Latest news with #bonding
RNZ News
29-05-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
National campaigned on this bonding scheme, so why has no work been done on it?
Photo: RNZ / Reece Baker No work has been done on the nurse bonding and relocation schemes National campaigned on in the election, the Health Ministry has confirmed. Health Minister Simeon Brown has repeatedly avoided answering direct questions from RNZ about the continuation of the schemes, a key plank of National's health policies. The scheme the party proposed in April 2023 would have seen the government put $4500 a year towards nurses and midwives' student loans starting in 2024. It was to be paired with a relocation programme offering up to $10,000 to up to 1000 qualified overseas nurses and midwives. Nurses at the time were sceptical , saying it would be better to improve pay and conditions or make nursing tuition free. Asked if any work had been done on the policy, the Health Ministry confirmed it "is not currently working on a standalone bonding scheme", pointing to other initiatives aimed at increasing the workforce. These include the expansion of Health NZ's separate voluntary bonding scheme introduced under John Key's government, which Brown celebrated in a statement late last month. RNZ questioned him in early May on progress with National's election policy. "Well look, we announced I think last week a significant uplift in the number of bonded placements through Health NZ to bond a range of nurses and other health practitioners," he said, referring to Health NZ's scheme. Put to him that was a different scheme, he said "and there's been a significant increase in the number of placements". Asked if it was therefore no longer needed, he said: "Well, it's a significant increase in the number of places that we have made available in that existing bonding scheme", and asked directly if the election policy had been abandoned, he said "we're very focused on the current scheme ... and growing it". Subsequent questions on Wednesday about the scheme were met with similar responses. "Oh, look, as I announced a few weeks ago Health New Zealand's invested significantly more into the nurse bonding that it currently operates ... we're doing a lot to invest in more nurses, both in acute both in hospitals and in primary care ... the bonding system is something that we've continued to invest in." Brown also brushed off written questions, his office's five-paragraph response answering none of RNZ's questions directly. "National's health workforce policy was developed at a time when New Zealand was facing critical nurse shortages, driven by border closures and a failure to provide clear immigration pathways for nurses under the previous government," one said. The new bonding scheme was costed at $46.8 million over three years starting in 2024/25, rising to $49.2m in 2027/28, with the relocation grants costing $10m a year over the same timeframe - the money all coming out of the savings expected from reducing government spending on contractors and consultants. The policy remains on National's website. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon as recently as December said the scheme was still a "live" issue and while he could give no firm commitment on timing, "that programme is still something that [then-Health Minister] Shane Reti will work his way through". Simeon Brown replaced Dr Reti as Health Minister the following month.
CNN
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Music video nights are the pinnacle of friendship
A night spent watching music videos is a most sacred ritual. It begins, for me and my loved ones, when the night feels like it's ending. It's late, we're drowsy and conversation is dwindling. Someone turns on YouTube and starts playing the music video to a song they love. We perk up. Chappell Roan's 'My Kink is Karma' kicks us off. Inspired, my friend requests a video of Kelly Clarkson covering the same song. Then I request a Kelly Clarkson single that appeared in 'The Princess Diaries 2.' And down the rabbit hole we go, spending hours singing and dancing along to music videos we haven't seen in years. The night ends somewhere around Ludacris' 'Pimpin' All Over the World.' Stumbling into a music video marathon with friends is the ultimate bonding activity: It's a nostalgia trip. A musical catharsis. A pop culture crash course. A 'gay pastime.' And, thank goodness, mostly free! But for its simple charms, it can provoke some remarkably deep revelations — exchanging memories surrounding the videos is how we learn each other's lore. 'You're saying something about your inner life, your story,' said Clay Routledge, a psychologist who studies nostalgia at the Archbridge Institute think tank. 'You don't normally think that watching music videos might do that.' Lakyn Carlton, a stylist and social media personality, perhaps said it best: 'Watching music videos is a perfectly valid and, in fact, validly perfect party activity.' Some of my fondest memories revolve around music videos: Watching Duran Duran's 'Rio' with my mom to better understand her teenage crush on Nick Rhodes. Returning home late with my college roommates, falling asleep to Shakira and Ciara. Waking up early before middle school with VH1's 'Jump Start,' trying to learn the words to the Rihanna and Taylor Swift songs my classmates were singing. Filming our own videos as kids with our parents' bulky handheld cameras. 'Music is a powerful source of nostalgia, and we all have soundtracks to our lives,' Routledge said. 