Nutrition...Music and Science

Here is a rap on, "healthy food."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWTYyx6PLZY&NR=1

---Post under development---
More later.

BMI calculator for adults from the CDC

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"Disclaimer

"Placement of the CDC.gov widget or gadget is to be used only as a marker to the CDC.gov site and a channel for CDC.gov content. The use of a widget, gadget or link does not indicate any form of endorsement or approval from CDC, the Coordinating Center for Health Information and Service, the National Center for Health Marketing, or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services."

BMI For Adults Widget

Nutrition Club and Information. Response here supports this science education blog

Science and Nutrition in Boston...News from Betsy Bragg

NEWS ALERT You Can Help Feed our Children A Healthy Future "Optimum Health for Kids" was launched by Optimum Health Solution (a 501c3 non profit organization dedicated to eliminating chronic disease, malnutrition and obesity in children) on October 26, 2009 at the Martin Luther King Jr. K-8 School in Dorchester. This program, based on the Hippocrates Health Institute approach, addresses the most important aspects of physical health: healthy whole food, exercise, psycho-emotional support and detoxification. As part of the program, the teachers will receive pre and post personal health assessments to show improvements in their own health while following the program. They will also receive training to implement the program within their classrooms and will earn 30 Professional Development Points. Their lesson plans and videos will be posted on www.optimumhealthsolution.org to give access to teachers for use in classrooms worldwide. Upon completion of the course, Optimum Health Solution will assist the teachers, students and community with the planting of raised organic gardens. To date, thanks to your contributions, half the funds have been raised through the Optimum Health Solution "Life Force Energy" classes, Dinner Speaker Series and sales of health products. All are welcome to attend our events and to sign up for our newsletter. For more information please visit www.optimumhealthsolution.org/blog Your donations to this program are needed and appreciated as well as tax deductible. Please make donations on line at www.optimumhealthsolution.org/donate.htm. Or You Can Help Raise Funds By You and your friends buying tickets to the Dinner Speaker events. Two of our speakers, Nathan Batallion Dec 1and Brenda Cobb March 15, are willing to pay all their expenses and donate their fee to the Martin Luther King, Jr. K-8 School projects Nathan Batalion, ND, international lecturer, will be featured Tuesday, December 1 at the Optimum Health Solution~Raw New England Dinner Speaker Series on the topic of REVERSING THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS In addition Aimee Perrin will be presenting one of her fantastic food demos. Brenda Cobb will only come if 100 tickets have been purchased for her March 16 event by December 15. Brenda Cobb, author of The Living Foods Lifestyle and Director of "The Living Foods Institute" in Atlanta, Georgia is an internationally renowned speaker. Help make this happen. She will be speaking on RAW & LIVING FOODS REVERSE AGING & HEAL Stuart Reiter, Prana Cafe head Chef, will also present a food demo of a savory dish with samples. You can pick up flyers and the OHS brochure at our BVFF booth or they can be emailed to you. Buy your ticket now for only $15. You can also BUY A RAFFLE TICKET for only $1 at our booth (mid aisle 6) at the FREE Boston Vegetarian Food Festival tomorrow Saturday, Oct 31 (10-6) or Sunday, Nov 1 (10-4) at the Reggie Lewis Athletic Center, 1350 Tremont Street, Boston across from the Roxbury Crossing Orange Line Subway Station. FREE PARKING GREAT PRIZES: Free ticket and free dinner at a Dinner Speaker event of your choice 50% off a Life Force Energy class Free Organic Annie's Fresh Tastes for Breakfast Free Life Force by Brian Clement Free DVD "Yoga in the Garden of Serenity with Kathleen Anderson". Also to raise funds, SCHEDULE A HEALTH ASSESSMENT on Tuesdays Nov. 5 or Nov. 10.On Sunday, Nov. 1, you can assess the health of your arteries FREE at our booth. You can VOLUNTEER AT OUR BOOTH ON SUNDAY NOV 1 from 12 to 4 and help repack car with everything from the booth.

Forward email

betsy@optimumhealthsolution.org.

Optimum Health Solution | 337 Newton St. #4 | Waltham | MA | 02453

One Viewpoint on Global Health Care (Available in Several Languages)

Posting this link does not indicate support or lack of support for the ideas presented. In other words, the view of the blogger is not, or is not necessarily, presented.

The viewpoint presented is that of the company IBM and suggests a sustainable health care system from its perspective: http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/healthcare/doc/content/landing/2955767105.html?re=gihclshome

It is presented to serve as a discussion starter. Your viewpoints and comments are welcome in the comments (Click on, "Comments," below the post.) For Earth to have sustainable systems, all our voices, ideas, and effort are needed. Yours are welcome!

Dr-J

A touch of sugar

Cereal nutrition in the news today, discusses sugar. Here is a tip for decreasing sugar in your morning cereal, but, first, a nutrition lab that overlaps with other areas like shopping, advertising, marketing, and, human behavior.

Every parent or guardian seems to discover that children, as well as adults are attracted to ideas in marketing and advertising. In a course I designed called, Nutrition, Health and Lifestyles, we discussed breakfast cereals and other overlaps among the science of nutrition.

In one of the labs that I designed for the course, students analyze supermarket fliers for area of advertising devoted to good and bad nutrition, or, analyze television commercial time devoted to good and bad nutrition . Students quantitatively describe what constitutes good and bad nutrition for their own experimental designs. Students love this lab. I also did the lab and used my own analysis to decide where to shop. (I like shopping where the person deciding what to sell considers the health of the shoppers.)

The lab can readily be adapted to students from K through graduate school, based on level of analysis and reference to sayings of parents or grandparents or school nurses, to, references in the technical literature of both science and business.

