All posts by HealthyLife

HealthyLife is a part of www.WeRIndia.com, an all India – centric website (https://healthylife.werindia.com) and is solely owned and operated by WeRIndia.com. It is a Indian nutritional portal providing educational articles.This nutritional port was launched on February 5th, 2015.
We Parents Have a Right to Know How Our Kids' Food Is Grown

We Parents Have a Right to Know How Our Kids’ Food Is Grown

BY: Ginnifer Goodwin

Ginnifer Goodwin is the star of ABC’s fantasy drama series Once Upon a Time plays both the fairy tale heroine Snow White and her real world counterpart, schoolteacher Mary Margaret Blanchard. Ginnifer married actor Josh Dallas in 2014. Their first child, Oliver, is a year old.

Credit: This article is as it is appeared in http://www.takepart.com/

Without mandatory labeling of GMOs, it’s even harder to make informed choices at the supermarket.Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make labeling of GMOs in food voluntary for food companies everywhere in the U.S.

When I thought about becoming a mom I pictured family time, story time, playtime—I didn’t anticipate all of the work it would take to figure out what I was feeding my son to make sure he was eating safe and healthy food.

For the 90 percent of Americans and moms like me who want to exercise our right to decide what we want to feed our children, this is the opposite of what is needed. Without mandatory labeling of GMOs, it’s getting even harder to make informed choices at the supermarket because GMOs are in more and more foods. We feel like we’re being kept in the dark.

The use of glyphosate, an herbicide, has skyrocketed in recent years as a direct result of the expansion of GMO crops, and it’s now the world’s most widely used weed killer. The amount of herbicide that is used to grow our food has also exploded because GMO crops are made to withstand herbicides like glyphosate. It didn’t used to be that way.

But the World Health Organization has found that the active ingredient in glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.This stuff is routinely found in our food, air, and water. We don’t yet know the effects on our kids. This is something we won’t know until scientists can study the long-term health effects of this chemical. That’s not a risk I want to take.

Parents spend their time protecting their kids from what could happen, so it makes complete sense that we would want to protect our kids from the potential effects of glyphosate.

To me it’s simple. Foods that are genetically modified should have labels that say so. That way, parents can decide for themselves if they want products grown with tons of weed killer.

RELATED

Celebrity Moms Want Food Companies to Get Real About GMO Labeling

This isn’t a controversial position. National polls consistently show that the majority of Americans believe that GMO foods should be labeled. This is regardless of age, income, education, or party affiliation. If Russia and China get to know whether their food contains GMOs, shouldn’t we?

Yet major food companies have spent millions of dollars trying to prevent mandatory labeling. Why would anyone fight so hard against our right to know?

With so much overwhelming public support for labeling, Congress and the Food and Drug Administration should require companies to label GMO foods. With GMO labels, moms like me will know if the food they are feeding their kids is grown with a weed killer that harms the environment or causes health problems. Once parents know what’s in their children’s food and how it’s grown, they can make an informed decision.

This is why I signed Just Label It’s “Conceal or Reveal” petition calling on companies to support mandatory FDA labeling of GMOs and to stop contributing to anti-labeling efforts. I hope you will sign too.

Image courtesy: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/

Author: HealthyLife | Posted on: August 5, 2015
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CILANTRO (CORIANDER) & LIME SOUP

Cilantro (Coriander) & Lime Soup

Try this soup when you are suffering from cold and cough. Gives a great relief for throat and gives relief for the chest.

Ingredients:

  • ¼ cup Toor dal or lentils and 1 cup water for cooking
  • ⅓ cup chopped coriander/cilantro
  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • 1 or 2 green chilies, chopped
  • ½ inch ginger, roughly chopped
  • 4 to 5 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
  • 1 tbsp cold processed sesame oil or any oil
  • ½ tsp mustard seeds
  • 8-10 curry leaves
  • 1 dry red chili
  • Pinch of asafoetida
  • Turmeric powder
  • 5 cups water,
  • 5 to 3 tbsp lemon juice
  • Salt as required
  • Coriander/ cilantro leaves for garnishing

Preparation method:

  1. Wash toor daal / lentil in water and add ¼ cup water in a pressure cooker along with a pinch of turmeric powder.
  2. Cook toor daal in the pressure cooker till it becomes soft.
  3. Using a grinder coarse grind : ⅓ cup chopped coriander, 2 tsp cumin seeds, ½ tsp black pepper, 1 or 2 green chilies, ½ inch ginger and 4 to 5 garlic cloves. Do not add water while grinding.
  4. In a pan heat 1 tbsp sesame oil or any oil and add ½ tsp mustard seeds. Sauté till the mustard seeds start crackling.
  5. Add curry leaves and dry red chili. Add the ground coarse paste along with a pinch of asafetida and ¼ tsp turmeric powder. Stir very well.
  6. Add the cooked daal, salt and 1.5 cups water. Stir well and on a low flame simmer the soup.
  7. Before serving add 3 tbsp lemon juice or lime juice. And garnish with few cilantro/coriander leaves.
Author: HealthyLife | Posted on: August 3, 2015
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Daisies

Freaky Photos Of Daisies From Fukushima’s ‘Safe Zone’ Caused By ‘Hormonal Imbalances’

This article is originally published in www.True activist.com.

