Diet Coke, diet Pepsi, diet pills, no-fat diet, vegetable diet… We are surrounded by the word “diet” everywhere we look and listen. We have so easily been attracted by the promise and potential of diet products that we have stopped thinking about what diet products are doing to us. We are paying for products that harm us psychologically (心理) and physically.

    Diet products greatly weaken us psychologically. On one level, we are not allowing our brain to admit that our weight problems lie not in actually losing the weight, but in controlling the amount of fatty, high-calorie, unhealthy foods. Diet products allow us to jump over the thinking stage and go straight for the scale(秤) instead. All we have to do is to recognize the word “diet” in food labels.

    On another level, diet products have greater psychological effects. Every time we have a zero-calorie drink, we are telling ourselves without our awareness that we don't have to work to get results. Diet products make people believe that gain comes without pain, and that life can be without struggle.

    The danger of diet products lies not only in the psychological effects they have on us, but also in the physical harm that they cause. Diet foods can indirectly harm our bodies because eating them instead of healthy foods means we are preventing our bodies from having basic nutrients. Diet foods and diet pills contain zero calorie only because the diet industry has created chemicals to produce these wonder products. Diet products may not be nutritional, and the chemicals that go into diet products are possibly dangerous in the future.

    Now that we are aware of the effects that diet products have on us, it is time to seriously think about buying them. Losing weight lies in the power of minds, not in the power of chemicals. Once we realize this, we will be much better able to resist diet products, and therefore prevent the psychological harm that comes from using them.

    Some people love eating food right after it is cooked. I prefer food just taken out from the freezer. Fruit, candies, nuts, chocolate, cake with buttercream frosting(糖霜), even peas, all of them taste delicious when frozen. In fact, I often eat them that way.

    I was a kid when I picked up the habit. In my family, lots of things were thrown into the freezer — finally, two freezers — to prevent them from going bad. Among them were some of the candies my sisters and I had collected on Halloween.

    If we eat when they are still warm, we'll find ourselves taking the cookies more than we should. It's better if we can put them into the freezer and wait. That way we'll eat less and enjoy them more because they are hard and chewing becomes a slower, more patient effort. That's the point about frozen buttercream frosting. Put it in your mouth at room temperature, and it's gone very quickly. But when it's frozen, you can enjoy the taste much longer as it melts(融化) in your mouth.

    The freezer treats a lot of fruit kindly. Take frozen grapes for example, I keep a bowl of grapes in my freezer. They become a little icy, and somehow their sweetness is improved. They are perfect and healthy dessert(点心). This is the same with oranges, apples, bananas…You might think bananas would get super­hard when frozen. Wrong! They become cool, creamy and sweet. If you have wisely covered some or all of the bananas with melted chocolate before putting them into the freeze, they will have a double taste.

    As long as you aren't eating anything that truly has to be hot, go ahead and experiment.

    A total of 34 Chinese cities with a combined population of nearly 300 million took park in a pet adoption day at the weekend, promoting the adoption of rescued stray (流浪的)animals.

    The live broadcast of China Pet Adoption Day events in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjin, Qingdao, Tianjin and Xi'an was watched by 562,000 people.

    From Urumqi in the far northwest to Fuzhou on the southeast coast, people gathered to raise awareness of animal care and to help stray find loving homes.

    Sun Quanhui, manager and senior adviser of World Animal Protection, said, “Planet Earth is not only home to humanity but also a home that we share with other animals. It is mankind's duty and important to treat animals kindly in a civilized society.”

    As China's population becomes richer, pet ownership has increased rapidly, but problems, such as pet abandonment and cruelty, are also growing.

    In recent years, more and more adoption events have taken place all over the country, which indicates an awakening of the Chinese public consciousness to animal protection.

    “Adopting a pet instead of buying one has been gaining a wider acceptance.”

    American Edward Dumpe, who has been working on designs for stray animal shelters in Beijing, said, “It surely sounds super sweet and I have no doubt that it must have been the result of great efforts.”

    “I think it is a good step in the right direction, and should be taken as evidence that Chinese society is becoming more aware of stray animals who should be taken care of and treated with respect.”

    In real life, “Rabbit-eating Carrot” is fashion designer who has created clothes embroidered(刺绣)with slogans(口号)such has “Please adopt a pet” and images of her cats, with all earnings going to the Qiming Small Animal Protection Center in Sichuan Province.

    “I didn't know that there were events like this in China. This is fantastic. Impressive.” Said George Philippe, a french living in Beijing and father of two, at an event in the capital.

    Is any economist so dull as to criticize Christmas? At first glance, the holiday season in western economies seems a treat for those concerned with such vagaries(奇思遐想)as GDP growth. After all, everyone is spending; in America, retailers make 25% of their yearly sales and 60% of their profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even so, economists find something to worry about in the nature of the purchases being made.

