Students will learn about the benefits of massage as well as basic relaxation techniques and stress relief. Classes will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30-7:30 pm Classes are limited to five couples (10 participants).
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by Lindsay Field KENNESAW — A Kennesaw group will begin a new series of parenting seminars later this month. Family Matters of North Cobb, a group created by local business owners last fall, will offer six seminars under the theme of “Parenting for …
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While there continues to be plenty of confusion when the subject of diet and healthy eating comes up, I would argue that most everyone can agree on a few principles. First, that the food we eat, whether meat, grain or vegetable, should be actual food. That is, as unprocessed as possible and without chemical additives. second, that we should be eating a variety of vegetables and fruit every day. and third, that we should be moderate with our portion size.
Beyond that, it’s all a big conversation, and one that changes almost weekly as conflicting new studies arrive concerning fats and salt, carbohydrates and sugars, caffeine, alcohol and every other aspect of diet there is to think (or not think) about.
Dining out can often be where I simply stop thinking about such things. After all, in restaurants you have little control over the portions served. and even the food-conscious among us may choose not to question too closely all the ingredients that went into making that delectable dish in front of us. So, when the goal is healthy restaurant eating, it helps to have a stable of restaurants and dishes you can rely on to meet those basic principles.
Otto’s Restaurant and Bar has become one of my favorite places to find food that is as beautifully prepared as it is healthy and satisfying. Main courses emphasize Mediterranean-style grilled seafood and meats that are served with generous portions of sautéed fresh vegetables. Specialty favorites include grilled salmon in grape leaves and a lemon-currant vinaigrette with sautéed spinach and roasted potatoes; grilled New Zealand lamb chops with roasted red potatoes, French green beans and an almond-mint pesto; and a spinach-artichoke pasta with fresh spinach, roasted sweet red peppers, mushrooms, artichokes and feta cheese in a light lemony cream sauce.
also outstanding are Otto’s entree salads that pull together fresh berries, shaved vegetables and mixed greens, with Greek or Italian cheeses and grilled meat or seafood, all tossed in a variety of unique house-prepared vinaigrettes. the warm farmhouse atmosphere, linen tablecloths and excellent service justify the prices, which run from $13 to $33 for an entrée course. or try chef Karl Granburg’s tasting menu that provides three courses ($25/$35 with wine pairings) built on the same Mediterranean flavors as the regular menu but changes regularly with what the market and season have to offer.
A rarely discussed principle of healthy eating concerns the attitude of the cook. Those who ascribe to it believe that a peaceful kitchen, in which the food is prepared with love and intention, imparts greater health and enjoyment to those who eat it. Two small Madison restaurants certainly hold to that principle, which may go some way to account for their many years serving State Street diners.
at Himal Chuli, a mood of calm emanates from the open kitchen where daily Himalayan specialties are prepared. There are certainly dishes for the meat eaters, in which lamb, beef or chicken has been simmered to tenderness in various delicately spiced sauces. but when I’m thinking Himal Chuli, I’m craving any of their daily tarkaris: stews of vegetables and legumes, fragrant with turmeric, coriander, fresh garlic and ginger. Two freshly made tarkaris are offered each day, served with a choice jasmine or brown rice — or the Nepalese flatbread called roti — for $7.79. Add a cup of dal (a thin, tasty bean soup) for an additional $1.20. I always leave feeling nourished on every level.
by contrast, Mediterranean Café, just down the street, is a cheerfully noisy place that has become a Madison institution. Lines at lunch often stream out the door, where owner and chef Fayçal Belakhdar, with a crew of devoted workers, takes the orders himself (counter service only) from an array of specials that derive from the cuisines of North Africa, Greece, Italy and southern France. Belakhdar prides himself on providing lovingly prepared meals with high-quality ingredients at low prices.
I never feel as if I’ve eaten unhealthily at Med Café, but my staple is the spinach pie, a generous slice thick with spinach and feta cheese, served with a refreshingly crisp and tart Greek salad and rice pilaf ($7.75). Another great health-conscious choice is Zidane’s couscous, a stew of thick-cut vegetables and chickpeas served over whole-wheat couscous ($7.25). although it’s fully satisfying as a vegetarian dish, you can add chunks of white-meat chicken or slices of rotisserie-style lamb and beef for a little extra. also available are outstanding freshly prepared soups, two selections each day, one vegetarian and one chicken based.
one great quality of the Chinese cuisines for healthy dining is that most dishes are made with plenty of vegetables. A problem at Chinese restaurants, if you don’t choose carefully, can be that many dishes are cooked with a lot of starch or oil. For that reason, I’ve come to appreciate Chinese noodle soups, prepared with a chicken broth, vegetables, small amounts of meat and, of course, yummy noodles.
