KevinsTeachingBlog

Genius Hour Wrap Up This was an interesting project for me. I have a need to retool my diet, and I have been, but this has helped me accelerate the process, and get past not jsut learning what I should be eating more or less of, but also why.  Sure I can say "I have to eat more oats and less trans fats" but it'll be easy to slide on that if I don't take the trouble to learn why, and also how to quickly recognize packaged foods to avoid.  For example, I now know that soft tub margarine is somewhat better for heart issues than butter (less saturated fat), but firm stick butter is much, much worse: it holds its shape because it's been hydrogenized, which turns good fats into trans fats. And trans fats are the Big Bad for anyone's diet, especially heart patients, but everyone.  The project itself covered a pretty decent range of basic computer-based presentation skills that I will find useful as a teacher. Most of them I'm either very comfortable with or compe...

Quick and Easy Breakfast  I thought it would be a good idea to do a breakfast post. A major factor in controlling heart disease is controlling cholesterol, and Breakfast offers many options to be the biggest cholesterol-fighting meal of the day.  Of course, there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, you want to increase one and reduce the other.  Berries are really good for this, and Blueberries, in particular, are easy for me to eat by the handful. Whole grains are also great for both of these, but the time-honoured ingredient for scraping out the bad cholesterol is Whole Oats. It says so right on the front of the Cheerios box! Plain Cheerios, not the sugar-frosted kinds.  Easy breakfasts An aside about Cheerios, Multigrain Cheerios are about equal to Honey Nut Cheerios health-wise. Looking at the nutrition label, they're almost identical. That's because they're frosted with the same amount of sugar. Since my visit to the hospital I've learned how to enjoy plain...