"food choices" news and stories

Yesterday around 3:30 pm I found myself rummaging around in the fridge for a snack. I came up with a few slices of swiss cheese and a bunch of red grapes. When I was working full time in an office, I would always find myself slumping around 3 pm or so and would often run out for a smoothie from the cart down the street. When it was raining, I'd get really lazy and wend my way to the building vending machine for a hit of M&Ms. Now that I work from home, I'm often too lazy to convince myself to leave my apartment for a snack and so instead put together comical combinations like leftover brussel sprouts and handfuls of cashews.

Settling back down in front of my computer, I started thinking about the myriad forms an afternoon snack can take and wondering about the afternoon snack habits of others. And that's where you, loyal Slashfood readers, come in. Tell me about your afternoon snacks. Confess your odd habits or your need to have a cup of mint green tea at precisely 2:37 pm every afternoon.

(If you're curious about the snack habits of others, check out Lunch, a food blog that chronicles the daily lunch and snack consumption of two women in NY or Snack Pack, the blog devoted entirely to snacks, written by some folks at the St. Petersburg Times).

"What's your sign?" has just taken on a whole new meaning. We just found a whole set of horoscopes that will help you determine everything from your favorite cocktail to the best pizza topping - all based on star signs. We've already seen that ice cream preference can be determined by the signs, but drinks and hamburgers?

With a Libra volunteer, we put the choices to the test. According to the horoscopes, her soul food is baking, gourmet pizzas will satisfying her taste buds, a blue cheese burger on a croissant will get washed down with a mimosa or a beer in a pretty glass and Kettle Corn is her ideal snack.

She agreed with the baking, kettle corn and pizza, but turned down the idea of a burger on a croissant. She also said that she wouldn't mind the food options for most of the other signs, so it looks like the accuracy of the food horoscopes might be off by a bit. We're not going to be picking our foods based on our star signs any time soon, but maybe we'll use one of the charts on the days that we really can't decide what to have for lunch.

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In a study published by the American Dietetic Association, parents are the biggest factor in what kids eat and in the food choices that they ultimately make. For young children, this doesn't come as a surprise because they have few opportunities to eat food not provided by their parents, but what makes the study noteworthy is that it applies to teens and concludes that having "healthy household eating rules" is the biggest factor in influencing a child's diet.

When parents emphasized getting a certain amount of fat (i.e. always served lean ground beef instead of regular) or made the number of servings of fruits and veggies important, the kids were more likely to make the same choices when eating without their parents.

What are good "healthy household eating rules" to have? The researchers who performed the study suggested having only healthy/healthier snacks at home, always having a vegetable with dinner and a fruit with breakfast, and setting limits on sweets and sodas. Kids might not strictly follow the "rules" when they're not at home, but their long-term choices will be shaped by them.

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