Is chocolate bad ?

"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."
- Charles M. Schulz

Millions of people, all around the world (including myself) rely on their daily dose of chocolate bar to elevate their moods. It is even reported that melting chocolate is better than a passionate kiss. Part of the pleasure comes from the fact that the melting point of chocolate is slightly lower than human body temperature resulting in the "melting" taste.

Chocolate is considered to be a health food with its high contents of flavonoids considered to be good for heart. Cocoa is known to be an anti-oxidant. Studies have also indicated that small but regular quantities of dark chocolate could lower possibility of heart attack.


But it could all change according to a new study which says that eating chocolates could lead to weaker bones and a greater chance of suffering fracture. According to the study, women who ate chocolate daily had an overall bone density 3.1 per cent lower than those who consumed it less than once a week.

It comes after the British medical journal The Lancet said chocolate could no more be considered a health food as the chocolate manufacturers remove flavonoids because of their bitter taste. As a result, chocolate might end up being just another source for fats and sugars :(

Image Credits : Wikipedia.

Cannabis cure cancer..

I wrote earlier about cannabis doing a lot of harm to lungs. However according to a report at BBC new study reports that they could stop breast cancer in human body.

Cannabidiol or CBD, a compound extracted from cannabis block the activity of genes responsible for aggressive spread of cancer cells away from the original tumor site. The report also suggests that it could act as an alternative to non-toxic chemotherapy.

However the authors of the report were quick to stress that they didn't suggest "people smoke cannabis" : )

Walkers crisps got crispier!

Walkers crisps got even more crispier! The company is the first to put carbon footprint figures on its products.

Carbon Footprints
Carbon footprints - which measure the amount of carbon (other GHG emissions) produced to directly or indirectly support any activity in equivalent tons of CO2 have become a bench mark. For eg. when you buy an Walkers crisp, carbon has been burnt during its production,packaging, transportation etc. Therefore the overall Carbon Footprint of a crisp is calculated by summing up all the carbon expanded during its lifetime.


In recent times carbon footprints have wielded great significance with its effect on increasing world temperatures and resulting climate change. 72% of the totally emitted GHG (Green House Gases) is CO2. Carbon footprints therefore measure the contribution of a product towards Global Warming. Countries like US, China, Russia, Japan, India and Germany have the largest CO2 emission levels with US also leading in the per capital CO2 emissions.

Walkers Carbon Footprint
Carbon trust on the behalf of Walkers have calculated the carbon footprint of a standard packet of Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps. They have taken into account various stages in the life cycle of a Walkers Crisp starting from sowing of potato and sunflower seeds to disposing of the packet. The final carbon footprint calculation is 75g.



The stages involved in calculation :

1. Raw Materials : Potato, Sunflower and seasoning.
2. Manufacture : Producing crisps from potato.
3. Packaging.
4. Distribution.
5. Disposal of the packets.

Certainly a commendable step towards the future of this planet!

Image credits: Walkers

Most polluted places..

Here's a list of world's top 10 polluted places according to a new study published.

1. Sumgayit, Azerbaijan; Potentially 275,000 affected
2. Linfen, China; Potentially 3m affected
3. Tianying, China; Potentially 140,000 affected
4. Sukinda, India; Potentially 2.6m affected
5. Vapi, India; Potentially 71,000 affected
6. La Oroya, Peru; Potentially 35,000 affected
7. Dzerzhinsk, Russia; Potentially 300,000 affected
8. Norilsk, Russia; Potentially 134,000 affected
9. Chernobyl, Ukraine; Potentially 5.5m affected
10. Kabwe, Zambia; Potentially 255,000 affected

It is interesting to note that developing countries like India, Russia and China figure most prominently in the list assembled by the Blacksmith Institute, a US-based independent environmental group. Click here for the entire story.

Just the way your mom would cook it...

