Month: November 2019

The Healthiest Items You Can Order From Your Favorite Fast Food Restaurant

Post author By HealthyWay Staff Writer
Post date November 27, 2019

Despite best-laid plans, the reality is that almost all of us rely on fast food on days when there isn’t enough time to prepare a meal from scratch. We’re in good company. According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2013, 28 percent of Americans reported eating fast food at least once a week, while 16 percent reported having fast food several times a week.
The good news? Fast food chains have more healthy options than ever, and a nutritious and filling meal is now just a quick drive-thru trip away.
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If you were to go by the lunches seen on social media and food blogs, you’d think that everyone else is going to open up picture-perfect Mason jar salads and intricately composed bento boxes once noon rolls around. As idyllic as this seems, the reality is that people—particularly millennials—are working longer hours and spending more money than ever on food outside the home.
Fast food chains are scrambling to benefit from this trend, and we can leverage that to the advantage of our schedules and our bodies.
Studying the effects of fast food consumption has traditionally produced some grim statistics; a study conducted over a period of 15 years by researchers at the University of Minnesota found a correlation between fast food consumption, weight gain, and insulin resistance leading to an increased risk for type 2 diabetes and obesity. That same study also concluded that people who ate fast food two or more times a week were at a higher risk than those who didn’t eat fast food.
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But eating fast food isn’t all bad news. In fact, this is the time to be seeking out healthy menu items. Popular chains that were once thought of as entirely unhealthy are introducing menu items that cater to a more health-conscious audience.
The New Yorker article “Freedom From Fries” describes how consumer trends such as the demand for food transparency and quality ingredients have been driving the fast food industry’s shift toward healthier food options.
Gone are the days when being health conscious while eating fast food meant a small order of fries and a sad side salad made of limp lettuce and slimy cucumber slices. But it is still important to do some research before buying what you think is healthy. What appears safe in terms of calories and fat can often be the complete opposite.
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So how do you choose the healthiest option at your favorite fast food restaurant? Registered dietician Lindsay Pleskot specializes in teaching and inspiring her clients to make healthy choices and was able to offer us some practical advice on how to get the most nutritional bang for your buck from fast food menu items.
Pleskot explains that ironically, some of of the most deceptive items on fast food menus are salads. Fast food entrée salads are notorious for being marketed as healthy choices when in reality they often have sky-high calorie counts and large amounts of saturated fat and sodium.
The problem, Pleskot says, is that “we seem to automatically associate salads with health and nutrition but often they are loaded with tons of dressing and toppings that will add up quickly; think cheese, nuts, croutons, and bacon, to name a few.”

Pleskot also gives a few general rules for keeping your fast food on the healthy side. She advises keeping a close eye on sauces and condiments when possible, seeking out grilled instead of deep-fried items, and asking for the dressing on the side. A spritz of lemon juice on a salad is a calorie-free way to stretch out the dressing so that you aren’t stuck using the whole packet.
Whether you’re a Starbucks kinda gal or a devoted fan of Taco Bell, there’s something at every major fast food chain for anyone in need of a healthy meal in minutes.
Here we break it down by some of our favorite big names in the fast food game.

Starbucks

There are some mornings when your alarm clock fights a losing battle against a few extra precious moments of sleep. When even a bowl of cold cereal takes too much time, the food menu at Starbucks includes healthy options that will leave you feeling satisfied and full until lunchtime. Pleskot advises skipping the lemon loaf and ordering the Spinach, Feta, and Cage Free Egg White Breakfast Wrap to start your day.
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With only 280 calories per serving, this savory wrap contains a very filling 20 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber. Still feeling hungry? Pleskot suggests adding a fruit cup or veggies and dip to round out the meal.
Not all of Starbucks’ breakfast sandwiches are equally as healthy though. Be wary of their Sausage, Cheddar, and Egg Breakfast Sandwich, which has 480 calories and 29 grams of fat per serving.

McDonald’s

Although entrée salads from fast food restaurants have a bad reputation for being full of empty calories and saturated fat, there are definitely healthier options to be found if you do your research
For example, McDonald’s Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad contains an impressive 330 calories, 11 grams of fat, 33 grams of protein, and 6 grams of fiber, which, as a whole, should keep you feeling satisfied for hours.
Compare the grilled chicken salad to McDonald’s Southwest Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Salad for an eye-opening example of how food preparation and high calorie salad toppers can make a huge difference.
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Thanks to the deep fried chicken, shredded cheese, and fried chili-lime tortilla strips, this salad comes in at 500 calories and 25 grams of fat.

Taco Bell

Taco Bell has been a vegetarian staple for generations, but today, the chain quietly offers all diners an easy, tasty way to cut calories. It’s called “Fresco style,” and it replaces high-calorie sauces and toppings with a bright, healthy pico de gallo.
Even the Taco Bell Bean Burrito, a classic for low-budget vegetarians in a hurry, is available Fresco style…although the pico de gallo substitution only shaves 20 calories off this already-minimal dish.
With 350 calories, 9 grams of fat, 13 grams of protein, and a whopping 11 grams of dietary fiber, even the non-Fresco Bean Burrito packs a filling and nutritious punch for those days when you have no time to stop and eat.
While Fresco-style food from Taco Bell offers several healthy options, be wary of their regular menu items, as they can contain astronomical amounts of calories, fat, and sodium.
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For example, the Cheesy Gordita Crunch contains 500 calories and fully half of the recommended daily intake of saturated fat.

Wendy’s

As many health-conscious Wendy’s customers will know, this fast food chain has had quite a few diet-friendly side options for a while now. Their side salads, baked potatoes, and chili are all smart choices even if you’re aiming for a complete meal.
Ordering an entrée, however, takes a little bit of research. Pleskot advises always “looking out for anything deep fried and breaded. For example, opt for sandwiches made with grilled chicken breast instead of a crispy chicken sandwich … it offers just as much protein without all of the extra fat, calories, and salt.”
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Wendy’s Grilled Chicken Sandwich fits the bill perfectly, with 370 calories per serving, 10 grams of fat, and 34 grams of protein.
Compare this grilled chicken sandwich to the restaurant’s Homestyle Asiago Ranch Chicken Club. This deep-fried chicken breast sandwich is smothered in a creamy ranch dressing and Asiago cheese with a topping of bacon. The damage? 650 calories, 34 grams of fat, and almost double the sodium compared to the Grilled Chicken Sandwich.
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In need of something more? Add a side salad or a plain baked potato for extra energy without a ton of calories.

Dunkin’ Donuts

The key to eating a healthy meal at Dunkin’ Donuts is to make a healthy food selection and then stick to drip coffee, an Americano, or a cappuccino made with skim milk as an accompanying beverage.
The Turkey Sausage Wake Up Wrap contains a satisfying 240 calories and 11 grams of protein to get your day started.
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Looking for a meatless but still filling alternative? Dunkin’ Donuts’ Egg White Veggie Flatbread is a vegetarian option that still contains plenty of protein with very little fat.
Speaking of the Veggie Egg White Flatbread, it’s part of Dunkin’ Donuts’ DDSMART collection. Look for the DDSMART logo to find choices that contain a quarter less fat, sodium, sugar, or calories than the restaurant’s typical fare.
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If you don’t spot the DDSMART logo, be careful ordering off the Dunkin’ Donuts menu. There are some real calorie bombs here. For instance, the Sausage Egg & Cheese Croissant is an example of a nutritionally catastrophic breakfast menu item. With 720 calories per serving, 100 percent of the recommended daily intake of saturated fat, and sky-high sodium levels, this is one breakfast sandwich to steer clear of.

Burger King

Are you craving a burger but worry it will hinder your healthy eating goals? Believe it or not, a classic cheeseburger from Burger King is a relatively healthy choice when the need for a burger strikes. A single cheeseburger contains 280 calories and is fairly low in fat and sodium.
If you want to be even more virtuous and skip the cheese, a plain Burger King hamburger has only 240 calories and 10 grams of fat. It’s also comparatively low in sodium.
Feeling like a splurge? Pair a Burger King hamburger with a small order of onion rings to complete your traditional fast food meal with gusto.
While a Burger King cheeseburger may be relatively healthy option, beware the Bacon & Cheese Whopper. Unlike a regular cheeseburger, this sandwich weighs in with 790 calories per serving and 51 grams of fat per serving.
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No discussion of health and Burger King is complete without a look at the famous Impossible Whopper, which features a high-tech plant-based patty that’s virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Does the lack of animal protein make the Impossible Whopper any healthier, though?
Sadly, the answer is “not really.” An Impossible Whopper contains 630 calories, compared to the beef Whopper’s 660. Not much difference there. The same goes for fat; the Impossible Whopper contains just 6 fewer grams than the real thing, which has 40 grams of fat. Both burgers are catastrophically high in sodium. The traditional Whopper contains 980 milligrams of the stuff, and the Impossible version has 1,080 milligrams.
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For context, the American Heart Association recommends a hard limit of 2,300 milligrams of sodium for most adults, and they’d really prefer we limit ourselves to less than 1,500.

