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Archives for July 2017

July 30, 2017 By Farida Gohil 1 Comment

Vegetables can boost enjoyment of meals!

344361-vegetables

Did you know vegetables can make you look like a hero and a better cook?

According to a new study published in the journal of Public Health Nutrition, smart preparation and presentation of a vegetable entree not only enhances the enjoyment of a meal but also boosts a diner’s perception of the person who prepared it.

Researchers at Cornell University explored the impact that adding a vegetable to the plate has on perceptions of both the meal and the person who prepared it. With the majority of vegetable consumption in the American diet taking place at dinner time but only 23% of those meals being served with a vegetable, the study explored what added psychological motivation to include vegetables in meals might exist.

The study consisted of two phases. Twenty -two laddering interviews were conducted, followed by a national survey of 500 American mothers with two or more children under age 18. The survey asked participants to evaluate meals served either with or without vegetables, as well as the cook who did or did not include a vegetable with the dinner time meal. Participants who were asked to choose from a list of 12 attributes, such as “selfish” or “loving” to describe the meal preparation. No respondent saw both versions of the meal or meal preparer. The survey also asked questions regarding children’s favourite vegetable.

vegetable-rainbowParticipants eating meals that included a vegetable gave significantly higher ratings to dishes such as chicken, steak and pasta on a variety of dimensions including “tasty” and “loving”.

Results showed that meals were favoured when a vegetable was included. For example, plain Steak versus Steak with broccoli (score of 7.00 as opposed to 8.08), but also received better descriptions such as “loving” for the same meal (7.00 vs. 7.92).

They also choose much more positive descriptors for the meal preparer that served a vegetable, including a much more frequent selection of “thoughtful”, “attentive” and “capable” accompanied by a decrease in the selections of “neglectful”, “selfish” and boring.

Overall, vegetables “made the meal” not only in terms of enhancing expectations of the main dish but in terms of creating a better perception of the cook as well.

The researchers also uncovered a number of interesting insights concerning children’s favourite vegetables.Most participants easily recalled their children’s favourite vegetable, with over a dozen different vegetables receiving multiple mentions.Vegetable preference also changed with age; broccoli was the overall favourite for older children, while the carrots and corn topping the list for the younger kids.

Go ahead and do not forget to include a variety of veggies in your meal!

July 24, 2017 By Anusha Subramanian 3 Comments

Making money on Fitness and Youtube

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He is a millennial, a YouTube celebrity and is all over the net inspiring people to get healthy and fit but, did you know he had to work hard too to get fit and fab. Today, he runs his own health and fitness YouTube channel called BeerBiceps which has a huge following. When asked why ‘BeerBiceps’? “My idea of BeerBiceps(www.youtube.com/c/beerbicepsofficial)is to be fit and have fun too”, says RanveerAllahbadia on ‘Beneath the Force-The Vishal Gondal Show’.

On the show he talks of from being a fat boy where his life was full of ‘One more beer’ and ‘one more cheesecake’, no clear goal and more importantly, NO PURPOSE,to coming a long way and walk the path of health and fitness. Ranveer realized there was no short cut to fat loss and the solution was only through proper diet, exercise and discipline. Today, having a fit lifestyle has literally created a career for him.

He is a full time weight loss and strength coach. He is also the present trainer of TanmayBhat of the AIB fame who purely by following diet and exercise under the guidance of Ranveer has been able to lose 100+ kgs. Ranveer says that fitness has given him something much bigger than just a career. “As much as fitness has trained my body, it’s trained my mind even more,”he adds.

Ranveer’smantra is ‘fitness should be a permanent change in one’s lifestyle. Not a temporary activity to get to your physical goals’. His advice to one and all is embrace a fit lifestyle ‘JUST’ to develop as a person.

Some take away from the podcast

  • From aspiring to being a film director, chef finally fitness became an escape for him
  • The superhero is really enchanted by is ‘Batman’. He says, “Batman is a superhero without super powers but his brain was a super power and that appeals to me”

Life hack- his to do list. He says, “everything in my life works on a to-do-list’

20 minutes meditation in the morning keeps him happy and peaceful

You can listen to the podcast here:

Making Money on Youtube With Beer Biceps

July 18, 2017 By GOQii Editor 6 Comments

Your Android smart phone can tell you what you are eating

Food-Referee-for-press-01Thanks to smart phones, food logging or food journaling or keeping track of what you eat has shown to help prevent and stop over-eating. The GOQii app has helped its players to portion control their diet and eat healthier trhough the food log. While, the app has made it easy for the GOQii coaches to track what their players are eating and give them appropriate advice.

But, how would you feel, if I tell you that your android smart phone can now detect what you are eating and whether you are eating right by simply taking a photo of your food plate and thereby making it easy to log your food. GOQii on Monday July 17th, launched its auto food recognition feature called ‘Referee. The launch took place in the presence of GOQIi players some who travelled from as far as Nandurbar and Thane. A variety of food items were on display and players with android phones

GOQii Food Referee, is a feature to automatically detect food and it’s nutrition information by uploading photos and logging food. With the introduction of Referee logging food will become easy and the built in database already has thousands of food items.

Food-Referee-for-pressSpeaking on this new development, Vishal Gondal, CEO and Founder, GOQii said “One of the feedback that we constantly received from our players was how it was cumbersome to type food intake on a daily basis and log. ‘Referee’ will now make it easy for the players to just click a picture and log food to share with coach and friends and making it fun and exciting to meet their health goals”.

GOQii Referee, is a food and nutrition detector which uses food recognition machine learning algorithms to identify many different foods and their nutrition information. Using artificial intelligence (AI), neural networks, computer vision and image recognition, Referee identifies the nutrition information in Indian and Continental cuisines. GOQii Referee has been tested on thousands of diverse dishes ranging from Indian and Continental cuisine list.

