LOVE eating mushrooms? Think twice

To all people who love to eat mushrooms:

You cannot eat more than 200g mushrooms per month. Mushrooms absorb the heavy and toxic metals from the earth and stores it. Heavy metal does not get excreted and stores in YOUR body if you ingest mushrooms, and puts a heavy heavy burden on your kidneys.

And this is one of the causes of kidney diseases.

Also, one of the solutions to minimise the nuclear contamination level after the Chernobyl incident, is to grow mushrooms in the affected areas. Now we know why.

Love pizza but have to watch your calories？ Here's the solution for you!

Carrot Crust Pizza

Ingredients:

Crust: 

3 medium carrots 

1 clove garlic, 

minced 1/4 cup mozza cheese, 

shredded 1 egg Toppings 

2 Tbsp pizza sauce 

2 Tbsp onion, finely chopped

 2 slices bacon, cooked & diced 

2 Tbsp green pepper, diced 

2 Tbsp Parmesan cheese, shredded 

 

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 400. 

Line a pizza pan with parchment paper. 

Set aside. In a food processor, blend carrots until very finely chopped. 

Take the processed carrot and, using a cheesecloth or clean piece of material (like an old shirt or tea towel), strain as much water (carrot juice) out of the carrots as you can. 

Place the strained carrots into a bowl - you should have about 1 cup of carrot. Stir in garlic, Mozza cheese, and egg until well blended. 

Using a spatula, spread out carrot mixture onto prepared cookie sheet to about an 8 inch circle. 

Bake at 400 for 10 - 12 minutes, until just starting to brown around the outside and top appears dry. 

Top as desired. Place back in the oven for another 5 minutes. 

Turn oven to broil and broil for an addition 1 or 2 minutes to brown/crisp things up - keep an eye on it that it doesn't get too brown. 

Remove from oven and let sit for a minute or two. Use the parchment paper to slide off pizza tray. 

Cut and serve. 

 

Nutritional info: 

CRUST ONLY - 237 Calories, 10.8 Fat, 19.8 Carbs, 16.5 Protein. 

CRUST AND TOPPINGS - 394 Calories, 20.7 Fat, 26 Carbs, 27 Protein. 

That is for the ENTIRE pizza. It is a single serving. Have you ever eaten an entire pizza for 400 calories? Well....now you can :D 

Source 

 

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Grilled Corn, Avocado and Tomato Salad with Honey Lime Dressing

 I'm not a big salad person, but darn I;m drooling over this one...


INGREDIENTS

GRILLED CORN, AVOCADO AND TOMATO SALAD
1 pint grape tomatoes
1 ripe avocado
2 ears of fresh sweet corn
2 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
HONEY LIME DRESSING
Juice of 1 lime
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp honey
Sea salt and fresh cracked pepper, to taste
1 clove garlic, minced
Dash of cayenne pepper
DIRECTIONS

GRILLED CORN, AVOCADO AND TOMATO SALAD

Remove husks from corn and grill over medium heat for 10 minutes. The corn should have some brown spots and be tender and not mushy. Cut the corn off the cob then scrape the cob with the back of your knife to get the juices. Set aside and let cool. Slice the tomatoes in half. Dice the avocado and chop the cilantro.
HONEY LIME DRESSING

1
Add all the dressing ingredients in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside.
2
Combine the sliced tomatoes, avocado, cilantro and grilled corn and honey lime dressing and mix gently so everything is evenly coated. Be careful not to mash the avocados. Let the salad sit for 10-15 minutes to let flavors mingle. Enjoy.

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Good cheese? Bad cheese?

Most of us love to eat cheese. It's the great-tasting staple that transforms bread into a sandwich, salad into a Ploughman's lunch and pasta into macaroni cheese. But is cheese good for our health?

According to the National Dairy Council, it supplies 12 pc of the calcium in the British diet and is a fine source of protein and nutrients - including vitamins B2 (riboflavin), B12, A and D. It's also a good idea to eat cheese after a meal as it neutralises mouth acids and helps minimise tooth decay.

But cheese can also be perilously high in fat and saturates, and some of its critics also charge it with causing catarrh and allergies.

But cheeses aren't all the same. In fact, they have a huge variety of nutrient values, so read our guide to see how your favourite cheese rates on a scale of one to five.

Brie Per 100g:
calories 319,
fat 26.9g (saturates 16.8g),
calcium 540mg
Despite its fat-laden reputation, Brie is less fat-rich than Cheddar or Stilton and has good levels of calcium. It is also a reasonable source of zinc, needed for a healthy skin, immune system and reproductive health. The soft rind is rich in vitamin B1 (thiamin), so it is best to eat it rather than throw it away.
Health rating: ***

Camembert Per 100g:
calories 297,
fat (saturates) 23.7g (14.8g),
calcium 350mg
THIS rich and creamy cheese actually has a third less fat and a quarter less calories than Cheddar. It is unusually high in folic acid and, for a soft cheese, is rich in calcium. The edible rind is rich in thiamin, which is needed for energy release and healthy nerves.
Health rating: ***

Cheddar Per 100g:
calories 412,
fat 34.4g (saturates 21.7g),
calcium 720mg
CHEDDAR is one of the highest-fat cheeses, which is bad news considering it's also one of our favourites. However, it is a great supplier of calcium and provides respectable quantities of zinc. Orange Cheddar is simply white Cheddar with added orange colouring.
Health rating: ** to ***

