How much food is really enough?Written by Darryn Aldridge
Ok, so you think you’re doing all right things, eating low fat foods, exercising regularly, thinking slim, but at end of day, you’re still not breaking through those barriers and shedding weight like you’d like to. Well don’t fret people, stand in queue with all others who, like you, are struggling to come to grips with this one.Thankfully, there are some very simple steps we can take that will really help you to start making some gains in this area. Did you know for instance, that it takes approximately 20 minutes before your body realizes that it has had sufficient to eat? One of our biggest problems then is what do we do in that 20 minute period to stop us overeating. Some easy solutions could be; 1. Weigh Your Food: Sounds so simple, yet many of us still pile our food on plate until it looks “about right”. I can almost guarantee that about right is probably no where near amount you should be eating. I was hugely surprised at what a proper portion size really looked like. As time goes by you will find that you start to get a feel for what portions will look like, so you won’t need to weigh your food as often as you first needed to. It does however, pay to weigh your food from time to time, as it is very easy for portion sizes to creep up again without you noticing. 2. Eat Slower: Again, sounds very simplistic, but I’m sure we have all been guilty at some stage of rushing our food down. Simple things like putting your knife and fork down while you are chewing, and not putting more food into your mouth until you have swallowed what you’ve already got in your mouth, will help to slow down eating process. The real bonus to this is that you will actually start to really taste food you are eating and begin to feel and appreciate different textures that each mouthful gives you. We live in a world where we do everything at a fast pace. Learn to slow down and enjoy it, you will be doing your digestive system a favor.
| | Mad Cow Disease RevisitedWritten by Thomas Ogren
Mad Cow Disease RevisitedThomas Ogren The practice of feeding animals to non-carnivorous domestic animals is one that must be stopped now. It is entirely possible that current news of mad cow disease is but tip of iceberg for future potential health problems. When I used to milk cows I was encouraged by my vet to add "bone meal" to my feed as a way to increase protein levels in dairy grain. Normally we would use extra soybean meal to jack protein levels, but many farmers used bone meal. The bone meal consists of rendered bones and tissue from cattle. Essentially we were feeding cattle to cattle, a process that in retrospect seems 100% unnatural. I have an MS degree in Agriculture and in one of my poultry classes in college we visited a huge egg ranch. The foreman there explained to us that if you examined chicken manure you'd find that as much as 25% of feed had gone through chickens undigested and was still there in manure. With this in mind they had started taking chicken manure, steaming it and then drying it, and were now mixing chickens' own manure back into chicken feed. By doing this they supposedly were saving some 20% on feed costs!
|
