EXERCISE !!

Exercise is an important way to maintain a healthy diet. You should at least exercise 30 minutes a day 5 days a week. Exercise helps keep your weight balanced and lowers the chance of you having a heart attack or stroke. It also lowers the risk of you getting diabetes, osteoporosis, and different cancers. It relieves stress and boosts moods. Exercise is on the food pyramid as one of the most important things to do daily, so lets keep our lives healthy and teach other how to become active and live healthy.
- Rashawn

Ginger Soda?

Do you consider Ginger Ale a soda? It is indeed a carbonated drink; the only difference is it tastes like ginger. YUCK! Just kidding. Did you know that this “soda” has some important health benefits? If you have an upset stomach, this is the best drink to go for. You have problems digesting food? Put that pepto bismol down, because ginger ale can come to the rescue as well.

Why is it so healthy? Well, the ginger that is in this carbonated drink has natural and strong anit-inflammatory properties. So guess what this means? This is a great thing for people with arthritis or chronic muscle pains.

Ginger has a strong effect and was originally a home remedy for upset stomachs and of course, motion sickness. But the taste of this spice is strong has caused many people to place sugar into the juice it produce to ease the taste buds.

If you’re a heavy soda drinker and you want to start consuming healthier beverages, use ginger ale as something to ease into the process.

Published by: Michael Jones and Susana Vuong

The real key to beautiful skin- diet

A lot of skin problems in young children like eczema are an early sign of allergy. A good way to treat skin pigmentation is vitamin E. It turns skin lighter.Researchers recently did a study that showed that kids who got the most beta-carotene,vitamin E, folic acid or iron were a about 60% less likely to have eczema compared to kids who got the least of these nutrients.

Tea thats green?!

Tea is a good drink for you no matter which one you drink; but Green Tea, what is that stuff? It’s tea, but it’s green? I guess that’s where the name came from. This tea is made with the Camellia sinensis leaves that have gone through minimal oxidation during processing.

Green tea is a healthy drink that the Chinese used for medication purposes for thousands of years. There is a clear link between drinking green tea and a lower risk of having esophageal cancer according to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in a study in 1994. There is also a clear link of the consumption of green tea and the slowed growth of malignant cancer cells.

Suggestion from the healthy foods team, DRINK GREEN TEA.

Published by Michael Jones and Susana Vuong

Be aware!!!!

Are you aware of any chemicals or toxins that are added to your food? Well you should be! The CCCF also known as the Codex Committee on Contaminants
in Foods, along with the FDA, USDA, FOA, WHO, and WTO all decide the amounts of chemicals can be allowed in our food. Recently, the CCCF had a meeting where they discussed the acceptable standard amount of melamine (a contaminant) in our food products.

Are they serious? What has our world come to?

Melamine is not naturally found in soil, water, or air ---it's man made. The acceptable level should be zero, but according to the National Health Federation, the acceptable contamination level for melamine is 1.0 part per million (that's equal
to 1 milligram per kilogram of food) for infants and 2.5 ppm for adults. So basically, they're allowing this chemical in our food.

If you remember back in 2007, melamine was the cause of the contaminated pet food debacle that caused renal failure and killed thousand of pets. After that incident, melamine was found in infant formulas and milk products; thousands of Chinese infants were hospitalized because of this. Melamine which is actually an industrial chemical used in the production of Melawares (a nearly indestructible, hard plastic), is harmful to our bodies. The reason why melamine is used in our food is because it mimics protein. So adding this cheep substance to animal and human food production saves heartless manufactures lots of money.

On a brighter side stay aware of where your food comes from, and eat raw organic products. At least then you don't have to worry about what secret chemicals they are sneaking into your manufactured food products!

Produced: Rynesha Snowden

Lentil cakes with garlic and herbs.