Subway

Subway has a reputation as a healthier alternative to the fried-and-greasy fast food model. Surely you can’t crash your diet on a fresh deli sub, right? Well, that depends.
If you’re satisfied with a 6-inch Veggie Delite on 9-grain wheat bread—without cheese and substituting a splash of vinegar for calorie-rich mayonnaise—you can eat pretty healthy. Such a sandwich build (with lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, red onions, green peppers, and cucumbers as your only toppings) weighs in at just 200 calories and only 2 grams of fat, none of it saturated.
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Not bad. This sandwich also has a relatively low share of sodium, with just 280 milligrams and a not-negligible amount of dietary fiber with 5 grams. If a sub like that sounds good, feel free to eat fresh all you want.
If you’re more of an Ultimate Meatball Marinara kind of gal, watch out. Subway recommends ordering this sandwich on their Ultimate Cheesy Garlic Bread, which is a calorie-packed powerhouse.
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A 6-inch Ultimate Meatball Marinara with that bread option contains 730 calories—and that’s without any toppings whatsoever. Load on the melted mozzarella, lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles, and you’re up to 830 calories for a 6-inch sub. This build also contains 52 grams of fat and more sodium than the American Heart Association recommends all day (1,720 milligrams).

KFC

Eaters on a strict caloric budget aren’t likely to seek out fried chicken, but sometimes you just have to eat. If KFC is all you see, that’s where you’ll end up. And the truth is that the calorie counts on certain KFC menu items might surprise you (in a good way).
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The trick here is to avoid the breading. Stick with Kentucky Grilled Chicken, which, yes, is actually what it’s called. A single drumstick, grilled, only contains 90 calories, 4 grams of fat, and 290 milligrams of sodium.
If you can’t resist the temptation of KFC Original Recipe fried chicken, you actually don’t have that much to worry about as long as you exercise portion control. A single Original Recipe drumstick contains 120 calories, 7 grams of fat, and 380 grams of sodium.
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Even the sandwiches at KFC aren’t out of control, calorie-wise. A Crispy Colonol’s Sandwich contains 470 calories—which isn’t great, but won’t put you over the top in a single sitting. You do have to watch out for sodium with KFC sandwiches, though. The above example contains 1,170 milligrams of the stuff, which is more than half of the American Heart Association’s absolute hard ceiling of 2,300 milligrams.

Jack in the Box

Typically, a late-night dinner at Jack in the Box means you’ve made a bad decision somewhere along the way. But you don’t have to pile mistake on mistake with your order; Jack in the Box has a few items that will fill you up without breaking your diet goals.
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You might have noticed a grilled-chicken trend here. Jack in the Box keeps up the streak. Check out their Chicken Fajita Pita, which makes a decent meal with 340 calories, 12 grams of fat, and a whopping 23 grams of protein.
Unfortunately, the Chicken Fajita Pita wasn’t created with heart health in mind. It contains 1,000 milligrams of sodium—and that doesn’t include the side of salsa that comes with each order.
Even better is the Jack in the Box Side Salad, although it won’t make a very satisfying meal on its own. With just 20 calories (or 45 with a drizzle of balsamic vinaigrette), this dish probably isn’t enough to beat the hunger pangs. Still, it makes a smart addition to one of the outlet’s grilled chicken dishes.
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Stay away from the Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger, though. This grease bomb packs 930 calories, 65(!) grams of fat, and almost 1,600 milligrams of sodium. When you absolutely must have a burger, stick with the plain Jack in the Box hamburger, which weighs in at 340 calories and 18 grams of fat.

Sonic Drive-In

For healthy eating at your neighborhood Sonic, the word to remember is “wraps.” More specifically, the Grilled Chicken Wrap. It isn’t exactly low in calories—it has 480 of them—but it’s among the lighter options on this particularly heavy menu.
A word of warning to sodium-conscious eaters, though: The Sonic Grilled Chicken Wrap is salty. It contains 1,720 milligrams of sodium, which is a lot.
A less sodium-packed option is the Jr. Burger. This is a better choice for the health-conscious among us, with 330 calories, 16 grams of fat, and 610 milligrams of sodium. The trade-off, of course, is that this is a small sandwich with just 15 grams of protein. You may be more satisfied by the Grilled Chicken Wrap, which offers 31 grams of protein.
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As for menu items to avoid, where do we start? The SuperSONIC Bacon Double Cheeseburger with mayonnaise is loaded with 1,030 calories, 65 grams of fat, and 1,880 milligrams of sodium. A Chicken Club Toaster Sandwich, which sounds healthy enough, contains 770 calories and 43 grams of fat. And, if you can resist the temptation, you probably want to avoid the Footlong Quarter Pound Coney Hot Dog. This beast has 790 calories, 49 grams of fat, and 2,300 milligrams of sodium. Oof.

Chipotle Mexican Grill

Chipotle famously only uses 51 ingredients in all their dishes. But how healthy are those 51 ingredients in their various combinations?
As with Subway, that all depends on you. Fast food restaurants that give their customers wide leeway in constructing their own dishes complicate the attempt to eat healthy—but they also give you more power over what you’re putting into your own body. All in all, it’s a beneficial trend, we’d say.
Anyway, for a healthy, satisfying meal at Chipotle, start with a burrito bowl. A single burrito-sized flour tortilla contains 320 calories, all of which could be spent on tastier, healthier ingredients.
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Likewise, it’s a good move to skip the rice. Black beans provide plenty of starch on their own. As for what to include, start with the veggie burrito bowl with black beans. Add an extra serving of fajita vegetables if you’d like, and don’t skimp on the guacamole. This condiment (if you can call it that) is relatively calorie-dense, with 230 calories per serving, but the heart-healthy fats of avocados tip the scale in guacamole’s favor.
Choose tomatillo green-chili salsa to round out your lunch. A burrito bowl like this only carries 395 calories and 23.5 grams of fat. More importantly, it’s loaded with vitamin C and helps to keep you feeling full with 14 grams of dietary fiber.
If you’re counting calories, you probably don’t want to build a carnitas burrito with white rice, pinto beans, and guacamole. A meal like that carries an incredible 1,100 calories, with 48.5 grams of fat and nearly 2,000 milligrams of sodium. They may be real ingredients, but they’re not necessarily diet food.

Hardee’s / Carl’s Jr.

Hardee’s (or Carl’s Jr., depending on where you live) may not seem like a healthy-eating mainstay, and that criticism is fair. However, you can’t credibly accuse the chain of failing to serve more health-conscious customers.
The restaurant’s menu offers a selection of “better for you” options, including designations like “Low Carb It,” “Trim It,” and “Gluten-Sensitive.” Yep, this is a fast food restaurant where you can order a Thickburger in a whole-leaf lettuce wrap instead of a bun.
For breakfast, try the “Trim It”-branded Frisco Breakfast Sandwich. It’s an eggy, meaty meal that will satisfy well into your lunch hour. This product contains 360 calories, 11 grams of fat, and 19 grams of protein.
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Low-sodium eaters should steer clear, though; the Frisco Breakfast Sandwich is loaded with 1,100 milligrams of sodium.
The “Trim It” collection’s Charbroiled BBQ Chicken Sandwich is Hardee’s original low-fat menu item, and it remains a decent choice for the hungry health enthusiast.
The Charbroiled BBQ Chicken Sandwich provides 18 grams of protein, which is a lot for a lunch item that only contains 190 calories. It’s also low in fat, with just 3.5 grams. And while the Charbroiled BBQ Chicken Sandwich’s sodium content is a bit high at 910 milligrams, it won’t put you over the limit as long as you plan the rest of the day’s meals carefully.
Avoid the ⅓-pound Bacon Cheese Thickburger, except as a very occasional treat. This sandwich is certainly hearty, with 850 calories and 42 grams of protein. However, the 54 grams of fat, 130 milligrams of cholesterol, and 1,700 milligrams of sodium make this item a no-go for those of us who are trying to eat healthier.

Steak ‘n Shake

If there’s a healthy milkshake out there in the world, we have not met it (though we’d like to). So we’re afraid we’ll have to stick to the “steak” side of the menu here. As you might have guessed, the healthiest lunch and dinner option on the Steak ‘n Shake menu is probably its Grilled Chicken Sandwich. It’s got 360 calories and just 7 grams of fat, but it provides a belly-filling 28 grams of protein.
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If you’re in the mood for a burger, you can’t go wrong with the Steak n’ Shake Single. This no-frills steakburger contains 320 calories, 14 grams of fat, and 15 grams of protein.
Maybe stay away from the Bacon ‘n Cheese Triple if you’re watching what you eat. Three burger patties is a lot, as reflected by this sandwich’s calorie count of 1,030. Add in the 74 grams of fat and 170 milligrams of cholesterol, and you’ve got a meal that bites back, health-wise.

Hungry yet?