my current favorite is the wonton and fish meatball noodle soup ($7.45) at Hong Kong Wok, located inside Hilldale Mall. A good portion of broccoli flowerets and bok choy join the pork wontons and tasty little balls of pressed white-flesh fish in a broth that is clean, flavorful and garnished with fresh chopped scallion for a hint of pungency. Choose from egg noodles, bean thread, ho fun or rice noodle, depending on your taste or dietary needs. if you’re not a fan of the fish meatball, you can get just the wontons in soup with vegetables and noodle for $6.45.
my macrobiotic days are far behind me, but sometimes I still crave the clean, simple flavors of the basic macrobiotic plate: brown rice, beans, steamed greens and, if you’re lucky, a little seaweed and some winter squash. There was a bit of a dry spell, after the late great Willy Street vegetarian restaurant Savory Thymes closed its doors. but we once again have a decent basic plate at the Green Owl Café. this version shows up with nicely seasoned beans, steamed greens and brown rice, all drizzled with a delicious lemon-miso-tahini sauce. the Green Owl offers a choice of soup or salad — the salads are excellent — with the Basics Plate for $11.
Finally, Monty’s Blue Plate Diner wins my vote as the most vegan/vegetarian place the whole family can enjoy. which is to say that Monty’s is not strictly a vegan or even a vegetarian restaurant. Burgers, chicken, chili and all varieties of egg dishes appear on the menu, not to mention a rockin’ assortment of home-baked desserts.
but Monty’s also offers a variety of appealing vegan options to satisfy healthy dining principles. at breakfast, try the homemade granola served with almond milk and bananas, or the tofu scrambler ($7.50) that includes spinach, mushrooms, onions and celery, along with a dusting of turmeric and cumin. at lunch or dinner, you can substitute a tasty, rich walnut burger for any style of the meaty variety on the menu. or try the Heathen Vegan Shoplifter’s Delight ($8.60), a sandwich on sourdough French bread of portobello mushrooms, fried tempeh, red onion and avocado in a lemon-tahini sauce.
Monty’s is a crowd-pleaser for every possible palate and persuasion about food, its primary concern in making sure what comes out of its kitchen is nothing less than delicious. as my favorite (and not entirely healthy) celebrity chef Ina Garten would say, “How bad can that be?”
Drugmaker Vivus Inc. said Monday that regulators will take another three months to make a decision on its closely-watched obesity drug Qnexa, which could become the first new prescription weight loss pill to reach the market in more than a decade.
Vivus said the Food and Drug Administration pushed back its target date to July 17 to consider a new drug safety plan submitted by the company. Previously the agency was scheduled to make a decision by April 17. Vivus said the three-month extension is standard when companies submit additional risk management information for a drug.
The FDA has rejected three experimental drugs for obesity in the last three years, including Qnexa, raising questions about whether any new weight loss drugs can win approval. The agency has not approved a new prescription diet pill since 1999.
An effective and safe diet pill would likely be a blockbuster product in the U.S.: with more than 75 million obese adults, the nation’s obesity rate is nearing 35 percent.
Qnexa was previously rejected in 2010 over concerns that it can cause heart palpitations and birth defects if taken by pregnant women.
But Vivus resubmitted the drug and it received a surprisingly positive 20-2 favorable vote from a panel of medical advisers in February.
The group emphasized the drug’s benefits, which include weight loss of nearly 10 percent for most patients taking the drug over a year — the highest reduction reported with any recent diet pill. but panelists stressed that Vivus should be required to conduct a large, follow-up study of the pill’s heart effects, to assure its safety.
Vivus said it submitted new materials for Qnexa’s risk management plan to the FDA last Wednesday. Such plans often include materials like patient brochures that explain a drug’s safety risks. Side effects reported with Qnexa include birth defects, heart palpitations, suicidal thoughts, and memory lapses. Vivus has asked the FDA to approve Qnexa for patients who are obese and who have related health problems like high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes.
Shares of the Mountain View, Calif., company dropped $1.37, or 6 percent, to $21.55 in after-hours trading. The stock rose 39 cents to close at $22.92 during regular trading.
Qnexa is a combination of two older drugs that have long been available. The amphetamine phentermine, which is approved for short-term weight loss, and topiramate, an anti-seizure drug sold by Johnson & Johnson as Topamax. Phentermine helps suppress appetite, while topiramate is believed to make patients feel more satiated.
While several drugs are available for short-term weight loss, there is only one FDA-approved prescription drug for long-term weight loss: Xenical from Roche, which is seldom prescribed due to unpleasant digestive side effects and modest weight loss.
