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The genus name of chocolate, Theobroma derives from the Greek theos, “god,” and “broma,” “food,” thus meaning “food of the gods.” The common name chocolate derives from an Aztec name for this plant, chocolatl. Cocoa was the “love tonic” of Montezuma II, who is reputed to have drunk some fifty cups daily before visiting his harem of six hundred women.
In 1502 the returning crew of Columbus brought cacao beans back to Europe, and in 1550 nuns came up with the idea of adding sugar and vanilla, leading to what we now regard as chocolate. During the 1800s, physicians recommended chocolate to boost libido, and to this day it is well known for its ability to inspire passion.
Cacao is considered aphrodisiac, antioxidant, cardiotonic, diuretic, emollient, laxative, nervous system stimulant, and nutritive. Cacao increases levels of serotonin and endorphins in the body. It gives a short-term boost in energy and, when consumed in its whole, raw from, is beneficial for the teeth, as it contains tannins that inhibit dental decay. It also contains phenylethylamine, a compound that is naturally occurring in the brain in trace amounts and is released when we are in love, peaking during orgasm. Cacao also contains theobromine, a compound that dilates the coronary artery, increasing blood flow to the heart. Most commercial chocolates today, however, have a low cacao content and contain sugar and hydrogenated oil. It contains many constituents including Vitamin E, B complex vitamins, chromium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, amino acids (arginine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, tyramine, tyrosine), phenylethylamine, anandamide, dopamine, serotonin, xanthines (caffeine, theobromine, trigonelline), flavonoids (epicatechin, catechin, procyanidins), essential oil, sucrose, glucose, mucilage, oleopalmitostearin, tannins, and natural sugars.
In its natural form, chocolate is considered bitter, warm, dry, yang, governed by Mars and Uranus and corresponding to the element of Fire.
Who would allow you to totally ignore, abuse, laugh with, swear at, shed tears on, get angry at and be totally honest with him/her? Your journal does.
Your journal is an unconditional friend. It does not reject, manipulate, judge, laugh at or ridicule you. It’s always there for you. So be honest with your best friend and it will help you discover who you are.
"The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way, and that's heaven. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind."
posted by Delia Quigley Mar 3, 2010
A major side effect of America’s economic downturn is that when people don’t have money, they cannot afford to feed their animals, much less themselves. This seems to leave them no recourse but to drop said pets at a local rescue shelter or worst still just to abandon them, often times to die of dehydration and starvation, in the very houses they just foreclosed on. This presents a challenge to the shelters because they now have to feed and care for these frightened animals on budgets that were not meant to handle the overwhelming numbers of healthy, tame, house-trained pets. How it is oftentimes handled, regrettably, is with a quiet death by euthanasia.
My brother has a good friend who lives on a small patch of land in rural Missouri. Not much happens out there except when he comes upon a dog whose owner has driven his pet out into the countryside and left it along the side of the road to find its way. One time there was a beautiful Rottwieler chained to a fence, no doubt so it wouldn’t run after the car accelerating away from him. It wasn’t until after I adopted Seamus and Maya, my two rescue dogs, that I learned their previous owners, a young couple with two small children, filed bankruptcy, lost their home and had to move to a no-pets-allowed apartment.
What does it say about our culture that we can abandon household pets with such disregard and inconsideration? Oops, did I mean animals, or how we treat each other? If we can so easily abandon our spouse, children, friends and family, then it stands to reason the human species has lost a bit too much compassionate DNA.
Why are there no financial subsidies for the abandoned animals and children of this country rather than the fat cats on Wall Street?
And why are we not, as a country, joining together to see that those who cannot fend for themselves are taken care of, like any healthy society should?
Scientific research has consistently informed us that television violence, movie violence, video game violence, and music violence contributes to desensitizing us to, drum roll, violence. Too busy watching all that violence we did not see how we have been altered by our actions.
Abandoning one’s pet to an uncertain fate along the side of the road or to be euthanized because it is more convenient is, make no mistake, a form of cruel and unjust violence.
This violence includes, but is not limited to, the unethical treatment of animals for food, the senseless slaughter of wild horses, wolves, and animals for fur, and the extinction of one animal species after another due to a lack of compassion and a willingness to think only about our own needs and comforts.
Now what can we do about it?
It is now a common sight to see shoppers carrying their own reusable shopping bags to the grocery store. That is fantastic, and such an easy eco-friendly action for most of us to take. Still, there’s a ton of material we continue to schlep home when shopping — the cellophane, unrecyclable bags, plastic, and cardboard used in the packaging of many common items. Much of this packaging is unnecessary, but manufacturers know that flashy packaging translates into increased sales.
As of 1994, the European Union requires manufacturing companies to take back and recycle at least 60 percent of their packaging waste, including that used for food items, thus taking the burden off of the consumer and local communities. No such incentive for reducing packaging exists for manufacturers in the U.S. or Canada.
