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How To Use Baking Soda To Whiten Teeth

January 14, 2013/14 Comments/in BEAUTY, Beauty How-To, BUY THIS. MAKE THAT., Fitness & Health, HEALTH, View All Beauty Stories, View All Health Stories /by Editor

Baking soda will definitely whiten your teeth. Here’s how to use it properly.

CHEAP & EFFECTIVE | There’s no question that brushing with ordinary baking soda will remove surface stains from your teeth and contribute to a pearly white smile. Toothpaste manufacturers know this, which is why some of them have taken a page from 19th- and early 20th-century history books—when paste made from hydrogen peroxide combined with baking soda was a common agent for cleaning and destaining teeth—and included baking soda as an active ingredient in their product.

With baking soda’s proven track record, it’s no wonder people are curious about using it by itself as an inexpensive alternative to bleaching trays to whiten their teeth, though many worry that its abrasive properties will strip the enamel from their teeth. Read more

A Very Good Reason To Buy Unshelled Nuts

November 12, 2012/5 Comments/in Diet, FITNESS, Fitness & Health, FOOD, HEALTH, Nutrition, View All Fitness Stories, View All Food Stories, View All Health Stories /by Editor

Notoriously addictive nuts are one superfood that should be consumed daily. Here’s how to avoid over indulging.

EATING RIGHT | Jeffrey Steingarten, a leading food writer in the U.S., once compared ingesting a single pecan to swallowing a pat of butter. That didn’t stop the sometime judge on Iron Chef America from indulging in pecans, but this fact stopped me cold when I read it in Vogue—and it put me off pecans forever. After all who would knowingly shove multiple slabs of pure butterfat into their mouth? Read more

Chew On These Three Sugarless Gum Brands

July 6, 2012/10 Comments/in Fitness & Health, HEALTH, Nutrition, View All Health Stories /by Editor

Some sugarless chewing gum is not like the others: these three brands are actually good for your teeth.

BUY RIGHT | A chewer from way back, I could tell you I gobble gum because it stimulates the production of saliva which has been scientifically proven to help neutralize acid erosion on tooth enamel—but really it’s because I’m a fresh breath fanatic and mints and sprays leave me with a dry mouth. Read more

Can House Cleaning Make You Happier?

June 11, 2012/2 Comments/in Fitness & Health, HEALTH, View All Health Stories, Well Being /by Editor

Get out the squeegee, Margie—doing housework may well be the way to improve your state of mind.

HAPPY TALK | We don’t need social scientists or surveys to confirm that having a clean house is a natural mood booster. But did you know that actually doing the cleaning may improve your mood as much as having a house that’s clean? In her new book, The First 20 Minutes: Surprising science reveals how we can exercise better, train smarter, live longer, author Gretchen Reynolds reports that a recent large-scale survey done in Europe found an “inverse association between housework and distress.”

Breast Or Thigh: Which Chicken Part Is Best?

May 9, 2012/7 Comments/in Diet, FOOD, Food & Drink, HEALTH, Nutrition, View All Food Stories, View All Health Stories /by Editor

Chicken breasts have long been considered the healthiest part of the bird, but top chefs favour the flavour of dark meat. (RECIPES)

WHAT THE PROS KNOW | Why it took so long, I’ll never know, but North Americans are beginning to wean themselves from the breast—the chicken breast, that is. “The dark, tender meat of the chicken thigh is the most flavorful part of the bird,” writes Nate Appleman in his cookbook A16 Food + Wine, the International Association of Culinary Professionals cookbook of the year in 2008. To prove it, he includes THIS AWESOME RECIPE for Chicken Meatballs with Peperonata.

International superstar chef Daniel Boulud (who once set up shop in Vancouver) gave chicken thighs two thumbs up this past winter when he used them in THIS GREAT RECIPE for Chicken Lasagna, which appeared in Elle Décor.

Neither of these chefs would ever stint on ingredients or sacrifice quality because of cost. Both cook with chicken thighs not because they are always cheaper than breasts but because they taste better than breasts. Simple as that.

But here a small voice interjects, “But what about health? Aren’t chicken breasts a whole lot better for you?” Read more

Floss Much? No? Then AirFloss To The Rescue

May 1, 2012/2 Comments/in Fitness & Health, HEALTH, View All Health Stories /by Editor

This cool new dental tool can help with a cumbersome chore many of us avoid like the plague.

MONEY WELL SPENT | Floss much? Didn’t think so. Don’t worry; you’re not alone. Daily flossing is as important as daily brushing, but most people don’t floss routinely, and if/when they do floss, it’s guilt flossing, the kind you engage in just before or after a trek to the dentist. Read more

A Tasty Gluten-Free Sub For Wheat Pasta

April 9, 2012/0 Comments/in BUY THIS. MAKE THAT., CANADIAN CONTENT, Diet, FOOD, Food & Drink, HEALTH, Nutrition, View All Food Stories, View All Health Stories /by Editor

Yes, there is a guilt-free, gluten-free substitute for high-cal, high-carb wheat-based pasta.

EASY & DELISH | For anyone on a low-cal, low-carb or gluten-free diet, pasta can be a problem—at least the traditional wheat-based kind. But there is an alternative: shirataki noodles, used in Asian cuisine. Read more

kombucha-Kathy Patalsky- Happy Healthy Life

Need A Quick Energy Boost? Try Kombucha

March 28, 2012/3 Comments/in Diet, FITNESS, Fitness & Health, FOOD, HEALTH, Nutrition, View All Fitness Stories, View All Food Stories, View All Health Stories /by Editor

This newly mainstream fizzy health drink can make you sparkle.

CULT PRODUCT ALERT | Kombucha is a centuries-old fermented-tea beverage consumed for its presumed health benefits. While there’s no hard scientific evidence that kombucha stimulates the immune system, improves digestion and liver function or boosts physical and mental energy in humans, growing legions of kombucha devotees will tell you otherwise, including such celebrities as Gwyneth Paltrow, who pitches GT’s Raw Organic Kombucha as part of her dietary regimen. Read more

Great Threads: The Best All Around Floss

January 10, 2012/4 Comments/in Fitness & Health, HEALTH, View All Health Stories /by Editor

Everyone plans to floss more (according to a survey of New Year’s resolutions): This product will insure that happens..

MONEY WELL SPENT | Is Canada a nation of flosser wannabes? You would think so if you glanced at the December 31 Huffington Post “picture gallery” piece that ran under the bold headline “New Year’s Resolutions 2012: The Top Resolutions For Canadians.” Read more

Lose Extra Pounds With Help From Fitday.com

January 9, 2012/65 Comments/in Diet, FITNESS, Fitness & Health, HEALTH, Nutrition, Skin & Body Care, View All Fitness Stories, View All Health Stories, Well Being /by Editor

Fitday.com is a fab, free website that can help you lose weight, get fitter and more.

FREE & FABULOUS | I’ve been trying on a quasi-casual level to lose “those last five pounds” for the last five years, but haven’t been able to. Now I know why and what to do about it, thanks to Fitday.com. Fitday, for the uninitiated—and there are still one or two of us out there—is a free, superbly organized weight loss website that allows its five million members to easily set a weight loss goal that will trigger an action plan that includes daily food consumption and physical activity requirements.

All of this is great, of course, but the best thing about Fitday in my view, and in the view of Innovative Fitness trainer Josh Allen who introduced me to the program, is the way it tracks the nutrient values in the foods you consume—and nutrient values, as I’m coming to learn, are at the root of my problem.