Taxes key in war on ‘lifestyle’ disease, say health experts

PARIS, April 5 — Global health leaders declared war on lifestyle diseases today, decrying the impact of tobacco, alcohol and soft drinks on the world’s poor, while calling for taxes to curb consumption and finance healthcare.

In half-a-dozen studies in The Lancet, a leading health journal, experts detailed the link between poverty and non-communicable diseases (NDCs) such as stroke and diabetes, and made the case for consumer taxes opposed by industry and many politicians.

NDCs, which also include heart disease and cancer, “are a major cause and consequence of poverty worldwide,” said Rachel Nugent, vice-president of RTI International, a non-profit health policy institute in Seattle, and chair of The Lancet Taskforce on Non-Communicable Diseases (NDCs).

Many of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, which run to 2030, will remain out of reach unless governments invest in policies that break the chains binding unhealthy habits and so-called “lifestyle” diseases, she said.

“Every year, almost 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty because of out-of-pocket health spending,” Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, wrote in a comment, also in The Lancet.

“The costs of treating NDCs are a major contributor to this global scandal.”

NDCs are responsible for 38 million deaths — nearly half before the age of 70 — each year, a large share of them caused or aggravated by smoking, excessive drinking and/or unhealthy diets, according to the WHO.

One of the UN’s 2030 goals is to reduce deaths from NDCs by a third.

In 2011, world leaders at the UN general assembly pledged to develop national plans for the prevention and control of NDCs, and set targets to benchmark progress. But few have followed through.

“There has been a broad failure globally and in countries to act on the commitments made in the 2011 Political Declaration,” Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, and senior editor Jennifer Sargent, wrote in an editorial.

Harm of taxes ‘overstated’

One of the most controversial remedies proposed for getting people to cut back on smoking and the consumption of alcohol or soda pop is point-of-sale taxes.

Opponents argue such levies penalise the poor most of all, and amount to a regressive tariff.

The new studies show a more nuanced reality.

Research looking at the impact of price hikes in 13 poor, emerging and wealthy countries, for example, found that — for alcohol and sugary snacks — low-income households were more likely than wealthy ones to cut back, leading to incremental health gains.

But even if they pay more as a percentage of their income, families can benefit in other ways, the researchers argued.

“The extra tax expenditures involved should not deter governments from implementing a policy that may disproportionately benefit the health and welfare of lower-income households,” said Franco Sassi, a researcher at Imperial College Business School in London.

Additional tax revenue gained should be set aside for “pro-poor programmes”, he added.

For former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has given away more than a billion dollars to curb tobacco use over the last decade, the benefits are obvious.

“Raising taxes on tobacco is the most effective way to drive down smoking rates, particularly among young people,” he told AFP. “It is also the least widespread of all the proven tobacco control policies.

“If we can help more governments raise tobacco taxes, we could make a very big difference in smoking rates, and also raise revenue that countries can invest in other vital services,” he added.

Tobacco claims nearly seven million lives yearly from cancer and other lung diseases, accounting for about one-in-10 deaths worldwide, and a million in China alone, according to the WHO.

“The evidence suggests that concerns about higher taxes on tobacco, alcohol and soft drinks harming the poor are overstated,” said Nugent. — AFP

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Is Taming Your Ambition The Key To A Better Life

What are you really aiming for in life? Do you still have goals? Perhaps you’ve abandoned your earlier dreams. Maybe you’re an embittered loser or perhaps you’re perfectly happy with where you’ve got to.

Brits can be ambivalent, at best, about ambition. The vote for Brexit was greeted with jubilation by the 52% who wanted it. But the ambition of many Leave voters was to get back to an earlier, supposedly simpler version of British life, and not to march boldly on into an unknown future.

Should we be aiming a bit higher? It’s a competitive world out there and perhaps we need to make our peace with ambition; go back in on Monday morning and shoot for the top. Except that the workplace can be fraught and complicated and there are difficult trade-offs to manage. Organisations and bureaucracy can combine to keep us in an “iron cage”, the German sociologist Max Weber observed. We could waste a lot of energy – and suffer a lot of grief – in the attempt to realise our ambitions. Maybe just earning a living and getting by is ambition enough.

“There is no job of your life out there, waiting to be found,” Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor at the Insead business school, wrote in a piece for the Harvard Business Review in 2012. “There are only jobs that may make you feel more or less alive.”

Michelle Mone, the serial entrepreneur, founder of Ultimo lingerie and now a member of the House of Lords, is unashamedly, unrelentingly ambitious.

