Quoted from: Professor Jim Al-Khalili
University of Surrey
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7810846.stm
Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.
At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics, or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.
Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.
For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is a scientist born in AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.
Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.
As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists.
Modern methods
Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.
But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science.
Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others.
Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method.
As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data.
This is how we do science today and is why I put my trust in the advances that have been made in science.
But it is often still claimed that the modern scientific method was not established until the early 17th Century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.
There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Ibn al-Haytham arrived there first.
In fact, with his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of results, he is often referred to as the "world's first true scientist".
Understanding light
He was the first scientist to give a correct account of how we see objects.
He proved experimentally, for instance, that the so-called emission theory (which stated that light from our eyes shines upon the objects we see), which was believed by great thinkers such as Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy, was wrong and established the modern idea that we see because light enters our eyes.
What he also did that no other scientist had tried before was to use mathematics to describe and prove this process.
So he can be regarded as the very first theoretical physicist, too.
He is perhaps best known for his invention of the pinhole camera and should be credited with the discovery of the laws of refraction.
He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colours and studied shadows, rainbows and eclipses; and by observing the way sunlight diffracted through the atmosphere, he was able to work out a rather good estimate for the height of the atmosphere, which he found to be around 100km.
Enforced study
In common with many modern scholars, Ibn-al Haytham badly needed the time and isolation to focus on writing his many treatises, including his great work on optics.
An unwelcome opportunity was granted him, however, when he was imprisoned in Egypt between 1011 and 1021, having failed a task set him by a caliph in Cairo to help solve the problem of regulating the flooding of the Nile.
While still in Basra, Ibn al-Haytham had claimed that the Nile's autumn flood waters could be held by a system of dykes and canals, thereby preserved as reservoirs until the summer's droughts.
But on arrival in Cairo, he soon realised that his scheme was utterly impractical from an engineering perspective.
Yet rather than admit his mistake to the dangerous and murderous caliph, Ibn-al Haytham instead decided to feign madness as a way to escape punishment.
This promptly led to him being placed under house arrest, thereby granting him 10 years of seclusion in which to work.
Planetary motion
He was only released after the caliph's death. He returned to Iraq where he composed a further 100 works on a range of subjects in physics and mathematics.
While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy.
It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics, explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.
It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili presents Science and Islam on BBC Four at 2100GMT on Monday 5, 12 & 19 January
January 06, 2009
January 05, 2009
December 31, 2008
Beauties of Islam
Beauties of Islam ~ A series of Lectures !
with Shaikh: Yusuf Estes
Download Videos
Faith & its proof
Rights & the balance that goes with them
Spread the message of Islam, its obligatory on every Muslim !
December 09, 2008
THE BOY AND THE APPLE TREE(Nice Story)
THE BOY AND THE APPLE TREE : Nice Story
A long time ago, there was a huge apple tree. A little boy loved to come and play around it everyday.
He climbed to the treetop, ate the apples, and took a nap under the shadow.
He loved the tree and the tree loved to play with him. Time went by, the little boy had grown up
and he no longer played around the tree every day.
One day, the boy came back to the tree and he looked sad.
"Come and play with me", the tree asked the boy.
"I am no longer a kid, I do not play around trees any more" the boy replied.
"I want toys. I need money to buy them."
"Sorry, but I do not have money, but you can pick all my apples and sell them. So, you will have money."
The boy was so excited. He grabbed all the apples on the tree and left happily. The boy never came
back after he picked the apples. The tree was sad.
One day, the boy who now turned into a man returned and the tree was excited.
"Come and play with me" the tree said.
"I do not have time to play. I have to work for my family. We need a house for shelter. Can you help me?"
"Sorry, but I do not have any house. But you can chop off my branches to build your house". So the man
cut all the branches of the tree and left happily. The tree was glad to see him happy but the man never
came back since then. The tree was again lonely and sad.
One hot summer day, the man returned and the tree was delighted.
"Come and play with me!" the tree said.
"I am getting old. I want to go sailing to relax myself. Can you give me a boat?" said the man.
"Use my trunk to build your boat. You can sail far away and be happy."
So the man cut the tree trunk to make a boat. He went sailing and never showed up for a long time.
