Character Donuts

ちびまる子にゃんドーナツ

The donuts are available for a limited time at Foresta Nature Doughnuts in Japan. Each donut sells for 450 yen.

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For the Seventh Time in a Row, Nutrition Experts Named the DASH Diet No. 1 Choice for Your Overall Health

Jessica Orwig and Lydia Ramsey wrote . . . . . .

The way we think about diets is undergoing an important shift.

We thinking less about diets as being for rapid weight loss and more about for creating lifestyle changes that stick.

To help people sift through the noise and find science-backed plans that work for years rather than weeks, US News & World Report ranked 38 eating plans.

The rankings considered different criteria including how easy the diet is to follow, its effects on weight loss — both in the short and long term — how nutritional and safe the diet is, and how well it helps prevent diabetes and heart disease.

DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, or high blood pressure. While the diet focuses on a meal plan that helps lower or prevent high blood pressure, it is a diet for everyone.

In fact, the US Department of Agriculture considers it one of the best examples of a healthy eating pattern.

“The DASH diet is really a safe plan for everyone,” Angela Haupt, assistant managing editor of health at US News & World Report, told Business Insider in 2016. “There’s nothing exciting about it, and that’s what makes it a good plan. It’s not some fad diet making outlandish claims that you can’t rely on.”

And for people with abnormally high blood pressure, the DASH diet may, over time, help drop that blood pressure by as many as eight to 14 points.

How to DASH your diet

The distinguishing factor of the DASH diet is that it limits how much sodium you eat.

Since many frozen and prepackaged foods contain large amounts of salt, DASH dieters stick to fresh produce and lean proteins like fish and poultry.

The diet also includes a lot of whole grains, low-fat dairy products, and legumes.

The typical day on a 2,000-calorie DASH diet looks like this:

• No more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium, eventually working down to no more than 1,500 milligrams. (For reference, a single slice of pizza contains about 640 milligrams of sodium.)
• 6-8 servings of grains
• 4-5 servings each of veggies and fruits
• 2-3 servings of fat-free or low-fat dairy. (Plain dairy products are much lower in sugar than flavored.)
• 6 or fewer servings (equal to about one ounce) of lean meat, poultry, and fish
• 4-5 servings (per week) of nuts, seeds, and legumes
• 2-3 servings of fats and oils
• No more than 1-2 alcoholic drinks. (A serving is equal to 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1 1/2 ounces of liquor.)
• 5 or fewer servings (per week) of sweets

For example, you could have an omelet with veggies and reduced-fat cheese for breakfast, minestrone soup for lunch, low-fat yogurt as a snack, and spaghetti squash with meat sauce for dinner.

With all the fiber-packed fruits and veggies in the DASH diet, you won’t go hungry.

Source: Business Insider

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Read more:

Best Diets . . . . .

Vietnamese-style Braised Pork Belly in Caramel Sauce

Ingredients

2 slices fresh ginger
10 oz slab pork belly
7 fluid oz coconut milk

Marinade

1 tbsp gia vi (a mixture of 2 parts sugar, 1 part sea salt, 1 part ground black pepper, 1 part garlic powder)
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp chopped shallot

Caramel Sauce

4 tsp sugar

Method

1. Bring a large pan of water to a boil and throw in the ginger. Add the pork (don’t cut it into chunks at this stage or it will cook too quickly and lose its sweetness) and cook for three to four minutes over a high heat to blanch the meat. Drain.
2. Mix together the marinade ingredients. Slice the pork belly into 3/4-inch chunks, rub in the marinade, then cover and leave for at least 15 minutes.
3. Put the sugar in a heavy-bottomed pan or cast-iron casserole. Place over a medium heat, without stirring, for two to three minutes, then reduce the heat and stir constantly until no sugar grains are visible, for two to three minutes. The sugar will melt and turn golden – pay attention to the colour of the caramel under the bubbles. Add 7 fluid oz hot water and bring to a boil. Don’t worry if the sugar hardens on contact with the water; it will re-melt.
4. Add the marinated pork to the caramel pan, coating all the meat with the caramel sauce. Stir in the coconut milk, then leave it for a minute. Taste and add more fish sauce or sugar if necessary, depending on whether it’s too sweet or salty.
5. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, until the liquid has reduced and thickened. Serve hot with white rice.

Makes 4 servings.

Source: The Vietnamese Market Cookbook

In Pictures: Dishes of Vietnamese Restaurants in Toyko, Japan

One of the Restaurant: シクロ 六本木

Mesentery: New Organ Discovered Inside Human Body by Scientists

Tom Embury-Dennis wrote . . . . . .

A new organ has been discovered hiding in plain sight inside the human body.

Known as the mesentery, it was previously thought to be just a few fragmented structures in the digestive system.

But scientists have realised it is in fact one, continuous organ.

Although its function is still unclear, the discovery opens up “a whole new area of science,” according to J Calvin Coffey, a researcher at the University Hospital Limerick who first discovered it.

“When we approach it like every other organ… we can categorise abdominal disease in terms of this organ,” he said.

“Now we have established anatomy and the structure. The next step is the function. If you understand the function you can identify abnormal function, and then you have disease.

“Put them all together and you have the field of mesenteric science.”

The research has been published in The Lancet medical journal.

Following its reclassification, medical students are now being taught that the mesentery is a distinct organ.

Gray’s Anatomy, the world’s most famous medical textbook, has been updated to include the new definition.

Medical students and researchers can now investigate what role the mesentery might play in abdominal diseases, which it is hoped could ultimately lead to new treatments.

The organ is a double fold of peritoneum – the lining of the abdominal cavity – that holds our intestine to the wall of our abdomen.

It was described by the Italian polymath Leanardo da Vinci in 1508, but it has been ignored throughout the centuries, until now.

Although there are generally considered to be five organs in the human body, there are in fact now 79, including the mesentery.

The heart, brain, liver, lungs and kidneys are the vital organs, but there are another 74 that play a role in keeping us healthy.

Source: The Independent

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