The food looks scrumptious...... but is it safe?
by Shanika Sriyananda
Dining out at your favourite haunt is certainly a pleasure. In a
relaxing mood with romantic music, you can taste your testiest dish. But
have you ever given a thought to the hygiene as to how the food was
prepared? Surely NO.
 You had stepped in, may be because of its name, flagging with wide
publicity. Remember these do not exhibit what goes inside the kitchen.
The food looks well dressed.... and.... safe to eat.
Wait.... just for a minute. You do not have to worry much because
there are proofs to show that the place you dine do not sell hygienic
food.
Chief Medical Officer of Health, Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) Dr.
Pradeep Kariyawasam, who inspected over 200 eating places under his
jurisdiction, had proved that most of these places were preparing food
under very unhygienic conditions.
According to him, from a simple buth kade to a star hotel there is
not much of a difference. There are over 1,000 eating places in the city
but of the total only 400 eating places including five star hotels, sell
hygienic food only up to a satisfactory level.
"There are no major issues in these 400 eating places but their
preparation practices are not acceptable.
The way they prepare food, the ingredients they use and basic
requirements in the kitchen like a clean area and utensils, are not upto
the required levels but compared to other eating places they carry out
the process under minimum hygienic conditions", he said.
Size of the kitchen; size of the eating area, water from the main
supply, toilet facilities for workers, garbage disposal, refrigerator
facilities, cooking practices, which are the major requirements of an
eating place have been neglected in the majority of these eating places
in the city.
One other major requirement is the ingredients they use. In a
majority of these places they use rotten potatoes and onions. In the
raids, Dr. Kariyawasam had found that most of the imported food items
like canned food, meat and cheese have gone beyond expiry dates and were
full of fungus.
The owners reply that they had purchased the lot from super markets.
In most eating places the imported food items which had expired, were
used in cooking.
Dr. Kariyawasam said that the outdated food items were sold in the
market and the food stuff that are close to the expiry date were being
imported to the country due its low cost. He said that the consumers
while buying imported food items from super markets should double-check
the expiry date. He said that some items have been relabelled.
However, according to Dr. Kariyawasam, on the whole, there is a vast
improvement in the eating places now. " When you take year 2000 and now,
there is a progress. Now, almost all the star grade hotels have proper
kitchens," he explained.
Lack of trained staff to handle food preparation is a major lapse in
many of the star hotels and in popular restaurants. The trained staff
have gone abroad for better prospects.
The CMC has issued over 600 licences and, those, who operate under
poor conditions would be warned and given a grace period of few weeks to
correct the fault. If they do not heed the warnings, legal action will
be taken against them.
Take a nap, protect your heart?
 Naps aren't generally included in the litany of good-for-your-heart
lifestyle choices recommended for lowering cardiovascular risk, but they
may soon be.
New research suggests a midday siesta may reduce a person's risk of
death from heart disease, possibly by lowering stress levels.
The findings must be confirmed, but Dimitrios Trichopoulos, MD, a
study author, tells WebMD there is little downside to taking naps and
there could be big health benefits.
"The siesta is a victim of progress.
Most of us aren't in the position to take a daily nap," he says. "But
our research suggests that the practice could help protect the heart,
and we need further studies to find out if this really is the case."
Part of the culture
Trichopoulos says the research stemmed from the observation that
heart disease death rates are lower in Mediterranean and Latin American
countries where midday siestas are part of the culture.
His own earlier research in a Greek population provided weak evidence
in favour of the nap hypothesis, but another, larger study, conducted in
Costa Rica failed to show an association.
The findings
The newly published Greek study by Trichopoulos and colleagues from
the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and Greece's University
of Athens Medical School is the largest ever to examine the issue in a
previously healthy population.
A total of 23,681 residents of Greece with no history of heart
disease, stroke, or cancer at enrollment were followed on an average of
6.3 years.
After trying to control for other heart disease risk factors, such as
diet and physical activity levels, the researchers concluded that people
who took naps at least three times a week for an average of at least 30
minutes were 37% less likely to die of heart disease than people who did
not take regular naps.
Less frequent nappers had a 12% reduction in heart disease mortality,
which was not considered statistically significant.
The perceived protective effect was stronger among working men than
among men who were retired, suggesting, say the authors, that the
stress-lowering effects of napping may explain the finding.
"The existence of a stronger inverse association among working men is
compatible with the fact that occupational stress is common in many
manual and nonmanual professions," the researchers wrote.
How a man can survive to 85 or more
 At middle age, there's a fork in the road for a man's health. One way
leads to a two-in-three chance reaching age 85. The other cuts those
odds to about one in five.
A road map for that healthy old age comes from a remarkable study of
5,820 American men of Japanese descent. Studied since 1965, when they
were an average 54 years old, the surviving men now range in age from 85
to 105.