Typically, there has been much space and time devoted to sugary cereals in the media. As a parent, I didn't want my child to never have cereals other children craved. A solution we came up with in our household was to use the "sugared cereals," in the sugar bowl and sprinkle a spoonful of that onto a healthy breakfast cereal selection. For example, one might put a spoonful of Fruit L.-Coco P.- Captain C., or other sweet cereal, onto a dish of old-fashioned oatmeal. Children readily adapt to this, "special use," of the sweet cereals. The result is connecting science to what you and your children eat, and, a healthier family.

Enjoy breakfast together! Enjoy science together!

(c)2008 J S Shipman

How can you use science to help you make decisions?

In the United States, and elsewhere, many people are often concerned about their weight, how can you use science to evaluate whether you want a macrobiotic diet, a lap-band ventura or anything in-between?
lap-band ventura

Evaluating any decision regarding your health and lifestyle requires sound scientific principles. People are often aware of processes of scientific method(s). Some students, and grown-ups, too, will think of these methods in science class, but forget to use them in every day life. Making sound decisions leads to better health and improved longevity.

Across grades K-12, researchers have focused on ways that students investigate, model, discuss, and understand increasingly sophisticated mathematics and science concepts. Source: http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/ncisla/research/. Accessed December 28, 2007.

Because of global warming, alternative energy, water use and other complicated social and environmental issues, people need to rely on basic science skills like evaluating data.
As a result of the societal and personal needs, decision making is being increasingly included in school curricula, for example, http://earthsys.ag.ohio-state.edu/Decision/aboutdm.htm, Ohio Sea Grant's education project for development of electronic curricula for decision making using Great Lakes data.
But, it takes more than "book-learning" or even internet-learning to make decisions. Higher order thinking skills are essential. Let's look at a sample set of educational standards on this topic:

National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)

# Standard 6: Technology Problem-solving and Decision-making Tools
* Students use technology resources for solving problems and making informed decisions.
* Students employ technology in the development of strategies for solving problems in the real world.
Source: http://www.k12science.org/curriculum/weatherproj/teacher_curriculumstandards.html. Accessed December 28, 2007. The standards, like the ones shown above, often suggest the end result for students. But how do they get there? How do we, adults, get there when we make decisions? Whether picking shampoo, or choosing the best presidential candidate, whether selecting a diet, exercise routine or surgery, we (students and mentors alike) need good decision making skills. We need to think deeply.

I have found that encouraging high school students to use the HOT Skills wheel has helped them to develop the skills necessary to be able to make decisions well. What are HOT Skills?

Let's look at HOT skills related to making a decision on the lap band.

Knowledge

Comprehension

Analysis

Application

Synthesis

Evaluation

1. Knowledge
2. Comprehension
3. Analysis
4. Application
5. Synthesis
6. Evaluation

Source: http://www.youngstown.k12.oh.us/pyett/thinking/index.htm. Accessed December 28, 2007.

Knowledge: Do you know what a lap band is? Journey Lite specializes in Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding which is also known as LAGB or the LAP BAND System procedure. The LAPBAND Adjustable Gastric Band is designed to help you lose excess body weight, improve weight-related health conditions and enhance quality of life. It reduces the stomach capacity and restricts the amount of food that can be consumed at one time.

There's a quote from some of the LAPBAND advertising . It tells some information about the LAPBAND. This information falls in the "knowledge" category of thinking.

Another "knowledge" skill is to "list." Can you list products or lifestyle changes that compete with the LAPBAND? If you used the internet, or pamphlets at your doctor's office or from a medical or nursing text to list products and lifestyle changes that could acheive the same goals of the LAPBAND, you would still be in the knowledge category.

Comprehension: Do you understand the ideas gathered so far? The types of thinking you can do if you understand are:

• interpretation of facts, compare, contrast
• order, group, and infer causes
• predict consequences
• understanding information
• translation of knowledge into new context
• grasping meaning

How would you interpret the facts? Could you make a chart comparing the LAPBAND to competitors products? Could you talk to people who had the procedure and to people that made other life style choices and compare their answers?

Analysis: Do you see patterns? How are parts organized? DO you recognize any hidden meanings? Can you identify components?
Application: You can apply the data when you use information, methods, concepts,and theories in new situations. Solving problems by using required skills or knowledge is also, "application." For example, did you apply math skills that you already have to analyze the data.
Synthesis: Can you generalize from given facts, relate knowledge from several areas, predict, draw conclusions and use old ideas to create new ones? assess value of theories, make choices based on reasoned arguments, verify value of evidence, recognize subjectivity, compare and discriminate between/among ideas.

(c)2007 J S Shipman. Used by Read-about-it.blogspot.com with the author's permission.

You are What You Eat

Here's a great link (Your taxes paid for it!) to help you understand nutrients found in foods.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=9673

Another link you might find interesting shows how to prevent many birth defects.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/folicacid.html

A Gift You can give

At freerice.com, you can play a game and donate rice to feed hungry people. Enjoy it.

http://freerice.com/index.php

Here you can see the generosity of the world:

http://www.poverty.com/internationalaid.html

All about rice:

---Under development---

International Rice Research Institute
People all over the world cooperate on rice research. This cooperation keeps so many people from dying from starvation. It helps us prevent or lessen the effect of plant disease on crop harvest. There is a similar cooperation among wheat researchers that is also saving lives and preventing or decreasing diseases of wheat crops. Research helps feed people. We can accomplish great things when we work together.
http://www.irri.org/

(c)2007 J. S. Shipman

Went through 80 loaves of bread brands...

To find bread without high fructose corn syrup. Please read the following article, submitted by a reader. Thanks for the post.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/341888_fructose01web.html