Half-fat Cheddar Per 100g:
calories 261,
fat 15g (9.4g),
calcium 840mg
THIS IS not only lower in fat than normal Cheddar, it's also higher in protein, calcium and zinc. On the downside, it's lower in the fat-soluble vitamins A and D.
Health rating: ****

Cottage Cheese Per 100g:
calories 98,
fat 3.9g (saturates 2.4g),
calcium 73mg
THE only truly low-fat cheese, with about the same fat content as skinless chicken breast. The reduced-fat version is even more virtuous, with only 78 calories per 100g, making it ideal for slimmers. But cottage cheese is very low in calcium compared with other cheeses.
Health rating: ***

Cream Cheese Per 100g:
calories 439,
fat 47.4g (29.7g),
calcium 98mg
THIS is about the unhealthiest cheese of the lot. It has a level of fat and saturates equal to double cream, but a calcium content of only a seventh of that of Cheddar.
Health rating: *

Edam Per 100g:
calories 333,
fat 25.4g (15.9g),
calcium 770mg
EDAM has a medium amount of fat and calories but an excellent calcium content - higher than Cheddar. Unfortunately, its sodium content is particularly high - a factor to take into account if you have a family history of high blood pressure.
Health rating: ***

Feta Per 100g:
calories 250,
fat 20.2g (13.7g),
calcium 360mg
CLASSIC Greek cheese made with sheep's milk and may be suitable for people with a cow's milk allergy. Has a middling amount of calcium but fewer calories than half-fat Cheddar and only a third more fat. However, has a very high sodium content: 100g supplies two-thirds the recommended daily intake for women.
Health rating: ***

Flora Alternative To Cheddar Per 100g:
calories 409,
fat 34.5g (8.5g),
calcium 700mg
Made using technology that swops some of the highly saturated buttermilk for sunflower oil. Has as much calcium as full-fat Cheddar but 60 pc less saturated fat and 90 pc less cholesterol. But it is still a high-fat product and should be eaten in moderation.
Health rating: ****

Mozzarella Per 100g:
calories 301,
fat 25g (19g),
calcium 515mg
THIS is a medium-fat cheese which can be disproportionately high in undesirable saturates. However, has a good calcium content and its stringy nature means a little goes a long way.
Health rating ***

Parmesan Per 100g:
calories 452,
fat 32.7g (20.5g),
calcium 1,200mg
RICHER in protein than many cheeses and contains about the same amount of fat as Cheddar. It is amazingly high in calcium and just 10g grated over pasta supplies 15 pc of the recommended daily allowance (RDA).
Health rating: *****

Philadelphia Per 100g:
calories 313,
fat 31g (19.4g),
calcium 110mg
THIS full-fat soft cheese has marginally less fat than Cheddar but is much lower in calcium. A healthier alternative is Philadelphia Light with only half the fat and saturate content. Both contain the additive E410, a stabiliser made from locust beans.
Health rating ** (full fat) *** (reduced fat)

Ricotta Per 100g:
calories 185,
fat 14.8g (9.3g),
calcium 210mg
A FRESH, unripened cheese made from the whey of cow's milk, ricotta is naturally much lower in fat than many cheeses. It contains low to medium amounts of calcium but is also low in salt, so is a good choice for people watching their sodium intake.
Health rating **** 

Stilton Per 100g:
calories 411,
fat 35.5g (22.2g),
calcium 320mg
SIMILAR in fat and calorie content to Cheddar, but has less than half the calcium content. It can also be very high in sodium, but a plus point is a high amount of folic acid, now thought to lower heart disease risk. Weight for weight, Stilton has the same amount of this vitamin as broccoli.
Health rating: ** to ***

Swiss Per 100g (approx):
calories 400,
fat 30g (20g),
calcium 1,000mg
Typical Swiss cheeses such as Gruyere and Emmental are very high in protein, with a correspondingly high mineral content. A matchbox-sized piece (30g) provides more than 40 pc of the RDA for calcium and one-tenth of the RDA for zinc. Health rating ****

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Easy and yum bacon cups!

 

What you need:

• bacon
• cheese
• cupcake/muffin tray
• oven
• spring onion and seasoning

Pop the tray into the oven, when the edges of the bacon is crispy and the cheese have melted, take it out and enjoy!

Of course, as a health care worker I will not be recommending this recipe to any clients/ patients. However, here is a healthier alternative choice.

• replace bacon with ham or macon
• replace cheddar or gouda cheese with brie

4 Foods Renamed So That You Might Actually Eat Them

All of us have foods we don't want to touch. It's not that we're picky eaters; it's just that Brussels sprouts and broccoli are gross, no matter how badly the first lady wants us to enjoy them.
But what really makes us picky eaters is foods we won't touch simply because they sound gross. That's why marketers are able to laugh at us from their penthouses with gold-plated toilets -- they can sell us anything. With the right name.

#4. Chilean Sea Bass Used to Be Patagonian Toothfish

For some reason, this adorable little swimmer, despite being undeniably delicious, just didn't move a lot of units. Because a fish is really only as delicious as the number of people who buy it, a change was obviously in order. Lee Lantz was the man to make that change happen. Disillusioned with his paltry toothfish sales, he just up and changed the name of the hideous-looking seabeast to Chilean sea bass, which, for all intents and purposes, it absolutely is not.