Finally, the man returned after many years. "Sorry, my boy. But I do not have anything for you anymore.
No more apples for you", the tree said.
"No problem, I do not have any teeth to bite" the man replied.
"No more trunk for you to climb on".
"I am too old for that now" the man said.
"I really cannot give you anything, the only thing left is my dying roots," the tree said with tears.
"I do not need much now, just a place to rest. I am tired after all these years," the man replied.
"Good! Old tree roots are the best place to lean on and rest, come sit down with me and rest."
The man sat down and the tree was glad and smiled with tears.
This is a story of everyone. The tree is like our parents. When we were young, we loved to play
with our Mum and Dad. When we grow up, we leave them; only come to them when we need
something or when we are in trouble.
No matter what, parents will always be there and give everything they could just to make you happy.
You may think the boy is cruel to the tree, but that is how all of us treat our parents. We take them
for granted; we don't appreciate all they do for us, until it's too late.
May Allah forgives us of our shortcomings and may He guide us.
* * * * * * * * *
December 01, 2008
7 REASONS WHY A SCIENTIST BELIEVES IN GOD*
(This article of Mr A. Cressy Morrison, former President of the New York Academy of Sciences, first appeared in the "Reader's Digesf' (January 1948); then on recommendation of Professor C. A. Coulson, F. R.S., Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, was republished in the Reader's Digest November 1960) - It shows how science compels the scientists to admit to the essential need of a Supreme Creator.
We are still in the dawn of the scientific age and every increase of light reveals more brightly the handiwork of an intelligent Creator. In the 90 years since Darwin we have made stupendous discoveries; with a spirit of scientific humanity and of faith grounded in knowledge we are approaching even nearer to an awareness of God.
For myself I count seven reasons for my faith.
First:
By unwavering mathematical law we can prove that our universe was designed and executed by a great engineering Intelligence. Suppose you put ten coins, marked from one to ten, into your pocket and give them a good shuffle. Now try to take them out in sequence from one to ten, pulling back the coin each time and shaking them all again. Mathematically we know that your chance of first drawing number one is one in ten; of drawing one and two in succession, one in 100; of drawing one, two and three in succession, one in a thousand, and so on; your chance of drawing them all, from one to number ten in succession, would reach the unbelievable figure of one chance in ten thousand million.
By the same reasoning, so many exacting conditions are necessary for life on earth that they could not possibly exist in proper relationship by chance. The earth rotates on its axis at one thousand miles an hour; if it turned at one hundred miles an hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long as now, and the hot sun would then burn up our vegetation during each long day, while in the long night any surviving sprout would freeze.
Again, the sun, source of our life, has a surface temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and our earth is, just far enough away so that this 'eternal fire" warms us just enough and not too much! If the sun gave off only one-half its present radiation, we would freeze, and if it gave half as much more, we would roast.
The slant of the earth, tilted at an angle of 23 degrees, gives us our season; if it had not been so tilted, vapours from the ocean would move north and south, piling up for us continents of ice. If our moon was, say, only 50 thousand miles away instead of its actual distance. Our tides would be so enormous that twice a day all continents would be submerged; even the mountains would soon be eroded away. If the crust of the earth had been only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen without which animal life must die. Had the ocean been a few feet deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been absorbed and no vegetable life could exist. Or if our atmosphere had been thinner, some of the meteors, now burned in space by the million evey day; would be striking all parts of the earth, starting fires everywhere. Because of these, and host of other examples, there is not one chance in millions that life on our planet is an accident.
Second:
The resourcefulness of life to accomplish its purpose is a manifestation of all-pervading Intelligence. What life itself is no man has fathomed. It has neither weight nor dimensions, but it does have force; a growing root will crack a rock. Life has conquered water, land and air, mastering the element, compelling them to dissolve and reform their combinations.
Life, the sculptor, shapes all living things; an artist, it designs every leaf of every tree, and colours every flower. Life is a musician and has each bird to sing its love songs, the insects to call each other in the music of their multitudinous sounds. Life is a sublime chemist, giving taste to fruits and spices, and perfume to the rose changing water and carbonic acid into sugar and wood and, in so doing, releasing oxygen that animals may have the breath of life.
