Sugar has earned a bad reputation for being bad for your heart, your brain and your waistline. Because of this, there have been many attempts to market sugar substitutes. Some are useful, but some are even worse than the original problem.

Here the common ones and how they rank.

Worse than sugar:

• High Fructose Corn Syrup: man made sugar that is used because it is cheap to produce. Affects your liver and fat storage negatively.
• Aspartame: Has some negative effects on brain and organ function. Effects can be reduced by eating protein with the meal.

About the same as sugar:

• Honey - More micronutrients than sugar if in its unprocessed form. Here are some tips to be able to tell the difference. Other than that, in processed form, its the same as sugar.
• Brown Sugar - Just a color difference.
• Agave Syrup - Has more calories than sugar, but is also sweeter. So you just end up using less. Basically the same as sugar.

Better than sugar:

• Some sugar alcohols - e.g. xylitol. Lower calories than sugar. Has

When is a mastectomy really required to prevent breast cancer? (Thinkstock photo)

Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie announced she has had both her breasts removed in February to reduce her high genetic risk of breast cancer. The surgery, called double mastectomy, brought down her risk from 87 per cent to about 5 per cent.

The announcement took her fans by surprise and has become headline news around the world, including Singapore. Fans are wondering if the preventive procedure was really necessary and how common is it.

In Singapore, preventive mastectomy is performed for rare patients who, like Angelina, carry specific mutated genes.

“Carriers of mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes have more than a 50 per cent risk of developing breast cancer in their lifetime. When that mutation is detected, our recommendation would be to perform a preventive double mastectomy, usually when the woman is in her 30s,” says Dr Hong Ga Sze, Head and Senior Consultant, KK Breast Department, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH).

“Before such a surgery is performed, a patient will

For a taxi driver, a key survival skill is knowing where to find customers. As far as possible, a driver should know the routes at his or her fingertips. Hence, in this 6th instalment of Taxi Talks, I would like to share with you the top eight sweet spots (lucrative routes). They are:

Passengers at Singapore's Changi Airport in Singapore, which has been named among the world's top child-friendly airports by Conde Nast Traveller India magazine.

#1: Changi Airport
Changi Airport is the world’s 7th busiest airport for international passenger traffic with 51 million passengers moving in and out of the airport via its three terminals. It is served by over 100 airlines with about 6,300 weekly scheduled flights to some 220 cities in 60 countries. Hence, the terminals at Changi Airport are one of the busiest and most popular for taxi drivers.

Here’s the “profile” of each terminal:

T1 – mostly international flights by airlines like Qantas, China Airways, Delta, Thai Airways and budget airlines like AirAsia, JetStar and Lion Air.
T2 – regional airlines like Singapore Airlines, with the inclusion of budget airlines like Scoot, Tiger Airways and Cebu Pacific

For three decades he smiled and waved at Singaporeans from his spot on billboards, posters and brochures. He was dedicated to his task of making Singapore a kinder, more courteous place for everyone to live in, regardless of whether he had trousers on or not.

Then the news broke. On 15 May, Singa the Lion announced his resignation and impending retirement.

“I suppose it’s time for real people to step up and for the mascot to step aside,” he wrote. “It’s not that we aren’t a gracious society, or that kindness is not innate in all of us. But some days it feels like not very many of us believe in or care about expressing kindness.”

I asked on Twitter what people thought about his resignation.

#AskTheTweeps: What do you think about Singa the Lion’s resignation? (RT please!)

— Kirsten Han (@kixes) May 16, 2013

@kixes I actually have no idea what to think about it. As a PR stunt it seems somewhat strange and off-message. — ☣ JY Yang (@MizHalle) May 16, 2013

@kixes I mean, this is basically a

There’s nothing quite like death to make a point. Even when it comes to telling Singaporeans how ungracious they are.

Call it clever marketing or whatever, terminating (via resignation that is) “Singa the Lion” has certainly worked for its zookeepers at the Singapore Kindness Movement.

Nothing like the "death" of a local icon (who had been  pretty much been ignored of late up to this point, frankly) to spark buzz on social and mainstream media -- it’s way more effective than holding a press conference and feeding guests with bee hoon and juice boxes.

It’s an old tactic though.

The comic gods killed Superman when readership of his comics started plunging, and he was dutifully resurrected after a while.

And who can forget when the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime first died (he’s died and come back alive many times) in the mid-1980s. I was in primary school. I couldn’t sleep the night my pretend girlfriend in class told me about it. I swore to take revenge on Megatron, if he ever came to

Just by looking at the physical differences of people around you, it's pretty clear that we are all different. That's why there can be few fixed "rules" for what the best kind of nutrition plan is for each person.

That's why some people at Genesis Gym are getting great results on very low carbohydrate diets. While others are eating more than or almost TWO kilograms of starch each day.

(You can find out more about different kinds of diets in my other article here)

But no matter who you are, or which nutrition expert you ask, there is ONE thing that 99.99% of them are likely to agree on. If people did this, we would get a lot less chronic disease, a lot less obesity, and a lot more positive effects like glowing skin, better sleep, and less constipation.

Here it is:

We need to eat more veggies than we currently do.

So, how much is enough?

I like to ask for 6-8 servings a day for ladies, and 10-12 for men. One serving is about the size of your fist when uncooked.

Every year we do almost a thousand

A good friend of mine (I’ll call him Peter) once confided in me that he was having serious communication issues with his girlfriend (I’ll call her Anne).

Every day, Anne would complain to Peter about her life problems. And, boy, did Anne seem to have an endless list of problems.

Just because people have problems doesn’t automatically mean they want solutions

As a natural response, Peter began suggesting possible solutions—his list of solutions was as endless as Anne’s list of problems.

But to Peter’s shock, Anne didn't appreciate his advice. In fact, she told Peter that she felt like he wasn’t listening to her.

This was causing strain in their relationship.

After Peter had explained the situation to me, he asked for my input.

I recommended that he stop giving Anne solutions. The next time Anne shared her struggles with him, I encouraged him to listen actively and to simply—and sincerely—say, “I’m sorry that you’re going through this. I'm here for you.”

We want to feel understood before we’ll

COMMENT

Singapore has been no stranger to non-Singaporean protests; in recent years we have seen migrant workers participate in collective action in response to alleged unfair labour practices.

However, the latest case of non-citizens protesting in Singapore was not about abusive employers or withheld wages. Wednesday evening saw about 100 Malaysians in Singapore gathering at Merlion Park dressed in black to protest electoral irregularities in their recent elections.

The election returned Barisan Nasional to power despite it having lost the popular vote, and the Malaysians' protest coincided with a massive rally led by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat in Kelana Jaya in Kuala Lumpur.

The peaceful gathering was labelled an "illegal outdoor protest" by the Singapore police, and five Malaysians -- thought to be organisers -- were called in to assist with investigations. Nine were subsequently issued warnings.

Following this news, I asked people on Facebook and Twitter what they thought about