FitSugar

The Communal Table: Hunger Hits Home

Susannah Chen — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:06:03 PDT

As much as we love to cook and eat, we can't ignore the stark reality of what's going on around us: each day, millions upon millions of people struggle to secure their next meal. (Ironically, even food writers have been known to live off of food stamps.) To bring more awareness to the cause, Food Network's brought together some of the country's top food outlets for a virtual roundtable to discuss the fight against hunger. Find out how you can help beyond just donating money, and see what the rest of our friends are doing to raise awareness of poverty and food scarcity.

FN Dish: 4 Ways to Take Action Against Childhood Hunger Today
EatingWell: 6 Inspiring People Who Are Fighting Hunger
BlogHer Food: Poor Girl on SNAP: Using EBT at the Farmers Market
Food52: A Day in the Life at Share Our Strength
GMA.com: Fight Hunger With These 5 Charities
Cooking Channel: Join the Great American Bake Sale
Food Republic: Joining Bloggers to Take on Hunger
Eatocracy: Focus on Hunger

Join in on the conversation over at Twitter by checking out #pullupachair.

5 Ways to Fight World Hunger Beyond Donating Money

Susannah Chen — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 06:58:30 PDT

Between Easter feasts and Passover Seders, Spring is high time for eating aplenty. That doesn't mean, however, that we should ignore the surge in world hunger that's increased over the past decade and a half.

Food scarcity is a concern that touches more than 925 million people - or one in seven individuals - around the world. Despite America's wealth, this statistic is even more stark stateside: more than one in five children in the United States face food insecurity.

Donating money is an obvious way to help fight hunger, but there are some additional ways to make a difference. Here are five of our favorites.

Help serve a meal at a community dining room. Make instant, personal connections with others by volunteering your time at a local homeless shelter.
Exercise your brain. Got a restless mind and time to kill? Keep yourself on your toes by playing the United Nations World Food Programme's multiple-choice online game Free Rice, which donates rice for every question you've answered correctly.

For three more ideas, keep reading.

UN: The World Wastes a Third of All Food Produced

Susannah Chen — Thu, 12 May 2011 10:55:18 PDT

Yesterday, the United Nations revealed a shocking statistic: that 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year - roughly a third of all the planet's food that's produced for human consumption. The findings come from a report commissioned by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and are designed to address the causes behind rising prices, declining food production, and world hunger, among other issues.

Wasted food, or excess or unwanted food being tossed away, amounts to 222 million tons of refuse a year. It doesn't just apply to home cooks and finicky diners; according to the report, retailers in developed countries are as much to blame for throwing out food simply for its appearance. Then there's the issue of food loss: deficits that occur as a result of inefficient food production and processing, particularly in developing nations. Are you shocked by these numbers?

Source: Flickr User jbloom

How the Miracle Berry Could Aid World Hunger

Susannah Chen — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 03:04:11 PST

You may have heard of the miracle berry, the flavor-tripping fruit that changes the tongue's taste bud molecules, allowing foods that are sour or bitter to taste deceptively sweet. Well, one prominent chef's hoping to give the fruit a purpose that supersedes its trippy reputation: alleviating world hunger.

At the TED2011 conference, chef Homaro Cantu (who is known for pushing boundaries in molecular cuisine at his Chicago restaurant, Moto), suggested the berry could help broaden the world's dwindling food supply by making items like tree branches and edible grasses more palatable.

"This miracle berry tricks your tongue into thinking all these [edible] bitter and disgusting things taste great. We've eliminated all food miles, all herbicides, pesticides, fungicides; we've made food more healthy," Cantu explained. What do you think? Could you foresee this being a viable solution to the world food crisis that we're facing today?

Yummy Link: Do Your Part to Stop World Hunger

partysugar — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:00:00 PDT

Help end world hunger while increasing your vocabulary. All you have to do is play the definition game. For every correctly defined word, the United Nations will donate 10 grains of rice to a hungry person somewhere in the world. - Free Rice

Natalie Portman: Sexy Vegetarian

FitSugar — Tue, 08 May 2007 11:45:00 PDT

What do Natalie Portman and Alicia Silverstone have in common? They are both big time vegetarians.

Here's what Natalie has to say about her food politics:

“I am a very strict vegetarian ... I just really, really love animals, and I act on my values.”

Did you know that for every one vegetarian more than 100 animals each are saved from suffering? There are amazing health benefits to sticking to a plant based diet, too. Vegetarians are less likely to develop heart disease, cancer, Type 2 diabetes, or high blood pressure than meat-eaters. Another cool tidbit - on average, vegetarians are up to 20 lbs lighter than meat-eaters. So maybe moving towards a meatless week, month and year might be a more powerful lifestyle change than just a meatless Monday.

