Favorite Holiday for Food?

 Thanksgiving has passed and Christmas is right around the corner. I am so ready for Christmas day to get here because my family is going to have a big meal cooked before we all open presents. Thinking about this got me thinking that I don't know what my favorite holiday is for food purposes. Thanksgiving of course is a given. There is an abundance of food just waiting to be on everyones second plate for the meal. At thanksgiving there is also pie and other desserts just waiting for you after you are already full from your meal, but you eat it anyway. This is an amazing holiday filled with food. Christmas also for my family has a lot of food. We don't have to have turkey, which I don't really like, and we always have something different. Christmas always has a lot of desserts as well and after you eat, you get to open up all of your present, or vice versa. Then there is halloween, another great holiday surrounded by food. This food is all candy and some kids get a huge amount that will last months, or until the parents put it in the trash. I think that thanksgiving is still the best holiday for food even though these two other holidays have a case for being the best. Which holiday is your favorite for the sole purpose of food? Do you like turkey and potatoes with some football. What ever you eat for christmas and some presents. Or do you like all of the candy on a night where you try to scare everyone.

Ramen Noodles.

 Today as I was eating some Ramen Noodles I wanted to look more into what I was actually eating. I looked up the ingredients of a beef flavored Ramen Noodle package. As I thought, I found a bunch of ingredients that I knew absolutely nothing about. Some things that I saw that I had no clue about were things like Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate, and Riboflavin. When I looked up Niacan I found that it is actually vitamin B3 and is important for phsiological and enzymatic functions in the body. It can be used to help metabolize foods and lower cholesterol. When I looked up Riboflavin I found out that it is vitamin B2 and is also essential to your health. It has properties like Niacan that help the body metabolize food and Riboflavin can also assist in reducing red-eyes, if you ever need that for any reason. I then looked up Thiamine Mononitrate, which is also known as vitamin B1. Thiamine Mononitrate is required by US laws to be placed in food containing enriched flour, which Ramen Noodles do. In fact all of the above must be in food that contains enriched flour. So all of these additives actually do serve a purpose I as I researched I did not find any negatie feedback on these three things. They seem to be needed in foods like Ramen Noodles and actually serve a purpose.

Waffle House Vs. IHOP

 Today my blog will be about the classic match-up of Waffle House vs. IHOP. I for one love both of the restaurants but understand their differences and how people favor one over the other. Waffle House is the classic place to go for your muchies if your either drunk, high, or hungry from an all nighter. You can always depend on getting some great food from Waffle house at 1 a.m. and the service isn't that bad since they are probably accustomed to seeing inebriated people every night of the week. Waffle House is usually cheaper and to me the food seems more real, I mean I can even see them cooking the food I am about to eat. Despite Waffle house being cheap, delicious, and a great place to go if your drunk, they are often not the cleanest places. They all just look old and trashy, but they make up for it with their food. IHOP is also very delicious and has a lot more variety then Waffle House does. They also usually look nicer and are a lot bigger inside. One deciding factor that usually makes me choose Waffle House as the better place is that IHOP has the worst waitresses and waiters. It seems like everytime I go it takes 30 minutes to get a table no matter how many people are eating there. IHOP also seems more expensive than Waffle House is and the food is not any better. The pancakes are really good at IHOP and I like pancakes a lot more than waffles. After thinking about it all I think I would say Waffle House is the better option. What do you think? Do you favor either one?

Where to go grocery shopping

Since I started college I always seem to go to Walmart whenever I need to go buy some groceries for my dorm. When I lived at home I always went to Kroger. The only reason this changed is because Kroger was closes to me at home, and Walmart is closer to my dorm. I decided to do a little research and find out if I could figure out which store would be cheaper for me to shop at. The main things that I now buy for groceries are very simple items that include sandwich meat, water, soda, bread, chips, soup, and hot pockets. After researching a bit on the items that I buy and other popular items I found that Walmart usually has a lower general price for most of their items, but Kroger is constantly having sells and you can sometimes save pretty big if you pay attention to what and when the things you want to buy are on sell at Kroger. Kroger also has a lot of coupons that can help customers save money while shopping. I have a friend that has worked at Kroger for over 2 years and he says that Walmart employee's are always coming into Kroger and looking at prices so they can go back to Walmart and make the prices a couple of cents lower. For a college kid I would say Walmart is probably the best bet since most of us are not buying a lot and don't really care about sales and coupons for our soda and chips. Where do you go to buy groceries?

Gatorade vs. Water

 If you asked Bobby Boucher, he would tell you that water is the way to go. I agree with waterboy, because when I am playing sports I prefer water to rehydrate my body. I sometimes like to drink gatorade after a hard workout or after a lot of running because it replinishes a lot of electrolytes and helps you get your energy back. So they both have their benefits but I thought I would investigate and learn if their were studies to prove if either was a better option. For the most part I saw that gatorade is usually a better option to  drink during a workout to reach your maximum potential. Livestrongs website had an article that said in an study were they placed people on a treadmill to walk for 30 minutes, the people who drank gatorade had a "lower rate of percieved exertion." So if you are working out, or after you workout gatorade may be the best choice for you to rehydrate yourself, if you like gatorade of course. If you are not doing any physical activity I would not recommend drinking gatorade over water though, it still has a lot of sugar and if there is nothing to replinish, water is the best bet. What do you prefer to drink during your physical activities. . . Water sucks, it really really sucks, water sucks, it really really sucks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75B8gLZ8Zes&feature=related

Most Important Meal of the Day.