Experts say the challenge of weight loss drug development lies in safely turning off one of the body’s fundamental directives: to eat enough food to maintain its current weight.
The decadeslong search for an effective diet drug is littered with failures, most notably the fen-phen combination, which was linked to heart damage in 1997. The cocktail of phentermine and fenfluramine was a popular weight loss combination prescribed by doctors, though it was never approved by FDA.
Other safety failures for diet pills have continued to pile up in recent years.
Four years ago Sanofi-Aventis SA discontinued studies of its highly anticipated pill Acomplia due to psychiatric side effects, including depression and suicidal thoughts. in 2010, Abbott Laboratories withdrew its drug Meridia after a study showed it increased heart attack and stroke.
Qnexa is generally regarded as the most promising of three experimental obesity drugs to be considered because it was the most effective at helping lose weight. The competing drug candidates are Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s lorcaserin, and Orexigen Therapeutics Inc.’s Contrave.
One Direction, who recently landed on these shores, is no doubt hoping they can stamp a presence in Australia.
Yet their recent arrival was less showmanship, and more sneakiness. Hundreds of fans had camped out at Sydney Airport hoping to capture a glimpse, a signature or even a few words from the British boy-band, which has experienced a meteoric rise of late.
The fans enjoyed nothing of the sort, with the five members — Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson — disappearing into a side exit and jumping into waiting transport. Many fans were less than impressed, some even shedding a tear or two.
The band will begin their sold out Australia tour in Sydney this Friday, followed by performances in Melbourne and Brisbane. They will also be appearing at the Logies, along with the likes of Seal.
Meanwhile, Flight Of the Conchords will be stirring up a pot of musical comedy throughout the month of July.
The band, made up of the two Kiwis Jemaine Clement (pictured) and Bret McKenzie, will perform in Sydney, Brisbane, Newcastle, Wollongong, Melbourne and Perth.
“We are finally returning to Australia. Mostly to apologise,” Clement said in a statement.
Image courtesy of C.Smith/WENN.com
Katy Perry to hit the big screenRicki-Lee Coulter on music, mentoring and SealGuy Sebastian: his family and tough decision
Special Prosecutor Angela CoreyFlorida State Attorney Angela Corey announced Monday that the Trayvon Martin shooting case will not go to the grand jury. the jury had been scheduled to convene April 10 by State Attorney Norm Wolfinger. But after a firestorm of criticism of his office and the police in the investigation of the unarmed teenager’s killing, Wolfinger was taken off the case March 22 by Gov. Rick Scott, who appointed the hard-nosed Corey as special prosecutor.
Her decision not to go to the grand jury was no surprise. She has said previously she has never gone to a grand jury with a justifiable homicide case. on March 29, she told the Miami Herald: ”I always lean towards moving forward without needing the Grand Jury in a case like this. I foresee us being able to make a decision and move it on our own.”
Corey would only require the grand jury’s imprimatur if she planned to file capital murder charges. few people thought it was ever a possibility that such charges would be laid against George Zimmerman, the 28-year-old self-appointed crime-stopper who shot Martin after he followed him in a gated community where he lived and Martin had been visiting.
The confrontation that ensued has generated claims and counterclaims, leaked police documents, videos and enhancements of videos, recorded phone calls and enhancements of those calls, the views of experts and witnesses about what was said on those calls and who was screaming on one of them. Only three things can be said with absolute certainty: Trayvon Martin is dead, it was George Zimmerman’s bullet that made him that way and the public discourse about the case has not seen the like for a very long time.
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Could Barry Zito be preparing to stage “Alex Smith, the Sequel”?
The reaction to his shutout against the Rockies on Monday sounded eerily familiar. first baseman Aubrey Huff’s gloating on Zito’s behalf was almost identical to the told-you-sos from left tackle Joe Staley after his quarterback became a bona fide winner for the 49ers.
The bitter exasperation over their years of failure matched up pretty well, too. they made an unprecedented tandem in Bay Area sports, the twin albatrosses. they also maintained the same demeanor, consistently decent and professional under the most difficult circumstances.
they eventually shared a trait vital to rebuilding a crumbling sports career: greatly diminished expectations. Smith learned that he didn’t have to prove he was Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. at the start of the 2011 football season, he had passed the point where he had to play like the first overall pick in the 2005 NFL draft.
Zito should have reached the same point last year, after being left off the Giants‘ postseason roster in 2010. There’s a strong possibility he hasn’t reached it yet. in his five seasons as a Giant, Zito has gone through some very promising stretches. through May 5, 2010, he had a 5-0 record with a 1.49 ERA. that mastery evaporated over the summer.
So why would this year be different? The new five-year, $112.5 million extension for Matt Cain might help. So could the two-year, $40.5 million deal that Tim Lincecum received to bypass arbitration.
