Diagrams That Make Cooking So Much Easier

Diagrams That Make Cooking So Much Easier

Including easy ingredient substitutions, meat cuts, and more.

Reasons Why Soda Is Terrible For You.."Killing You."

A recent study showed how drinking too much diet soda for a long period of time can end up hurting your teeth as much as chronic abuse of methamphetamines or crack cocaine.

The acids in each substance eat away at tooth enamel, the hard outer surface of the tooth that protects your pearly whites from cavities, cracks, and discoloration.

Soda doesn't just rot your teeth. Either sugar-free or sweetened soft drinks have at one point been linked to obesity, depression, and diabetes.

We've gathered the scariest findings from recent soda studies:

• Soda increases your risk of heart attack. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, published March 2012 in the journal Circulation, found that drinking just one sugary beverage a day was associated with a 20 percent increase in a man's risk of having a heart attack over a 22-year period.

Fitness Tip: Sodium and Your Diet

Fitness Tip: Sodium and Your Diet - Who doesn't like the taste of salt?

As a way of lowering your blood pressure, keeping salt in your meal plan in check is another important way to support your overall health. Read labels, and watch out for prepared foods that contain large amounts of salt such as soups, snacks, and even some sodas. If you are craving salt, try enhancing your food flavor with fresh squeezed lemon or lime juice or some NO sodium or low sodium seasoning.

What you should know about artificial sweeteners

Aspartame, sucrose, acesulfame potassium, stevia: From yogurt to diet pop, artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes are everywhere, appealing to the growing number of consumers who want to watch their weight.

Despite the sweeteners’ ubiquity in the grocery aisles, however, there’s no end to the confusion about their safety.

Companies that sell artificial sweeteners, or foods made with them, assert they are harmless. Advocacy groups, such as the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, cite studies that link some of them to cancer. The sugar lobby (yes, such a thing exists) argues artificial sweeteners are inferior to the real article. Then there’s the conspiracy theorists who liken sugar substitutes to poison.