Lunchboxes 'lack fruit and veg'

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
2 October 2011 Last updated at 23:07 GMT Kate Mendoza: "Eating healthily can reduce people's chances of getting diseases like cancer"

Parents are failing to put enough fruit and veg into their children's packed lunches, health experts have warned.

The School Food Trust, which examined 3,500 packed lunches in England in 2009, says about 40% of lunchboxes do not contain any fruit or vegetables, compared with 10% of school dinners.

It said parents should consider switching to school meals.

Meanwhile, the World Cancer Research Fund has set up a website to give parents advice on healthier lunchboxes.

It says the same sort of changes as those made when TV chef Jamie Oliver championed school dinners are now needed.

It wants parents to ensure their children's packed lunches always contain at least two portions of fruits and vegetables.

'Missed opportunity'

WCRF head of education Kate Mendoza said: "There is no doubt Jamie Oliver helped achieve great things for the food served in school canteens. But as the nutritional content of school canteen meals has improved, the healthiness of the content of lunchboxes has been left behind.

Continue reading the main story

Parents could spend almost eight days a year making packed lunches that meet the national standards for school food”

End Quote Patricia Mucavele, School Food Trust "It is disappointing that children are going to school with lunchboxes that are not playing their part in helping to encourage the kind of healthy diet that is so important for their future.

"This is why we want to get across the message to parents that including a piece of fruit or using a portion of salad as a filling for a sandwich are positive things they can do for their children's health.

"It can sometimes be difficult for parents to control what their children eat, particularly if they are passing shops on the way home from school or visiting their friends. But parents can influence what is in their packed lunches and the fact that not all of them are doing so is a missed opportunity."

She said they were aiming to advise parents about healthy options - rather than telling them what not to put in as has happened in the past.

Patricia Mucavele, research and nutrition manager at the School Food Trust, which offers its own advice on packed lunches, said, "School lunches are now the most nutritious choice for children and young people.

"Packed lunches aren't as nutritious as school meals - they are typically higher in saturated fat, sugar and salt, and often contain foods that can't be provided in schools, such as sweets and salted snacks.

Continue reading the main story Butternut squash soup with wholegrain breadCous cous with roasted vegetables and chickpeasWholegrain pasta salad with tomatoes, green beans and sweetcorn in green pesto sauceLow-fat cream cheese on wholegrain cracker with grapesCarrot and cucumber sticksDried fruits"Making healthy packed lunches that give children the variety they need in their diet takes a lot of time and effort.

"We have previously estimated that parents could spend almost eight days a year making packed lunches that meet the national standards for school food.

"And when you look at how the prices compare, it gives parents wanting to give their children good food, and save time and money, something to think about."

The trust's 2009 Primary School Food Survey, included an in-depth look at the contents of almost 3,500 packed lunches across 135 schools in England.

It found 58% of those with packed lunches had items that could count towards their "five a day" fruit and vegetable target, compared with over 90% of those eating school meals.

Debt Financing

Career Advisor

Read More

Scent Of Rotten Fruit Signals Sex, At Least For Fruit Flies

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
digicla/Flickr Waitin' on a lady

If you're into sexual chemistry, set an aging banana peel or apple core out on your kitchen counter, pull up a chair, and wait — for the fruit flies.

If you are squeamish about the fruit you eat, you may want to stop reading here. Otherwise, here's the skinny about fruit flies: They like to mate ON fruit. Or whatever else that's on the fruit-fly version of the nutrition pyramid (or whatever geometric thingie the USDA is shoving its food groups into nowadays). Editor's Note: Chris, it's a plate. Try to keep up.

Scientists certainly knew about the fruit fly's mating rituals. But now they think they know why they're into fruit so much. It's the smell.

 

Female fruit flies produce pheromones — biochemicals that affect behavior in lots of insects and animals too — to attract males. But researchers have discovered that the brain circuits in male fruit flies that detect the female's come-hither chemical are activated FIRST by aromatic chemicals in fruit. (OK, if you have to know, it's phenylacetic acid and phenylacetaldehyde in the fruit.)

Why is this? Well, usually there's some good reason for complicated animal or insect behavior (unlike most human behavior, I'm afraid). In this case, researchers led by Richard Benton at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, say it's to the fruit flies advantage to mate where they eat. It offers an immediate and beneficial place to lay eggs. They're born in a horn of plenty.

People have been known to use food as an aphrodisiac, too. Food won over Albert Finney in the movie Tom Jones, and cast a spell on an entire family in Like Water For Chocolate.

If you want to read more about fly love and the importance of food, you can read all about it in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Read More

Q&A: Key answers about listeria in fruit

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Some questions consumers may have about listeria in cantaloupes.

Q: What is listeria?

A: Listeria is a hardy bacteria found in soil and water that can be carried by animals. It is often found in processed meats because it can contaminate a processing facility and stay there for a long period of time. It is also common in unpasteurized cheeses and unpasteurized milk. It is less common in produce like cantaloupe, but there have been a couple of other listeria outbreaks in fruits and vegetables in recent years. When a person contracts the disease, it can cause fever, muscle aches, gastrointestinal symptoms and even death. One in five people who have listeria can die.

Q: Am I at risk?