Dead-eyed stink-brick might have been more accurate.

Originally, the newly renamed fish was sold solely to make what had to be the most scrumptious fish sticks ever, so it wasn't the best marketing strategy. But then the Four Seasons in New York added Chilean sea bass to their menu, and a culinary sensation was born.

#3. Dried Plums Used to Be Prunes

Prunes have a very bad reputation. Let's not mince words: They're associated with helping old people move their bowels. That's not a sexy distinction.

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Nothing says "erotic" like regularly punishing your toilet.

To get around this, the California Prune Board, who you might remember as the band that frequently opened for the California Raisins in the '80s, decided to change the name of their product to what it really is ... dried plums. Great news! The FDA was all for it!
Swept up in the excitement of possibly breaking the chains that bind their product to elderly constipation, the prune board took it a step further and decided to change their name to the California Dried Plum Board.

When that move was given the green light as well, the board got cocky. In one of the most audacious requests in the history of food, they asked the FDA, presumably with a straight face, if they could change the name of prune juice to dried plum juice. The FDA literally had to spend your tax dollars to issue an official response to the request, in which they informed Big Prune that "dried juice" would be a contradiction in terms.

#2. Canola Oil Used to Be Rapeseed Oil

Shockingly, this name change wasn't the result of the public's reluctance to cook with rape, although we have no doubt that the name still would have crippled product sales. So it's a good thing that a shockingly knowledgeable public somehow knew, without the aid of the Internet even, that rapeseed oil contains erucic acid, which, as you know, sounds like something scary as shit that you shouldn't put in your food.

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"The rapeseed is coming in well, but our pedophile bushes are struggling."

What people didn't know was that the stuff they were selling was actually a contaminant-free hybrid of rapeseed oil. So, they renamed it canola oil and kept the switcheroo so quiet that it took a series of chain letters to expose the secret.
This was a sneaky success, but seriously, who's going to buy rapeseed oil anyway? They had no choice.

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Nobody's ever been canola'd in a frathouse bathroom.

#1. Sea Urchin Used to Be Whore's Eggs

The Japanese, eaters of all sorts of disgusting things, had been eating whore's eggs for a really long time. As if you needed further proof that the USA leads the way in being a bunch of prudes, allow us to be the first to tell you that folks here in the States have been eating "whore's eggs" for a long time also. The only difference is, because we have some kind of irrational fear of whores, we call them uni here, and that's a stupid name, because what they really are is sea urchins.

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Easily the third least whorish creature of the ocean floor.

Uni is a delicacy here now. In fact, it's so popular that you should get off your computer right now and take up diving. Urchin divers make $2,500 a week. That's almost as much as a good whore makes



Read more: http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/4-foods-renamed-so-that-you-might-actually-eat-them/#ixzz2U6vQhikH
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5 Ways to Trick Your Brain into Eating Healthy

The human brain is a complex device -- and we figure that, like all devices, there's always someone out there who has figured out how to hack it for their own benefit. More specifically, scientists bent on never having to diet again have discovered extremely simple techniques that you can use to trick yourself into having healthier eating habits. For example, you can ...

#5. Use a Bigger Fork

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Using a bigger fork makes you eat less food, as weird as that sounds. It's not that your wrist will be too tired to keep shoveling stuff into your mouth; it's that you'll simply feel full with less food than if you were eating with a regular-sized fork.
In one study, researchers invaded a restaurant over several days and gave random customers different types of forks. Half of the customers were given forks 20 percent larger than average size, while the other half were given forks 20 percent smaller. The researchers went through the diners' plates when they were done and measured how much food was eaten off of each of them, which isn't creepy at all.

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Why go to a restaurant to look at a stranger's food when you could just join Instagram?

What they found out was that the people who were given larger forks left significantly more food on their plates than those with smaller forks. But why would larger bites make you eat less? Because sight plays a huge role in our eating habits. We rely on visual cues to guide us when we're eating (i.e., how much food we see on the plate), since it takes our nervous system a while to realize whether we're really full or not.
So, if your senses are telling your brain that you should be satisfied, the brain will decide that, what the hell, you might as well be. When you use a bigger fork, you'll see yourself making bigger dents in the overall food on the plate, fooling your brain into believing that you're overeating. With a smaller fork, the transition from "a lot of food" to "hardly any food at all" is more subtle, so you keep on snacking well past the point your thunder thighs would appreciate.

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Next thing you know, your dining room has no furniture.

However, the "use a bigger fork" trick only works at regular meal times, where your goal is to eat until you're satisfied. If you're snacking (where your goal is to eat until your pants explode), using a bigger fork will simply make you eat more food.

#4. Look at Healthy Food While You're Eating Something Else

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Here's a simple trick to lose a few pounds: Keep healthier food around ... and don't eat it. Just let it sit there, looking disapprovingly at the pizza you're gorging on.

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You smug motherfucker.