A balanced vegetarian diet full of legumes, whole grains, fruits and vegetables is extremely healthy. It's low in dietary cholesterol and saturated fat, so it's a great option if you are worried about high cholesterol. There are plenty of meat alternatives that taste like the real thing, but are much healthier for you, like Gardenburgers.

Being vegetarian is also good for other people. It takes tons of crops and water to raise farm animals - up to 16 lbs of grain to get just 1 lb of meat. All that plant food could be used more efficiently to feed people directly, and stop world hunger (that is we could all share). Not only that, but the meat industry creates tons of pollution, waste, and adds to global warming.

Fit's Tips: If you have been thinking about becoming a vegetarian, check out the GoVeg website for information. It is chock full of helpful information.

Source

How Not to Destroy Your Marriage

The Good Men Project — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:30:42 PDT

We're happy to present this story from one of our favorite sites, The Good Men Project. Today, Mark Tyrrell offers eight relationship tools to make your marriage work.

"All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble." - Raymond Hull

So how do you make your marriage work? Or do you just blindly hope it'll take care of itself?

Think of a hot, successful date with someone you’re attracted to. You have fun, great conversation and more sexual chemistry than a warehouse full of pheromones. You don’t have to “work at” the date because it’s self sustaining. It runs as smoothly as the gliding hand of a classical guitar maestro and you can’t wait for another rendition.

Teenage Dating in a Twilight-Hunger Games World

But marriage, or any long term relationship; well that’s a whole other caboodle.

If we’re not careful, marriage can deteriorate into little more than a torturous assault course; littered with routine boredoms, frustrations and resentments. Couple all that with external pressures and sometimes marriage feels not worth the effort. But there are major benefits to being hitched or committed, other than just a beneficial tax regime.

Healthy marriage; healthy people.

Being happily married bestows heaps of health benefits. You might be forgiven for thinking that if you’re married you don’t live longer it just seems like it but, no, a good marriage really can help you clock up more years (1) and married people are happier (2) even though they don’t always look it from the outside.

But when marriage doesn’t work it can feel being manacled to a maniac, marooned with a misogynist or nailed to a nag. And I don’t care what the studies say, that’s not healthy. You may hear couples say stuff like: “We are making our marriage work!” but how do we do this?

Making it work.

We pay lip service to “working on the marriage” but what is the work we need to do? Marriage vows such as “to love and to cherish” and “forsaking all others, for better or for worse” don’t really tell us how to make it work, although they give us a clue.

Fortunately a ton of research has been done on what to do and not do to make your marriage, or any intimate relationship work. Follow the guidelines here to become “good at marriage."

Tip one: Be romantic but keep it real.

We are all (force?) fed romance in movies and novels. The handsome man gets the beautiful woman. But what I wonder is what happens after our romantic couple ride off into the sunset together? What do they do exactly? Bicker? Moan at one another? Start to ignore each other?

After all that romance, our beautiful couple is bound to have massive expectations of their life together. But when rose tinted expectations clash with day to reality, watch out!

Romance is vital in any relationship. Always seeing the best in your partner helps to keep things intimate and love should be expressed. But if you have been raised on Mills and Boon Romance novels or feel-good movies, then your own romantic expectations can work against the sustainability of your long term relationship.

When day to day life fails to live up to the giddy, heady lust-filled days of the pre-settled down romance people can become angry, even blame one another: “This wasn’t what I signed up for." They find it hard to take the rough with the smooth because they never really figured there would be any rough.

Expectations not diluted with at least a dash of realism can be a royal road to relationship ruin. Your partner may be an angel, but they have feet of clay. You must learn to love those feet or at least accept them a bit!

Get the rest after the jump!

Rewind: The Avengers Finally Hits Theaters

Maggie Pehanick — Sat, 05 May 2012 03:05:00 PDT

Before you head out to the theater to see The Avengers, be sure to catch up with our guide to everything you need to know about the crime-fighting characters.
Have you seen these non-superhero movies that the Avengers stars have costarred in?
In the world of trailers, Liam Hemsworth steamed up the preview for The Expendables 2, and we tried to decipher the third trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. Jake Gyllenhaal shows off his bald head in cop movie End of Watch, and we saw more Andrew Garfield in the new trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man.
The release of Johnny Depp's vampire comedy is just around the corner, so we got excited all over again with all the stills from Dark Shadows.
While we're sad to see our favorite shows go on hiatus, we're gearing up with a peek at the New Girl season finale, a Hart of Dixie wedding, and a look at Elena's parents on The Vampire Diaries season finale.
We love all the style from Glee in the new pictures of a very Glee-tastic prom.
If you're at a loss for entertainment once your DVR queue dwindles, you can always check out the most anticipated summer concerts.
50 Shades of Grey generated more buzz when Alexander Skargard showed interest in playing Christian.
The Bachelorette is premiering soon and we finally got pictures of all the lucky contenders.
We talked to New Girl's Max Greenfield about his shirtless scenes, turns out he doesn't look forward to them as much as we do.
The MTV Movie Awards nominations are out, and it looks like The Hunger Games and Bridesmaids are poised to dominate the ceremony.

