ASFSA – Health, Food & Happiness Blog – Page 9 – Promoting Health, Food, Nutrition, Fitness & Happiness

Health

The Best Place to Meditate

June 26, 2009

Meditation is a good way to relax, reduce stress levels, stay healthy restore your sanity, especially if life is treating you poorly or you have a very demanding job. In fact, it’s good to do even if you stay home all day coping with toddlers; every parent who does knows exactly how demanding that job can be. Just because it comes with copious amounts of love doesn’t mean it’s not often difficult, especially during teething when you are up half the night.

Where to do it

Everyone should give meditation a try; most will find it helps them to relax at least a little bit. Done properly it can have wider benefits. However, you do need a place to do it that is free from distractions and is comfortable. If you are uncomfortable it will intrude into your inner consciousness and prevent you from meditating properly.

If you can’t find the right place to meditate, create one! This can be as easy as placing a comfortable chair out on the deck where the fresh air and sunshine will help you feel at peace with the world. You can sit there whenever you’ve a spare moment or three and simply relax, or get into other meditation techniques.

Benefits of an outdoor haven

Another place to meditate in is an outdoor haven you create for yourself with plenty of alfresco furniture such as a chaise, chairs, tables and whatever else you feel is needed. Maybe some shade cloth or a decorative garden wall to protect you from the prevailing breeze. Having dedicated outdoor furniture will ensure the place is ready when you are and you won’t have to cart heavy chairs outside and back in.

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Health

Natural Remedies for Arthritis

June 10, 2009

Arthritis is a condition that affects many people. It may have eventuated from your choice of career. For instance people that have worked all their lives in jobs like furniture removalists such as Brilliance Removalists Melbourne or a tough job such as carpet steam cleaners done by Brilliance Cleaning where their bodies have been subjected to heavy physical loads are particularly susceptible. One big problem with treatment is that there are many different forms of arthritis and not all respond to the same treatment. Another problem is that the drugs – whether they are prescription or over the counter – have side effects that can be sometimes worse than the disease.

Most drugs are anti-inflammatories or painkillers – or sometimes both in one. Long-term use can cause problems such as digestive problems, ulcers, stroke and more. Even if they just make you drowsy, going around in a daze is not living life to the fullest. You may not be able to drive or go out because you tend to lose your balance and are afraid of falling. So what can you do?

There are many natural remedies for arthritis. Trying out these different remedies gives you a feeling of control over your life and your body that can even make you feel better. This is known as the placebo effect. That said, sometimes the remedies work well and it is far better to take them than the drugs that can have those awful side effects. The remedies may be herbs, spices, essential oils or even fruit and/or vegetables. Some people change their diet and get a great deal of relief.

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Food

5 Ways to Cut Cooking Time in Half

May 15, 2009

If you are a working mum and your other half doesn’t do any cooking, you might find yourself getting into the habit of buying convenience foods to cut down on your workload, especially in the hot weather when no one wants to be slaving over a hot stove. However, even though kids love junk food, it is really bad for their health and yours too, so how can you get healthy meals without spending every night cooking?

It is easy to cut your cooking time in half with a little organisation.

For a start, having salads means you don’t have to cook at all, unless you love to make your own potato salad from scratch. That’s okay; it’s easy to cube the potatoes and shove them in the microwave, then throw some mayonnaise over them. It hardly counts as cooking. Besides, you don’t actually have to have potato salad.
You can alternate a cooked meal with a salad; that’s one option. There is another one though. Cook twice as much and have the leftovers the next night. These can be either the same meal or made up into another kind of meal. For instance, if you have three cupfuls of cooked, diced vegetables left over, you can beat some eggs, add the veggies and make vegetable fritters to go with some salad. Even though you still have to cook the fritters, it is not as much effort as cooking meat and vegetables for a full meal.

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Home & Garden

More Relaxation = Robotic Pool Cleaners

April 28, 2009

Nearly everyone who has a pool knows that an automatic pool cleaner is essential if they don’t want to spend half their leisure time in cleaning the pool. Pool cleaning is a big job and takes a lot of muscle if you do it manually. Not everyone can manage it physically, and most people prefer to enjoy their leisure time rather than using it to clean the pool, especially if they don’t use it all that much.

While automated pool cleaners will do a lot of the work, you still have to do some of it. Even lifting the cleaner into the pool is sometimes very difficult. You have to hook it all up and make sure it is working properly. A robotic cleaner takes a great deal less work. Here are the pros of having a robot to clean your pool.

They do an even better job of cleaning the pool than automatic cleaners do
They require less input and attention from you
They work independently of the pool’s filtration system
They offer value for money, saving on the cost of chemicals, water and power
They clean the sides, bottom and steps of the pool with no dramas
They clean corners

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Fitness, Food

Local School Wellness Policies and Related News

April 5, 2009

One section of the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 requires that all school districts that participate in the National School Lunch Program have local wellness policies by July 1, 2006. The School Nutrition Association (formerly ASFSA) has put together tools to help assist the school community in dealing with this new requirement.

