broccoli. This way, your body would stay healthy and energetic for you to play the game. At the same time, you need to drink a lot of fluids like water and vegetable juice to keep your body well hydrated.

If you follow these suggestions, then, you would be sure to achieve overall softball conditioning for your body, mind and spirit.

by Marc-Olivier Dagenais

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What are Office Lunch Clubs?

In response to the expense of eating out for lunch every day, many offices are forming lunch clubs. Brown bag lunches get boring, and these lunch clubs are a popular and fun alternative. Each member of the lunch club will have an assigned day to provide lunch for the other group members. If the group is small, that assigned person may bring everything including drinks and paper goods. If the group is large, they may assign different tasks to a few people who have that day’s lunch duty. Really, the club can be as simple or complicated as the members want to make it.

Even cooking impaired people can choose to provide a bucket of grilled chicken with sides or a deli platter on their day, and they would still spend less than if they ate a restaurant meal every day. As an alternative, people who do not want to prepare a lasagna or other home made treats could just be assigned to make sure that the eating area is stocked with drinks and paper goods. Again, the arrangement can be flexible.

How Do Lunch Clubs Help Employees?

If employees are spending almost $10 a day on lunches, that adds up to about $200 a month. It would be much cheaper to provide a periodic cooked meal for everybody on one assigned day.

Dishes like lasagna, baked chicken pieces, or chilli are inexpensive and satisfying. Add fruit or a salad, and you have a good meal.

Some of the group members, who love to cook, will get a lot of satisfaction our of showing off their best efforts. Others will just be happy to look forward to a fun and friendly lunch every day. This really can save each member money while providing a chance to eat together and relax.

This also gives the employees an opportunity to show off cooking skills if they choose, eat together, and bond over a meal. Many offices have a break room with a fridge and microwave.

How Do Lunch Club Help Employees and Managers?

Many savvy business owners have noticed that their employees tend to take more time at lunch than is strictly allowed. This is especially true if they have to leave the building to get a meal. That is why lots of businesses have begun to find ways to encourage employees to stay in for lunch.

Some business owners even offer to cater the meal. Some do it every day, and some just do it once a week. Either way, this is a great perk that tends ot build morale and keep employees on site! They find that the expense of the employee meals is more than offset by the benefit is provides. They can help employees save money, keep lunch periods of schedule, and build morale and team bonding.

If your business cannot afford to cater the meal, you can still encourage lunch clubs. A small business owner could offer to provide soda, ice tea, or lemonade. They could provide paper goods. They should also join the lunch club to show that they are truly interested in the group!

For a few dollars a week, a small business can reap a big benefit.

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How To Break Stress With Foods

Did you know that your stress level can be affected by food? Some people don’t pay attention to their food control and what they eat. When done correctly, food can help to control your stress level. Let’s look at some of the ways that food can affect and help your stress level:

* It’s important to have a well balanced and healthy diet in order to be stress-free. Eating what you want, including junk food will do nothing for you but help you gain weight. You should try to stick to a time frame where you can eat, especially the three basic meals.

* Eat snacks in between. Some good choices are celery and carrots. It’s not a good idea to skip a meal, as it can add on to your stress level. The food that you eat should contain plenty of vitamins and nutrients. Breakfast should be one of your heavier meals of the day.

* Eat plenty of fruits to help control your stress level. Fruit contains plenty of Vitamin C and antioxidants. Antioxidants fight off radicals. Radicals can contribute to your stress level. Try eating things like apples or oranges to combat your stress level.

* If you like nuts and are not allergic to them, almonds can help to relieve stress. Almonds have plenty of Vitamin E and help to keep stress from getting to you. You can munch on a few of them as a stress reliever.

* Drinking milk can help people relieve stress. Milk has plenty of antioxidants that help to combat stress. Drinking a cup everyday is a good way of effectively relieving your stress levels. You can also have milk when you’re eating cereal.

* Try eating asparagus to get rid of stress. Asparagus has plenty of antioxidants that can help with that. Another stress reliever is blueberries. These also have plenty of antioxidants. Keep some of these handy so when you feel the stress coming on, you can readily eat them.

If your stress level is high, it’s important that you change your diet as soon as possible. The sooner you can do that, the sooner you can effectively deal with getting your stress level down and get rid of stress altogether.

By: Scott Wells

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Diets Meal Plans – Four Simple Laws Of Guaranteed Calorie Shifting Meal Time Planning

Most shifting calories diets meal plans are very straightforward to follow. There are only 4 basic rules:

1. Create your own custom-tailed 11-day diets meal plans that include food from the dairy, meat, bread, and fruits/vegetables food groups, in groups of 4 daily meals that could be partaken of in any random order on any given day. The fixed grouping of the meals must be grouped in such a way that you are matchibg up different combinations of foods together at every meal and rotating these groupings as you move incrementally from one meal to the next.

2. You are free to have as much as you like as long as you don’t overeat. Pay heed to your stomach. Cease eating before you start to feel too full.

3. Allow for an ample gap in between meals to allow for adequate digestion. A minimum of two and a half to three hours is a good rule.

4. After each 11th consecutive day of following the diet, you must take three days of break from the diet. So you are 11 days on, and three days off, following a 14 day cycle. You are free to eat whatever you wish during your three days off, as long as you do not overeat at each meal.

By alternating the food groups that you have at every meal in the system mentioned above, you end up varying your caloric intake in a pattern of highs and lows. This abrupt alteration in your eating pattern is what results in an induced state of instant weight reduction.