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
- George Bernard Shaw

Very true indeed..! The love for food outweighs any other love in this universe. This love which has been epitomized for centuries, by the saying "Bhookhe Bhajan Na Hoin Gopala" (One can't worship on an empty stomach!) and more recently by the ad line "Hum kamate kyon hain? Khane ke liye!" (What do we earn for? to eat!)



Indian food habits

The battle for a decent and affordable square meal assumes gigantic proportions in cities. For any metro worth its salt having a sizable "IT workforce" and student population the population is much more accentuated. Anyone who has moved out of his/her home town to a bigger city misses the "maa ke haath ka khana"(home-cooked food).

Indian food habits are very much traditional even in this globalized age. Occasional bread-n-butter,pizza,burger or maggie is fine but cannot substitute a full fledged meal of Dal, roti, chawal and sabzi!

Now much has been written about the Mumbai ka Dabbawallas, known to deliver 200,000 dabbas (food tiffins) every day but a more recent phenomenon is the Mom's Kitchen which is managed by ex-IT professionals.



Mom's Kitchen

Mom's kitchen prides itself on being India's first fully professional tiffin service providing "end-to-end solutions" right from food preparation to food delivery (What a context!) Started by two IT professionals who got "frustrated" by the pathetic food quality of daily food in Pune, they claim to have the food prepared by the master cooks specially handpicked from Allahabad to retain the homely touch. Their USP is "fanatical devotion to unmatchable customer service."

The food is reasonably priced with the premium tiffin priced at Rs. 30 and the mini tiffin at Rs. 20. With the durable daals, sizzling sabzis and the rasila raitas it seems a runaway!



Interesting study

The "core team" consists of three former IT professionals- Vikram Pandiya, Ashwani Kumar Singh Rathore and Venkataramana Singanamala - all of whom kicked off their jobs. They make for an interesting study as Ashwin wants "all the Pizzas and Burger companies mushrooming around the country to ride back to their parent countries and establish Moms kitchen as a national brand."

The orders can be placed online at their website which also allows for tiffin customization. Their delivery areas cover a large part of Pune with plans to expand further with new centers. If this model succeeds one can foresee similar kitchens coming up other big cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Delhi to name a few!

Feeling high...

A recent research confirms that cannabis cause severe harm to the lungs - with one joint being as bad as five cigarettes. In the study, researchers from the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, Wakefield Hospital and the Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, studied 339 volunteers.




This research confirms that cannabis poses a serious health risk to the lungs says Reuters . However, tobacco continues to be more harmful overall because it is typically smoked in much higher quantities than cannabis.


Cannabis - the culture

Cannabis have had a past of their own giving rise to the 420 Cannabis culture with the Beatles star Paul McCartney famously saying ,

"I spent my time [in the Tokyo jail] making a mental list of all those drugs which are legal but dangerous. We're all on drugs --cigarettes, whiskey and wild, wild women. Society thinks alcohol is terrific, yet it kills. Cigarettes can kill. They are worse than marijuana. It's just not true that marijuana can kill. What about the little old ladies on Valium? Think of aspirin's danger to the stomach."

after being deported from Japan for bringing almost half a pound of marijuana into Tokyo for an 11-concert Wings tour. He later said,



"I support decriminalization. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them criminal is wrong."


Cannabis - the history

Cannabis has been used as a medicine for thousands of years all over the world including India, China and the Middle East. Painted pottery from the Neolithic Yang-shao culture (4200-3200 BC) indicated the presence of cultivated hemp. Hemp reached eastern Europe in the later part of the third millennium BC. Remains of hemp have been discovered in the eighteenth-dynasty tomb of Akhenaten (Amenophis IV) at el-Amarna and cannabis pollen was found on the mummy of Rameses II (nineteenth dynasty).



It was the first psychoactive substance (apart from alcohol) that became a common subject in modern popular music, with jazz classics from the 1930s such as Louis Armstrong's Muggles and Cab Calloway's That Funny Reefer Man topping the bill of marijuana-inspired fare.Finally, in 1937, through the considerable persuasive powers of Harry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the Marihuana (Marijuana) Tax Act became federal law and in 1956 the drug was incorporated into the more comprehensive Narcotics Act.
The history is recorded by BBC in a news item here.


