Beauty Food

There is no doubt that all of us want to look beautiful, slim and fit. One has to exercise sufficiently to look good. But it is important to eat the right kind of diet to look beautiful. There are a number of beauty foods that are healthy and help in enhancing your looks. Given below some foods that you can add to your diet if you want to look beautiful.

• Apple Cider Vinegar: This vinegar has a number of healing properties and it makes the skin soft and supple. Apple cider vinegar is concentrated with enzymes and these help peel off dead skin cells. It breaks down fat and helps food digest properly.
• Carrots: Help to maintain the outer layer of the skin to prevent premature aging. It works just like Retin A.
• Cheese: Make a slice or two of hard cheese a part of your diet. Cheese helps to prevent bacteria from growing in the mouth and prevents cavities. Choose between Swiss, cheddar or Gouda.
• Citrus Fruits: These fruits hold the skin cells together by forming collagen. Collagen cannot be added to the skin topically and hence fruits and juices must be made an integral part of your daily diet.
• Cranberries: These berries keep the urinary tract lining healthy.
• Garlic: Helps to combat wrinkles and restores tissues.
• Nonfat Yogurt: Is high is calcium and helps to keep your smile white and your teeth cavity-free.
• Sweet Potatoes: These potatoes are full of vitamin A and vitamin A is known for being an anti-wrinkling agent. The result of eating this vegetable is smoother skin.
• Tomatoes: This vegetable does wonders to your skin. Tomatoes are rich in vitamin A, vitamin C and potassium.
• Wheat Germ: To get rid of pimples efficiently include two or three tablespoons of wheat germ in your diet. You add this to your cereal, yogurt and cottage cheese.

Here are some general tips about a beauty diet:

• Vegetables: you should have three to five servings of vegetables daily. Include one serving of raw, leafy greens.
• Meat: Do not have more than three-ounce servings a day. Take off all the fat. Try to include two servings of turkey or chicken and a serving of fish a day is ideal.
• Fruits: Have two to three servings everyday. ½ cup of chopped or sliced fruit is one serving.
• Dairy: Have at least two servings daily. One serving is eight ounces of milk or yogurt.
• Fats: Salad dressing, cooking oil, butter and mayonnaise should be limited to two servings a day.

Eat these foods for beauty and follow the beauty diet and you will notice that over a short period of time you are looking better than you did before.

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Benefits of Reiki

Reiki techniques are used to heal the body, mind and the spirit. It has been proved that Reiki can help people suffering from various major and minor ailments. It is often used as a complementary conventional therapy in a number of hospitals today. Reiki has not only helped patients with physical ailments but also helped those with minor psychological problems as well. Reiki has even helped people to improve their overall personality. Some of the benefits of Reiki are as follows:

• Reiki boots and improves the immune system.
• It increases energy levels.
• Improves the confidence level and the esteem of the client.
• It reduces stress and relives stress as well.
• It helps a client in the grieving process.
• Reiki can be used as a complementary therapy with conventional therapies
• It improves chronic an acute medical problems.
• Promotes creativity.

Reiki can be used simultaneously with other conventional therapies without adverse effects. Reiki can be used in the following conditions:

• While using medication
• While undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.
• While you have a cast of plaster of Paris.
• If your physician agrees to Reiki treatment while you are hospitalized.
• Along with other forms of healing that are complementary.
• While you are pregnant

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World Cuisines

Top 10
influences on
world cuisines

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Geography, geology & climate

They play a major role in world cuisines. Certain crops demand heavy rains, or sandy soil, or hot summers, or whatever. All this helps determine which raw materials will be available to the cook. Example: Southern Indians eat rice, northern Indians eat wheat.

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Seasonal food shortages

Example: Lands with frigid winters need to preserve foods and incorporate them into their cold season diets.

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Religion and custom

Certain foods or combinations of foods may be forbidden by religion or deplored by custom.

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War

These world cuisine influencers include invasions. Initially, there is an aversion to the enemy's food. Eventually, assimilation occurs.

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Technology

I've observed many times in my travels the obvious but telling difference in the agricultural results between a farmer using a animal pulled plow and a modern tractor.

