The season of food
As the days get shorter and the nights get cooler, we find ourselves reaching for snacks and goodies all the more. We could argue there’s a scientific reason for our second helpings, or own up to the fact that our December food choices tend not to be the most light or nutritious. Like it or not, most winter meals are rich, abundant and frequent.
Luckily though, waistlines in North America have ballooned to the point that advice is everywhere — the Consumerist.com is grading fast food chains on nutritional transparency and CNN has a launched a Healthy Bodies segment on its website. Even our schools have taken measures to cut sugary and deep-fried items from their cafeteria menus. With the internet at hand and a flurry of bloggers to show you the way, you just may find a way of eating better this season and educating (or scaring) yourself out of a few thousand calories.
Avoid fast food and soft drinks — even the diet ones
We’ve all heard horror stories about fast food, but with recent additions like salads to the McDonald’s menu and even more Subway “fresh” sandwich shops popping up everyday, the fast food industry has managed to clean up its dirty reputation just enough to lure even health-conscious individuals through the glass door.
So as you’re racing through the mall in a shopping frenzy and you feel your blood sugar drop, this article tells you to mind the food court with caution (or not at all), by pointing out that fertilizer and additives deemed too harmful for cats have been included in some of the most seemingly healthy menu options out there.
And lest we forget that triple hamburgers don’t become nutritious by association, here is a comparison chart of some popular items you might consider at the counter. If that’s not enough to keep you from driving “thru” on the way home, here’s a reminder of what the food actually looks like when you order it, and a story about a new breakfast option from Hardee’s that weighs in with more fat and calories than two McDonald’s Double Cheeseburgers. Never mind the fact that most fast food sandwiches are consumed with some type of sugary, fizzy beverage. Speaking of which…
A blogger at Healthbolt claims these gory details about what a single Coke will do to your body within an hour of drinking it. For Diet Coke drinkers and aspartame lovers, here’s a video about Donald Rumsfeld and a conspiracy theory brought to you by YouTube about Stevia — a natural alternative to sugar currently blocked in the US by the FDA but that is being considered for future production of Diet Coke in North America.
Make smarter food choices… Duh
So what should you be eating? Here’s an exhaustive list of the world’s healthiest foods to peruse before cooking for guests. For the kick in the pants you need to get everything done between visits, here are 100 ingredients towards better productivity.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t have any of the mashed potatoes or the pie. Allow yourself a taste of everything in small portions, with most of your plate’s real estate reserved for fresh vegetables and fruits. If you’re a visual person, here’s a quick glance at what 200 calories looks like.
If you’ve already mastered your eating habits and are a little bit of a nutrition guru, then here are some finicky food tricks you can add to your diet to move you from clean living to performance eating. Until fast food chains in North America catch on to practices like those of Leon’s in the UK, join the Slow Food movement and fine tune your eating philosophy.
Don’t learn to eat poorly in the first place
At the end of the day, rethinking your approach to food from recreation to fuel requires a lifestyle change. It’s easier to keep eating well if you grew up on free-range chicken and not KFC, but even kids brought up healthy can pick up bad food habits in adolescence.
With that in mind, the Dietitians of Canada offer Let’s Make a Meal and these nutrition challenges for students. South of the border, The American Heart Association promotes healthy eating and exercise with help from Bill Clinton and I Go Hugo, while General Mills’s Eat Better America campaign shakes up their approach to online recipes with The Good Food Fight.
Also, take time this season listen to this broadcast about how others eat around the world and to play Food Force, a video-game you can download from the United Nations that educates players about world hunger and the importance of a varied diet for proper health.
Finally, if you can't clean your plate, consider "replating" it instead of refrigerating leftovers.
What scares you?
For frightening ideas to share with your class this season, or even some disturbingly revealing technology to peruse on your own time, the web is full of options whether your idea of what’s most “scary” lies in the realm of imagination or in the real world.
Strange creatures
Taking the lead from B-movies and Hallowe’en icons, American Monsters.com reports on mythical creatures recognized around the world. Your “one stop guide to all things cryptozoological,” this site catalogs monsters into 13 varieties (from “Formerly-Extinct” to “Beyond Mythology”). More scientific discussions in the same vein can be read at Unexplained-mysteries.com delving also into the topics fof ghosts, extraterrestrials, metaphysics and conspiracy theories. Skeptics however will feel more comfortable at LiveScience.com which links to articles that contest everything from vampires to urban legends while killing all the fun.
Try to incorporate some of these concepts into your classroom with help from the Kennedy Centre’s ArtsEdge site. It offers a “Monsters” lesson plan (rubrics included) that encourages your students to ask “How have monsters been viewed, what purpose do they serve, why are they necessary?”