We don’t mean to suggest that eating fast food is always damaging to your health. Just pull up this handy guide next time you find yourself in the drive-thru and choose carefully; there’s plenty out there that will fit into your eating plan.
Also, it’s important to recognize that the problem with fast food isn’t that it’s fast; the issue is with how the food is prepared and the extra ingredients that are piled on for extra flavor. If fast food is a regular part of your diet, then stick to the tips in this article.
But, if it isn’t, take Pleskot’s advice about occasionally treating yourself to the real, greasy deal: “I think the first thing to consider when eating fast food or eating out in general is whether or not this is something you do all the time or is this a once in a while treat? If it really is just once in a while, enjoy your favorite and eat it mindfully!”

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Tru Storys: The Costliest Typos Of All Time

Post author By HealthyWay Staff Writer
Post date November 21, 2019

A simple typo can have massive consequences.
Mistakes happen. Most of the time, they don’t really affect things in a meaningful way—you might be slightly embarrassed if you misspell a few words or swap out some homonyms, but you probably won’t suffer too terribly. Hey, everyone screws up; you forgive, forget, and move on.
That’s not always the case. Just ask Lynne Lambert. Her company, NYC Subway Line, is a small business that assigns data entry duties to a single employee. Accuracy is crucial because each invoice represents a fairly significant portion of the company’s revenue. A mistake can have serious ramifications, even if it appears fairly innocuous.
“We had a person in that job who would swing from very good to terrible within a day,” Lambert says. “One day, we discovered two errors on invoices she’d made for our biggest customer. I pointed them out and asked [her] to correct them, then resend the invoices via email with an apology.”

Lambert checked up on the employee later to make sure that she’d followed through.
“The invoice was correct, but the note said, ‘We are sorry for the incontinence,'” Lambert recalls. Flabbergasted, she pointed out the mistake to the employee, who blamed it on spellcheck (probably an appropriate explanation, since if it wasn’t a misspelling…well, never mind). She gave the employee another chance.
“She then sent the corrected invoice with the exact same note within two minutes of the first,” Lambert says. “That’s when I knew she was out of chances. We had to let her go.”

In a sense, Lambert was fortunate. While that typo cost an employee her job, the most significant typos in history have had more far-reaching consequences. We looked into the stories behind a few of the most costly typographical errors of all time.

1. A missing hyphen destroyed a NASA spacecraft.

In 1962, NASA launched Mariner 1, a spacecraft intended to fly by Venus and send vital scientific data back to Earth on its infinite journey into the cosmos. Instead, it veered off course, forcing a safety officer to detonate it about five minutes after launch.
A review board later determined that a missing hyphen in the Mariner 1’s coded instructions played a major role in the disaster. The typo caused an issue with the spacecraft’s tracking mechanism.

If you’re picturing some programmer missing a key while setting up the Mariner 1’s software, that’s not exactly the case; at the time, NASA coded computers with punch cards. The hyphen—referred to as a “bar” in NASA’s parlance—should have told the computer to ignore veering movements resulting from a radio guidance failure without attempting to correct course.
The “bar” had been missing from other successful flights that relied on the same software, but radio failure compounded the problem for the Mariner 1. In other words, the missing hyphen wasn’t the only issue with this spaceflight, just the most significant preventable error.

“[The radio guidance failure combined with the missing hyphen] caused the computer to swing automatically into a series of unnecessary course corrections with erroneous steering commands, which finally threw the spacecraft off course,” NASA wrote.
Fortunately, the Mariner 1 was an unmanned mission. Still, the error cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $80 million—in 1962. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $663 million today. That’s a lot of money for a single hyphen.

2. In 1988, an unfortunate typo led to a $10 million lawsuit.

The plaintiff: Gloria Quinan, owner of the Banner Travel agency in Sonoma, California. She placed an ad in the Yellow Pages, but as you might have guessed if you paid attention to the title of this article, the phone book’s copy editor apparently skipped a day.
The ad was supposed to advertise “exotic travel.” Instead, it promoted “erotic travel.” To some tourists, that’s certainly an intriguing offer, but it wasn’t the type of promotion that Banner Travel had intended to promote.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Quinan says she developed severe health issues due to stress from the misprinted ad. She claimed that her business was effectively ruined. Unsurprisingly, the defendant, Pacific Bell, declined to comment (though we’re sure they offered a sexy, sexy apology at some point).

”Her older clients, which was most of her business, want to avoid her now,” Quinan’s attorney, George Altenberg, told the Associated Press.
In accordance with California law, the records regarding the case were destroyed—understandable, given its age—so we’re not sure of the outcome. Regardless, it wasn’t great press for Pacific Bell, and it certainly wasn’t great press for the Banner Travel agency. We’re sure it also disappointed a few frisky travelers.

3. New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched a memorable advertising campaign in 2013.

That year, the MTA was forced to dispose of up to $250,000 worth of new subway maps. The reason? They didn’t display accurate fare information.
“[The MTA] is very embarrassed about this,” an anonymous source told The New York Post at the time. “They were frantically calling the booths, trying to get these maps back.”
The maps listed minimum prices for pay-per-ride cards as $4.50 instead of $5. That’s a minor mistake, right? Not quite. The entire purpose of the campaign was to print maps with accurate pricing.

“They weren’t coming out with a new map because they were changing the map,” said Paul Flores, an MTA station agent, in 2013. “They were coming out with a new map because they were changing the price. That was the sole purpose. And they couldn’t even get that right.”
How does that sort of mistake happen? You’d think that someone would catch the typo during the printing process.
“When a document is extremely important, it goes through hundreds of hands,” says James, a freelance copy editor who recently edited the quarterly report for a Fortune 100 company. “You essentially have to edit the document while it’s being printed, and that’s not an exaggeration.”

“Ironically, we see more of these mistakes with massive campaigns since everyone assumes that someone else has looked over the document—or in this case, the map.”
By MTA union estimates, 80,000 incorrect maps were erroneously printed.

4. Back in 1631, a misprinted Bible ruined its publishers’ lives…and gave readers some terrible advice.

Religious typos are particularly unfortunate because the mistakes can ruin important messages. This Easter, for example, a UK church printed a celebratory banner that hadn’t been through spellcheck. It reportedly read: “Chris is Risen.” That’s great news for Chris, we suppose, but it was a massive waste of money for the church.
Still, that embarrassing blunder pales in comparison to an infamous 17th-century printing error. Royal publishers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas sent out 1,000 copies of the Bible without noticing a fairly striking misprint: When listing the seventh of the Ten Commandments, the book left out the word “not.”

The resulting verse read “Thou shalt commit adultery.”
The Anglican Church wasn’t thrilled, as the Bible was intended to represent the faith of the royalty. King Charles I ordered the Bibles destroyed, but several survived the censorship. Recently, The Telegraph reported that one of 10 known copies of the “Wicked Bible” went to auction and was expected to sell for around $21,000; it sold for about $44,000.

History has known worse typos. As here in the Wicked Bible. pic.twitter.com/zXJxV56pIE

— David Drew (@NHSwhistleblowr) March 19, 2018

Unfortunately, the publishers didn’t fare so well. They lost their printing license and faced heavy fines for their mistake. According to one text, the Archbishop of Canterbury said:
“I knew the time when great care was had about printing, the Bibles especially. Good compositors and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and letter rare and fair, every way of the best. But now the paper is nought, the composers boys, and the correctors unlearned.”
That’s the 17th-century equivalent of saying, “Your Bible is bad, your editing is bad, and you should feel bad.”

5. An erroneous trade nearly ruined a major banking firm.

Granted, we’re not usually interested in stories of corporate stock trading, but try to put yourself in the shoes of a Mizuho Securities employee in December 2005.

The company attempted to sell 610,000 shares of J-COM Co., Ltd., a staffing services company, at one yen each. That was an amazing deal—at the time, a single share of J-COM went for 610,000 yen. The issue compounded throughout the day, eventually resulting in estimated losses of 27 billion yen (roughly $255 million).
As you might have guessed, someone at Mizuho Securities had attempted to sell a single share for 610,000 yen, but somehow, the values for “value” and “number of stocks” switched. The error probably occurred due to an issue with the firm’s electronic trading system, and in 2009, a court determined that the Tokyo Stock Exchange was 70 percent liable for the mistake.
That wasn’t the only time a human error created a massive disaster on the stock market. In 1994, Chilean stockbroker Juan Pablo Davila lost his company $30 million when he accidentally entered a trade as “buy” instead of “sell” on his computer. In an attempt to rectify his mistake, Davila made additional (unauthorized) trades…and lost $175 million by the end of the day.
Davila served three years in prison for his catastrophic series of bad decisions, and today, the word “davilar” is part of the Spanish language. Its meaning: “to botch things up royally.”

6. An extra comma cost the United States government millions of dollars.

What do you do if you’re a major government and you’re recovering from, oh, a massive Civil War?

If you answered “tariffs,” congratulations, you’re the United States during Reconstruction (also, how are you reading this article?). The Tariff Act of 1872 was intended to restore the economy by changing some of the taxes on imported goods. It was a crucial piece of legislation, since the United States didn’t have a federal income tax at the time; in some years, tariffs provided for up to 95 percent of the federal budget.

