November 29, 2007

"Fun-Sized" Posts and Lemony Tea


[Posted by Crabby.]

This week, we're introducing even more Shiny Newness at Cranky Fitness. First there was the news that Mary may be blogging here sometimes, allowing Crabby to sleep in until noon and surf the internet all day adding a fresh new voice and perspective to the blog. So what's next? Well, now Crabby is pleased to announce another new blog addition: the Fun-Size Post!

What's a Fun-Sized Post? Well, this is, for example. Sometimes little snippets of health news come to the Crab's attention, or she has stray complaints or observations, or she has some little announcement she wants to make about the blog. Crabby used to either (a) save these to fill up a Random Round-up type post, or (b) stretch them out into a full post even though there was really nothing interesting to say about it or (c) forget whatever it was entirely.

Now, a new option! Crabby will just throw these things out there whenever she feels like it.

Like... um... now!

So here's a random health snippet that caught Crabby's eye but she almost forgot about:

More News About Tea!

So according to a new study, a lot of the antioxidants in green tea that we're always hearing about aren't actually being absorbed by our bodies. (Which is frustrating for those of us who plan to live forever and conquer all health problems simply by drinking a beverage experts claim is good for us). In fact, less than 20% of the catechins (the Good Guys) survive the digestive process.

Well, turns out, adding lemon or vitamin C helps spare those antioxidants! With the addition of citrus, the mighty (but unstable) catechins are much better at surviving the perils of your digestive system.

And what about milk? Well, dairy and soy milk both helped preserve antioxidants too, though the scientists seemed to be distrustful of these additives for complicated reasons. (You may want to read the article to try to sort that out). Previous research has sent decidedly mixed messages about the whole adding-milk-to-tea thing. Plus, sometimes they study black tea and sometimes green, further complicating things.

Crabby just wishes researchers would hurry up and figure this all out because damn it, she likes milk in her tea!

8 comments:

  1. Now that's a Fun-Sized Post worth it's weight in lemons!

    Going to buy lemons right now. 1:11 AM in the morning. You have me that convinced!

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  2. and, as with those idiotic FUN SIZED candy bars, this post ONLY leaves me wanting MORE!!

    :)

    Carla

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  3. Definitely need more lemons! Especially at when you can't sleep. :)

    Doctors are always saying we need more dairy products for calcium, but I've read that 70% of the calcium in milk isn't absorbed into the body. Hmmn... would lemons help with that?

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  4. Thanks jozet, carla & mary for reading about lemons instead of counting sheep! And dang, we're not absorbing much of that calcium either?

    Since I still like milk in my tea, and the taste of lemon kind of clashes with it, I discovered last night that squeezing a tangerine in there worked pretty good too. Since I make my tea insanely strong, I'm just bursting with antioxidant goodness this morning!

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  5. Anything written by the great Crab is fun!
    The Bag Lady is off to town sometime today (she keeps waiting for it to warm up, but it ain't happening, so she's gonna hafta bite da bullet), so she may purchase some lemons...if she can find some in this frozen wasteland.

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  6. Thanks Leah & Bag Lady!

    And one thing I should have mentioned: I don't want to burden the always-gracious frequent commenters by putting out tiny posts all the time and having people feel like they need to be nice and drop in. I'm so lucky to have you folks stop by so regularly, so my feelings won't be hurt by skipping over the mini-posts!

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  7. Heaven help me if people "skipped" our "fun-sized" posts.

    They're ALL fun-sized. In fact, Crabby's "mini" post is longer than 90% of the posts we throw together every day.

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