Why? It turns out that just having healthier food on your table makes you a more conscientious eater. According to researchers from Cornell University, even if you don't choose the healthier alternative in front of you, you're still going to make healthier choices than if you didn't have that fruit or salad there at all.
In their study, they went to a school cafeteria over several days and put different side options on the lunch line. On one day they placed sugary meals like applesauce and fruit cocktail on the counter, and on the next there were healthier things like green beans and bananas. Naturally, most of the students ignored the obvious attempt to make them eat better and just chose what they would normally choose.

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It's like putting heroin next to an algebra textbook. Which would you choose?

Or at least that's what the kids thought they were doing. What the researchers found is that on the days when green beans and bananas were presented to them, even if students didn't take those items, their overall meals became healthier than on days when they were offered sugary items.
It's a priming effect -- just by being reminded that healthier food exists, subconsciously the kids felt guilty for not picking that food and ended up eating better. In other words, it's for the same reason you're less likely to curse when there is a priest sitting at your table.

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"Did you hear the one about the priest ... and the altar boy ... who, uh, enriched each other's lives in a totally platonic way?"

#3. Pretend You're Eating Fatty Foods

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You might have seen recent studies that found that diet products are bad for you, and not just because of all the chemicals that make bacteria grow in your stomach. One reason appears to be that diet soda and other low-fat products make you fat because you believe that they don't.

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And before you even ask, no, the same argument does not apply to condoms.

The way a meal is labeled is more important than you think. In one experiment, researchers gave people cookies that were labeled either medium or large and told them that they could take as many as they wanted. The catch? The medium and large cookies were the same size, and since people trust their brains more than they trust their guts, people who were eating the "medium" cookies ate more than those who were eating the "large" cookies, simply because they thought they were making a healthier choice.
But this isn't a purely psychological thing; there's actually a real bodily effect going on here. In our guts, we have this hunger hormone called ghrelin, which is pronounced "gremlin" with a thick Jamaican accent. Ghrelin, essentially, is what makes you eat -- more ghrelin in your system means more appetite, and less means you feel like those two slices of pizza were enough. But here's the thing: How much ghrelin is produced depends not just on how much you've eaten, but on how much you think you have.

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"You see me eating four pieces of chicken, I see me eating only 20 percent of this bucket."

In one study, researchers from Yale University gave each subject a 380-calorie milkshake and told half of them that it was a high-fat 620-calorie milkshake, while the other half were told that it was a diet milkshake at 140 calories. Blood samples were taken while the subjects drank their milkshakes to record their ghrelin levels.
The results were clear: People who thought that they were drinking the high-fat shake had a significant decrease of ghrelin, while those under the assumption that they were sipping the sissy-boy shake had no ghrelin response at all, meaning they were still just as hungry as they were before. By tricking yourself into thinking that you're eating more, you can stop your body, both mentally and physiologically, from wanting more food. But there are also external things that can help you control your appetite ...

#2. Pay Attention to the Size and Color of Your Plates

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One common technique to make yourself eat less is simply using smaller plates -- not just because they hold less food, but because they make each plate seem fuller than it really is, which tricks your brain into thinking you've eaten more. What you might not know is that even the color of the plate impacts how much you eat.

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Finally, you'll get some use out of your $500 "investment."

Researchers decided to test this idea during a college reunion, possibly because there are few social events where people will more systematically attack a buffet table. Attendees could get either a red or a white plate, and then they had the option of serving themselves pasta with tomato sauce or Alfredo sauce, which are red and white, respectively. This wasn't part of some patriotic theme: The researchers wanted the food to either blend in with the plate or stand out.
The experiment found that when people had plates that contrasted with the color of their meal, they served themselves 22 percent less food (32 grams) than those who had similar plate and food colors. So if you're trying to kick that eggplant habit, for example, simply throw away all your purple plates, and voila!

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Even the potent Acapulco Aubergine cultivar is powerless against color coordination.

To take it a bit further, they also recorded the tablecloths of the serving tables (which were either red or white) and saw that again, when the food contrasted with the cloth background, people served themselves 10 percent less than others. It works for the same reason as the "smaller plates" trick: It's called the Delboeuf illusion, an optical effect where something will look bigger if you closely surround it with a larger object that contrasts with it. The more your plate contrasts with your food, the more you'll think you've served yourself and the less you'll end up eating.
But what if you feed exclusively on burgers and rarely use things like plates or forks? Believe it or not, there's still hope for you ...

#1. Eat With Soft Lighting and Music

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We mentioned before that there is a reason restaurants play music while you eat -- music affects mood, and mood affects eating habits. Well, if restaurants are trying to use this to brainwash you into spending more, can you use it to your own advantage, diet-wise?
Totally. Researchers, apparently as part of an ongoing dare to see who could spend the most days in a restaurant, set up shop in a fast food joint and measured how much diners were eating from their meals by weighing their trays as they came and went.

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"Also, we'll need to measure any BMs you've taken in the past 24 hours."

After assessing the average amount of food eaten, the researchers tinkered with the restaurant's lighting and music, making both a few notches softer. Once more, they looked at how much food the people were eating. The difference was significant: Under the softer lighting and music, customers ate 18 percent less food (even though they ordered the same amount), consuming an average of 775 calories, compared to 949 calories. So why does this happen?
Bear in mind that those people didn't just eat less -- they were also more satisfied with the smaller amount they consumed. The diners rated their experience as significantly better than those who'd eaten under the usual brighter lights and louder music.