The Ulysses S. Grant administration enacted the Tariff Act of 1872 to reduce rates on manufactured goods while maintaining other tariffs. Unfortunately, it included an enormous error: an extra comma.

Like previous tariff acts, the legislation had an extensive list of duty-free products. People wouldn’t have to pay taxes when importing these items. Here’s the important line that made its way into the act:
“[Exempted from the tax are] Fruit, plants tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation.”

The language was supposed to read “fruit plants,” referring to plants that were imported specifically to grow in the United States. Because the comma made its way into the document, however, all fruits were exempted from tariffs—and imported fruits were big business. When importers noticed the error, they pounced (and here, we’re using “pounced” to mean “slowly litigated their case in a boring legal way that probably doesn’t need much further explanation”).
In total, the United States was forced to refund $2 million in collected fruit tariffs, which was about 0.65 percent of the government’s entire federal budget in 1875. Despite a public outcry, nobody could figure out how the comma made its way into the document, but needless to say, it was removed in subsequent tariff acts.

7. A car dealership sent out scratch-off tickets…and all of them were winners.

Technically, this is a printing error rather than a typo, but we think it’s painful enough to include in this list.
If you’ve ever lived in any place ever (and we’re guessing you have), you’ve probably received junk mail from car dealerships. You throw most of them away—except the scratch-off tickets. Everyone loves scratching their way to a prize, even if that prize is something lame like a free test drive or a short conversation with an oddly aggressive used car salesperson.

But for one New Mexico car dealership, the stakes were substantially higher. In 2007, Roswell Honda sent out 30,000 scratch-off tickets to local drivers—and each one was a winner. Recipients believed that they’d won a $1,000 grand prize, and within days, the dealership was swarmed by excited “winners.”
The winning tickets were, of course, not real winners; they were misprinted.
“Unfortunately, they missed it in the proofreading,” Jeff Kohn, Roswell Honda general manager, told The Associated Press.
Adding that his dealership was making a “full-faith effort” to investigate the error, Kohn said that he was able to stop 20,000 more mailers from reaching his potential customers.
“[This is] not how we portray ourselves or our community,” he said.
Kohn blamed the mistake on Atlanta-based ad agency Force Media Group, which issued a press release shortly after the mailers made the news.
“It was a printing error,” said Force Media Group spokesperson Jim Fitzpatrick. “Instead of only one ticket in 50,000 having the winning notification under the scratch‐off, they all did. We’re going to make up for that in this new sweepstakes by actually increasing both the value and number of prizes offered as well as by dramatically increasing the chances of winning. The dealer and Force looked at the situation and decided we had to make it better to make it right.”

8. An airline offered its passengers a once-in-a-lifetime fare.

In 2006, Italian airline Alitalia (try saying those last three words three times fast) offered an incredible opportunity: For only $33, travelers could fly from Toronto to Larnaca, a small resort town in Cyprus.That was a shocking discount, since business-class fares between the cities usually cost around $2,500.
Alitalia quickly sold hundreds of tickets, which would have been great news if they’d actually intended to sell them in the first place. Someone at the airline had messed up, pricing the tickets at 1 percent of their actual value.

The company suspended ticket sales within a few hours, but the damage was done. To their credit, Alitalia honored 509 of the bookings (the rest, which hadn’t been ticketed, were refunded).
“It was a human mistake,” Alitalia’s spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal. “We hope that people will appreciate the effort we are making.”
At normal rates, the tickets would have meant about $1.32 million for the airline. Instead, Alitalia received about $16,797.

9. An extra “s” ruined a business that had operated for more than a century.

In 2009, Welsh engineering firm Taylor & Sons was doing well. The company had operated for 124 years and employed 250 people. Unfortunately, that changed rapidly thanks to a clerical error.
Companies House, the United Kingdom government institution responsible for registering businesses, reported that Taylor & Sons Ltd. had been officially dissolved. Suppliers jumped ship, customers cancelled their orders, and banks refused to issue loans to the failing business—but the business wasn’t failing. Companies House had meant to report the dissolution of Taylor & Son Ltd. (no “s”), a completely different company.
To make matters worse, Taylor & Sons managing director Philip Davison-Sebry was on vacation when the news broke, and some clients believed that he’d skipped the country.

“I felt physically sick. Back at the business the phones were ringing out, it was like Armageddon,” Davison-Sebry said. “Everyone wanted to be paid. People were queuing up for money. Equipment was being taken off site.”
“We lost all our credibility as all our suppliers thought we were in liquidation. It was like a snowball effect.”
While Companies House corrected the error three days later, the damage was done. Taylor & Sons wasn’t able to recover and officially liquidated in 2014.
“I was so close to a nervous breakdown,” Davison-Sebry said in 2015. “I was terrible with the stress of it. I could see everything disintegrating before my eyes and it was not very pleasant … I would not wish it on my worst enemy. Well, except the bloke who nicked my boat.”
The firm sued Companies House and eventually won; they’d asked for £9 million (roughly $11.6 million USD). We could not find an update on who stole Davison-Sebry’s boat.

10. An antique ale sold at auction for much, much less than it was worth.

In 1852, explorer Sir Edward Belcher led an expedition to the Arctic, and like all good 19th century explorers, he took some strong drinks with him. That included Allsopp’s Arctic Ale, specially brewed in Staffordshire, England for Belcher and his men.
These days, a pristine bottle can fetch more than $500,000 at auction—provided that you spell its name correctly. In 2007, an eBay seller made a costly mistake by listing a bottle of the stuff as “allsop’s arctic ale. full and corked with a wax seal.”

That missing “p” prevented the bottle from showing up in most collectors’ searches. A buyer named collectordan placed the winning bid of $304, then turned around and resold it on the same auction site for a whopping $503,300. We’re not sure whether or not anyone ever drank the expensive brew, but we’re guessing you don’t spend that type of money on an after-dinner drink.

11. A man was sentenced to death (partially) due to a missing word.

While the other typos on this list are serious, at least they didn’t endanger someone’s life. That’s not the case here.
In 1987, Bruce Wayne Morris (who was not Batman, as far as we can tell through cursory research) was found guilty of killing a man who picked him up while he was hitchhiking in 1985 (okay, definitely not Batman). The jury could choose between two punishments for the crime: life in prison with no possibility of parole, or a death sentence.

However, the written instructions given to the jury inaccurately said “with possibility of parole.” Jurors were left with a difficult decision; either they sentence Morris to death, or they allow for the possibility that he could eventually rejoin society. They sentenced him to execution.
That kicked off a legal battle that undoubtedly cost California taxpayers quite a bit of money. A federal court eventually reversed the sentence because it found that the mistake “is too obvious, the likelihood of prejudice too great, and the stakes are too high to conclude the error was harmless.”
Bruce Wayne Morris was freed from prison, became a billionaire, and is using his spare time to build a high-tech batsuit with…oh, actually, we typed the wrong name into Google. Bruce Wayne Morris is probably still behind bars.

12. An embarrassing typo on a ballot led to expensive reprints.

In 2006, Ottawa County in Michigan spent about $40,000 to reprint 170,000 ballots with an unfortunate spelling error in the text of a proposed amendment to the state constitution.

Here’s how the proposal should have read:
“A proposal to amend the State Constitution to ban affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes.”
Granted, it’s pretty dry and boring, but that’s a competent description of the ballot measure. Unfortunately, someone left off the “l” in “public,” which, ahem, substantially changed the meaning of the sentence. The county clerk’s office had proofread the ballot several times, but somehow, the error made it through.
“It’s just one of those words,” county clerk Daniel C. Krueger said. “Even after we told people it was in there, they still read over it.”
The proposal ultimately passed, prompting a lengthy Supreme Court case questioning the ballot initiative’s constitutionality. The law was found to be constitutional, and we should note that the court’s decision correctly spelled the word “public” 73 times. Maybe spelling isn’t that difficult.

13. The URL mistakes you’re making every day are earning someone money.

Make a tiny mistake while typing our name, and you might find yourself at healthway.com, a manufacturer of air purifiers.
Those are honest mistakes, but some companies intentionally try to take advantage of typos by setting up “typosquatting” websites. Add a stray vowel while typing a popular site’s URL into your address bar, and you’ll likely end up at one of these sites; the advertisements on the side of the screen will collect a tiny amount of revenue from each accidental view.

[Editorial note: Because many typosquatting websites have malicious intent, we don’t recommend intentionally mistyping the names of well-known websites to try to find typosquatters. Trust us, they’re out there.]
About 57 percent of typosquatting websites feature Google pay-per-click ads; the others make their money via other means. According to an estimate from Harvard Business School associate professor Ben Edelman, Google makes about $497 million from typosquatting on the top 100,000 domains every year.
“In fact, comparing domain parking sites to ordinary search results, we expect that the parking sites (including typosquatting sites) have a higher click-through rate,” Edelman writes. “… If so, advertisers’ costs for typosquatting placements could easily exceed our estimates by a factor of two or more.”