'So when we hear old music, with memories attached to it, it does bring us back. It helps us make good contact with nostalgic memories.' The ritual of music video marathons began for most in 1981, with the birth of MTV, where you could reliably catch instant classics like Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' indie breakthroughs like the Talking Heads' 'Burning Down the House' and Dire Straits' meta 'Money for Nothing,' imagining a conversation between people who jealously fantasize about living like the artists they watch on (where else?) MTV. 'Many a life-altering youth experience revolved around an MTV soundtrack,' Jamie Allen wrote for CNN in 2001, 20 years after the network launched. The music on MTV was kaleidoscopic, even if it took the network several years to integrate videos from genres pioneered by Black artists. And it 'managed to bring together people' whose tastes may never have overlapped on the radio, Syracuse University now-trustee professor Robert Thompson told CNN in 2001. When MTV pivoted to reality programming full-time, music videos moved to YouTube, where many of them have since racked up billions of views, even if they premiered on cable. And that's where many younger Millennials and Gen Z music lovers first fell in love with the artform. 'People might think pop culture is kind of superficial, but oftentimes, it tells the story of a time — the story of a time we were a part of and connected to,' Routledge said. Nostalgia, Routledge said, very often turns contagious. Once someone starts dreamily revisiting a teenage episode of their lives, even if the disclosure is inspired by Britney Spears' airplane-set 'Toxic' video, it opens the door to get to know them better — and for the rest of the attendees of a music video night to share their own stories. 'People kind of think of nostalgia as this personal experience, but so much of nostalgia is an exchange with other people,' Routledge said. ''I remember where I was, here's my story' — there's self-disclosure there. We're building the closeness of our relationships because we're revealing more about our personal lives.' Victoria Arguelles, a content strategist at an ad agency, recently moved back to her hometown of Miami. But she treasures the nights in New York when she and her friends would meet up for 'Frigay,' their name for the standing appointment of watching older music videos before hitting the town. 'It unlocked a ton of memories,' she said of the weekly tradition. Whether spinning in circles to Madonna's 'Ray of Light' or shocking themselves by discovering the moves to Lady Gaga's 'Judas' still lived in their bodies, Arguelles and her friends strengthened their bonds through song and dance. They'd often continue the music video marathon once they returned home from the bar, sometimes into the early morning. 'Everyone had different memories attached, but we all somehow knew the same choreography,' Arguelles said. 'So our friend group was very much the meme of 'gay people love to get together and watch music videos for hours,' because we do!' My first music video request is always Lady Gaga's 'Telephone,' because every time it plays, I'm suddenly 12 again, lying on my stomach on the carpet of my friend Katie's living room, noodling around on her laptop when we first watch the video that blows our minds. We were hanging out in between school and rehearsal, in the time of our lives before we rebuilt our identities as teenagers. We were energized by Gaga's anarchic vision of a Bonnie-and-Clyde romance with Beyoncé. Watching the 'Telephone' video's near-nudity, f-bombs and lesbian love affair felt like a portal to a more adult world. Most of my friends have similar stories about music videos stirring something in them, or symbolizing a time in their lives they never thought they'd miss. And without music video nights, we wouldn't have such a convenient occasion on which to share those stories. So I asked my friends about some of their most treasured nights spent with music videos. Logan remembered discovering Billie Eilish from her college apartment couch. Elly said she and her friends still turn pretty much every girls' night into a music video marathon, touching everything from A$AP Rocky to early 2010s J-pop to OK Go's perfectly synchronized romps. Hellen recently revisited Vanessa Hudgens' videos that used to play during Disney Channel commercial breaks and filmed herself relearning the choreography. Lexi carefully curates hers with Janet Jackson, Mandy Moore and Mariah Carey, comparing her playlists to a 'karaoke night but for free' and with 'no limit on how much time you have.' More than a few of my friends told me they started the music video nights with the intention of venturing out late, but they ended up staying in and singing together instead. There's an emphasis on videos that are 10, 20, even 40 years older on music video nights mostly because they're part of the pop cultural language we share with our friends, but also because artists just aren't cranking out classic videos like they used to. Still, there's Sabrina Carpenter's gory, sapphic video for her hit 'Taste,' and Chappell Roan's clips have a scrappy DIY charm. And of course, video queen Gaga has wormed her way back into my rotation with 'Abracadabra.' That video feels like it's nostalgic, too, for the era of Gaga's career when dark, dance-y videos for 'Telephone,' 'Bad Romance' and 'Alejandro' were viral hits. So when 'Abracadabra' comes on now, it takes me back to that time. 'There are a lot of things that we do on the surface that just seem kind of fun or superficial or not really that meaningful,' Routledge said. But popular cultural artifacts, including the music videos we obsessed over as kids, give us a 'reason to talk about something.' 'You end up sharing what you were feeling at the time,' Routledge said. 'It's going beyond the superficial conversation to sharing things. And nostalgia helps us do that, because, in a way, that makes us feel connected to these memories. And then you're revealing something, right?'