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This is why Olive Garden doesn't set up shop at a Slayer concert.

As it turns out, this isn't just a case of people wanting to get out of there faster when their senses are being assaulted from all directions, although that's certainly a factor. According to the researchers, since it's easier for you to enjoy your meal when your environment is calmer, you take slower bites and end up eating less overall. On the other hand, the lights and music stress you out so you eat more, and faster (note: fast food restaurants want you to leave quickly so it frees up a table).
So, if you're trying to lose weight, that gives you two options: Eat at fancy restaurants only, or start wearing thick shades and noise-cancelling earphones to Burger King.


 

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20264_5-ways-to-trick-your-brain-into-eating-healthy.html#ixzz2U0KjnkOP
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The 5 Weirdest Things That Influence How Your Food Tastes

By:

We never get tired of optical illusions (particularly that mind-melting one with the gray squares) -- it's good to remind yourself that your senses can't be trusted. But the one sense you'd think you could trust is taste -- nobody is going to convince you that a hamburger is apple pie.
But, as with the other four senses, your taste is manipulated by a whole bunch of factors outside of your control. Like ...

#5. What Your Mom Ate While You Were a Fetus

Obviously, the food you ate as a kid growing up will influence your tastes for life. But it starts earlier than that. In fact, the foods your mother ate while you were in the womb influence what your favorite foods will be.

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As well as the food she bathed in.

The study on this was carried out by researchers from the not-at-all-evil-sounding Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, who had pregnant women drink a bunch of carrot juice while pregnant and then while breastfeeding (with various groups changing up when they drank it). The results? The kids whose mothers were given the carrot juice, regardless of the stage when they were given it, were less grossed out when fed a carrot-flavored cereal one month later.

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"My mom only ate whiskey and corn nuts."

And in fact, the kids whose mothers had carrot juice during both stages (during pregnancy and during breastfeeding) reportedly couldn't get enough of the stuff. And this is freaking carrot juice we're talking about here.
It makes sense in a way, considering the food your mom ate flavored both her breast milk and the amniotic fluid that surrounded you in the womb. Still, you'd think the residual carrot flavor would be imperceptible, having filtered through her body in the course of metabolizing it. You might like the taste of pork gravy but you wouldn't want to go lick the sweat off of a guy just because he eats it every day.

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Oh, come on, what's suggestive about that?

But, science says you're wrong. So go try it.

#4. The Label -- Even If It Lies

It would be no surprise to find that, for instance, people think food in fancy packaging is better than something of equal quality that came in a box featuring a picture of a poorly drawn clown and Comic Sans font. That's why artists and designers get paid, it's why labels exist in the first place. But the influence a label has on the actual taste experience runs much deeper, and much weirder, than that.

First there's the experiment that found that simply labeling a food -- in this case, bologna -- as low-fat will result in people rating it as tasting worse than the equivalent full-fat version. No low-fat food was used in the experiment at all, meaning that both times, the participants were actually eating the full-fat bologna, the stuff they'd presumably eaten at some point in their lives and should have been familiar with.

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"OK, now this one has the same fat content, but I shit on one half. Go."

Even weirder, a study conducted in 2002 found that simply adding the name of a substance onto the list of ingredients was enough to make people taste it within the food they're eating. Specifically, they gave the same nutrition bar to two groups, but for one group they added the word "soy" to the label (the bar had no soy in it). The soy label group thought their bars tasted much worse. They were almost four times as likely to say it had a weird taste than the group eating the exact same bar, only without that word on the label.
And those results hold up even when trying to filter out opinion -- these people weren't just asked if it tasted "good" or "bad." The testers with the supposed soy in their bars complained that it had an aftertaste, the other group didn't. The soy labellers also said the bar was "grainy."

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The phrase "poop-like" was used several times.

All of those tastes and sensations were perceived only because they had (apparently) been conditioned to equate soy with tasteless health food. So, seeing that word on the label literally made it taste that way.

#3. Background Noise

Imagine the fanciest possible restaurant. If you never go to places like that, picture one from a movie -- white tablecloth, everyone has wine and there is soft, classical music playing in the background.
Now imagine a cheaper, family dining type place, like T.G.I. Friday's. There's loud pop music, often to the point that you can't hear yourself think.

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On top of the table full of screaming kids, making you question your decision to never punch one.

Obviously these establishments are putting some thought into what they want their customers to hear. But why? Is it all about atmosphere? Not according to science. First, when you eat in places with high noise levels, you lose the ability to accurately gauge how sweet or salty your food is. It has to do with the way your brain is wired -- continual loud noises whip the neurons of your ear up into such a rage that for no reason they stage an all-out assault on the weaker neurons of your taste buds.
A cynical person could say that restaurants with lower quality food crank up the noise so that you're less likely to notice it, but we have no way of knowing that (maybe they just think the music adds to the "fun" atmosphere).

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"One more Nickleback song and I'll burn this place to the fucking ground."

