Consumer News: Home prices are still rising, but not everywhere

Aldi shoppers are sharing ridiculously easy meal combinations that require few ingredients and little prep

• Aldi shoppers on Reddit have been swapping great dinner ideas built around a few inexpensive, easy-to-prepare ingredients.

• The smartest trick isn't necessarily finding the absolute cheapest food at Aldi it's more about keeping meals around that are easier than opening a delivery app.

• Frozen chicken, rice, vegetables, ravioli, and Aldi's seasoned pork roasts can all become the foundation for multiple quick meals with plenty of leftovers.

We've all been there. There's technically food in the refrigerator, but nothing looks enough like dinner to stop you from opening DoorDash.

Aldi shoppers on Reddit may have found a solution: Don't just stock up on ingredients. Stock up on meals that practically assemble themselves.

A recent discussion in the Aldi subreddit asking for low energy dinner ideas generated dozens of combinations involving frozen foods, prepared meats, pasta, rice, and vegetables.

I dug through those suggestions and other recent Aldi discussions and found six ideas worth stealing. This will be particularly helpful on nights when the alternative is an expensive takeout order.

1. Make your own sweet-and-sour chicken bowl

This was one of the most popular suggestions, and it's about as easy as dinner gets.

Grab Aldi's frozen honey-battered chicken, sweet-and-sour sauce, frozen broccoli or mixed vegetables, and your choice of rice or noodles.

Cook the chicken, microwave, or steam the vegetables and toss everything together.

One shopper suggested Aldi's Asian medley frozen vegetables, while another uses the same basic formula with General Tso's chicken, broccoli, and jasmine rice.

The bigger hack here is worth remembering: Use a frozen entre as a single ingredient rather than the entire meal. Then add inexpensive things like rice or vegetables and youll stretch it farther and make it feel a lot more like takeout from Panda Express or Chipotle.

2. Turn ravioli into a dump-and-bake dinner

Keep frozen or refrigerated ravioli, a jar of marinara, and shredded mozzarella around and you've essentially got emergency lasagna.

Instead of cooking each component separately, layer the ravioli with sauce and cheese in a baking dish and bake until everything is hot and bubbly.

You can use the same strategy with Alfredo sauce and throw in broccoli or another vegetable.

This is exactly the type of meal that's useful to have in your back pocket: three ingredients, almost no chopping, and very little cleanup.

Pro tip: Create an I don't want to cook section of your freezer. Keep two or three complete meal combinations together rather than scattering the ingredients throughout the kitchen. When you're tired, you shouldn't have to invent dinner.

3. Put pesto and tortellini on emergency dinner duty

Aldi shoppers also recommended combining tortellini and pesto with ground beef and whatever vegetables happen to be around.

You can make it even easier by skipping the ground beef and using leftover chicken or another precooked protein.

There's also a clever way to keep that jar of pesto from becoming food waste. Aldi shoppers recommend freezing leftover pesto in an ice-cube tray, then transferring the frozen portions to a freezer container or bag. Pull out only what you need the next time pasta night rolls around.

That's particularly useful if you're regularly throwing away half-used jars.

4. Turn one pork roast into multiple dinners

Aldi's seasoned pork shoulder roasts have developed something of a following among shoppers looking for inexpensive, low-effort meals.

The formula couldn't be much simpler: Put the roast in a slow cooker, let it cook for several hours, shred it, and serve it in tortillas with cheese, onion, cilantro, or salsa.

One shopper reported paying $5 to $7 for the carnitas roast, while another recent shopper said a roast costing less than $6 produced dinner plus enough for lunch the following day. Prices vary by store and location, of course.

But don't stop at tacos!

Use the leftovers for quesadillas, burrito bowls, nachos, or sandwiches. Several Aldi shoppers say they get multiple meals from a single roast.

Pro tip: When you're comparing convenience foods, don't look only at the package price. Calculate the cost per meal. A $6 or $7 item that becomes dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow may be a better value than a $4 convenience food that feeds you once.

5. Build a burrito bowl instead of ordering one

Rice is your friend here.

Start with rice, then add beans, corn, salsa, shredded cheese, and whatever protein you have available.

One Aldi shopper recently reported making roughly six Mexican-style meals for a little over $14, or about $2.40 per serving, using Aldi carnitas, pinto beans, corn, salsa, cheese, and rice. That's one shopper's experience rather than a nationwide price comparison, but it illustrates how inexpensive ingredients can stretch a relatively small amount of meat.

That's also the real savings trick: Let rice and beans do more of the work.

You don't need a Chipotle-sized pile of meat in every bowl to make it dinner.

