I missed the last four photo challenges…..it is good to be back and join in this week’s challenge – Blue.
This is the Freedom Tower in Lower Manhattan, the main building of the World Trade Center Complex. The tower is under construction and dominates the NY city skyline. The clear blue sky on a cold winter morning is reflected on the glass exterior of the tower.
I have visited Ground Zero several times since that fateful day in 2001, and each time a sense of loss and grief tugs at your heart.
This study sounds too good to be true….a National Institutes of Health funded study conducted by the Department of Medicine of the University of California, San Diego, found people who eat chocolate more frequently tend to be thinner than those who consume the sweet treat less often.
Researchers asked nearly 1,000 adults in Southern California questions about types of food and beverages including how many times a week they ate chocolate. Body mass index, which is a measure of body fat, was also calculated as part of the study. The participants who ate chocolate more often didn’t consume fewer calories overall, or exercise more, than their non-chocoholic counterparts. In fact, the more frequent chocolate eaters consumed more total calories!
The researchers caution that the study doesn’t prove a link between frequent chocolate munching and weight loss.
Rather, the findings suggest that the health benefits of chocolate may be linked to how many times in a given week chocolate is eaten rather than the total amount consumed in that week, says the study’s lead researcher, Beatrice Golomb, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Eating a small amount of chocolate each of five days during a week was linked to a lower BMI, even if the person ate more calories overall and didn’t exercise more than other participants.
These findings were published as a research letter in the recent Archives of Internal Medicine, and this article details the study.
Madhu, this one seems just right for you – not sure you’ll read it all 
How important is the title of an article? I would think it is important enough to catch the reader’s attention. So, I find an article title interesting enough to click on it and read it, only to find that the title is misleading. Had I not clicked on the link, I would not know what the main story was. That is what happened when I read the article titled, “Low-Income Adults Less Likely To Have Coverage, Regular Source of Care,” published earlier this month by the California Healthline.
My first thought was – Do we need a study to tell us that low-income adults cannot afford to have health coverage, but I anyway clicked on the linked article. And, was I surprised to find that the intent of the main article was not to stop at stating that low-income adults have lesser health coverage, but also that the healthcare reform could bridge those gaps! The original article published by The Commonwealth Fund was titled, .”The Income Divide in Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Help Restore Fairness to the U.S. Health System.”
Had I scrolled all the way to the end of the article, I would have found a concluding paragraph referencing the healthcare reform law. It wasn’t intentional I think, but the online article may have lot several readers due to the misleading title. Or perhaps, the writer thinks of the healthcare reform or Obamacare (as it popularly known) as socialized medicine! I don’t know the answer.
Everyone these days seems to be a part of the social media network with their very own Facebook page. Twitter keeps people busy tweeting away all day long. Every news anchor and reporter talk about their tweets. Everywhere you go, people are busy with their mobile devices. Alcoholic and workaholic were common terms until recently, but mediaholic seems to be the buzzword now.
A recent article in The Guardian reports the findings of a new study to be published in the journal Psychological Science suggesting that social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter are more addictive and difficult to resist than cigarettes or alcohol. 
University of Chicago researchers used BlackBerry smartphones to measure how often 205 people succumbed to their social media cravings or other vices. Participants in the seven-day study were polled seven times over 14 hours a day and asked whether they experienced a desire within the last 30 minutes, and if they had resisted. They also were asked to rate the desire on a scale from “mild” to “irresistible.” Overall, there were 10,558 responses and 7,827 instances of desire reported.
The researchers found that the highest self-control failure rates were associated with social media, while participants had more success resisting desires to play sports or spend money.
“Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities,” says lead researcher Wilhelm Hofmann. “With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs—long-term as well as monetary—and the opportunity may not always be the right one. So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time.”
Do you agree with the findings of this study? Are you one of these people who cannot resist social networking?
This beautiful braided aniseed bread was baked a day before Christmas, and every single crumb vanished the next day! The recipe is courtesy of a fabulous book Warm Bread and Honey Cake – Home Baking From Around The World by Gaitri-Pagrach Chandra, a food historian who is a Guyanese Hindu of Indian ancestry, educated in North America and Europe and married into a European Jewish family. A great book for home bakers looking for something different or seeking authentic recipes from other countries, with stories from the author’s life and a little bit of history of the bread/cake. I baked a couple of other breads and cakes, and hopefully will post them some time soon.
I followed the recipe and was rewarded with an impressive braid, fit for any party or for simple snacking. I was so tempted to pinch off a bit to taste it but didn’t want to spoil the braid, and this was a test of my will power!
My aniseed braid waiting for the yeast to do its drama……
The recipe can be accessed here. Here is a close-up of the braid.
