BANANA CRAZE IN JAPAN

The Philippines should move faster and purposely to fill the shortage of bananas in the shelves of Japan, where the "Banana Morning Diet" has a big craze.
Due to the growing popularity of the Banana Morning Diet, Rep. Emmylou Talinio-Mendoza said that over the last six months, bananas have been flying off supermarket racks in Japan faster show they would be replenished.
Created by a pharmacist in Osaka, the Banana Morning Diet has become Fashionable in Japan on account of strong endorsement by celebrities there who have testimony about their sudden loss of weight.
The regimen starts with a banana with a glass of room temperature water for breakfast and anything for lunch and dinner. Desserts are not allowed after meals. A mid afternoon snack is fine. One must have a dinner at 8 p.m. and go to bed before midnight.
A market of approximately128 million people, Japan is the buyer of more than half of the annual Philippine banana exports. Japan imported 970,000 metric tons (MT) of bananas in 2007, mostly from the Philippines and partly from Taiwan.
Cotabato is one of the Philippine province that producing banana and other tropical Fruits . Cotabato has a large plantation run by tropical growers, including Standard Philippine Fruit Corp., a subsidiary of Dole Philippines Inc.
After Ecuador, Philippines is the world's biggest banana exporter, with a global market share of 16%. Last year the country shipped out around 1.905 million metric tons of $440 million worth of banana, or P18.1 billion based on $1:41.14 exchange rate at the end of 2007.
The Philippines' 2007 export banana volume was only 40 percent of the 4.65 million metric ton shipped out by Ecuador of the same year. Ecuador was 34 percent of the global banana export market in 2007.
Besides Ecuador, the Philippines' other rivals in banana export markets are India, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Costa Rica and Mexico.

Truth About Diet Soda

We talk a lot about ''watching what we eat,'' but if you never gave a thought to what you ate and instead watched only what you drank, you could probably cut 450 calories a day out of your life. (Yes, nearly a pound of fat loss a week!) That's what a study from the University of North Carolina found. Americans today drink about 192 gallons of liquid a year—or about 2 liters a day. To put it into perspective, this is nearly twice as many calories as we did 30 years ago.
When confronted with the growing tide of calories from sweetened beverages, the first response is, “Why not just drink diet soda?” Well, for a few reasons:
Just because diet soda is low in calories doesn't mean it can't lead to weight gain.
It may have only 5 or fewer calories per serving, but emerging research suggests that consuming sugary-tasting beverages--even if they're artificially sweetened--may lead to a high preference for sweetness overall. That means sweeter (and more caloric) cereal, bread, dessert--everything.
Guzzling these drinks all day long forces out the healthy beverages you need. 
Diet soda is 100 percent nutrition-free, and again, it's just as important to actively drink the good stuff as it is to avoid that bad stuff. So one diet soda a day is fine, but if you're downing five or six cans, that means you're limiting your intake of healthful beverages, particularly water and tea.

There remain some concerns over aspartame, the low-calorie chemical used to give diet sodas their flavor.
Aspartame is 180 times sweeter than sugar, and some animal research has linked consumption of high amounts of the sweetener to brain tumors and lymphoma in rodents. The FDA maintains that the sweetener is safe, but reported side effects include dizziness, headaches, diarrhea, memory loss, and mood changes. Bottom line: Diet soda does you no good, and it might just be doing you wrong.

The best way to hydrate is by drinking low-calorie, high-nutrient fluids—and avoiding belt-busting beverages.

Now that you have a hold on your liquid assets, upgrade the rest of your grocery list by avoiding the 13 Worst "Healthy" Foods in the Supermarket. With so many items to choose from, it's easier to fall victim to packaged food lies than you think.
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