Locavore Lifestyle

• What other trends does the Locavore Lifestyle connect to?
• Why is a trainload of produce possibly more environmentally sustainable than a truckload?
  
• Name 10 local foods-meat/fish/dairy/grain/veg/fruit within a 100 mile radius to you?
• Compare the cost of each to your supermarket?
• Eat 3 locally grown foods this week and compare with an equivalent supermarket product? Describe and contrast the texture, smell, colour, flavour, look, feel, cost of each?
• Why would you not engage in Locavore activities?
• Why would you?
• Can you see one aspect of your habitual shopping becoming local that isn't already?
• Have you thanked a farmer/producer recently?
  

Rainbow Bento Lunch

rainbow bento lunch, originally uploaded by tiffanywashko.
The Food People have put out another PDF on Kids for a bit of retrospective food trend watching. But its far from nostalgic.

The food trends concerning kids are all about patching up the wonky health patterns that are apparent after a couple of generations of fast food product development/marketing, not to mention water soil and air contaminants. What does it really mean to promote healthy food choices? Have you noticed the urgency to be seen by consumers as healthy or green?

What really is a healthy food or beverage product? Is it the label that says so?

Bento Lunch Boxes originate from Japan.

Nutritional Vending Machines

TheDieline.com: The #1 Package Design Website, World's Best Packaging: VitaMeal - A Nutritious Revolution in Vending

Irena Ivanova has a solution to fast food and nutritional sustainance here...beautiful packaging design also!



http://www.irinaivanova.com/

Ordered Online Healthy Snacks to Your Door

graze - nature delivered

Nutritionist Roz Kadir says that grazing is good. She designs nutritionally complete grazing boxes preordered online and delivered within the UK. This trend is part of a mini-size me Trend.

Roz describes the health benefits of positive snacking. Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers and could only eat what was available; they never sat down to eat meals as we do today. I like to think of snacks as mini meals that replicate the way our bodies were designed to eat and not just as treats.

Done correctly, grazing can help maintain your blood sugar levels, providing you with consistent energy throughout the day. If you eat very sugary refined foods such as white bread, pasta and cakes, your blood sugar sky rockets causing the body to react by producing lots of insulin. Insulin is responsible for converting sugars to fat and storing energy, as a result your blood sugar levels can plummet causing that awful mid afternoon sleepy feeling so many of us experience.

Education is Preventable

Governments and educators have failed so far in guiding people to choose health above processed convenience foods. Both the mainstream media and doctors have asserted that diabetes has no cure and heart disease is hereditary. Yet on October 15th 2008 Obama stated on national television that heart disease and diabetes are preventable, and therefore people must be educated on how to prevent these diseases.

Social media has greatly leveraged Obama's capacity to advocate profound political policy. How may this same technology be utilised to inform students about their own bodies and the sources from which their food comes? It's certainly helpful when presidents advocate for common sense but the information overload now outweighs the cure.

How can technology assist educators to enable students to make healthy food choices? Dr Patrick Nixon of globalchange states that "education needs to focus on how to find immediate answers to complex problems using new technology."

• How can social media assist you in making the best choices for your bodies and long term health?

• What technology tools would inform you?

• What technology tools would empower you?

• Which web resources would you choose and why? Why not?
  

• Who might you listen to on the web? How do you ascertain their authority?

• Do you feel that sharing your own discoveries will assist you as well as others?

• What other actions might you take in order to enhance your own food choices?

I really recommend this video by Dr Patrick Dixon as a starting point to developing your own answers
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gG8eiXe9d9o

Coca-Cola craves health drink market

Coca-Cola could launch stevia drink ahead of FDA GRAS

Wacko! This is stunning news, Stevia could well be mainstream already. This is a tricky ingredient to balance in cooking because by force of habit we equate it to sugar-which it is not.
Use extremely sparingly like one sixteenth (less?) of a t spoon maximum. The thing is if you find the right amount you will have sweet baked goods, drinks etc fit for any diabetic sweet tooth. But if you over do it the over powering flavour could put you off Stevia altogether. Dont be put off! It is beneficial for you! A Calorie free sweetener, the benefits of replacing sugar are systemic. It reduces blood pressure and has antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties. I have yet to give up sugar, but if Stevia were more readily available commercially then I could do it.

Stevia
Much sweeter than sugar. Stevioside, a chemical that makes up 6-18% of the leaf, is 100 times sweeter than a 10% solution of sucrose. Originally from Paraguay.

Image from Ecolibrary
http://ecolibrary.cs.brandeis.edu/index.php

Chocolates claim tooth-friendly sugar?

First chocolates released with tooth-friendly sugar

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