Healthier Holiday Cookie Recipes

By Jeannette Moninger

WebMD Feature

Holiday cookies come around only once a year. They're nearly impossible to resist. But you could be nibbling your way to something worse than coal in your stocking.

When faced with a tray full of temptation, reach for cookies with oats, nuts, or fruit. "You'll at least get some fiber," says registered dietitian nutritionist Libby Mills, spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Avoid anything smeared with frosting or coated with sugary sprinkles.

At home, don't be afraid to tinker with a beloved family recipe. "Your ancestors didn't know a lot about the dangers of trans fats or the need for fiber," she says. Give your loved ones the gift of a new and improved family recipe.

When done right, you can enjoy these delicious holiday treats and stay off the naughty list.

An easy place to start is the granulated sugar. You can use 1/4 cup less in many drop cookies, such as these cinnamon-sugar cookies, and they'll still taste as sweet. Often, you could cut up to a third of the sugar and not notice a difference. Or add dried fruit to make up for the sugar you're leaving out.

If you want to bake with a sugar substitute product, stick to recipes from the manufacturer. Used in your recipes, these products could throw off the flavor, texture, and appearance of your cookie. "Some artificial sweeteners become bitter when exposed to heat," Mills says. Aspartame won't do well in the oven, but saccharin and sucralose should taste OK.

Baking tip: Because sugar helps dough spread while baking, using less sugar can lead to puffier, rounder cookies. If you want cookies that look more like you're used to, Mills suggests coating the palm of your hand with nonstick cooking spray and flattening out the dough balls before putting them in the oven.

Butter, shortening, and some kinds of margarine have a lot of unhealthy fats. Fortunately, you can replace up to half of a recipe's fat content with healthier options.

Fruit purees. Try unsweetened applesauce, pumpkin puree, or prune butter.

Vegetable purees. Cauliflower adds the lightest flavoring. Pureed fennel will add extra flavor to anise cookies.

Oils. Canola and sunflower oils raise good cholesterol, too. Canola oil also gives you healthy omega-3 fats.

The substitution is simple: 1 cup of butter = 1/2 cup of butter plus 1/2 cup of oil or pureed fruits or vegetables. For example, "In this chocolate chip cookie recipe, 3 tablespoons of butter could be replaced with an equal amount of canola oil," Mills says.

However, "Lower-fat cookies will have a denser texture," she says. "They won't be as crisp."

If you use margarine, avoid the hard sticks. Choose soft margarine in a tub with no trans fat and less than 2 grams of saturated fat per serving.

Baking tip: Reduced-fat substitutions will make cookies lose moisture during baking. Lower the oven temperature by 25 degrees, and shorten the baking time. Keep an eye on the first batch to get the timing right.

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The Emotional Effects of OAB

Overactive bladder is a physical issue, but it has an impact on the rest of your life as well. Few people want to sit around and chat about their need to rush to the bathroom, though.

"A woman who's growing older sees men on television talking about erectile dysfunction, but not women sharing their stories about continence," says Linda Brubaker, MD. She's the director of female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery at Loyola University Health System.Do Diaphragms Cause Urinary Tract Infections?

In every issue of WebMD the Magazine, we ask experts to answer readers' questions about a wide range of topics, including some of the most common beliefs about medicine. In our September 2011 issue, we asked Jane Miller, MD, an associate professor of urology at Washington University's School of Medicine, about the link between diaphragms and painful bladder infections. Q: My friend says I'm getting urinary tract infections because I use a diaphragm. Is she right? A: It's TRUE. Diaphragm...

Read the Do Diaphragms Cause Urinary Tract Infections? article > >

Because of the relative silence on the subject, it might seem you're alone -- but you aren't. And there is support for you.

"Especially as overactive bladder and other continence problems become more severe, they can be very distressing, embarrassing, and ultimately isolating," says Ross Rames, MD. He's an associate professor of urology at the Medical University of South Carolina.

People with OAB often don't want to be out in public because they're afraid they'll have to keep rushing to the bathroom. When you stay home, though, you miss out on things you enjoy doing, and being with friends and family. Instead of relieving your stress, you're building up more worry and frustration.

