The siren smells of the mall food court can weaken even the most determined healthy eater worn down by a day at the mall. With the aroma of Auntie Anne’s tickling your nose and stirring a rumble in your tummy, it ain’t easy to avoid a calorie fest. Good thing our benevolent benefactors at Consumer Reports are on the case. The snack beat, as it were. [More]
health
Not All Mall Snacks Are Created Equal — What Should You Eat If You’re Trying To Be Healthy?
By 10.24.13
Tobacco Companies Say Kids Shouldn’t Smoke — So What’s With Fruit-Flavored Cigars?
By 10.22.13
Tobacco companies have insisted in the past that they don’t think kids should smoke and aren’t marketing to them, but we can’t imagine as many adults go for fruity- or candy-flavored cigars as the younger set. Those are just as bad for your health as cigarettes, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and middle and high school kids just love’em. [More]
Blame Sleeptexting For That Message You Definitely Didn’t Want That Person To Get
By 10.17.13
You wake up, and you find that you sent a certain someone a text message that says, “The flugelhorn is ripe.” But wait! Before you allow the embarrassment to wash over and sink you into a pit of forever lonely despair — it could just be a case of sleeptexting which means it’s totally not your fault. [More]
Mexican Restaurant: Sorry We Gave You Bloody Diarrhea. Please Come Back, Have A Free Burrito!
By 9.13.13
Much like a customer might be wary of returning to say, the Carnival Triumph aka Poop Cruise, we can’t imagine many of the 74 diners who endured bloody diarrhea after eating at Federico’s Mexican Food will be tempted to cross that restaurant’s threshold any time soon. But that isn’t stopping the eatery from begging people to return in the form of free burrito bribery. [More]
Not All Neti Pots Explain How To Avoid Brain-Eating Amoebas
By 9.5.13
A neti pot is a little pitcher that you use to gently blast warm saline solution through your sinuses to remove dust, pollen, mucus, and other nastiness. This all seems very gentle and healthy, until you learn that incomplete instructions that come with some pots may lead to you delivering pathogens to your brain rather than sweet relief to your congested sinuses. [More]
Should You Take Glucosamine And Chondroitin? Meh
By 8.30.13
Americans are buying a lot of glucosamine and chondroitin supplements, which are intended to help ease the pain of or prevent symptoms from arthritis. The problem is that there’s no proof that the pills do any good…and tests from our lab-coated cousins down the hall at Consumer Reports showed that many brands don’t even contain the whole dose claimed on the label. [More]
Water, Water, Everywhere And Not A Drop To Drink (Unless You Like Swallowing Worms)
By 8.29.13
Residents of a northeast Oklahoma town are turning off the tap and reaching for bottled water after some unwelcome visitors decided to take a dip in the city’s filtering system: Little red worms have been found in the filtering system. As such, city officials are asking citizens not to drink the water or use it for cooking while the problem gets sorted out. [More]
Tainted Guinea Pig Street Meat Suspected Of Sending 81 To The Hospital
By 8.26.13
While you might see a guinea pig and think, “Oh, I used to have one of those as a pet and it made funny grunting sounds,” there are plenty of people who see a guinea pig and think, “Mmm, dinner.” Health officials in Minnesota say 81 of the latter kind of people were felled by tainted guinea pig meat and other food at a street fair this month in big case of suspected salmonella poisoning. [More]
eBay Pulls Craze Sports Supplement Amid Concerns Of Amphetamine-Like Ingredients
By 8.13.13
Following in the footsteps of Walmart.com and Bodybuilding.com, eBay has announced it will stop selling a popular sports supplement accused of containing amphetamine-like compounds. This, after an investigation revealed some dark spots in the past of one of Driven Sports’ executives’ pasts, including a criminal conviction, a pending federal charge and repeated sales of allegedly risky products over the years. [More]
Just Because It’s Got The Word “Yogurt” In It Doesn’t Mean Fro Yo Is A Health Food
By 8.8.13 — Updated: 8.9.13
It’s not like anyone is walking into a frozen yogurt shop and shouting, “Bring me my vegetables!” but even the mere presence of the word “yogurt” might connote healthiness to some of us. And hey, it’s not ice cream, which everyone knows isn’t healthy, so it must be kinda good for you, right? All those yogurt cultures (depending on the store) and inherent dairy goodness? Alas, dear fro yo eaters, the word “yogurt” does not a health food make. [More]
Study: Skipping Breakfast Could Increase Risk Of Heart Attack
By 7.23.13
This is usually where I’d say that my wise, older relative once told me the benefits of doing such and such a thing, but not this time. I always say: I don’t skip the morning meal because otherwise I’d be grumpier than a bear woken from hibernation by the blasting of a Justin Bieber CD straight into the ear holes by lunch if I didn’t eat, but a new study says you shouldn’t skimp on breakfast because it might increase your risk of having a heart attack. [More]
Study: Peaches From A Can (That Were Put There By A Man) As Nutritious As Fresh Counterparts
By 5.23.13
Cracking open a can of peaches and slurping down the syrupy, sticky sweet juice before eating the peaches inside always made me feel like I was getting away with something. How could something so tasty also be good for you? Surely this canned nectar of the gods isn’t as healthy as biting into a juicy fresh peach. But a new study says actually, canned peaches are just as nutritious as the fresh ones. [More]
Report: There’s No Health Benefit In Drastically Cutting Your Salt Intake
By 5.15.13 — Updated: 6.10.15
Watching someone dump a whole lot of salt on their meal might make a person cluck in disapproval — “Don’t you know that too much salt is bad for you?” And while a person’s blood pressure can go up, leading to possible ill health effects like heart attacks and strokes, a new report says that there is no good reason for people to aim for the very lowest of the low levels recommended by national guidelines. [More]
Study: Taking Fish Oil Pills Doesn’t Help Prevent Heart Attacks If You’re Already On Meds
By 5.9.13
Those in the know have long recommended eating fish like salmon and tuna to get the benefits of its omega-3 fatty acids, or swallowing fish oil capsules to get the same good stuff. But a new study says that if you’re at high risk for heart problems and already taking medications to prevent them, fish oil won’t really do anything for you. [More]
Portland, Ore. Becomes Fourth U.S. City To Adopt Policy Requiring Paid Sick Leave
By 3.14.13
High fives all around in Portland, Ore. as the City Council unanimously voted yesterday to require that businesses offer sick leave. That makes Portland the fourth among its kind in the United States to mandate sick days, as the policy says workers must get up to five days off a year if they’re feeling under the weather. [More]
File New Trend Of Blood Facial Under “Terrifying Things Humans Do To Stay Young”
By 3.13.13
It seems like celebrities can convince their fans that basically anything is cool these days. To wit: a terrifying sounding beauty treatment called a “blood facial,” which involves taking blood from elsewhere in your body, separating out platelets and having them injected into your face. We’ll pass this time and just deal with getting old. [CBS Miami] [More]
Getting Paid To Lose Weight Possibly More Effective Than Throwing Cake In The Garbage
By 3.11.13
Instead of wasting money on perfectly good desserts by throwing them in the trash and dousing them with liquid dish soap just so you don’t eat them, getting paid to lose weight could be a much more rewarding dieting move. Earning cash and slimming down — in a perfect world, right? [More]
Yes, We Want Fries With That: Americans Get 11% Of Their Calories From Fast Food
By 2.21.13
A new study from the Centers for Disease Control is pointing a greasy finger at Americans’ eating habits, finding that on average we get 11% of our calories in a day from fast food. But hey, that’s down from 13% since the last time the government poked around in our fast food eating habits. [More]