Author: Amanda Froelich

No one yet knows the extent of damage caused by the Fukushima Power Plant meltdown…

It’s been four years since the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan had a meltdown, and since that time, countless photos have circulated documenting the extraordinary deformities in plants and wildlife caused by the disaster.

Some of the pictures to be found include some frighteningly deformed daisies in Nasushiobara City, a location 70 miles from the facility. As you can see for yourself, these are not ‘ordinary’ daisies. A resident of Nasushiobara City tweeted out the photos on Twitter with the following caption (translated into English by Fukushima Diary):

“The right one grew up, split into 2 stems to have 2 flowers connected each other, having 4 stems of flower tied beltlike. The left one has 4 stems grew up to be tied to each other and it had the ring-shaped flower.”

As concerning as the daisies are, they hint at a larger problem. Most people are not aware that three separate meltdowns actually took place around the same time the Fukushima disaster was reported. In consequence, there are various vectors of dissemination of nuclear radiation continuing to ooze from the disaster site. As Natural Society reports, not only is contaminated water continually released into the Pacific Ocean, groundwater around Fukushima has also been adversely affected.

Because of the geological formation that the Fukushima Power Plant was constructed upon, a number of opportunities for wastewater to enter the table have been presented. Once this occurs, the contaminated water will move through conduits, such as cracks and crevices, and make its way many miles from the nuclear power plants.

In fact, it may already be happening.

The deformed flowers are not an isolated case. An Australian news source reports that locals have been reporting cases of deformed animals (including a rabbit born without ears), fruits, and vegetables, as well as other plants, ever since the Fukushima incident in 2011.

And as can be seen below, Live Science published photos of deformed butterflies in August 2012. The pale blue grass butterflies were captured in Shiroishi, Fukushima, Motomiya, Koriyama, Hirono, Iwaki, Takahagi, Mito, Tsukuba, and Tokyo, and have dented eyes, misshapen wings, and other defects.

Butterflies

It is important to note, as International Business Times (IBTimes) reports, that the malformations in the oddly blossoming flowers are the result of hormonal imbalances. Few mainstream media sites have deduced, however, that radiation affects the production and function of plant growth hormones, even at low doses.

This news is valuable information, as the crisis unfolding in Japan does not appear to be slowing anytime soon. In January 2014, for example, radiation levels were found to be 500% higher than normal in San Francisco.

CounterPunch reported last month:

“On June 19th Tepco reported the highest-ever readings of strontium-90 outside of the Fukushima plant ports. The readings were 1,000,000 Bq/m3 of strontium-90 at two locations near water intakes for Reactors 3 and 4. Tepco has not been able to explain the spike up in readings. The prior highest readings were 700,000 Bq/m3.”

The report went on to explain that strontium-90 is a byproduct of nuclear reactors or the explosion of nuclear weapons and is considered the most dangerous component of radioactive fallout from a nuclear weapon. In fact, Strontium-90 causes cancer by damaging DNA in cells.

This news is relevant to the entire world, for no one yet knows the extent of damage caused by the power plant meltdowns.

Read More at: http://www.trueactivist.com/freaky-photos-of-daisies-from-fukushimas-safe-zone-caused-by-hormonal-imbalances/

Image credit: @rayon_violet

Author: HealthyLife | Posted on: July 31, 2015
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Eggless Lunch War

Egg less Lunch War

The realities of diet in India are far more complex than Westernized notions will grant.

Extract from the article: The U.S.’s National Public Radio (NPR) recently featured an article entitled “Egg War: Why India’s Vegetarian Elites are Accused of Keeping Kids Hungry.” On the face of it, the concern expressed by the writer was legitimate: the nutritional needs of poor school children in Madhya Pradesh following the State government’s decision to remove eggs from the menu. But, as the rather judgmental term “vegetarian elites” suggests, the article seems to be more about perpetuating a common misperception in reporting on India, that somehow vegetarianism is an “upper caste” Hindu ploy to make the poor in India starve. After all, just a few days before that, The New York Times addressed the beef ban issue with the headline, “Saving the Cows, Starving the Children”, complete with a photo of a woman offering a pranam to a cow.

