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Good news, lovebirds! If you're planning to celebrate with your Valentine in the coming weeks, get ready to toast to your health. Earlier this week, a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna spread some good news in honor of National Hug Day . He pointed out that hugging someone you care about can ease stress and anxiety, lower blood pressure and even boost memory -- but hugging a stranger can have the opposite effect. While the association between hugging and your health isn't new, it's especially relevant this time of year -- with Valentine's Day on the horizon and many couples hurrying to cuddle away the frigid temperatures sweeping across much of the nation. Experts believe it all comes back to the hormone oxytocin. A simple embrace seems to increase levels of the "love hormone," which has been linked to social bonding . That oxytocin boost seems to have a greater calming effect on women than men, the BBC reported. In one study, ...

Those nightcaps might affect your sleep more than you thought -- and not in a good way. A new review of studies, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research , shows that alcohol changes the normal rhythms of sleep by increasing the amount of time people spend in "deep sleep," but also decreasing the amount of time people spend in REM sleep by disrupting sleep during this stage, which is necessary for memory, concentration and motor skills. "In sum, alcohol on the whole is not useful for improving a whole night's sleep ," study researcher Chris Idzikowski, who is the director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, said in a statement. "Sleep may be deeper to start with, but then becomes disrupted. Additionally, that deeper sleep will probably promote snoring and poorer breathing. So, one shouldn't expect better sleep with alcohol." Sleep has two parts that cycle back and forth: non-REM sleep, and REM ...

A stroll down your supermarket aisles may seem like a tedious chore. Lettuce? Check. Carrots? Check. Beef? Check. But that same stroll can also offer lessons in innovation. New products appear and disappear over time, reflecting changing tastes and technologies. In a new book, The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food, author Josh Schonwald examines how foodies, farmers, scientists and entrepreneurs will revolutionize what’s on our dinner plates by 2035. Schonwald says the lettuce we buy two or three decades from now might be a new variety, the carrots could be red because they’ve been engineered to include lycopene – and the meat may have been made in a lab.      View the original article here: Foods of the Future: What You’ll Be Eating in 2035 – The Fiscal Times

Has this ever happened to you? You make a big pot of soup, stew, or other dish thinking you'll freeze a batch for convenient meals later...only you never get around to freezing it and then you have to toss the batch. The Kitchn recommends a "Freeze first, eat second" rule to solve this problem. Basically, as soon as you've finished cooking the food, set aside the extra portion you want to freeze. Then you no longer have to worry about forgetting to get those meals into the freezer and you can stop wasting so much food in the kitchen .