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Fuel availability

This affects cooking styles. Take wood. It is ideal for grilling and slow, brick oven cooking. It is plentiful in forested lands like Eastern Europe but is scarce in countries like India and China.

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Spread of New World foods

The European discovery of the New World had an explosive impact on the European diet. New foods were introduced in Europe including these now staples: potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, corn, chilies, allspice, chocolate, turkey and vanilla.

To illustrate, imagine:

Southern Italian cooking
without tomatoes

Chinese Sichuan seasoning
without hot chilies

Irish and German diets
without potatoes

Hungarian cuisine
without paprika

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Introductions to the New World

The migration of foods did not move in only one direction. Chicken, beef, lamb, pork, wheat, and many fruits and vegetables (apples and oranges, for example) were brought to the Western hemisphere. The importation of the Old World horse also revolutionized New World agriculture.

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Homogenization

The world cuisine exchange was beneficial. But today, national cuisines are being homogenized. This amalgamation is good if cooks can add the best dishes of other cultures to their repertoire. A Japanese adage says that tasting a new food adds 75 days to one's life. The trouble starts when new dishes displace the old, disrupting rather than enriching a traditional pattern of cooking and eating - and when the foods adopted represent the lowest common denominator rather than the best in the borrowed cuisine.

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Endangered cuisines

Some national and many regional ethnic cuisines are endangered culinary species. I believe those treasures are worth saving.

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Give blood. Give Life

World Blood Donor Day is day dedicated to thanking and celebrating voluntary non-remunerated blood donors.

Millions of people owe their lives to people they will never meet – people who donate their blood freely and without any reward. However, the overwhelming majority of the world’s population do not have access to safe blood. Over 80 million units of blood are donated every year, but only 38% are collected in developing countries where 82% of the global population live.

In addition, many countries remain dependent on donation by the families or friends of patients who require blood and, in some countries, blood donors still receive payment.Yet evidence from around the world demonstrates that voluntary unpaid donors are the foundation of a safe blood supply because they are least likely to transmit potentially life-threatening infections, such as HIV and hepatitis viruses, to the recipients of their blood. It is to these unsung heroes that World Blood Donor Day is dedicated.

World Blood Donor Day builds on the success of World Health Day 2000 which was devoted to the theme ‘Blood Saves Lives. Safe Blood Starts With Me. The enthusiasm and energy with which this day was celebrated indicated that there would be a positive response to an opportunity to give thanks to the millions of people who give the precious gift of life. It also builds on International Blood Donor Day organized annually by the International Federation of Blood Donor Organizations since 1995.

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Benefits of Walnuts

Walnuts are a delicious way to add extra nutrition, flavor and crunch to a meal. , they are available year round a great source of those all-important omega-3 fatty acids. It is no surprise that the regal and delicious walnut comes from an ornamental tree that is highly prized for its
beauty. The walnut kernel consists of two bumpy lobes that look like abstract butterflies. The lobes are off white in color and covered by a thin, light brown skin. They are partially attached to each other. The kernels are enclosed in round or oblong shells that are brown in color and very hard.

Health Benefits:
When it comes to their health benefits, walnuts definitely are not a hard nut to crack. This delicious nut is an excellent source of omega-3 essential fatty acids, a special type of protective fat the body cannot manufacture. Walnuts' concentration of omega-3s (a quarter-cup provides 90.8% of the daily value for these essential fats) has many potential health benefits ranging from cardiovascular protection, to the promotion of better cognitive function, to anti-inflammatory benefits helpful in asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and inflammatory skin diseases such as eczema and psoriasis. In addition, walnuts contain an antioxidant compound called ellagic acid that supports the immune system and appears to have several anticancer properties.