“I think it’s all down to self-respect and looking at yourself in the mirror and asking: ‘Am I happy with myself?’” she says. “If you’re happy with yourself, then fair enough.” Yet she isn’t happy. “I always look in the mirror and I say to myself: ‘You can do more.’ So I push myself all the time. I set goals all the time, I just don’t stop. But once I achieve them, I set more. I’d rather be ambitious than lazy. So I’m proud that I am ambitious.”

For Victoria Pendleton, the Olympic track cycling gold medallist, ambition has always taken the form of a personal challenge. “For me it’s always been a really big battle against myself and what I think I’m physically and mentally capable of,” she says. “It’s very high expectations, I guess, of what I can achieve. I hate feeling like I’ve let myself down or the team around me down by not being as good as I can be.”

Not all of us can be gold medal winners or multi-millionaire business moguls. So how should we recognise what ambition can do for us? What would constitute sensible and meaningful ambition?

Maybe we could start by being more careful with the language we use, which can be off-putting to some. Myles Downey, an executive coach and author, says that we have spoken of people having “drive” for a long time. But this feels like a rather blinkered, and overwhelmingly male, approach. He prefers to talk about people having “desire”. Downey has been working with one client recently, a senior executive, who has a big job, huge responsibility, is a success… and yet he’s “in profound pain”, as Downey puts it. “He’s lost what he used to enjoy about life, abandoned things he was good at,” he says. Laura Empson, professor at Cass business school in London, has labelled such people “insecure overachievers”.

You need the will to succeed, but you also need love, Downey says. Draw on both these qualities and harmful drive can become fulfilling desire. Perhaps the most powerful depiction in literature of ambition, and the harm it can do, is in Macbeth. A new production has just opened at the National Theatre in London, directed by Rufus Norris and starring Anne-Marie Duff and Rory Kinnear. Many of its themes feel more timely than ever, in particular Lady Macbeth’s speech addressed to her absent husband:

“Yet do I fear thy nature.

It is too full of the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great,

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it.”

(Act I, scene 5)

“If you look at anyone successful, anyone successful that I’ve known,” explains Norris, “there is an illness that attends it, and it’s an illness that enables you, to one degree or another, to cut off your humanity, because your success inevitably means someone else not quite making it, whether that’s me going up against a couple of people I knew really well for the job that I’m now in [artistic director of the National Theatre], or the bank manager getting the bank manager’s job, or somebody putting their child into private school, because it’s a form of ambition.”

Yet it is within the confines of the Macbeth marriage that the spark of ambition catches fire. “In some ways they are Shakespeare’s happiest married couple,” Norris says. “The play in one way is a brilliant dissection of a divorce, or a separation of a very strong relationship.”

This is what untamed ambition can do to even the strongest of marriages. And it can also derail careers, too. “Ambition and competitiveness… they can manifest themselves in different ways,” says Duff, reflecting on her own profession. “They can be an internal thing, where you have to strive to be better and better, which can be quite self-flagellating – got to get this right – or it can be looking over your shoulder seeing what other people have, and for some people that’s a great drive, to compare and contrast, but that can make people very unhappy in my experience. So you might want to have the former, which is about having an ambition within your creativity.”

Some people are just permanently ambitious. Rupert Murdoch, who turns 87 today, is not giving up. Ever. Martin Sorrell, who is 73, is equally firmly in place at WPP, the world’s biggest advertising business. Normal people would have retired by now, having achieved what they have achieved. But these two are not normal. Something drives them on that can perhaps never be satisfied.

Does this set a good example to others? Maybe, and maybe not. In the corporate world “talent” is sought and encouraged to flourish, with a view to spotting leaders of the future. But this can promote what Jennifer and Gianpiero Petriglieri, both from the Insead business school in France, have called “the talent curse”. In an article for the Harvard Business Review last year, they argued that businesses should break this cycle. “They should stop referring to talented young managers as ‘future leaders’, since it encourages bland conformity, risk-averse thinking and stilted behaviour.”

The journalist and author George Monbiot takes an even harder line on thrusting ambition. “The world has been wrecked by people seeking status through their work,” he wrote last month. “In many professions – such as fossil fuel energy companies, weapons manufacture, banking, advertising – your prestige rises with the harm you do. The greater your destruction of other people’s lives, the greater your contribution to shareholder value.”

Maybe the French chef Sébastien Bras, who recently gave up his three Michelin stars in search of a calmer and happier life, offers a helpful alternative role model. “I want to give a new meaning to my life… and redefine what is essential,” he said.

So what are you ambitious for, really? Isn’t peace of mind ultimately more important than material possessions? Beyond a certain level of financial comfort, does more money make you any happier? Most research suggests not. As Professor Richard Sennett wrote in The Culture of the New Capitalism more than a decade ago: “Certainly, driven individuals can waste their lives jockeying for position… But most adults learn how to tame the beast of ambition; we live for more than that reason.”