That means that every time you make a mistake while typing a URL, you’re likely contributing to a multi-billion dollar industry. See—we all make mistaekes.
Wait, we meant mistakes. We’re fired, aren’t we?

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Happy Home Lifestyle

How To Get Smells Out Of Tupperware (And Other Incredible Kitchen Hacks)

Post author By Mary Sauer
Post date November 14, 2019

As a child, I loved to cook. After my parents gave me an American Girl cookbook for Christmas one year, cooking quickly became a favorite hobby of mine. By the time I was ten, I was able to cook a few favorite meals for my family—and a whole lot of baked goods.
As fun as it was for me, I think the cookbook was a gift my mom grew to regret. I may have been a good cook, but I was a messy one, too. I would leave flour scattered across the floor, stain my clothes, and always managed to break a plate or a glass.
Not a lot has changed in the time since. I’m great with food prep, but I always manage to trash my kitchen in the process. My walls are perpetually splattered with tomato sauce or bacon grease, and most of my t-shirts are littered with stains. Neatness simply isn’t my strong suit, to say the least.

I have, however, been working on this fault of mine. I eventually realized that my failure to clean as I go (and my propensity for being excessively messy) was creating extra work for me. I was spending way, way too much time trying to make up for the disasters I’d created while cooking a simple dinner. Cleaning may not be my strongest skill, but I’m learning from some fellow moms, and a few expert cleaners, that it doesn’t have to be complicated.

If the same messes and stains are continually getting to you, there might be a hack to make your life simpler. Need help, say, getting smells out of Tupperware or scraping baked-on food from the microwave? Check out these genius hacks before throwing in the towel.

First, don’t throw that GladWare away.

I have to admit, I’ve thrown away an embarrassing amount of Tupperware simply because they stunk—the stinky things were forgotten in the back of the fridge or left in a lunch bag over the weekend. But it turns out stained and smelly containers don’t have to be tossed.

“Baking soda, ammonia, vinegar, and bleach are the four things you need to pretty much clean anything,” says Judy Woodward Bates—an author, speaker, and TV personality known as the Bargainomics Lady—who struggles with stinky Tupperware no more. “Make a paste of baking soda and water and rub [it] onto stained plasticware, and let it stand for a few minutes before scrubbing and rinsing.”

A Non-Toxic Approach to Microwave Messes

Many people opt to avoid cleaning products in their microwave because of the fumes they can create if any cleaning product is left behind. But without the help of products, cleaning a microwave can be totally tedious, especially with all that food baked on.
This trick from Jeanne Eschenberg Sager, mother and self-professed “queen of doing as little as possible,” uses natural ingredients to get stubborn messes out of the inside of her microwave.

“Fill a cup with a mixture of water and lemon juice,” she instructs. “Pop it in the microwave and let it ‘cook’ for a minute. It will loosen all the baked on gunk … in the microwave, so you don’t have to scrub at all. You can just wipe it right down!”

Don’t Despair Over Drink Spills

Nearly every time I host a dinner party or family get together, some dark beverage ends up all over my living room floor. There’s no need to rearrange furniture to cover up these stains. Home designer and creator of a machine-washable rug Lorena Canals has a few genius stain-removing hacks up her sleeve.

For fruit-based juices, she advises starting with quickly soaking up as much of the spill as you can to avoid it soaking into the fibers of the carpet. Avoid scrubbing. Then, mix ½ cup of hydrogen peroxide, ½ cup of water, and 1 teaspoon of dish soap together to create a stain-fighting solution.
“Using a clean sponge or cloth towel, gently blot this mixture onto the carpet … ,” she says. “Using a clean, dry, white cloth towel, gently blot … .”
Repeat the last two steps until the stain is completely gone.

Coffee is another drink that can cause stubborn stains when spilled on rugs and carpet. Canals recommends beginning by drying the spilled coffee with a dry, white towel. Then, mix ¼ cup of vinegar with a quart of warm water. Spritz the mixture on the stain, rinse, and repeat until the stain is gone.

Rescue Your Favorite Coffee Mug

When you have three kids in four years like I did, coffee becomes the beverage of choice. Unfortunately, I often neglect my favorite mug overnight, and I’ve even left it in the car over the weekend.

But see, I’ve found a couple different hacks that are perfect for dealing with stubborn tea or coffee stains. My first method of attack is a paste made from lemon juice and baking soda. I scrub it on, wipe it off, and rinse the cups clean.
If there is still a ring or stain in the cup, I fill the cup past the stain with undiluted vinegar, leave it overnight, and rinse it clean in the morning.

Set Yourself Free From Fingerprints

Stainless steel faucets are really hard to get—and keep—clean in most kitchens. Even after a good scrub, they start to show fingerprints after just a few uses. Fell fingerprints and water stains with this hack from Joanna Douglas, the owner of Clean Affinity, a home cleaning service in Portland, Oregon.

“For cleaning faucets and other pipes, we use waxed paper. This method gets rid of fingerprints and small stains,” she explains.

Rid Your Clothes of Cooking Stains

I’m the worst about remembering to wear my apron while I’m cooking, which means I’m regularly battling stains on my clothes. When it comes to most stains, Douglas says that a mixture of dishwashing soap and salt will easily remove the stain in less than five minutes.

For more serious stains, or stains that have been ignored for a bit too long, Lauren Haynes, supervisor at Star Domestic Cleaners, has a few tried and true hacks her company uses.
For butter stains, for instance, you should always begin by scraping, not scrubbing, as much of the butter as possible off of the clothing. Then, rub the spot with dishwashing soap, rinse, and repeat until all of the butter and soap are gone. Before washing the clothing, pretreat the stain with a stain remover and wash on the hottest setting.

“For gravy and ketchup stains, begin with removing the excess material and blot with a clean, white cloth,” she says. “Then mix 2 cups of cool water with a tablespoon of liquid dishwashing detergent. Apply the solution to a white cloth, and blot [the spot] until the liquid is absorbed. If necessary, repeat the process until the spot is gone. To remove the remaining cleaning solution, blot the area again with another cloth rinsed in cool water. At the end, blot dry, and you are done.”

Scrub Away Soap Scum

The tile, sinks, and faucets often become problem areas in kitchens because of soap scum and residue.
It’s a special kind of frustrating—soap is the chosen one! It was said that it would destroy the scum, not join it; bring cleanliness to the sink, not leave it in filth.

Fortunately, you don’t need a store-bought solution to get rid of soap scum. Simply create a paste from 1 cup of baking soda and a few tablespoons of vinegar. Apply this paste to areas with soap residue, and use a sponge to scrub away.

Never Dust Cabinet Tops Again

Early this year, I painted our kitchen a fresh coat of white. Climbing the counters to paint hard to reach areas, I was horrified to find a thick layer of dust settled in the space between the top of my cabinets and the ceiling. It was the biggest pain to clean up, taking several rags just to get the top layer of dust and dirt wiped away. I wish I had spoken with Woodward years ago, when we first moved into this home.

“If you have kitchen cabinets that don’t go all the way to the ceiling, cut or fold newspaper to cover the tops of the cabinets,” she suggests. “Instead of spending ages cleaning built-up gunk off your cabinets, just change out the paper from time to time.”

Stop Wiping Away Toast Crumbs

If your toaster leaves a sprinkle of toast crumbs on your counter every morning, it’s probably time for a deep clean of this kitchen appliance. I’m embarrassed to say that, until just recently, I had no clue that there was a “right” way to clean out a toaster.

As it turns out, each toaster has spring loaded trays on the bottom that can be completely removed. These trays catch most of the crumbs. Once you’ve unplugged your toaster, you can remove them, dump them, and give them a good soak in soap and water.

Oh, and before putting it back together, use a pastry brush to free crumbs trapped in other areas of the toaster, and wipe the toaster down with vinegar for good measure.

More Cleaning Hacks From The HealthyWay Staff

Ask around any office and you’ll find that lots of people have a cleaning trick or two up their sleeves. Well, the HealthyWay office is no different. When we started talking about this article, everyone wanted to contribute something.
And why not? When it comes to cleaning techniques, more is definitely better. Check out some of our colleagues’ favorite easy-cleaning hacks from around the web.

Clean That Hard-To-Reach Space Between The Stove And Counter

It’s easier not to think about it. In fact, we’re almost sorry to bring it up. But there is probably a crevice between your stove and the surrounding countertop, and it is almost certainly a filthy, crumb-infested nightmare.

Tight spaces full of crumbs aren’t just gross to think about. They also attract pests like roaches, who love the free meals and the dark, narrow pathway. So yes, this is a space we should all clean regularly. Luckily, there’s an easy way to achieve a crumb-free crevice in no time flat.
If the space is super-narrow, start with a clean butter knife. Keep the blade facing away from you and scrape out that crack. Don’t worry about the pile of debris that’ll form on the floor just yet; you can always vacuum that up later.

