‘Tis the season…of eating! Whether it is Christmas cookies, holiday hams or a pesky fruitcake, we all know that sweet treats play a big part in the joys of the season. But for a lot of us with allergies, and other dietary restrictions, yuletide pleasures can be a real challenge.
Never fear though, here on The Local Show, we’re here with a totally gluten- and dairy-free holiday recipe from KCPT viewer Amber Arnett Bequeaith. Amber runs Full Moon productions,the company that runs the Haunted Houses in the West Bottoms. but she and one of her children also happen to be gluten and dairy intolerant, which too, can be downright scary.
So how can you make a totally gluten and dairy free Christmas cookie that still passes the taste test? This week, we intend to find out.
If you are so inclined, here’s Amber’s GF/DF recipe for Holiday Sugar Cookies so you can try your own taste test at home:
½ c. Earth Balance (Butter substitute)
1 egg
¾ c. sugar
¼ c. turbinate sugar
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla
Cream together
½ c. sour cream alternative
Add and stir till mixed in
1c Almond Flour
1c Sweet White Sorghum Flour
1 ½ Brown Rice
1 teaspoon soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
Dash of Cinnamon
Mix into wet ingredients. Stir until it clumps. Take and ball the dough. Roll out on floured surface. Cut out!
Bake 350 degrees on a greased cookie sheet.
Kansas City based comic David Naster is still performing stand up in comedy clubs coast to coast and on some of the world’s finest cruise ships. But increasingly, he is in hot demand as a healthcare speaker. David Naster is considered an authority on the healing power of humor. He’s written several books on the subject, including You Just Have To Laugh. Now he has produced a new documentary that is currently making the rounds on the film festival circuit.
Just recently, they got a whole lot closer to achieving that goal as the University of Kansas Medical Center was awarded National Cancer Institute designation.
Nick Haines gets an update from the man leading the intitiative, Dr. Patrick James.
It doesn’t get the same attention as Kansas City’s quest to become a mecca for the life sciences or our push to be America’s most entrepreneriurial city, but Kansas City’s zeal to be the global center for animal health research is far further along than any of those efforts.
Many people don’t realize that our region already is home to four of the top 10 largest animal health companies in the world.
What began in the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Board room in July 2011 with 100 business, civic and elected leaders and 182 ideas for creating a greater Kansas City has become five initiatives which seek to to bring better health, improved education, more jobs, increased investment and a better quality of life to everyone in the region. The Local Show gathered key decision makers from each of the Big 5 initiatives to find out how much progress has been made.
Our Think Tank of Experts:
Jim Heeter, President & Chief Executive Officer, Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce
Russ Welsh, Current KC Chamber Chair; Chairman & CEO, Polsinelli Shughart
Greg Graves, Past (2011) KC Chamber Chair; Chairman of the Board & CEO, Burns & McDonnell
Translational research is the hot new area in the life sciences. It means moving discoveries from the laboratory bench to the patient’s bedside.
Patrick James, managing director of Quest Diagnostics, is leading the Chamber’s Big 5 life sciences effort. He was the emcee at a major gala dinner last week to celebrate the work of the Kansas City Life Sciences Insitute. Over 600 guests gathered to hear from area scientists.
Sometimes though it takes an outsider to put your accomplishments into perspective. The gala’s keynote speaker was the deputy director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center in Boston, Dr. David Livingston. Nick Haines sat down with Dr. Livingston to untangle the complicated subject of translational research.
Anyone who has experienced the death of a pet knows how heartbreaking that can be. But for some, the loss of a dog or a cat can be so emotionally wrenching it actually affects their physical and mental health.
The tale of a middle-aged woman so devastated by her dog’s death that she had to be put on a life support system is just one extreme example. But pet owners who even months after a loss still have trouble eating and sleeping are common and in Kansas City mental health professionals say they are increasingly treating patients for chronic depression brought on by the death of a pet. At the Struan Center in south Kansas City psychologist Dr. Raphael Smith runs a regular pet grief group therapy session. KCPT and producer Justin Bond got a rare opportunity to take its cameras inside to witness a recent meeting.
Approximately 200,000 women and men, girls and boys in the Kansas City Metro area suffer from an eating disorder. The JFS Eating Disorder Resource Center connects individuals and their families to support services and access to treatment.
