January 25, 2019 at 11:30AM by CWC There are some foods that seem to go bad the second you get home from the grocery store. (Looking at you, mushy brown bananas.) But others, like apples, seem to last forever. And actually—you ready for this—it turns out that apples at most supermarkets can be over a year old. What?! Considering that we’re currently at peak apple season, I decided to do some investigating not only to learn how long apples last, but if eating supposedly year-old apples is actually safe. Is it true that grocery store apples are old AF? Well…yes. Your standard grocery store apple can be as old as 10 months if you buy them out of season. But they don’t naturally last that long—untreated apples only last for a few weeks. So what gives? This vampire-esque lifespan is partly because of chemicals used on apples before arriving in stores, says Alex Formuzis, the vice president of communications at the Environmental Working Group. “Unlike some other produce, insecticides and fungicides are both applied to apples,” Fourmuzis says—up to 16 different kinds of pesticides in all. The fungicides protect the apples from bad bacteria, and the pesticides protect them from insects and other pests (since, as Fourmuzis says, they naturally attract bugs). Some producers also add a food-grade wax made of fatty acids and long-chain alcohols. “There are also fungicides in the wax film applied to conventional apples that is used so those apples can stay in cold storage facilities for long periods of
Month: January 2019
I just want a doctor who can explain safe queer sex. Is that too much to ask?!
January 25, 2019 at 11:15AM by CWC My 2010 web history is the only thing more personal than my list of visible-to-sender-and-recipient-only Venmo charges. The Google search bar was first to know when I was I was planning to have sex with another woman for the first time. Sure, I learned some important information, but I had a lot of questions—specifically about how to have safe queer sex (no banana, no condom, ya feel?). At my next appointment, I asked my gynecologist for her advice. Her response? Basically, bleerblbleeebllblbeeelblbleeelbbbl (or, the sound you can make when you put your finger on your lips and move it up and down really fast). Talking about my specific sexual experiences with my gynecologist usually has me asking, “Am I teaching you, or are you treating me?” Within the last nine years I’ve visited to the doctor enough to know this is hardly an anomaly. Many healthcare professionals—especially those of the cis, hetero, and male-identifying variety—are about as clueless about LGBT healthcare needs as I am about walking in barbie heels. (Read: very). Even now, I have a gynecologist who is totally knowledgeable when it comes to most things regarding the state of my vagina, but talking about my specific sexual experiences with this particular physician usually has me asking myself, “Am I teaching you or are you treating me?” (Yes, I’m in the market for a new one.) Last week, a survey published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found what I (and I’d argue most queer folks) have learned through lived experience:
Why fitness influencer Morit Summers decided to open a body positive gym in Brooklyn
January 25, 2019 at 10:01AM by CWC Here’s a novel thought: What if gyms were places that people could go to feel *good* about themselves? For fitness influencer Morit Summers, this was the impetus behind opening Form Fitness, a brand-new, body-positive gym in Brooklyn. “I wanted to make a space that was safe for people, and that people, when they walk in, feel comfortable, and not intimidated and afraid that people are looking at them,” she tells me, bouncing on a medicine ball in the corner of her space. Behind her, two people are working with trainers to the sounds of vintage Michael Jackson blasting over the sound system, and as I watch them hit the equipment, I’m jealous I didn’t bring my sneakers. The mission to create a space like this one was personal, inspired largely by Summers’ own fitness journey that began when she was in high school. “I was 14 and I was really overweight, and I hated gym class. I was embarrassed. I had coaches put me in situations where it was even more embarrassing,” she tells me. That summer, she joined a gym and fell in love with it. She went on to study exercise science and epidemiology in college and found a career in personal training. But even when she was spending most of her life in the gym, she was still being shamed about her size. “I was always the trainer that people would call fat and say: ‘You’re not going to have clients’ and stuff like that,” she
You can thank your open office for contributing to burnout
January 25, 2019 at 09:38AM by CWC Offices cubicles have been maligned as passé, akin fax machines and a desktop Roladexes. But maybe it’s time to bring them back. While 20-foot long desks shared by several colleagues may make your office feel more cool hangout space than workspace, working at a company with an open floor plan presents a series of problems. As author and psychology professor Art Markman calls out in a recent article for Fast Company, it could also be contributing to burnout culture. Burnout is feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and stressed to the max all at once. And it’s such a pervasive problem in our culture that methods to curb it regularly—and rightly—make headlines. Meditation, working out, taking a lunch break, and leaving work on time to do something enjoyable are common practices that can help to stave off burnout, but as Dr. Markman points out, they aren’t always easy to accomplish when you work in such physical closeness with your coworkers (with no barriers). “For example, anyone who leaves the office at exactly 5 p.m. runs the risk of being labeled a slacker by anyone staying later. As a result, people look around the office and wait for other people to leave before they head out,” he says. “If staying all of those extra hours made people more productive, there might be something valuable in working longer hours.” Similarly, someone might feel bad for leaving their desk in the middle of the afternoon to go outside for 45
Heads up: There might be canola oil in your oat milk
