Choosing a Food Pyramid

Various governments around the world, including the United States and Canadian governments have constructed guidelines for healthy eating for its citizens. Now here comes the tricky part. Whereas there used to be just one food guide pyramid called the USDA Food Guide Pyramid there are now several types including the Mediterranean Pyramid, the Vegetarian Pyramid and the Asian Pyramid. The challenge is now to help you figure out which one is best for you.

If you need help on choosing the type of food pyramid that is ideal for your health the United States government has a very detailed site at www.mypyramid.gov that helps you choose your optimum diet by giving you an online questionnaire to fill out. This questionnaire helps analyze the lifestyle, food preferences and cultural factors that may be affecting your overall health and helps you choose the diet pyramid that is best for you.

On this site you will also find the typical USDA Food Guide Pyramid (which is also reproduced below.) This pyramid, which was revised in 1991, features six to eleven servings of bread a day as the bulk of the food that is eaten – followed by vegetables and fruits as the next major food group and then proteins such as milk and poultry. However this is not necessarily best food pyramid when it comes to eating an anti-aging diet, as it is heavy on potentially aging carbohydrates in the form of bread. It is also lower on protein then most aging experts would like.

More and more diet experts have determined that the Mediterranean diet is much healthier food pyramid when it comes to preventing aging.

The Mediterranean food pyramid is forty percent higher in fat than the U.S. Food Pyramid. The key is that the fats are from heart healthy sources –in particular olive oil.

This food pyramid diet is inspired by the lifestyle practiced daily on the Greek island of Crete where people live longer than any other populations in the world. it is widely recognized that the rates of chronic diseases were lowest in the world in Mediterranean culture and that adult life expectancy was high despite limited medical services. This pyramid was created in 1960 when researchers first began to notice that people from Mediterranean cultures just seemed to be thriving compared to their North American counterparts.

Studies conducted over the past few decades have concluded that the people from these cultures are also twenty percent less likely to die of coronary artery disease than Americans. The citizens of these Latin countries also have one third less cancer than citizens in the U.S. which nutritionists often attribute to the generous amount of antioxidants and phytochmeicals that are naturally contained in all of the fruits and vegetables in the diet.

There have been lots of studies and research done to support the idea that the Mediterranean Food Pyramid is much healthier for you than other types of eating schemes.

For instance, one French study assigned 600 heart attack survivors to follow either a Mediterranean diet or a regimen similar to the one recommended by the U.S. Government. Both diets reduced cholesterol levels by comparable amounts, only eight new heart attacks occurred over the next two years in the Mediterranean group, compared to thirty three occurrences in the U.S. Food Pyramid group.

Parenting Tips
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Feng Shui For Kid’s Rooms

Lately I have been interested in the art of Feng Shui. This is the fine art of furniture placement and according to Asian lore it can help affect the health of your children.

Your children can benefit from Feng Shui as well. There are no special Feng Shui workshops for this type of thing, so here are some Feng Shui secrets for keeping them happy, healthy and in a state of general, overall positivity.

More than any other rooms in the home the children's bedrooms and playrooms need to be clean, safe, secure, well-lit and well-organized. This brings in the good chi. Don't let any dirt lurk in corners or under the bed as it is not good for the child's health or psychological state. Also when organizing stay away from sharp pointy metal mesh storage units as they bring harsh and forbidding energy into the room.

In the children's playroom or bedroom try to only have furniture that is rounded at the corners. Round tables are best. Fortunately a lot of children's furniture is already sold this way so finding it is not the issue. The reason this is good Feng Shui is because hard corners and edges symbolize Shar Chi which is 'sharp, cutting energy.' For the same reason you should remeove all sharp, cutting objects like scissor or carts with pointy edges to keep your children feeling secure.

If you want your children to do well in school consider hanging wind chimes near their desk. Metal wind chimes help clear bad energy Make sure too that the desk is made of wood or plastic and not glass as this symbolizes harmful shar chi for children as well. The main thing about feng shui living is that it should never encourage the harsh bad energy known as 'poison arrows.'

The worst color to paint a child's room is white because it is a color that symbolizes death in Asian countries. It is also not that practical as it gets dirty easy. The best colors for a child's room are reds, greens, blues and yellow. Orange is also recommended as it is a very happy color.

To make sure that your child always feels safe and guided by your presence even if you are not there then be sure to place a picture of yourself near the door, by the child's bed or on the East wall. Placing pictures of other family members such as Grandpa and Grandma on the East Wall is also a good idea.

If your child is a baby consider getting them a rotating glass lamp or one of those Fisher Price Aquariums that rotates different colored light on the wall. This is recommended because the Feng Shui superstition is that whirling or rotating lights can keep bad spirits away and also dispel negative chi in a room. Yet another purpose of this is to keep the child entertained and mesmerized so that he or she can fall asleep. You don't need a number of feng shui consultations to tell you why this works so well. In fact the Fisher Price Aquarium is such an excellent creator of positive Chi many adults have wished they could have one for their own room!

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