Canada has added far-right groups Blood and Honour and Combat 18 to its terror watch list.

Nintendo has, once again, built something to let players live out the fantasy of designing a Mario level, but questions linger on what they’ve learned from the first time around.

For our latest photo issue, comedian and photographer Sandy Honig shot hilariously specific images for her ongoing series SandyStock.

Bye Bye Camera questions the meaning of humanity from a machine’s perspective.

On Monday night, Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign launched a Twitch channel.

Using the ‘Track THIS’ tool opens up 100 tabs at a time that will make you seem like a hypebeast, a filthy rich person, a doomsday prepper, or an influencer.

The visual for her latest single comes just after she was indicted on felony charges for a strip club fight last year.

In 2017, two bounty hunters and a fugitive died in a chaotic shoot-out. Shortly after their deaths, someone started tracking one of the bounty hunter’s phones.

Longtime cannabis activist Dana Larsen wants psychedelic mushrooms to be the next decriminalized drug.

With a pirate cell tower, it’s easy to send fake emergency alerts warning of a terrorist attack, nuclear bomb, or other disaster.

Personally, I’m a crustless gentleman. Gimme that melty tip of of cheesy goodness, gimme that pepperoni with crispy edges, and then gimme another slice. Yes, for my money Belly Space Analysis dictates I’m better off grabbing another slice from the box rather than chomp away at the crust’s puffy blandness. So I gaze up at […]

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It’s dinner party night. Yes, sweaty and flushed, you run around baking bread and breaking eggs before that doorbell bing-bongs, the guests ping-pong, and everyone sits down to eat up your delicious homemade meal. Of course, you enjoy the dinner — you love it, it’s great — but you don’t really enjoy it. No, you’re running […]

The post #475 Guests who do the dishes even after you tell them not to appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

Read time: 6 mins

La biodiversité du Canada est une pierre angulaire de notre mode de vie. Maintenant plus que jamais, nous devons allier nos efforts pour protéger la nature. Les gens protègent ce qu’ils aiment : c’est la raison pour laquelle Environnement et Changement climatique Canada (ECCC) a lancé le concours de photos #NotreNature, qui célèbre la biodiversité du Canada.

Canada’s biodiversity is a cornerstone of our way of life. Now more than ever, we have to come together to protect our nature. People protect what they love, which is why Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is hosting the #OurNature photo contest, a celebration of Canada’s biodiversity. Enter before June 30, 2019 by sharing a photo of the nature you love on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #OurNature and tagging @canenvironment, and you could win a Parks Canada Discovery Pass!

Read time: 3 mins

Today’s guest post comes from Dylan MacKay. Dylan is a nutritional biochemist who has type 1 diabetes and when I saw RD Marie Spano’s Instagram post, I knew he would have both personal and professional thoughts to share and so I invited him to do so.

I don’t know what it is with grapes but they always seem to be raisin my ire…

I mean as a person with type 1 diabetes, a PhD in Human Nutritional Science, and who does diabetes research and occasionally clinical trials looking at glucose response, maybe I’m not the one to talk about this, but I just can’t not.

Recently a Welch’s (*cough* big grape juice) “nutrition advisor” posted the above nutrition translation travesty on Instagram.

This is really kind of surprised me because when I have low blood sugar I often drink grape juice, How am I still alive? I mean I can honestly say there are times grape juice may have saved my life (by raising my blood sugar). Yet you could potentially look at this Instagram post and fairly think

“drinking 100% juice made from polyphenol-rich fruit juice does not raise your blood sugar”

unlike apparently that bad candy or pop that raises your blood sugar.

That would be of course 100% wrong.

Polyphenols are not magic sugar blockers, otherwise we would be using them to treat diabetes and you would get serious gastrointestinal upset from eating berries and grapes. I feel like you don’t even really need to be an RD to see this messaging is bad (Seriously, Welch’s advisors, how much do you get paid for your credibility?). Especially on a social media platform, where someone might not scroll to the end of the associated comment and look at the “reference” provided.

Speaking of the reference used for this knowledge translation crime, it is for a review article called Impact of Dietary Polyphenols on Carbohydrate Metabolism and having reviewed it I can say it does not in support the claim in that post. Most of the article talks about animal or cell culture results that show polyphenols may impact glucose digestion or absorption, but there’s nothing in the article showing it stops it. It even concludes that

“To confirm the implications of polyphenol consumption for prevention of insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and eventually type 2 diabetes, human trials with well-defined diets, controlled study designs and clinically relevant endpoints… are needed.”

