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Monday, October 27, 2014
Get your fruit fix

Get your fruit fix


If the produce at the supermarket looks like it’s seen better days this time of the year, hit the other aisles. The Journal of the Science of Food Agriculture found that canned and fresh peaches had similar levels of antioxidants; folate; vitamins A, C, and E; and other nutrients.

Dried
Often higher in fiber than fresh varieties, dried fruit is ideal for snacking and a great source of instant energy. But it’s also higher in sugar and easy to overeat, so make sure to practice portion control.

Squeeze pouches
Fruit purees make it simple to get your recommended daily allowances on the go. Look for 100 percent-fruit varieties without high-fructose corn syrup or preservatives.

Leathers
These chewy strips of dried, pureed fruit may have added sugar, but as long as it isn’t the first ingredient, they’re a healthy alternative to candy.

Frozen

They are often flash-frozen in the field, which locks in nutrients, and are sometimes even healthier than fresh produce that’s been tucked across the country. Add them to smoothies or muffins. 
at 10:01 PM 0 comments
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5 reasons to start a company in the Philippines

5 reasons to start a company in the Philippines


The Southeast Asia is a key player when it comes to startups. It’s a market of 600 million people, a third of which in one country alone, with 17000 islands. But the Philippines is a stand out.

It’s a fast-growing middle-class region, with 24% of the Philippine population in this category as of 2013. Dubbed as the social media and selfie capital of the world by Times, Philippines has the fastest smartphone penetration.

You’re not alone to find it difficult to position this land on a map, as it is still quite unexplored by many. The opportunity to launch a business in the country is huge. Here are 5 good reasons to start up a business in the country:

It’s more fun in the Philippines!

This official campaign of the tourism board of the Philippines says quite a lot. The entrepreneurial spirit of Asians is truly infectious.

The Philippines is an amazing melting-pot of an Asian-Pacific set of islands, which has been conquered by the Spanish, freed from the Japanese later on by the Americans, and with a huge diaspora across the world.

The result is a very social and friendly culture, where karaoke, laughter and time for friends are omnipresent. As innovation often comes from diversity, you could not dream of a country with more different faces and cultures and acquiescence to new changes.

Growth is firm in the Philippines!

With the second best performing economy of Asia behind China, the Philippines is doing well. Their GDP recorded 6.5% growth in the fourth quarter of 2013, compared to 7.7% for China (IBT)

The exports of the country are also amazing, with the top chunk held by Electronic products, far beyond the bananas people think too often of.

The stock market also increased its main index by 61% over the last two years.

It’s archeologically empire-building in the Philippines!

If the history of the Silicon Valley or Israel is better known than the one of the Philippines, you can still find a lot of examples testifying their entrepreneurial spirit:

The country opened its Asia’s first University back in 1611. The University of Santo Tomas was set up by the Catholic, and it is still boasting some 42000 students as of 2013.

It carved the first rice terraces some 2000 years ago with an advanced irrigation system to drive water from the rainforests.

It resisted the Spanish invasion, with Lapu-Lapu, the omni-present soldier statue you can see in Cebu Island, being then recognized as “the first Filipino”, back in the 16th century.

It survived wars and typhoons, and has rebuilt the country after each catastrophe.

It is preparing a Startup Bill which many compares to a move as bold as the one made by Chile a few years ago (with Startup Chile being now a world famous program for foreign entrepreneurs).

It’s innovative in the Philippines!

The local startup scene in the Philippines is recognized to be leading innovation in two important fields:

Bitcoin and crypto-currencies, as the regulations are light when it comes to these new virtual currencies, and as their huge diaspora need a better way to send money back home. A few American startup-ers came intently to know how the Philippines bitcoin community was faring.

Social enterprise, as 62% of the population lives with less than three dollar per day. This population, called “the bottom of the pyramid”, is often referred to as a market as people there still have ways to consume goods and services. A social enterprise such as Rags to Riches in Manila, offers an e-commerce platform for craft made by remote populations.

These two fields are key innovation drivers where the Philippines can lead the way.

The startup network is vigorous in the Philippines!

The Philippines has its own main tech event and international hackathons and competition such as Seedstars World or AngelHack, training and mentoring centers. The Digital ICT Congress in Pangasinan is now on its 4th year tapping huge universities and institution in the entire province.

It’s definitely vivifying to visit the tech scenes of the Philippines, both in Cebu, and Pangasinan, an island better known for its nature spots.

With a unique positioning between Asia, the Pacific, and the United States, this is a big 100 million people country not to forget about. (Louie dela Vega/FOCUS)
at 9:55 PM 0 comments
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Monitoring your child thru smart parental control apps

Monitoring your child thru smart parental control apps

Being a parent is a tough job and assuring a better future for their children is a priority. But in today’s world where everything is accessible thru the use of modern technology, parenting becomes tougher given that the Internet can now be easily accessed on smartphones and tablets; the possibility of reaching offensive contents heightens. Gone are the days when the only medium to explore the web is thru desktops and laptops where parents can easily monitor their kid’s activities.