Take Walnuts to Heart:

Adding walnuts to your diet can be an important step in improving your cardiovascular health. Walnuts are an important source of monounsaturated fats-approximately 15% of the fat found in walnuts is healthful monounsaturated fat. A host of studies have shown that increasing the dietary intake of monounsaturated-dense walnuts has favorable effects on high cholesterol levels and other cardiovascular risk factors. One particular study compared the effects of a cholesterol-lowering . In addition to their heart-protective monounsaturated fats, walnuts' concentration of omega-3 essential fatty acids is also responsible for the favorable effects walnut consumption produces on cardiovascular risk factors. Omega-3s benefit the cardiovascular system by helping to prevent erratic heart rhythms, making blood less likely to clot inside arteries (which is the proximate cause of most heart attacks), and improving the ratio of good (HDL) cholesterol to potentially harmful (LDL) cholesterol. Omega-3s also reduce inflammation, which is a key component in the processes that turn cholesterol into artery-clogging plaques.

Walnuts Improve Cholesterol Profile in Persons with Type 2 Diabetes:
In patients with type 2 diabetes, including a daily ounce of walnuts in a diet in which 30% of calories came from fat translated into a significant improvement in subjects' cholesterol profile.
In this study, published in Diabetes Care, 58 men and women with an average age of 59 years, were assigned to one of three diets in which 30% of calories was derived from fat: a low fat diet, a modified low fat diet, and a modified low fat diet including an ounce of walnuts per day.
After 6 months, those on the walnut diet had achieved a significantly greater increase in their HDL-to-total cholesterol ratio than the other groups, plus walnut eaters saw a 10% reduction in their LDL cholesterol. Why such benefit from walnuts? Most likely because walnuts are exceptionally high in their content of monounsaturated fat and the omega-3 fatty acid, alpha-linolenic acid. Plus, walnuts combine these heart healthy fats with a hefty dose of the antioxidants including at least 16 antioxidant phenols, vitamin E, ellagic and gallic acid.
Additional research has confirmed that when walnuts are eaten as part of a modified low-fat diet, the result is a more cardiprotective fat profile in diabetic patients than can be achieved by simply lowering the fat content of the diet.

Food for Better Thought:
Walnuts have often been thought of as a "brain food," not only because of the wrinkled brain-like appearance of their shells, but because of their high concentration of omega-3 fats. Your brain is more than 60% structural fat. For your brain cells to function properly, this structural fat needs to be primarily the omega-3 fats found in walnuts, flaxseed and cold-water fish. This is because the membranes of all our cells, including our brain cells or neurons, are primarily composed of fats. Cell membranes are the gatekeepers of the cell. Anything that wants to get into or out of a cell must pass through the cell's outer membrane. And omega-3 fats, which are especially fluid and flexible, make this process a whole lot easier, thus maximizing the cell's ability to usher in nutrients while eliminating wastes--definitely a good idea, especially when the cell in question is in your brain.

Help Prevent Gallstones
Twenty years of dietary data collected on over 80,000 women from the Nurses' Health Study shows that women who eat least 1 ounce of nuts, peanuts or peanut butter each week have a 25% lower risk of developing gallstones. Since 1 ounce is only 28.6 nuts or about 2 tablespoons of nut butter, preventing gallbladder disease may be as easy as having a handful of walnuts as an afternoon pick me up, or tossing some walnuts on your oatmeal or salad.

A Few Quick Serving Ideas:

Mix crushed walnuts into plain yogurt and top with maple syrup.
Add walnuts to healthy sautéed vegetables.
Walnuts are great in baked goods and breakfast treats. Some of our favorites include zucchini walnut bread, carrot walnut muffins and apple walnut pancakes.
Purée walnuts, cooked lentils and your favorite herbs and spices in a food processor. Add enough olive or flax oil so that it achieves a dip-like consistency.
Sprinkle walnuts onto salads.
Add walnuts to your favorite poultry stuffing recipe

Nutritional Profile
Walnuts are an excellent source of omega-3 essential fatty acids. Walnuts are also a very good source of the manganese and a good source of copper. In addition, walnuts contain the antioxidant phytochemical, ellagic acid.

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Meal Planning for the Family-Make it easy

Whether you have a toddler or a teen, here are five of the best strategies to improve nutrition and encourage smart eating habits:

1.Have regular family meals
2.Serve a variety of healthy foods and snacks.
3.Be a role model by eating healthy yourself.
4.Avoid battles over food.
5.Involve kids in the process.
But it's not easy when everyone is juggling busy schedules and convenience food, such as fast food, is so readily available.