That's not to say that the optimum eating experience means dead silence -- otherwise that sad, lonely sandwich eaten quietly over the sink in your apartment wouldn't taste so much like shame. Science agrees with those stuffy restaurants you were imagining at the beginning -- if you pipe in music at a volume of between exactly 62 and 67 decibels (about the level that human conversations are held) the food served will be rated as tasting nicer than the exact same food served outside of this specific volume range. There, the music is just audible enough to arouse the senses, but low enough as not to overwhelm them (also, classical music works best). For the senses, the difference between soft and loud music is like the difference between an invigorating swim in a cool swimming pool and having somebody dump a bucket of ice water over your head.
All of this applies to drinking establishments too, by the way. Research found that your opinion of wine largely depends on what kind of music is being played while you drink it. Subjects changed their ratings of the wine by up to 60 percent depending on the soundtrack, which we're assuming means you could open a joint selling prison-brewed toilet wine by the glass, as long as you played fancy music while people drank.

#2. Your Personality and Mood

You already know that people eat fatty and sweet food when they get stressed out -- the snack food industry pretty much depends on this for half of their yearly sales. The simple explanation is that when we're in a bad mood we want to eat something that will make us feel good; the sciencey explanation has to do with how sugar and carbs can boost the levels of Serotonin in the brain. But, strangely, stress can also change the way food tastes to you.

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In a somewhat diabolical 1998 study, scientists asked a group of people to each taste a sample of artificial sweetener, and then they went about stressing those people out. They first assigned them each a task of unscrambling a series of jumbled-up words, which might not sound very stressful, but the scientists deliberately designed half of these puzzles to be unsolvable. Oh, and there was a machine which blasted a horn into their ears at completely random intervals.
After this bout of torture, the group was then asked to taste another sample of artificial sweetener and rate how bitter and sweet this sample was compared to the first sample they took. The group rated it as being more bitter, and less sweet than the exact same stuff they ate before the scientists went about pissing them off.

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"It's OK, those men can't hurt you anymore."

Does that mean that, because the stressed-out brain wants you to eat something sweet, it makes you perceive foods as being less sweet so that you'll eat more of it? The scientists don't take it that far, though it is interesting to note that strenuous physical exercise does the opposite -- when physically exhausted, you're more likely to taste the sugar in whatever you eat or drink. So if after a long run you chug some Gatorade and suddenly feel like somebody has shot you in the mouth with a sugar cannon, that's why.
And on top of all of that, scientists have found different people taste foods differently based on, not just their mood, but their overall personality. Different chemicals in your food react to different chemicals in your brain, thus the foods you like aren't just personal preference, they say something about how your brain works. Depressed people can't taste sweetness as well, people with panic disorders don't taste bitterness as strongly as others.

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Which means all Robert Smith can taste is corn.

So keep that in mind the next time you shove something in a friend's face and say, "OH MY GOD YOU HAVE GOT TO TRY THIS ITS SOOOOOOO GOOD" and after taking a bite they ask if you're high. It's not just personal preference, they are literally tasting it differently than you.

#1. Color

Once again, this is one that seems obvious at first. Of course it matters how food looks -- there are people who work as food stylists whose job it is to dress up food for ads and menu photos. But color can affect your taste buds in all sorts of unexpected ways.
For instance, it's been found that the color of the glass in which the drink is served has the ability to alter how the drink itself tastes. Thanks to our odd tendency to unconsciously associate fiery colors with heat, one study found that drinkers perceived drinks served in yellow and red containers as being hotter than those (same) drinks served within blue and green containers. Other studies have shown that the color of the liquid itself influencing how sweet, sour, or bitter you find it to taste, with green having the effect of making sweet drinks seem even sweeter, while yellow makes them seem less sweet. Take a sour drink and change the color to yellow or green, and it'll taste less sour to you.

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"Mmmm ... what is that, goat's blood?"

It's all about expectations. Ever wonder why "hot" cinnamon candies are always red? A hot blue candy would just be... wrong. Which brings us to the weirdest experiment in this article, a famous 1970s study mentioned in the book Fast Food Nation.
The participants were placed in a room and asked to simply eat a meal consisting of steak, french fries, and peas, all of which the experimenters provided. To the untrained eye, the food was completely normal both color-wise and taste-wise, which should have aroused suspicion considering these people knew they were part of an experiment. We'd have expected the scientists to come out at the end and announce, "Congratulations, everything on your plate has touched my balls! For science!"

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"And that banana has been in Tony's ass. So fuck you."

But that wasn't it. Unbeknownst to the poor men and women eating this meal, the lights in the room were equipped with filters that hid the fact that all of their food had been dyed the wrong color. When they turned on the normal lights, the test subjects saw that the steak was actually blue, the fries were green, and the peas were red. Luckily for the scientific method, the reaction from the participants was fairly hard to misinterpret: they suddenly became violently ill at the sight of what they'd just eaten.


Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19365_the-5-weirdest-things-that-influence-how-your-food-tastes_p2.html#ixzz2TpNDU1jC
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8 "Healthy" Foods That Are Bad For Your Health

8 Health Foods That Are Bad For Your Health

#8.

"Vitamin Waters"

The two biggest players in the "vitamin water" game are the original Vitamin Water, owned by Coke, and Sobe Life Water, owned by Pepsi, which should start to raise the red flags right there.
There are a bunch of other drinks playing the same game, with their light to clear colors and healthy sounding names that make it sound like they are plain old water with some nutrients added. Which is true, if you consider eight teaspoons of sugar a nutrient.

