Posts Tagged ‘North American’

Low-fat Oasis

You can break up a band, you can break up a love affair, but you can’t break up with your brother.

Poor Noel Gallagher — up there all alone with his new band, The High Flying Birds, playing support act to the younger and hotter Snow Patrol at the Edmonton Expo Centre in Edmonton. It’s the changing of the guard in the annals of Britrock! Oasis was once the biggest band in, well, England, and now they’re history because these two gifted Gallagher brothers just couldn’t get along. So sad. I could never keep it straight which one was which. Noel was the “brooding one,” I think.

Noel has since come forth with a strong new band, and some solid new songs, though it was the Oasis tunes he pulled out that went over the best — ending a well-received set with Don’t Look Back in Anger. How apt. The opening song, too, spoke volumes for the kind of people who like to read things into everything: It’s Good To Be Free. At one point, a fan yelled out, “F— Liam!” — which was good because he didn’t have to say it. Again.

Noel even teased the 4,000 or so fans when he started to strum the chords to Wonderwall — causing his keyboardist Mike Rowe (who played on a number of Oasis albums) to break into laughter — but then he didn’t play the song, the bastard. Didn’t say a word to the crowd till near the end, too: “It’s been a pleasure, good night.” Hello, goodbye, nice to see you. The guy has as much charisma as those guards with the big hats at Buckingham Palace. Noel is definitely the brooding one.

But he was right: it was a pleasure. The awkwardly acronymed new band NGHFB came off like a low-fat Oasis with one, thick, throbbing beat after another. The band favours one-chord grooves, leaning more to the rootsy side of rock ‘n’ roll, few frills, not a lot of solos or other self-indulgence, but the same style of catchy choruses heard in Oasis. Elegant, clearly-stated riffs from guitar and piano rounded out the sound. One of the unusual highlights was a bouncy shuffle called The Death of You and Me that might also be a telling sign of the singer’s current state of mind: “Life is getting faster, no one has the answer.”

With the 18-year-old opening act Jake Bugg coming across like a young Liam Gallagher — with an even more nasal voice, if such a thing can be imagined — and Snow Patrol closing the night with its immaculate brand of modern rock, this show was a great opportunity to examine this thing they call “Brit Rock.” Believe it or not, it does have a “sound” distinct from its North American cousin — Oasis over there, Bon Jovi over here. Bad example. Or maybe it’s because UK bands are so close to one another, geographically speaking, while drawing on such a rich history of rock ‘n’ roll that beats the North Americans hands down, when you go to the scoreboard.

Of course there are key differences in the two bands that played Saturday night. Where the Gallagher Brothers — and Noel — borrowed from the Beatles, Snow Patrol carries faint shades of the Clash, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Coldplay. While Noel is a bit dour, his style a bit downcast, Snow Patrol is sunny and gregarious in comparison, its singer Gary Lightbody even managing to work “Edmonton” into the lyric of the band’s opening tune. What followed was a crisp, clean, but at times shockingly dull show where few chances were taken, where even the most powerful moments were telegraphed and planned, and whose highlight – hit speaking – was the slow and mellow romantic ode Chasing Cars, coming midway through the set.

Lightbody is obviously a stronger singer than Gallagher, too, with remarkable range and tone, but it really doesn’t matter. NGHFB, in contrast, put forth some angst, some tension, some uncertainty — at least from wondering if Noel was going to suddenly to fly off the handle and start cursing out the crowd (or wait, Liam was the guy who did that stuff). And some power, too. For all its mid-tempo, one-chord, moody drones, the High Flying Birds rocked. The crowd thinned a bit by the time Snow Patrol polished off Chasing Cars, for while this was a “co-headlining” bill, it was pretty clear which was the better band.

The inevitable Oasis reunion ought to be huge. Like brothers, there is no getting away from it. 

Article source: http://www.edmontonsun.com/2012/10/28/low-fat-oasis

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Kraft Still Trimming the Fat Ahead of Split

By Paul Ziobro

Bloomberg News

Kraft’s sale of a majority stake of Back to Nature, the all-natural granola, cookie and cracker brand, shows that the food giant is still tinkering with its portfolio as it nears the Oct. 1 split up, but only around the edges.