It was Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated in El Salvador in 1980, who suggested we might consider a different sort of ambition: “Aspire not to have more but to be more,” he said. So yes, perhaps we should all be aiming higher. But it is our broader quality of life and wellbeing, and not merely a rise up the income scale, that we could be focusing our energies on.

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Hit Documentary Sparks High-quality Iron Pans Trend

A hit documentary has made high-quality iron pans a must-have item in Chinese kitchens, sparking fears the boom could damage the industry.

The first episode of the third season of Chinese food documentary "A Bite of China," produced by China Central Television, premiered Monday evening. The documentary depicts Chinese food culture, particularly the relationship between people and food.

With eight episodes each lasting 50 minutes, this season focuses on areas such as kitchenware, snacks, banquets, chefs and desserts

The first episode focused on a particular hand-made iron pan produced in Zhangqiu District in east China's Shandong Province. According to the documentary, a Zhangqiu Iron Pan needs to go through 12 procedures, be put in a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius and be beaten 36,000 times until it becomes "as clear as a mirror."

The episode helped sales of Zhangqiu Iron Pans to skyrocket overnight, and sales on the pans on the Taobao e-commerce website increased almost 6,000 times.

According to Alibaba, which runs Taobao, the iron pans are most popular in Shandong, followed by Jiangsu, Beijing and Guangdong.

Liu Zimu, who runs the pan factory in the documentary, said that one hour after the episode's premier, he sold all 2,000 pans in his store.

"We have about 50 craftsmen making the pans, and we are able to produce a little more than 100 pans every day," Liu said. "So far, we have received orders that will take two years to deliver. The history of the iron pans spans 1,000 years, and hand-made ones are better at heat conduction than those produced by machines."

"The hand-made pans are not sticky after tens of thousands of times of beating," Liu said. "They are better for cooking."

According to Liu, prices of the pans range from 300 yuan (47 U.S. dollars) to more than 1,000 yuan. A pan made by a seasoned craftsman in Liu's factory can fetch 1,299 yuan.

While the popularity of the pans has brought big bucks, Liu worries about the development of the industry.

"I am really happy that the craftsmanship is getting more attention and the pan makers are getting more respect," Liu said. "But making such pans is very complicated, and our capacity is quite limited, so it is inevitable that there will be fake ones on the market."

Liu said that even some iron pans made in Japan had been labeled as Zhangqiu Iron Pans, not to mention a number of poorly-made copies.

"The market is getting a little irrational," Liu said.

As orders overwhelmed factory capacity, Liu has closed his online store.

"Making the pans is an art, and I don't want money to taint the art," Liu said.

Liu said that making the pans is not easy. A craftsman needs to use a hammer of at least 7.5 kg to beat the pans tens of thousands of times, a "very tough job."

Zhangqiu pan-making culture once faced difficulties in being passed on, as the industry was threatened by mass production by machines, Liu said. As a result, many craftsmen switched jobs to survive.

The situation did not get better until recently, when the public realized the quality of the iron pans.

To help pass on pan-making culture, Liu and his peers have recruited many apprentices.

In Liu's factory, apprentices are paid to attend training sessions, and senior craftsmen enjoy high subsidies to "let them live better lives."

Before the documentary fervor, Liu's pans were already finding their way into other countries. Last year, his pans were purchased by consumers in more than 20 countries and regions, including the United States, Russia and Australia.

"The pans are particularly popular among overseas Chinese," Liu said. In late 2017, a British man bought more than 100 pans. The pans were later sold out when the man returned to Britain, according to Liu.

"I hope that after the documentary fervor, the public can view the art more rationally," Liu said.

"The public need to allow the craftsmen focus on making good-quality, genuine pans rather than churning out a big number of pans just for the sake of money," he said. "We are not just making pans; we are passing on a traditional art."

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Dig Into Caribbean Food in This 19th-Century Fire Station

Caribbean street food and whimsical desserts will replace bar snacks at a new restaurant in a 121-year-old fire station in Bloomingdale.

Spark at Engine Co. 12, formerly Old Engine 12 Firehouse restaurant, opens February 3 under new owner Jenna Mack (who runs an event planning company called Event Emissary). The same chef is in charge, and a few of the old dishes remain in rotation, but that’s about it.

“The menu was large, and it wasn’t as focused as I would have liked it to be,” says chef Peter Prime, who got his start in DC working at Leopold’s Kafe, Citronelle, and Equinox before taking over the kitchen at Old Engine in 2014. His new menu is pared down and highlights the casual island dishes he grew up with in Trinidad.