Al Pacino takes his daily vitamin supplement.

Vitamin Water and Life Water both contain 32.5 grams of sugar per bottle, so you might as well hydrate after a workout by drinking a bottle of water and tossing a full sized Snickers (30 grams of sugar) down your throat. But hey, at least that's half a Snickers less than a can of Coke, so really it might as well be water.
There are low calorie versions out there, like Vitamin Water 10, but it still has to appeal to their customer base: people who refuse to drink anything that isn't sweet, even their daily vitamins.

"Man, if only these came in doughnut form."

That means you're trading sugar for artificial sweeteners, and experts say that's a bad idea from multiple angles. Those sweeteners have some possible long-term side effects and might even trick your body into slowing down its metabolism, causing you to actually gain more weight than if you were on the regular stuff. But maybe your particular brand uses stevia, the trendy natural sugar substitute. Well, you should know it might even be more controversial than artificial sweeteners and has been banned in the EU.
Basically, you name a sugar substitute, and we'll name you an organ failure or type of cancer.

Which, coincidentally, is a fun party game at Weight Watchers meetings.

#7.

Bran Muffins

Bran tastes terrible, and therefore must be good for you. One of the easier ways to stuff that sawdust-like substance down your reluctant gullet is with a bran muffin. Unfortunately, like Mary Poppins's medicine, any type of muffin you use is sending the good stuff down with a spoonful of sugar and enough fat to choke a Japanese Whaler.

The main ingredient in muffins is cake, and the main ingredient in cake is fat. If you noticed that muffin wrappers tend to be grease soaked to the point of translucence, you might have put this together already. But you might not know that a medium-sized blueberry muffin has more calories than a McDonald's Sausage McMuffin that's the same size. Almost half of those calories are from fat. Specifically, a third of the fat you are supposed to eat in an entire day.

Damn you, you delicious, puffy pastry ... aw, we can't stay mad at you.

Switching to bran doesn't stop the muffin from being worth its weight in sausage, egg and heart attacks. Assuming bran muffins are any better for you is like switching out the chocolate chips in chocolate chip cookies for raisins and declaring it health food. Structurally, it's still mostly cookie. Switching to a bran muffin gets you down to a just under the calorie count of a Sausage McMuffin, which is not the kind of breakfast that will get your body on the cover of Shapely Ass magazine.

Or even the soon-to-be-launched ASS! Magazine.

Trendy places like Starbucks are already on top of this with low fat muffins. As you can see, they brought the fat calories down to a much smaller percentage of the whole, but the overall calorie count is still very much in the McMuffin range. Also, taking the fat out of a muffin steals its soul. It's like a damned scone or some shit.

#6.

Granola and Cereal Bars

Granola bars have to be good for you, right? Well, if they taste awful, then yes. If they taste good, it's probably the same ingredients that make candy bars taste good: sugar, fat and chocolate.
Sure, these bars all look really similar, with white or green boxes sporting pictures of lumpy beige bars and smiling women in yoga clothes, but they run the gamut from healthy sawdust bricks to Snickers bars in eco-themed wrappers.

"If this wasn't healthy, would I be eating it during yoga?"

The Quaker Oats True Delights Bar contains raspberries and chocolate and allegedly tastes pretty good, and it had better, because pound for pound, it's pretty much got the same amount of fat and calories as a Snickers bar. It's also this big.

Are your mouths watering, readers?

If you've got gigantic hands and therefore think that looks pretty big, basically it's only half the size of a Snickers (1.2 ounces versus 2.0 ounces) so there's a good chance you'll wind up eating two--or eating something else when you get hungry again. Either way you might as well have eaten the candy bar, for all the good it's doing you.

Plus, Mr. T endorses Snickers. So, there's that.

Sure, there are granola bars out there that are actually good for you and not made of candy, but they taste like freaking granola. If you want to be healthy, you gotta pay the price. Your body won't like doing without fat because through most of the history of our species, fat meant quick energy we could use to run away from a woolly mammoth. You can't trick your body into not wanting it--you just have to suffer through.

#5.

Chewable Vitamin Tablets

Vitamin C has been touted as a cure-all for everything from preventing colds to curing cancer. The latter claim was popularized by Linus Pauling and eaten up by people who forgot that he got a Nobel Prize in chemistry and not medicine. The movement was dealt a bit of a setback when he died of cancer in 1994.
Anyway, Vitamin C may not cure cancer or AIDS (that's been claimed too) but it is good for you. And for people who hate oranges or pills, the only solution is chewable Vitamin C tablets.

Or maybe people just really want to devour Barney Rubble.

However, with some chewable tablets, while you are eating the tablets, the tablets are also eating you. The scientific name for Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, which gives you a hint as to the problem.

Studies have shown that in some cases, chewable Vitamin C tablets can cause people's teeth to erode.
Dentists suggest you brush your teeth afterwards (although dentists suggest you brush your teeth after everything) and try to buy a brand that has Vitamin C in its non-acidic form. Or man up and swallow the pill.

#4.

Fish

Fish has always been pushed as something good for you, by doctors, health nuts and the Japanese, opposed only by people who don't like fish, and of course, fish.

And occasionally, Don Knotts.

However, in recent years, a lot of people have been jumping on the fish-are-poison bandwagon, which is alarmist and inaccurate. Fish aren't poison. They're merely filled with poisons.