January 25, 2019 at 08:59AM by CWC Plant-based milks have never been more popular (or plentiful) in 2019—what a time to be alive!—but out of all the options, oat milk is currently queen bee. And while oat milk fans probably already know to avoid carrageenan and check the sugar content before adding it to their coffee, there’s an ingredient that pops up in many common oat milk brands that has people doing a double-take: rapeseed oil. The name alone is off-putting. If you take the time to whip out your phone and do a quick Google search while staring at the dairy-free case, you’ll find that it’s commonly talked about alongside canola oil. Here’s why: they’re basically the same thing. Some background: Rapeseed oil is made from the seeds of the rape plant (a relative of mustard). Rapeseed oil naturally contains high amounts of erucic acid (between 30-60 percent), which has been associated with heart problems in mice. In the 1970s, food scientists developed a rapeseed plant that had much lower levels of erucic acid through cross-breeding techniques (not to be confused with genetically-modifying the plants). They named the plant (and the oil created from it) canola. Per the FDA, in order for an oil to be called canola, no more than two percent of its fatty acid profile can come from erucic acid. So yeah, there are some slight differences, although outside of the US and Canada, people conflate the two things—likely because most “rapeseed oil” today is made with these lower-erucic
Whole30 has a *lot* of rules—this cheat sheet summarizes everything you need to know
January 25, 2019 at 06:55AM by CWC It’s a familiar scenario in 2019: You meet a friend for dinner, and suddenly she’s swiping left on the bread basket, ordering her steak without the cream sauce, and treating the dessert menu like it’s covered in Zika germs. (Still a thing, FYI.) But before you start searching for a new companion with whom you can split your chocolate lava cake, consider the fact that her condition could be temporary. Like tons of other people, she may just be doing Whole30—a crazy-popular nutrition challenge whereby people ditch a few food groups for 30 days to in order to improve their health and eating habits. You might say that the program, developed by sports nutritionist Melissa Hartwig, helped launch Paleo-style eating back into mainstream territory. (Like Paleo, refined sugar, grains, legumes, and dairy are just a few of Whole30’s no-go ingredients—meals revolve around veggies, fruit, and animal protein instead.) And your mom, your aunt, and your BFF aren’t the only ones on board. Stars like Busy Philipps and Emmy Rossum are also fans. So why, exactly, has Whole30 caught on like a flaming sage bundle since it launched in 2009? According to Diana Rodgers, RD, a Whole30 coach and owner of Sustainable Dish, the program is a great way to re-evaluate your eating habits if you feel like they’ve veered off course. “In our modern food landscape, where we have 24/7 access to hyperpalatable [processed] food, we’re wired to seek out as many calories as possible,” she explains. “But by focusing
How to deal if hair dyes make your scalp itchy and red
January 25, 2019 at 07:12AM by CWC A few months ago, a photo made the rounds on the Internet of a woman who’s head swelled to twice it’s normal size after she had an allergic reaction to hair dye. It was shocking, to say the least, but most allergies to hair dye are way more subtle: itchy red scalp, watery eyes, and flaking. It begs the question: Is there any way to really avoid hair dye allergies or even the sensitivity that comes from allowing dye to sit on the scalp for hours? Despite the fact that we, as consumers, now care more than ever about the ingredients in our beauty products, hair dye is one aspect of the industry that hasn’t seen a ton of forward progress. Unless you’re interested in toning your strands with things like coffee or beet juice, there is no such thing as “natural hair dye.” Chemicals need to be applied to open the cuticle of the hair, so that the color molecule can go into the cortex of the hair (and stay there!), resulting in the glorious and strikingly different “after” photo. Many products on the market contain a combination of ammonia and peroxide. While things are admittedly getting better—in October of last year, the FDA banned lead acetate as a color additive in dyes, and Madison Reed introduced the first ever “six-free” product—there’s still a ways to go. “There are products in hair color that trigger allergies to hair color called PPD (1,4-phenylenediamine) and PTD (1,4-toluenediamine),”
Etiquette tips for inviting (or not!) coworkers to your wedding
January 25, 2019 at 05:30AM by CWC Remember when Jim and Pam got married on The Office and the entire staff of Dunder Mifflin attended their wedding? From line-crossing boss Michael to chronically unfriendly Angela and social loose cannon Dwight, literally everybody got an invite. (Come to think of it, those characters were always particularly light on the work-life boundaries with one another.) But since life isn’t but a delightful sitcom, the matter of whom to invite to your wedding can be a much more complicated ordeal…with far more disastrous implications if not handled properly. If you’re in the midst of wedding planning and you’re deciding whom to invite, the subject of coworkers may come up—especially if you have a few close friends at your job. You spend a hearty chunk of your life with them, but if you invite some, should you invite them all? Where is the line? “Deciding who from the office to invite to the wedding is one of the most commonly asked wedding-etiquette questions,” says Anne Chertoff, the wedding expert of Beaumont Etiquette. “Deciding who from the office to invite to the wedding is one of the most commonly asked wedding-etiquette questions.” —Anne Chertoff, wedding-etiquette expert Perhaps that’s because the premise includes several tough-to-solve conundrums, like how to artfully invite some coworkers and not others to your nuptials. And if you go forth with that plan, how do you break the news to the colleagues who didn’t make the cut? Could it be best to just
Here’s Why That “Easy” Workout Feels SO Much Harder
January 25, 2019 N Continue Reading… Author | Life by Daily Burn Selected by iversue
An Eco-Friendly Swap For Your Cleaners, Detergents & Other Home Goods You’re Constantly Buying
January 25, 2019 at 01:00AM 10 joy-sparking home essentials we’re loving this year. Continue Reading… Author Emma Loewe | Life by Daily Burn Selected by iversue