New Diet Craze: I Gross You Out So Much That You Quit Eating Crappy, Disgusting Fast Food!

We’ve all heard the horror stories about gross, nasty things found in the food at some of the most popular fast food joints in the world – fried mice, hair, severed finger in chili, condoms, chemicals, and many more – some are actually myths, but many of them are 100% true! I figured I’d take advantage of these disgusting tales of food filth, and introduce my new “Grossed Out Food Diet”! Ok…So, it’s not a real diet, but at least it may help to persuade you from eating these unhealthy fast food choices next time you get a craving.

These are a list of food horror stories that have either been verified to be true, or at least had a lawsuit filed against the restaurant by the victim, so prepare to be grossed out! Next time you get a craving for some McDonalds, KFC, Taco Bell, or Burger King, just remember this post and proceed with caution!

1. In 1995 a man in Alabama was dining at McDonalds when he found a condom in his burger. No word on whether it was a used condom or not, but does it really matter?!?

2. An Ohio man found skin, apparently from part of a thumb, in his sandwich at Arbys back in 2004.

3. In 2003 a man was enjoying a three-piece combo from Popeye’s Chicken, and as he took a bite out of his chicken, he noticed that a mouse had apparently lodged itself between the skin and the meat of the chicken. This restaurant had been cited for rodent infestations in the past – why wasn’t this place shutdown!

4. Clam chowder gone bad! A woman eating a bowl of clam chowder in 2002 at a McCormick and Smicks’s seafood restaurant in Southern California found a condom in her chowder, which she originally mistook for calamari, but soon after noticed that it was something else rubbery. She sued the restaurant and won an undisclosed settlement amount.

5. Employees at an Oregon Jack in the Box decided to “amuse themselves” one day by adding a variety of disgusting things to customers’ burgers, including acid, soap, phlegm, hair, and staples.

6. In 2000 a woman purchased a box of chicken wings at a local McDonalds only to find that one of the chicken pieces was actually a chicken’s head! FYI: Deep fried chicken head is not on the McDonalds menu.

7. A firefighter in Virginia Beach found two used bandages in his quarter pounder from McDonalds. I imagine that this happens more often than most people think.

8. A man in Tennessee allegedly bit down on a hypodermic needle while eating a Big Mac from McDonalds (this one is not confirmed to be true, but it’s scary to think about nonetheless).

9. A 50-year-old man in Houston contracted a disease called cysticercosis caused by employees using poor hygiene, such as not washing their hands after going to the bathroom, at a local restaurant. His food was contaminated with tapeworm eggs which nearly killed him. The tapeworm larvae spread to his brain and caused him to pass out and not wake up for eight days. Apparently, he was the fourth patient treated for the disease in that area within the past few months back in 2007.

10. Check out this disgusting Burger King in Florida that just leaves their hamburger buns outside for the pigeons to eat!

11. A 2003/2004 study conducted in Durban, South Africa (a popular tourist town) concluded that 20,000 food outlets, including popular fast food joints, in the area inspected by the City Health Department failed to meet minimum health requirements. Health officials found hair, insects, cigarettes, weevils and fingernails in the food at these places. Senior official at the City Health Department, Umar Singh, said “We have found foreign objects coming into contact with food, including insects, weevils and cockroaches. We have also found unsanitary conditions, the smoking of tobacco products, defective fume-extraction units and a lack of protective clothing for the staff.”

12. A 2009 video shows an employee at Dominos doing some very disgusting things to a couple of sub sandwiches. Needless to say, the employee was immediately fired after the big-wigs at Domino’s saw the video on the Internet.

Top 10 Healthy Drinks That Can Help You Lose Weight

When it comes to weight loss, substituting healthy drinks for those sugary sodas and energy drinks can have a drastic effect on your weight loss goals. Most people don’t realize how many calories they take in each day from drinks alone. For instance, a caffe mocha with all the fixings can pack in over 500 calories! So as you can see, switching to healthier drinks and ditching the “junk drinks” will greatly reduce your daily caloric intake and in return start shredding those unwanted pounds. Check out this list of the top 10 healthy drinks that can help you reach your weight loss goals…

1. Vegetable Juice

   Vegetable juice is every bit as nutritious as fruit juice but with about half the calories. Most vegetable juices are also rich in fiber which can help make you feel full and in turn eat less.
   

