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A gut health scientist who's also a dietitian and trained chef shares her 4 favorite, tasty high-fiber snacks
- Snacking can be an easy way to eat more fiber and boost gut health.
- Fiber helps fuel the "good" microbes in the gut, which influence overall health.
- Emily Leeming, a gut health scientist and chef, snacks on dark chocolate and fruit.
Snacking can be a great way to eat more fiber and look after your gut health, Emily Leeming, a dietitian and gut microbiome researcher at King's College London, told Business Insider.
The gut microbiome is the name given to the trillions of microbes that live in the colon lining, which studies have linked to our overall health β from the immune system to the brain.
Fiber, found in foods such as fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and beans, fuels the "good" microbes in the gut. And studies suggest that it helps create a more diverse microbiome, an indicator of a healthy gut. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that adults eat 22 to 34 grams of fiber each day.
Snacks make up around 20% of the average person's energy intake, Leeming said, so choosing more nutritious foods can be a "great strategy to making big inroads for our health."
"When you're feeling hungry, you can think, 'Okay, can I get at least five grams of fiber in a snack?'" Leeming, a trained chef and the author of "Genius Gut: The Life-Changing Science of Eating for your Second Brain," said.
Leeming shared her four go-to snacks that boost her gut health.
Fresh or dried fruit
Fresh or dried fruit is a delicious snack, a great source of fiber, and easy to eat on the go, Leeming said: "I love fruit, I eat a lot of it."
Berries, in particular, are high in fiber, and can be sprinkled on top of a sweet breakfast such as oatmeal or Greek yogurt in seconds, she said.
Dried apricots, which contain seven grams of fiber per 100 grams, are another of her favorites.
Nuts
As well as containing heart-healthy fats and plant protein, nuts are high in fiber.
They contain around seven to nine grams of fiber per 100 grams and typically require no prep, making them the perfect quick, gut-friendly snack.
Leeming keeps a jar of mixed nuts by the kettle in her kitchen, so she can eat them while she waits for it to boil.
"The things that I want to eat more of, I keep in my line of sight. That just visually prompts you to go for them as a first step," she said.
CruditΓ©s and dip
Leeming likes to keep plant-based dips such as hummus or guacamole, and some chopped-up veggies in the fridge so she can grab them when she's feeling peckish.
"Just having some snacks that are more healthy and easily available really helps," she said."I really focus on things that are easy and simple that you just don't have to do lots of mental logistics to kind of make happen."
Vegetables contain fiber, as well as the chickpeas in hummus, and the avocado in guacamole.
Dark chocolate
85% strength dark chocolate is surprisingly high in fiber, Leeming said: "It's about 11 grams of fiber per 100 grams."
She loves to have two squares paired with some fruit as a snack. "That's making a significant contribution toward that 30 grams of fiber a day that we need," she said.
Dark chocolate, which contains antioxidants, also has other health benefits. A recent study based on around 110,000 nurses, published in the BMJ, found that those who consumed at least five servings of dark chocolate a week had a 21% lower risk of type two diabetes from the baseline than those who had none or rarely ate chocolate.
The authors said this could be because dark chocolate is high in epicatechin, a polyphenol that research suggests could help prevent metabolic disease.
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Mark Zuckerberg takes another shot at Apple and says it's 'squeezing people' for money
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had a longstanding feud with Apple.
- He once again took shots at Apple in a recent interview with Joe Rogan.
- The CEO said Apple hasn't innovated in a while and criticized the ecosystem the iPhonemaker built.
Mark Zuckerberg is taking more shots at Apple.
In an interview on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast that was published Friday, the Meta CEO shared several issues he has with Apple, continuing his decadelong feud with the Cupertino company.
Zuckerberg said on the podcast that Apple has been slow to innovate since the iPhone. He added that the few ways the company has been able to profit since then is by imposing developers' fees and creating an ecosystem that's difficult for other companies to penetrate.
The Facebook creator credited Apple for making one of the most popular smartphones in the world, but he said Apple hasn't "really invented anything great in a while" since the iPhone.
"It's like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and now they're just kind of sitting on it 20 years later," he told Rogan.
To make up for declining sales in iPhones, Zuckerberg said Apple has been "squeezing people" by imposing what he called a "30% tax" on developers and creating an enclosed ecosystem around Apple's popular products.
"They build stuff like Airpods, which are cool, but they've just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way," he said.