If you have a little more space to work with, you’re in luck. You can wrap a microfiber towel around the knife for an even more effective cleaning solution. For really thick gaps, substitute a yardstick for the knife.

Why pay for floor cleaner when you can make your own?

By the end of the week, our kitchen floors provide a detailed record of the family’s dining and social life. It isn’t pretty. There’s a splash of Monday’s spaghetti here, a splatter of juice from when the toddler had a temper tantrum during lunch…it’s all there, written in gunk.
Time to clean the slate (along with the floor). But floor-cleaning products seem to come in only two styles: Overly harsh on the one hand, ineffective on the other. That’s why we’re eternally grateful for this DIY floor-cleaner recipe from lifestyle blog One Good Thing.

It’s mild and mostly natural. At the same time, it packs serious grease-cutting power. This recipe is ideal for tile floors—and if your kitchen is floored in fine wood or, worse, carpeted, you’ve got bigger problems than finding a good cleaner.
You only need three ingredients: white vinegar, liquid dish soap, and washing soda. Oh, plus water, if you count that (in which case you need four ingredients). Combine ¼ cup of vinegar, 1 tablespoon of dish soap, ¼ cup of washing soda, and 2 gallons of hot water. Mix well, and commence mopping!

Deodorize The Garbage Disposal The Natural Way

Garbage disposals would be the perfect clean-up amenity if it weren’t for their habit of collecting foul odors like the deranged curator of an olfactory museum. The good news is that it’s not as hard as you might think. You can make your own disposal-deodorizing cubes with a little citrus fruit, vinegar, and baking soda, as we learned from YouTube cooking show Cooking with Kyler.

First off, build your cleansing cubes. Chop half of 1 lemon and half of 1 lime into small bits and spread them evenly into each cell of a standard ice cube tray. Then fill the tray with distilled white vinegar and freeze overnight. That’s right: We’re making vinegar-ice.
When the cubes are good and frozen, let the hot water run for a minute, then pour about ½ cup of baking soda down the maw of your garbage disposal. Drop in a single vinegar-citrus ice cube and run your disposal until the terrible odors are all flushed away. It’s that simple.

Clean Oven Racks With This Surprise Solution

Ugh, oven racks. They collect at least a little of everything you bake. It doesn’t take long for them to become blackened, encrusted messes. They’re almost impossible to scrub clean in place, and besides, who wants to inhale that much oven cleaner?

Well, there’s an easier solution, and it involves a common cleaning product that might surprise you. We learned about this one from the house-cleaning website Clean My Space.
The first surprise is that we’re going to use the bathtub. Throw down an old towel to prevent scratching the tub, then drop in your dirty oven racks. As you fill the tub with the hottest water your pipes can serve up (don’t worry; we won’t be reaching in any time soon), mix up a cup of laundry detergent and as much water as you can fit in a Mason jar. Shake it to dissolve the detergent, then toss it into the bathtub.

Now, for the easy part: Wait. We’d recommend soaking the oven racks overnight. The next morning, give them a scrub and watch the gunk flow away! Rinse, dry, put them back in the oven, and you’re done. Sorry about your towel.

Brighten Up Dingy Baking Sheets

Here’s another useful kitchen hint from One Good Thing. Have you ever noticed that cookie sheets tend to get…a little bit gross with repeated use? They develop brown burn streaks, bits of yesteryear’s cookies, and other pollutants, both flat and three-dimensional.
And these are not normal stains. You can scrub your baking sheets in dishwashing detergent for as long as you like without making any progress. It isn’t the elbow grease that’s the problem; it’s the cleaning product. Time to try something new.
Well, according to One Good Thing, the secret you’ve been missing just requires two pantry staples you probably have in your home already: baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. (Put that hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle; it’ll be far easier to apply.)

All you have to do is sprinkle a layer of baking soda on your stained baking sheet, follow with an even spritzing of hydrogen peroxide, and ending with a final layer of baking soda. Then, you wait.
Come back a few hours later and start scrubbing. Previously unbeatable stains will melt away before your eyes. So much for buying new baking sheets every year!

The Fastest, Easiest Way To Clean Refrigerator Shelves

Refrigerator shelving is one of those cleaning tasks we tend to avoid. You can’t just wipe the surface down with a towel, like the counter. You have to carefully remove everything and lean in to scrub at a back-breaking angle. Even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to scrape away ancient ketchup spills and juice remnants.

An anonymous Reddit user is here to save us all. This contributor, who goes by the online handle “thinkadinky,” recommends covering refrigerator shelves with plastic wrap. (Don’t use the kind that you use to preserve, say, a half-eaten sandwich. You want the kind that adheres to a flat surface.)
Think about that for a second. If your shelves are covered in an impenetrable layer of clean plastic, you only have to wash them one last time. In a few months, when the spills have coagulated, you can just peel away the plastic wrap and lay down a new layer.
Now, if only they’d make a plastic wrap that secures to the floor…

Banish Tough Grease Stains With Common Ingredients

Let’s talk splatter, and not just any old kind. We need to discuss the hot oil that splashes and steams its way onto every surface of the kitchen. Don’t think that happens on your range? Just check the oven hood.
We’re always amazed by the oil splash zone in our kitchen. Somehow, grease seems to float through the air to secure itself to surfaces and appliances across the room. We don’t know the science, but at least we know how to fix the problem.
This is a trick we learned from the decor blog Thrifty and Chic. Their writers insist it only takes two products to blast those grease stains into oblivion: Mineral oil (often called “baby oil,” frequently with a scent mixed in) and a spritzer bottle containing one part white vinegar, two parts water, and a dribble of liquid dishwashing soap.

First, wipe down your problem-surface with the mineral oil. Grease binds to grease; ironically, the best way to fight oil is with oil. You might have to scrub a bit, but this technique will be far more effective than soap and a scrub, and with less work.
Of course, now you’ve got a new problem. You’ve got a surface covered in mineral oil. Here’s where your spritzer solution comes in. Just spray down the mineral-oil-cleaned area, wipe it smooth, and repeat until your kitchen is like new.

Make Kitchen Tile Grout Like New

Whether you’ve got filth on your kitchen tile or your backsplash could use a little TLC, chances are you’ve been frustrated by the challenge of scrubbing grout clean. There’s just something about this stuff that soaks up the dirt.
Well, you might have heard of a DIY scrubbing mixture that pops up all over the internet, particularly as a shower-cleaning hack. It’s just equal parts liquid dish soap and white vinegar. The writers over at A Pretty Life in the Suburbs swear by this stuff as a grout-cleaner in the bathroom, the kitchen, and beyond.

Start by microwaving the vinegar. This isn’t fancy home chemistry or anything; it just helps the dish soap to dissolve fully into the liquid. Try 1 cup each of dish soap and vinegar, and get your spray bottle (at least 2 cups capacity, please) ready.
Pour the dish soap into the hot vinegar, then add the whole mixture to your spray bottle. Shake it up until it’s fully mixed. Then you’re ready to go. And remember: A little bit goes a long way.
Spray the solution onto filthy grout and let it work into the surface for a few minutes. Then scrub, scrub, scrub! A toothbrush works pretty well. Once you’ve got the grout good and clean, rinse the whole area with hot water to remove the soapy residue. You’ll be shocked by how that grout can shine, no matter how many years’ worth of gunk you had to blast through.

Welcome to your new kitchen.

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Trending

Stories Of When Small Symptoms Pointed To Life-Changing Diagnoses

Post author By HealthyWay Staff Writer
Post date November 11, 2019

According to a survey by Bankrate, one in four Americans avoid going to the doctor due to the high cost of medical care. Sometimes, though, money isn’t the issue; we simply don’t believe that we’re that sick. Why spend a few hundred bucks at the doctor’s office when you’ve only got a slight sniffle?
Unfortunately, we don’t have the necessary training to diagnose our own illnesses, and while some symptoms might seem relatively minor, they can be indicative of fairly serious issues. In a recent Reddit thread, users shared their stories of small problems that had big implications.

We collected the best of these stories, edited them slightly for readability, and share them here as cautionary tales.
If you’re thinking about putting off that next routine checkup, these stories might change your mind.

1. Even when one doctor gives you a clean bill of health, you might need a second opinion.

“When I was deployed to Afghanistan as a medic, a medevac pilot came in because he had a small abnormality on his flight physical electrocardiogram (EKG),” Reddit user Absolute906 wrote. “Apparently, this was something he had been getting waivers for years for.”
In other words, the pilot was familiar with the problem, but as far as he knew, it wasn’t really a problem—or at least, it wasn’t anything that would stop him from working.

“I had just finished an [anatomy and physiology] class and had learned about something called Brugada syndrome, which is basically an arrhythmia that causes sudden cardiac death in the patient. I jokingly mentioned how his EKG reminded me of the abnormality I saw in my textbook, thinking there was no way he actually had it. It had to be [an] artifact from the EKG.”
“The doctor’s eyes widened and he sprinted out of the office,” they continued. “The pilot had it. He was immediately relieved of flight duty, sent home, and had a defibrillator put into his heart before being medically retired.”

