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The 5 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

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From Livestrong.com: The 5 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating | LIVESTRONG.COM.

Read the whole article for why they’re healthy.

NUTRITIONAL YEAST
HOW TO EAT IT: Stir 1-2 tablespoons into sauces, soups, or stir-fries to add rich flavor and a protein boost without a lot of extra calories (2 tablespoons has about 60 calories).

Chia Seeds
HOW TO EAT THEM: Sprinkle chia seeds on cereal, yogurt, salads… really anything! The seeds form a gel when mixed with liquid, so they’re great for thickening smoothies, salad dressings, and soups.

Kefir
HOW TO EAT IT: Pour a glass for a light breakfast or a sweet snack. Just be careful: Since kefir is so packed with healthy probiotics, you may need to build a tolerance to it. Start with a small glass (about half a cup) and increase the amount every few days.

Hemp
HOW TO EAT IT: Toss two tablespoons of hemp seeds into your oatmeal or stir-fry. Or add them to a smoothie for an extra dose of protein.

Black Garlic
HOW TO EAT IT: The gentle, sweet flavor of black garlic makes it a versatile superfood—add it into any recipe in which you’d use fresh garlic, from pasta dishes to soups and stews. The best part? No garlic breath.

As more people become aware of the nutritional benefits of lesser-known superfoods like nutritional yeast, chia seeds, and black garlic, meal kit services have stepped up to incorporate these ingredients into their offerings. By focusing on healthful, diverse options, companies like Green Chef and Hello Fresh not only cater to taste preferences but also promote better eating habits.

When selecting meal kits, consider how these nutrient-dense ingredients can elevate your home-cooked dishes, ensuring you’re not just eating for convenience but also for optimal health.

For those exploring their options between different meal kit services, understanding the benefits of each can guide your decision-making process. A comprehensive review by experts comparing green chef vs hello fresh can illuminate which service best aligns with your dietary preferences and lifestyle. Both meal kits offer unique advantages: Green Chef focuses on organic and sustainable ingredients, while Hello Fresh provides a wider variety of recipes to cater to different tastes.

With an expert team evaluating these meal kits, you can gain insights into which service not only meets your culinary desires but also incorporates superfoods that contribute to a healthier lifestyle, making meal preparation both enjoyable and beneficial for your well-being.

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Indiana Tops Nation For Sex Assaults Of High School-Age Girls

Via Shakesville a report on sexual violence against high-school age girls from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts Indiana at the high the highest percentage of crimes at 17.3 percent of girls in grades 9 through 12 have been raped. I’m trying to find a link to the original report from the CDCP. But here is a CBS news story on it. Shakesville also points out the correlating information that Indiana leads the nation on abortion restrictions, so those young women who become pregnant as a result of rape will have a difficult time dealing with the aftermath.

UPDATE: I didn’t find the info under sexual violence on the CDC site, but I did find it under data sources on this page on Youth Violence. There is a PDF file on that page called Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance — United States, 2009 that contains a summary of statistics on page 6, and a table of more detailed statistics broken down by state on page 50 that matches the information in this story. If you’re concerned about the date of 2009, note that this survey was completed then, but there was subsequent analysis, and the report on the survey itself was more recently published.

Indiana Tops Nation For Sex Assaults Of High School-Age Girls « CBS Chicago.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (CBS) — In Indiana, girls have a higher chance of becoming the victim of sexual assault than almost any other place in the country.

As WBBM Newsradio’s Michele Fiore reports, 10.5 percent of all American high school-age girls have been forced into sexual intercourse, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the rate vastly exceeds the national average in Indiana, where 17.3 percent of girls in grades 9 through 12 have been raped.

Kinsey Institute Director for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction Julie Heiman told the Bloomington, Ind., Herald-Times that she was “shocked” at the statistics.

The Herald-Times also pointed out that researching the issue is a challenge, given that up to 50 percent of sexual assaults against women are never reported, and Indiana is one of three states – along with Mississippi and New Mexico – where law enforcement is not required to report sexual violence to the FBI.

Researchers also emphasized that 80 percent or more of rape and sexual assault involves people who know each other, not strangers, the newspaper reported.

Following the release of the CDC report, Indiana University researchers are now calling for more sex education and assault prevention efforts.

The Indy Star has a report on the same study, with some additional quotes. Still no link to the original study.

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Losing my religion for equality

President Jimmy Carter chooses to leave his church rather than support inequality for women. His explanation here: Losing my religion for equality.

Excerpts from his piece:

Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.

I HAVE been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

Read the whole piece.

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Christians Fight for Their Children’s God-Given Right to Bully Gay Kids

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Jezebel on:Christians Fight for Their Children’s God-Given Right to Bully Gay Kids.

“Bullying children is wrong and bad” may sound like the most basic tenet of human decency, but if you ask conservative lobbying groups like Concerned Women for America and Focus on the Family, making it a crime to taunt someone until they kill themselves is akin to interfering with religious freedom. According to AlterNet’s Katherine Stewart, conservative groups across the country have opposed various anti-bullying measures because they say outlawing bullying is akin to state endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle. You know, Madonna and glitter and buttsex and all-women’s softball teams all that. The homosexual lifestyle.

