Blog Posts by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

He cleaned his plate! But a new study says that might not be a good thing after all. (Photo: Getty Images).A routine part of mealtimes for many families may actually be harming your kids. A new study has found that urging your kids to join the "clean plate club" by finishing all the food on their plates can prevent them from learning healthy eating habits.

Also on Shine: Are Parents to Blame for Childhood Obesity?

"In the 1950s, cleaning your plate meant something different," Katie Loth, a registered dietician and research assistant at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who was the lead author on the study, told HealthDay. "Portion sizes have gotten bigger over time, and if you encourage kids to rely on environmental indicators, like how much food is on their plates or the time of day, they'll lose the ability to rely on internal cues to know whether they're hungry or full."

Also on Shine: How Much Does My Kid Need to Eat?

The study will be published in the May issue of the journal "Pediatrics"; the results were released online on Monday. It used data from 2,200 teenagers

Read More »from The Danger of the Clean Plate Club

He cleaned his plate! But a new study says that might not be a good thing after all. (Photo: Getty Images).A routine part of mealtime for many families may actually be harming your kids. A new study has found that urging your kids to join the "clean plate club" by finishing all the food on their plates can prevent them from learning healthy eating habits.

Also on Shine: Are Parents to Blame for Childhood Obesity?

"In the 1950s, cleaning your plate meant something different," Katie Loth, a registered dietician and research assistant at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who was the lead author on the study, told HealthDay. "Portion sizes have gotten bigger over time, and if you encourage kids to rely on environmental indicators, like how much food is on their plates or the time of day, they'll lose the ability to rely on internal cues to know whether they're hungry or full."

Also on Shine: How Much Does My Kid Need to Eat?

The study will be published in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics; the results were released online on Monday. Researchers looked at data from 2,200

Read More »from The Dangers of the Clean Plate Club

Women who smoke have a much higher risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, a new study finds. (Photo: Getty Images)If people need another reason to quit smoking, researchers in Sweden have one that might finally make women kick the habit: A new study shows that women who smoke even just one cigarette per day double their risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, an incurable disease that inflames and eventually erodes a person's joints.

Related: Study Finds No Link Between Pollution and Rheumatoid Arthritis

The increased risk for developing the painful joint disease was the same whether women smoked one or as many as seven cigarettes per day, head researcher Daniela Di Giuseppe and her team found. The risk shot to 70 percent for women who smoked between one and five packs per day. And while quitting improved the odds somewhat, even former smokers had a higher risk of rheumatoid arthritis compared to women who had never picked up a cigarette.

Also on Shine: 6 Supplements for Arthritis Sufferers

"Compared to never smokers, the risk was still significantly elevated 15 years after smoking

Read More »from Risk of Rheumatoid Arthritis Doubles for Female Smokers, Study Finds

Domenic Johansson was taken from his parents in 2009 because he was being homeschooled. (Photo: Facebook)Annie and Christer Johansson haven't seen their son, Domenic, in nearly four years. He was just seven when he was taken away from them at gunpoint in June 2009. The family was on an airplane about to leave Sweden for their new home in India, where Annie's family is from.

Also on Shine: Can Kids Be Raised in a Gender-Neutral Society? Sweden Thinks So

But the people who took him weren't kidnappers or terrorists -- they were Swedish police officers operating under orders from social service agencies. And social services ordered them to seize the boy—not to prevent him from being physically or sexually abused—but for being homeschooled. At least, that's the official reason they gave when they grabbed him and hauled him off the plane.

Homeschooling is illegal in Sweden, where the perks offered to working parents are great but the regulations imposed by the government are many. For example: People from "non-noble" families are prevented from giving their children "noble" names, and all schools

Read More »from Parents Fight To Regain Custody of Homeschooled Son

Katherine Russell, widow of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. (Photo William Farrington/Polaris)A few years ago, in a photo essay for Slate.com, boxer-turned-Boston-Marathon-Bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev said: “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them." But Tsarnaev, 26, who died Friday in a police shoot-out during a botched getaway, fell in love with and married one: Katherine Russell, a 24-year-old Rhode Island native and the mother of their 3-year-old daughter, Zahara. 

Also on Shine: The Boston Marathon Bombings: How to Avoid Charity Scams and Help for Real

The young family lived in a Cambridge apartment that had been leased more than 10 years ago by Tsarnaev's parents. Russell worked 70 to 80 hours, 7 days a week as a home health-care aide, her lawyer, Amato DeLuca, told reporters, and she thought her husband was caring for their toddler at home while she was at work. Instead, he allegedly was planning out the terrorist attack that killed 3 and maimed more than 170 others at the finish line of the Boston Marathon last week.

Also on Shine: Boston

Read More »from Who is Katherine Russell, Widow of Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev?

A party where everyone pretends to be homeless? Not cool. (Photo: Getty Images)Sororities and fraternities are known for a lot of positive things -- community service, career networking, sisterhood -- but sensitive and culturally appropriate party themes aren't one of them. Just two months after Duke University brothers of Kappa Sigma got in trouble for a racist, "Asian-themed" party, and less than six months after Chi Omegas sisters at Penn State apologized for holding a racist Mexican-inspired dress-up party, the ladies at Kappa Delta at Indiana University decided it would be a good idea to dress up as homeless people for fun.

Smudges of dirt on their faces? Check. Grungy looking plaid shirts? Check. Holding stained cardboard signs offering to "twerk for food" or "tickle your pickle" and asking for money for booze? Check, check, check.

Next stop, public outrage. Just days after a sorority sister's venom-spewing email rant went viral, Kappa Delta's poverty-themed party caps off a week of bad press for Greek life.  On Friday, a student at Indiana University

Read More »from Homeless-Themed Sorority Party: Another Shameful Moment Brought to You by the Greek System

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As law enforcement officials continue to comb the Boston area searching for 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev while residents remain in their homes under a "shelter in place" order issued by the city government, one question hangs over our heads: Why have so many bad things happened on April 19th?

Related: The Latest Developments in the Boston Marathon Bombings

It's a day charged with historical importance, marking the anniversaries of a handful of U.S. events: The Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, the end of the Waco siege at the Branch Davidian compound in 1993 and the first day of the battle of Lexington and Concord which kicked off the American Revolution in 1775. Also on that day: Some white supremacists argue its Adolf Hitler's birthday (officially April 20 in Europe, but April 19 in the U.S.), a gun turret exploded on the USS Iowa in 1989, killing 87 sailors, and the FBI raided radical Christian doomsday organization The Covenant, The Sword, and the Read More »from What's The Significance of April 19?

photo: Getty ImagesIt's like proof that governments and fashion magazines can say whatever they want, but the industry isn't really changing: Officials at one of the largest eating-disorder treatment centers in the world have complained that modeling agencies have been scouting for new talent among their patients.

Also on Shine: Too-Skinny Model Ban Takes Effect in Israel

"We think this is repugnant. People have stood outside our clinic and tried to pick up our girls because they know they are very thin," the chief doctor at Sweden's Stockholm Center for Eating Disorders, Dr. Anna-Maria af Sandeberg, told the Metro newspaper.

Also on Shine: Model Jessica Clark Opens Up About Her Eating Disorders

One patient, a 14-year-old girl, was reportedly approached by an agent while she was still in treatment. The agent left her a business card, which infuriated the girl's mother, Christina Lillman-Ringbord, who later confronted the agent.

"They claimed that they approach healthy, normally slim young people

Read More »from Scouts Search For Models at Eating Disorder Clinic, Claim Doctors