As consumers, there are a number of items we can use or purchase in order to reduce our consumption of excess packaging:
Do you have any tips to reduce packaging? Share them below, please.
Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys.. When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this product to get their money back..
It was a white substance with no food appeal so they added the yellow colouring and sold it to people to use in place of butter.. How do you like it?
They have come out with some clever new flavourings..
DO YOU KNOW the difference between margarine and butter?
Both have the same amount of calories.
Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams; compared to 5 grams for margarine.
Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.
Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods. Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few and only because they are added!
Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavours of other foods.
Buter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years .
And now, for Margarine..
- Very High in Trans fatty acids.
- Triples risk of coronary heart disease .
- Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol)
- Increases the risk of cancers up to five times..
- Lowers quality of breast milk.
- Decreases immune response.
- Decreases insulin response.
And here's the most disturbing fact.... HERE IS THE PART THAT IS VERY INTERESTING!
Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC... and shares 27 ingredients with PAINT
These facts alone were enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the molecular structure of the substance).
You can try this yourself:
Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it open in your garage or shaded area. Within a couple of days you will notice a couple of things:
* no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)
* it does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value, nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not a find a home to grow. Why? Because it is nearly plastic .
Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?
Pass the BUTTER... PLEASE
The dictionary describes the word “lie” in the following way:
v 1. to say something that is not true in a conscious effort to deceive somebody,
2. to give a false impression;
n 1. a false statement made deliberately,
2. a false impression created deliberately.
In all four of these descriptions, one thing stands out clearly: that lying is something we do deliberately — that our purpose for lying is to intentionally deceive. Obviously, this type of activity seems at odds with being “nice.”
How is it that we can consider ourselves good people and include lying?
We may think our lying is for a good reason: to keep from hurting someone’s feelings, to smooth over conflict or to make someone happy.
After all, what does it hurt to tell a little white lie every once in a while?
What lying does, as a rule, is to create multiple realities. When you lie, reality splits — it “dis-integrates.” You now have one reality that you know and live in, knowing the “truth” about a particular issue, and the reality that the people to whom you’ve lied live in, which is designed around somewhat or totally different information. The people to whom you have lied make decisions and choices based on the reality they inhabit, but it’s a different reality than the one you inhabit, so that split will now influence your relationship and your common future.
Presumably, you told the white lie to make these other people’s reality “nicer,” but you probably also told it to make your reality more comfortable (i.e., by lying, you avoided “feeling bad,” disappointing them or being the bearer of bad news). The problem is, you are creating this potentially huge disintegration without having any real way of knowing what the repercussions of that reality-split will be down the road. You can’t know how this separate reality might circle back in the future, and you can’t really know whether the net outcome for this other person will be better or worse than the course of the reality that might have resulted if you had told the truth. All you can know for sure is that you’ve now created a rift in a continuum of both your own and these other people’s lives, and you’ve taken charge, if even in a small way, of designing someone else’s reality.
The more lies you tell, of course, the more multiple realities you create and must live with.
You may feel pulled in a thousand directions, and unable to make decisions without the fear that all these “custom made” realities could come crashing down around you. You may also not feel like you fully know or trust yourself at times.
How can we be sure we are speaking it, and speaking it with full integrity?
How can we know when we are simply telling the truth, and when we are gossiping or talking out of turn?
At one time or another, most of us have been on the receiving end of someone who just had to “speak his or her truth,” but who also seemed to have had an agenda about making us wrong, guilt-tripping us or hurting our feelings. We’ve been in situations where someone says something totally inappropriate or unkind and then uses, “Well, it’s true!” as an excuse.
“Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”
That might mean love for another person, but it also means love of the greater good, for a principle or fundamental truth. Sometimes you may have to speak up in a way that hurts or angers someone close to you but that you feel is necessary for the benefit of a larger group or purpose. And yes, sometimes it means you may elect not to share a particular truth out of care or respect for another person. The intersection of love and truth is a complex territory. What you need is a personal code of integrity that you can live with and be proud of.
You will find yourself to be a much happier person when your words match your intentions and when your actions match your words.
Shakespeare had it right. In ways both big and small, the failure to forgive kills love and murders beauty. An unforgiving attitude makes life far less loving and beautiful than it could be. Move from blame to forgiveness, and here’s how:
It is much more satisfying to experience your feelings than to blame them on somebody else. You can move through your feelings–even bad ones–to real connection with yourself and others. And because of this you can learn to:
1. become a good friend and a Kind Father (or mother) to myself;
2. give myself encouragement and support, instead of habitual criticism;
3. pay attention to my feelings and identify what it is that I’m feeling;
4. experience my feelings fully, mourning fully;
5. share my heart experience with others and experience the connection of listening to their experience.
Learning to do this will help you become more forgiving. You don’t have to get angry and blame others to escape your feelings–because now you’ll welcome your feelings. In short, establishing a relationship with yourself will help free you from the blaming lifestyle.
The dictionary defines forgiveness: “To stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offence, flaw or mistake.”
