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We all love food but unfortunately, our bodies don’t always turn out for the best physically because of it. For those of you who are tired of going through diet after diet or are sick of downing the latest weight-loss miracle product, maybe it’s time to turn to the very thing most of us run away from: food! However, not just any food will lead you to a flatter stomach. It’s all about choosing the right items and incorporating them into your daily diet in a way that will benefit you.

The key to foods that can improve you on the inside and well as the outside is to eat items that contain monounsaturated fatty acids, also known as MUFAs. Despite the name, this type of fat is good for you and when consumed in healthy amounts, it can protect you from chronic disease. New medical findings have also shown that monounsaturated fatty acids also aids in reducing fat, more specifically belly fat. Who wouldn’t want that?

To get your stomach on the right track, you’ll want to include the following foods into your daily diet: chocolate (surprise, surprise!), olives, oils, nuts and seeds, and avocados. When eaten, these foods work hard to control your calorie intake, resulting in the loss of inches off of your waistline. While this great news has been recently brought to light, the actual concept of these MUFA-rich foods goes back to the ancient civilizations. Almonds were a favorite of Egyptian pharaohs. Olive oil was as good as gold for the Greeks, while chocolate was protected and considered sacred by the Aztecs. For centuries avocados have been worshipped as a symbol of fertility. These civilizations managed to flourish for a long time so it only makes sense that these powerhouse foods can greatly benefit you and your body.

Even though chocolate is on the list, there is a right and wrong way to consume them. To tackle your belly fat over time, you can eat chocolate any way you prefer but limit it to a ¼ cup serving per day. You can choose from semisweet or dark chocolate chips, chunks or shavings. Olives are great as a snack or as part of a delicious meal. Add a helping of 10 large olives to your meals either on top of a healthy pizza or tossed with pasta or in a salad. You can choose from green olives, black olives, black olive tapenade (a thick paste), or green olive tapenade. Oils may sound like they can be bad for you but you can’t go wrong with olive oil, flaxseed oil, canola oil, pesto sauce, peanut oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, walnut oil, sunflower oil, walnut oil, and sesame oil. Using oil in your meals is as simple as adding one tablespoon a day into just about everything from salad dressing and grilled dishes to stir-fried and pan-fried meals. For nuts and seeds, you can opt for almonds, pecans, macadamia, Brazil nuts, pumpkin seeds, and spreads that contain nuts like cashew butter, natural, chunky peanut butter, sunflower seed butter and sesame seed paste. Love avocados? Then you’ll enjoy chowing down on ¼ cups a day of Florida and Hass avocados in your salads, salsa, with entrees, and even in a mashed up dip of salt, pepper, and lime juice for your chips.

A handful of these tasty treats each day will pay off in a flatter stomach and an overall healthier you!

The mission of the Sustainable Food Lab is to accelerate improvement in mainstream food and agriculture systems so we can sustain a high quality life on earth.

We define a sustainable food and agriculture system as one in which the fertility of our soil is maintained and improved; the availability and quality of water are protected and enhanced; our biodiversity is protected; farmers, farm workers, and all other actors in value chains have livable incomes; the food we eat is affordable and promotes our health; sustainable businesses can thrive; and the flow of energy and the discharge of waste, including greenhouse gas emissions, are within the capacity of the earth to absorb forever.

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The Wild Kat Key Chain

This little device is exactly what I gave my wife as soon as I started carrying them on my site.  It is one of the most innovative, yet simple self defense tools I have ever seen.

You place your fingers through the eye holes and suddenly you have a viable weapon.   It rest comfortably in your hand and is designed to strike a hard surface (such as the human face).

When to Use a Device Like This:

The Wild Kat keychain may permanently injure or kill your attacker and is not designed to be used when lesser means will suffice, however, when lesser means aren’t acceptable - this thing will do the trick.

Target Areas

Face:

Technique 1: You’ll want to strike the eyes and nose area of your attacker using a raking motion.  A downward diagonal slash will leave most anyone on their knees, holding their face.

