Source: http://greatist.com/eat/how-much-sugar-per-day?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_http–greatistcom-

We like to think we know what’s good for us. Sure, beer, burgers, and ice cream make occasional appearances in our diet, but for the most part, we make smart food choices throughout the day.

As for sugar? We don’t have dessert every day—and when we do, we try to make it healthy—so we can’t be eating too much of it, right?

Wrong. When we tallied up the amount of sugar in a day’s worth of relatively healthy meals and snacks (yogurt with fruit and granola, a whole-wheat turkey wrap, trail mix, and a homemade stir-fry), we were shocked. We even skipped dessert!

There’s a lot of sugar hiding in everyday food (both added and natural sugars are included in the counts below). Check out the stats, get more info on the type of sugar you should try to avoid, and find ideas for healthy swaps.

The Stats Yogurt With Berries and Granola:*

6 ounces low-fat vanilla yogurt: 29 grams of sugar
1 cup mixed berries: 8.5 grams
1/2 cup granola: 12 grams

*see notes below on added vs. natural sugars

Coffee Cake…

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tinybuddha/~3/zQPw8TwjNsE/

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When ware listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” ~Karl A. Menninger

I remember my first call like it was yesterday.

I answered the phone, heart beating out of my chest, hand firm on a sheet of local emergency phone numbers.

The voice on the other end was full of… meek embarrassment.

Not exactly what I was expecting.

“Uhh, I’m really sorry… I’m not, uhh… I’m not suicidal…. I just… I just had a huge fight with my girlfriend…. I just… I really need to talk to someone…. Is that okay?”

If you’re like I was before I became a volunteer in 2011, when you think about a suicide hotline you imagine and circumstances so traumatic and unbearable that they bring people to consider ending life.

But, I soon discovered that everything I expected to be true—everything from what the callers would be like, all the way up to how I would handle them—was completely wrong.

And what I learned forever changed the way I think about pain.

My First Big Surprise About Pain

I became a volunteer because I wanted to help people who were hurting.

But looking back, I realize that I…

Source: http://greatist.com/eat/healthy-scone-recipes?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_http–greatistcom-

When you’re craving a buttery, crispy scone but are trying to be healthy, there’s no need to fret. Make one of these better-for-you versions!

Below you’ll find low-sugar, gluten-free, Paleo, and vegan options. Plus, they come in every flavor imaginable to keep your sweet tooth satisfied—whether you’re eating them for breakfast or as an afternoon snack.

Photo: Fed and Fit

1. Paleo Blueberry Scones

If you’re not about to make your own gluten-free flour with cashews and arrowroot starch, you can use store-bought coconut or almond flour instead. We love the super-detailed, step-by-step photos, which show exactly what you should be doing.

…

Source: http://greatist.com/live/how-to-be-happy-ritual?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_http–greatistcom-

When my wife and I moved to New York City in 2001, recently graduated from college and newly married, we were eager to find friends. We knew nearly no one but were sure we’d soon find a fun-loving group like the 20- and 30-something New Yorkers who spontaneously dropped in on one another on TV shows like Seinfeld and Friends.

We hatched a plan. After moving into our Midtown Manhattan apartment, we invited all the neighbors over for drinks by placing Kinko’s-printed quarter-sheets into everyone’s mailboxes. Then, we waited for our versions of Chandler, Kramer, and Elaine to show up. But they didn’t. In fact, no one did. As the ice in the cooler melted and the guacamole browned, not a single person among 100 apartments stopped by. Not. One. Person.

Recalling that episode now, we sound embarrassingly naïve. We didn’t realize friendships in the real world worked nothing like the ones we had forged in our dormitories, let alone those we saw on television. Yet as it turns out, our desire to belong to a tight community was far from foolish.

Recent studies have shown a dearth of social interaction with people you care about and who care about you not only leads to loneliness, but is also linked to a range of harmful physical effects. In other words: A lack of close friendships may be hazardous to your health.

Dying for Friends

A 2010 meta-analysis reviewed 148 studies involving more than 300,000 participants and concluded that having weak social…

Source: http://greatist.com/live/email-writing-tips?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_http–greatistcom-

It’s the first thing we check up on the morning and the last thing we look at before bed. Yes, we’re talking about email, not our significant others. Whether you’re writing coworkers, family, or a crush, there’s an art to getting someone to respond. Boomerang, an email scheduling service, analyzed more than 5.3 million messages to figure out what makes people reply. Here were the biggest takeaways:

1. Write like a third grader.

Just because you can use extemporaneous and pompous in a sentence doesn’t mean you should. Short words and short sentences garner get the most responses.

2. Butter up, but don’t overdo it.

Flattery can go a long way. Just make sure your message doesn’t get to be over-the-top cheery (Great! Awesome! Wonderful! Amazing!) We get it. You’re a fan. This is incredible. But one exclamation point gets that message across.