CNN
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Music video nights are the pinnacle of friendship
A night spent watching music videos is a most sacred ritual. It begins, for me and my loved ones, when the night feels like it's ending. It's late, we're drowsy and conversation is dwindling. Someone turns on YouTube and starts playing the music video to a song they love. We perk up. Chappell Roan's 'My Kink is Karma' kicks us off. Inspired, my friend requests a video of Kelly Clarkson covering the same song. Then I request a Kelly Clarkson single that appeared in 'The Princess Diaries 2.' And down the rabbit hole we go, spending hours singing and dancing along to music videos we haven't seen in years. The night ends somewhere around Ludacris' 'Pimpin' All Over the World.' Stumbling into a music video marathon with friends is the ultimate bonding activity: It's a nostalgia trip. A musical catharsis. A pop culture crash course. A 'gay pastime.' And, thank goodness, mostly free! But for its simple charms, it can provoke some remarkably deep revelations — exchanging memories surrounding the videos is how we learn each other's lore. 'You're saying something about your inner life, your story,' said Clay Routledge, a psychologist who studies nostalgia at the Archbridge Institute think tank. 'You don't normally think that watching music videos might do that.' Lakyn Carlton, a stylist and social media personality, perhaps said it best: 'Watching music videos is a perfectly valid and, in fact, validly perfect party activity.' Some of my fondest memories revolve around music videos: Watching Duran Duran's 'Rio' with my mom to better understand her teenage crush on Nick Rhodes. Returning home late with my college roommates, falling asleep to Shakira and Ciara. Waking up early before middle school with VH1's 'Jump Start,' trying to learn the words to the Rihanna and Taylor Swift songs my classmates were singing. Filming our own videos as kids with our parents' bulky handheld cameras. 'Music is a powerful source of nostalgia, and we all have soundtracks to our lives,' Routledge said. 'So when we hear old music, with memories attached to it, it does bring us back. It helps us make good contact with nostalgic memories.' The ritual of music video marathons began for most in 1981, with the birth of MTV, where you could reliably catch instant classics like Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' indie breakthroughs like the Talking Heads' 'Burning Down the House' and Dire Straits' meta 'Money for Nothing,' imagining a conversation between people who jealously fantasize about living like the artists they watch on (where else?) MTV. 'Many a life-altering youth experience revolved around an MTV soundtrack,' Jamie Allen wrote for CNN in 2001, 20 years after the network launched. The music on MTV was kaleidoscopic, even if it took the network several years to integrate videos from genres pioneered by Black artists. And it 'managed to bring together people' whose tastes may never have overlapped on the radio, Syracuse University now-trustee professor Robert Thompson told CNN in 2001. When MTV pivoted to reality programming full-time, music videos moved to YouTube, where many of them have since racked up billions of views, even if they premiered on cable. And that's where many younger Millennials and Gen Z music lovers first fell in love with the artform. 'People might think pop culture is kind of superficial, but oftentimes, it tells the story of a time — the story of a time we were a part of and connected to,' Routledge said. Nostalgia, Routledge said, very often turns contagious. Once someone starts dreamily revisiting a teenage episode of their lives, even if the disclosure is inspired by Britney Spears' airplane-set 'Toxic' video, it opens the door to get to know them better — and for the rest of the attendees of a music video night to share their own stories. 