2. Fruit Smoothies

   Mix-up a delicious batch of smoothies using your favorite fruits and a little bit of skim milk. Do not consume smoothies with added sugar, whipped cream, honey, or other sweeteners that can add hundreds of calories – in other words, don’t eat smoothies from your favorite local restaurant or ice-cream shop and think that you’re eating healthy because you’re not!
   

3. Fruit Juice

   Fruit juices have loads of vitamins and nutrients, but it’s important to make sure that there’s no added sugar…sorry Sunny D and Tang! Also remember that the pulpier, the better. Fruit juice with lots of pulp contains added fiber that can help you feel more full and eat less.
   

4. Black Coffee

   Coffee has plenty of positive health benefits and best of all, it contains no calories! Black coffee is rich in antioxidants that can help boost your mood, improve concentration, reduce the risk of diabetes and cancer, as well as many other benefits. Keep you coffee consumption at 4 cups or less per day – as with anything, moderation is the key.
   

5. Green Tea

   Like coffee, green tea has a plethora of positive health benefits and contains plenty of helpful antioxidants. It also helps to boost your metabolism if consumed on a daily basis, which can help to speed up your body’s fat-burning mechanism – as much as a 40% increase in some cases!
   
   

6. Milk

   The calcium in Low-fat or skim milk can help contribute to the breakdown of fat cells in your body. Too much milk, though, can pack on the pounds because it does contain a lot of calories, so stick to 3-4 small servings per day in order to benefit from milk’s weight loss benefits.
   
   

7. Protein Drinks

   Protein drinks, such as from powders or pre-mixed varieties, can have a great effect on your weight loss regiment, because lean muscle is very efficient at burning fat. In other words, the more muscle you have, the more fat your body will burn. Protein is a big part of this equation, because it’s the building block of muscle growth.
   
   

8. Fiber Drinks

   There’s many fiber-rich drinks on the market today, and they can be a great tool for any weight loss program. Fiber helps to make your body feel full, and it also has plenty of other positive health benefits as well.
   

9. Apple Cider Vinegar

   Sounds a little gross, and it may be too gross for some people to try, but apple cider vinegar is a sort-of “old school” health drink that was very popular in the ’70s as a weight loss tool. Although there aren’t any scientific studies that actually prove it works, many fitness gurus swear by it, saying that it greatly boosts your metabolism if taken regularly…Hey, it’s worth a try! Here’s a recipe to make your own apple cider vinegar.
   

10. Ice Water

    Probably the most powerful weight loss tool at your disposal, and also the cheapest, is plain old ice water (who’d a thunk!). Drinking plenty of water is great for your body because it helps you feel full, boosts your metabolism, and it contains zero calories. Furthermore, some studies suggest that drinking just two extra glasses of ice water per day can help boost your metabolism by as much as 30%. This equates to about 5 pounds of fat loss per year!

Know of any other “miracle” weight loss health drinks? Post them in the comments section, or if you liked this article, please bookmark it below. Thanks!

Good Humor, Good Health

David S. Sobel MD, Robert Ornstein PhD

 

"The arrival of a good clown exercises more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than twenty asses laden with drugs."