Zuckerberg said Meta experienced this when it was developing the Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
The CEO said Apple declined to let Meta use the same "protocol" Apple uses for Airpods in order to allow the Meta glasses to connect seamlessly to iPhones. Zuckerberg said he believed Apple was using privacy and security concerns as an excuse to keep a wall around the Apple ecosystem.
Meta's chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth echoed a similar sentiment in an October interview with "Stratechery."
"The thing I worry about with Apple specifically is that they have their phones and devices so locked down that they can self-preference a ton," he said, pointing to Airpods as one example.
Spokespeople for Meta and Apple did not respond to a request for comment sent during the weekend.
Zuckerberg has been undergoing his own brand transformation as he preps for a second Trump administration, walking back on content moderation and rolling back DEI initiatives at his company. But his feud with Apple goes back to at least 2014.
Previously, Zuckerberg has criticized Apple's prices, its app store and privacy policies, and, more recently, the company's Vision Pro VR headsets.
Still, Zuckerberg said on the podcast that he remains optimistic.
"I mean, the good news about the tech industry is that it's just super dynamic and things are constantly getting invented," he said. "And I think companies β if you just don't do a good job for like 10 years, eventually you're just going to get beat by someone."
What is Skype? A history of Microsoft's free video-calling app and how to use it
- Skype is a free video-calling platform that Microsoft acquired for $8.5 billion over a decade ago.
- Skype was once the go-to video-calling app and telecommunications industry disruptor.
- But now, Skype has faded out of popular usage in favor of platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Skype, a telecommunications platform currently owned by Microsoft, became ubiquitous in the early 2000s, at one point accounting for up to 40% of all international calls.
While Skype has since lost some of its audience to Microsoft Teams β particularly in the business context β and a significant portion of its market share to Zoom, it still maintained an average of 40 million daily users as of 2020.
Founded in 2003 by Swedish entrepreneur Niklas ZennstrΓΆm and Danish entrepreneur Janus Friis, Skype held its first public trial in August of that year. By 2005, the company was acquired by eBay for $2.5 billion. In 2009, a portion of Skype was resold to Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board for $1.9 billion, giving the company a market valuation of $2.75 billion.
Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, making it a division of Microsoft with its former CEO Tony Bates reporting to then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
Following the acquisition, Microsoft integrated Skype into its product lineup, discontinuing Windows Messenger in favor of the Skype client, which became the default messaging service in Windows 8.1. By 2013, Skype was available across multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, iPadOS, iOS, Android, and BlackBerry.
Skype was once a telecommunications industry disruptor
By offering free voice and video calls between Skype users globally, it effectively undercut traditional telecommunications providers that charged hefty fees for international calls. This disruptive technology approach that Skype took paid dividends in terms of the platform's immense popularity, especially in regions where long-distance calling was prohibitively expensive.
Instead of paying telecommunications companies long-distance rates, the only fee you'd incur would be the internet data that Skype used for your audio or video call. Skype also offered low rates for calls to landlines and cellphones.
Through its North American subscription plan, you could get 2,000 minutes of calling for $5.94/month β or the equivalent of about 0.297 cents per minute; if you go over 2,000 minutes, the rate goes to $0.35/minute. For US only calls, a 2,000 minute plan costs just $2.54 with extra time costing only $0.15/minute.
Skype's advantages and disadvantages
Despite no longer being the industry leader in terms of market share, Skype is still a capable free solution for video and audio calls.
Unlike the free version of Zoom, Skype doesn't have a 30 minute time limit. Additionally, in 2023 Microsoft integrated Bing AI with Skype, allowing users to converse with it in a private chat or mention it in group chats and ask it questions; you can even ask it to help plan vacation destinations or generate jokes.
However, Microsoft has clearly prioritized other tech like Microsoft Teams at the expense of Skype over the years.
In 2015, Skype for Business replaced Lync as Microsoft's business communication solution. In 2017, Microsoft announced plans to replace Skype for Business with Microsoft Teams, with its official retirement occurring in July 2021.
Where Zoom and Teams pull away from Skype is less in the one-on-one context and more in business centric contexts where you might have more than 50 people β the maximum size Skype supports β on a single call. Skype also does not have breakout room functionality like what you see with Zoom.
How to use Skype
Once you've downloaded Skype to your computer or mobile device, you can make a new Skype call through desktop or mobile by opening the Skype app and clicking New call or Start a call.