Behold an almost invisible drop of protoplasm, transparent and jelly-like, capable of motion, drawiug energy from the sun. This single cell, this transparent mistlike droplet, holds within itself the germ of life, and has the power to distribute this life to every living thing, great and small. The powers of this droplet are greater than our vegetation and animals and people, for all life came from it. Nature did not create life; fire-blistered rocks and a saltless sea could not meet the necessarv requirements. Who, then, has put it here ?
Third:
Animal wisdom speaks irresistibly of a good Creator who infused instinct into otherwise helpless little creatures. The young salmon spends years at sea, then comes back to his own river; and travels up the very side of the river into which flows The tributary where he was born. What brings him back so precisely? If you transfer him to another tributary he will know at once that he is off his course and he will fight his way down and back to the main stream and then turn up against the current to finish his destiny more accurately.
Even more difficult to solve is the mystery of eels. These amazing creatures migrate at maturity from all ponds and rivers everywhere - those from Europe across thousands of miles of oceans - all bound for the same abysmal deeps near Bermuda. There they breed and die. The little ones, with no apparent means of knowing anything except that they are in a wilderness of water; nevertheless find their way back not only to the very shore from which their parent came but thence to the rivers, lakes or little ponds - so that each body of water is always populated with eels. No American eel has ever been caught in Europe, no European eel in American waters. Nature has even delayed the maturity of the European eel by a year or more to make up for its longer journey. Where does the directing iruptilse originate?
A wasp will overpower a grasshopper, dig a hole in the earth, sting the grasshopper in exactly the right place so that he does not die but becomes unconscious and lives on as a form of preserved meat. Then the Wasp will lay her eggs handily so that her children when they hatch can nibble witliout killing' the insect on which they feed, to them dead meat would be fatal. The mother then flies way and dies; she never sees her young. Surely the wasp must have done all this right the first time and every time, or else there would be no wasp. Such mysterious techniques cannot be explained by adaption; they were bestowed.
Fourth:
Man has something more than animal instinct - the power of reason.
No other animal has ever left a record of its ability to count ten or even to understand the meaning of ten. Where instinct is like a single note of a flute, beautiful but limited, the human brain contains all the notes of all the instruments in the orchestra. No need to belabor this fourth point; thanks to the human, reason we can contemplate the possibility that we are what we are only because we have received a spark of Universal Intelligence.
Fifth:
Provision for all living is revealed in phenomena which we know today but which Darwin did not know - such as the wonders of genes. So unspeakably tiny are these genes that, if all of them responsible for all living people in the world could be put in one place, there would be less than a thimbleful. Yet these ultra-microscopic genes and their companions, the chromosomes, inhabit every living cell and are the absolute keys to all human, animal and vegetable characteristics. A thimble is a small place in which to put all the individual characteristics of two thousand million human beings. However; the facts are beyond question. Well then, how do genes lock up all the normal heredity of a multitude of ancestors and preserve the psychology of each in such an infinitely small space? Here evolution really begins - at the cell, the entity which holds and carries genes. How a few million atoms, locked up as an ultra-microscopic gene, can absolutely rule all on earth is an example of profound cunning and provision that could emanate only from a Creative Intelligence - no other hypothesis will serve.
Sixth:
By the economy of nature, we are forced to realize that only infinite wisdom could have foreseen and prepared with such astute husbandry.
Many years ago a species of cactus was planted in Australia as a protective fence. Having no insect enemies in Australia the cactus soon began a prodigious growth; the alarming abundance persisted until the plants covered an area as long and wide as England, crowding inhabitants out of the towns and villages, and destroying their farms. Seeking a defence, the entomologists scoured the world; finally they turned up an insect which exclusively feeds on cactus, and would eat nothing else. It would breed freely too; and it had no enemies in Australia. So animal soon conquered vegetable and today the cactus pest has retreated, and with it all but a small protective residue of the insects, enough to hold the cactus in check for ever.
Such checks and balances have been universally provided. Why have not fast-breeding insects dominated the earth? Because they have no lungs such as man possesses; they breathe through tubes. But when insects grow large, their tubes do not grow in ratio to the increasing size of the body. Hence there has never beetn an insect of great size; this limitation on growth has held them all in check.
If this physical check had not been provided, man could not exist. Imagine meeting a hornet as big as a lion!
