great post on calorie lab comparing various food items in their standard serving size twenty years ago to their standard serving size today. the information on food portions comes from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute from a quiz on portion control the NHLB created titled Portion Distortion. the charts also call out how much activity or exercise is additionally needed to offset the difference and addition of calories. example: the additional 400 calories gained in a standard portion of french fries is an equivalent to 1 hour 10 minutes of walking. that additional walking is just to balance out the excess of 400 calories in the portion increase - your body will still retain the remaining 210 calories. though the portions and calories have increased, the amount of time available in a day has not.
Tag Archive for 'health'
a recent Soil Association report that shows Genetically Modified crops decrease yields, whether it’s cotton or soybeans or corn. i found this information from an online article via Science News Review titled Biotech Propaganda Meets Scientific Reality. also greenpeace has a great post on the evils of monsanto, a chemical company with an aggressive & profit driven involvement in global gm crops. the more learn about gm crops and gm food, the more i am convinced that organic & local farming is the most safe & sane way to go. perhaps this can be done on a small, per household scale or where several households collectively group together to farm and garden food.
this 10 minute youtube video titled Homegrown Revolution - Radical Change Taking Root is a great example of truly inspiring city gardening.
the generally quite fun and always quite crazy 2008 san francisco bay to breakers is this sunday, may 18th. the race is 12 kilometer (7.46 miles) and goes from one end of san francisco to the other. giantmonster will be running (but no, not as the mighty glergg) and enjoying the madness! hope to see you there!
i am amazed and inspired each time i watch this video titled Qigong Demo with John Chang. it was sent in from brit and i’ve since found it (along with other great material & insights) on the sites martialdevelopment.com and also mind-energy.net. the videos posted below are of john chang (’dynamo jack’ & also John DiJang) demostrating his remarkable chi energy that he has developed over the course of his life through a deep & ancient meditation practice. john chang is a healer and lives in java. he is also the subject of a book titled The Magus of Java: Teachings of an Authentic Taoist Immortal. truly amazing. beginning my meditation practice right now …
Qigong Demo with John Chang
John Chang
brain scientist and neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor spoke recently at the TED conference. the speech she gave is available on the TED talks site. what she talks about it is very fascinating, beautiful, and moving. from the TED talks website: One morning, Jill Bolte Taylor realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. it’s friday and it’s time to enhance your brain and perspective on your life, your mind, and your world. please enjoy Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight. it’s great!
time to fight cancer! how? well, oddly enough through the power of jacking off. no really. researchers in australia have concluded that men could reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer through regular masturbation. wow, who knew? & giantmonster is happy to report we are cancer free! set aside some special time & help fight cancer today - you deserve it!
it’s friday and giantmonster would like to remind you that bananas are a valuable source of vitamin B6, vitamin b12, vitamin C, magnesium, and potassium. bananas have a high iron content and one medium-sized banana (about 4 ounces) contains 100 calories. there you go. have a banana for lunch please!
incredible! myaspartameexperiment.com is a very detailed website of an extensive experiment conducted by a private citizen on the effects of the artificial sweetener aspartame (nutrasweet). in short: stop using anything with nutrasweet/aspartame today! the experiment was conducted by victoria inness-brown, MA. inness-brown put a group of rats on a steady diet containing nutrasweet for 2 years and 8 months. the aspartame received daily by her rats was equivalent to two-thirds the aspartame contained in a 8 ounce can of diet soda (meaning it was less than the human equivalent of the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) for aspartame as set by the FDA). the results are startling -the rats fed nutrasweet developed tumors, eye diseases, bone disorders, and eventually died. quoting the website for the basis of the experiment:
“I did my aspartame experiment because my family was addicted to diet soda. After researching the effects of aspartame, I strongly believed the artificial sweetener might one day lead to their illness and even early death.”
WARNING: the website myaspartameexperiment.com contains disturbing images of rats with symptoms of severe diseases and and illness. you can review the setup for the nutrasweet experiment here. fyi: nutrasweet is another bad product made by monsanto (the makers of round-up, agent orange, rBST/rBGH).
if you are like me, you’ve always wanted to give all your friends syphillis, maybe some HIV, a touch of black death, and even some athlete’s foot each & every holiday season. well now you finally can! the geniuses at GIANTmicrobes have created a plush line of just that - giant microbes! yes, there’s the flesh eating virus (with embroidered knife & fork!), gonorrhea, mad cow, and so much more! with marketing tag lines for their dolls such as scum that go “he may look like the scum of the earth, but once you cross paths he’s sure to grow on you” - how can you resist?
wow. there’s crazy post on who-sucks dot com titled monstrous myostatin misfortunes with equally crazy pics of some mighty massive muscle magnification caused by myostatin deficiency. oh my! myostatin is a hormone that regulates muscle growth. too much myostatin and you may not have enough muscle mass. too little myostatin and, well, you are super buffed and strong without really trying. i have to remember to ask santa for just a wee bit of a myostatin deficiency this year. yikes.
the staff of one at giantmonster is slimming down for the summer with this hot new diet. you should do it too! it’s simple - all you have to do is eat live frogs and live rats on a daily basis and watch the pounds just melt off! yeah, awesome! you are allowed baby rats and mice to snack in between meals. it is also said to cure minor tummy aches and pains. and it’s low carb too (fart!).