Well Done! School Nutrition Professionals Put Wellness Policies to Work
This spring 2008 publication from the School Nutrition Association provides inspiration and practical ideas for all in the school community who are committed to fostering healthy eating habits in children. School nutrition professionals from districts of all sizes and all across the country share experiences relating to gaining support from principals, teachers, parents and students; establishing cafeteria-based nutrition education programs; finding products to meet new nutrition standards; developing staff wellness programs and making operational changes.

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Fitness

5 Elements of Fitness You Can Do at Home

February 2, 2009

Most people have some idea that they should workout to keep fit both physically and mentally. The trouble is, life is hectic for most people, especially mothers who work outside the home and don’t get much support from their husbands. Now we are not talking about hard working people such as furniture removalists like Brilliance Removalists Perth or tradesmen, who mostly get plenty of exercise in their day to day jobs – but another reason people don’t exercise is they think it’s necessary to attend a gym and they either can’t afford it, or there is none available close where they live. However, you don’t have to go to the gym to get fit. You can easily do these 5 elements of fitness at home and be much healthier for it.

Always start with a warm up so there is no injury to your muscles or ligaments. An easy way to warm up is to go for a walk. If you simply can’t go outside, getting a treadmill or a stationary bike will really help. The Best Online Fitness Advice sites recommend Walking up and down the stairs is good too. 10 minutes is a good time for warming up.
Once you have warmed up, it’s time to do a cardiovascular workout. How? It’s easy; just walk or pedal faster, go jogging, do some aerobics with a video to guide you or skip rope, whichever sounds like the most fun. Make sure it gets your heart rate up. Try and to it for 30 minutes each time.

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Food

How to Get the Best Cake

January 17, 2009

Do you spend your days wondering what cake you’ll buy next, or dreaming of the delicious morsels of cake you had last time you were at Gran’s place? It is not easy to get good cake with just the right amount of moisture – and the flavour that you could die for.

Making a cake is a skill that not many people have, but it’s not impossible, so don’t despair. It is all the fault of the education system that took basic cooking out of high schools and replaced it with the science of cooking, a much more complicated subject in which students rarely did any cooking. When they did it was some amazingly exotic food that looked wonderful and tasted disgusting.

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Beauty

Who can Have Botox Injections?

November 21, 2008

While cosmetic procedures such as Botox injections has been traditionally something that only women are interested in, the trend is certainly swinging to include people of both genders. Men are now looking to have their wrinkles removed with Botox, especially if they have a job that puts them into the public eye to any extent.

Just as you see certain males sporting hair styles that include additional colour, the younger men – and sometimes older ones – now realise that looking their best must sometimes include injections of Botox to remove the lines and wrinkles that occur with age – or sometimes with their lifestyle choices or simply their genes. Men who are on television or high up in the sporting world, singers and actors and other high profile people want to show their best face to the camera.

They don’t have to suffer looking older before their time if they get Botox treatment. But it is not only their looks that can be treated with this procedure. Men are known to sweat a lot more than women. Anyone who sweats excessively, such as drenching their shirt with sweat several times a day, can get relief from this unpleasant condition with Botox treatment. If you have a job where you have to deal with the public such as salesman or even serving coffee, being drenched in sweat is a real turn off for other people. Having it treated means you will always look fresh and have much less BO. (more…)

Fitness, Health

Nutrition Advisory Council

May 1, 2005

18^th Annual NAC Art Contest

Are you looking for ways to encourage your NAC members’ creativity and talent? Participate in the 18th Annual NAC Art Contest. This year’s theme is “School Meals are a SMART Start to Good Health.”

State associations are asked to promote, conduct and sponsor a state contest. Each state is to select three winners to be submitted for the national competition: one from grades K-4, one from grades 5-8 and one from grades 9-12.

Twelve national winners will be selected from the state entries, four from each category. Each of the twelve finalists will receive $75 from ASFSA. The Grand Prize winner will receive an additional $100 from ASFSA, and the entry will be reproduced on a T-shirt.

Encourage your students to illustrate the theme in the most colorful and creative ways possible. Entries are due to states for judging by January 12, 2004. National winners will be announced in March 2004.

Download an application (in Adobe Acrobat format)
Download an application (in Microsoft Word format)

Fitness, Food

Right-Sized: School Meals are the Nutritious Choice on Campus

May 17, 2004

What’s on the menu today? Caesar salad, chicken teriyaki on a bun or cheese lasagna with marinara sauce & breadstick. And sides include fresh apple slices, jicama and baby carrots with dip or apricot applesauce. These are just a few of the options customers can choose from at over 99,000 locations nationwide. Welcome to the school lunch of 2004.

Every day over 36 million school breakfasts and lunches are served to America’s school children. Provided through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, these are nutritious, appealing, balanced meals, provided in age-appropriate serving sizes. A network of child nutrition professionals that oversee school nutrition programs on the local level – each of them members of the American School Food Service Association (ASFSA) – are available as expert sources to discuss the realities of school meals and the school nutrition business.

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