You’d expect scientific news about chocolate coming out of the Hershey Center for Heath & Nutrition to be favorable toward the brown elixir. And you wouldn’t be disappointed.
Chocolate, which recently has been embraced as the ultimate recovery drink by recovering athletes, has been deemed by the Hershey center as a rich source of antioxidants, those naturally occurring elements that helps us fight disease. Further, chocolate contains more polyphenols and flavanols than fruit juice. The testing found this property for antioxidants in dark chocolate and cocoa. (Hot chocolate was also tested, but proved not as rich in antioxidants because of the processing involved.read more
Fifteen years ago I took my first trip to Panthertown Valley, a 6,700-acre playground that some call the Yosemite of the East because of its abundance of waterfalls (19), towering (if not old-growth) trees and exposed granite domes. It was also to be my first try at backpacking solo.read more
A quick sampling of what’s going on around the state this weekend.
Coast
Sometimes it takes a push from our creative side to jump-start our active side. That’s one incentive for checking out Lake Waccamaw State Park’s monthly Nature Journal Hike. Once a month, participants, with journal and pen in hand, head out with a park ranger to explore this unique park 12 miles east of Whiteville in the coastal plain. Lake Waccamaw State Park is dominated by a 9,000-acre Carolina bay, one of thousands of oval lakes that dot the middle of the eastern seaboard — or once did, for many of the shallow lakes have long-since filled in. The lake (pictured) is the subject of this month’s hike, from 3-4 p.m. on Saturday. It’s free — even the journal is included.read more
The following is a expanded version, with links, of a story I wrote that originally appeared in yesterday’s (Feb. 1) The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer.
You’re a month into your new fitness program and you’re not seeing the results you expected: You are not alone.read more
That’s just one of the services provided in this space by GetGoingNC: sitting through five-hour meetings of city planners, DOT engineers, committee members and elected officials to sift out the nuggets of information useful to you, the recreating public. In this case, the bike riding public.read more