Seven:
The fact that man can conceive the idea of God is in itself a unique proof.
The conception of god rises from a divine faculty of man, unshared with the rest of our world - the faculty we call imagination. By its power, man and man alone can fmd the evidence of things unseen. The vista that power opens up is unbounded; indeed, as man is perfected, imagination becomes a spiritual reality. He may discern in all the evidence of design and purpose the great truth that heaven is wherever and whatever is; that God is everywhere and in everything, but nowhere so close as in our hearts. It is scientifically as well as imaginatively true; in the words of the palmist; The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.
Source:
God -An Islamic Perspective
By: Allamah Sayyed Saeed Akhtar Rizvi
We are still in the dawn of the scientific age and every increase of light reveals more brightly the handiwork of an intelligent Creator. In the 90 years since Darwin we have made stupendous discoveries; with a spirit of scientific humanity and of faith grounded in knowledge we are approaching even nearer to an awareness of God.
For myself I count seven reasons for my faith.
First:
By unwavering mathematical law we can prove that our universe was designed and executed by a great engineering Intelligence. Suppose you put ten coins, marked from one to ten, into your pocket and give them a good shuffle. Now try to take them out in sequence from one to ten, pulling back the coin each time and shaking them all again. Mathematically we know that your chance of first drawing number one is one in ten; of drawing one and two in succession, one in 100; of drawing one, two and three in succession, one in a thousand, and so on; your chance of drawing them all, from one to number ten in succession, would reach the unbelievable figure of one chance in ten thousand million.
By the same reasoning, so many exacting conditions are necessary for life on earth that they could not possibly exist in proper relationship by chance. The earth rotates on its axis at one thousand miles an hour; if it turned at one hundred miles an hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long as now, and the hot sun would then burn up our vegetation during each long day, while in the long night any surviving sprout would freeze.
Again, the sun, source of our life, has a surface temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and our earth is, just far enough away so that this 'eternal fire" warms us just enough and not too much! If the sun gave off only one-half its present radiation, we would freeze, and if it gave half as much more, we would roast.
The slant of the earth, tilted at an angle of 23 degrees, gives us our season; if it had not been so tilted, vapours from the ocean would move north and south, piling up for us continents of ice. If our moon was, say, only 50 thousand miles away instead of its actual distance. Our tides would be so enormous that twice a day all continents would be submerged; even the mountains would soon be eroded away. If the crust of the earth had been only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen without which animal life must die. Had the ocean been a few feet deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been absorbed and no vegetable life could exist. Or if our atmosphere had been thinner, some of the meteors, now burned in space by the million evey day; would be striking all parts of the earth, starting fires everywhere. Because of these, and host of other examples, there is not one chance in millions that life on our planet is an accident.
Second:
The resourcefulness of life to accomplish its purpose is a manifestation of all-pervading Intelligence. What life itself is no man has fathomed. It has neither weight nor dimensions, but it does have force; a growing root will crack a rock. Life has conquered water, land and air, mastering the element, compelling them to dissolve and reform their combinations.
Life, the sculptor, shapes all living things; an artist, it designs every leaf of every tree, and colours every flower. Life is a musician and has each bird to sing its love songs, the insects to call each other in the music of their multitudinous sounds. Life is a sublime chemist, giving taste to fruits and spices, and perfume to the rose changing water and carbonic acid into sugar and wood and, in so doing, releasing oxygen that animals may have the breath of life.
Behold an almost invisible drop of protoplasm, transparent and jelly-like, capable of motion, drawiug energy from the sun. This single cell, this transparent mistlike droplet, holds within itself the germ of life, and has the power to distribute this life to every living thing, great and small. The powers of this droplet are greater than our vegetation and animals and people, for all life came from it. Nature did not create life; fire-blistered rocks and a saltless sea could not meet the necessarv requirements. Who, then, has put it here ?
Third:
Animal wisdom speaks irresistibly of a good Creator who infused instinct into otherwise helpless little creatures. The young salmon spends years at sea, then comes back to his own river; and travels up the very side of the river into which flows The tributary where he was born. What brings him back so precisely? If you transfer him to another tributary he will know at once that he is off his course and he will fight his way down and back to the main stream and then turn up against the current to finish his destiny more accurately.