“We designed it around the way I like to eat out,” he says. “Sit down with a group of friends, try a lot of different things, you know, just have fun, hang out, eat, get in there with your hands.”

He means that literally: smoked meat like oxtail and pork belly come out on wooden platters meant for digging in sans utensils. An entire snapper is fried (complete with head and eyeballs), and a lacquered chicken is a throwback to the Chinese restaurants in Trinidad that Prime went to as a kid. The chef also hopes to carve out a niche for himself with dishes like coconut braised greens, avocado beignets, smoked bone marrow, and chipotle mayo oxtail.

That’s just the food. As a native islander, Prime is determined to bring good rum to the restaurant. Despite a rocky start with the liquor as a teenager, he’s fallen back in love, and plans to have tasting flight options at the bar. He’s using the booze in glazes and sauces, too, like his guava-rum barbecue sauce.

For dessert, there’s ice cream and gelato served in push-pop form, banana fritters topped with a rum-and-Coke syrup and Pop Rocks candy, and a horchata-like cocktail rimmed with crushed Fireballs.

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4 New Things to Try In Your Daily Life in 2018

Being More Impulsive - I come up with a lot of great ideas, especially for my career on a consistent basis. What I’m currently working on is being more impulsive with these ideas and not just sitting on them. I’ve currently been taking notes from friends of mine who exhibit these traits phenomenally.

Waking Up Earlier - I currently wake up at around 5am, a couple hours earlier than necessary for work, but I want to stretch it to 4am. I found that waking up earlier gives me a heads start on the day and allows me to get more done. Many of the most successful people I have been in contact with have made it a habit to wake up earlier than most, so I want to do the same.

Positive Self Talk - I’ve noticed that in moments I’m paying the least attention, I default to negative self talk about myself or my environment. For example I might drop a pen on the ground by accident and say something like, “wow, that’s so stupid.” My goal is to default to more positive/constructive ways of speaking, regardless of the situation.

Time Management - I have an overloaded schedule, and it’s been that way ever since I started playing soccer at age 9. I’m used to it, and I enjoy having a lot on my plate, but I know I can work more efficiently if I can budget my time better. At times I overwork/exhaust myself making it harder to complete these tasks. I want to put myself in a position where I’m using my time more efficiently.

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Around The World In 79 Days: British Cyclist Smashes Record

PARIS, France - A British cyclist set a new world record Monday By traveling around the globe in 79 days -- beating the fictional exploits of Phileas Fogg by a day.

Scottish adventurer Mark Beaumont rode into Paris 78 days, 14 hours and 14 minutes after he set off from the French capital, smashing the previous record of 123 days for a round-the-world bike trip.

Arriving in evening rush hour traffic under light drizzle, the 34-year-old rode the last cobbled mile to the Arc de Triomphe with a 20-strong entourage on wheels, including a man in a top hat on a penny-farthing bicycle.

Some 50 supporters were at the monument to greet him, including his tearful wife Nicci and his daughters Harriet, four, and Willa, one.

"I doubt I'll ever do anything like it again," said Beaumont, describing the journey as "definitely the longest two-and-a-half months of my life".

Bouncing his grinning one-year-old in his arms, Beaumont said the world record was "an absolute dream come true".

A Guinness World Records judge was on hand to present him with his two framed records -- he also beat the previous time for the farthest distance cycled in a month -- while he was still in the saddle.

Beaumont had held the round-the-world record until 2009 when it was beaten by a New Zealander, leaving Beaumont to conclude he simply had to have the title back.

"I have taken myself beyond anything I have ever done physically and mentally," he said.

3:30 a.m. starts

Fogg took 80 days to complete his voyage by train, ship and balloon in Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel, "Around the World in 80 Days".

Although Beaumont was able to fly over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, he did the rest with his own muscles.

He spent 16 hours a day in the saddle for 76 days to cover the 29,000 kilometers (18,000 miles), getting up at 3.30 am every morning.

The three remaining days were spent on flights.

"I am quite looking forward to not getting up at half-past three every morning," Beaumont joked as he set out in the dark on the 180-km final stretch in the Loire valley southwest of Paris.

Childhood dream

Beaumont set out from Paris on July 2 and crossed Europe, Russia and Mongolia before arriving in Beijing.

From there he flew to Perth in western Australia and crossed the country as well as neighboring New Zealand before flying on to Anchorage in Alaska.

His trans-American journey ended in Halifax in Canada, where he boarded a flight for Lisbon.

Beaumont said being the fastest man to cycle round the world has been his dream since childhood.

This is "the culmination of me as a 12-year-old boy pedaling across Scotland 22 years ago and going on lots of adventures, going further every time," he told his followers on Twitter.