Zito’s seven-year, $126 million contract no longer has to be viewed as an unbearable weight on his team, obstructing the Giants’ ability to retain the young pitchers who have been far more successful over the past five years. Zito doesn’t have to prove that he is The Man. He hasn’t had to prove that in a while. The Giants, after all, won a World Series without him.
but the pressure of an outsized contract remained an obstacle. Zito doesn’t particularly care for that argument. It’s too simple to leap from that to a charge of mental weakness, which no athlete wants to hear. but his career didn’t dip after he signed the deal. in 2007, it fell off a cliff. it dropped as steeply and unpredictably as Zito’s curveball in 2002, when he dominated the American League and won the Cy Young Award.
by the time the Giants gave him the extravagant contract, he had lost some speed on his fastball and command of the curve. but he could still get batters out and function as the ace of the AL West champs. in his penultimate game with the A’s, Zito outdueled Johan Santana 3-2 in the 2006 playoff opener. Six months later, that pitcher had vanished. The transformation was too dramatic to explain only in baseball terms.
He’d try to explain with the same calm assessment over and over again. “I didn’t attack the zone.” “I got too fine with it.” He always stood up and answered the questions, but he had nothing else to say. He sounded like a metronome, and very much like the 49ers’ quarterback, who had his own verbal tics. “Absolutely” was Smith’s favored opener to almost any question, a sign of extreme amiability and a certain brand of stubbornness. He wasn’t going to give in to the temptation to be a jerk.
Smith always had more defenders than Zito. He is six years younger. (Smith will turn 28 on May 7; Zito will be 34 on May 13.) until 2011, Smith didn’t have the right coach, the proper system or a protective line. He had never reached the heights Zito had hit in 2002.
but at this point, Zito faces less pressure to excel. As the no. 4 pitcher for the Giants, he can be an asset. If he doesn’t implode for more than three starts this year and he throws an occasional gem like Monday’s in Denver, Zito will be a revelation. He doesn’t have to be worth $126 million. He just has to be worthy of a start every five days.
He and Smith reached the lowest moments of their careers in the same week. three days after the Giants left Zito off their 2010 postseason roster, Mike Singletary tried pulling Smith from a disastrous game against Philadelphia. When the coach sent backup David Carr to the field, then recalled him for Smith, the crowd chanted for Carr.
Smith seemed like a lost cause then. He became a winner. Zito seemed hopeless in spring training, and the Giants would have been thrilled to get five minimally damaging innings out of him Monday. instead, he became a magician. Giving up on convention, he led with his curveball instead of setting it up with the fastball. by acknowledging the limits of his skill set, he achieved excellence. Smith did the same all year for the 49ers.
This article appeared on page B – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Working women often postpone motherhood without realising its deleterious consequences, relying instead on reproductive technologies to restore their childbearing capacity, says a study.
“There is an alarming misconception about fertility among women,” said Pasquale Patrizio, professor of obstetrics & gynaecology at Yale School of Medicine and director of the Yale Fertility Centre.
“We also found a lack of knowledge about steps women can take early in their reproductive years to preserve the possibility of conception later in life,” added Patrizio.
The report stemmed from the observations Patrizio and colleagues made that more women are coming to the fertility clinic at age 43 or older expecting that pregnancy can be instantly achieved, and they’re disappointed to learn that it can’t be done easily, the journal Fertility and Sterility reported.
“We are really seeing more and more patients ‘upset’ after failing in having their own biological child after age 43, so we had to report on this,” said Patrizio.
“Their typical reaction is, ‘what do you mean you cannot help me? I am healthy, I exercise, and I cannot have my own baby?’” he said.
These women delay pregnancies in their most fertile years for a variety of reasons, such as focusing on careers, lack of financial stability, or not having a partner, said a university statement.
They are vaguely aware that fertility decreases with age, but it is only when they experience age-related infertility firsthand that they begin to understand the reality of their situation, note the researchers.
The growing popularity of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has given women the impression that female fertility may be manipulated at any stage in life, noted Patrizio, who said the problem is exacerbated due to images of celebrities who seem to effortlessly give birth at advanced ages.
Source: the Express Tribune – http://goo.gl/Uzqm8
Q: my 12-year-old daughter thinks she's old enough to set her own bedtime. we told her that we want her in bed, lights out, by 9:30 on weeknights and 10 on non-school nights. this really isn't working, however, as she continues to try to stay up later.
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Signed into law last week by President Obama, the JOBS Act (Jumpstart our Business Startups Act) is heralded as a measure set to revolutionize how startup companies, investors (experienced and novice), the SEC and Wall Street will be able to interact …
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