From the Super Bowl to sweet treats: what’s happening in February - Striking a Chord…

From the Super Bowl to sweet treats: what’s happening in February

Greetings! Will you be watching the big game on Sunday? Perhaps more importantly, do you have your chips and dip – and other essential snacks – ready to go?

If you’re not enthused about football, maybe you plan to still watch for the commercials. Advertisers are certainly paying a pretty penny for your eyeballs. A 30-second commercial during Super Bowl 59 costs around $7 million, though some brands have reported paying closer to $8 million, USA Today reports. Fox sold out their ad slots in early November, indicating that the big price tag clearly wasn’t much of a deterrent.

Whatever you end up doing Sunday evening, hope it’s enjoyable. - February marks American Heart Month. Every year, more than 650,000 Americans die from heart disease.

“The number one cause of deaths for most groups, heart disease affects all ages, genders, and ethnicities. Risk factors include high cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, and excessive alcohol use,” NationalToday.com reports.

Most of us know the keys to maintaining or improving heart health, including eating a nutritious diet, getting regular exercise, managing stress, and managing cholesterol and blood pressure. If adopting a totally new lifestyle seems too overwhelming – and it’s probably not sustainable – just start with one positive small step and build from there.

Heart fact: The first bypass surgery was performed in May 1967 by Argentinian surgeon Rene Favalro. Today, coronary artery bypass grafting is the most common cardiac surgery in the world. --- February also is Celebration of Chocolate Month (now there’s a celebration I can get behind!). Chocolate is made from roasted and ground cacao beans, liquid, solid, or paste. Although “cacao” and “cocoa” can technically be used interchangeably to refer to beans from the cacao plant, which term is used typically depends on how heavily the bean has been processed.

“Cacao powder is made from fermented beans that have not been roasted. They are processed at low temperatures and then milled into a powder. The result is a powder that’s bitter in taste and higher in nutritional content. Cocoa powder on the other hand is made from beans that are both fermented and roasted, and then processed at a much higher temperature,” AllRecipes explains.

In honor of Celebration of Chocolate Month, here’s a brief timeline of the history of chocolate: 1674: Cacao production begins in the state of Marnhão, Brazil.

1819: The first chocolate factory in Switzerland opens in the town of Vevey, courtesy of Francois-Louis Cailler.

1847: British man Joseph Fry and his sons create the first chocolate bar, making chocolate more affordable the world over. (The earliest form of a chocolate treat was hot chocolate.)

1894: The globally renowned chocolate brand Hershey is established.

1967: The chocolate brand Twix is introduced and produced in the United Kingdom.

A couple of fun facts: – The average cacao pod contains 40 beans, and it takes approximately 400 beans to make one pound of chocolate.

– The Aztecs, to whom chocolate is native, once used cacao as a means of exchange the same way we use money today. - Moving on to individual days, today, Feb. 5 is National Chocolate Fondue Day and World Nutella Day (I think I have food on the brain).

Interestingly, Nutella was first introduced in Italy in 1964. The hazelnut and cocoa spread is popular in crepes, on banana pancakes or just on its own. Nutella sponsored the largest breakfast ever in 2005 when nearly 28,000 Nutella enthusiasts gathered in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, to participate in the world’s largest continental breakfast. - Feb. 6 is Reclaim Social Day. This observance started on Feb. 6, 2018, when Lightful, a London-based nonprofit technology business released the hashtag #ReclaimSocial in an attempt to create a worldwide surge of optimism on social media. On that day, charity organizations shared their stories of the good they had been able to accomplish.

The idea was to stop the spread of negative news online and instead use social media to encourage people.

As many pitfalls as it has, social media does allow us to connect with relatives or friends who live far away. It also can offer the opportunity to learn something new. In fact, over half of YouTube users say they use it to learn things they’ve never done before. Also, YouTube supports more than 70 languages, which covers 95% of the internet population. That in itself is mind-blowing. Social media also allows a person to easily connect with a broader audience, whether it’s for a GoFundMe campaign or a meal train for someone in ne ed, or just to of fer prayer and encouragement. Like so many other things in life, social media can be used for good or evil; it all depends how we use it. It requires intentionality. - Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) Awareness Week is held every year from Feb. 7 to 14. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CHDs are the leading birth defects that cause death in infants and adults. Approximately 1% of births per year are affected by CHDs, which exist from birth and often affect the structure and shape of a baby’s heart.

Since the 1990s, the condition has been one of the leading causes of defect-related deaths, with over 360,000 deaths in 1990. However, advancements in technology have offered hope. Recent years have witnessed the birth of new CHD intervention methods and with the biotech revolution, even more innovations are expected. - Have a great week and stay healthy!