'People kind of think of nostalgia as this personal experience, but so much of nostalgia is an exchange with other people,' Routledge said. ''I remember where I was, here's my story' — there's self-disclosure there. We're building the closeness of our relationships because we're revealing more about our personal lives.' Victoria Arguelles, a content strategist at an ad agency, recently moved back to her hometown of Miami. But she treasures the nights in New York when she and her friends would meet up for 'Frigay,' their name for the standing appointment of watching older music videos before hitting the town. 'It unlocked a ton of memories,' she said of the weekly tradition. Whether spinning in circles to Madonna's 'Ray of Light' or shocking themselves by discovering the moves to Lady Gaga's 'Judas' still lived in their bodies, Arguelles and her friends strengthened their bonds through song and dance. They'd often continue the music video marathon once they returned home from the bar, sometimes into the early morning. 'Everyone had different memories attached, but we all somehow knew the same choreography,' Arguelles said. 'So our friend group was very much the meme of 'gay people love to get together and watch music videos for hours,' because we do!' My first music video request is always Lady Gaga's 'Telephone,' because every time it plays, I'm suddenly 12 again, lying on my stomach on the carpet of my friend Katie's living room, noodling around on her laptop when we first watch the video that blows our minds. We were hanging out in between school and rehearsal, in the time of our lives before we rebuilt our identities as teenagers. We were energized by Gaga's anarchic vision of a Bonnie-and-Clyde romance with Beyoncé. Watching the 'Telephone' video's near-nudity, f-bombs and lesbian love affair felt like a portal to a more adult world. Most of my friends have similar stories about music videos stirring something in them, or symbolizing a time in their lives they never thought they'd miss. And without music video nights, we wouldn't have such a convenient occasion on which to share those stories. So I asked my friends about some of their most treasured nights spent with music videos. Logan remembered discovering Billie Eilish from her college apartment couch. Elly said she and her friends still turn pretty much every girls' night into a music video marathon, touching everything from A$AP Rocky to early 2010s J-pop to OK Go's perfectly synchronized romps. Hellen recently revisited Vanessa Hudgens' videos that used to play during Disney Channel commercial breaks and filmed herself relearning the choreography. Lexi carefully curates hers with Janet Jackson, Mandy Moore and Mariah Carey, comparing her playlists to a 'karaoke night but for free' and with 'no limit on how much time you have.' More than a few of my friends told me they started the music video nights with the intention of venturing out late, but they ended up staying in and singing together instead. There's an emphasis on videos that are 10, 20, even 40 years older on music video nights mostly because they're part of the pop cultural language we share with our friends, but also because artists just aren't cranking out classic videos like they used to. Still, there's Sabrina Carpenter's gory, sapphic video for her hit 'Taste,' and Chappell Roan's clips have a scrappy DIY charm. And of course, video queen Gaga has wormed her way back into my rotation with 'Abracadabra.' That video feels like it's nostalgic, too, for the era of Gaga's career when dark, dance-y videos for 'Telephone,' 'Bad Romance' and 'Alejandro' were viral hits. So when 'Abracadabra' comes on now, it takes me back to that time. 'There are a lot of things that we do on the surface that just seem kind of fun or superficial or not really that meaningful,' Routledge said. But popular cultural artifacts, including the music videos we obsessed over as kids, give us a 'reason to talk about something.' 'You end up sharing what you were feeling at the time,' Routledge said. 'It's going beyond the superficial conversation to sharing things. And nostalgia helps us do that, because, in a way, that makes us feel connected to these memories. And then you're revealing something, right?'