Limiting your activities can affect your physical health, too. "Women may stop going for walks because they're afraid to be that far from the bathroom," Brubaker says. "Or they may stop playing sports -- even 'grandma soccer' with the kids -- because they're afraid of leakage accidents. So their lives become more [inactive]." And that can lead to other health problems.

OAB can also make it tough to do your job. "Imagine if you're a schoolteacher and you have to stand up in front of a classroom of 4th-graders for an hour or more without a break," Rames says. What if you're an executive who has to make a long presentation, or a surgeon who can't just rush out to the bathroom in the middle of an operation? That's why it's so important to work with your doctor to control those sudden, strong urges to go.

An overactive bladder can get in the way of intimate relationships, too, says Rames. You might leak during orgasm, which can make both sex and masturbation a lot less fun. If worries about bladder problems get in the way of your sex life, don't ignore them. Talk to your partner and your doctor.

Interrupted sleep from getting up to go can leave you feeling groggy, exhausted, and overwhelmed. Over time, this lack of sleep can lead to depression. In a series of online interviews, women who made two or more nighttime bathroom trips were more likely to say they were depressed than women who said they have OAB without nocturia, or the need to urinate several times a night.

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Sugar Trumps Fat in Driving Unhealthy Eating: Study

Sugar, not fat, is the major reason why people are drawn to unhealthy treats, a new study says.

Researchers monitored the brain activity of more than 100 teens as they drank chocolate-flavored milkshakes that had the same number of calories but were either high in sugar and low in fat, or the other way around, The New York Times reported.

Both types of shakes activated pleasure centers in the brain, but those that were high in sugar did so far more effectively and triggered a food reward network involved in compulsive eating, according to the study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The findings add to a growing body of research that's improving understanding of what causes overeating.

"We do a lot of work on the prevention of obesity, and what is really clear not only from this study but from the broader literature over all is that the more sugar you eat, the more you want to consume it," study lead author Eric Stice, a senior research scientist at the Oregon Research Institute, told The Times.

"As far as the ability to engage brain reward regions and drive compulsive intake, sugar seems to be doing a much better job than fat," he said.

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Treating Sleep Apnea Might Be a Win-Win for Golfers

Lower handicap after treatment attributed to sharper focus

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- Treating their sleep apnea improved middle-aged men's golf games, according to a small new study.

"The degree of improvement was most substantial in the better golfers who have done a superior job of managing the technical and mechanical aspects of golf," said study lead author Dr. Marc Benton, medical director of SleepWell Centers of New Jersey, in Madison.

Researchers looked at 12 men with an average age of 55 who had moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea. The sleep disorder is characterized by frequent episodes of disrupted breathing during sleep.

Their golf performance was assessed before and after up to six months of a sleep apnea treatment called continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which helps keep a person's airway open by providing a steady stream of air during sleep.

The therapy led to less daytime sleepiness and improved sleep-related quality of life. The men also had a significant 11 percent drop in their average golf handicap index, a formula used to estimate a player's skill level.

Among better golfers who had a handicap of 12 or less at the start of the study, the average handicap fell by almost 32 percent after CPAP treatment, according to the study, which was published in the Dec. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

The men attributed their improved golf performance to factors such as improved concentration, endurance and decision making.

"With the cognitive enhancement afforded by successful treatment of their sleep apnea, they saw measurable improvement early and more significantly than those who were less skilled," Benton said in a journal news release.

The researchers said most avid golfers in the United States are men aged 40 to 70, which is a group with a high rate of sleep apnea.

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Typical Gum Disease Treatments Won't Help Ease Diabetes, Study Finds

Despite ties between the two illnesses, gum therapies didn't help with blood-sugar control

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- Typical, nonsurgical treatment of gum disease in people with type 2 diabetes will not improve their blood-sugar control, a new study suggests.

There's long been a connection between gum disease and wider health issues, and experts say a prior study had offered some evidence that treatment of gum disease might enhance blood-sugar control in patients with diabetes.