In Michigan, lawmakers attempted to insert a provision into an anti-bullying bill that would have allowed bullying only on the grounds that it was being done based on a “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” (As in, “I sincerely and morally believe that Mandy has a nutsack” or “God told me I should write “FAG” on your locker?”). That effort was killed after national outcry against it, but in Tennessee, lawmakers are now attempting to make it legal for jerkhole kids to bully other kids based on their religious preference — or lack thereof. And in Washington, 70 education and civil rights groups have backed a measure that would make it illegal for sexual orientation or gender identity to be used as basis for student discrimination. Christian groups have claimed this law would contribute to the “homosexualization” of students, notes Stewart.

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She Has No Head! – Is the Destruction of The Amazons The Destruction of Feminism in DC Comics?

Kelly Thompson on Wonder Woman issue 7: She Has No Head! – Is the Destruction of The Amazons The Destruction of Feminism in DC Comics? | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources.

I drafted Wonder Woman #7 for my CBR reviews last week not knowing what the issue was about, and it resulted in the toughest review I’ve had to write for CBR yet. To CBR’s credit, though the review skewed a bit editorial, they ran it. However, we have strict word counts over there and I have many thoughts and feelings…so here we are on She Has No Head! five days later.

I have loved and supported the new Wonder Woman under Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang. I supported this book vehemently even when I did not agree with all the choices they made — like Wonder Woman being Zeus’ daughter and thus a demi-god — because I understand that writers have to do things that are unpopular sometimes in order to tell the best story. And in fact, doing something unpopular can often be the right thing to do. In addition to that, I also understand that stories are not tailor made FOR ME, and I don’t expect them to be. So I accepted the changes as many fans did and continued to read, and frankly to love, so much of what Azzarello and Chiang were doing.

And more:

I spent the weekend trying to decide whether this story would have hit as painfully if not for the current state of women in the real world. In the U.S. alone we are in a fever of women’s reproductive rights being stripped away, women being denied a seat at the table for discussion of these rights, women who use birth control publicly being called ‘sluts’, and women being physically violated by things like transvaginal probes. Not to mention everything from continued victim blaming for rape, sexual harassment in the workplace, and women still (in 2012!) making approximately 80 cents on the dollar. And those things still ignore the far larger and more obviously dangerous problems that women must face in so many other countries – being forced to marry your rapist, being stoned to death for daring to be raped, to even archaic rules like women not being allowed to drive cars.

It’s hard to ignore that this is a society that increasingly hates and distrusts women, especially as they gain any ground or power for themselves. And so it’s doubly hard to see that reflected back in our fiction right now. To see powerful women – which The Amazons have unequivocally been – as THE example of a society of powerful women in DC Comics – stripped of everything that might be good and honorable so that we may see the broadest most hateful stereotypes of them presented. The erroneous and damaging stereotype reinforced yet again that women with power will become absolute monsters. I would never make an argument that a matriarchal society would be a utopia. I would argue that any society that has inequality can by its very nature NOT be a utopia. But I see the Amazons, time and time again turned (primarily by men I’m sorry to say) into horror stories. Wildly exaggerated speculation of man-hating, man-killing, war-like unreasonable monsters. The question in fiction seems to lately be – how could powerful women be anything but monsters? For me, it’s a bridge too far.

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Movie Trailer for Bully

This year, over 5 million American kids will be bullied at school, online, on the bus, at home, through their cell phones and on the streets of their towns, making it the most common form of violence young people in this country experience. The Bully Project is the first feature documentary film to show how we’ve all been affected by bullying, whether we’ve been victims, perpetrators or stood silent witness. The world we inhabit as adults begins on the playground. The Bully Project opens on the first day of school. For the more than 5 million kids who’ll be bullied this year in the United States, it’s a day filled with more anxiety and foreboding than excitement. As the sun rises and school busses across the country overflow with backpacks, brass instruments and the rambunctious sounds of raging hormones, this is a ride into the unknown.

The Bully Project opens in select theaters on Friday. I had hoped it would be opening in Indianapolis, but I don’t see it playing here yet. The movie was rated “R” because of the language, but the producers objected to that rating – it would mean that kids, who are the target audience, would not be able to see it. They tried to fight that rating, and ultimately rejected any rating, choosing to release it without a rating rather than accept it. Movie chain AMC has agreed to open the movie to minors.

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Gay New York Couple of 60+ Years Die Just Two Weeks Apart

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According to Gay Blog Towleroad:

Gay New York Couple of 60+ Years Who Married Last Year Die Just Two Weeks Apart
Shaun O’Brien, a dancer of four decades with the New York City Ballet, died at the age of 86 on February 23. His husband (left) Cris Alexander, a Broadway actor and photographer, died on March 7, just two weeks later.

From their New York Times Obit:

When same-sex marriage became legal in New York last year, he married Shaun O’Brien, the celebrated character dancer with the New York City Ballet. They had been together for more than 60 years and died less than two weeks apart — Mr. Alexander on March 7 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., at age 92; Mr. O’Brien on Feb. 23 at 86. They shared a Victorian house in Saratoga Springs.

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