Problems walking

Beaumont set the world record in 2008 when he cycled around the world unsupported in just short of 195 days. That was bettered by New Zealander Andrew Nicholson doing it in 123 days two years ago.

In the meantime Beaumont had taken on other adventures, and was part of a team who tried to break the record for rowing across the Atlantic in 2012, only to capsize after 27 days.

Although his latest escapade has not been so obviously dangerous, spending so long in the saddle has taken its toll. Beaumont told reporters that even walking up airport stairs "really hurt".

And he predicted that his record may not last forever.

"I'm 6 foot 3 inches (1.9 meters) tall and 90 kilos (14 stone). Someone who is 75 kilos and a 'proper' cyclist might do it faster. We shall see," he said.

"But I'll always be the first who did it (in under 80 days). No one remembers who was second up Everest." — Agence France-Presse

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Finding The Keys To Life With “Unlocked Lifestyle”

At an early age, Dakota Achin was taught a paramount life lesson that ultimately shaped his own personal philosophy - and his future.

“When I was younger, my grandfather would always remind me that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. And that’s something that has really resonated with me and really developed more meaning over the years as I’ve thought more about it.”

Following his first year of college, the then 19-year-old Achin found the time passing by him at a blistering pace and quickly discovered how easy it was to succumb to the pressures that come with the working world. For a long time, the Cohasset High School alum knew that he was not willing to compromise his happiness for a paycheck. So when the opportunity presented itself, Achin knew he had to pursue his passion.

Achin began making t-shirts after his freshman year of college in 2015, starting with hand-me-down clothing and one-step kits as he attempted to master the craft. Now a senior at the University of Vermont, Achin has expanded his brand “Unlocked Lifestyle” father than he had originally imagined. In addition to selling his product on campus, Achin now sells his product online as well as at the Cohasset Farmers Market held weekly on the Common.

Like most successful brands, “Unlocked Lifestyle” is centered on a general theme typically personified though some sort of logo or imagery. The keyhole, the brand’s signature design, embodies Achin’s personal philosophy regarding the pursuit of life-long happiness. Achin said he always gravitated toward the design as it represented the idea that “anyone can unlock happiness and the peace of mind that has been inside you all along.”

Staying organized was one of the original roadblocks Achin faced as he began to grow his business. Finding a balance between his education and his business, which is now his main source of income, also proved to be a challenge for him as he pursues prosperity. Yet one of Achin’s biggest goals all along has been to encourage people to find their happiness and explore their own personal pleasures.

“I really wanted to pick a career and a lifestyle that I love and that allows me to encourage others to do what they love as well,” he said.

Achin has sold his unique clothing line to all walks of life from coast to coast. The young entrepreneur took his products along for a cross-country road trip in 2016, peddling them as far as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park on his journey. Now in his third year of business, the 21-year-old has his sights set on the future of “Unlocked Lifestyle”.

Achin recently completed one of his biggest orders to date, customizing shirts for a band based in Burlington, VT known as Two Percent. The senior at the University of Vermont plans to bring his business to more farmer’s markets and festivals in the future and hopes to extend his brand into local stores and retailers. Achin shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

“I’m really just getting started,” he said.

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Lifestyle Is At The Heart Of Heart Health

But the deadly disease is preventable, either totally or partially, said Dr Alex Teo, medical director of Providence Clinic.

Generally used to refer to conditions affecting the heart or blood vessels, CVD is associated with a build-up of fatty deposits in the arteries and an increased risk of blood clots. It can also be associated with damage to arteries in organs such as the brain, heart, kidneys and eyes.

Health screening is an important tool for early recognition and prevention of CVD, said Dr Teo, adding it is advisable to go for medical check-ups at least once a year.

Family doctors also play a pivotal role in instilling the importance of regular blood monitoring for early intervention.

This is especially so for patients with chronic medical conditions - regular monitoring can help prevent cardiovascular complications, said Dr Teo.

"Your general practitioner (GP) can have a detailed consultation and ensure you receive the most appropriate screening tests," he added.

Since last Friday, eligible Singaporeans can pay $5 or less for health screenings and the first post-screening consultation under the Screen for Life programme, depending on whether they are under the Community Health Assist Scheme or Pioneer Generation subsidy.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF CVD?

• Coronary heart disease, which occurs when the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle is blocked or reduced. This puts an increased strain on the heart, and can lead to angina - caused by restricted blood flow to the heart muscle - heart attacks and failure.
• Strokes, where blood to part of the brain is cut off. This can cause brain damage, transient ischaemic attack (where the blood flow to the brain is temporarily disrupted), and even death.
• Peripheral arterial disease, which occurs when there is a blockage in the arteries to the limbs, usually the legs.
• Aortic diseases, which are a group of conditions affecting the aorta, the largest blood vessel in the body. It carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body.