Nearly half of Americans over age 30 are believed to have gum disease, and people with diabetes are at greater risk for the problem, the researchers said. Well-controlled diabetes is associated with less severe gum disease and a lower risk for progression of gum disease, according to background information in the study.

But would an easing of gum disease help control patients' diabetes? To find out, the researchers, led by Steven Engebretson of New York University, tracked outcomes for more than 500 diabetes patients with gum disease who were divided into two groups.

One group's gum disease was treated using scaling, root planing and an oral rinse, followed by further gum disease treatment after three and six months. The other group received no treatment for their gum disease.

Scaling and root planing involves scraping away the tartar from above and below the gum line, and smoothing out rough spots on the tooth's root, where germs can collect, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

After six months, people in the treatment group showed improvement in their gum disease. There was no difference, however, in blood-sugar control between the two groups, according to the findings, which were published in the Dec. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

These findings do not support the use of nonsurgical gum disease treatment to improve blood-sugar control in people with diabetes, the researchers said.

Experts said the finding was in line with what is known on the subject.

"The results don't surprise me," said Dr. Gerald Bernstein, director of the Diabetes Education Program at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. "[Gum disease] requires physical intervention to remove offending plaques and microinfection that does not easily clear with brushing and rinsing."

What is really important is how inflammation linked to gum disease is related to wider cardiac inflammation, Bernstein said. That relationship might influence the rate at which artery-hardening plaques are deposited in blood vessels.

Dr. Spyros Mezitis, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said it's well known that gum disease is "associated with worsening of [blood-sugar] control in diabetics."

But the current study suggests that "[gum] treatment improves the common disease and preserves teeth but should not be used to control diabetes," he said.

"Larger studies are needed to confirm these findings," Mezitis added.

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TVA Pulls the Plug on More Coal Plants; Others Will Surely Follow

Last week, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) board of directors voted in favor of retiring 3,300 megawatts (MW) of coal power capacity. This action is good news for consumers and the environment in the region. It also continues the drumbeat of retirement announcements nationwide and provides further evidence of the eroding economic viability of the aging U.S. coal fleet. A recent UCS analysis, Ripe for Retirement, documents why many more U.S. coal generators should also be considered for closure.

TVA’s latest announcement includes eight coal generators: all five units at their Colbert plant in Tuscumbia, Alabama; two of three generators at the Paradise plant near Central City, Kentucky; and one of the two remaining operating generators at the Widows Creek facility in Stevenson, Alabama.

TVA’s Colbert coal plant in Tuscumbia, Alabama is slated for retirement. Credit: TVA.

Historically one of the largest coal-power providers in the country, TVA has now become a national leader in terms of its decisions to retire its oldest, dirtiest, and least efficient coal generators. Previously, TVA had announced that 10 generators at its Johnsonville plant (near Dupont, Tennessee) and six other generators at Widows Creek would close operations by 2017. All told, TVA has now announced the retirement of more than 5,350 MW of coal capacity—second only to American Electric Power Company.

In making the decision to retire the latest slate of coal generators, TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson said that “the plan is what’s best in terms of its positive impact on TVA’s rates, debt and the environment; and it will bring the greatest benefit to the people of the Valley.” That’s refreshing to hear, as many leaders in the electric power industry would seemingly rather spend billions of dollars in ratepayer money to keep old coal plants running than invest in cleaner, more affordable options.

There is no question that these closures will have a direct impact on jobs and the communities where they are located. That’s why it is critical for TVA to work with state and local officials to develop and carry out a plan that secures a fair and just transition. But there are a lot of positive takeaways as well.

Burning coal is no longer always the cheapest way to produce electricity. Investments in wind power, solar, and other renewables, as well as investments in energy efficiency and natural gas, are all better options.

Spending billions to upgrade old coal plants would likely have been a poor decision for TVA, as instances elsewhere have shown. For example, Brayton Point Station, the largest coal plant in New England, was announced for closure last month even after Dominion Resources, its previous owner, had spent more than $1.1 billion over several years to upgrade the facility and install new pollution controls. The plant operators decided that it couldn’t compete in the current market, with financial analysts projecting the facility would lose more than $3 million in 2014 alone.