CNN
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Music video nights are the pinnacle of friendship
A night spent watching music videos is a most sacred ritual. It begins, for me and my loved ones, when the night feels like it's ending. It's late, we're drowsy and conversation is dwindling. Someone turns on YouTube and starts playing the music video to a song they love. We perk up. Chappell Roan's 'My Kink is Karma' kicks us off. Inspired, my friend requests a video of Kelly Clarkson covering the same song. Then I request a Kelly Clarkson single that appeared in 'The Princess Diaries 2.' And down the rabbit hole we go, spending hours singing and dancing along to music videos we haven't seen in years. The night ends somewhere around Ludacris' 'Pimpin' All Over the World.' Stumbling into a music video marathon with friends is the ultimate bonding activity: It's a nostalgia trip. A musical catharsis. A pop culture crash course. A 'gay pastime.' And, thank goodness, mostly free! But for its simple charms, it can provoke some remarkably deep revelations — exchanging memories surrounding the videos is how we learn each other's lore. 'You're saying something about your inner life, your story,' said Clay Routledge, a psychologist who studies nostalgia at the Archbridge Institute think tank. 'You don't normally think that watching music videos might do that.' Lakyn Carlton, a stylist and social media personality, perhaps said it best: 'Watching music videos is a perfectly valid and, in fact, validly perfect party activity.' Some of my fondest memories revolve around music videos: Watching Duran Duran's 'Rio' with my mom to better understand her teenage crush on Nick Rhodes. Returning home late with my college roommates, falling asleep to Shakira and Ciara. Waking up early before middle school with VH1's 'Jump Start,' trying to learn the words to the Rihanna and Taylor Swift songs my classmates were singing. Filming our own videos as kids with our parents' bulky handheld cameras. 'Music is a powerful source of nostalgia, and we all have soundtracks to our lives,' Routledge said. 'So when we hear old music, with memories attached to it, it does bring us back. It helps us make good contact with nostalgic memories.' The ritual of music video marathons began for most in 1981, with the birth of MTV, where you could reliably catch instant classics like Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' indie breakthroughs like the Talking Heads' 'Burning Down the House' and Dire Straits' meta 'Money for Nothing,' imagining a conversation between people who jealously fantasize about living like the artists they watch on (where else?) MTV. 'Many a life-altering youth experience revolved around an MTV soundtrack,' Jamie Allen wrote for CNN in 2001, 20 years after the network launched. The music on MTV was kaleidoscopic, even if it took the network several years to integrate videos from genres pioneered by Black artists. And it 'managed to bring together people' whose tastes may never have overlapped on the radio, Syracuse University now-trustee professor Robert Thompson told CNN in 2001. When MTV pivoted to reality programming full-time, music videos moved to YouTube, where many of them have since racked up billions of views, even if they premiered on cable. And that's where many younger Millennials and Gen Z music lovers first fell in love with the artform. 'People might think pop culture is kind of superficial, but oftentimes, it tells the story of a time — the story of a time we were a part of and connected to,' Routledge said. Nostalgia, Routledge said, very often turns contagious. Once someone starts dreamily revisiting a teenage episode of their lives, even if the disclosure is inspired by Britney Spears' airplane-set 'Toxic' video, it opens the door to get to know them better — and for the rest of the attendees of a music video night to share their own stories. 'People kind of think of nostalgia as this personal experience, but so much of nostalgia is an exchange with other people,' Routledge said. ''I remember where I was, here's my story' — there's self-disclosure there. We're building the closeness of our relationships because we're revealing more about our personal lives.' Victoria Arguelles, a content strategist at an ad agency, recently moved back to her hometown of Miami. But she treasures the nights in New York when she and her friends would meet up for 'Frigay,' their name for the standing appointment of watching older music videos before hitting the town. 'It unlocked a ton of memories,' she said of the weekly tradition. Whether spinning in circles to Madonna's 'Ray of Light' or shocking themselves by discovering the moves to Lady Gaga's 'Judas' still lived in their bodies, Arguelles and her friends strengthened their bonds through song and dance. They'd often continue the music video marathon once they returned home from the bar, sometimes into the early morning. 'Everyone had different memories attached, but we all somehow knew the same choreography,' Arguelles said. 