And the Saga of the Food Label Continues..

Once entrepreneurs started tampering with the food supply— that's when things started to get a little tricky.

Food stopped being simply the substance that gives us energy and the nutrients we need to survive, and [rapidly] evolved into a product to sell sell sell. Forget survival of the fittest. Industry doesn't care about health fitness. It cares about financial fitness, which translates into maximizing profits, minimizing costs, and doing whatever else it takes to do just that, including constantly keeping your attention [and wallet] open, by developing new products [note: the avg. supermarket now has about 60,000 products, up from about 20,000, just decades ago], packaging, marketing, so on and so forth.

In efforts to somehow manage and regulate this crazy food processing, which continues full-force today, the food label was born— telling us what's in an unnatural, unrecognizable, processed food and some key nutrient information, including:

• Calories
  
• Fat [unsaturated, saturated, trans]
  
• Cholesterol
  
• Sodium
  
• Potassium
  
• Carbs
  
• Fiber
  
• Sugar
  
• Protein
  
• Calcium
  
• Iron
  
• Vitamins A and C
  
• Ingredients in descending order by weight

Phew. That's a lot of really useful information on nearly every packaged food you can lay your hands on.

But forget all that. In the next few months, food makers [will] devise [their] own label plan, which consists of listing calories, saturated fat, sodium, and sugar on the front of packages, with the option to include [ahem, market] one or two more 'positive' ingredients as well, such as fiber.


Is the food industry really making genuine efforts to help consumers make healthier choices, as they claim?

And, more importantly, will consumers know how to use this new label plan any more effectively than what is on packages already?

And note: to say that the current food label is hidden, is bogus [or, complete BS]. Think for a minute: Do children have a difficult time finding games on their cereal boxes? [Case and point.]

Like an unknown foreign language, you can present the same information in a million different ways, but you still need an education or translator.

Happy Healthy Juicy $50 Million for Nutrition Education Just Might Prove More Effective Than Advertising This Initiative!

Study Finds Children Are Unhealthy For Our Diet

A recent study published in the European Review of Agricultural Economics found that 'presence of children in a household has a negative impact on dietary quality.'

This included lower intakes of fruits and vegetables, and higher intakes of dairy products, cereal, and potatoes.

It's time we stop feeding our kids like this:




And learn to feed them like this:




Because not only are they becoming like this:




But so are we.




Happy Healthy Juicy The Children Are NOT To Blame! We Must Do [Eat & Learn] Better!

Jennifer Connelly Finds Excuse to Become Garbage Disposal: Pregnancy

People.com reports Jennifer Connelly is pregnant with her third child.

In an interview with David Letterman, she talks about the 'nausea' during her early pregnancy, which, frankly, is nauseating itself.

She said,

“I have to stand in one spot in my apartment to make a phone call. It was like that with the nausea..

I had to stand in one spot, which happened to be in front of my refrigerator, which was open, with me dipping pretzels in cream cheese and stuffing them in my mouth,” she laughs. “If I did that, I was good.”

Ugh. Again, case and point, Gisele Bundchen called it: Pregnancy, for many, is synonymous with 'garbage disposal'.







I guess that's just the 'right' some of these women give themselves when growing another human being inside their bodies after slaving [or whittling] away to Hollywood diets otherwise.










Happy Healthy Juicy, My Goodness, That's Your Child In There, If Anything, You Should Be Eating Better!

Anorexia Robs Yet Another Life

For Isabelle Caro, the struggle ended in death, as confirmed by People.com.

It's been reported that Caro had been suffering since she was 13 years old [cumulatively, 15 years, wasted]. Caro is most known for her nude 'No Anorexia' campaign displayed during Milan's Fashion Week in 2007. Ridiculously, the ad was banned.

The NY Daily News reports:

Through a translator, she said that her desire to be thin began with a fashion designer telling her that she had to lose 10 kilos (about 20 pounds) to make it in the fashion world. Her illness pushed her health to its limits – she had been in a coma in 2006. She weighed only 55 pounds.

After that, she said that she tried to eat and to recover from the illness that plagued her since she was 13.

"I thought this could be a chance to use my suffering to get a message across, and finally put an image on what thinness represents and the danger it leads to -- which is death," she told AFP in 2007

Unfortunately, she turned that image into reality.

Eating disorders are serious and deadly. And a boatload of suffering and unhappiness. Not to sound like a PSA, but if you or someone you know is suffering: You're not alone. There is hope and light at the end of the tunnel. Get help. Never give up. And just keep on trekking.

Happy Healthy Juicy, Beauty Is Just That!

The Top 5 Joys of Aging

We live in an age-defying society and culture that feigns natural and feeds superficiality, spending, and never-ending discontent. While young folks rush to become adults, their older counterparts strive to hold onto that same youth they so anxiously tried to leave behind.



