Eating Insects For Survival And Pleasure

By Owen Jones

In the developed world, not a lot of people eat insects for pleasure, but that is quite unusual if you consider the number of people and the number of nations in the world that do. In Asia, numerous individuals eat insects on a weekly or even daily basis. However, you may one day be glad that you read about eating insects, if you are stranded somewhere far from any other supply of food.

For example, lots of army personnel are taught how to eat worms and insects as part of their routine training course as part of their survival training. Insects are abundant and are simple to catch or trap, they are also a richer source of protein than steak and easier to cook and far less risky to eat raw than meat from mammals, fish or birds.

Insects can supply over three times the amount of protein weight for weight than any meat or fish. They are also free, you merely have to know where to look or how to bait them. However, you should not eat just any insect that you can get your hands on. There a couple of easy basic guidelines.

Do not consume anything that can bite or sting you back. Not because this is dangerous to you, but because creatures like bees, wasps and some ants only do not taste nice because of the poisons they create for their stings. A noteworthy exception to this rule is the scorpion. Numerous people find roast scorpion a delicacy.

You could hone this rule to just include brightly coloured, stinging insects - especially ones with yellow colouring. Furry insects are not nice either, especially caterpillars. Flying insects in general, like flies, mosquitoes, blue bottles and the like, should be avoided as well.

Big beetles (with the exception of cockroaches), grass hoppers, locusts, crickets and scorpions are the best. So are worms, maggots and most other larvae of that type like bee, wasp and hornet larvae. Termites and non-stinging ants are also safe to eat.

Most people fry the insects in oil after removing the wings (like with flying termites or ants). However, if you are stuck in the wild, you may not have any oil with you. Luckily, that is not too much of a difficulty if you cook the insects fairly slowly, because most of them have enough of their own body fat to be fried in.

If you find that taking your first meal of insects is just too much to stomach, have a go at mashing them in with some boiled root vegetables or wrap them in leaves. Boiled nettle leaves are very good for you and young dandelion leaves can be consumed raw.

If you are not certain how much to cook your insects, worms and larvae, here are a few tips from Asia. Fry big beetles, termites and scorpions until they are crunchy on the outside but with a small, slightly soft centre. Fry worms, crickets, grass hoppers and the like until they are hard and crisp and boil grubs and bee, wasp and hornet larvae for only a few seconds.

Most Westerners that visit Thailand turn their noses up at eating insects, but after six years of living here, I have never heard any of those who tried them say that they were unpleasant. In fact, most said that they were surprisingly tasty, but then why else would so many individuals like them?

Raw Food For Weight Loss And pH Balance

 By DeeDee Coleman 

The pH Scale

When you choose to enjoy a raw food nutrition plan, whether for weight loss or just over all better health, your pH should balance. Excessive secretion of acids in the gastric glands is what causes the discomfort projected when the diet consists of more foods containing acid than of foods containing alkaline. When this condition occurs there is too much acid in your blood to allow adequate oxygen. The ability or inability to free hydrogen ions determines the difference between acidity and alkalinity.

The pH Scale (Potential for freeing Hydrogen ions) measures the amount of oxygen in your blood and determines if it carries too little oxygen (acid) or too much oxygen (alkaline). When eating raw for weight loss be careful to eat well balanced meals and your pH should become and remain neutral.

The pH scale ranges from 0 (100 percent acid) to 14 (100 percent alkaline), each unit representing a tenfold change. Extremes in either direction can be responsible for the same health effects, so you will want to be neutral which is between 7.35 and 7.45.

How Vital Is Your pH?

The pH scale is familiar to those who measure it for labels or swimming pools. Who else cares about pH levels? Everybody should; we should all be concerned about anything that could conceivably affect our health and wellbeing.

Though different organs have different pH levels, we are able to test pH levels for certain foods after digestion and if desired, categorize them as low pH (acid foods) and high PH (alkaline foods).

Maintain Healthy pH

Due to the SAD (Standard American Diet) which provides a large amount of refined sugar, processed foods and animal protein coupled with pollution and stress (which is tremendously acidifying), most people are acidic.

When the blood pH is outside the range of 7.35 to 7.45, health problems are imminent.

The Importance Of Recognizing A Low pH

Do you have little energy? Are you lethargic? Are you short-tempered? Do you sleep poorly? These are symptoms experienced by those with diets high in acids. Other symptoms are brittle teeth, weak nails, dry skin and sensitivity to cold. Too much acid in the blood causes the immune system to weaken. When the immune system is weak the body is prone to viruses such as colds and the flu; it is also prone to recurring infections like urinary tract infection or bronchitis.

