DO NOT BE A NEWS JUNKIE IT WILL KILL YOUR CREATIVITY
News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence. The daily repetition of news about things we can't act upon makes us passive. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitized, sarcastic and fatalistic. The scientific term is "learned helplessness". It's a bit of a stretch, but I would not be surprised if news consumption, at least partially contributes to the widespread disease of depression.
News kills creativity. Finally, things we already know limit our creativity. This is one reason that mathematicians, novelists, composers and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative works at a young age. Their brains enjoy a wide, uninhabited space that emboldens them to come up with and pursue novel ideas. I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter.
The news media has never told us or warned us about the fact that the U.S. has allowed foods that are banned in many other developed countries into our food supply,” says nutritionist Mira Calton who, together with her husband Jayson Calton, Ph.D., wrote the new book Rich Food, Poor Food. During a six-year expedition that took them to 100 countries on seven continents, the Caltons studied more than 150 ingredients and put together a comprehensive list of the top 13 problematic products that are forbidden by governments, outside the U.S., due to their detrimental effects on human health. “If you see any of the following ingredients listed on the nutrition label, don’t buy the product,” Calton warns. “Leaving these banned bad boys on the shelves will speak volumes to grocery stores and food manufactures about what informed consumers simply won’t tolerate.”
Ingredients: Coloring agents (blue 1, blue 2, yellow 5, and yellow 6) found in: Cake, candy, macaroni and cheese, medicines, sport drinks, soda, pet food, and cheese. “Recent studies have shown that when food manufacturers left foods in their natural, often beige-like color instead of coloring them with these chemical agents, individuals thought they tasted bland and ate less, even when the recipe wasn't altered,” Calton says. This may explain why the use of artificial dyes—the most popular being red 40, yellow 5, and yellow 6—have increased five-fold since 1955.
Ingredient: Azodicarbonamide. Found in: Breads, frozen dinners, boxed pasta mixes, and packaged baked goods. Why the U.S. allows it: While most countries wait a week for flour to naturally whiten, the American food processors prefer to use this chemical to bleach the flour ASAP. Health hazards: It's not enough to just ban this product in Singapore. You can get up to 15 years in prison and be penalized nearly half a million dollars in fines for using this chemical that's been linked to asthma and is primarily used in foamed plastics, like yoga mats and sneaker soles.
Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have discovered that restricting consumption of glucose, the most common dietary sugar, can extend the life of healthy human-lung cells and speed the death of precancerous human-lung cells, reducing cancer’s spread and growth rate. The research has wide-ranging potential in age-related science, including ways in which calorie-intake restriction can benefit longevity and help prevent diseases like cancer that have been linked to aging, said principal investigator Trygve Tollefsbol, Ph.D., D.O., a professor in the Department of Biology.
"These results further verify the potential health benefits of controlling calorie intake." Tollefsbol said. "Our research indicates that calorie reduction extends the lifespan of healthy human cells and aids the body’s natural ability to kill off cancer-forming cells." The group’s study titled "Glucose Restriction Can Extend Normal Cell Lifespan and Impair Precancerous Cell Growth Through Epigenetic Control of hTERT and p16 Expression" has been published in the online edition of The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, or FASEB Journal. Besides today most of us know that taking excess amount of sugar can lead to diabetes. Researchers at Middleborough General Hospital in northern England who studied more than 4,800 diabetics said the decrease in life expectancy was most pronounced in people with Type 1 diabetes, the more serious form. and methyl alcohol, which are very dangerous substances to your brain and overall health.
Avoiding sodas is also good. Levels of sugar that many of us consume without a second thought could be harming our life expectancy, scientists have warned. Three sodas a day is hardly an unthinkable amount to drink – but a new study suggests that even this amount could have an adverse effect on your health, potentially even slashing your lifespan and reducing your fertility. Added sugar is best avoided if you’re trying to lose weight, but in general we’re told that small amounts of sugary foods and drinks are unlikely to do too much harm. Now, however, a study suggests that even levels of added sugar that we might consider to be ‘safe’ could be having a major impact on our health.
Japan has one of the highest numbers of centenarians in the world. As America fights an obesity epidemic and an increase in chronic diseases at younger ages, we may wonder how Japan has achieved such a long average lifespan. The answer is probably strongly linked to Japanese diet. Even Japanese desserts are lighter than Americans are used to. Using less sugar and fat, they may be made of sweetened pounded rice or bean paste and include fresh fruits and light toppings.
There's no question that something's terribly wrong with the way we eat. Nearly one in three Americans is overweight or obese, and rates of diabetes continue to rise. These conditions, along with steady rates of heart disease, cancer, and inflammatory problems, have led some to predict that the young generation now growing up wills the first ever in our history to have shorter lifespans than their parents.
Our genome has remained relatively unchanged for the past 120,000 years - a lengthy expanse of span of time during which our Paleolithic hunter-gatherer ancestors primarily ate meat, with some vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. Evolution ensured that humans were well adapted to eat those types of foods, and their bodies were happy to receive them. It's only been in the last 10,000 years, however, that humans have started to engage in agriculture, a technological and sociological development that has resulted in increased reliance on grains, legumes, and dairy — what are now Neolithic staples. Trouble is, our bodies haven't the foggiest idea what to do with these foods and in some cases, and they’re actually toxic.
Shockingly, it's been over these past 10,000 years that humans have become significantly shorter, fatter, less muscular, and more prone to disease. It's this realization that has led some thinkers like Jared Diamond to proclaim that agriculture was the worst mistake our species has ever made.