We look at aging like it's a disease. We dread the wrinkles, grays [or balding], sun spots, and sagging, and counter them with even more pore-clogging [clown] makeup, creams, dyes, Botox, scalpels, whatever it takes. And in the meanwhile, we ignore what we actually gain in the process. [And I'm not referring to the weight due to a so-called slowing metabolism, though we often ignore that too.]

Below is a friendly reminder that there are, too, joys of aging. Yup, that's right— joys. No matter how old. Feel free to add your joys in the Comments section following :>

Top Five Joys of Aging--

Number 5: Fully equipped kitchens and real food.

Remember school? We spent most of our youth there and had to subsist on cafeteria slop, re-hydrated freeze-dried foods, and other fast, mass-produced, ready-to-eat crap. Settling into a place with a decently equipped kitchen, cooking real food, and spending time with friends over the homey dinner table— mmm, there's nothing like it..


Number 4: Additions to the family.

'First comes love, then comes marriage (optional), then comes baby in the baby carriage.' Aside from the pooping, crying, and tantrums, how can you resist gushing over all the cute faces of baby spawn, posted by friends and family [in addition to, perhaps, your own]?


Number 3: Shorter memories.

There are definite advantages to forgetting things quicker. For one, it makes forgiveness that much more easier..



Number 2: Wisdom and the ability to give back.

I was helping a third grader with his vocabulary. He gave me this sentence: 'I have a lot of wisdom about baseball.' Wisdom, he read, means knowledge.

But wisdom is more than just knowledge. It's about experience, the ability to know better, and the gift to share it with others. What's better than being able to navigate this grand world with ease, help others, and give back? Like cheese, being aged makes us sharp.


Number 1: Who cares?

Pimpled adolescence is ridden with self-centeredness, -consciousness, and bullying, it's pretty ridiculous and equally amazing that so many of us survived the torment and angst. So after years of trying to figure out the world and our places in it, probably the best thing about aging is becoming more relaxed and comfortable in our selves, learning to let go and not get so hung up on the petty little things, and just enjoy.

See? Aging ain't so bad after all..

Happy Healthy Juicy, We All Get Older So Might As Well Go With It!

Matthew Morrison Rips Up the Cover of Details

What does it take for Mr. Charming on Glee to look like a hunk[a.. salacious meat]?

Well, PER Week, it looks something like this:

• ~100 miles cycling
  
• ~25 miles running
  
• Mini ab workouts during downtime on set
  
• 4 sessions of resistance training
  
• Strict dieting, banning even fruit after dark [which he deems 'too much sugar']

PLUS these bonuses:

• Paddleboarding on days off
  
• Going on a sweet-potato-only diet for a few days right before a photoshoot [..why the editors publish (and probably many think) that it's a 'high-protein tuber', I do not know..]

What is nice to know, however, is that it does take a ridiculous amount of effort to look that ridiculously Mmm... But, maybe not going so extremist, it's also nice to know what you have to do to get [somewhere around] there: Eat Right. Be Active. Plain & Simple.

Happy Healthy Juicy Lesson Learned! Thank you, Mr. Schuester. [angelic voices] Ahhhh....

The Material Girl Gives Us Material Matter to Chatter About

Shocking news!! Celebrities are human, just like us! And they age, too, just like us!

That's Madonna, looking all teary-eyed upset but as lovely as can be for a Dolce & Gabanna ad.



O, the legendary Madonna. We've been watching her for decades now. Yup, that's right, decades. Who would have thought decades later, she'd be decades older?

Everybody was her first hit single in the early '80s. She was only 24, then. Or, alternatively, to reflect our modern-day perceptions, perhaps that statement should read: She was already 24, by then.

Point? We live in a twisted youth-obsessed society, where old is anything beyond 30. Forty is ancient. And 50? Psha, you might as well be dead, given the wrinkles, veins, and sagging will have eaten you alive.


Somehow, we're conned into believing that we're ugly when we can't defy gravity, time, and the human aging process. Famous people like Demi Moore, who has not aged since her mid-thirties, does this beautifully [pun intended]. She helps us believe that celebrities are superhuman or, that with enough funds, getting cut up or filled can make you beautiful just like the rest of Hollywood.


But don't worry. This is not a post on how more and more young girls [teens!] are learning and actually getting cosmetic procedures done each year. Nor is it about supplanting unrealistic, foolish, or superficial ideals into men, women, and children alike.

This is about the striking 52 year-old Madonna, endorsing high-end fashion, and.. [scroll down below but do so at your own risk.. of reality]




















Photoshop!

There's been a lot of hubbub around the differences between the two pics. Unfortunately, though, the chatter's been about her glaring veins and rough skin texture. Eww! Rather than the lying and untruthfulness that we are exposed to every single day over and over.. and over again. How could they?? No one even bothered to give the Material Girl props for having such hearty guns. The nerve..

But, everyone's entitled to creative freedom— the top really does make me want their product more than the bottom.. Just don't forget to let the kids [and other ignoramuses] in on the secret.

Happy Healthy Juicy Something to Blab About!