'So our friend group was very much the meme of 'gay people love to get together and watch music videos for hours,' because we do!' My first music video request is always Lady Gaga's 'Telephone,' because every time it plays, I'm suddenly 12 again, lying on my stomach on the carpet of my friend Katie's living room, noodling around on her laptop when we first watch the video that blows our minds. We were hanging out in between school and rehearsal, in the time of our lives before we rebuilt our identities as teenagers. We were energized by Gaga's anarchic vision of a Bonnie-and-Clyde romance with Beyoncé. Watching the 'Telephone' video's near-nudity, f-bombs and lesbian love affair felt like a portal to a more adult world. Most of my friends have similar stories about music videos stirring something in them, or symbolizing a time in their lives they never thought they'd miss. And without music video nights, we wouldn't have such a convenient occasion on which to share those stories. So I asked my friends about some of their most treasured nights spent with music videos. Logan remembered discovering Billie Eilish from her college apartment couch. Elly said she and her friends still turn pretty much every girls' night into a music video marathon, touching everything from A$AP Rocky to early 2010s J-pop to OK Go's perfectly synchronized romps. Hellen recently revisited Vanessa Hudgens' videos that used to play during Disney Channel commercial breaks and filmed herself relearning the choreography. Lexi carefully curates hers with Janet Jackson, Mandy Moore and Mariah Carey, comparing her playlists to a 'karaoke night but for free' and with 'no limit on how much time you have.' More than a few of my friends told me they started the music video nights with the intention of venturing out late, but they ended up staying in and singing together instead. There's an emphasis on videos that are 10, 20, even 40 years older on music video nights mostly because they're part of the pop cultural language we share with our friends, but also because artists just aren't cranking out classic videos like they used to. Still, there's Sabrina Carpenter's gory, sapphic video for her hit 'Taste,' and Chappell Roan's clips have a scrappy DIY charm. And of course, video queen Gaga has wormed her way back into my rotation with 'Abracadabra.' That video feels like it's nostalgic, too, for the era of Gaga's career when dark, dance-y videos for 'Telephone,' 'Bad Romance' and 'Alejandro' were viral hits. So when 'Abracadabra' comes on now, it takes me back to that time. 'There are a lot of things that we do on the surface that just seem kind of fun or superficial or not really that meaningful,' Routledge said. But popular cultural artifacts, including the music videos we obsessed over as kids, give us a 'reason to talk about something.' 'You end up sharing what you were feeling at the time,' Routledge said. 'It's going beyond the superficial conversation to sharing things. And nostalgia helps us do that, because, in a way, that makes us feel connected to these memories. And then you're revealing something, right?'
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Guardian
Healthy, portable and a little bit sexy: a love letter to the pistachio
Do you ever feel like there's something missing when you sit down to eat? As if the whole process has become so streamlined that something's got lost? You're not alone. The packaged convenience of modern food has weakened our connection with what we eat and although very few of us want to return to hunting in the woods, there is still a part of us that's crying out for food that we have to work for just a little, so we can nourish our soul as well as our body. Well, I know a nutty treat that does the trick, so let's get cracking. Sophisticated and a little bit sexy, the pistachio truly is a nut like no other. Full of flavour and texture, with a satisfying crunch, this superfood is a pleasurable, tactile and nourishing snack that you'll never fall out of love with. Bursting with goodness and zest, this gorgeous green nut is the perfect antidote to the soulless sloth of so much modern food because you don't just eat a pistachio, you rescue it heroically from its shell. Each time you crack a pistachio out of its little casing, that simple task creates the pleasure of (slightly) delayed gratification. It's like adult fidget spinning, but you get to eat the spinner afterwards. That ritual of sitting back and cracking pistachio shells can be a bonding ceremony over a drink with a friend, a nice way to avoid picking up our phones as we watch TV, or simply a good way to pass the hours on a long train journey. Wherever we crack their shells, pistachios take us back to nature. They're so pretty, too: eminently Instagrammable, they evoke Mediterranean summers and epic Persian feasts. No wonder the Queen of Sheba said that pistachios were the food of royalty – if legend is to be believed, anyway. Other nuts can only dream of their casual sophistication. Peanuts are only good for pub floors, almonds sit there like a guest who's overstayed their welcome and walnuts are just big, bitter and twisted. So that's why I stick to the gorgeous green pistachio. I eat them a handful at a time – after shelling them, of course – crunching my way to a mouthful of their mild nutty flavour, buttery texture, with a suggestion of salt and hints of sweetness. If you eat 49 pistachios a day that's just 160 calories and you get a natural source of B vitamins and minerals, as well as monounsaturated fats. If you love to exercise, this plant-based complete protein will keep you going and then give you a boost afterwards, thanks to its high levels of magnesium, which can help your body to recover. The benefits don't end there. As if having healthy fats, high fibre too, and antioxidants wasn't enough, these superfoods can also help to manage our blood sugar levels for us. How kind can a foodstuff be? The benefits just keep on coming: a study published in January found that eating a handful of lutein-containing pistachio nuts each day for 12 weeks improved the eye health of a group of midlifers, so whoever says that delicious food can't be healthy has clearly never eaten a pistachio, the poor people. Our axe-wielding ancestors wouldn't recognise us getting our nutrition from microwaved ready meals, capsuled supplements or long-life juices. It's all become a little too lazy, but pistachios make you work (just a little bit) for their goodness, so they're a great way for everyone to connect back to nature. Fun to eat, full of flavour, and amazing for your health – the pistachio is beyond royalty, it's actually divine. Learn more about pistachio benefits