6. Stretch frozen General Tso's chicken

Here's another way to get more out of a prepared meal: An Aldi shopper said they bulk up a package of frozen General Tso's chicken with diced chicken patties and frozen vegetables, noting that the package contains enough sauce to cover the additions.

You don't necessarily need the extra chicken. Adding broccoli, peppers, or a frozen vegetable mix and serving everything over rice can stretch a relatively small prepared entre across more servings.

It's a simple principle you can apply to lots of frozen meals: add the cheap stuff yourself. Rice, pasta, and frozen vegetables generally cost considerably less than buying another prepared entre.

Keep one no-brainer dinner on standby

This may be the most useful hack of all. Pick one dinner your household likes that requires almost no thought and make sure you always have the ingredients.

Maybe it's tortellini + pesto.

Maybe it's General Tso's chicken + broccoli + rice.

Maybe it's ravioli + sauce + cheese.

The specific meal doesn't really matter. What matters the most is having something available on a random Wednesday night when everyone is hungry and there is ZERO motivation to cook.

It's those weeknight dinners, when youre tired, that the delivery app sitting on your phone tends to scream your name, just waiting for the opportunity to ruin your food budget for the month.

New research suggests fathers of girls may be more attentive, committed partners to the mothers of their children

• Fathers of daughters reported higher levels of attachment, commitment, trust, and intimacy with their partners than fathers of sons.

• Researchers surveyed nearly 1,700 parents across three separate studies to explore whether having a daughter was linked to fathers relationship behaviors.

• The researchers say the reason for the difference isnt clear, but how fathers treat their partners could also shape what daughters learn to expect from future relationships.

Having a child can change a couples relationship in plenty of ways. But new research from Rutgers University suggests the sex of the child may also play a role in how fathers approach their relationships.

The study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, found that fathers of daughters showed higher levels of attachment, commitment, trust, and intimacy toward the mothers of their children than fathers of sons.

That doesnt necessarily mean fathers of girls are better parents. Instead, the researchers found a difference in how fathers appeared to engage with their partners.

Having a daughter appears to be protective of the primary parent relationship, researcher Kristina Durante, professor and research fellow at the Center for Women in Business, said in a news release. When men have daughters, it alters their psychologies in interesting ways, including, as we found, higher levels of commitment to the mother.

How researchers studied the connection

The researchers conducted three surveys involving nearly 1,700 parents across the United States.

In the first survey, they asked fathers of daughters under age 18 about the quality of their relationships with their childrens mothers. A second survey looked at the issue from the other side, asking mothers of daughters how they viewed the fathers behavior toward them.

The researchers also wanted to determine whether any differences existed before men became fathers. So, in the third survey, they recruited people who were expecting a baby during the final trimester of pregnancy. Their questions were designed to determine whether differences in relationship behavior were already present or appeared after the participants became parents.

What the findings could mean

Across the research, fathers of daughters were perceived as being more attentive to their partners. Both the fathers themselves and the mothers of their children reported higher levels of relationship commitment and other measures of pair-bonding.

The researchers aren't sure exactly why having a daughter was associated with this difference. One possibility is that fathers may become more conscious of the example they're setting for their daughters. A father who is supportive and committed to his partner may unintentionally demonstrate what a healthy relationship can look like.

The researchers also pointed to other possibilities, including changes in relationship expectations and cultural ideas about protecting daughters. They emphasized that these are possible explanations, rather than established reasons for the findings.

For families, the researchers say the potential significance may extend beyond the parents themselves: How a father treats his partner could help shape what his daughter comes to expect from men and relationships later in life.

Relationships are enormously beneficial to men, but historically they've been especially critical for women, said Durante. A father who's actively working at his own partnership is showing his daughter that this kind of investment from a man is possible, and worth expecting.

New research finds nutritional deficiencies were diagnosed in nearly 1 in 6 children within a year of treatment

• Nearly 17% of children in the study were diagnosed with a nutritional deficiency or related complication within a year of starting a GLP-1 medication.

• Vitamin D deficiency was the most common issue, affecting 12.4% of patients within one year.

• Nutrition counseling was relatively uncommon after children started GLP-1 treatment, with just 23.3% receiving it within six months.

GLP-1 medications have become an increasingly common treatment for children and teens with obesity, prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. These medications can help control blood sugar and reduce appetite, but that reduction in appetite also means some children may eat less overall.

For children and teenagers, getting enough nutrients is especially important because their bodies are still growing and developing. Researchers from Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago wanted to take a closer look at whether nutritional deficiencies were being diagnosed among young people taking GLP-1 medications.