Same goes for angry emails. If you get too negative, people start to tune out. So writing “I had an awful experience at your store today. The clerk was very rude. Please do something to make it right.” is more likely to get a reply than “Your clerk is a douchebag. Piss off, and I…

Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/24/466955069/cookbook-explores-culinary-skills-of-india-s-working-class?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=thesalt

The Indecisive Chicken combines the recipes and life stories of eight women from communities across India who now live in Dharavi, a teeming Mumbai slum. Sarita Rai, from a village in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, contributed a recipe for pharas, “semi-circular pockets of rice dough” filled with chickpea flour, served steamed or deep-fried.

Neville Sukhia/Courtesy of The Indecisive Chicken: Stories and recipes from eight Dharavi cooks

Once Mumbai’s largest slum, Dharavi — made famous by the 2008 movie Slumdog Millionaire — is a teeming multi-ethnic and multicultural settlement claiming almost a million migrants from across India.

Dharavi houses hundreds of cottage and small-scale industries, run mostly by men, who make products like bags and belts, zari embroidery and pottery. It’s also known for its huge recycling industry. Together, these enterprises generate more than $650 million a year, according to some reports.

Additional Information:

<img src="http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/manually-added/indecisive-chicken_custom-552a18c6643cff646c2416e501d5138223cb5d2d-s300.jpg" title="The Indecisive Chicken…

Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/24/467964321/judge-rules-nyc-can-require-sodium-warnings-on-restaurant-menus?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=thesalt

A New York judge has ruled that items like Panera’s Bacon Turkey Bravo Sandwich on Tomato Basil bread, which contains 2,850 milligrams of sodium, require a warning label.

Jesse Grant/Getty Images for IMG

The New York State Supreme Court has ruled that chain restaurants in New York City can be fined after Mar. 1 for failing to post sodium warnings on certain items on their menus.

The ruling is a win for the city’s Board of Health, which unanimously passed a rule last September that requires chains with 15 or more locations nationwide to print a salt-shaker warning icon next to menu items containing 2,300 or more milligrams of sodium.

<img src="http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/02/24/sodium-warning-label-0115d13a24cd29893f91e88cad193c1938d10d85-s300.jpeg" title="In New York City's chain restaurants, this salt shaker icon will …

Source: http://greatist.com/live/pull-out-method?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_http–greatistcom-

We all know the basic concept of birth control. The purpose: Lower your risk of pregnancy by as much as humanly possible.

Of course, no form of contraception is foolproof. But if you put the condom on properly (and choose the right one), take your pill regularly, and generally use birth control correctly, your chances of getting knocked up are indeed significantly lower.

But not using any barrier (literal or hormonal) and just trusting he’ll pull out before any of his swimmers have made their way out and upstream? Well, there’s a reason they call it “pull and pray.”

Yet a shocking number of women are relying on what is the contraceptive equivilant of keeping your fingers crossed. A new survey from Glow, a menstrual cycle tracking app, found that 18 percent of women use the withdrawal method as their primary form of birth control.

Other research suggests the number may be even higher: A 2013 study from Duke found that 31 percent of women have used pulling out as their primary form of contraception at least once, while the CDC estimates that 60 percent of women have done so. And that same Glow survey found that pulling out was the third most popular form of birth control—more than an IUD!

Is It Legit?

“People do think of this as being contraception—but it’s not,” says Lauren F. Streicher, M.D., clinical associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University and author of Sex Rx: Hormones, Health…

Source: http://www.foodpolitics.com/2016/02/food-navigator-usas-special-edition-on-on-oils-and-fats/

Is fat really good or bad and, one way or the other, is it really back?

Food Navigator-USA has an interest in fats from the perspective of companies that use them in food processing.  Here’s what it says:

Fats are often classed into good, bad and ugly categories. But do consumers know which are which, and how can manufacturers help increase consumption of the healthier variety (MUFAs and PUFAs) and reduce trans- and saturated fats (and that’s assuming that saturated fats really are the bogeyman many dietitians have made them out to be)?

Protein is hot, sugar is public enemy #1, and fat is back (so the trend-watchers say). But when it comes to good, bad and ugly fats, does everyone agree on which are which? Check out our gallery of insights from consumers, industry stakeholders, and the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee…

Cobram Estate will enter US to fill what it says is a void in high quality, extra virgin olive oils: Award winning Australian olive oil manufacturer Cobram Estate in February will extend its reach into the competitive US market, which it says suffers a dearth of high quality, extra virgin olive oils. .. Read

Solazyme to launch algae butter in early 2016: We’re offering a hard fat from a completely new source: Solazyme is aiming to launch the latest addition to its micro-algae-based ingredients portfolio in early 2016 – an algae butter – which it says could replace hard fats…

Source: http://greatist.com/move/exercise-can-change-outlook?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_http–greatistcom-

There’s no shortage of motivating weight-loss videos, but this one is seriously awesome. For Adonis Hill (the same guy who just gained 70 pounds to lose weight alongside his client), strength training did much more than help him get in shape. In this incredible short film called The Lift, Hill narrates his journey from depressed, overweight 25-year-old to inspirational trainer, reminding us that lifting is about building mental strength too. The video features everyday men and women killing it in their workouts and some kick-ass quotes from Hill.

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