“The realities of culture, ethics, and diet in India are far more complicated than what some static and simplistic four varna oppressor model taught to middle school American children might proclaim.”

The problem today is that the right in India lacks the intellectual resources to invest in an Indic narrative of decolonization, much as its younger minds want to.

READ MORE at :  http://www.hinduhumanrights.info/a-meatless-argument/

Why this discussion is happening? See below article for more…

2) Egg War: Why India’s Vegetarian Elite Are Accused Of Keeping Kids Hungry

India’s free school lunch program alone reaches about 120 million of India’s poorest children, and the anganwadis reach millions of younger children. So, the egg war isn’t trivial.

Read more at: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/14/422592127/egg-wars-india-s-vegetarian-elite-are-accused-of-keeping-kids-hungry

Image courtesy: https://c1.staticflickr.com/

Author: HealthyLife | Posted on: July 22, 2015
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Vegetable Parappu Usili

Vegetable Parappu Usili

Ingredients:

  • Beans or cabbage- 2 cups ( or capsicum, long beans can also be used) – Cut vegetables to small pieces (1/4 inches)
  • Bengal gram  or split channa daal- 1 cupe
  • Yellow lentil or toor daal-  1 table spoon
  • Cumin seeds – 1 tea spoon
  • Red chillies – 4 to 5
  • Ginger -1/2 inch
  • Asafetida – Need in very small quantity ( a pinch)
  • Curry leaves – 7-8 leaves
  • Cilantro (coriander) – 1/4 cup for garnishing
  • Salt to taste
  • Oil for frying

Method:

  1. Soak channa daal & toor daal for 2 hours
  2.  Cut beans or preferred vegetables to small size
  3.  In a pan heat oil, add seasoning ingredients like mustard, little hing, curry leaves and cook cut vegetables and transfer to a bowl.
  4. Using a grinder grind soaked daal along with cumin, ginger, red chilies, asafetida and salt by adding little water.
  5. In the pan add one and half tablespoon of oil and heat the oil. To heated oil add the grinded mixture. And slowly stir the mixture in oil. Daal mix will cook in the oil well and forms small lumps (similar to upma)*.
  6.  Allow cooked daal to cool and add cut vegetables to this daal mix and mix well.
  7.  Add little lemon juice, garnish with coriander leaves
  8. Serve the daal usli with chapatti, rice or poori.

*Alternatively to cook daal one can use steam. Transfer freshly grinded daal mix to a cooker utensil and steam cook for 10 minutes. Once the daal cooked allow it to cool and break the daal to small lumps.

Image courtesy : https://anubala29blog.files.wordpress.com/

Author: HealthyLife | Posted on: July 20, 2015
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FDA Rejects Several Snack Products From India for Contaminants

FDA Rejects Several Snack Products From India for Contaminants

Haldiram’s top list of rejected items :The move comes as global food corporation Nestlé has been subjected to a nationwide ban in India of its Maggi noodles that have allegedly tested for high levels of lead. According to a Wall Street Journal report, more than half of all the snack products that were tested and then blocked from sale in the US in 2015 were from India. Indian products led the world in snack rejects in 2014 as well.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rejected a number of snack imports made by Indian company Haldiram Snacks for concerns over high levels of pesticides, mold and bacteria. FDA first found pesticides in Haldiram’s products in September 2014 and has since refused imports of the company’s products 86 times. Among the products rejected have been Haldiram brand cookies, biscuits and wafers.

For the month February 2015, the FDA website lists out various Haldiram products under its snacks category in an ‘Import Refusal Report’ which lists refusal actions taken by the FDA against imported products.

The charge statement for every rejected Haldiram’s product reads: “The article is subject to refusal of admission pursuant to section 801(a)(3) in that it appears to be adulterated because it contains a pesticide chemical, which is in violation of section 402(a)(2)(B).”

The FDA website also lists out Nestle India products under its noodles and macaroni section of import refusal report. The FDA charges Nestle noodle products of misbranding. “The label fails to declare all major food allergens present in the product, as required by section 403(w)(1),” one of the charges reads. Other charges also say that the article labeling fails to “bear required nutrition information.”

This is how a table for rejected Haldiram’s product looks at the FDA website 

Manufacturer FEI 3009445869
Manufacturer Name Haldiram Snacks Pvt. Ltd.
Manufacturer Address line 1 C-3, Sector- 67
Manufacturer Address line 2
Manufacturer’s City Noida
Manufacturer Province/State Uttar Pradesh
Manufacturer Country/Area India
Product Code 07BGH99
FDA Product Description:FRIED SNACK FOODS, N.E.C.

