Four foods that help with focus and one that definitely does not

Just in time for back-to-school jitters, HealthCastle.com posted a handy list of foods that have attention-boosting properties. Their list includes the following:

• Fish
• Sunflower Seeds
• Eggs
• Quinoa

Those four foods are great suggestions. Here's one that's not. Diet Blog brings to light the story of a man at the State Fair of Texas who created deep-fried butter.

How well do you know food calories?

I'll be honest. I thought I knew food calories pretty well.

I was wrong.

Men's Health is offering a fun quiz for people to test their calorie judging abilities based on viewing images of different quantities of the same food and trying to decide which one equals 100 calories. For example, one question (that I totally whiffed on) was the calorie count of 18 pretzels versus 25 pretzels. The right answer: 18.

Judging calorie count is harder than it looks. I think if there is anything to take from the Men's Health quiz it is to not rely on a discerning eye if you're in the business of counting calories. It's simply too hard to judge the size of one serving compared to another.

At least for me it is.

Read more:
What does 100 calories look like? | Men's Health

Protect your neck (and the rest of your skin) with summer sun tips

Men's Health has some handy tips on beating the sun this summer ... before the sun beats you.

With the calendar turning to June, summer activities are going to hit it big, if they haven't already. Fun in the sun, though, means exposure to UV rays, and exposure to UV rays can lead to skin cancer. More than 7500 Americans die from skin cancer every year (nearly two-thirds of whom are men), so heeding the Men's Health advice may be the best thing you do during these summer months.

Here are a couple of highlights:

Unless you always slather on enough (sunscreen) — 1 ounce, or about a shot glass full — don't go any lower than SPF 45. And check the expiration date; over time, the chemicals can degrade and lose their effectiveness.

Apparently, we aren't putting nearly enough sunscreen on. The one-ounce rule is so haphazardly followed that some researchers recommend dividing a sunscreen's SPF by three in order to get the actual SPF. In that sense, SPF 45 lotion turns into SPF 15.

Make the math irrelevant and bulk up your SPF buying.

Try green tea. "Our research suggests that drinking green tea can bring a 70 to 80 percent reduction in the risk of basal-cell carcinoma and squamous-cell carcinoma," says Hasan Mukhtar, Ph.D., Helfaer professor of cancer research in the department of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin.

Green tea's skin protection benefits come courtesy of antioxidants, nature's ultimate quick-fix nutrient. Antioxidants often battle cancer cells, and the antioxidants found in green tea specifically target those of skin cancer. Two glasses of green tea a day should do the trick.

Read more:
Save your skin | Men's Health

Cereal: the breakfast of champions ... and workout warriors?

The hottest new sports drink trend isn't a sports drink at all.

According to a new sports nutrition study, good old-fashioned cereal has the same effect on muscle recovery as sports drinks. Whoever knew the Gatorade killer would be Lucky Charms?

In the study, cyclists and triathletes were asked to consume either a bowl of cereal and milk or a sports drink after exercising for two hours. A bowl of cereal—which contains carbohydrates, protein, and fat—showed the same results as a sports drink for nearly all of the measures of glycogen and protein synthesis in their muscles.

The protein is the kicker. A lot of commercially-available sports drinks don't contain protein or don't contain it in the same quantities as some cereals. Throw in the fact that cereal is a cheaper alternative, and cereal presents an awfully intriguing case for that post-workout recovery.

Read more:
Part of a complete workout | Men's Health Today

Can book learnin' save you from hospital goin'?

One of the biggest difference makers in the eternal struggle for good health is education, according to a story posted on WebMD.com. Sorry, Flinstone vitamins. Better luck next time.

WebMD used information from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America (RWJFCBHA for short), which based its study on polling done on over 174,000 Americans who rated their health on a scale of poor to excellent. When compared to census data on education, the healthier proved to be the smarter.

The more education people had, the more likely they were to report better health, regardless of race or ethnicity.

That difference didn't just show up when the commission compared people with the fewest and most years of schooling. Even a few years of education made a difference.

For instance, high school graduates were nearly twice as likely as college graduates to report being in less than very good health.

What does this mean for regular people? Well, hopefully it doesn't warrant a return trip to university. Interesting conclusions can be drawn from the study with the direct correlation between education and health being one of them. But as far as heading back to school in the hopes that we'll get over our cold, there's no need to extrapolate to quite that extreme.

A healthier outlook through extended education can be achieved simply through a better awareness of your own nutrition and wellness. It doesn't take a pH d to know that sugary foods are bad for you. But it does take some knowledge about eating right and taking care of your body in order to keep yourself healthy.

Read more:
More education, better health | WebMD.com