Even more difficult to solve is the mystery of eels. These amazing creatures migrate at maturity from all ponds and rivers everywhere - those from Europe across thousands of miles of oceans - all bound for the same abysmal deeps near Bermuda. There they breed and die. The little ones, with no apparent means of knowing anything except that they are in a wilderness of water; nevertheless find their way back not only to the very shore from which their parent came but thence to the rivers, lakes or little ponds - so that each body of water is always populated with eels. No American eel has ever been caught in Europe, no European eel in American waters. Nature has even delayed the maturity of the European eel by a year or more to make up for its longer journey. Where does the directing iruptilse originate?
A wasp will overpower a grasshopper, dig a hole in the earth, sting the grasshopper in exactly the right place so that he does not die but becomes unconscious and lives on as a form of preserved meat. Then the Wasp will lay her eggs handily so that her children when they hatch can nibble witliout killing' the insect on which they feed, to them dead meat would be fatal. The mother then flies way and dies; she never sees her young. Surely the wasp must have done all this right the first time and every time, or else there would be no wasp. Such mysterious techniques cannot be explained by adaption; they were bestowed.
Fourth:
Man has something more than animal instinct - the power of reason.
No other animal has ever left a record of its ability to count ten or even to understand the meaning of ten. Where instinct is like a single note of a flute, beautiful but limited, the human brain contains all the notes of all the instruments in the orchestra. No need to belabor this fourth point; thanks to the human, reason we can contemplate the possibility that we are what we are only because we have received a spark of Universal Intelligence.
Fifth:
Provision for all living is revealed in phenomena which we know today but which Darwin did not know - such as the wonders of genes. So unspeakably tiny are these genes that, if all of them responsible for all living people in the world could be put in one place, there would be less than a thimbleful. Yet these ultra-microscopic genes and their companions, the chromosomes, inhabit every living cell and are the absolute keys to all human, animal and vegetable characteristics. A thimble is a small place in which to put all the individual characteristics of two thousand million human beings. However; the facts are beyond question. Well then, how do genes lock up all the normal heredity of a multitude of ancestors and preserve the psychology of each in such an infinitely small space? Here evolution really begins - at the cell, the entity which holds and carries genes. How a few million atoms, locked up as an ultra-microscopic gene, can absolutely rule all on earth is an example of profound cunning and provision that could emanate only from a Creative Intelligence - no other hypothesis will serve.
Sixth:
By the economy of nature, we are forced to realize that only infinite wisdom could have foreseen and prepared with such astute husbandry.
Many years ago a species of cactus was planted in Australia as a protective fence. Having no insect enemies in Australia the cactus soon began a prodigious growth; the alarming abundance persisted until the plants covered an area as long and wide as England, crowding inhabitants out of the towns and villages, and destroying their farms. Seeking a defence, the entomologists scoured the world; finally they turned up an insect which exclusively feeds on cactus, and would eat nothing else. It would breed freely too; and it had no enemies in Australia. So animal soon conquered vegetable and today the cactus pest has retreated, and with it all but a small protective residue of the insects, enough to hold the cactus in check for ever.
Such checks and balances have been universally provided. Why have not fast-breeding insects dominated the earth? Because they have no lungs such as man possesses; they breathe through tubes. But when insects grow large, their tubes do not grow in ratio to the increasing size of the body. Hence there has never beetn an insect of great size; this limitation on growth has held them all in check.
If this physical check had not been provided, man could not exist. Imagine meeting a hornet as big as a lion!
Seven:
The fact that man can conceive the idea of God is in itself a unique proof.
The conception of god rises from a divine faculty of man, unshared with the rest of our world - the faculty we call imagination. By its power, man and man alone can fmd the evidence of things unseen. The vista that power opens up is unbounded; indeed, as man is perfected, imagination becomes a spiritual reality. He may discern in all the evidence of design and purpose the great truth that heaven is wherever and whatever is; that God is everywhere and in everything, but nowhere so close as in our hearts. It is scientifically as well as imaginatively true; in the words of the palmist; The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.
Source:
God -An Islamic Perspective
By: Allamah Sayyed Saeed Akhtar Rizvi
November 17, 2008
SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT YOUR SLEEP....
