Area Presentations…

Keeping your wits: how to avoid dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, Wednesday November 15, 3:00 p.m. Encinitas Library.

Bone: not so boring, Friday November 17, 10:00 a.m. at Escondido Senior Center. Register at OASIS Adult Learning Center (www.oasisnet.org)

In the news

            Have you had your flu shot yet? If you think that you might get the flu anyway you may be right! The vaccine is rarely 100 percent effective but that’s not the point. What we do know is that persons who receive the influenza vaccine, especially seniors, are much less likely to be hospitalized with a complication.

Most people who die during an influenza epidemic don’t succumb to the virus but to secondary infection, such as that caused by Staphylococcus bacteria, many strains of which are now resistant to several antibiotics. And the last place you want to be is in the hospital where antibiotic-resistant bacteria are most likely to occur.

And you can’t get the flu from the vaccine! It’s made from a killed virus. But you might get the flu in the couple of weeks that it takes for the vaccine to protect you. So don’t wait!

Lifestyle

Dieting Guidelines

You’ve probably heard that by using a smaller dinner plate it will appear that there is more food there and you will eat less. The reverse is also true. If a plate is bigger and you fill it yourself you’ll put more on it – and you’ll probably clean your plate!

Some ingenious researchers with a sense of humor went a little further. They offered Philadelphia moviegoers fresh popcorn in either a medium-sized bowl or a large one. (There is no such thing as a “small” popcorn bowl in a movie theater.) The large-bowl folks ate 45.3 percent more popcorn than those who had a medium-sized bowl. But the sadistic researchers went a step further. They did the same thing with stale popcorn – and the people with large bowls ate 33.6 percent more than the medium-bowl subjects.

Even persons who should know better can fall into the trap. When a group of 85 nutrition experts were invited to an ice cream social, they were given either a small bowl or a small scoop or a large bowl or a large scoop, and were told to serve themselves. If they had a large bowl they took (and ate) 31 percent more ice cream. Those who used a large scoop gave themselves 14.5 percent more, whether they had a small or large bowl.

Take a look at your mealtime habits and ask yourself if you can make a few changes to take advantage of this nutritional illusion!