A delicious mixture of spices and herbs come together to make these mouth watering heartwarming bites we call lentil cakes. The aroma of fresh tomatoes, salsa and chopped cilantro filled the kitchen as we prepared our delicious food. Before we made them I thought they were going to come out like little lentil muffins. They ended up looking more like patties than anything (almost resembling veggie burgers.) Something to look out for while making lentil cakes is making sure the mixture is the right texture to form into a patty before putting them into the oil to fry. It's also important to make sure you have a good space to fry them and don't put too many in the pan at once. It was so hard for me to not let one burn while another was getting flipped. Other than that everything went well when making the lentil cakes. I think of them as more of a winter time food but they're so good I'd eat them whenever.

Food Pyramid...Fiction and Facts.

Last week I mentioned a couple of facts about eating healthy and following the guidelines of a food pyramid but they weren't all true. There are many different opinions about what a human being should eat everyday. The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) has a food pyramid that provides parameters regarding the amounts of food to be consumed in different food groups. Unfortunately, such parameters are not based for each and every human being. A really good healthy food pyramid to follow is the one created by the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. I recommend this pyramid because it shows a healthy diet pyramid and doesn't give exact serving amounts, but rather, general guidelines. Everyone is different; how can we go off only one set of guidelines for a person to live healthy. Remember when I mentioned that its was really healthy for a person to get 6-11 servings of bread/grains? If you really think about it, that's a lot for a small person to handle and not enough for a really tall person to eat to stay healthy. Some of the things that are put on the USDA's food pyramid are really crazy and make no sense for one person to eat all of it in one full day. Therefore its important to keep these things in mind so we can all live healthy. If you want more information click here!
- Stay tuned for more information on food pyramids by Rashawn !!

Too much water, a bad thing???

There’s a risk in drinking too much water?! IMPOSSIBLE! Water is supposed to be healthy for you no matter what! How can you drink too much of it? GUESS WHAT? Although it is true that it’s really hard to overdose on water, it’s not impossible to be harmed from drinking large amounts of water.

So I’m sure people have heard of the term dehydration right? It’s when the body does not have enough fluids. In simple terms, it literally means your body is being drained of water. That’s when you become thirsty, your body is craving water. Check this out, there is such a thing call hyponatremia. Drinking too much water causes low sodium in the blood. Sodium is important to the body because it helps regulate the amounts of water in the body that flows to the nerves and muscles.

So next time you hear people tell you it’s impossible to drink too much water, you can. It’s also hard to drink 8 glasses of water a day if you don’t exercise which most people don’t tend to do on a daily basis. In order to lead a healthy life, drinking at least 2 to 6 glasses of water is recommended. Dr. Heinz Valtin, who was interviewed in the June 2008 issue of the Nutrition Action Health Letter stated that none of the statements: “drinking eight classes of water a day” or “it’s impossible to drink too much water” have ever been proven.

There are some reasons however, why some people tend to drink more water than others. One reason being, when you exercise you sweat; sweating is losing water so naturally the body would want that liquid back, causing people to drink more water. Another reason being is that larger people need to drink more fluids than smaller people (and here I thought there was something wrong with me). Also, people who eat meat will get less water in their foods. In other words, vegetable lovers will tend to drink less water because they already get some of it from eating their veggies.

People are now drinking more calories rather than getting it from their foods, which makes it hard to lose weight and have a healthy diet. Even juice now isn’t so healthy because of all the excess sugar that has been added. Although juice and soda might give you a boost of energy for a while, you will crash later. The less energy you have, the harder you have to fight. So the best choice to drink is water.