Bhang in India..

Back home in India, the cannabis served as a folk standard of potency. The three varieties are known as bhang, ganja, and charas. Bhang, the least potent of them all is consumed openly during the Indian festival of Holi as a drink and is widely depicted in Indian movies. It is interesting to note that the marijuana used in the United States is equivalent to bhang or, increasingly in recent years, to ganja.



In India while the government cracks down on rave parties where youngsters(allegedly) do drugs the lips are sealed when it comes down to open consumption of Bhang during Holi.

Watch your buddies !

A new study done by researchers at the University of California in San Diego has shown that having fat friends and family may increase your chances of being fat too!

The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, says it is plausible that "areas of the brain that correspond to actions such as eating food may be stimulated if these actions are observed by others"



This is the first time research has indicated the unhealthy side of social networking. So watch who you eat out with...OBESITY IS CONTAGIOUS!

Why are we fat ??? - Part 2

Continuing the assault on obesity [and not obese people :)] , is the following article...

For long corpulence has been blamed on too much of eating and too little of exercise. Caloric intake is much more than what could be burnt off by the body. Modern easy-going city lifestyle,lack of physical effort and sports and fat-rich junk food are blamed. Accordingly most of the efforts to reduce obesity have concentrated on addressing the above issues. Eating healthy and staying fit are modern day mantras.



But looks like the obesity researchers are not buying this argument. Insisting that "something" else must have changed in our environment to necessitate such changes, 20 "obesity experts" have come out with 10 most plausible explanations (International Journal of Obesity, DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0803326) for this epidemic. (Obesity has indeed achieved epidemic status in many parts of the world)


Some of the reasons suggested by the experts are:

1. Lack of Sleep.

2. Climate control.

3. Less smoking ( Smoking reduces appetite ! ).

4. Pre natal effects.

5. Heavier people have more children.

6. Demographics ( Some people are fatter than others! )

7. Increased use of drugs.

8. Pollution (looks like you can blame it for everything!).

9. Older parents ( later you conceive, fatter the progeny).

and finally ....

10. Fat people marry fat :)

Hope that now it does not come as a surprise that many of us are fat!

Why are we fat ???

Looks like someone got the answer to the perennial query!

A new study conducted by researchers at Oregon National Primate Research Center, US indicates that in obesity the brain is unaware of body fat!

In both humans and mice, fat cells throughout the body release a hormone called leptin. This hormone controls sensations like appetite and thirst on reaching the brain.



In theory, when fat increases in the body so do levels of leptin, causing a decrease in appetite. But scientists have found that administering leptin does not reliably work to treat obesity. It is because the high fat diet makes the brain insensitive to leptin and hence oblivious of presence of fats.

The experiment conducted on mice surely works up sympathy for those fat human beings out there!

Sleep..

"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.",
said Mark Twain.


Albert Einstein, JFK, Winston Churchill, Napoleon, Thomas Edison and Leonardo de Vinci also used to enjoy midday naps. Many of us would agree (or perhaps would want to agree!).

Everybody dreams about a good nap in the middle of the day (My favorite is - under the shade of a tree after a good meal) but have to make-do with sleeping on an armchair in the office. For such sleep enthusiasts, there is good news in store. According to the researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Athens Medical School in Greece - a nap a day keeps the doctor away.

As per their findings published in Archives of Internal Medicine, those who took afternoon siestas of 30 minutes or more at least three times a week had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease than those who did not. Their study, conducted on 23,681 men and women indicates that regular or occasional naps reduce the risk of death from heart attacks or other heart-related ills by 64 %.

"We all know that the three pillars of health are diet, exercise, and sleep, and, sometimes, people forget about the importance of sleep," said Dr. Alex Chediak , president-elect of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and a University of Miami researcher.

It would be very encouraging if someone could pass on this philosophy to employers all over the world. Please don't forget my boss!