Here are some ways to incorporate all five strategies into your routine.
Family Meals:
Family meals are a comforting ritual for both parents and kids. Children like the predictability of family meals and parents get a chance to catch up with their kids. Kids who take part in regular family meals are also:
* more likely to eat fruits, vegetables, and grains
* less likely to snack on unhealthy foods
*less likely to smoke, use marijuana, or drink alcohol
In addition, family meals offer the chance to introduce kids to new foods and to act as a role model for healthy eating

Teens may turn up their noses at the prospect of a family meal — not surprising because they're busy and want to be more independent. Yet studies find that teens still want their parents' advice and counsel, so use mealtime as a chance to reconnect. Also, consider trying these strategies:

Allow your teen to invite a friend to dinner.
Involve your teen in meal planning and preparation.
Keep mealtime calm and congenial — no lectures or arguing.
What counts as a family meal? Any time you and your family eat together — whether it's takeout food or a home-cooked meal with all the trimmings. Strive for nutritious food and a time when everyone can be there. This may mean eating dinner a little later to accommodate a child who's at sports practice. It can also mean setting aside time on the weekends, such as Sunday brunch, when it may be more convenient to gather as a group.

Stocking Up on Healthy Foods
Kids, especially younger ones, will eat mostly what's available at home. That's why it's important to control the supply lines — the foods that you serve for meals and have on hand for snacks.

Follow these basic guidelines:
Work fruits and vegetables into the daily routine, aiming for the goal of at least five servings a day. Be sure you serve fruit or vegetables at every meal.
Make it easy for kids to choose healthy snacks by keeping fruits and vegetables on hand and ready to eat. Other good snacks include low-fat yogurt, peanut butter and celery, or whole-grain crackers and cheese.
Serve lean meats and other good sources of protein, such as fish, eggs, beans, and nuts.
Choose whole-grain breads and cereals so kids get more fiber.
Limit fat intake by avoiding deep-fried foods and choosing healthier cooking methods, such as broiling, grilling, roasting, and steaming. Choose low-fat or nonfat dairy products.
Limit fast food and low-nutrient snacks, such as chips and candy. But don't completely ban favorite snacks from your home. Instead, make them "once-in-a-while" foods, so kids don't feel deprived.
Limit sugary drinks, such as soda and fruit-flavored drinks. Serve water and low-fat milk instead.

How to Be a Role Model
The best way for you to encourage healthy eating is to eat well yourself. Kids will follow the lead of the adults they see every day. By eating fruits and vegetables and not overindulging in the less nutritious stuff, you'll be sending the right message.
Another way to be a good role model is to serve appropriate portions and not overeat. Talk about your feelings of fullness, especially with younger children. You might say, "This is delicious, but I'm full, so I'm going to stop eating." Similarly, parents who are always dieting or complaining about their bodies may foster these same negative feelings in their kids. Try to keep a positive approach about food.

Don't Battle Over Food
It's easy for food to become a source of conflict. Well-intentioned parents might find themselves bargaining or bribing kids so they eat the healthy food in front of them. A better strategy is to give kids some control, but to also limit the kind of foods available.

Kids should decide if they're hungry, what they will eat from the foods served, and when they're full. Parents control which foods are available to the child, both at mealtime and between meals.

Here are some guidelines to follow:
1.Establish a predictable schedule of meals and snacks. It's OK to choose not to eat when both parents and kids know when to expect the next meal or snack.
2.Don't force kids to clean their plates. Doing so teaches kids to override feelings of fullness.
3.Don't bribe or reward kids with food. Avoid using dessert as the prize for eating the meal.
4.Don't use food as a way of showing love. When you want to show love, give kids a hug, some of your time, or praise.

Get Kids Involved
Most kids will enjoy deciding what to make for dinner. Talk to them about making choices and planning a balanced meal. Some might even want to help shop for ingredients and prepare the meal. At the store, teach kids to check out food labels to begin understanding what to look for.