There may still be some minor tweaking before the spin off occurs, though it would only involve minor brands that have a hard time fitting cleanly into either Mondelez, the global snacks unit, or Kraft Foods Group, the North American grocery business.

Oreo and other big brands aren’t going anywhere.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed on the Back to Nature deal, which is expected to close in October, but the purchaser, Brynwood Partners, typically makes deals that are less than $125 million.

Article source: http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/08/22/kraft-still-trimming-the-fat-ahead-of-split/

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"Fat Kid Rules the World" gets North American distribution

Lucas Shaw

Reuters

4:28 p.m. CDT, June 14, 2012

Article source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sns-rt-us-fatkidrulestheworld-distributionbre85d1mx-20120614,0,4306515.story

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"Fat Kid Rules the World" gets North American distribution

Oprah Winfrey talks to eight, count ‘em, eight Kardashian-Jenner family members in an interview set to air on Winfrey’s cable channel, OWN.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/fat-kid-rules-world-gets-north-american-distribution-212626474.html

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Low-Fat Dairy Linked to Lower Stroke Risk

THURSDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) — In what the researchers
say is the largest study on the issue to date, adults who consumed higher
amounts of low-fat dairy products also had a somewhat lower long-term risk
of stroke.

The study involved nearly 75,000 Swedish adults who were tracked for an
average of 10 years after completing a dietary questionnaire.

Those who consumed low-fat versions of products such as milk, yogurt or
cheese had a 12 percent lower risk for stroke than those whose diet
typically included high/full-fat versions of these dairy staples.

“I think this finding certainly makes sense,” said Lona Sandon, a
dietician and assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University
of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. “When you have more
high-fat dairy you have more saturated fat, which we know is one of the
types of fats that can affect LDL, or ‘bad,’ cholesterol levels. And
eating saturated fat leads to clogging up arteries in the heart and the
brain. So then you’re more likely to have the clots breaking off and
causing something like an ischemic stroke.”

However, “when you’re looking at stroke risk you’d really want to look
at an individual’s whole dietary pattern,” said Sandon, who was not
involved in the new research. “But it is certainly plausible that
whole-fat dairy bumps up the risk that is out there.”

A research team led by Susanna Larsson, from the division of
nutritional epidemiology at the National Institute of Environmental
Medicine at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, reported the findings April
19 in the journal Stroke.

The study authors noted that in the United States, about one-third of
all adult men and women over the age of 18 have high blood pressure, which
they describe as a “major controllable risk factor” for stroke. Still,
they added, only about half of affected Americans have their blood
pressure under control.

With that in mind, experts have long touted the benefits of the Dietary
Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH diet), with its emphasis on low-fat
dairy consumption.

In 1997, the Swedish team administered food surveys to almost 75,000
men and women between the ages of 45 and 83, none of whom had a prior
history of either heart disease or cancer.

From that point forward, the incidence of stroke among study
participants was monitored via data collected by the Swedish Hospital
Discharge Registry.

Over the course of about a decade, nearly 4,100 strokes occurred, the
authors noted. People who stuck to low-fat dairy products appeared to have
a somewhat lower risk for stroke. The study was only able to find an
association between eating low-fat dairy products and lowered odds for
stroke; it could not prove cause-and-effect.

The Swedish researchers called for further large studies to examine the
apparent association, while at the same time suggesting that, if it holds
up upon further scrutiny, the finding could have broad public health
implications.

Larsson’s team pointed out that when it comes to dairy consumption, the
typical North American diet closely mirrors that of northern Europeans, so
a snapshot of Swedish diets and stroke risk might be relevant to a U.S.
population.

“The bottom line is that if you’re consuming more fat in your day — no
matter where it’s coming from — it is going to increase your risk for
atherosclerosis [hardening of the arteries], and thereby your risk for
stroke,” said Sandon. “And that’s what’s behind the USDA’s Dietary
Guidelines for Americans, which recommends that you get three dairy
servings per day, in order to get enough calcium and potassium, but at the
same time making sure that those servings are low-fat.”

Larsson’s study was funded by the Swedish Council for Working Life and
Social Research and the Swedish Research Council.

More information

For more on how diet impacts stroke risk, head to the National Stroke Association.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/low-fat-dairy-linked-lower-stroke-risk-200618425.html

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