I am sure everyone has heard that Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I know that I rarely eat breakfast and I only know a couple people that are in school that eat breakfast on a regular basis. I wanted to look into what makes it so important and why so many people skip breakfast. Studies have shown that children who eat breakfast in the morning make better grades in school. I remember when I was in elementary school my teacher used to give everyone in the class a small, single serving size, box of cereal to take home and eat in the morning before we took a standardized test. I guess they knew the secret to making good grades was to eat a healthy breakfast in the morning. Eating breakfast is said to be so important because it gets your brain started and gives you energy. It also can keep you from getting so hungry at lunch time that you over eat to compensate for your missed meal. If breakfast has all of these benefits, why is no one eating it? I know a lot of people including my self do not eat breakfast because they wake up to late and do not have time to prepare something to eat. You can always grab a pop tart or something of that nature, but that is not really a healthy breakfast. Also I know a lot of people that are just not hungry in the morning and the thought of eating makes their stomach hurt. The other day I was told by a friend that when he eats breakfast he finds himself in the bathroom (#2) more often than if he would have not eaten. I am sure there are many people with their own reasons for not eating breakfast, but  according to studies they should be eating in the morning. How often do you eat breakfast? When you do, is it healthy?

"The Biggest Loser" - Does it last.

          When the show The Biggest Loser first started coming on TV it was one of the reality shows that I would watch every week. At first I thought that the show was doing great things for these people who were severely overweight and had given up hope of ever being at a healthy weight. The show even inspired me to start exercising and eating healthier. As the show went through seasons and my knowledge of exercising and healthy eating habits grew I began to see a lot of problems with the show. Everything may seem perfect, but there are a lot of issues with this reality show. First of all, they make these extremely obese people exercise for 4-6 hours a day when they probably haven't done that much exercise for the last year. They start making these ordinary people train as hard as professional athletes and put a huge amount of strain on there bodies. Another thing is that these people are losing almost 20 pounds a week on a regular basis. This is insane. The commonly recommended weight loss per week is 1-2 pounds. So some of these contestant are losing 10x as much weight in a week than they should. Since they are so obese it is not uncommon that they would lose more weight a lot faster than someone who only needs to lose 20 pounds, but 20 pounds in one week for anyone is ridiculous. The weight that they are losing is also not weight just from fat. Since they are working out for so long each day, they lose a lot of water in there body, technically losing weight. One contestant Ryan Benson said in an interview he "regained 32 pounds in 5 days simply by drinking water." Another contestant, Kai Hibbard, consumed only sugar-free Jello and asparagus for several days along with jumping in and out of a sauna for six hours prior to the final weigh-in.  So when they step on the scale at the end of the week to see who is above that line, a lot of that weight that the scale says they lost will come right back. Also a lot of these contestants that are now off the show have gained back a lot of weight, not necessarily back to the 400 pounds that they were, but a significant amount.

McDonald's burgers are invincible.

    Everyday when I get on my laptop I click on internet explore and it takes me to my home page, yahoo. I like to look at some of the stories that seem interesting. I saw one the other day about a McDonald's burger and fries that someone bought and let sit out on their counter for 6 months. She took weekly pictures of the burger, and on day 180 the burger and fries looked the exact same as the day she bought it. The only thing that happened to the McDonald's meal was that it became hard, there was not mold, a bad smell, or decomposition. After I saw this I started to Google to see if anyone else had ever tried this and I found that someone other people had done this same experiment. One person has had a McDonald's burger for 12 years now and they also have one that is almost 2 years old. Picture and story here. Both of these burgers look identical and look the same as a burger that was bought 10 minutes ago. They also said that the only change in the burger was that it had became hard. This is pretty messed up, if you left a normal loaf of bread out it would start to mold, harden, and probably start to smell. Home made bread molds a lot faster than a loaf of bread from a store. So what are they putting in these burgers to make them so invincible? There has to be a lot of chemicals put into the bun and the meat that makes them not mold and start to smell. The other stories that I read about people leaving food out for a long period of time had similar results with different food. One person said that a subway sandwich did the same as the burger and after weeks it never molded or started to smell. There was also the same story with someone leaving out a twinkie for a year. So what are these food companies putting in our food that make them never mold? Is it safe?

Organic Food vs. Conventional Food

    Since we have been talking about food so much and all of the things commonly unknown to the masses, I decided to try and look into the pro's and con's of organic and conventional food. The food is termed by the way it is grown. If it is grown without the use of chemical then it is organic, if chemicals come in contact with the food in the growing process then it is conventional. Is one overall better than the other? Most sites that I went to basically had the same conclusion, that there is not enough evidence to support or discredit either method of farming. They share indentical taste, nutrition value, and neither one has been proven to be the healthier option. I have never even ate an organic food so I can't really imply my own input on which option I think is better, I just know that in all my time of eating conventionaly farmed food I have been fine. One of the only things that I have noticed and is actually proven is that the price of organic food is higher than the cost of conventionaly farmed food. This is a result of the organic farming process taking a lot more work to grow and proctect. So maybe the only bad thing about conventional farming is our perception that chemicals in the growing process is bad. After more research has been done over the topic and until conventional farming is proven to be a more harmful option, I will continue to eat the conventionaly farmed foods.

National Security Threat?

 So I watched a video in writing class today about how GMO's can be related to the raising obesity rates in America. The reporter said that the obesity rate in the United States have become a national security threat and we are the only country that has declared obesity that big of a problem. The only answer to the question if GMO's are causing a rise in obesity is, I dont know there is no proof either way. I don't get how our country can declare something a national security threat and then ignore the possible roots of the problem. If GMO's are causing spikes in the obesity rate shouldn't this be something the government should try and test? It pisses me off that the government is too "fat" and lazy to figure out why close to 40% of Americans are fat and lazy!