Read more at :
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/06/fda-rejects-several-snack-products-from-india-for-contaminants/#.Vah4GPlViko

http://www.firstpost.com/world/india-made-food-products-face-usfda-heat-haldirams-top-list-of-rejected-items-2297850.html

Imagecourtesy: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TAtKvcVx50I/maxresdefault.jpg

Author: HealthyLife | Posted on: July 17, 2015
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Juicing Vs. Smoothies

Which one is better? Juicing Vs. Smoothies

If you are looking to add liquid nutrition to your regimen, fresh juices and smoothies both offer nutritional benefits. Each, however, has distinct advantages and drawbacks. When you want to boost your intake of fresh vegetables and fruits, juicing is a good way to achieve that goal. If you need an on-the-go meal or snack that provides nutrients to keep you feeling full, smoothies are an excellent choice

Advantage of juicing:

The top reason to juice is to increase your intake of fresh produce. Vegetables and fruits supply the body with a wealth of vitamins and minerals that help boost immunity and fight oxidative stress in the body. Juicing also affords you an opportunity to experiment with vegetables you might not normally consume or know how to use in recipes, like kale or beets, which are bursting with nutrients such as vitamin K and B vitamins. Juicing process makes the nutrients in produce more readily available because your body does not have to break down the food before absorbing the nutrients.

Considerations about Juicing:

Juicing strips most of the fiber content from vegetables and fruits. The Institute of Medicine’s recommended daily amount of fiber is 25 grams or more, depending on gender and age, but the average American gets only 15 grams a day, says the Harvard School of Public Health. Because the produce used to make fresh juice will not count toward your fiber intake, you’ll need to make sure you are getting enough fiber from other daily servings of vegetables and fruits. Juice is also not a meal replacement, since it is not a significant source of protein, and protein and fiber are the nutrients needed to fill you up.   You will need to invest in a juicer to start juicing, which is an added expense.

Advantages of Smoothies:

Just an ordinary blender will do good smoothie job. Given the right ingredients, you can easily make a light, nutritious meal with a smoothie by combining fruits and vegetables with a source of protein, such as soy milk, low-fat yogurt or a scoop of protein powder. As with juicing, making smoothies allows you to blend foods you might not think of combining.  You will retain the fiber in fruits and vegetables when you make a smoothie, and you can add more beneficial fiber and heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids by tossing in a few tablespoons of flaxseed or chia seeds. The fiber and protein in a smoothie add up to a satisfying meal or snack.

Considerations about Smoothies:

For the most nutritious smoothies, aim for a mix of fruit, vegetables, healthy fat and protein, which can help you lose or maintain weight. Remember adding extra sweet, honey, ice cream, sugar can increase your sugar level.

Reference source:

http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/
http://www.incrediblesmoothies.com/

Image source:

http://i00.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto

Author: HealthyLife | Posted on: July 8, 2015
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Mango-Orange Ginger Green

Mango-Orange Ginger Green Smoothie Recipe

Here is a healthy smoothie recipe for all those who love extra zing in their smoothie. The main ingredients have lot of health benefits.
Mango: Mango fruit is rich in pre-biotic dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, and poly-phenolic flavonoid antioxidant compounds. It is King of all fruits.

Oranges: Oranges provide lots of health benefits. Important one is it is an excellent source of vitamin C (provides 53.2 mg per 100 g, about 90% of DRI); Vitamin C is a powerful natural antioxidant.

Ginger: Many of us know the benefit of ginger. It is an anti-inflammatory agent. A preliminary study at University of Michigan Comprehensive cancer Center revealed that ginger caused ovarian cancer cells to die. Further, the way in which the cells died suggests ginger may avoid the problem common in ovarian cancer of cells becoming resistant to standard treatments.
How to prepare smoothie using these three fruits? It is simple and easy….

Ingredients: (For serving Size: One)

• 1 mango, peeled and pitted
• 2 oranges, peeled and deseeded
• 3 cups romaine lettuce, chopped
• 2 cups baby spinach
• 1/2 inch of fresh ginger root, grated or sliced
• 2 tablespoons of chia seeds, soaked for 20 minutes
• 8 ounces of filtered water

Start by adding the liquid to your blender followed by the soft fruit. Add the greens to your blender last. Blend on high for 30 seconds or until the smoothie is creamy.

Nutrition Information:

• Calories: 355
• Fat: 4g
• Protein: 9g
• Carbohydrates: 82.3g
• Fiber: 16.5
• Calcium: 24% RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance)
• Iron: 4.2mg
• Folate: 514 mcg
• Vitamin A: 152% RDA
• Vitamin C: 372% RDA

This smoothie is also a rich source of folate, vitamin B1 – B6, vitamin E, vitamin K, copper, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium and zinc.

Image source: Wishfulchef.cdn.kinsta.com

Author: HealthyLife | Posted on:
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