Quest Nutrition - Protein Bar Taste Test Review

www.questnutrition.com
www.questtraining.com

I do a taste test and review of two different protein bars by Quest Nutrition. I taste and review the "Cookies & Cream" and "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough" protein bars in this video. If you're interested in purchasing these products, feel free to visit the first link above. I was fortunate enough to receive a "Thank You" package from Quest themselves, so it was only right that I did this video for them. I hope that you guys enjoyed the video, and go out and grab some of these great tasting bars today.

Have you had these bars before? If so, what is your favorite flavor? Drop me a comment down below and tell me what flavors you would recommend to a friend.

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In White House Pitches, Rosy View of Health Care Site

Led by David Simas, a senior communications adviser in the West Wing, and sometimes joined by Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, and others, the fast-paced PowerPoint briefings showed images of a shiny new Web site that was elegantly designed, simple to use and ready for what officials hoped would eventually be a flood of customers on Oct. 1. One lawmaker recalled comparisons to Travelocity, the travel booking site.

In fact, the rosy presentations set President Obama up for even more criticism when the portal was swamped by millions of people who quickly found out they could not log on. The technical problems that emerged have raised questions — still not entirely answered — about how much the president’s aides knew, or should have known, about the site’s troubles.

“We knew this was a complex undertaking but did not see the huge volume of demand coming,” Mr. McDonough said in an interview this week. “And that volume has exacerbated, as the president said the other day, the underlying problems. The fact is we’ll get to the bottom of it and get it fixed.”

The issue of when administration officials recognized the Web site’s potential for major problems has emerged as one of the key political talking points on Capitol Hill. During a hearing Thursday of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, angry lawmakers grilled executives from the private companies hired to design and build the site about whether they had warned government officials.

The executives testified that “end to end” testing of the Web site did not take place until two weeks before the site made its debut — about the same time that the briefings by Mr. Simas and Mr. McDonough were taking place. And they said problems with the software that powers the Web site were communicated to senior officials in the president’s administration.

Cheryl R. Campbell, a senior vice president of CGI Federal, a unit of the CGI Group, the main contractor on the federal exchange, said that all of her company’s work had been done “under the direction and supervision” of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as C.M.S.

Andrew M. Slavitt, the UnitedHealth executive responsible for Quality Software Services, told lawmakers that “we made everyone aware of the risks that we saw.” He added later, “We informed C.M.S. that more testing was necessary.”

Some specialists involved in the repair effort have estimated it will be six to eight weeks before the online system operates tolerably, and longer before all the kinks are worked out.

According to some accounts, the project’s managers at the Department of Health and Human Services assured the White House that any remaining problems could be worked out once the Web site went live, but other senior department officials predicted serious trouble and advised delaying the rollout.

But on a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officials twice declined to answer questions about whether Kathleen Sebelius, Mr. Obama’s health secretary, knew about the problems. Asked if Marilyn Tavenner, the agency’s director, or anyone else had alerted Ms. Sebelius, an official cut off a reporter.

“Next question,” he said.

Mr. McDonough said in the interview that officials “anticipated bumps and glitches and problems.” But he and other White House officials declined to say specifically what information officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Health and Human Services Department communicated to their counterparts at the White House before the Web site was opened to the public.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said this week that “we did not know until the problems manifested themselves after the launch that they would be as significant as they have turned out to be.”

The briefings in late September, including one for editors and reporters at The New York Times on Sept. 26, were designed to counter assertions by Republicans that the federal health marketplace would not work and was not ready. Mr. Simas, who worked as one of Mr. Obama’s polling data analysts during the 2012 campaign, served as the top pitchman, eagerly whipping through graphs and charts. The briefings focused largely on the Web site’s appearance and ease of use, rather than the software powering the site.

Robert Pear contributed reporting from Washington, and Sharon LaFraniere from New York.

Bits Blog: Health Sites Under Scrutiny Over Mining of Data

Millions of people rely on Web sites like WebMD and Health.com for information about depression, sexually transmitted diseases, cancer and other sensitive personal health issues. But it can be difficult for consumers to understand how health sites may capture, analyze and share information about user searches and other activities — even the small minority of people who manage to slog all the way through the privacy policies.

Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois.

In an effort to increase industry transparency, Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, has opened an inquiry into the data-mining practices of some popular health sites.

On Tuesday, she sent letters to officials at eight sites asking for detailed information about their companies’ data collection, data storage and data sharing practices. The sites included: about.com; drugs.com; health.com; mayoclinic.com; menshealth.com; mercola.com; WebMd.com; and weightwatchers.com.

In the letters to the sites’ executives, Ms. Madigan said she was concerned about the potential dissemination of information related to people’s private health concerns.

“Health-related information, which would be protected from disclosure when said in a doctor’s office, can be captured, shared, and sold when entered into a Web site,” she wrote. “These concerns are likely overlooked by consumers, as the disclosures about capturing and sharing their information are often buried in privacy policies not found on websites’ main pages.”

WebMD’s privacy policy, for example, says that the site does not make a user’s personal information – like a name or address — available to third parties for marketing purposes.