Technique 2: punch directly into your attackers eyes.  The ears will fall on both sides of the nose and burry themselves deep into your attackers eye sockets.

The throat and neck.  (LETHAL):

Technique 1: You will only use this technique if deadly force is justified.  In this technique you will strike upward into your attackers throat between the Adam’s apple and the chin.  The ears will fall on both sides of the wind pipe severing the carotid artery and crushing the trachea.  Twist for added effectiveness.

Technique 2: You will strike horizontally into the side of your attackers neck.  Once the device penetrates the skin pull or push violently toward the wind pipe of your attacker.  You will rip through the muscle, the carotid artery and the windpipe.  Now twist to finish it off.

Chest and Arms:

I do not suggest attacking this area since there will not be as much effect.  However, in a fight you may only have these targets.

Technique 1: Arm Pit and inner arm.  (LETHAL) Striking upward into the arm pit then twisting or upward between the bicep and triceps muscle will severe the brachial artery.

Technique 2: In a choke hold - drive the device into the underside of the forearm.  twist until the attacker lets go.

Abdomen:

Strike Deep and Hard - The Twist.  This is not as disabling as the other attacks, but will be a great distraction or follow up attack to help you escape.

Groin and Inner Thighs:

Men will often leave this vital target area exposed while attacking a woman - use this to your advantage.

Technique 1: Standing close to the attacker face to face - drive the kat downward into his groin or upper/inner thigh.  Then twist.

Technique 2: The attacker has knocked you to the ground and is either standing above you or is sitting on you - drive the device horizontally into his inner thigh.  Just below the groin.

Technique 3. The attacker is standing in front of you facing any direction.  Drive the device upward into the testicles.  Then twist…

Lower legs:

If you have been knocked to the ground and are being kicked..

Drive the kat into the meaty portion of the calf muscle.  Then…. TWIST!

As you can see from the pictures this cute little device makes a great key chain.  The truth of the matter is - you’ll probably never need it to defend your self, but after reading this, don’t you feel a little more safe?

A German nursing home has come up with a novel idea to stop Alzheimer’s patients from wandering off: a phantom bus stop.

The bus stop, in front of the Benrath Senior Centre in the western city of Düsseldorf, is an exact replica of a standard stop, with one small difference: buses never stop there.

The idea emerged after the centre was forced to rely on police to retrieve patients who wanted to return to their homes and families but had forgotten that in many cases neither existed any longer.

“If we can’t find them then we have to alert the police,” said Benrath’s director Richard Neureither. “It can be particularly dangerous if this happens in winter and they spend the night out in the cold.”

Without powers to detain patients, he said, Benrath had been forced to look for other solutions.

“We cannot and must not run after people and lock them up,” said Mr Neureither.

Instead, Benrath home teamed up with local care association called the ‘Old Lions’. They went to the Rheinbahn transport network which was happy to provide the bus stop to nowhere.

“It sounds funny,” said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, “but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.

“We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later today and invite them in to the home for a coffee,” said Mr Neureither. “Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.” The idea has proved so successful that it has now been adopted by several other homes across Germany.

A GIANT beetle with an inch-long horn is looking for love after sneaking into Britain - in a shipment of bananas.

The elephant beetle - more at home in the rainforests of Costa Rica - is now fully grown at nearly five inches long.

And time is ticking because elephant beetles - an endangered species - live for just four months.

The creature arrived in a container shipment of bananas from Costa Rica to London and was handed to Linton Zoo, Cambs, by pest control officers last week.

They nicknamed him Billy and are busy satisfying his voracious appetite - he munches mangoes and bananas.

Zoo staff cannot tell his precise age but believe him to be full grown because he has a 4cm-long horn and weighs 35g.

Linton Zoo director Kim Simmons said: “Billy needs to mate.

“He is showing all the signs and keeps displaying. He bobs up and down on his branch and taps on the ground.