TVA’s combined slate of coal plant retirements will avoid more than 20 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually (based on 2009 generation levels), as well as significant amounts of coal ash and harmful sulfur dioxide, smog, and mercury pollution. In addition, coal plants require a lot of water resources to operate. The TVA retirements will avoid the need for hundreds of billions of gallons of water withdrawals and billions of gallons of water consumption from the region’s lakes and rivers each year.

Like TVA, an increasing number of utilities are making decisions to shut down uneconomic coal plants. In fact, just last Friday Central Iowa Power Cooperative closed its 1960s-era Fair Station coal plant (63 MW) near Montpelier, Iowa, due to economic reasons. Nationwide, nearly 21 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired electricity generation has already retired since 2009, representing 6 percent of the U.S. coal fleet. Including TVA’s latest announcement, another 34.2 GW of coal generators are slated for retirement in the next several years (see map).

Since 2009, more than 34.2 gigawatts (GW) of coal generators have been announced for retirement. Source: SNL.

Why is coal failing? There are plenty of reasons, including an aging and inefficient coal fleet, the low cost of natural gas, the falling costs of renewable energy, slowing growth in electricity demand, rising construction costs for coal plants, and rising coal prices.

In addition to these market dynamics, state renewable energy and energy efficiency policies have bolstered the economic viability of renewable energy and energy efficiency. And of course, there is also increasing pressure to reduce the pollution from coal plants that harms public health and contributes to climate change.

As a result of this changing economic landscape, we have now reached a critical moment for utilities, investors, and electricity regulators and planners to take stock and make smart investment, policy, and planning decisions. To help with that, late last year we released our Ripe for Retirement analysis, which examined the economic viability of our nation’s coal generators. Our findings showed that, even with all the recent retirement announcements, there are still many more uncompetitive coal generators that should be considered for closure.

In fact, another 285 coal units—totaling more than 49 GW of capacity—failed the economic test we used and remain on our ripe for retirement list (see map below). That means the power they produce—after being upgraded with modern pollution controls—is more costly than electricity generated from existing natural gas combined-cycle (NGCC) power plants, and in many cases is also more expensive than wind power.

Importantly, in light of last week’s announcement, this ripe-for-retirement list includes an additional 11 coal generators (3,450 MW) owned and operated by TVA.

As many as 285 coal generators are ripe for retirement (orange dots) according to UCS analysis, which compares the cost of operating coal-fired generating units with the cost of operating existing natural gas combined-cycle generating plants.

As TVA embarks this fall on its next round of integrated resource planning, their remaining ripe-for-retirement coal units (along with all its other coal generators) should be carefully evaluated. If the cost of keeping them operating exceeds the cost of cleaner alternatives, then they too should be retired.

Retiring uneconomic coal plants creates an opportunity to accelerate our nation’s transition to a cleaner energy future by shifting more of the electricity sector’s investment dollars toward new renewable energy resources, energy-saving technologies, and an expanded and modernized electric grid. TVA is taking positive steps in this direction that other power providers should follow.

SPECIAL NOTE: Several of my UCS colleagues and I have been working to update our 2012 Ripe for Retirement analysis, using more recent data and a few refinements in our methodology. The results, which we expect to release in December, are very interesting. Stay tuned to The Equation in the coming weeks for more information.

Posted in: Energy, Fossil Fuels Tags: clean energy, coal, Coal Plants, TVA

About the author: Jeff Deyette is a senior energy analyst with expertise on the economic and environmental implications of renewable energy and energy efficiency policies at the state and federal level. He holds a master’s degree in energy resource and environmental management & international relations. See Jeff's full bio.

Support from UCS members make work like this possible. Will you join us? Help UCS advance independent science for a healthy environment and a safer world.

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The Global Carbon Budget and Why the Warsaw Climate Talks Matter

As the latest round of United Nations climate negotiations opened this week in Warsaw, the tragedy and destruction of typhoon Haiyan dominated news coverage around the globe. The disaster in the Philippines, with countless lives and livelihoods lost, is a stark reminder of the suffering and tremendous heartbreak that is at stake as the world’s nations meet to find an agreement to curb our heat-trapping emissions.