If done properly, you could effortlessly burn an entire pound every twenty-four hours!

The manner whereby the Shifting Calories Diet functions is that you rotate the groupings of calories that you have, from one meal to the next. In other words, you may eat a diverse spectrum of unique food from all of the 4 main food groupings. And you may eat each of them in unlimited quantity without keeping track of carbohydrates and calories. The only “catch”, in all of this, is that you will have to sort out the food from every food group and eat them in different groups at varying times of day. As an example, you may have food from the bread and meat food groups at one meal, yet at the next meal you may eat only dairy products, and then the next meal might1000contain vegetables and dairy at the next. And this grouping is constantly shifting, daily, from one meal to the next.

What this basically achieves for you is a phased approach to induced burning of fat. The body responds to the lack of one nutrient by reaching into its fat stores. And then you immediately reintroduce the suppressed nutrient from your diet by the time fat burning has already kicked in. Yet before your body has the opportunity to “recover” and switch back to a “normal” metabolism, you will then suppress a different nutrient, and your body will be able to sustain its fat burning mode since it now perceives the lack of that nutrient.

Ultimately what you are doing is inducing a cyclical fat burning mode, not by cutting out one component of your diet like carbs, but by just inducing spurts of nutritional deprivation in short microbursts, just long enough to induce fat loss, but not long enough to actually deny you of the essential nutrients that you need in order to maintain a nutritious diet.

By: Pauline McCluskey

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New Delhi, May 28 — Nine of 10 mud-eating children are in the last stage of malnutrition. Eight of 10 people are deprived of every national social-security net and live with starvation and hunger. The average life span is 40. In April, the Hindustan Times revealed acute deprivation in the Uttar Pradesh village of Ganne, part of the former constituency of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Now, a Supreme Court inquiry team that visited the area soon after reveals hunger and disease worse than this paper reported, spread over 150 sq km of a former kingdom called Shankargarh. “A grim, catastrophic picture emerges from enquiry of commission (sic). there is a total collapse of food-security related schemes,” said the report, recommending several “emergency measures” in up to 46 villages. “Protruding stomach, dry, whitish hair, ashen skin, skinny children – hunger stares you in the face.” The state government refutes this assessment, saying “habit, not hunger” makes children eat mud. The SC report – a copy is with HT – attributes the crisis in Shankargarh to “apathy, insensitivity, nexus between vested interests and elected representatives with active approval of administration and state”. Written by Arundhati Dhuru, an advisor to the Supreme Court, and noted economist Jean Dreze, the report is the latest indicator of the frailty of India’s vast but inefficient and corruption-ridden social-security systems, on which the nation will spend more than Rs 1.18 lakh crore over 2010-11. “A grim, catastrophic picture emerges from enquiry of commission (sic). there is a total collapse of food-security related schemes,” said the report, recommending several “emergency measures” in up to 46 villages. “Protruding stomach, dry, whitish hair, ashen skin, skinny children – hunger stares you in the face.”The Planning Commission is presently working at identifying the number of poor in advance of a Right to Food legislation, stalled in March as being inadequate by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. Experts have said reform of India’s social-security schemes is essential if the government is to deliver “inclusive growth”, an ambition stressed by PM Manmohan Singh earlier this week. After the Supreme Court team visited Ganne, the district administration, which had rubbished HT’s reportage, restarted collapsed programmes: School mid-day meals, child health centres, jobs-for-work programme and drinking water projects, among others. “Following the observations of the Supreme Court team about the anganwadi (a nutritional-health centre) outside the village at a distance, the same has now been opened inside the village limits,” said UP’s Director of the Child Development and Nutrition Department Devendra Verma. Verma then quoted the state’s own findings: “It was found that children were eating mud as a habit and not due to hunger.” HT had found frail, malnourished children eating lumps of mud laced with silica – a raw material for glass sheets and soap – because they were not officially classified as poor and so ineligible for help. Instead, richer and influential people had cornered government benefits. Most families work in stone quarries and eat one or two daily meals of boiled rice and salt – with a watery vegetable on lucky days – with the mud being a deadly option in Ganne, 45 km east of Allahabad and a 12-km walk from the nearest road. The silica mining rights to 46 villages over 150 sq km vest with the former ruler, the Raja of Shankargarh, in perpetuity. He contracts the mines to contractors who exploit thousands of villagers, the report said. “There is strong indications (sic) that people are living in conditions of bonded labour,” the SC report said. Since Shankargarh is rocky and most land unfit for cultivation, villagers have little choice but to work in the silica mines. Apart from hunger, the SC team found every third person diagnosed with tuberculosis from inhaling silica. “Shankergarh-wali TB” is the name given by locals to what appears to be incurable silicosis. The mud-eating children and famished, disease-ridden villagers mainly belong to a community called the Kohls, a scheduled caste found across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Originally jungle dwellers, they were driven out when the forests were cleared. The Kohls do not own even the land they live on, their children help them break stones and when the monsoons arrive, they must migrate, as far west as Surat in Gujarat. The grade IV malnutrition that the team found in 90 per cent of the children requires hospitalisation, according to Union Health Ministry standards. That is unlikely. “They are not covered by any labour laws or medical benefits,” said the report, forwarded to the Uttar Pradesh government by the Commissioners to the Supreme Court.

India is home to a quarter of the world’s hungry – about 230 million people – according to a World Food Programme report released on March 2009.

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