SLEEP
Assalaamu Alaikkum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu!
(Peace be upon you with God's blessings and prosper)...
Do you know what happens when you sleep??
It is Allah that takes the souls (of men) at death; and those that die not
(He takes) during their sleep: those on whom He has passed the decree of
death, He keeps back (from returning to life), but the rest He sends (to their
bodies) for a term appointed. Verily in this are signs for those who reflect.
Quran, Chapter 39 verse 42
This means: every time you sleep, Allah takes your souls, amongst many
other souls he takes during sleeping. Then Allah decides who is going to be
given another chance. For those who are blessed with another chance, Allah
will permit their souls to go back to their bodies, the rest he keeps back from
returning to life i.e.they die.
This means: each time you go to bed you should never be sure you will get
up again, you ONLY have 50% chance for coming back to life. This means:
each time you go to bed you should be prepared for your hereafter.
This means: when you wake up the next day you should appreciate how
lucky (blessed) you are. And say 'Blessed be the One(Allah) who returned
my soul to my body, and granted me another chance'. This is what the
prophet PBUH used to say after waking up. This means: when you wake up
the next day you should make sure you utilize the new day as much as you
can before sleep time comes; the new day you are living could be the last
chance you are given!
This means: you should try to make sure you recite sura AL-MULK
(chapter 67) before sleeping, because the prophet PBUH promised that one
who reads this sura before sleeping is saved from the punishment of the
grave. May Allah forgive us all and bless us with a happy life in this dunya
and the hereafter. Aameen.
PASS THIS ON
MAY ALLAH REWARD & BLESS US AND our FAMILIES. Aameen.
PASS THIS ON
MAY ALLAH REWARD & BLESS US AND our FAMILIES. Aameen.
September 04, 2008
ARE these Foods safe to Eat?
There will always be those fattening foods that are easy to make, easy to get, and easy to crave. You think 'OK, I know this is bad but it can't be that bad!' Think again. Here are the top seven foods you should never ever feed your family or yourself!
1.Doughnuts
It's hard to resist the smell of a Krispy Kreme doughnut, which is why I never step foot in the store. Doughnuts are fried chock-full of sugar and white flour and loads of trans fat.
According to the Krispy Kreme website, an average 3.5 ounce sugar doughnut weighs in with about 400 calories and contains few other nutrients besides fat. These sugary treats may satisfy your craving but it won't satisfy your hunger as most of the calories come from fat.
'Eating a lot of refined sugar contributes to blood sugar 'swings' or extreme fluctuations,' eDiets Chief Nutritionist Susan Burke said.
2. Cheeseburger with fries
The age-old classic may be delicious but think twice before sinking your teeth into that Big Mac. The saturated fat found in cheese burgers has been linked to heart attacks, strokes and some types of cancer..
'In fact, fast-food portions are gargantuan, almost double the calories per meal compared to 20 years ago,' Susan says. 'Twenty years ago the average fast-food cheeseburger had about 300 calories. Today's BK Whopper with cheese has 720. To burn the excess 420 calories, you'd have to run for 40 minutes. For example, in 1985 a medium French fry had 240 calories, 2.4 ounces. Today's 'medium' is 6.9 ounces and 610 calories.
'This fast-food meal of cheeseburger and fries has way too many calories and fat grams, not to mention grams of saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol and sodium.'
Let's break down this meal. First, take the white-flour bun (refined carbohydrates) , then add some processed cheese (saturated fat and trans fat, plus lots of additives and preservatives) and then top off with fried red meat (cholesterol and saturated fats). And let's not forget about the condiments such as the always fattening mayonnaise.
Not sounding so appetizing anymore, huh? Oh, and let's not forget about the infamous side dish. You cheeseburger will most likely come with a side of French fries, which is sadly the most popular vegetable dish in the U.S. Don't kid yourself, French fries are not vegetables, they are extremely high in fat and contain a tiny amount of nutrients.
3. Fried Chicken and Chicken Nuggets
With the recent class-action lawsuit between The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and KFC, the health risks posed by fried foods are becoming more public. The CSPI is suing the food chain for their use of cooking oil containing unhealthy trans fats. The lawsuit seeks to order KFC to use other types of cooking oils and to inform customers how much trans fats KFC's food contains.