02-Food-Referee-for-press

Along with the auto food detector, GOQii also launched ‘Arena’ a motivational platform that will help GOQii users, to connect and motivate each other in making a lifestyle change for a better and healthy life. It’s just another social platform for players to get healthy together.

Through GOQii Arena, user can create their own groups of people with similar health goals and challenge each other, thereby creating opportunities to promote healthy living. Using Arena, users can share images of the food, activity, Karma donation with their coach and friends. With the increase in use of social media and apps, most use persuasive technology to steer its users to click on ads or buy products. GOQii aims to use persuasive technology to help the users in developing healthy habits through Arena.

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July 17, 2017 By Payal Choudhury 3 Comments

Carbohydrates -“Your diet’s fuel”

carbohydrate-addicts-diet-plan1

The way carbohydrates are demonized today, it’s no wonder that so many people actually fear eating them. I used to be one of them. As a recovering “carb-o-phobe,” I’m now on the flip side and advocate eating complex carbohydrates for optimal nutrition.

Carbohydrates are nutrients that act as a good source of energy for our body. It is made up of sugar, starch and cellulose and it contains hydrogen and oxygen in the ratio 2:1which is the same as that of water. Although carbohydrates can be digested a lot easier than fats or proteins, they aren’t considered indispensable for the body.

While some carbohydrates make us healthy, others can be harmful to our health, if taken in excess quantities. For example, certain carbohydrates increase the risk of diabetes and heart ailments. So why are certain carbohydrates are beneficial and others adversely affect our health?…We need to go deeper and learn about the different forms of carbohydrates.

There are many forms of carbohydrates, but the three common forms are sugars, starches, and fibres. The basic unit of all carbohydrates is a sugar molecule. Then there are simple and complex carbohydrates. While sugars are simple carbohydrates, starches and fibres are classified as complex.

We generally consume simple and complex carbs. To understand what they are about, we’ll look at the list of carbohydrate rich foods and all that is essential for.

Simple carbohydrates are sugars composed of monosaccharide (single sugar molecules) or disaccharides (two joined sugar molecules) such as glucose, sucrose, lactose, and fructose. This category of carbohydrates is best found in fresh fruits.

On the other hand, however, there is another grade of foods that contain simple carbohydrates. This class of foods is processed foods. The trouble with these foods is that they provide energy and calories in abundance. It is for this reason that these high-calorie products must be kept away. Apart from that, simple carbohydrates that the body obtains from natural foods are also easier to digest than those obtained from processed foods.

Simple carbohydrates contain one or two sugar molecules linked together and are digested or broken down into glucose faster, because the bonds in these small molecules are easily accessible to the enzymes of the digestive tract. Hence, these carbohydrates are readily absorbed.

Complex carbohydrate:

Complex carbohydrates (or polysaccharides) are made up of three or more sugar molecules that are bound together. Since these carbohydrates get digested slowly, they release sugar into the system very gradually, thus allowing the body a consistent level of energy.

Often referred to as starch, foods that contain these complex carbohydrates are a great source of vitamins, minerals, and fibres. The old belief that starch is bad for the body is rapidly dying, because starches by themselves contain only 4 calories per gram, while fat contains 9 calories per gram. Also, the advantage with complex carbohydrates is that they fill you up quicker, thus allowing a reduced intake of food, which very simply leads to a reduced calorie intake.

In addition, refined carbohydrates may contain hydrogenated vegetable oils, additional fat, and processed sugars. Eating refined carbohydrates like a cookie in the morning will neither give you the energy nor give you the nutrition to maintain a balanced body.

Benefits of simple sugars:

Eating sugar gives you immediate access to fuel. There are times when this is an advantage. When the level of sugar in your blood drops, you may feel sluggish or even ill. Eating a simple carbohydrate, such as a fruit, may raise your blood sugar and give you the burst you need.

Simple carbohydrates may have the advantage over complex when it comes to preparing for exercise. Before a training session, race or game, many athletes eat a large amount of carbohydrate to provide energy. So before any workout, simple carbohydrates are your best choice. Due to the fact that they’re digested more quickly, simple carbohydrates are good for athletes who need short bursts of energy, as opposed to endurance athletes who need longer-term energy from slow-digesting carbohydrates. Examples of pre-workout meals that contain simple carbs are bananas with honey, low-fat yogurt with jelly or chocolate milk.

Complex Sugars:

There a number benefits of eating more complex carbohydrates, so it might be necessary to make some switches. Here are some examples of easy substitutions:

  • Instead of white bread and pasta, switch to whole grain bread and pasta (if the switch is intimidating at first, try mixing half whole grain and half white when making your pastas).
  • Instead of munching on chips, try raw vegetables.
  • Instead of rice, try eating more beans as a base for dishes.

Also diets rich in fibre help to keep us ‘regular’ which also promotes greater intestinal health and, in turn, helps to guard against a number of illnesses including colorectal cancer. Immunity is strengthened. It contributes to Energy, Digestion, Metabolism, Sleep, Filling fibre, Brain function, and Nervous system function.

Well, to distinguish simple and complex carbohydrates and how they are processed by the body, one might think that foods containing complex carbohydrates are actually healthier than those that have simple carbohydrates. However, this is not always true. Rice is rich in starch which is a complex carbohydrate, while fruits contain fructose which is a simple sugar. But we all know that between the two, fruits are a better option when it comes to eating healthy.

Thus, we see that not all carbohydrates are bad. In fact, a balanced diet that has a fair share of carbohydrates, is essential for a healthy you. So let go of your carbohydrate fears and feel good about including some of these foods and reap the benefits that good carbohydrates have to offer.

 

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