After attending a neighborhood harvest festival this past weekend, we’re more inspired than ever to “eat real,” the message of Food Day today. The nationwide grassroots event, sponsored by the nonprofit watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and slated to occur annually every Oct. 24, is to bring awareness to the fight for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way.
Of all the events and fundraisers held every October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we look forward most to Les Girls cabaret, where Hollywood stars put on a saucy musical show to raise money and awareness for the National Breast Cancer Coalition. The 11th annual revue on Oct. 17 raked in $450,000 from ticket sales, pledges and silent auction bids, bringing the NBCC that much closer to its goal of ending breast cancer by 2020.
Although we may not realize it, the portrayal of women in the media has had a devastating impact on American women, our self-image and society at large. That’s the message of the documentary Miss Representation, which premieres on OWN tonight at 9 pm ET/PT.
Seven years ago, we were at a tire shop waiting for a flat to be changed when we inexplicably broke out into a sweat, felt our extremities go numb, struggled to breathe and felt like our brain was somehow trying to leave our body. It was like simultaneously dying and losing one’s mind. That turned out to be a panic attack, the first of many in our two-year battle with recurring episodes. So we were personally interested in reading Learning to Breathe: My Yearlong Quest to Bring Calm to My Life (Free Press, 2011), about New York Times best-selling author Priscilla Warner’s journey to overcome her 40-year struggle with panic disorder and achieve the inner peace common to Tibetan monks.
Sin By Silence, a powerful film about women who are incarcerated — some with life sentences — for killing their abusive partners debuts tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Investigation Discovery. The documentary’s title comes from an observation by Abraham Lincoln, “to sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of men,” which we think is particularly appropriate, since October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
We remember kicking off our Sunday shoes and cutting loose to Footloose when it came out in 1984, the same year cover girl Andie MacDowell made her debut in the Tarzan movie Greystoke. Twenty-seven years later, the 53-year-old South Carolina native finds herself in the Footloose remake, playing Vi Moore, the wife of a preacher (Dennis Quaid) and mother of rebellious Ariel (Julianne Hough) in the familiar tale about a small rural town that bans dancing.
We’ve all heard about mindless eating, the distracted munching in front of the TV or while multitasking that leads to weight gain. So it makes sense that its opposite — mindful eating — has been shown to reduce binging and improve eating habits in numerous studies.
We love to unwind with some soothing music after a long day, and numerous medical studies show that a musical interlude can induce the relaxation response, the body’s counter-command to the stress response. Other research demonstrates music can temporarily relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety, and even suppress pain. But we had the chance to literally feel the power of music when we checked out the TAIZ Sensorium treatment recently at Miraval Resort & Spa in Tucson, AZ.
It’s probably safe to say that we were the only person at the Los Angeles premiere of the documentary Got the Facts on Milk? who’d had a cheeseburger for lunch that day. This was a crowd that cheered every time the word “vegan” was uttered, and broke into applause when filmmaker Shira Lane said during a Q&A that her cereal mixer of choice was homemade cashew milk.
We recently had the opportunity to hear the inspirational Nancy Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, speak at the American Dietetic Association’s Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo in San Diego. “I know the month of October comes and a lot of you think, ‘Oh, a lot of pink,’” Brinker said, drawing laughs from the mostly female audience. But as long as 456,000 women die from breast cancer every year, “There will be more pink,” she promised. Enter Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which means October is the best month of the year for win-win shopping, in our opinion.
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