The study of these men uncovers six signs that point toward a healthy
old age. They are:
* No smoking
* No more than two alcoholic drinks a day
* Normal blood sugar
* Normal blood pressure
* Not overweight
* Physical strength
The biggest individual risks came from smoking, having more than
three alcoholic drinks a day, having high blood sugar, or high blood
pressure.
Men who have all six risk factors have only a 22% chance of living to
85 - and only a 9% chance of being healthy if they live that long.
The healthiest men are nonsmoking, strong, lean, moderate drinkers
with normal blood sugar and blood pressure.
Such men have a 69% chance of surviving to age 85 and a 55% chance of
being healthy then, find Bradley J. Willcox, MD, of the University of
Hawaii and Pacific Health Research Institute, Honolulu, and his
colleagues.
"Our questions were, 'What is healthy ageing?' and 'How do you get
there?'" Willcox tells WebMD.
"I am encouraged very much by our findings. I think that there is a
tremendous number of things we can do to age more healthily."
These days, people live longer, healthier lives. But most of those
who reach what gerontologists call "oldest old age" are women.
More than twice as many women reach age 85 as men. Three times as
many reach 90 - and four times as many get a cake with 100 candles.
It's becoming clear that the factors linked with healthy ageing
differ for men and women, says Boston University researcher Thomas T.
Perls MD, MPH. Perls, who was not involved in the Willcox study, is
director of the New England Centenarian Study, which explores how people
live to be 100 years old.
Perls notes that in addition to their six medical and lifestyle
factors, Willcox and colleagues also found two social factors that boost
a man's odds of a long, healthy life.
One of these is marriage. Unmarried men, they found, were 70% more
likely to die before age 85.
Perls says he, too, finds this to be true.
"The vast majority of 100-year-old women lost their spouses in their
60s and 70s," Perls tells WebMD. "The 100-year-old men - who are much
fewer in number - I would say all of them are married, either to their
original or second spouse.
"Men cannot survive without a spouse. Women certainly can," Perls
says. "They may thrive without a spouse.
"So there are probably very potent and important gender differences
in healthy ageing," he says.
The second social factor Willcox and colleagues identified is
education. Men with less than a high school education have a small, but
significant, 17% extra risk of death before age 85. But not finishing
high school cuts the chances of being physically and mentally healthy at
age 85 by a whopping 62%.
And there may be other as-yet-unexplored factors. For example, an
editorial in the same issue of JAMA suggests that fatherhood likely
plays an important role in men's health. What role? Nobody knows because
nobody has looked at the issue, suggest Craig F. Garfield, MD, of
Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute, and his colleagues.
"Now is the time to gather more complete information about the
involvement and impact of different forms of fatherhood for men, and the
ensuing benefits and risks that affect the majority of men who are
fathers," Garfield and colleagues argue.
How Men Can Survive to 85 - and Beyond
How Men Can Survive to 85 - and Beyond
What's the secret to achieving a healthy old age? No single thing,
Willcox and Perls agree.
New England Centenarian Study
How parents can deal with
Short attention span
 Attention span is the length of time an activity is pursued. For a
child with short attention span, only a short time is spent on an
activity and a task is not stuck to. The child will shift from one
activity to another and is easily sidetracked.
The average length of attention span is approximately
7 minutes - 2 year old
9 minutes - 3 year old
12 minutes - 4 year old
14 minutes - 5 year old
Reasons why
1. Slow maturation or organic brain malfunction
2. Inherited trait
3. Inadequate visual and auditory perception resulting in child's
poor ability to receive sights and sounds, understand the meaning and
respond appropriately.
4. Child is anxious, insecure and has not developed patience or
persistence. Child also lacks confidence.
5. Associated with learning disabilities, retardation and emotional
disturbance.
How to prevent
1. Promote adequacy and success. Praise and encourage child for any
efforts and completing a task. Help select task that child can complete
with success and praise task completion.
2. Teach and reinforce child's increasing ability to focus on a task,
for example praise child for playing with a toy for longer intervals.
What to do
1. Structure the environment to minimise disruptions, for example
letting your child play one toy at a time or placing other toys out of
sight by the use of cabinets or closed shelves.
2. Child attention span can be increased by careful task planning. He
can be given tasks that he enjoys doing or short specific task that can
be successfully completed.
3. Use a timer or alarm to increase your child's attention span. Set
the timer for a few minutes as you get your child to do a particular
task. Slowly increase the activity time before the timer rings.
4. Use a positive reinforcement system like praise and rewards to
encourage longer and longer intervals of focused attention.
5. Use educational games to encourage your child to concentrate, eg.
jigsaw puzzle, memory games or games that help sharpen visual
perception.
6. Give clear and specific instructions. Ensure that your child is
looking at you before giving any instructions, Also get your child to
repeat the instructions.
7. Be consistent in rules and disciplines.
8. Have a very clear routine for your child. Construct a timetable
for eating, play, study, chores and bedtime.
9. Help your child to use self-task by saying to himself "stop, look
and listen".
Source: Handling Common Problems of Children.
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