When chronic acidity is present the body illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, PMS, allergies or arthritis may attack the weakest parts of the body.

Balance Your pH

You can instantaneously correct the smallest change in pH by the elimination of fluids from the body and/or by neutralizing the acids with alkaline minerals. It is very important for the body to reach and maintain a healthy acid/alkaline balance.

To eliminate the body of fluids it must sweat, urinate, breathe or store them as fat.

To neutralize the acids with alkaline the body needs minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, manganese and iron.

Effects of pH During Weight Loss

Excess acids are stored as fat and can only be relieved by ingesting enough alkaline buffers to neutralize them.

If you are dieting to lose weight it shouldn't surprise you that it's just not happening. Diet and low-calorie foods are full of sugar, unhealthy animal protein and junk that makes your body crave more, causing you to eat more and never lose weight; or even gain more weight. In addition to sabotaging your weight loss attempts, you lose alkaline minerals. You may even lose a little weight, but your blood will still be acidic.

If you want to lose weight, gain and retain good health simply eating raw food for weight loss help you to accomplish both. Eating a well balanced diet of raw foods takes the guess-work out of high pH levels and low pH levels. It alleviates the constant testing and stress to make sure it remains balanced.

Effortlessly Maintain A Healthy pH

A raw food diet is rich in alkaline minerals like plant-based calcium, sodium, silica, magnesium and potassium. It's so easy to get healthy and stay healthy; to get balanced and stay balanced eating raw foods. You can find many good recipes on the Internet as well as information and tips regarding transitioning to raw foods. You will be healthier, happier and you can look forward to staying healthy forever.

Test Your pH At Home

You can purchase pH test strips for around $12 (for 90 strips). All you have to do is read and follow the instructions. To get an accurate test you should do it every day for about two weeks. If your pH remains between 7.35 and 7.45 you can relax. If your pH is too low or too high you can adjust your alkaline intake accordingly. It doesn't matter if you are dieting to lose weight, if you eat raw food for weight loss or if you are just concerned about your health and the damage caused by eating processed food, eating raw provides all the nutrients your body needs

Dieting for Weight Loss? How Keeping a Food Journal Can Help

By Mary C Weaver 

Are you dieting and looking for a really hot success tip?

Here goes: to lose fat, focus on the caloric deficit.

Maybe that's not what you were expecting.

But the point is, calories do count, despite all kinds of chicanery that attempts to persuade us otherwise.

The very human part of us that wants a quick fix or pixie-dust solution yearns to believe that somewhere there is a diet that will allow us to eat all the fried chicken or ice cream or whatever (name your poison) we want "and still lose weight."

That's not gonna happen as long as we're subject to the laws of thermodynamics.

Of course, calories aren't everything. The quality of the food matters too. But without a caloric deficit, whether through food reduction or exercise or both, fat loss cannot occur.

The only way to know whether you're in a caloric deficit? Keep a food journal!

You see, research proves that keeping a food journal is one of the best possible strategies for fat loss.

It's not a sexy idea, and if people haven't done it, they think it's going to be too much trouble. It was a lot more trouble before so many cool web apps appeared to make it easy.

Now in just a couple of minutes a day, you can keep an online journal at tracker.dailyburn.com or with a Google spreadsheet or with any number of free online services.

In a recent study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, the researchers looked at the relationship between fat loss and keeping a food record.

They discovered that "keeping food records was a better predictor of weight loss than... baseline body mass index, exercise, and age."

And more more days that the study subjects kept their food journal, the greater their weight loss was.

Possibly you've heard or read the statement "What gets measured gets done," attributed to management guru Peter Drucker. What gets measured gets attention and focus--and the goals we focus on have a much greater chance of being accomplished.

There's ample research--not just the study cited above--that measuring and writing down food intake has a huge positive effect on a fat-loss program.

Most of us have no idea how much we're eating until we get really intentional about tracking it. Keeping a food journal makes it much harder to eat mindlessly. And the simple act of writing down our intake tends to encourage eating less.

So... if you're on a weight-loss diet, why not try tracking your food? That strategy alone will significantly increase your chances of success!

While we're on the subject of weight loss, I have a special gift for you: my hourlong mp3 audio titled The 10 Biggest Fat-Loss and Fitness Mistakes Even Smart Women Make (and How to Correct Them).