Experts tell us that forgiveness is:
1. Letting go of a negative attachment to the past.
2. Letting go of the intense emotions tied to the past event–recognizing I no longer need to hold onto grudges, resentments, hatred and self pity.
3. Recognizing people are different, want and need different things and sometimes hurt each other.
4. No longer blaming the other person for my feelings.
5. No longer wanting to punish, realizing that punishing another will not heal me.
6. Moving on. Freeing my energy, and putting it to better use.
Did you know that adding color to your plate may add years to your life?
The natural pigments that make fruits and vegetables so colorful can also help protect your body from common diseases and illnesses as you age. Think color! The bright red of ripe tomatoes, strawberries, cherries, and cranberries; the brilliant orange of carrots; the vibrant green of kiwifruit and kale; and the dramatic purple of Concord grapes.
Scientists in labs across the country have made astounding discoveries about the health benefits of highly pigmented fruits and vegetables, which contain disease-fighting compounds called phytonutrients. These powerhouses act as a rogue police force, fighting off free radicals that cause cancer and a host of other enemies that increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and more. Here’s just a sampling of the health benefits of eating colorful fruits and vegetables.
* The red in tomatoes helps reduce the risk of heart disease, prostate cancer, and other types of cancers.
* The yellow in corn protects against macular degeneration, the number-one cause of blindness in the elderly.
* The orange in carrots and sweet potatoes helps prevent heart disease by lowering cholesterol and helps reduce the risk of stroke.
* The green in dark, leafy greens helps prevent cancer.
* The blue in blueberries helps protect memory and motor function as you age, and helps fight cancer and heart disease.
* The purple in Concord grapes and grape juice helps prevent heart disease.
So when you’re filling your shopping cart or your plate, think the more color, the better!
Lets spread some kindness around!!!
Wikipedia says that a random act of kindness is: “a selfless act performed by a person or persons wishing to either assist or cheer up an individual… There will generally be no reason other than to make people smile, or be happier.”
Perhaps it is the use of the world random that is misleading, and that it would be easier if we used the word spontaneous or impulsive instead. Spontaneity means we are acting on an impulse, in the moment, freely; particularly, that we are moved to do something for someone without any thought of receiving something in return. Such behavior is surely the ground of a healthy and joyful society, where we happily give of ourselves to help another and such an act is happily received.
What stops us from acting this way?
Invariably it is our insecurities, lack of self-esteem and self-love, doubts and inadequacies. And the same qualities also stop us from being able to freely receive. If we feel unworthy then we believe we have nothing to give; if we don’t love ourselves then we don’t trust why someone would be kind to us. We may fear that if someone gives without reason that they actually want something from us, or that they have an ulterior motive.
When we feel uncomfortable with generosity it can make us get stuck in ourselves and our issues. When we can appreciate the beauty of spontaneity it takes us out of such self-centeredness; it enables us to let go of focusing on self and to reach out to each other. We can both give and receive. Such ego less moments are exquisite!
Giving spontaneously can also have a remarkable affect on all those who come in contact with both the act and the players. For instance, HuffPost blogger Arthur Rosenfield was in the drive-thru line at Starbucks. The man in line behind him was getting impatient and angry, leaning on his horn and shouting insults at both Arthur and the Starbucks workers. Beginning to get angry himself, Arthur chose to keep his cool and change the negativity into something positive. He paid for the man’s coffee and drove away. When he got home at the end of the day, he discovered that he had created a chain of giving that had not only continued all that day but had been highlighted on NBC News and within twenty-four hours had spread around the world on the Internet.
Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end. -Scott Adams
Can you imagine a world where no one gave to each other?
World, where we all just looked after our own needs and ignored everyone else’s?
This would surely be a miserable place to live, for ultimately, whether spontaneous or planned, we cannot be happy without being kind, by giving and caring for each other.
Random acts of kindness are essential to our well being, as they liberate us from self-obsession, selfishness, and isolation; they are the effect of an open and loving nature. True generosity is giving without expectation, with no need to be repaid in any form. This is the most powerful act of generosity, as it is unconditional, unattached, and free to land wherever it will. Whether we give to our family, friends, or to strangers, it is the same.
We may feel we have little to offer, but whether it is a few pennies or a whole bankroll, a cup of tea or a banquet is irrelevant–it is the act of giving itself that is important.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, Almost anything we do will seem insignificant, but it is very important that we do it.
"We don't always know what makes us happy. We know, instead, what we think SHOULD. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail...We are mute when it comes to naming accurately our own preferences, delights, gifts, talents. The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people's expectations. The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart."
We are each unique beings with a unique path in life. If we wish to be fulfilled, we need to go to our own hearts for direction. We might regularly ask ourselves:
- "What do I really want to do?"
- "What brings me greatest happiness?"
- "How can I bring more of these into my life?"
Life wants us to go for what brings us most joy and meaning.
"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. ...I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing."
"Let me listen to me and not to them."
