No matter what you’re eating, chances are it contains some or all of these ingredients:

Healthy foods hidden dangers.
(Credit: Daily Express)

• Additives
• Antibiotics
• Preservatives
• Monosodium glutamate
• High fructose corn syrup
• Artificial flavoring / natural flavoring

In fact, according to Uncle Sam, there are more than 3000 substances that are allowed go into our food, often referred to as the “Everything” Added to Food in the United States (EAFUS) database.

As usual, Wikipedia is nice enough to break things down for us. Here are the broad categories they have listed for food additives:

Acids

Food acids are added to make flavors “sharper”, and also act as preservatives and antioxidants. Common food acids include vinegar, citric acid, tartaric acid, malic acid, fumaric acid, lactic acid.

With the latest news from JAMA that neither vitamin C or E reduce the risk of prostate or total cancer in men, everyone is now asking, ‘what good are they then’?

“vitamins E and C are important as part of our antioxidant defenses, even if we have not yet documented specific preventive effects.” – Dr. Weill

According to WebMD, vitamin C is great for fighting against:

• cardiovascular disease,
• eye disease,
• immune system deficiencies,
• prenatal health problems, and even
• skin wrinkling.

With vitamin E, early lab studies are promising, but studies have been disappointing. The only established benefits are for people who have an actual deficiency, something rare for most of us, unless you have certain diseases like cystic fibrosis or digestive problems, or you’re on a very low-fat diet.

It’s true. Happiness is contagious – out to three degrees of separation no doubt – according to Harvard researcher just published in the British Medical Journal.

So apparently the flip side of ‘hanging out with the wrong crowd’ is ‘be happy by hanging out with happy people’.

Whether McDonald’s Moms speak for the Kroc family or not, no matter how you slice it McDonald’s, 500 calories = 500 calories, and with all their marketing prowess, they’ll never be able to change that.

Maybe that’s why Mrs. Kroc gave away so much of her money to needy organizations!

For some lunchtime reading though, I suggest Fast Food Nation for all the Mickey D lover’s out there. I read it a few years back and only just last month had my 1st McDonald’s meal since – a $1 chicken sandwich (which was actually well worth it IMO).

A recent poll of 4 doctors, 2 female & 2 male, reveal to us what vitamins they take themselves – a surefire model to help us fine tune our own habits.

Here are their daily vitamins:

Females

What Dr. Melina Jampolis – Age: 38 takes:

1. Multivitamin
2. Calcium
3. Vitamin D
4. Omega 3
5. Jampolis, who specializes exclusively in nutrition for weight loss and disease prevention and treatment, says everyone should take a basic multivitamin. “I like to call it an insurance policy,” she says.

What not to take

1. “I’m not convinced that the ‘beautiful skin’ vitamins really help much — it’s much better to get the nutrients from your diet, drink water, and wear sunscreen,” Jampolis says.

Next time you’re feeling a little ‘under the weather’, check out Google Flu Trends for a possible flare up in your area. Google matches their search results up against the CDC’s historical data and we get a visual of the comparison.

“We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and discovered that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States.”

When Obama takes office, he’ll have quite a few items on the agenda that need immediate attention. Not counting the two most obvious ones – the economy and ending our wars. This image displays a few more I learned about back in school.

Here’s to hoping we can kick it up a notch!