Nightmares
Some of the freakiest monsters are the ones we dream up on our own. Bad dreams, for instance, can often feel seem horribly real, the distress frequently taking hours to fade away. But what if you could transform your nightmares into productive time spent problem solving? This blog entry lists 12 famous dreams that inspired inventions, art and scientific theory. DreamViews.com discusses lucid dreams (dreaming while you are aware that you’re dreaming) as a tool to stop nightmares, while tapping into your brain’s most creative moments. Finally, watch and download “Is 4am the new midnight?” , a hilarious 10-minute video that draws creepy connections between art, history and popular culture to the “most surreal of hours” — 4am.
(Personal) demons and skeletons (in the closet)
Dark hours and dark dreams can be creepy, but you haven’t felt your heart skip until you’ve seen your deep dark secrets posted on the internet. Enter sites Wefeelfine.org and The Dumpster. “We feel fine: An exploration of human emotion in six movements” uses a data collection engine that scans blog posts for occurrences of "I feel" and "I am feeling" every 10 minutes. It translates its findings into candy-coloured interactive animations that reveal statements like “I feel like my bed is a protection from all the scary things in life” to amazingly much more personal observations with vague allusions to the author’s identity. The Dumpster is a similar online experiment which allows users to “surf through tens of thousands of specific romantic relationships in which one person has ‘dumped’ another.” More frightening still is this Adbusters.org article, "Loneliness and Technology", which indirectly links the technology that makes Dumpster possible to being a leading factor in the demise of the relationships within its own experiment.
Don’t buy it: Get media smart!
www.pbskids.org/dontbuyit/
This site from PBSkids.org teaches kids about media literacy while encouraging them to be critical of advertizing and marketing. Activities like the “design your own cereal box” walk users through some of the psychology behind product design for children so kids learn to see some popular ad tricks and gimmicks.
The Elegant Universe
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
Not only is NOVA’s 3-hour program about string theory and quantum physics available to watch online for free, it’s also divided into chapters ranging from 4 to 10 minutes long so you can watch as much or as little as you like at once.
The Human Body & Mind
www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/
This site is full of interactive online activities, games and surveys that teach as well as entertain. Test your memory and your individual senses, or learn about almost anything having to do with your “mind” or “body” by following the appropriate links.
Mango Languages (Beta)
www.trymango.com/
As the “first free enterprise language learning course available on the Internet”, Mango offers online tutorials to learn conversational basics of about 10 languages. Listen to audio samples, and follow along with the prompts and on-screen tips.
Breathing Earth
www.breathingearth.net
Get a quick glance of C02 emissions, births, deaths, and populations around the world, tracked by country in this web presentation.
Colour Lovers 
www.colourlovers.net
As more and more of us get acquainted with creating web pages, the opportunity for some pretty hideous colour combinations increases. Enter: Colour Lovers. A great community of people who love colour and are willing to share their pretty palettes with the rest of the world. And they spelled
it with a “u”!
Ever wanted to perform knee surgery or resurface a hip? This site’s interactive flash cartoons walk you through scenarios most of us only see on television, all the while providing instruction, the occasional quiz, and some jazzy background music. An excellent resource to support science classes and help students learn about different career choices.
The Fin, Fur and Feather Bureau of Investigation 
www.fffbi.com
A kid-friendly site from National Geographic, this site uses flash animation and cartoon animals to teach students (Grades 3–8) about places and cultures around the world. Lots of online quizzes, interactive stories and surprises to keep reading-aged children interested.
Not sure what you feel like listening to? Map your mood (from dark to positive, and calm to energetic), select a genre, specify an era and presto! Mood or dance music to satisfy your soul. For music snobs, you can even check the “non Hit” box for more obscure music results.
Neave TV“Creativity in a telly style.” A fresh new twist to watching video on the web.
Off the Map
www.pbs.org/independentlens/offthemap
An excellent site for those of us who claim not to be artists. This site is all about “visionary art” or self-taught art — that is, art created by people with no formal art training or intention to please others. This site includes classroom activities for all grade levels, an interactive space for you to create your own “backyard paradise”, and a virtual tour around the world featuring 10 visionary artists and their work.
Religion Facts
www.religionfacts.com
Includes the “Big Religion Chart”, a table with allows you to compare the fundamental basics of 40 belief systems at a glance. A good supplement to history and philosophy sessions.
Ted: Ideas worth spreading
www.ted.com
Listen to talks from over1000 thought-leaders, sharing their ideas on the latest in absolutely everything. Videos of various lengths organized under themes such as “The Creative Spark”, “A Greener Future” and “Not Business as Usual”, this is some of the most guilt-free time you’ll spend on the Internet.
Universal Leonardo
www.universalleornardo.org
The most thorough online resource of Leonardo daVinci’s work, including drawings, inventions, manuscripts and paintings. An exhaustive catalogue of daVinci’s work and a detailed chronology of his life are only the beginning. Learn about painting restoration, and your own “emotional brain” while reading about the Mona Lisa. Includes activities for the classroom in .pdf form.