    Much of the holiday spending is on gifts for others. At the simplest level, giving gifts involves the giver thinking of something that the recipient would like--he tries to guess her preferences, as economists say--and then buying the gift and delivering it. Yet this guessing of preferences is not easy; indeed, it is often done badly. Every year, ties go unworn and books unread. And even if a gift is enjoyed, it may not be what the recipient would have bought if they had spent the money themselves.

    Interested in this mismatch between wants and gifts, in 1993 Joel Waldfogel, then an economist at Yale University, sought to estimate the difference in dollar terms. In a study, he asked students two questions at the end of a holiday season: first, estimate the total amount paid(by the givers) for all the holiday gifts you received; second, apart from the sentimental value of the items, if you did not have them, how much would you be willing to pay to get them? His results were gloomy: on average, a gift was valued by the recipient well below the price paid by the giver.

    In addition, recipients may not know their own preferences very well. Some of the best gifts, after all, are unexpected items that you would never have thought of buying, but which turn out to be especially well picked. And preferences can change. So by giving a jazz CD, for example, the giver may be encouraging the recipient to enjoy something that was ignored before. This, a desire to build skills, is possibly the hope held by many parents who ignore their children's desires for video games and buy them books instead.

    Finally, there are items that a recipient would like to receive but not purchase. If someone else buys them, however, they can be enjoyed guilt-free. This might explain the volume of chocolate that changes over the holidays. Thus, the lesson for gift-givers is that you should try hard to guess the preference of each person on your list and then choose a gift that will have high sentimental value.

    In an industry with low margins (利润) where the traditional wisdom is led by Walmart, the key to success is lowering operating costs. A big part of those costs are in labor, so it is no surprise that the retail industry has been a leader in using more part-time workers to keep labor costs down, holding the line on wages, not training, and with few exceptions, seeing employees as a cost to be minimized. There is no doubt that these businesses fight for every dollar of margin. Unlike trend-leading hi-tech companies which spend a lot of money on employees to get them innovated, retail industry can spend very limited money on their employees.

    What researchers found was that companies were often staffing their stores far too low, and that many stores tended to perform better with higher staffing levels and were more profitable. Let's let that sink in for a minute. The stores were making more money (with all other things being equal) when they spent more on employees.

    They also found that retailers didn't do a very good job when staffing levels are just the actual demand in those stores. In fact, they set staffing levels identically across stores, even when the needs of the stores varied considerably. The average store did not appear to be understaffed, but there were enough that were understaffed and effect on overall company profitability was substantial.

    Interestingly, the same researchers persuaded the retail chain to run an experiment with them and slightly raise staffing levels to the amount that their analysis of historical data suggests would be ideal. Yes, labor costs obviously jumped when they did that, but so did profits. In retail, labor is a small percentage of costs—the biggest part is the cost of the products they sell. So, the net effect was an increase in profits of $7.4 million across 168 stores on an annual basis.

    What can we learn from this? One question worth thinking of is: How can traditional retail industry survive the increasingly severe market? Especially now with the growth of online retail, the one thing stores still have going for them is one to one customer contact with salespeople. If retailers cut that down to almost nothing, then they have effectively eliminated their competitive advantage against online stores.

    As winter set in, it's the perfect time to get out of town and escape the seasonal mood disorder. Here are vacation ideas to adopt now.

    Costa Rica

    Costa Rica, located in the Valle del General, is an off-the-radar agriculture town that's not overrun with tourists. The area is known for its coffee, pineapples and sugar cane plantations, as well as its rich forests. What's more, you can enjoy horseback riding, spend afternoons at the spa or tour a nearby wildlife shelter to look out for colorful birds, sloths and other animals.

    Los Cabos, Mexico

    If you love wine, travel to Los Cabos, a beautiful vacation destination at the southern edge of the Baja Peninsula. During your getaway, you can enjoy special wine tastings and dinner cooked by Los Cabos's Michelin-starred chef. There are wildlife-viewing opportunities, too. From December through May, you can spot whales, manta rays and more wildlife.

    Petit St Vincent, the Grenadines

    This private Caribbean island was spared the anger of hurricanes Irma and Maria. What's more, the whole island is only 115 acres and has 22 cottages. Each cottage is located in a quiet place, and you can expect to unplug and recharge phones with no wireless connections, televisions or telephones in the cottages. Even better, you can spend your days admiring fascinating marine (海洋的) life at the Jean-Michel Cousteau Diving Caribbean center.

    The Exumas, Bahamas

    On Fowl Cay's 50-acre private island, you can enjoy a carefree escape. Days can be spent fishing, boating and diving before wandering along white sands. The resort features large one-, two- and three-bedroom houses. Best of all, if you're planning a group getaway or multigenerational trip, you rent the entire island for a one-of-a-kind island escape.