Finally Saturday has arrived and I can be puck-ish (really…I can be puck-ish)…..I can push back from the news and post on some cool stuff…..
There is no mistake….I like my cup of Joe….but I recall a couple of years ago when there was a thing that pregnant women should just say no to Starbucks……but like most of these “warnings” there is more…..
Pregnant women who can’t resist a single morning cup of joe don’t have to worry about their caffeine habit when it comes to their child’s future smarts, per a new study in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio found that moderate caffeine consumption during pregnancy wasn’t linked to lower IQ scores or increased behavioral problems in young children, Medical Daily reports. “We consider our results to be reassuring for pregnant women who consume moderate amounts of caffeine, or the equivalent to one or two cups of coffee per day,” study co-author Sarah Keim says in a press release. The study looked at a caffeine marker called paraxanthine—one of the compounds caffeine breaks down into—in 2,197 women at two different points during their pregnancies, then compared those levels to the child’s IQ scores and behavioral assessments at ages 4 and 7.
“We did not find evidence of an adverse association of maternal pregnancy caffeine consumption with child cognition or behavior [at those ages],” study co-author Mark Klebanoff adds. Scientists pulled samples for the study from those collected between 1959 and 1974, when drinking coffee while pregnant wasn’t frowned upon as much, per Live Science. The study’s results are in line with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ findings that moderate caffeine consumption (less than 200mg, or one to two cups of joe per day) is OK for pregnant women, though it points out that the effects of higher amounts of caffeine are still inconclusive…
Have some coffee future Moms and relax……
The news these days is all about healthy eating, right? What can be more healthy than a banana? But the days of eating a banana may be limited…….
If you like bananas, it’s time to start savoring them while you still can. A deadly fungus that’s been killing the plant since the 1960s has jumped continents, moving from where it ravaged crops for decades in Southeast Asia to parts of South Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and Africa—and that’s just since 2013, reports Quartz. The so-called “Panama” disease is spreading thanks to a single clone of the Fusarium fungus, also called Tropical Race 4, scientists report in the journal PLOS Pathogens. Worse still, one of the world’s most popular bananas, the Cavendish, is particularly susceptible to this strain. The soil-borne fungus travels up the plant’s roots, ultimately killing the plant and infesting entire banana plots, which are then contaminated for years.
Entire swaths of banana plantations in Australia, China, the Philippines, Jordan, Mozambique, Pakistan, and beyond have been infested in the past two years, putting many farmers and families out of business and cutting them off from a major food source, reports PhysOrg. Right now the only way to fight the disease is through strict quarantine, so researchers are trying to spread the word about effective measures in the hopes of getting a step ahead of the fast-spreading fungus before it hits Latin America, where most of the world’s bananas are grown. Once it lands there, notes Quartz, “the days of the iconic yellow fruit are numbered.
Okay…that officially sucks! No bananas…..no banana splits!
Like I said….that just sucks!