WHAT ARE SOME LIFESTYLE HABITS THAT CAN LEAD TO CVD?

The more risk factors you have, the greater your chances are of developing CVD.

These include high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes and inactivity, which increases the likelihood of hypertension, high cholesterol levels and being overweight. Obesity also raises the risk of developing diabetes and high blood pressure.

Other risk factors include age, gender, diet and excessive alcohol consumption.

HOW CAN CVD BE PREVENTED?

• Have a healthy diet.
• Quit smoking. Your GP can provide you with support and prescribe medication.
• Regular exercise of at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a week, such as cycling or brisk walking. Visit your GP for a health check if you have not exercised before, or if you are returning to exercise after a long break.
• If you are overweight, a combination of exercise and a healthy diet can help you lose weight. Aim to get your body mass index below 25. If you are struggling, your GP can help you come up with a weight loss plan and recommend services in your area.
• Try not to exceed the recommended weekly limit of 21 alcohol units for men and 14 alcohol units for women. Aim to spread your drinking over three days or more. Your GP can help you if you are finding it difficult to cut down your drinking.
• If you are at a particularly high risk of developing CVD, your GP may recommend taking medication to reduce your risk. This may include statins and low-dose aspirin.

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Don’t Treat Love Or Leisure Like A Job

In an old cartoon by the American Roz Chast, a waiter approaches a woman with food on her plate. “Are you still working on that?” “No, in fact, I’m completely exhausted,” she replies. “Maybe if you wrap it up, I can finish working on it at home.” The title is Another Day In The Salt Mines. The idea that eating a delicious meal – cooked by someone else! – constitutes work remains largely confined to the US, mercifully. But the general enthusiasm for describing things as work is more widespread. Marriage, we’re endlessly informed by relationship gurus and divorcing celebrities, is work. Parenting is “the hardest job in the world”. Even leisure has been remade in the image of work, as we strive to reach 10,000 daily steps on our wearable fitness monitors; or check off experience after experience on “bucket lists” – a form of to-do list you’re not even permitted the pleasure of moaning about, because they’re meant to be fun.

In recent decades, of course, one major reason for defining more things as work has been to call attention to burdens that still fall disproportionately on women – cooking, toddler-chasing, caring for ageing relatives – and that are no less arduous, or crucial to the economy, simply because they’re unpaid. But as theology professor Jonathan Malesic wrote recently in the New Republic, there’s a dark side even to that worthy goal: in extending the logic of the workplace to life outside it, we implicitly concede that workers are the only kind of people worth valuing. “If everything is work,” Malesic writes, “then talk of work/life balance is a sham.” And we start judging parents, partners and others by their work ethic. “We shame mothers who don’t perform ‘best practices’ like breastfeeding, or initiating skin-to-skin contact with their child within seconds of birth,” he says, while the childless are seen as self-indulgent slackers.

The idea of “emotional labour” is an intriguing case in point. In the 1980s this useful phrase, coined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild, referred to the exhausting requirement faced by people in certain jobs – again, usually women – to act smiley or solicitous, how they felt inside. But in the past few years, it’s been popularised to include, say, the “job” of listening to your spouse or friend unburden themselves of their problems. It’s undoubtedly sexist when men take it for granted that women will listen obligingly while they moan. But isn’t it rather strange to characterise the underlying act – listening to someone you love – as an imposition from which you’d rather be free? If something so fundamental to a relationship counts as work, it’s hard to imagine what wouldn’t.

It’s hard to disagree with Malesic that, in an ideal world, we’d value all these interpersonal activities – and introduce policies permitting plenty of time for them – not because they’re jobs, but just because they matter. Things surely shouldn’t need to be work, and people shouldn’t need to be hard workers, in order to count.

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Delicious Lighter Potato Gratin

Potato gratin is a classic dish for a reason – everyone loves it! The combination of cheese, potato and that creamy, delicious sauce is a delight for your taste buds, and will have to going back for seconds. Unfortunately, like many tasty dishes it’s not the healthiest, so this version has a couple of changes to create something a little lighter.

While there’s nothing wrong with treating yourself every now and again, it’s always good to make healthier choices where you can and this gratin does just that! Instead of cream, use light evaporated milk and cut the cheese down to just 2 tablespoons. If you really want to step the flavour up a notch, try sprinkling some french onion soup mix between layers.