Produced by Michael Jones and Susana Vuong

Kaiser on the go

I no you know about Kaiser, who doesn't, but what do you know about health and wellness.
well Kaiser Permanente is pushing healthy eating and active living to their patients and community. Making sure that health is a big focus on life, I took a look at the kaiser website. On their website I can search nutrition, health, healthy eating habits, and pretty much anything relating to keeping me informed about health. Being a Patient from Kaiser I never knew how serious they were about Nutrition. Just reading down the page I found an article stating that Kaiser joined with five leading health care systems to be involved in going green. How wonderful dose that sound, If a hospital can push healthy living, as well as saving the environment where else could they go wrong. The Healthier Hospitals Initiative is a great plan and I believe It is a start to a healthier society.
I think more hospitals need to jump on this wagon and be involved in making our world
a healthy and greener place

Produced by: Rynesha Snowden

OBUGS

OBUGS is a program that empowers children and youth to learn, grow and cook their way to a healthy future. They're inviting people to come to their appreciation Celebration at the Paul and Inez Jones also known as the Linden Street Garden on June 18,2010 from 5-7pm at 3032 Linden st(between 30th and 32nd). There is going to be seasonal BBQ celebration gratitude and coming together in the garden. West Oakland middle School are building a new OBUGS garden during the week of June 8th through the 12th on their site and would appreciate any help they can get. Each day will start at 11am. The final touch will be putting the soil in the beds and spreading the wood chips. If you would like to participate on any of the days.Or would like to know more information on OBUGS or any questions just contact them by email at obugs@obugs.org or by phone:(510)465-4660.

REMEMBERING THE FOOD PYRAMID !

Are you familiar with the food pyramid? I know you learned about it in elementary school but do you ever follow the guide lines of it. Do you ever eat 6-11 servings of bread/grain or 3-5 servings of protein or dairy a day? I know I don't , its actually harder than you think to just keep track of everything you eat especially growing up in this economy when you healthiest meal is the lettuce on a McDonald's hamburger. Ive always wondered about how we could change our country and as of now i think the most important thing would be to eat healthy because as most people know eating unhealthy can lead to feeling horrible and becoming obese and if you didn't already know it can also cause diabetes and clogging of the arteries which can lead to death. The food pyramid is our guideline to living life healthy and lets not throw this away, instead lets embrace it.

In Praise of Soil

I'll say it: school gardening programs are the trend these days (a good one albeit!) and its hard to find a neighborhood in our "green friendly" east bay that does not have at least one school with its own garden and gardening curriculum. What is a lot harder to come across is an interdisciplinary gardening program that goes beyond the realms of plant science, nutrition, community gardening.
"In Praise of Soil" deserves to be praised for its innovative inter-disciplinary gardening program that successfully integrated gardening, visual arts, and nutrition into one comprehensive program.
On a personal note, this program speaks to me; as a child I would play in the dirt while my mom gardened. I would make designs out of seeds, form my piles of weeds into mazes and build sculptures out of soil. As I grew older, I began to see how gardening itself is an art, and soil and seeds are a medium that we can manipulate and form into something truly beautiful.
Zach Pine certainly understood this and was able to take his passion for art and gardening and turn it into a truly amazing program. Over a 3 month period, environmental artist Zach Pine taught 86 second and third graders to make temporary sculptures from soil, plants, and other natural materials. Additionally "In Praise of Soil" successfully incorporated gardening skills, community learning, lessons on plants and nutrition, and even photography into a gardening program that no doubt has made an amazing influence on the youth at Franklin Elementary school!

Anyone up for a cup of coffee?

Coffee is the most popular beverage in the world. When you wake up in the morning, and you reach for your coffee or when you stop by Starbucks to buy a cup of coffee, did you ever wonder how coffee came to be in the U.S? Or who founded it?

Check this out, I’m not sure if you know this but it was actually goats that found out coffee beans was edible. Sometime around 600 A.D. a goat shepherd first noticed that his goats acted weird and more energetic after eating these cherry looking fruits from a bush nearby their herding area. The goat shepherd then shared this with the Abbot who worked at a monastery nearby. They tried cooking the cherry like fruit but the result was a bitter liquid. When the Abbot threw away their bitter liquid in the fire, a very nice aroma filled the room and soon the Abbot had the idea to make a drink out of what we now call coffee beans.