You can add contacts to Skype or invite people to join Skype by navigating to the Contacts tab and clicking New Contact and searching for the person via their Skype name, phone number, email, or full name.
How to delete your Skype account
If you, too, are gravitating towards platforms like Zoom or Teams rather than Skype, you might be wondering how to delete your Skype account.
Since your Skype account is tied into your Microsoft account, it is not possible to close your Skype account without closing your entire Microsoft account. If you want to proceed, you can close your Microsoft account by visiting the Microsoft account closure page, signing in, and selecting either 30 or 60 days from the dropdown, clicking Next, and following Microsoft's prompts.
How to change your Skype name
Your Skype name itself cannot be changed, however, you change your account's display name.
Start by clicking on your Skype profile picture, then select Skype profile and click the pencil icon to edit the display name and make your changes.
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Every year my family drove from Canada to Florida to see my grandparents. I still cherish those memories.
- My family would drive from Canada to Florida every March to spend time with my grandparents.
- I have some of the best memories of spending time at their condo.
- It was a privilege to be able to spend so much time with my family.
For most 8-year-olds, waking up at four in the morning would be an unwelcome experience. But for me, waking up on a frigid March morning in 1998, I was ready to go. It was our first family road trip, and we were headed down to my grandparents' Condo in Marco Island, Florida. And, in what was probably a bid to keep me quiet, my parents had bought me a brand new Gameboy with PokΓ©mon β I was raring to go.
I didn't know it yet, but this was the first step in what would become one of the most significant annual events of my entire life.
We would drive from Canada to Florida
Each year, March Break became defined by heading from our home in Ottawa, Canada, down to "The Condo" (it achieved proper noun status in my family long ago) β the year-round balmy Florida weather a welcome and almost magical contrast to the iced-over roads and gray skies of Ottawa in March.
My grandparents bought the condo after they retired in the early 90s, and my childhood winters became punctuated by two weeks of glorious heat each year.
Our first day often ended in Roanoke, Virginia, an infamous place in our family lore. This was mostly because we were all motion sick from our first day spent in a car, inevitably throwing up on our only night in town. Day two usually ended in Orlando or Tampa Bay, staying over so we kids could exhaust ourselves at Disney World, Universal Studios, or, eventually, the Kennedy Space Center.
Over the years, the story remained the same, even if the details changed: early start, sick in Virginia, hours lost on a Gameboy, and spending a couple of days at theme parks before heading to the Condo.
It felt like the place just belonged to us
For me, Marco Island was a place that felt as personal as someone else's secret family recipe. It was a place only for us: nobody outside our family had ever even heard of it. A small retirement community on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, today there are still fewer than 20,000 residents.
In the years since our first trip, Marco Island has been at the center of dozens of core memories: few were more iconic than splashing around in the pool as thickly-accented Bostonian snowbirds scowled their way through calisthenics sessions at us. Inevitably, we were the only kids in the complex aside from a couple of others who were visiting their grandparents too β we'd quickly make and forget our new friends each year, united in our days' long-shared experience of being under five feet tall.
Countless embarrassing photos have been taken (and hopefully lost), including my spot-on imitation of a pelican loitering around our favorite restaurant, the aptly-named Pelican Bend. The first time I was ever allowed to stay up until midnight was at the Condo on Y2K, watching the Nickelodeon coverage of the big event. Teaching my younger sister how to play mini-golf, taking my first flight without my parents when I visited in my 20s. I even introduced my future wife on a video call to my grandparents while I was staying over at the condo ("She's a 10!" my grandmother exclaimed).
It was a privilege to have that time with my family
I didn't know it then, but each early morning wake-up and afternoon spent on the beach was a privilege β to be able to form such a strong connection to my family, my grandparents, and, eventually, my love of travel.
A couple of months ago, my parents told me that Hurricane Milton was headed straight toward Marco Island, and we held our collective breath for its landfall. While the hurricane left more knocked-over lawn chairs than serious damage, we were all relieved β something so central to us couldn't simply get washed away, could it?
Today, I live in the humidity of South Africa, having moved here a few years ago, with scents on the breeze reminding me of Marco Island. Travel, especially road trips, became a central feature in my adult life. And for years, I really couldn't explain the powerful, almost irresistible urge to download the most recent version of PokΓ©mon whenever I had a trip lined up.
I think I've figured it out now.