“He has been making the most of his new home and emits tiny mating calls. It’s like he’s saying ‘here I am, come get me’.”

But the hunt for a female elephant beetle has so far drawn a blank.

Kim said: “We haven’t been able to find Billy a Betty from zoos. Now we’re pinning our hopes on private collectors.”

Zoo staff believe it is a miracle he survived the journey.

Kim said: “It’s a very lucky and tough insect having survived the journey to Britain and the pesticides designed to prevent unwanted creatures entering the country.”

The elephant beetle population has recently been depleted by the destruction of the rainforests, which has reduced their grounds for mating.

The smoke from burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50 percent more of some of the chemicals linked to lung cancer than tobacco smoke. A marijuana cigarette also deposits four times as much of that tar as an equivalent tobacco one. Scientists were therefore surprised to learn that a study of more than 2,000 people found no increase in the risk of developing lung cancer for marijuana smokers.

“We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use—more than 500 to 1,000 uses—would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana,” explains physician Donald Tashkin of the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead researcher on the project. But looking at residents of Los Angeles County, the scientists found that even those who smoked more than 20,000 joints in their life did not have an increased risk of lung cancer.

The researchers interviewed 611 lung cancer patients and 1,040 healthy controls as well as 601 patients with cancer in the head or neck region under the age of 60 to create the statistical analysis. They found that 80 percent of those with lung cancer and 70 percent of those with other cancers had smoked tobacco while only roughly half of both groups had smoked marijuana. The more tobacco a person smoked, the greater the risk of developing cancer, as other studies have shown.

But after controlling for tobacco, alcohol and other drug use as well as matching patients and controls by age, gender and neighborhood, marijuana did not seem to have an effect, despite its unhealthy aspects. “Marijuana is packed more loosely than tobacco, so there’s less filtration through the rod of the cigarette, so more particles will be inhaled,” Tashkin says. “And marijuana smokers typically smoke differently than tobacco smokers; they hold their breath about four times longer allowing more time for extra fine particles to deposit in the lungs.”

The study does not reveal how marijuana avoids causing cancer. Tashkin speculates that perhaps the THC chemical in marijuana smoke prompts aging cells to die before becoming cancerous. Tashkin and his colleagues presented the findings yesterday at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.

By:  David Biello

It may not lead to heaven but if you design your staircase with some creative thought it can look the part!

A custom built staircase is only limited by the designer’s imagination, and can make use of a wide variety of materials to produce what are often strikingly original forms.

Most of us probably take our staircase for granted and think of it as a simple way to ascend or descend between floors. Stairs usually take center stage at the entrance to our home, so we walk you through the wide range of staircase styles and trends to optimize their performance.

Here are few tips while choosing the right staircase design:

• Style – match your staircase to the style of home
• Needs – do you need storage underneath
• Natural light –staircases can be dark so strategically position windows
• Flooring surface – match your floor with your stairs
• Safety – what are the capabilities of the homeowners eg children/elderly
• Avoid tripping points – differ surfaces on entering and exiting so your body visualises and feels the change

Here are the 15 most Creative and modern Staircases.

Storage Stairs:

Alternating Treated Stairs:

Floating Staircase

Retractable Staircase:

Crooked Stairs:

Glass Stairs:

XXS House:

Some More Interesting Staircase Designs:

This modern Storey staircase by Europa Stairways, could update any decor, adding a fresh twist to a standard staircase design. This unique, high quality model is composed of the finest materials available and has been constructed using exquisite craftsmanship.

Staircase Design by Albini and Fontanot

I had some friends over for a little Memorial Day BBQ and plan to do it again for the July 4 holiday and many other weekends before summer ends. While grilling is a healthy cooking technique—it requires no added fat and lets excess fat in meat and poultry drip away—there are many foods that we should keep off our grill sdue to their high calories, saturated fat, and/or sodium content.Here’s my summer grilling menu, which is a lot healthier than the traditional BBQ. I hope it inspires some of you to share your favorite outdoor summer dishes.