Foods cooked in highly heated oils (most notably partially hydrogenated oil) have been known to cause cancer, weight gain and other serious health risks if ingested regularly. A 10-piece chicken McNugget from McDonald's has 420 calories, 24 grams of fat and 1120 milligrams of sodium. One Extra Crispy Chicken Breast from KFC has around 420 calories and eight grams of saturated fat. So unless you want to super size yourself, it's best to make a clean break with fried foods.
4. Oscar Mayer's Lunchables
Sure they are convenient and easy, but boy are they unhealthy! These kid-marketed lunches are loaded with saturated fat and sodium. They usually contain highly processed meats and cheeses, white flour crackers and sugary treats. Lunchables get two-thirds of their calories from fat and sugar. And they provide lopsided nutrition since they contain no fruits or vegetables.
'They insidiously promote obesity by making kids think that lunch normally comes in a cellophane-wrapped box,' Susan says. 'Parents are promoting their children's obesity by buying these items. They're expensive, too. Pack a sandwich and save dollars and health.'
5. Sugary Cereal
Not all cereals are created equally. And while your kids might beg for the latest cookie or marshmallow chocolate surprise cereals, it is a safe bet they are about as healthy as a dessert. Keywords to look out for are puffed, dyed and sweetened.
Most kids' cereals are so highly processed they no longer look like the grains they were originally made from. A healthy alternative is oatmeal. Although, if you are buying pre-packaged oatmeal make sure to check the label and see how much sugar it contains, you might be surprised.
'A little sugar isn't a problem but when the first ingredient on the box is sugar, then watch out,' she said. 'There is no fruit in Froot Loops. But the unsweetened original Cheerios or Rice Krispies are fine, and you can sweeten them naturally with blueberries and strawberries.'
6. Processed Meats.
What falls under the category of processed meats? Hot dogs, sausage, jerky, bacon, certain lunch meats and meats used in canned soup products. Almost all processed meats have sodium nitrite added as a preservative.
A recent study conducted at the University of Hawaii found that sodium nitrite can act as 'a precursor to highly carcinogenic nitrosamines -- potent cancer-causing chem! icals th a t accelerate the formation and growth of cancer cells throughout the body.' So eliminate these meats from your diet before they eliminate you!
7. Canned soup.
Sometimes regarded as a healthy food, soups can be very deceiving. You must stay on your guard because many canned soups have high levels of trans fats, sodium and artificial preservatives such as MSG. Just one serving (which is roughly one cup) can have almost 1,000 milligrams of salt. Also, steer clear of soups that are cream-based, they can be high in calories and fat.
Susan says it is important to 'read labels from back to front. Ignore the health claims, and instead focus on the ingredients and serving size. Watch out for hydrogenated fat (trans fat) and sodium. If you're buying bread to go with you soup, the first ingredient should be whole grain -- either whole wheat, rye or other grain. If it just says 'wheat bread,' that doesn't mean whole wheat.'
We all want our family to be healthy and happy, so steer clear of these foods. Think it's difficult to maintain a healthy lifestyle? Think again!
1.Doughnuts
It's hard to resist the smell of a Krispy Kreme doughnut, which is why I never step foot in the store. Doughnuts are fried chock-full of sugar and white flour and loads of trans fat.
According to the Krispy Kreme website, an average 3.5 ounce sugar doughnut weighs in with about 400 calories and contains few other nutrients besides fat. These sugary treats may satisfy your craving but it won't satisfy your hunger as most of the calories come from fat.
'Eating a lot of refined sugar contributes to blood sugar 'swings' or extreme fluctuations,' eDiets Chief Nutritionist Susan Burke said.
2. Cheeseburger with fries
The age-old classic may be delicious but think twice before sinking your teeth into that Big Mac. The saturated fat found in cheese burgers has been linked to heart attacks, strokes and some types of cancer..
'In fact, fast-food portions are gargantuan, almost double the calories per meal compared to 20 years ago,' Susan says. 'Twenty years ago the average fast-food cheeseburger had about 300 calories. Today's BK Whopper with cheese has 720. To burn the excess 420 calories, you'd have to run for 40 minutes. For example, in 1985 a medium French fry had 240 calories, 2.4 ounces. Today's 'medium' is 6.9 ounces and 610 calories.