In the kitchen, select age-appropriate tasks so kids can play a part without getting injured or feeling overwhelmed. And at the end of the meal, don't forget to praise the chef.

School lunches can be another learning lesson for kids. More important, if you can get them thinking about what they eat for lunch, you might be able to help them make positive changes. Brainstorm about what kinds of foods they'd like for lunch or go to the grocery store to shop together for healthy, packable foods.

There's another important reason why kids should be involved: It can help prepare them to make good decisions on their own about the foods they want to eat. That's not to say they'll suddenly want a salad instead of french fries, but the mealtime habits you help create now can lead to a lifetime of healthier choices.

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Blood Vs Diet

The concept behind the blood-type diet is simple: Determine your blood type, follow the diet and exercise plan for that type, and voila, you'll lose weight, reduce your risk of chronic illness, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, avoid common viruses and infections and slow the aging process -- or so the diet claims. The Blood Type Diet contends that chemical reactions occur between your blood and the foods you eat -- eat the wrong food for your blood type and suffer adverse health consequences. So how do you know what foods to eat or avoid? To answer that question, the diet's author considers when your blood type first appeared in history. Type O, for instance, which is apparently the oldest blood type, emerged at a time when people had to hunt for their food to survive, thus the emphasis on meat in this diet. Type A's, on the other hand, were cultivators and ate more vegetarian foods. Type B's were nomads, eating the widest range of foods, while type AB's are called enigmas, for they combine types A and B, requiring meat but in smaller portions.

What You Can Eat

All four plans on the Blood Type Diet (for types O, A, B and AB) have different food requirements which are broken into three categories: highly beneficial (the food is like a medicine), neutral (the food can be enjoyed without positive or negative consequences) or avoid (the food acts like a poison).

Type O individuals, for instance, are encouraged to eat a diet high in animal protein (i.e. lean red meats and poultry) but limited in dairy products, grains (especially wheat) and legumes. Type A's, on the other hand, are advised to follow a vegetarian diet, consuming beans, legumes, cereals, vegetables, fruits and small amounts of dairy products but eliminating all meats. Meanwhile, the type B diet encourages meat (but not chicken), dairy products, all fruits, most vegetables, some beans, no nuts or seeds and no wheat. And those on the type AB diet are allowed to eat some meat, some dairy products, limited wheat products and most fruits and vegetables.

Is the diet healthy?

Not necessarily. While some of the food lists in the diet give healthy options, the fact that so many nutritious foods are restricted is troubling. The list concept is also extremely structured, and this rigidity may doom many people who attempt this diet.

What do the experts say?

There's no scientific proof that eating and exercising according to your blood type will help you lose weight. If you follow the diet and do lose weight, it's probably because you're eating fewer calories, not because there's something magical going on with your blood type and the foods you're eating.

Bottom Line

Each of the four blood type diets is too restrictive, asking you to follow lists and cut otherwise healthy foods from your diets. Categorizing foods into good and bad is simply not a healthy approach, for almost all foods can fit into a diet. And by cutting healthy foods, you'll miss out on valuable nutrients assuring your diet will be unbalanced and not enjoyable.

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How to avoid cravings while you are dieting?

Cravings can affect even the most determined dieter. Similarly to giving up smoking, when dieting you always get cravings.

So you could try the following tips to help you cope and resist temptation:

* Don't skip meals as this will make you more likely to crave other foods and snack because you are hungry.

* Don't starve yourself as this is most likely to lead to you experience cravings and to give in to temptation. Keep healthy snacks, like fruit or carrot/celery sticks) handy at all times.

* Drink plenty of water as dehydration can sometimes be mistaken for hunger and can increas cravings, especially for sweet foods. Water will also make you feel full, so you would feel less hungry.

* Don't keep foods you crave in the house, and don't go shopping when you're hungry as you're more likely to buy foods that are bad for you.

* As with any craving, distract your attention from it - go for a walk, have a bath or watch TV.

* Indulge once in a while so that you don't deprive yourself completely as this could be your downfall. If you crave chocolate allow yourself a fun size chocolate bar and don't feel guilty.

Good Luck!

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