As appropriate pediatric use of GLP-1s becomes more widespread, we need to understand the risks during periods of rapid growth and pubertal development, senior author Justin Ryder, Ph.D., said in a news release. Nutrients such as vitamin D, iron, and calcium are of particular concern during adolescence, when deficiencies may have lasting implications for skeletal health and overall development.

Nutritional support needs to play a critical role once treatment with a GLP-1 medication is initiated. In our study, however, we found that only 5% of patients received nutritional counseling within 30 days of GLP-1 treatment and less than 25% received nutritional counseling within six months.

How the study worked

Researchers analyzed national health insurance claims data covering more than 100 million people between 2017 and 2022. They identified 2,031 children ages 10 to 17 who had recently started taking a GLP-1 medication and had no documented nutritional deficiency during the six months before treatment.

The researchers then looked at medical claims for up to one year after treatment began to identify diagnoses involving nutritional deficiencies or related complications. They also looked at whether patients received nutrition therapy or counseling and how soon that care occurred after starting medication.

Most of the children in the study had type 2 diabetes or obesity. Liraglutide was the most commonly prescribed GLP-1 medication, followed by dulaglutide and semaglutide.

Importantly, this was a retrospective study based on insurance claims. That means it can show patterns in diagnoses and care, but it cannot establish that GLP-1 medications directly caused the nutritional deficiencies.

What the researchers found

Within six months, 10.2% of the children had been diagnosed with at least one nutritional deficiency or related complication. By one year, that figure had risen to 16.8% nearly one in six patients.

Vitamin D deficiency was by far the most common finding, diagnosed in 12.4% of children within a year. Nutritional anemia was diagnosed in 1.5%, while iron-deficiency anemia was diagnosed in 1.4%.

Nutrition counseling also wasn't common. Only 5.8% of children had received nutrition therapy within 30 days of starting a GLP-1, and 23.3% had received it within six months.

The researchers say the findings highlight the importance of monitoring nutrition when children begin GLP-1 treatment. The study doesn't show that every child taking these medications will develop a deficiency, but it does suggest that it may be important to add nutrition counseling into pediatric GLP-1 care.

We hope that our study findings bring much needed recognition to the importance of proactive nutritional management when GLP-1s are prescribed to children, as opposed to waiting until a nutritional deficiency is diagnosed, said Dr. Ryder. Knowing the risks, we are in a much better position to prevent harm to children treated with GLP-1s during a pivotal period in their lives.

New research finds shorter, gentler workouts may still offer meaningful relief

• A large review found exercise reduced both acute and chronic pain across several conditions.

• Lower-intensity and shorter exercise programs were linked to greater pain reductions.

• Some benefits were seen with less than two hours of exercise per week.

When youre in pain, exercise might sound like the last thing you want to do. But new research suggests that moving your body doesnt necessarily have to mean pushing through a tough workout to see benefits.

Researchers from Adelaide University looked at a large body of existing research and found that exercise was associated with reduced pain across a variety of conditions. The research included musculoskeletal, neurological, inflammatory, and cancer-related pain.

The findings also challenge the idea that more exercise automatically means more pain relief. In fact, shorter and lower-intensity programs showed greater reductions in pain.

When we exercise, our body releases chemicals including endorphins and serotonin that can help reduce how strongly we feel pain and increase our pain tolerance, researcher Dr. Ben Singh said in a news release. Additionally, it helps calm inflammation and change the way our brain responds to pain, while also improving mood.

These effects help explain why exercise can be such a powerful tool for pain management. Yet despite the evidence, it isnt used as routinely as it could be and is rarely prescribed with the same precision as medication. Instead, people experiencing pain may be told to stay active, rather than being given a specific, evidence-based exercise program that considers what type of exercise to do, how hard to work and for how long.

Researchers looked at thousands of studies

Rather than conducting a single exercise trial, researchers performed whats known as an umbrella review. This involves bringing together findings from multiple systematic reviews to get a broader look at the evidence.

The researchers searched 11 databases for systematic reviews that included randomized controlled trials comparing exercise with control groups. They excluded reviews that didnt include a meta-analysis, werent based on randomized controlled trials, or focused mainly on laboratory-induced pain.

Ultimately, the researchers included 157 systematic reviews covering 2,736 randomized controlled trials and 221,279 participants. The studies looked at several types of exercise, including aerobic and resistance exercise as well as yoga, Pilates, and tai chi.