The aftermath of typhoon Haiyan. Source: Oxfam

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) states its objective is to stabilize emissions “to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” This oft-quoted phrase takes on a new dimension as we see the aftermath of one of human history’s most powerful storms, with sustained winds of almost 200 miles per hour and waves up to 30 feet high wreaking havoc on hundreds of local communities.

It is clear that human influence has been the dominant cause of our warming climate over the last half century. If the global ocean and atmosphere continue to warm from unchecked emissions, our future will likely be marked by more intense typhoons and hurricanes equal to the strength of Haiyan and Sandy. It’s also clear that if we are to stay within the carbon budget necessary to keep climate impacts from becoming unmanageable, we will need to decarbonize and leave fossil fuels in the ground.

The global carbon budget is the estimated amount of total carbon we can dump into the atmosphere and still have a reasonable chance of avoiding “dangerous” climate change. The “dangerous” temperature level has been pegged at a warming of 2°C (3.6°F) above the pre-industrial global average temperature. However, many would argue this temperature limit should be lowered in light of the impacts we are already seeing, as discussed in a recent UCS blog here and in the latest UNEP report on the Emissions Gap. As a benchmark, the difference in global average temperature between an ice age and an interglacial (a warm period) is only about 5°C, so a 2°C temperature increase is significant.

Source: University of Cambridge, Program for Sustainability and Leadership

The total amount of carbon that would take us to this level of warming has been estimated at 1000 billion tonnes of total carbon starting from the Industrial Revolution. We’ve already spent half of that budget – see the University of Cambridge’s full infographic here.

Of course, the impact of spending our entire carbon budget depends to some degree on the assumptions made about how the earth’s system responds, but most estimates using the 2°C threshold agree that we are about halfway through our allowance.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explains that we may blow our entire carbon budget in the next 30 years or so at the rate we are going. But if you read the fine print, the carbon budget proposed by the IPCC doesn’t even give us a sure guarantee of staying below the 2°C threshold – it only gives us a 2 in 3 chance of doing so. Not great odds.

Another way of visualizing the carbon budget is to show an estimate of the remaining reserves that we need to leave in the ground. The amount in the ground is truly massive compared to what we have already used. The design website “Information is Beautiful” has an infographic that uses data from the International Energy Agency, NASA, NOAA, and the World Bank to show the current overall balance. It’s sobering. By their estimates, if carbon emissions continue to increase at 3 percent a year – as they have been – the point where we break our 2°C carbon budget limit is a mere dozen years away. (See the full version here.)

Source: Information is Beautiful

Carbon dioxide may be colorless and odorless and seemingly benign, but it is long-lived and the most powerful heat-trapping emission from human activity. Two-thirds of the carbon dioxide you and I produce today from burning oil and gas in our cars and for our electricity will still be around in the atmosphere in a hundred years – it takes that long to be naturally removed. It is past time to give up our fossil fuel addiction and instead focus on balancing the ecological budget. Whether we exceed our “safe” carbon level in ten years or forty years really is up to us.

As the Philippines lead negotiator Naderev “Yeb” Saño so poignantly requested on the opening day, let’s hope the talks in Warsaw do reach a “meaningful outcome.” Saño’s hunger strike, in solidarity with the millions affected in the Philippines, has now spread to some participants at the Warsaw COP19 meeting and to wider civil society around the world. With the Philippines now faced with thousands of people dead and millions homeless, Saño implores us to act. Collectively, we must step up to the challenge of tackling this immense global crisis.

Posted in: Global Warming Tags: carbon budget, climate, climate-change, COP 19, Haiyan, Philippines, Typhoon Haiyan, UNFCCC, Warsaw Talks

About the author: Melanie Fitzpatrick, a climate scientist with the UCS Climate and Energy Program, is an expert on local and global impacts of climate change. She holds a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Washington, specializing in the role of sea ice and clouds in Antarctica. See Melanie's full bio.

Support from UCS members make work like this possible. Will you join us? Help UCS advance independent science for a healthy environment and a safer world.

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