Ingredients

• 185ml can light and creamy evaporated milk
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 700g desiree potatoes, peeled, thinly sliced
• 1 small brown onion, thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup fresh breadcrumbs
• 2 tablespoons finely grated parmesan cheese

Method

• Preheat oven to 180C and Lightly grease a 6 cup-capacity baking dish. Combine milk and garlic in a jug.
• Layer one-quarter of the potatoes over base of prepared dish. Top with one-third onion. Repeat layers, finishing with potato.
• Top with milk mixture, breadcrumbs and parmesan. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until potato is tender and breadcrumbs golden.

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3 Books to Help You Create a New Lifestyle that Lasts

For far too long we’ve been led to believe that “going on a diet” and “losing weight” is something you force rather than something you learn.

And where has it gotten us? Well, according to this article, 38 percent of adults are obese, along with 17 percent of teenagers—numbers that have been increasing year over year.

That’s not how I work – which you’ll know if you’ve been reading me for a while.

We all know what happens when you force a diet or weight loss: you relapse. You yo-yo. You live in one extreme for as long as you can handle it and then, inevitably, slip into the other extreme.

That’s a hard way to live.

You know what? I’ll be honest here: to change your lifestyle is a tall order. It’s really difficult, and it takes effort. But the difference between forcing an outcome (weight loss) and mastering your diet (lifestyle) is that, at some point, the process stops being a change in lifestyle and starts being what you do, day in and day out, because that’s who you are now.

It stops being so hard, in other words. It becomes easier and easier, more and more real.

But forcing a diet, losing some weight, and then relapsing? That doesn’t get easier. That’s just giving yourself the same pain over and over (and we’ll explore why on earth you’re doing that in another post.)

Which pain do you want: the pain of continually losing weight and then putting it all back on? Or the much shorter-term pain of actually changing your lifestyle and making a habit of being healthy?

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Let’s assume it’s the second one…I’m assuming you’re a sane human being, after all 🙂

The philosophies outlined in the following three books will help you through the process to create a new lifestyle (and relationship with food) that’s permanent and real:

1. Antifragile by Nassim Taleb

If a mirror breaks, it is undoubtedly worse than when it wasn’t broken. This we can agree on.

When a Phoenix dies, it rises from its own ashes. It’s no better but no worse than before. It is reborn exactly the same as before.

Now, the hydra…when one of its heads gets cut off, grows two more. In other words: it doesn’t get better despite being harmed, but precisely because it was harmed. It is, as Taleb would say, “antifragile.”

Humans are hydras. You’re a hydra. All the pain in your life can make you better—if you let it.

I say this because when you’re changing your lifestyle, there are going to be times when you mess up. When you make bad choices. When you regress into what you used to be, even if momentarily. Welcome to being human. Imagine if you used every one of these “mess ups” to get better? To grow? To become more and more antifragile?

How strong and powerful could you become?

2. Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? by Ben Hunt-Davis

The Great Britain Men’s Eight rowing team [check this] won gold at the 2000 Olympics. They’d also skipped the opening ceremony, a once in a lifetime opportunity for most of them.

These two things are not unrelated. In fact, they’re 100 percent related.

After toiling in obscurity for years and years, they decided to try something totally new and completely different. (A good lesson here). They decided that every decision in their lives leading up to the Olympics should revolve around one question:

“Will it make the boat go faster?”

It’s the perfect question because it’s a “yes” or “no” answer. Something either makes the boat go faster or it doesn’t.

Now, you understand why they didn’t go to the opening ceremony. How would that make the boat go faster? It wouldn’t. It would be a late night and it would be wasted energy. It was a clear, but also difficult, No.

How does this apply to you? Well, you can ask a similar question about any decision you need to make:

“Will this help me create my new lifestyle?”

All the unimportant will be removed, and what will remain is what will take you toward your new lifestyle and toward the person you envision yourself to be.

3. The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

There’s a voice in your head, isn’t there?

When you think about it, it’s always been there.

Here’s the fascinating thing: it’s not you.

How can that be? You’re the one hearing it.

So…if it’s not you, then what is it?

It’s just a thought. That’s it. AThat means it doesn’t have to control you if you don’t want it to control you.

All those times you’ve made poor diet choices, all those times you’ve craved something sugary, all those times you’ve said “fuck it” and gorged yourself numb…I’m willing to bet they’re all because of the voice. Because it told you to do something and you obeyed.

Your voice is not you. It’s just a thought. Your thoughts do not define you. Because you have infinite thoughts and if each one defined you then there’d be infinite Yous. But there’s only one you. The witness behind your thoughts.

How’s that for life-shifting insight?

Now, you can take a step back and realize that you can simply observe this voice rather than do whatever it tells you.