During the earlier days, coffee was used as a ritual and medicinal drink. Then during the end of the 15th century people started roasting and crushing coffee beans and extracting the flavor with hot water. Our founding fathers of the U.S. formed their nation strategies in coffeehouses during the revolution.

A Venetian merchant name Pietro Della Valle brought coffee to Italy in 1645. This soon became the drink. In Italy, espresso became a must every day, so the price became regulated by the government. Italy has over 200,000 coffee bars. A latte is an Italian word for milk, so if you ask for a latte in Italy, you’re pretty much asking for milk and will be served a glass of milk.

In 1723, King Louis XV of France sent three coffee plants to his colony, Martinique. Two of the plants died and the last one ended up in Jamaica. It turns out that Jamaica’s climate was perfect for coffee bean production, so perfect that by the 1814, there were at least 600 plantations on the island. But in the 1830s, slavery was abolished so there were a shortage of plantation workers since coffee beans are handpicked one at a time when ripe. Jamaica’s market crashed in about 1943 because of the shortage of laborers. The Coffee Industry Board in 1953 was created by the Colonial Secretary to help centralize the marketing system.

Today, most of Jamaica’s produced coffee is shipped to Japan, who ranks number 3 in the world for coffee consumption.

Produced by Michael Jones and Susana Vuong

The way of Life

Never have I been so interested in a Cuisine, Leaning about Jamaican cooking has open
my eyes to a whole new world. All I think about is food and health, and little did
I know there was more to be learned. I-Tal Cuisine which only follows strict Rastafarian
guidelines, consists of no salt. Yes! no salt, how is that possible I thought to myself.
Later I understood that they believe in a natural and healthy way of life. A smile rolled across my face I wanted to here more. A lot of ital cooking is inspired by
Indian and African cooking, just formed with mostly vegetables and no meat. Rastas believe in eating to nourish the body. So food that contains flavor enhancers, artificial colors, and food additives are a big no no. Livity is a big deal to rastas
they believe in eating natural to expand their life mass. How cool is that, I thought to myself, If we all thought like this our mind set would be a lot smarter. Instead our country is into making money and putting our people at risk. It's a fight to eat healthy when so much processed and shelf life food is being forced at us. What are we to do?
Just about the only thing we can do keep our head up and fight for a healthier and natural society.

Produced by: Rynesha Snowden

Global Food Perspective-Jamaica

Last Friday the healthy food department took a trip to Jamaica in our kitchen. As we all know Jamaica is known for its landscape and absolute beauty and of course it's delicious food. Well there's a story behind everything in Jamaica, especially its food. Jamaica was one of the most valuable possession in the world more than 150 years ago because of the cultivation of sugar cane and coffee by African slave labor. Jamaica has a motto the island is based on and it is "Out of many,One People" ,describing how their country works as a whole and realize you cant get anywhere alone. Many different places influence Jamaican dishes including Spanish, British, East Indian, West Africa, Portuguese, Chinese, French and the dutch. One of the dishes we made which was my favorite by the way, was the Jamaican Patty it was influenced by English slave owners. It's basically a traditional turnover filled with spicy meat. We switched it up a little and filled it with healthy vegetables.

W.T.F : CURRY .

Have you ever took a trip to an Indian restaurant and wondered what the strong smell was? Its most likely curry. Curry is actually a mixture of spices that are typically used in dishes from different countries such as India and Jamaica. Curry over time contained more turmeric than any of the other spices it had in it and it was generally used to give more flavor to really bland foods. Curry is always assumed to be spicy but it all depends on what you put into the curry to flavor it. A traditional Indian or Jamaican curry consist of Garam Masala, fenugreek leaves, coriander and of course turmeric. A traditional Thai curry also known as a yellow curry consist of galangal, ginger,dried crushed chili (yellow or red), ground cumin, cinnamon, white pepper and of course turmeric. Try curries from different cultures and see if you can taste the difference.