Call 913-327-4690
This week on The Local Show, we take you inside the hidden world of eating disorders. Later tonight, KCPT brings you a national documentary that chronicles the millions of Americans suffering from anorexia and bulimia. Remarkably, they are conditions that have the highest fatality rate of all psychiatric disorders. Yet, as your about to see, it’s becoming increasing difficult to get a health insurance company to cover its treatment.
You will hear several stories from people suffering from these devastating illnesses in Erasing Eating Disorders, a national public television documentary coming up at 8 p.m. here on KCPT, or immediately following The Local Show if you’re watching the rebroadcast of this program.
We take you inside a local group home for women learning to overcome their eating disorders. Thalia House in Fairway, Ks. is a six person transitional home designed to fill an unmet need–to help women who have been released from hospital for anorexia and bulimia but are not quite ready to resume their normal lives.
Coming up at 8:30 here on KCPT, POV shows Girl Model which show an unseen side of the modeling industry as talent scouts recruit pre-pubescent girls overseas.
Can we as a society help decrease these startling eating disorder statistics? We are bombarded with messages with what to eat, not eat, what diet to be on, how to look, how to dress from the media. Media messages come from movies, television, magazines, or what brand clothing we wear. Last year at Johnson County Community College, they screened the new film America the Beautiful 2: The Thin Commandments about our country’s obsession with beauty and thinness.
And finally, there are three things not to say to someone with an eating disorder according to the eating recovery center:
1. Why can’t you just eat?
2. Everybody hates their body sometimes
3. Yes, I’ll keep your eating disorder a secret
Eating disorders are the deadliest mental illness. A woman with anorexia nervosa is 5.6 times more likely to die than another woman of her same age. The most frequent causes of death from eating disorders are suicide (32 percent), complications associated with anorexia (19 percent), and cancer (11 percent). The average age of death for an individual with anorexia is only 34 years.
Welcome to this first Local Show of this brand New Year. If you thought the fight over what so many now refer to as Obamacare was over, it’s not. It has simply moved to state capitals.
While the Supreme Court upheld most of the Affordable Care Act, it left up to states whether to expand Medicaid. Medicaid Expansion is going to be one of the most contentious issues lawmakers wrestle with in Topeka and Jefferson City as they prepare to start new legislative sessions in both states.
It’s one of those issues that gets complicated fast. In this report from Sam Zeff, we try to make sense of it all, by picking apart what’s at stake so we can better understand the arguments on both sides. KCPT’s reporting on healthcare issues is funded in part by a grant from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Production support provided by:
Majestic Rhinos, LLC
film & digital moving pictures www.MajesticRhinos.com
It is more than two and a half years since Congress passed and the President signed the Affordable Care Act. And it has been a good three months now since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal healthcare law. This week, The Local Show goes on location at the Kauffman Foundation for a conversation with regional health leaders to get a status report on how Kansas and Missouri are implementing these reforms and how the law is impacting small business owners, the uninsured, college students and those with pre-existing medical conditions.
It’s complicated…head scratching stuff. Do you know what a state health insurance exchange is? It’s one of the basic questions we get to the bottom of in this program.
Also, a quick reality check on the Affordable Care Act. Did you Know that while many of its most controversial provisions don’t go into effect until 2014, you can keep your college age kids on your health insurance plan until their 26. That is in effect now. And insurers are no longer allowed to charge women more than men simply because of their gender. Plus, insurance companies can no longer charge or require a co-pay for over 60 preventative care services.
Currently, 48 million Americans don’t have health insurance. The Affordable Care Act is supposed to dramatically diminish that number by providing, finally in this country, an affordable option for most Americans through the creation of new insurance pools managed by the states where people could get coverage at a reasonable price.
States are to start enrolling patients starting next year so that by 2014 they would be covered by health insurance, but as of now, only 15 states have established those so called “state health exchanges” and Kansas and Missouri are not among them.
In Missouri, there’s a statewide issue on the ballot November 6th that, if approved by voters, would block the governor or any Missouri agency from creating a state health exchange without approval from voters or the legislature.
In Kansas, Governor Brownback has chosen not to work towards establishing an exchange until the results of the Presidential election are known.
The panelists for this discussion include:
Jay Anghoff, Regional Director
U.S. Health Department
Andrea Routh, Executive Director
Missouri Health Advocacy Alliance
Sheldon Weisgrau, Director
Health Reform Resource Project
Ryan Barker, Public Policy Director
Missouri Foundation for Health
