Now thanks to the wonderful Sylvie at FuelMyBlog and those generous people at JML Direct, I was recently sent a rather strange contraption called the Spin Gym!

Now to be honest I was really sure on how this was going to work and it did remind me of one of those optical illusion toys that I had as a kid with the card in the middle and a bird on one side and a cage on the other, you know the ones I mean

OK! But What Does It Do?

The Spin Gym is a handy new gadget that with a little practise and a daily 5 minute workout it can effectively strengthen and tone your upper body muscles, such as your arms, shoulders, back and your chest.

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

It always seems when election season rolls around, we are hit with invective about wasteful government spending, which is something many Americans seem to want. A consistent target of these attacks is medical research, which is bowdlerized and misrepresented in order to appeal to the public’s sense of outrage that money is being spent on ridiculous lab tests that bear no importance for society at large.

The image painted by politicians and their followers is such that scientists are bored nerds conducting bogus experiments in university labs on Uncle Sam’s dime. It’s a caricature and shows just how out of touch many people are with science as a profession.

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We’re in denial. You, me, your friends and neighbours, all of us are in denial. We know that junk food is calorific but we assuage our guilty feelings by inventing clauses whereby the calories don’t count: It doesn’t count if it’s a Friday night; It doesn’t count because it’s just this once; It doesn’t count because it’s probably not as rich as a different brand…

One of those excuses is about to be eliminated, maybe to your advantage, maybe not. The change is this, fast food restaurants are going to be required to give dietary information on the products they serve so that you DO know how many calories are in that burger and fries. So now you’ll know if you really can’t eat it or if it’s ok, given that you’ve been good the rest of the week. (You have been good, haven’t you?)
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Did you ever think that your cell phone and the means to use it could end up killing you?

According to a recent warning from a group of trade activists, residing in close proximity to cellphone towers could end up leading to such horrific outcomes as melting your brain, saddling you with cancer or even worse, neutering your reproductive organs. If that’s the case, are you ready to go back to a land line?

In an interview with FoxNews.com, Dr. Robin Bernhoft, president of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM), warned that individuals living close to cell towers and antennas are in danger of becoming sick.

Whitney Seymour, a member of the activist Web site Citizens for Health, adds that the FCC standards regarding cell transmission antennas were structured on previous studies formed nearly 20 years ago using data even before that time.

So, is it time to ditch the cell phone and pack up the family if you’ve got a cell tower within eye sight of your home? Not so fast proclaim many in the cell phone industry.

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Image via Wikipedia

McDonalds is reacting to increasing pressure from its more health savvy customers and is reducing the weight of fries it serves and introducing seasonal fruit and vegetables into the mix.

Happy Meals, which, thanks to the toys that its sponsors provide, are a must have for many kids all over the world, are going to come under the change from September, in some states at least. After the initial trial the changes will be rolled out to the rest of the country’s 14,000 restaurants in the US. This won’t be the first time McDonalds has changed the make up of the Happy Meal, in the past they removed the fries completely which obviously went down like a dry lunch so the fries were put back on the menu. Jan Fields, McDonald’s US president observed: “People come to McDonald’s and, first of all, they want the choice and the control to be theirs, but their expectation of a Happy Meal does include a fry. When we did it without fries, there was a huge disappointment factor.”

The new meal will contain about half of the number of fries that the current Happy Meal contains, down from approximately 70 grams of potato to 30 grams, this edible shortfall will be made up with fruit or vegetables such as apple slices, carrot sticks, pineapple or raisins. What exactly depends on the region and the time of year. Despite the variations McDonalds say that the changes will reduce the amount of calories by about 20%.

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When you take the kids out for a meal you want to give them something nutritious and wholesome, something that will fill them up with yummy yummy goodness providing for healthy development, both intellectually and physically. Funny then that all they seem to want is fried processed carbs, mechanically recovered meat and fizzy drinks on top!

So you visit one of the ubiquitous junk food restaurants where they can fill up on calories and starches and then burn them all off again as the fly around the ball pool screaming like banshees and having great larks and lorks a lordy. So there they are, happily fed and playing in a safe environment where you can leave them to duke it out by themselves for five minutes while you get to catch a glimpse of today’s paper.

But put that paper down for a moment and look at what your treasured mites are gadding about in. Dr Erin Carr-Jordan, who also happens to be a developmental psychologist did and she filmed what she saw. Not only that but after having not been able to get a response from the management she made it her pet project to investigate just how filthy the PlayPlaces and restrooms really were. (spoiler alert: VERY!) Erin’s research took her to more than 50 separate ball pools where she took samples which she then sent back to the lab to have analysed.

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Image via Wikipedia

Running counter to natural assumption, proximity to fast and junk food doesn’t cause an exaggerated risk of obesity in school-age children and teens, a new study has revealed.

The research, carried out in Maine, found no correlation between overweight and obesity and the proximity of fast food outlets to schools and colleges. David Harris PhD of the University of Southern Maine in Portland et al wrote in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour that “Unhealthful (sic) food choices are ubiquitous” so retailers selling low nutrition, high salt, high sugar foods “[…] have no significant effect on student obesity.”

Of course there are several previous reports that show that the availability of processed foods in any particular neighbourhood will increase not only the risk but also the incidence of obesity among the population. Harris also postulated that the results may remain consistent with school age children if they’re allowed to go out for lunch and have a number of fast food options available nearby.

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