Less exercise may still make a difference

Overall, exercise was linked to a reduction in pain of about 1.1 points on a 0-to-10 pain scale. The researchers noted that this was about 60% larger than the average pain relief reported for common pain medications in separate trials involving chronic pain.

Importantly, the benefits werent limited to lengthy or intense workouts. The study found greater pain reductions with lower-intensity exercise and programs lasting less than 12 weeks. Significant benefits were also seen in programs involving less than two hours of exercise per week.

For people dealing with pain, that could make exercise feel a little more manageable. The findings suggest that pain relief may not require hours at the gym or an especially demanding routine. Instead, gentler forms of movement including activities such as walking, yoga, Pilates, or tai chi may provide meaningful benefits depending on the person and their condition.

Healthcare providers need definitive guidance, not just whether exercise helps, but which exercises work for which patients, and how to prescribe them effectively, Dr. Singh said.

These findings should provide clinicians with considerable flexibility and increased confidence to prescribe exercise as a core, scalable component of pain management across diverse conditions. At a time when were looking for safe and effective ways to manage pain beyond medication, these findings provide strong evidence for making exercise a more routine part of pain care.

You don't have to be a home inspector to spot clues that a house could be hiding expensive problems

• Look beyond the staging: Fresh paint, candles, and air fresheners can make a house look and smell great but they can also make problems harder to notice.

• Some warning signs are surprisingly easy to spot: Water stains, certain cracks, aging equipment. and pest evidence deserve a closer look.

• Spotting a red flag doesn't mean you should walk away: Take a photo, ask questions, and make sure your home inspector investigates it before you buy.

It's easy to fall for a house with a beautiful kitchen, freshly painted walls, and perfectly staged furniture.

But while you're imagining where the couch will go, you could be walking right past clues that the house may need thousands of dollars in repairs.

A recent Boston.com report asked real estate and home-inspection experts what buyers should watch for during a showing. Their advice is to not just look at the countertops and floor plan, but to look for clues that could point to water, structural, pest, or other expensive problems.

Here are five red flags worth watching for and what to do if you spot one.

1. Water stains or suspiciously fresh paint

Start by looking up.

Boston.com notes that water stains on ceilings and walls can point to a roof, plumbing, or HVAC leak. But also pay attention to areas that appear to have been recently repainted, particularly if it's just one section of a ceiling.

If you see fresh paint on a ceiling, dont automatically assume theyre hiding damage. Think of it simply as a reason to ask what was painted and why.

What to do: Take a picture of anything suspicious, ask whether there has been a previous lea, and specifically ask your inspector to investigate the area.

2. Cracks that look different from ordinary settling

A small crack doesn't automatically mean a house has foundation problems.

But home inspector Alex Steinberg told Boston.com that cracks deserve more attention when they're wide roughly 1/8 to 1/4 inch or more horizontal, or located around doors and windows.

What to do: Don't try to diagnose a foundation yourself. Photograph concerning cracks and show them to your home inspector, who may recommend evaluation by a structural engineer.

3. A house that smells suspiciously good

A home filled with candles, plug-in air fresheners, or other strong fragrances may simply have a seller trying to create a pleasant showing.

But Boston.com notes that strong fragrances can also make it harder for buyers to notice odors from mold, pets, or other problems.

What to do: Open closets and spend some time in the basement, bathrooms, and other areas away from the staged living spaces. If you notice a musty or unusual odor, ask about it and flag it for your inspector.

4. Major systems that look old

You don't need to know how to inspect a furnace to notice that it looks ancient.

The recommendation here is to pay attention to major systems and components such as the roof, HVAC system, water heater, plumbing, and electrical panel. Just because it might be old, doesnt mean the equipment is defective, but it could mean you're buying a house that will soon need an expensive replacement.

What to do: Ask the age of the roof, HVAC system, and water heater and request documentation showing when they were installed, repaired, or serviced.

5. Signs you're not the only one living there

Look inside cabinets, underneath sinks, and along basement walls for droppings, gnaw marks, or other evidence of rodents or insects.

Boston.com's experts also recommend checking wood for signs of termite damage and paying attention to areas where pests could be getting into the house.

What to do: If you see evidence of pests, photograph it and ask that it be specifically investigated before you buy.

A red flag isn't necessarily a deal breaker

The point isn't to conduct your own home inspection. It's to notice potential problems before you become emotionally committed to the house.

If something looks wrong during a showing, photograph it, ask the seller or agent about it, and request documentation for previous repairs. Then give your questions and photos to your home inspector.

A beautiful house can still come with an ugly repair bill.

So, during that first walkthrough, don't just ask yourself whether you love the house. Start figuring out what the house could cost you after you own it.