The closest thing in the article supporting the Instagram post is

“The shape of the plasma glucose curve with reduced concentrations in the early phase and a slightly elevated concentration in the later phase indicates delayed response due to berry consumption”

about a study done with 12 healthy participants looking at berry puree (rich in polyphenols). The polyphenols (or something else in the berries) changed the timing of the blood sugar elevation.

I suppose the Welch’s RD nutrition advisor might say

“well actually Dylan, changing the shape of the blood sugar elevation means it doesn’t actually raise blood sugar like candy”

and we could get into a long argument of how you define “like”. When people are arguing over minutia or semantics big food companies have won.

This type of nutrition misinformation advertising works because ultimately it is designed to ruin peoples’ trust in nutritional science and nutrition experts (especially RDs). If consumers are confused and can’t trust anything in nutrition, they are ripe for the next trend or fad or advertising claim. That is a good thing for companies, but a bad thing for people.

If you like grape juice, drink it, I sometimes do when I have low blood sugar (I have chugged maple syrup for that too so…), but know that grape juice will raise your blood sugar, and liquid calories, like those found from the 9 teaspoons of sugar per glass of grape juice, are an easy way to go over on your energy intake. Most of us are trying to avoid excess energy intake, so for that, in my opinion, you can’t beat water.

Dylan MacKay PhD is a nutritional biochemist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. He is also a Clinical Trialist at the George and Fay Yee Center for Healthcare Innovation. Dylan has a special interest in human clinical trials related to lifestyle and diabetes. He is originally from St. John’s, Newfoundland where he started his graduate studies at Memorial University.

       

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Careful now. You started strong but now you’re down to the drippy ice-cold clump in the middle of the stick. You can’t reach it from the top, you can’t reach it from the bottom, and using your fingers or a fork is cheating. No, you’re going straight in and facing the big risk of a […]

The post #476 Successfully biting off the last piece of the popsicle without it falling on the ground appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

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Anna Merlan, in Jezebel, in what she learned getting kicked out of America’s biggest anti-vax conference.

Rachel Pearson, in The New Yorker, on vulnerable child syndrome

Jen Ortiz, in Cosmopolitan, with a fabulous profile of celebrity profiler and author of the book I ordered on my kindle yesterday Fleishman is in Trouble’s Taffy Brodesser-Akner

[And if you don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, here’s my most recent piece for Medscape on what actually works for obesity at a population level (hint, it’s not shame, blame, or fear)]

       

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Greg Nolan (left) huddles under a makeshift tent on the remote west side of Williston Lake in northern British Columbia. The image was taken in June 1984, shortly after Nolan and his colleagues were stranded on the mountainside by their helicopter pilot after access had been cut off by a landslide. (Photo: Greg Nolan)

When you spend 27 years working in one of the toughest careers in Canada, doing something that can isolate, endanger and exhilarate you all at the same time, you’re bound to come out the other side with some tales to tell.

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Darwin’s finches are being devastated by beak parasites

Do electric car batteries take more CO2 to make than they save?

Dogs expressive eyebrows make us fall for their cute faces

Your Wi-Fi router could be used to watch you in your home

Bonobo mothers act as matchmakers for their sons

Sea sponges are better than scientists at DNA collection

Honing in on why some people think beets taste and smell like dirt

An AI learned numeracy while being trained for another task

It’s been been a while since I checked in on my favourite “fearless source of news, opinion, and activism that you can’t find anywhere else”. I was therefore shocked – shocked! – to discover that the Rebel appears in the…

Time for a trim. Yes, step into those grass-stained workboots, toss on a faded ballcap, and roll the rusty mower out of the wobbly tin shed. You’re about to spend an hour mindlessly chopping lawn so stare at those grass-covered wheels, duct-taped wires, and chippy paint patches before getting down to business. Now, if you’re […]

The post #477 When the lawnmower starts on the first pull appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

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Kim Elmslie, Campaign Director with Oceana Canada, and MP Fin Donnelly celebrate Canada’s ban on shark fin importation and exportation. Donnelly has been a leading voice in the fight for a ban on the trade, which sees some 73 million sharks killed for their fins each year. (Photo: Oceana Canada)

In a move ocean advocates are calling a “victory” for sharks, Canada has approved a long-awaited ban on the import and export of shark fins.

The ban is part of a raft of changes to the Fisheries Act, the legislation that regulates all fishing and fish habitat in Canada, which passed the Senate on Tuesday. The bill outlining the changes, C-68, must now receive royal assent before it becomes law.

The song starts up. Suddenly your brain flashes back to late nights lying on the faded corduroy couch with your first boyfriend. Scratchy records spin in the background, the TV flickers on mute, and you cuddle under thin blankets while everyone sleeps upstairs. The chorus builds up as you kiss in the shadows by the […]

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