- Thomas Sydenham, 17th century physician

When was the last time you laughed really hard - a hearty, sidesplitting belly laugh that suddenly grabbed you and sent you reeling out of control? Or you laughed so hard that you forgot what triggered it, leaving you laughing without reason? Modern science is beginning to confirm that this kind of laughter is not only enjoyable, it's also health-promoting. Laughter is an invigorating tonic that heightens and brightens mood, gently releasing us from tensions and social constraints. Humor offers a valuable perspective on ourselves and our world. What strikes us as funny is usually triggered by a mismatch between what we expect and what we see.
Laughter is an affirmation of our humanness, a face-saving way to express our anxieties, fears, and other hidden emotions to others. It breaks the ice, builds trust, and draws us together into a common state of well-being. Entertainer Victor Borge once quipped, "Humor is the shortest distance between two people."
Humor may be one of our best antidotes to stressful situations. When confronted with a threatening situation, animals have two choices: they can flee, or they can fight. We humans have a third alternative: to laugh. By seeing the humor in a stressful situation, we may be able to change our response to the threat. Humor allows us to distance ourselves and replace paralyzing feelings of anxiety with mirth. When we laugh, we simply cannot be worrying deeply at the same time.
What the Research Shows
Laughter is called "inner jogging." A robust laugh gives the muscles of your face, shoulders, diaphragm, and abdomen a good workout, and sometimes even your arms and legs. Heart rate and blood pressure temporarily rise, breathing becomes faster and deeper, and oxygen surges throughout your bloodstream.
Your muscles go limp and your blood pressure may fall, leaving you in a mellow euphoria. A good laugh can burn up as many calories per hour as brisk walking. During a good hearty laugh your brain orchestrates hormonal rushes that rouse you to a high-level alertness and numb pain. Researchers speculate that laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the brain's opiates. This may account for the pain relief that accompanies laughter.
Norman Cousins claimed to nurse himself back to health from a crippling arthritic condition, in part with old tapes of "Candid Camera" television program and Marx Brothers movies. He claimed that ten minutes of belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give him at least two hours of pain-free sleep.
In controlled studies, humor has been shown to lower pain thresholds, reduce stress and even boost immune system function.
In one study, people listening to twenty minutes of Lily Tomlin joking about the telephone company were far less sensitive to pain than those who listened to an academic lecture. The Tomlin tape also blocked pain as effectively as a standard relaxation tape-and you know which one was more fun.
People who use humor a lot are less likely to get upset when faced with negative events. In another study, students had to solve increasingly tricky math problems, becoming highly stressed in the process. Afterwards, they could listen to relaxation tapes, watch an exploration film on the Icelandic River, or see a funny "Candid Camera" scene. The relaxation and funny tapes both reduced stress. But humor only worked for people used to laughing a lot. Laughter needs to be a regular part of your life to get its full benefit.

