Lil’s Dietary Shop on the far southwest side of Chicago in the Mount Greenwood/Beverly neighborhood, has recently expanded. To celebrate, the store is throwing a Grand Re-Opening kick-off. All customers new and familiar to the store are invited to meet Lil’s new in-store dietitian, Anne Kozek, RD, MS, LDN and enjoy free samples and a friendly chat with Marcie Harvey, the store’s owner and her employees. (Don’t miss special discount for our Healthy-Family readers at the end of this article.) …read the rest of this entry »
I just received an email alert today from Kim Koeller announcing a new Celiac/Allergy application for iPod touch and iPhone users. It comes to us from AllergyFree Passort and GlutenFree Passport and is complimentary to Kim and Robert La France’s “Let’s Eat Out!” Series. …read the rest of this entry »
This Robert Kenner documentary, entitled: “Food, Inc.” is an unflattering look inside America’s corporate controlled food industry.
The Magnolia Pictures film makes its debut at San Francisco, CA: Embarcadero Center Cinema 5, West Los Angeles, CA: Nuart Theatre, and the New York, NY: Film Forum on July 12 before moving through the rest of the country, starting June 19th. …read the rest of this entry »
The environmental movement has produced some wonderful and creative ideas, to help our planet. Eco friendly fabrics made from hemp, bamboo, corn or milk have been part of this movement. These fibers for the extremely sensitive can, and have caused problems for people with skin sensitivities. There are chairs filled with soy and plastics that can be made from corn that are not always clearly marked. …read the rest of this entry »
I assume most folks on special multiple allergy diets have cast an uneasy eye on the new Expandex modified tapioca starch. I recently purchased a bag to experiment with and did a little investigating on the product in order to hopefully shed some light on things.
I contacted Corn Products U.S. technical support last week and a company representative responded (albeit after almost a week of waiting). Perhaps that is a good sign. The representative may have been digging deep to make sure the information presented is factual and accurate….
My contact confirmed that Expandex Modified Tapioca Starch is made in a dedicated facility where no gluten or corn are processed.
We recently tried out Cherrybrook Kitchen’s Gluten-free Dreams Chocolate Cake Mix. We used a single box mix and it produced 12 standard-sized (2 3/4 inch diameter) cupcakes. The directions on the box were simple and the recipe requires no eggs. We opted to avoid the vanilla extract and go with orange oil instead because our corn-intolerant son reacts to commercially made vanilla extracts. Otherwise we followed the directions on the box. The cupcakes baked for 18 minutes.
We topped our cupcakes with a variation of Better Homes and Gardens’ popular fudge frosting recipe. I halved the original recipe, exchanged the butter for spectrum palm oil, and omitted the vanilla again. My version required more water and I utilized the microwave to get the right consistency.
Our family really enjoyed the cupcakes. The box mix from Cherrybrook Kitchen is a really delicious dark, bittersweet cake, and the frosting is a thick, fudge-like, very sweet but not sticky topping. I personally found the frosting to be a bit sweet for me but the boys unequivocally objected. They thought it was just perfect. We will definitely make this again. …read the rest of this entry »
According to the New York Times, if you’ve had your Vitamin D levels checked by Quest Diagnostics over the last two years, chances are your reading was inaccurately high, meaning you may in fact be deficient even if the results came out adequate.
According to Andrew Pollack of the Times:
The company, Quest Diagnostics, has already sent letters to thousands of doctors listing the patients who might have received “questionable” test results and is offering free retests. The company said it had fixed the problems.
The biggest concern right now is to accurately find patients who have had an erroneously high result. These folks are currently not taking vitamin D supplements when they should be. According to Pollack’s report, the Quest test results have typically been too high, although not in all cases. …read the rest of this entry »
According to the New York Times, if you’ve had your Vitamin D levels checked by Quest Diagnostics over the last two years, chances are your reading was inaccurately high, meaning you may in fact be deficient even if the results came out adequate.