In addition, smartphones which are now the most popular gadget in town, also, have applications in them that may influence your kids. Addicting games, sexually explicit apps, and unmonitored use of social media are some of the many frightening possibilities on using smartphones

But parents shouldn’t worry anymore as technology, which created these devices, also has a solution to this problem. Listed are the apps and gadgets that parents must use to monitor their kid’s activities on the Internet and their smartphone devices and even offline activities by using GPS trackers that trace your kid’s location.



Phone control. This app allows you to monitor every activity of your child’s phone. It will forward outgoing and incoming SMS messages, photo taken, contacts, phone calls and location of the device. And you can do this without even noticing by your child because it doesn’t have an icon seen on the phone.

Norton online family. Allows you to monitor which sites your child has visited and automatically sends you an email when your child attempts to visit blocked sites. Also, it shows the apps downloaded on the phone and choose which apps they can use. Hone habits.

The app also has a 90-day history of your child’s phone activity allowing you to double-check your child’s

Kids place. If you want to select what app your children can exactly use, this app is the best for you. Kids Place lets you customized the home screen feature of their phone that will feature child-friendly apps like puzzles and quizzes. This app also has a healthy feature because of its capability to disable the wireless networks that will avoid your child in radiation exposure.

Canary. This is for parents who want to track their child’s phone activity while driving. Canary alerts parents with the details on calls, messages driving speeds and locations. It also sets a maximum driving speed and creates a perimeter map and alerts you when your child exceeded on the maximum speed or your child is outside the perimeter during curfew hours.

Canary is a Free app that can be downloaded on Appstore and Google Play; $14.99 for a lifetime subscription.


Footprints. By using this app, parents can monitor their child’s whereabouts in real time, anytime. Using GPS, this app helps parents to automatically locate their child’s location. If they’re travelling, you can confirm if they already arrived at a specific location.

This app will surely help parents to monitor their kids while using their gadgets and internet, also, their activities thru this GPS tracking apps. Source: www.mashable.com, www.androidpit.com, www.footprints.net , www.thecanaryproject.com. (Reginald Agsalon)/Focus)
at 9:46 PM 1 comments
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Romana’s sweet and nutty pleasure

Romana’s sweet and nutty pleasure

It seems, I am comfortably aware; a perfect metaphor for much of Mangaldan’s food diversity. From meaty gracious to going nuts.

One of the things I’m always looking at as I travel is the stories that are yet to unfold.  And if there’s a regular feature, a common thread wherever you go, it’s that the best chronicles come from the most challenging backgrounds. And it is without doubt that the greatest, most beloved, and iconic dishes in the pantheon of gastronomy originated with the hard-pressed, hardworking people—all of them began with the urgent need to make something good and reasonably sustaining out of very little.


Romana De Vera is an example. She is the woman behind the peanut brittle enterprise, and from whose the brand name is used. In 1958, she made peanut brittle just for the family and friends but started cooking for a townful of hungry mouths when demands were realized.
Filipinos like peanut brittle (sugar-coated legumes) that are hard to bite and addicting to eat—my own childhood version of chocolate. Romana looks deceptively simple; thick, rough chunks of brittle with large, whole peanuts that shatter easily, and tastes awesome—it is buttery and caramelly at the same time, and the peanuts definitely add that extra layer of greatness to the package.

Serving consumers for the past 5 decades, Romana still maintains the same homemade quality it was known for. The only choicest ingredients and meticulous procedures are used and observed.

“The procedure in making the peanut brittle from when I started this business until this day up is still the same; only the formula is developed,” Romana said. Nothing less from the pioneer in Philippine peanut brittle confectionery!

From peanut brittle, they’ve also branched out to manufacture other Filipino treats which now include peanut adobo, greaseless peanuts, homemade peanut butter, Spanish chocolate, ube halaya, etc.

So when you finally succumb to its temptation, and it’s unlikely about minutes later that you realized you’ve already eaten half the container, do not worry. Because the guilt you feel doesn’t take the edge off your enjoyment; it is just that good.

at 9:37 PM 0 comments
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Eating disorder impelled by media influence

Eating disorder impelled by media influence


Eating disorder can become anyone’s adversary. A well-coped and rational man is unguaranteed safe from meeting, and eventually, having the condition. It is a hinged belief of the physical, mental, and emotional credence on mere dieting, where in fact; it hasn’t been so, cleverly.

We are being battered daily with facts about everything from everywhere with the outburst of information technology. We are being attacked with new information at every turn with this entire media. We are told what is new, what is popular, what is good, and what is bad. And whether we acknowledge it or not, it influences our choices.

This health indisposition is deemed to be a serious behavior problem, as it is generated solely on their urge to losing weight: media influence.

Though culture, as one of the etiological factors leading to its development is part of the craze, it is seen less controlling than that of the media, which most, on the subject agrees that both are directly connected. The media and body image have long been dependent upon each other to set styles and trends.  For years, society has let the media set the standards of how men and, particularly women, are supposed to look in order to be attractive, and all-well effective. Unfortunately, many of these standards are unlikely for a normal person to achieve. In the depths of despair, as they say.