“I accidentally diagnosed a man with certain death.”
That’s the pessimistic perspective; looking at it another way, Absolute906 had almost certainly saved the pilot from certain death. Brugada syndrome typically causes sudden death around age 40, and because it’s so rare—it’s thought to affect 5 out of every 10,000 people—it’s often missed or ignored until it’s too late.

2. Bad headaches can indicate a serious issue.

We’ve covered this before: headaches can be a serious symptom when they’re frequent or excessively painful. When you can describe a headache as “the worst I’ve ever had,” it’s certainly time to head to your family physician’s office.
“When I was 12, I had a crazy bad headache that wouldn’t go away,” wrote user muffinlova. “My dad brought me to the doctor, and I didn’t even make it to the exam room before they turned me back and sent us to the hospital.”

“It turns out my headache was from a burst sinus cavity…as in, all the bones around my eye broke, and the liquid leaked back onto my brain, giving me brain meningitis. My eye was bulging out to the point where I looked like an alien, and they told my parents I was not going to make it.”
“Obviously, I pulled through, but I was hospitalized for two weeks and missed two months of school. I was, at the time, only the third known case of this happening, and they had flown in doctors from all over the US and from the UK. Crazy stuff.”

3. Even if you feel perfectly healthy, trust your physician.

Reddit user ThePicklest’s father used to be a power lifter. The key word there is “used to.” One day, he felt some unusual pain, so he went to the doctor’s office.
“A nurse comes in to the room, looks down at her chart, looks back up and says, ‘Mr. Pickle, you are having a heart attack.’ He got up on the bed and flexed, saying, ‘Does this look like a man that’s having a heart attack to you?'”
“She looked back down at her chart, up again, and says ‘Yes.’”

Cardiac arrest can have a variety of symptoms, including fatigue, sweating, nausea, and cold or clammy skin (we’ve got a more detailed list of symptoms here). Mr. Pickle—and yes, we love saying that—made a classic mistake by assuming that heart attacks can only affect people who appear obviously unhealthy. Heart attacks don’t always look like they do in the movies; more often than not, they’re surprisingly subtle.
Fortunately, he lived through the episode, although he’s since passed away due to unrelated issues. ThePicklest notes that his father quit powerlifting a short time later and became “way more laid back.”
“He started running more than lifting, and learned to appreciate food a lot more. This was his favorite story to tell.”

4. Any sudden numbness deserves medical attention.

“My mother woke up one day and her arm was numb,” user Stylophonics wrote. “After about 45 minutes, it will still pretty numb. She thought she had pinched a nerve in it sleeping, but went to the ER just in case.”
“She had had a stroke, which actually was caused by a blood clot, which moved up from her heart and exited a hole in her heart—a congenital defect she was unaware she had.”

“She ended up fine and the feeling in her arm came back,” Stylophonics continued, “but she was incredibly lucky that it did.”
Strokes are the leading preventable cause of disability, and by one estimate, 33 percent of Americans have had “mini-strokes” without realizing it. Each year, about 800,000 Americans have strokes. We’re really not trying to scare you—we’re just hoping that some cold, hard numbers help to show the reality.
The good news: Early diagnosis and treatment can greatly reduce the risk of long-term effects. The bad news: You’ve got to actually head to the doctor in order to receive said treatment.

5. Occasionally, physicians miss key symptoms for years…or decades.

“I was in a fender bender car accident—I was at fault—and my lower back would not stop aching,” wrote one Reddit user. “I went into the ER, figuring I had sprained the muscles in my back and that I would be prescribed muscle relaxers and maybe some pain pills.”
Of course, that wasn’t the case. The doctors seemed keenly interested in the patient’s bizarre results.

“Six hours, several x-rays, a CT scan, and four doctors later, I found out my spine was broken and—get this—healed. The best theory any of them could come up with was that my spine had broken during birth, and since we never knew, it just healed itself, filling in with cartilage.”
“One of the doctors told me that, had we known my spine broke at birth, I would have likely never walked. I would have been treated as handicapped my whole life. I didn’t find out until I was 20, and I already had a child. My mom cried because she always thought I was just a really colicky baby, when in fact I was probably in a lot of pain.”

6. When your doctor’s exam procedures seem extreme, go along with them.

“I have male pattern baldness and needed a prescription for some hair growth medication from a dermatologist,” wrote Redditor mattigus. “The doctor said he would give me a prescription, but first wanted to do a full skin check-up, which he does for every new patient. I got annoyed by the fact that I had to strip … in front of this guy just for my hair medicine.”

Hey, there’s a reason that the most effective medicines require a prescription—the physician has to check to make sure that you don’t have any other underlying health conditions that will affect the medication. In this case, that underlying condition was extremely serious.
“A few weeks later, I get a call,” he explained. “There was melanoma cancer on my back. They caught it early enough that it hadn’t spread. That checkup saved my life.”

7. Remember, serious symptoms aren’t always painful.

Reddit user so_illogical said that he might have bit the big one (pun intended) if he hadn’t checked up on some weird symptoms after a routine dental procedure.
“I was taking antibiotics for dental work and noticed these weird blisters showing up everywhere,” they wrote. “Weird, but whatever. 48 hours later, they started opening up, leaving holes in my skin—no blood, I just lost most of the skin in that area. Again, weird, but I was working, so whatever.”

“Then they started appearing in my throat so I got to the hospital ASAP and was diagnosed immediately with Steven-Johnson syndrome. Any longer, and the layers of my skin would have literally peeled away from each other and I would have died. That was a sobering day.”
And people wonder why we hate the dentist.

8. When your physician recommends a CT scan, go for it.

“I had gallstones for three years or so before I finally got my gallbladder ripped out last year,” Redditor dude_icus wrote, using some unnecessarily violent verbiage. “At its worst, I was getting an attack maybe once a month or so, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad.”

“I went to the surgeon for my post-op check-up,” he explained. “He told me that my gallbladder was filled with hundreds of stones of varying sizes, and that it was precancerous. Apparently, people don’t typically get gallbladder cancer until they are in their 80s or 90s. It is often very serious because people don’t catch it right away. I’m in my 20s, and like I said, I had been sitting on this problem for three years for I finally toughened up enough to get it checked out.”
The moral of the story: If you notice a new medical problem, don’t wait to head to the doctor—even if you’re fairly confident that you know what’s happening. You’ve got nothing to lose but your health.
Of course, you might also receive good health advice from a non-physician.
“I owe my life to my barber,” wrote AngryCotton. “When I was 17, he noticed a mole on the top of my head and said I should get that looked at. Two things could’ve happened here: One, I could’ve brushed it off. Two, he didn’t have to say anything.”

“Anyway, I went to get it checked out and ended up having it cut out with a scalpel. Turns out that it was cancerous, but at the very early stages. They did a little more cutting and were able to get everything out. [That was] almost 20 years ago, and life is good.”
Barbers aren’t dermatologists, but they do look at a lot of strange moles—hey, it’s part of the job. If someone tells you that a skin growth is unusual, don’t ignore them (but don’t worry too much until you’ve seen your doctor, as the vast majority of unusual-looking moles are non-cancerous).

9. Some of these stories are pretty heartbreaking.

“My girlfriend is in her final rotations for radiology,” wrote Facerless. “A while back, a young girl came in after winning a basketball championship. She had some shooting shin pain, but wasn’t in a [tremendous amount] of pain, still glowing from the win and talking excitedly about a scholarship offer.”

“When her scan came back, about 60 percent of the marrow in her tibia was one big sarcoma (meaning cancer). Surgery and therapy essentially ended her shot at a full ride.”
Still, it saved her life. While losing a scholarship certainly hurts, we’re guessing that she gladly made the trade.

10. Some rare conditions can prompt a “mock pregnancy.”

“A few years ago, I took a positive pregnancy test,” Doctor_Dalek wrote (she’s not an actual doctor, despite her Whovian username).
“I went to the doctor to confirm, just thinking I would be getting some blood work done and maybe an ultrasound. They did the ultrasound, but couldn’t find a baby in my uterus, so they told me it was ectopic—implanted in a Fallopian tube—and I needed to have surgery to remove the baby.”
“I went into surgery and woke up a few hours later. The first thing I remember is seeing my parents and my fiancé crying. Turns out I was never pregnant; I actually had a tumor the size of my fist on my ovary, and my body was reacting to it like a baby. I had an HCG hormone and everything. I’m 4.5 years in remission.”

Unfortunately, that’s not the only deeply disturbing pregnancy story on this list. Reddit user rockabillynurse is a nurse (hence the username) who was working in postpartum care when a patient came into the hospital in labor with her first child.
“She ended up requiring a C-section. In the operating room, they opened her up and found her belly full of cancerous growths. They immediately paged an oncologist at a neighboring hospital—we were just a women’s and children’s hospital—to come immediately while she was still open. It wound up being terminal. She wouldn’t even have known if she hadn’t needed that C-section.”
“Can you imagine going to the hospital to have your first baby and leaving with a diagnosis of terminal cancer? I think about her all the time.”