For example, it might say, “Oh, my god, I really want a donut.” Then you, the witness behind that thought, can take a step back and simply observe that these thoughts are happening. If you really pay attention, they’re actually quite funny. Since they don’t define you, you don’t have to act on them. In fact, then you can make the choice you really want to make and that you know will make you truly happy: a healthy choice.

Isn’t taking a step back from the voice worth getting good at?

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Don’t Let Your Dissertation Run Your Life

A Ph.D. student recently came to me to talk about exploring different careers. He lamented that while in graduate school, he gradually stopped doing everything in his life that was not research related. In undergrad, he was an avid outdoor adventurer, climbing mountains and rafting rivers. He loved volunteering with kids and the elderly because he could see his impact directly. But over time as his research project developed, he left these parts of his life behind because he “didn’t have time.”

Let’s compare this to the nonacademic world. For many, work is driven by deadlines. You have to produce something by this date and time in order to: a) please the client, b) please your boss or c) move on to the next part of the project. But in academe, all deadlines are “as soon as possible.” There is a never-ending sense of urgency. Do you have that chapter finished? If you’re not getting results, you should work harder and stay later. How many of us are guilty of analyzing data or writing a paper while on vacation?

When it comes to careers, the spread of research into your time will hold you back. From graduate school, you will gain a degree, technical skills, broader research skills and subject-matter expertise. But if you allow research to take over, you will be missing these important aspects: working with people outside your field, seeing what different careers actually look like, having experiences other than your research, developing key transferable skills, building a network of people who can refer you to jobs -- as well as maintaining and enhancing physical health, mental health (read the research if you haven’t), a social life and an understanding of who you are in the world.

I recommend that you seek out opportunities such as the ones below to get outside of your office, lab or library. Advocate for yourself with your research mentor and negotiate that you need a number of hours every week to pursue specific activities. Or just stop working late every night and coming in every weekend -- and see if anyone even notices.

Teaching and outreach. One of the most common activities for graduate students is to teach undergrads or other graduate students. Your department may require you to be a teaching assistant, or you may participate in outreach to local institutions. Even so, consider what you are gaining from the experience. Are you better at managing people, managing timelines, conveying complex ideas to novices, training, coaching or building rapport? Consider teaching new lessons or taking on additional responsibilities so you will have experience with spearheading and taking initiative.

Committees. We’ve all ignored the emails from the department administrators asking for volunteers for various committees, but what did we miss out on? Planning a symposium or conference can give you experience with working on teams, dividing responsibilities, holding each other accountable and organizing. Inviting faculty members for a weekly speaker series can help you improve your abilities to convince others, manage a budget and handle logistics.

Professional development. Many campuses offer opportunities to develop skills supplemental to or outside of your research. Seek out those workshops and programs to learn to negotiate, manage a team, lead, be a faculty member at different institutions, apply for grants, search for jobs, present and talk about your experiences. Writing is a vastly transferable skill, and you can find courses to help you write for the news media, policy organizations, regulatory affairs, federal agencies, patent agents or users of a product.

Volunteering. Academic research can often feel disconnected from the populations it’s meant to serve. Volunteering for local organizations is a great way to reconnect with people and have a direct impact through doing something small. Plus, you will gain abilities in communicating with other people who come from different backgrounds, building trust, active listening, understanding the needs of others and fulfilling the needs of clients.

Hobbies. A peril of thinking about your research all day, every day is that you lose opportunities for inspiration. When we allow our minds to change focus, it can help us reframe problems we’re working on. Tapping into your creativity can allow your brain to work in different ways and make new connections. So unearth that guitar from the closet, use a camera that’s not on your phone, take a cake-decorating course, design websites, read a sci-fi novel or blog about bad movies. When applying for jobs, you can mention hobbies on a résumé or in an interview to be more memorable.

Sports and physical activity. I gained 20 pounds in graduate school. Many graduate students exercise less and eat fewer healthy foods. Get your fitness back on track by joining an intramural sports team or finding a pickup basketball game at a gym. Camp and hike at nearby parks and trails. Not only will you build teamwork and coordination skills and reduce stress, but you’ll also have good topics for small talk when networking and interviewing.

Meeting professionals. Are you unsure of what careers best suit you? Or do you want to learn which companies match your interests and values? The best way to accomplish both of those tasks is to meet people who are in such careers. You can attend networking events or you can target individuals through LinkedIn and your current and previous institutions’ alumni associations. If you ask about shadowing opportunities or trying out a portion of their work, you’ll be able to write about your experience in an application and speak knowledgeably about the job in interviews.

Imagine you are the hiring manager for a company, and you’re interviewing two candidates. One has strong research skills from a top university. The other has not only strong research skills from a top university but also experience working on team projects, the proven ability to communicate research findings to nonexperts and over all seems more at ease. Whom would you hire?

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