Fish are similar to Brisk Iced Tea in that way.

The good news is you have a choice of what kind of poison you want to eat in your fish.
Do you prefer mercury? Try ocean fish. Apparently, the oceans are full of mercury, mostly thanks to coal-burning power plants and chemical processing plants and people dumping their defective T-1000 Terminators. And almost all fish contain at least some trace amounts of mercury.

And it's not the good or "Freddie" variety.

According to the EPA, children, pregnant women and women who think they might possibly get pregnant someday should completely avoid four species of fish that seem to be mercury superstars, while not eating more than one moderate serving of even a low-mercury fish a week.
You can avoid mercury by eating farmed fish, that have grown up nice and safe in a little fish farm, eating, uh, pesticide runoff. One expert suggests the safe limit on farmed salmon is one dinner every five months. Holy crap! Is that right? We're pretty sure doctors want you to smoke cigars more often than that.

"No. That's not true."

#3.

Fast Food Salads

In the recent crusade against unhealthy foods, fast food chains like McDonald's have been the first against the wall. Their clever (and mildly diabolical) two-pronged defense aims at targeting communities where the healthy eating trend hasn't spread yet and where the residents are currently the highest-risk demographic for heart disease and other diet-related issues (witness this official McDonald's-sponsored website, 365black.com). Meanwhile, they aim to hold onto the health nuts by promoting "healthy" items to the menu, like yogurts and salads.

Bacon salad bowls would satisfy both demographics.

The reason that "healthy" is in quotes is that fast food restaurants' salads are often even worse for you than their burgers. The Wendy's Mandarin Chicken Salad, for example, beats the quarter pound Wendy's Double Stack cheeseburger in fat, sugar, carbs and total calories.

Not as healthy as a Wendy's cheeseburger. Seemingly impossible, but true.

Fortunately, most fast food restaurants have nutrition information brochures stuffed somewhere out of view that you can use to research menu items before diving in. The new health care bill actually requires them to put the info somewhere visible but that takes all the challenge out of it. So let's just say if the salad has lots of dressing, meat, cheese or bits of fried food on it, the addition of lettuce does not negate the damage.

#2.

Protein Shakes

People associate protein with muscle, because that's what muscles are mostly made of. However, muscles going into your stomach doesn't translate to muscles coming out of your biceps. Your body breaks down what you eat into tiny components, and rebuilds these components into whatever it thinks it needs.

So if you needed a second set of Goro-like arms, protein shakes could provide that. Probably.

And to most Americans' annoyance, what it thinks it needs is usually fat.
Again, you have to take a look back at evolution. Your body doesn't know we haven't moved out of the Stone Age. And the only way to convince your body that all this extra protein is supposed to be for making new muscle, and not fat, is to work out like a mofo.

If you are sitting on the couch or in a desk chair all day, your body doesn't give a shit about whether you are giving it carbs or protein, it's going to make what it wants to make out of them. Except that in making protein into carbs (or fat) it dumps the protein's nitrogen and makes it into urea or uric acid which, in large amounts, can screw up your kidneys.
According to one expert, even a heavy exerciser would only need to double their protein intake at most. Most people need about 50 to 70 grams a day, depending on how much they weigh, and the average American eats about 100 grams a day as part of their normal diet. If you need more, you can easily get 30 to 60 gram from just a chicken breast.

Or two...

If you want to lose weight, it might help to replace meals with protein shakes (not add protein shakes to your meals, as some people do) but then you're missing out on the vitamins and nutrients you get from real food, and could run into some trouble in the long term. Ever wondered exactly what scurvy was? Try complete meal replacement and you just might find out.

"No. For the love of all that's holy, please don't."

So whether you're a bodybuilder looking to buff up with minimal effort, or a fatty looking for a magic food substance that doesn't make you any fatter, protein shakes aren't really the answer.

#1.

Herbal Supplements

Herbal supplements are not only a creative euphemism for marijuana, but also a booming market of remedies ranging from old school to New Age. None of them are regulated by the FDA, so your bottle of Ancient Chinese Vitality Root could be powdered dog shit for all you know. It could also cure cancer. It's a crapshoot.

Consumer organizations do their best to keep an eye on these things, however, and Consumer Reports made a list in 2004 of herbal supplements that are downright dangerous. Number one on that list is a Chinese remedy for eczema. This FDA alert tells of two people who took it hoping to clear up some skin problems and ended up needing kidney transplants.
One of the more well-known supplements on that list is kava, which is supposed to be a kind of herbal Prozac.

It is rather cheerful looking, as roots go.

Unfortunately, evidence started to appear indicating that, while it might make you feel good, it also destroys your liver. Kava advocates theorize this might have been caused by companies looking to cut costs by grinding up the entire kava plant, including leaves and stems, which may contain toxins, in addition to the traditionally used root.
Which brings us back to the beginning: There's no FDA to ask manufacturers, "Hey, what are you guys doing with the leaves and stems over there?" So they'll just throw any old thing right in. They could be grinding up used condoms and bear fur in there.

Remember: People still sell snake oil. They just put pictures of leaves on the bottle now.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18549_8-health-foods-that-are-bad-your-health_p2.html#ixzz2TpL5MvEp
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