'This fast-food meal of cheeseburger and fries has way too many calories and fat grams, not to mention grams of saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol and sodium.'
Let's break down this meal. First, take the white-flour bun (refined carbohydrates) , then add some processed cheese (saturated fat and trans fat, plus lots of additives and preservatives) and then top off with fried red meat (cholesterol and saturated fats). And let's not forget about the condiments such as the always fattening mayonnaise.
Not sounding so appetizing anymore, huh? Oh, and let's not forget about the infamous side dish. You cheeseburger will most likely come with a side of French fries, which is sadly the most popular vegetable dish in the U.S. Don't kid yourself, French fries are not vegetables, they are extremely high in fat and contain a tiny amount of nutrients.
3. Fried Chicken and Chicken Nuggets
With the recent class-action lawsuit between The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and KFC, the health risks posed by fried foods are becoming more public. The CSPI is suing the food chain for their use of cooking oil containing unhealthy trans fats. The lawsuit seeks to order KFC to use other types of cooking oils and to inform customers how much trans fats KFC's food contains.
Foods cooked in highly heated oils (most notably partially hydrogenated oil) have been known to cause cancer, weight gain and other serious health risks if ingested regularly. A 10-piece chicken McNugget from McDonald's has 420 calories, 24 grams of fat and 1120 milligrams of sodium. One Extra Crispy Chicken Breast from KFC has around 420 calories and eight grams of saturated fat. So unless you want to super size yourself, it's best to make a clean break with fried foods.
4. Oscar Mayer's Lunchables
Sure they are convenient and easy, but boy are they unhealthy! These kid-marketed lunches are loaded with saturated fat and sodium. They usually contain highly processed meats and cheeses, white flour crackers and sugary treats. Lunchables get two-thirds of their calories from fat and sugar. And they provide lopsided nutrition since they contain no fruits or vegetables.
'They insidiously promote obesity by making kids think that lunch normally comes in a cellophane-wrapped box,' Susan says. 'Parents are promoting their children's obesity by buying these items. They're expensive, too. Pack a sandwich and save dollars and health.'
5. Sugary Cereal
Not all cereals are created equally. And while your kids might beg for the latest cookie or marshmallow chocolate surprise cereals, it is a safe bet they are about as healthy as a dessert. Keywords to look out for are puffed, dyed and sweetened.
Most kids' cereals are so highly processed they no longer look like the grains they were originally made from. A healthy alternative is oatmeal. Although, if you are buying pre-packaged oatmeal make sure to check the label and see how much sugar it contains, you might be surprised.
'A little sugar isn't a problem but when the first ingredient on the box is sugar, then watch out,' she said. 'There is no fruit in Froot Loops. But the unsweetened original Cheerios or Rice Krispies are fine, and you can sweeten them naturally with blueberries and strawberries.'
6. Processed Meats.
What falls under the category of processed meats? Hot dogs, sausage, jerky, bacon, certain lunch meats and meats used in canned soup products. Almost all processed meats have sodium nitrite added as a preservative.
A recent study conducted at the University of Hawaii found that sodium nitrite can act as 'a precursor to highly carcinogenic nitrosamines -- potent cancer-causing chem! icals th a t accelerate the formation and growth of cancer cells throughout the body.' So eliminate these meats from your diet before they eliminate you!
7. Canned soup.
Sometimes regarded as a healthy food, soups can be very deceiving. You must stay on your guard because many canned soups have high levels of trans fats, sodium and artificial preservatives such as MSG. Just one serving (which is roughly one cup) can have almost 1,000 milligrams of salt. Also, steer clear of soups that are cream-based, they can be high in calories and fat.
Susan says it is important to 'read labels from back to front. Ignore the health claims, and instead focus on the ingredients and serving size. Watch out for hydrogenated fat (trans fat) and sodium. If you're buying bread to go with you soup, the first ingredient should be whole grain -- either whole wheat, rye or other grain. If it just says 'wheat bread,' that doesn't mean whole wheat.'
We all want our family to be healthy and happy, so steer clear of these foods. Think it's difficult to maintain a healthy lifestyle? Think again!
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