Hyperactivity

Hyperactivity

© Dr Jacob Teitelbaum MD

One of the side effects of our modern environment and diet has been an increase in illnesses such as autism and hyperactivity. It is important to recognize that these do not have a single cause but are rather the common endpoint for many different problems. When we understand these problems, it makes it easier to develop effective treatment strategies. I would like to begin with pregnancy, as nutritional and hormonal deficiencies in the mother can increase the risk of hyperactivity and learning disabilities in the child. Although this information may not help with your child now, looking for and treating these problems may prevent hyperactivity and other problems in the children that you will have in the future.
The three key areas to be aware of to prevent these problems in pregnancy are hypothyroidism and iodine and fish oil deficiencies. Unfortunately, hypothyroidism is dramatically under diagnosed in the United States. Even the using current lab guidelines, only one quarter of the 26 million Americans, mostly women, who are hypothyroid are receiving adequate care. Sadly, most doctors, and even the lab forms themselves have not updated to the new guidelines that were developed by the American Academy of Clinical Endocrinology almost three years ago. In addition, I believe that many people have an underactive thyroid – even if the tests are normal using the new lab guidelines. Also, some doctors are not aware that even in a hypothyroid patient who is on optimal levels of thyroid hormone, the dose needs to be increased by 30-60 percent during pregnancy to maintain normal thyroid levels as your blood volume increases. The effects of missing an underactive thyroid can be devastating to a pregnancy.
To give you some idea of the scope of the problem, the effect of not treating hypothyroidism results in over 4600 miscarriages/yr after 15 weeks of pregnancy-with countless more before. An astounding six percent of miscarriages are associated with hypothyroidism and undiagnosed hypothyroidism is also associated with infertility. In moderate to severely hypothyroid mothers, the baby was also over 6 times as likely to die soon after being born.
If they survive these problems, children born to hypothyroid mothers have a lower IQ by an average of 7 points. They are also almost 4 times as likely to have an IQ under 85 and over twice as likely to have learning difficulties resulting in their having to repeat a grade. Iodine deficiency during pregnancy, which can contribute to an underactive thyroid and is once again becoming more prevalent in the United States since iodine was removed from flour, has also been found to be much more common in mothers of children with hyperactivity. Fish oil deficiency, which along with low magnesium and zinc are the most critical deficiencies during pregnancy, may also impair proper brain development in the child. As you can see, a gram of prevention can be worth a pound of cure!
Having discussed what can be done to prevent attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, let’s look at the many factors which may contribute to these problems and how to treat them. This may eliminate or lower the need for Ritalin which, although sometimes helpful, is not necessarily the preferred approach to treatment. It important to remember however, that the underlying problems may vary from child to child. As is the case with adults, magnesium deficiency is critical with 95% of hyperactive children been found to have low levels. Magnesium deficiency is characterized by excessive fidgeting, anxious restlessness, psychomotor instability, and learning disabilities --even the presence of a normal IQ. In one study, supplementing the children with 200 mg of magnesium daily for six months resulted in significant improvement. Calcium, which is another mineral related to magnesium, is also often deficient in hyperactivity and supplementation may also result in improvement. 1 cup of milk supplies 400 mg of calcium and can be helpful if the child does not have milk allergies. Milk allergies should be suspected, however, in children that had frequent ear infections. Other nutrient deficiencies are also important. Iron deficiency was found in 82% of hyperactive children and one study found that supplementing these children with iron was helpful. The ferritin blood test for iron should be kept at a level of over 40. Zinc deficiency is also common in these children. Because of this, I would consider supplementing with magnesium 200 mg daily, calcium, zinc, and iron.
Another important area to explore in these children is the role of allergies and sensitivities to foods and food additives. Because the offending agent or agents may vary dramatically from child to child, the approach that I recommend is an elimination diet. This can be difficult to get the child to do, but given a somewhat controlled environment and the right amount of bribery it is possible. In the elimination diet, almost all of the foods and food additives normally eaten by the child are eliminated for five to seven days. If a marked improvement is seen by the end of that time, food allergies are likely. It is important to remember that symptoms may initially worsen as the offending foods or food additives are eliminated, so pick a time that you can stick with the diet for the full five to seven days. As you reintroduce different foods and food additives, you’ll be able to tell which foods are the offending agents. In addition, using an allergy desensitization technique based on acupressure called NAET, a child can be tested for multiple food sensitivities and have them eliminated in 30 to 40 simple sessions. For more information see www.NAET.com. Before we conclude, I would also like to add one more critical point.
Unfortunately, our schools today often try to make each child fit into the same mold. That your child is “a round and not a square peg” so to speak does not necessarily make them a bad child. Nonetheless, the teachers will often try to intimidate both the child and you and eventually convince the child that they are bad or inadequate. Unfortunately, the child will often then live up to that expectation. To be honest, when I was a child back in grade school, I found much of what was being taught to be boring and irrelevant. Spacing out and fidgeting was a very reasonable response. You’ll often find that when your child does not respond to your or the teacher’s instructions, it is because they’re doing something that is more interesting to them. Although this may be distracting to the adult, it is often a reasonable action on the child’s part. Even though your child’s teacher may read you the riot act, do not reinforce the misconception that the child is given that they are bad. In fact, it is often a good idea for you to run interference between the child and the teacher and to recognize with the child that perhaps what they are being taught is boring. Instead of teaching the child of that they are bad, take the approach of teaching them to adapt to a system that doesn’t always make sense. To be honest, you may find that you often do the same at your job. In fact this is the basis for the Dilbert comic strip. By giving the child understanding and letting them know that they are indeed good children who simply learn differently and that they are not “defective” , you’ll be better able to strike a compromise that may prevent some of the more disruptive behavior. When it feels appropriate, I encourage you to become the child’s advocate—even if this is done secretly between you and your child. This is appropriate as many of the hyperactive children and adults that I know are actually wonderful and more creative than their peers. They simply need to be taught differently and respected for who they are.