3 Ways Cottage Cheese Can Help You Lose Weight

Jenny Sugar — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:53:15 PDT

In order to lose weight, eating low-calorie protein is a must. Protein offers sustained energy, satiates your hunger, and curbs sugar cravings. After you eat a protein-packed food, you feel so satisfied you don't have the urge to reach for extra bites, and this translates to weight loss. Choosing low-calorie, low-fat protein sources is a must and while Greek yogurt has gained a lot of recognition, don't leave out the unsung hero of the protein world - cottage cheese. Here are some ways this simple food can help you drop pounds.

Breakfast: High-Protein Addition
You know how after you eat a bagel for breakfast it's tough to shake that sluggish feeling all morning? Protein has the opposite effect. It offers you energy for hours, so you feel bright-eyed and ready to tackle the day. Eggs and yogurt are popular choices, but for something a little different, whip up a smoothie and you guessed it - add cottage cheese to the blender. For 81 calories, four ounces will add a whopping 14 grams of protein to your glass. The blender will puree the cottage cheese into a smooth consistency, so your taste buds won't even know it's in there. Not into smoothies? Enjoy a bowl of cottage cheese topped with fruit for fiber and sweetness, and nuts for even more added protein.

Keep reading to find out two more ways cottage cheese can help with weight loss.

Why Pixar's First Leading Lady Merida Is the Bravest Princess of Them All

Tara Block — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:44:25 PDT

I recently attended a Pixar event at the animation film company's HQ for its upcoming Summer flick Brave. I was able to watch the first 30 minutes of the film, interview the director Mark Andrews and producer Katherine Sarafian, learn all about Scottish traditions, and even channel my inner Merida with archery lessons. Not only am I hooked on archery (pretty proud of my bull's-eye), I'm also hooked on Brave's heroine Princess Merida - Pixar's first leading lady! But don't let Merida's royal title fool you. As an adventurous girl in ancient Scotland who'd rather shoot arrows than get married, she's far from a typical Disney princess. Katherine and Mark both shared the ways she's breaking the princess mold and what makes her a great role model for us all. And as you'll see in the clip from the film below, the last thing Princess Merida wants is a Prince Charming.

Brave producer Katherine Sarafian agrees that the studio's latest project is especially exciting because it stars a girl. She asked me, "Who among us wouldn't want to give our daughters or sons a great cinema role model?" And not only is Merida a "powerhouse of a girl" with "fire and gusto and vigor" as Katherine describes her, she's also relatable, as she doesn't come with any special superpowers. "She just has great skills and she practices them," Katherine explains, "and she earned her skills by working hard and practicing and playing archery and playing sword fighting with her dad."

What really makes Merida someone little girls and adult women alike can relate to is that she's not perfect. At one point Merida's mom, Elinor, who's trying desperately to persuade her daughter to conform to her traditional role as a lady, says, "A princess strives for perfection." As women, we're constantly feeling that pressure to meet impossible expectations and aspire to society's ideal of who we should be and what we should be doing. But we rarely hit the mark. Katherine tells me, "I find her very relatable as someone who's coming of age and struggling with that central question of how can I really be seen for who I am in a world where there's an expectation of me that is incongruous to who I am?"

So why is such a relatable female lead so rare? Katherine tells me she's never understood why we haven't seen more strong female characters onscreen. With Brave, the filmmakers weren't trying to produce a story with a leading lady; it was the story, that happened to be about a girl, that got the project made. "If more filmmakers are developing ideas with great females at the center of the story, we should be able to take the world by storm," Katherine says.

The good news is with hits like The Hunger Games that are incredibly popular with both sexes, perhaps Brave is a part of a trend toward more female-driven films. Katherine points out that the box office figures have proven that people want to see girls and women lead stories. She adds, "I'm hoping people are realizing and studios realize that there is an audience, that this is half the population."

I found it interesting that Pixar (a subsidiary of Disney) would have its first female lead in a feature film be a princess, meaning, technically, Merida is a Disney princess. It appears that for a girl to be the lead in an animated movie she has to be princess. But both Katherine and director Mark Andrews insist the princess decision had nothing to do with the classic Disney princess archetype, but rather it was about a more exciting plot. "If you're a teenager and you make a stupid decision, maybe you get grounded," Katherine explains. "If you're royalty, your bad decision can have consequences that could cause a war in your kingdom. It was important that her decisions be tied to something much bigger than herself and her immediate family."