When actors and models, or any individual aboard in a profession that relies largely on appearance are depicted as idyllic, (because they are thin), eating disorder and media are once again solidly linked.  Typical women feel pressured to do whatever they feel is necessary to emulate and live up to these criteria.  They won’t see themselves desirable unless they are wearing a size smaller than their original number.

There may be an index of pressure to look a certain way, and that we can’t reproach these individuals for succumbing because we’re all, anyway, guilty of feeling vulnerable, but the fact that health is taken at risk; that is alarming. We should always be reminded that this is not strictly vanity issues, and encouraging the act is exclusively misconduct.

One of the many ways that the media and body image promote eating disorders is through the constant display of women wearing next to nothing or tight fitting clothing; or men fancying the 6-packed abs.  Aside from these outlandish spectacles are comments spawned regarding the advertisements.  It is such as these that give people the impression that unless they are 5’8’’ in height and 100 pounds in weight, they are perceived fat and ugly.

Eating disorders and the media have come under fire on more than one occasion in the past years.  Even singers, who felt they had put on a pound or two, started using a slenderizing filming technique to shoot their music videos.  The finished product came out looking unnatural, although the singers were certainly slender enough. This comes to show that when you interview a number of women, you would be hard-pressed to find one who is happy with their body because of the standards the media sets. In this respect, media may contribute to low self-esteem by promoting thinness as the way to gaining love, acceptance and respect.

The relation between media exposure and eating disorders is very constricted. Media continues to model unhealthy eating attitudes and behaviors. One of the ways we can protect our self-esteem and body image from the media’s often narrow definition of beauty and acceptability is to become a critical viewer of the media messages we are bombarded with each day. If we assent to the media messages about attractiveness and body shape and size, then it will have an effect on the way we think about our bodies and ourselves. We should be prompted that dieting doesn’t make us a happier person, and overall successful.

The underlying, and funny question though is “What would happen if all of a sudden, “thin” wasn’t “in”, would people then pig out to gain weight?” (Louie dela Vega/Photo courtesy by: www.huffingtonpost.com)
at 8:47 PM 0 comments
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Dragon fruit farm in the foot of Mount Balungao

Dragon fruit farm in the foot of Mount Balungao


 Known as the goat capital of Pangasinan province, and recently crowned for having the longest zipline in Southeast Asia, Balungao’s tourism industry continues to blossom.

And to further raise the Municipality's treasure, the 2.5-hectare dragon fruit farm in Mt. Balungao is seen to attract visitors.

Dragon fruit or Pitaya prefers free draining soil with sandy to clay loam types or sandy soils like the land that can be found in Balungao. 

Dragon fruit farming is widely popular in Central and South America. But thru research, it has reached different countries in Asia including the Philippines.

The Mt. Balungao Dragon Fruit farm is located in Napudot Road. The farm was developed in 2010 but the hefty harvest started just 2 years ago. According to Johnny Espe, owner of the farm, an expansion is planned due to the higher demand.

Espe is a nurse in profession but when he learned about the different benefits of dragon fruit, he started growing a few in their ancestral land in Balungao. Her sister who's in California has helped him research on ways how to grow dragon fruit. And now, the whole family helps in the business.

"From June to November po ang fruiting season. Hindi mahirap itanim basta't gamay mo siya. Kapag mainit ang klima, mas maganda ang tubo. Kaya swak na itanim dito sa Pilipinas kasi tropical country tayo", he explains.

The potential of dragon fruit is very much brighter because it commands a very high price in the local market. It costs around P120 - 150 per kilo. Espe said three-year old dragon fruit can produce 5 - 6 tons per hectare amounting to P720,000 in the local market alone. It is no wonder that dragon fruit is now dubbed as the new money crop–truly, a high revenue earner.

 "Marami kaming mga standing orders sa Manila. May mga kumukuha dito para ibenta sa market. Sa ngayon, P120 ang bentahan namin at nagbibigay kami ng discount kapag bulk order ang kukunin", says Espe.

The Espe family plants different varieties of dragon fruit including red, white, and yellow variety. The red varieties are used to combat anemia. While the yellow is sweeter in taste and contains the heart tonic called ‘captine’.

The Mt. Balungao DF Farm is open for public where sightseers are free to pick their own fruits, and then pay afterwards.

"Enjoy ‘yung farm tour pati ‘yung fruit picking. Feeling ko, sa amin ‘yung farm. Pati mga bata, nag-enjoy. Syempre, aside dun sa experience, ‘yung benefit na makukuha mo sa dragon fruit, maganda kaya kumakain kami nito", says Nathaniel Gancenia when he visited the farm.

The deep pink almost bright red scaly skin of the dragon fruit may be weird for some and looks like just a cactus, but the benefits are numerous. Some say that dragon fruits are called "priceless treasure". It can be taken as fruit, flower, vegetable, health product or medicine.

Named the cleansing fruit for the whole body system, the dragon fruit is rich in vitamins and minerals and the fruit, including its flowers and peelings, are edible as well. It is also effective for weight loss, and it helps reduce risks of cancer. (Jing Vallejos/Focus)
at 8:39 PM 0 comments
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