A: Listeria generally only affects the elderly, people with compromised immune systems, pregnant women and newborns whose mothers were infected before birth. The median age of victims in this outbreak is 78 years old. Healthy, younger adults and most children can usually consume listeria with no ill effects or mild illness.

Q: So can I eat cantaloupe?

A: You should avoid cantaloupe from Jensen Farms, the Colorado grower that distributed the tainted fruit.

Q: How do I know if I have a cantaloupe from Jensen Farms?

A: The recalled cantaloupe may be labeled "Colorado Grown," ''Distributed by Frontera Produce," ''Jensenfarms.com" or "Sweet Rocky Fords." It may also be labeled "USA." Not all of the recalled cantaloupes are labeled with a sticker, the Food and Drug Administration said, so it may be hard to tell. Neither the government nor Jensen Farms has released a list of retailers who sold the fruit, so health officials advise consumers ask retailers about the origin of their cantaloupe.

Q: I think I may have had one of the contaminated cantaloupes in my home. But I'm not sure. What should I do?

A: The government's motto is "when in doubt, throw it out." And if you think you had tainted fruit in your home, clean and sanitize all surfaces it may have touched.

Q: I scrub all of my fruits and vegetables before I eat them. So I am okay, right?

A: Scrubbing is never a bad idea, but it may not rid produce of all contaminants, especially on cantaloupe which has a thick, rough skin with a lot of places for pathogens to hide. Health officials think people may have been sickened when people cut into their cantaloupes, bringing listeria on the outside of the fruit to the inside. If you think you may have a tainted cantaloupe in your house, the best recourse is to throw it out.

Q: It looks like the cantaloupes weren't even shipped to my state. Should I still be concerned?

A: The FDA said Jensen Farms shipped to 25 states, but it may have been resold in other states. Illnesses have been discovered in several states where cantaloupes weren't shipped, including in Maryland where a person died.

Q: Why have there been so many deaths?

A: Listeria is less well-known than other pathogens like salmonella and E. coli, which cause many more illnesses in tainted food every year. But listeria is more deadly. One in five people who contract it can die.

Q: When is this outbreak going to be over?

A: FDA and CDC officials said Wednesday that they expect the number of illnesses and even deaths to rise through October. Listeria has an incubation period of a month or more, so people who ate contaminated fruit last week may not see illnesses until next month.

Associated Press

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Read More

How will a small red fruit taste wonders for ' taste hikers '

Courtesy of Keiko Abe

The miracle fruit from West Africa has a chemical, which binds and increases the sweet taste receptors in the acidic food.

A small crimson Berry from West Africa discovered lemon lemonade by Westerners nearly three centuries ago and vinegar in cider, with at least as far as the tongue can make is concerned.

Makes the chemical Miraculin in "Miracle fruit," known as the Berry, sour things immediately eaten afterwards sweet and taste sweet things taste super sweet. It has inspired and one small counter-culture "taste trippers", who come to it (or a tablet that contains it) Pan on their tongues and then sample a parade of food to his mind-bending properties to present.

But how it works, and, even more importantly, how it cool party trick to potential weapon against obesity, go may be little understood, so far.

 

In a paper in the proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, a group of Japanese chemist palate explain kidnapped as Miraculin.

Keiko Abe, Professor of biological chemistry at the University of Tokyo, and principal author of the paper, says Miraculin receptor binds tightly to sweet taste and then she slides at full speed, only if pH in the mouth starts to delete - sour in the acidic range from something as when you an immature strawberry or lime food. Miraculin that bind is so tight that the effect lasts 1-2 hours.

Miraculin Suss receptors that influence is so great, it turns out, there may be other sweet push-out. "If sweet substances are present in the mouth together, it is likely that the Miraculin monopolized almost the sweet taste receptor," Abe says the salt.

It was the first time the fruit, 1989 Aß, Abe says, she "surprised and thrilled" by the fruit makes - so enthused that they deleted what to she worked to investigate Miraculin.

But Abe is by far the only in the Miraculin honeyed vices caught. A number of chefs have also experimented with miracle fruit, both to entertain Diners and diabetics and under nourished.

In Boston designed school of culinary arts a flavor stumble Chief Eliana Hussain at Cambridge menu for mystery this year to meet, a group of adventurous Diners. Seth Resler, founder, says the 8-course menu including dishes like Citrus Salad with mint and yogurt and crazy from shrimp and strawberries.

"It was unusual," says Resler. "The strawberry tasted like they were dipped in icing sugar, different during the shrimp taste not." "The best thing to do is everything trying before and after, because the flavors can change much in only an hour."

Chicago Chef Homaro Cantu, co-host of the Discovery Channel show future food has taken over even a fondness for miracle fruit. He and pastry chef Ben Roche to work a miracle Berry diet book with desserts that Wired reports contain no sugar, and they offer their latest restaurant, iNG.

You also say it could against hunger makes nutritious is used but inedible plants such as grasses, taste good to people, the difficulties in cultivation or purchase of other types of food.

Japanese food chemist is Abe to agree the Miraculin can be taken, to work outside of the taste, the redemption of the world. Could it be a no calorie sweetener for patients with diabetes, obesity and other metabolic syndromes, she says.

But for all these good intentions, price could be an obstacle. Mberry, a company that tried the miracle fruit anger, cash in fees $42 for only 10 fresh berries (shipping). This is unfortunately no wonder.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Read More