today is 4/20 - so act accordingly. especially at 4:20pm. while you are at it, why not read up on 10 Things Every Parent, Teenager, & Teacher Should Know About Marijuana. good information there. attitudes seem to being changing more and more from one of ‘reefer madness’ to one of ‘reefer rad-ness!’ that is a good thing.
more advances in science and health with stem cell research and discoveries. Early reports from study conducted in the UK by a joint team of Brazilian and American scientists has found that diabetics with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again through new stem-cell therapy. quoting Dr. Richard Burt on the study:
“As a research scientist I am always hesitant to speak of a cure, but the initial results have been good and show the importance of conducting more trials.â€
my friend keith is participating in the American Diabetes Association’s donation drive/bike ride called Tour de Cure. keith is very near his personal goal of raising $2,100. so please help out with a monetary donation if you can. click here to sponsor keith and get him to that goal or beyond (beyond is good)! your sponsorship donation is tax deductable too.
are you drinking non-organic milk or eating non-organic dairy products? please stop. chances are the milk and dairy products you are consuming contain a gift from monsanto (the makers of round-up, agent orange, and nutrasweet /aspartame) called rBST - or Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (also rBGH). and you should avoid anything with rBST like the plague. although legal in the united states, rBST has been banned in the EU, canada, japan, and other nations due to tests that show it’s link to cancer. monsanto’s own tests on rats showed this but those results were excluded from the report to the FDA. and monsanto has gone out of it’s way to suppress that information, as well as suppress the labeling of milk & dairy containing rBST. please watch this youtube clip from the movie The Corporation titled Fox News Kills Monsanto Milk Story (embedded movie below). more info at alternet.org and foxBGHsuit.com. more about the absolutely evil monsanto via the organic consumers association website. avoid any dairy with rBST. support organic dairy farmers by purchasing organic milk and diary products.
next time you think of stuffing a big, thick, juicy wiener in your mouth, think about this: hot dogs may very well contain DNA-mutating compounds that boost one’s risk of getting cancer. granted, the phrase ‘cancer dogs’ lacks that marketing spark and zeal that would make one actually crave processed tubular meats. so what to do? well, it’s not so much the hot dogs per se, it’s those darn nitrates. nitrates are found in processed meats, like bacon, sausage, and the beloved steamy wiener (a.k.a. the hot dogs), as well as chemical fertilizers for vegetable crops. so avoid them nitrates (and probably hot dogs too). a health tip: when you do eat foods containing nitrates, have a glass of orange juice at the same time. vitamin c is known to inhibit the conversion of nitrates into nitrosamines in your stomach.
what drugs are dangerous according to their level of addictiveness? a new report by the Science and Technology Select Committee in the united kingdom urges that drugs should be considered harmful or dangerous based on their level of addictiveness. there’s even a handy bar graph to keep track of drug danger levels (according to how addictive the drug is considered) which is handy for when you’re out shopping (even smaller chart here). the danger levels/harm ratings on the drug chart are listed as being rated by “independent experts” (note: tommy chong & cheech marin were not available for comment). so it looks like ecstasy is the new gateway drug as it is rated as the least addicitve (g$: i told you so!), whereas the lazy lettuce is listed as middle of the road. both are less addictive than alcohol though. i find it odd that the graph lists heroin as more addictive than tobacco. i know lots of people who’ve kicked heroin, but none of them have been able to stop smoking. go figure.
it’s friday & we’re totally peaking! actually, just wrapping up the semi-unofficial week of the brain with this is your brain on ecstasy. it’s a highly informative slideshow (created by emanuel sferios & brought to you by the rad folks at dancesafe) outlining what takes place on a chemical level in your brain when you drop one of those special little MDMA pills or capsules. good stuff (the slideshow too).
for the lazy lettuce fans and big time jah praisers out there, some good news that you may already know: there is no link to pot smoking and lung cancer. zero. zip. nada. study shows no increased risk for even the heaviest marijuana smokers. neato! and even though numerous studies state that marijuana smoke contains 50% higher concentrations of chemicals linked to lung cancer than cigarette smoke, researchers feel it’s the THC connection and THC’s anti-tumor properties. there you go!
there’s a great read on the site seedmagazine about prions called the prion anomoly. i started to learn about prions a wee bit while reading about mad cow disease. this article goes even further in talking about how prions control stem cell growth and how prions may pass on genetic traits - challenging the theory that genes are soley responsible for inheritance. and be sure to click the link to the related article on prions called the bipolar protien. it goes into how prion-based disease spreads and how prions work to ’signal’ other cells.
so the recent developements with ye old timey avain bird flu - where the H5N1 deadly disease strain has been passed to a cat and now a weasel (technically a stone martin) - have been reminding me about the story premise for the movie Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. yes. in the movie, a terrible disease has killed off the world’s cats and dogs, leaving humans with no animals to keep as pets, except monkeys and apes. in reality, birds and now cats and ferrets/weasels are all capable of carrying the deadly bird flu strain. so what i’m saying is the basic setup for eventual ape domination is beginning now. just thought i’d mention it here first. this sci-fi moment has been brought to you by nothing-to-blog-about.biz.