11. Any unusual long-term symptom deserves medical attention.

“About four months after I had my son, I started to notice the vision in one of my eyes was really off,” wrote user tranquileyesme. “Blurry, spotty, etc. I didn’t really think about it much, because my eye didn’t hurt and wasn’t itchy, and I had a new baby to take care of.”
“Anyway, it lasted for months. Finally, my mom and sister convinced me I had to go to the eye doctor for it to see what was going on. I took my baby with, because I thought, ‘Hey, quick appointment. Maybe 20-30 minutes, and I’ll probably leave with some eye drops or something.'”
“Honestly, one of the worst days of my life. They put me through test after test. I was there for hours. I ended up calling my mom to come get the baby. They weren’t telling me anything. They scheduled an MRI for the next morning, because by this time, my 11 a.m. appointment had dragged out until 5:30 p.m., and the clinic was closed. We were the only people there. Still no answers. I am freaking out.”

“[I] go back the next day and get the MRI done,” she continued. “They send me to the neurologist this time—no eye doctors today. When I walk in, he has all the results from my tests the day before and the MRI I had just taken a while before. I was told I had multiple sclerosis. It was very scary.”
She says she’s doing well, thanks to a supportive family and a firm commitment to her therapy.
“The first years were the hardest, with [having] a toddler and learning to adjust. Now he’s 10 and more self-sufficient. We decided not to have more children, which was really hard, but overall the best decision for our family.”
Tranquileyesme’s doctors responded to her symptoms quickly and effectively, but not everyone is so lucky. If you feel that your physician isn’t taking your symptoms seriously—or if you think that you could benefit from a second opinion—don’t be afraid to say so.
“[I had] increasingly painful periods and nasty PMS symptoms in general,” wrote my_random_thots. “My family doctor attributed the change to age and just wouldn’t take it seriously. After a year of complaints, the doctor prescribed birth control pills, which did nothing.”

“After two years, I finally lost it and cried in her office. The cramps had gone from, ‘Hmm, this is a bit more than usual,’ to full-on WTF, 8/10, white-knuckle-puking-level pain. I asked to please, please be referred to an OBGYN.”
Fortunately, her doctor relented and provided an appropriate reference.
“When the gynecologist examined me, he also did an ultrasound in the office. He took one look at the screen [and] told me I could dress and that he’d be right back. When he returned, he was carrying his surgery bookings schedule. A few weeks later, I had a total hysterectomy and bilateral salpingectomy (tubes out). It would usually take up to a year to book that surgery, but he said he absolutely had to find me a spot.”
“He was horrified I hadn’t been seen much sooner and described my uterus as ‘more tumor than healthy tissue; it looks more like a raspberry than a pear.’ Fortunately, it was just benign fibroid [tumors], but it taught me a lesson: If something hurts, get help! Yell if you have to.”

While healthcare providers rarely act maliciously, many have biases against women. Medical schools are starting to address the problem, but unfortunately, some physicians don’t take women’s pain seriously. Patient advocates recommend being direct and asking about the basis of a physician’s recommendations. Don’t assume that you’re overreacting by asking for another opinion; it’s very possible that your physician is under-reacting.

12. When in doubt, see a specialist.

General practitioners are your first line of defense against serious diseases, but if you’ve got unusual symptoms, ask for a recommendation for a specialist.
“I don’t think you’d classify this as an illness, but I would clean my ears regularly, yet whenever I went to the doctors, they always said there was too much wax and [that they] couldn’t see anything,” wrote werekitty93. “My ears tended to hurt frequently, and I had a hard time hearing for years.”

“In high school, I went to a doctor who, as usual, checked my ears. Instead of just brushing it off and saying I need to clean more, she decided to do a total flush. Took two or three hours total to get both ears cleared, and when we were done, she discovered I had an ear infection that was most likely a year old. As a result, I can’t hear well out of either ear, but that ear in particular has more hearing loss than the other.”
“We also discovered why I had such an abundance of earwax. We figured out I had hyper hydrosis (an overactive sweat gland) that also caused my ears to make more wax. I have been instructed never to use Q-tips again—it just cakes the wax to the sides of my ears—and I go see a doctor once a month to have them flushed. So, had we just had a doctor flush my ears probably five years sooner, I wouldn’t have such hearing loss.”
That’s a tragic story, and unfortunately, it’s not the only example we found of physicians ignoring important information.

“[This wasn’t] me, but my 9-year-old son,” wrote Prima13. “Last summer, he complained about leg tiredness and slept a lot. Our pediatrician couldn’t find anything wrong with him. Fast forward to January 2017, and suddenly he’s constipated and his bladder is retaining enormous amounts of urine. We took him to the local children’s hospital, and they felt that his constipation was keeping him from releasing urine, so they hit him with gallons of Miralax mixture to get him moving.”
The treatment cured his constipation, but he still had his other symptoms.
“After a week of this at the hospital, my wife lost her mind on the hospital staff and demanded that they think outside the box. The neurology department came in and did an MRI, and they found that he had a fatty filum at the base of his spine which presented as a tethered cord.”
“They operated immediately. Unfortunately, now the damage is done. My son no longer has bowel or bladder function because of the nerve damage caused by the tethered cord, so we have to use a straight catheter on him six times a day and keep after his bowels with stimulant laxatives and enemas.”

“We will be entering a clinic in May where they will run a series of daily X-rays and enemas to arrive at the mixture we will need to use going forward. Poor kid will have to live with this the rest of his life. My wife and I are sick over it. If the issue had been caught sooner, he might not have to deal with this. If we had waited longer, it’s possible he could have lost the use of his legs.”
Keep in mind that doctors are only human, and they’re prone to delivering inaccurate diagnoses. One survey of nationwide autopsies found a 40 percent misdiagnosis rate. About 10 to 12 percent of those missed diagnoses were classified as “significant.” Granted, those numbers only look at patients who succumbed to fatal conditions—not patients who ultimately recovered—but the takeaway is that physicians make mistakes, and second opinions are often essential tools in crafting an appropriate treatment plan.

13. Strange symptoms deserve attention, even if you’ve always lived with them.

We hope that we’re not driving this point into the ground, but it’s important: If something seems unusual, get it checked out.
“I was much taller than [the rest of] my family,” wrote CrustyHamSandwich. “My family are all around 5’5″, but I was 6’5″ by high school. We always joked that I was a freak or won the genetic lottery.”

“I went to my father’s doctor for a physical, who noticed the swelling in my hands and ran a blood test. Turns out, my growth hormone levels were about three times the normal amount. I was diagnosed with Acromegaly. Got an MRI which showed I had a tumor on my pituitary gland. I got it removed and was feeling better after a few years.”
Another Reddit user developed an unusual taste for lettuce, which eventually convinced them to seek medical help.
“I started craving iceberg lettuce like you wouldn’t believe,” wrote lovetheblazer. “Like, I’d wake up in the middle of the night and go to the fridge just to eat handfuls of lettuce. At my worst, I was eating an entire bag of iceberg lettuce a day, no dressing or toppings, just munching on it like it was popcorn at the movie theater.”

“I finally decided I should drag myself to the doctor for a few blood tests, assuming I was a bit dehydrated or vitamin deficient or something. My hemoglobin level was 5 when it should be 13-16, ideally. My ferritin (iron stores) level was 1, which is literally as low as the test goes. I went straight from the doctor’s office to the hospital to be admitted for two blood transfusions and an intravenous iron infusion.”
“The hospital staff couldn’t believe I’d been walking around and even working overtime with a level that low for months. Within 24 hours of my blood and iron transfusions, my lettuce craving went away.”
Iron deficiencies are an especially significant problem for women, as we’ve covered in other pieces. You should know the symptoms—but remember, you can still have a condition without having the classic symptoms.
“[My wife] had a rare liver disease that sprung out of nowhere when she was 23,” wrote CountShaftula.
She missed the symptoms because she didn’t have visible jaundice—the yellowing the eyes and skin most commonly associated with liver disease. Instead, she felt extremely itchy.

“She figured it was just really dry skin,” the Reddit user continued. “Turned out to be PSC (Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis). But she’s two years post-transplant and doing great!”

So, how do you know whether you really need to see your physician?

When in doubt, go ahead and set up an appointment. No one’s going to accuse you of being a hypochondriac just because you checked out some unusual symptoms, and as these stories demonstrate, you’re better safe than sorry.
“As a physician: listen to your bodies,” user Doctorpayne wrote. “You guys know yourselves much better than we will even after talking to you in an emergency room for 5-10 minutes. If something is going on that is far outside the usual, please come in to the ER. I would much rather see you and tell you you’re fine [rather than] than sick beyond the point of repair.”
With that said, don’t overreact if you’ve experienced any of the symptoms in this article. These stories are notable because they’re the exception; chances are good that you’ll be perfectly fine. Still, it never hurts to stay on top of your health.

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