Gloss How-To: Give Your Sandwich a Makeover
Do you brown bag your lunch? Making your own lunch is not only cost effective, it also gives you full control over the nutrients, cooking methods and calories. But the same old same old turkey sandwich can get pretty darn boring after a while. Cooking Light has some great ideas for six simple sandwich makeovers that will enliven your taste buds and boost the nutritional quality of your lunch.
- Pesto packs a powerful flavor punch. Though some of pesto’s ingredients can be high calorie, used as a thin spread on a sandwich it’s actually quite calorie friendly. (Only about 58 calories per tablespoon.) And the healthy fats from the olive oil and nuts are a health perk.
- Roasted red pepper adds a new texture, flavor and color to wraps and sandwiches. It also provides plenty of vitamins C and A.
- Avocado is rich in monounsaturated fat, vitamin E, potassium, and heart healthy plant sterols. Add slices to a sandwich or puree into a spread.
- Pears are a mildly flavored addition to a sandwich and add an unexpected crunch. They’re also a great source of fiber.
- Dried fruit is a perfect mix in for chicken salad. It adds a natural sweetness and delivers a healthy dose of nutrients.
- Almond butter is a refreshing alternative for peanut butter. It’s rich in calcium and magnesium.
Growing up, Peggy Fleming was a household name — she won the United States their only gold medal at the 1968 Olympics for figure skating and is a true American idol. A survey by the Associated Press in 1993 ranked her as the 3rd most popular athlete in America.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and a good time to think about the preventative measures that women can take to help reduce their chances of getting breast cancer. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), one in every eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime, and although men can also get breast cancer, women are 100 times more likely to get it than men. The National Cancer Institute reports that over 207,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, and nearly 40,000 of them died from it.
We’ve talked a bit about the benefits of 
Sometimes you just can’t help it — late at night, you creep out of bed and head to the kitchen for a snack. Unfortunately, studies have shown that snacking at night is a major contributor to unwanted pounds and is a sure-fire way to sabotage a diet. With daylight savings just around the corner, it’ll be getting darker sooner and we could find ourselves in ‘hibernation’ mode…making us even more likely to fall victim to late-night snack attacks!
For those that need to lower their LDL (also referred to as “bad”) cholesterol, often doctors will prescribe a low-fat diet and exercise to get their levels down, however a new study finds that a diet focused on specific foods that are known to lower LDL levels is more effective than a low fat diet. In a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, patients who ate a diet filled with cholesterol-lowering foods saw a 13 percent reduction in their LDL cholesterol levels while those who followed a low-fat diet experienced a 3 percent decrease.
American’s are abuzz and concerned about Naegleria Fowleri — the “brain-eating amoeba” that has claimed the lives of three people so far. The extremely rare but extremely deadly condition typically causes a small handful of deaths per year — most commonly in Southern states during summer months. The three deaths linked to what’s been dubbed the brain-eating amoeba have occurred in Louisiana, Virginia and Florida where the amoeba thrives in warm, fresh waters such as ponds, lakes or rivers.