But third parties, the privacy policy says, may use non-personal data to target WebMD users with ads related to their interests. The policy added that WebMD may combine personal and nonpersonal information about users on the site, or may collate that data with information gathered from external sources.

Risa Fisher, a spokeswoman for WebMD, said that the company had just received Ms. Madigan’s letter of inquiry and planned to provide the information she requested about its user data practices.

“Privacy is very important to WebMD and our policies are designed to fully protect the personal health information of our users,” Ms. Fisher said.

The Illinois inquiry comes after the publication a few days ago of a research letter in a medical journal reporting that some popular health portals leaked information about users’ health searches to third parties, like social networks or ad networks, operating on their Web sites.

For his research, Marco D. Huesch, a health care policy researcher at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at University of Southern California searched for content related to depression, herpes and cancer on 20 popular health-related Web sites.

In the letter about his study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, he said that 13 of those sites used third-party tracking elements like cookies or social media plug-ins. Seven of the sites, he wrote, leaked his health searches to third-party trackers.

Although Mr. Huesch wrote that he could not determine whether the third parties misused the information, he found the leakage of the health searches worrisome in itself.

“The ramifications could span embarrassment, discrimination in the labor market,” Mr. Huesch wrote, “or the deliberate decision by marketers not to offer or advertise particular goods and services to an individual, based solely on the companies’ privately gathered knowledge.”

The online advertising industry is keenly aware of such concerns.

This year, the Network Advertising Initiative, an industry self-regulatory association for third-party digital ad companies, revised its code of conduct to require that its members obtain user permission before collecting information about certain specific health conditions.

The conditions that would require user permission include “all types of cancer, mental health related conditions, and sexually transmitted diseases,” the revised code said, but not acne, high blood pressure, heartburn, cold and flu, or cholesterol management.

The self-regulatory group has nearly 100 members, according to its site. The updated version of code of conduct is scheduled to take effect next year.

Bits Blog: A Digital Diaper for Tracking Children’s Health

A screen shot from Pixie Scientific’s Web site, showing its diapers and accompanying smartphone app that can transmit certain health information to a physician.

Talk about changing with the times.

A New York start-up called Pixie Scientific has developed a diaper that the company says can detect possible urinary tract infections, kidney dysfunctions, and dehydration, accompanied by a smartphone app that can transmit the information to a physician.

“I was driving with my wife and daughter one day, when my wife asked if the baby had wet herself,” said Yaroslav Faybishenko, Pixie’s founder. “I realized she was sitting in data.”

Other so-called quantified self products have been developed for adults, like products from Jawbone and FitBit that create digital records of calorie expenditure and sleep habits. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, a Taiwanese company called AiQ showed off shirts that it said could measure things like heart rate and other biometric signals.

In contrast to those things, the technology behind the diaper is relatively simple, and it owes as much to the quality of smartphone cameras as it does to clever chemistry.

At the front of the diaper is a patch with several colored squares. Each square represents a different interaction with a protein, water content or bacteria, and changes color if it detects something is outside of normal parameters. There is also a neutral white square, to more easily check for color changes in the other squares.

A smartphone app takes a picture and can make precise readings of the chemical data based on  color changes. The data is uploaded to a central location, where physicians can get information about how the child is doing and whether the baby needs further testing.

The diaper is expected to be tested at Benioff Children’s Hospital of the University of California, San Francisco this September. Columbia University’s children’s hospital is considering a similar study. If successful, the product may then be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for final approval.

Mr. Faybishenko said he thought the diaper, which he said would cost about 30 percent more than regular diapers, had potential as a consumer product, for parents who want to keep regular tabs on their child’s health. Rather than overwhelming parents with data, the app is likely to let them know whether they should see a pediatrician for one or more possible conditions. With the parents’ permission, the detailed urine analysis data could be sent to a doctor’s office.

“You really don’t want to overload parents with data they don’t understand,” he said. “Eventually the quantified self idea will be mostly silent and unobtrusive, just something inside the existing flow of life.”

Mr. Faybishenko said the company was working on other tests, but would not specify what they were.

F.C.C. to Study Health Effects of Cellphone Radiation

It’s going to take a stronger push from the public to demand that Congress not duck gun control.

It is in America’s interest that Congress ratify proposed changes to the International Monetary Fund.

Lil Wayne & Diddy Health Status’

 

Wayne's fine... He ain't got no worries

—
Karen Ci?il (@KarenCivil) October 26, 2012

TMZ reports Lil Wayne’s private jet had to make an emergency landing in Texas yesterday after he suffered seizure-like symptons. He was released hours later and is currently “doing fine”.

Meanwhile, Teflon Diddy was involved in a car accident in L.A. on Wednesday and walked away with minor injuries. Yesterday, the mogul’s rep spoke on his behalf. Get well you two.

“Sean Combs sustained multiple injuries in yesterday’s car accident including to his neck, ribs and collarbone. He is currently receiving treatment for these injuries from his physicians and would like to thank all of his fans for the outpouring of support that he has received since the accident.”

UPDATE: Lil Wayne’s management says:

Lil Wayne was successfully released from the hospital after being treated for a severe migraine and dehydration. He is at home on doctor mandated rest and will return to work soon. He appreciates all of his fans for their support and love.

Tags: diddy, lil wayne