humina humina humina

When Thomas Mann was a child his father contrived an experiment to teach him and his siblings a lesson about appetite. “Our father assured us,” Mann writes, “that once in our lives we could eat as many cream puffs … and cream rolls at the pastry shop as we wanted. He led us into a sweet smelling Paradise, and let the dream become reality - and we were amazed how quickly we reached the limit of our desire, which we believed to be infinite.” Here the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. We need only to experiment with our greed to discover that it is only in our fantasies that we are excessive; in reality our appetite is sensible; is, as we like to say, self-regulating - we know when we have had enough.

The Guardian | Insatiable Creatures

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Krinshnamurti

Most of what we feed to chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals—most of it is burned off, simply keeping the animals alive until they're slaughtered.

It's bizarre, really: You take a crop like soybeans, oats, corn, or wheat, which are all high in protein, fiber, and complex carbohydrates but devoid of cholesterol and artery-clogging saturated fat. You feed them to an animal and create a product with no fiber or complex carbohydrates at all but with lots of cholesterol and saturated fat. It makes about as much sense as taking pure water, running it through a sewer system, and then drinking it.

Vegetarianism in a Nutshell: Environment

don't you P-O-L-L-U-T-E pollute the river, sky, or sea or else you're gonna get what you deserve

How much cheese is too much? And what about the shampoo caps? Do I have to flatten the cardboard? And really, why no broken glass? These are the kinds of questions that freeze well-meaning recyclers in confusion between the blue bin and the trash can.

To get to the bottom of these mysteries, I checked in with the head of Los Angeles’s Solid Resource Citywide Recycling Division, Neil Guglielmo, who may be one of the few people in America who actually knows how much cheese is too much. Paper and cardboard, Neil says, do in fact need to be clean. “If it had a sandwich on it and you knock off the crumbs, that’s OK. If it had stuck-on lasagna, it can’t be recovered.” Ditto the pizza box.” Both will end up in a landfill. As for unflattened cardboard, it will get recycled, but it hogs a lot of unnecessary space in the truck. And broken glass? It shatters into pieces that are impossible to sort.

The trouble with that oozing Aveda bottle is that “it all goes into a big truck, and that smushes this nasty stuff” with the nice clean paper. Neil suggests that you rinse out the bottle once or twice and replace the cap. (Yes, to caps!) And yes, a bottle with a small lake of rosemary-mint shampoo in the bottom will still be recycled, but before that happens, the government has to use our taxes to wash it for you.

GOOD | Ask An Expert: What Happens When Non-recyclables End Up in the Blue Bin?

"You don’t understand the basic assumptions of your own culture if your own culture is the only culture you know." - Alan Watts

After prayer, we ate dinner. The food was catered from one of my favorite greasy restaurants, Kennedy Fried Chicken. It’s a huge halal food chain here in New York. It’s halal and open late, can’t go wrong with it. Tonight I had a philly cheesesteak, cheesy tater tots and an orange (to give my meal an ounce of healthiness). Epic yum.

30 Mosques, 30 Days

Dubai tends toward gluttony every month of the year, but during Ramadan, things are even more over the top, with nearly every eating establishment offering an Iftar fast-breaking gut-buster at sundown. It's Dubai doing what it does best: using its limited resources for its own commercial advantage. Even American fast-food outlets in Dubai offer Ramadan Value Meals, usually adding a dessert to the already calorie-packed meal deal. At the Dubai Mall, McDonald's was the only major international food chain that didn't have a special offer, just a banner that read: "Ramadan Kareem"--"Happy Ramadan."

Slate | My Ramadan World Tour

say what?

What is 365Black?
At McDonald's®, we believe that African-American culture and achievement should be celebrated 365 days a year — not just during Black History Month. That's the idea behind 365Black.com. It's a place where you can learn more about education, employment, career advancement and entrepreneurship opportunities, and meet real people whose lives have been touched by McDonald's. Plus, you can also have a chance to win exciting once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. So make sure you visit often — you just might get inspired.

Like the unique African Baobab tree, which nourishes its community with its leaves and fruit, McDonald's has branched out to the African-American community nourishing it with valuable programs and opportunities.

365Black | McDonald's has a new website for black people.

"That which you call "the external world" is as much you as your own body." - Alan Watts

Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit. His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He’s either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. [...]

The tribe had been getting richer for a decade, and during the two years he was there he watched as the villagers began to adopt the economics of modernity. They sold the food from their fields — quinoa, potatoes, corn, lentils — for cash, which they used to purchase things they didn’t need, as Suelo describes it.

They bought soda and white flour and refined sugar and noodles and big bags of MSG to flavor the starchy meals. They bought TVs. The more they spent, says Suelo, the more their health declined. He could measure the deterioration on his charts. “It looked,” he says, “like money was impoverishing them.”

Men.Style.com | Could You Survive Without Money?

"Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore." - Franz Kafka

How It's Made | How Hatchery Chicks are Made

The Japanese dies if there is no rice

Tumblr | Hospital Food

"Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."

What do these crises have in common:

Economic crisis
Water shortages
Global warming
Healthcare
Energy

Okay, they probably have lots of things in common. But the answer I was looking for is "food."

Imagine for a minute that everyone in the United States stopped overeating and became vegetarians, perhaps with some fish thrown in the mix for protein and Omega-3. We all know that situation can never happen, so this is just a thought experiment...

Read more: The Common Crisis | Dilbert.com Blog
Quote: Albert Einstein

This beautiful creature must die

Meat consumption has more than doubled in the United States in the last 50 years.

Now a new study of more than 500,000 Americans has provided the best evidence yet that our affinity for red meat has exacted a hefty price on our health and limited our longevity.

The study found that, other things being equal, the men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods.

Paying a Price for Loving Red Meat

think about life, and rainbows and death, and all of the things you've heard

Unapproved New Drug
Based on claims made on your product's label, we have determined that your Cheerios® Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal is promoted for conditions that cause it to be a drug because the product is intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.

FDA Warning Letter to General Mills, Inc
Quote: BMSR Smile Heavy

stop having boring tuna, stop having a boring life

Shamwow guy strikes back

yum for the tum ^_^

chemical food

"This is a hamburger from McDonalds that I purchased in 1996.

That was 12 years ago."

food, glorious food

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.

After living in the dark for so long, a glimpse of the light can make you giddy

Though the way antioxidants work in the brain is not well known, Dr Gómez-Pinilla says it is likely they protect the synaptic membranes. Synapses are the junctions between nerve cells, and their action is central to learning and memory. But they are also, he says, the most fragile parts of the brain. And many of the nutrients associated with brain function are known to affect transmission at the synapses.

An omega-3 fatty acid called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), for example, provides membranes at synaptic regions with “fluidity”—the capacity to transport signals. It also provides “plasticity”—a synapse’s capacity to change. Such changes are the basis of memory. Since 30% of the fatty constituents of nerve-cell membranes are DHA molecules, keeping your DHA levels topped up is part of having a healthy brain. Indeed, according to the studies reviewed by Dr Gómez-Pinilla, the benefits of omega-3s include improved learning and memory, and resistance to depression and bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, dementia, attention-deficit disorder and dyslexia.

Omega-3s are found in oily fish such as salmon, as well as in walnuts and kiwi fruit, and there is a strong negative correlation between the extent to which a country consumes fish and its levels of clinical depression. On the Japanese island of Okinawa, for example, people have a strikingly low rate of mental disorder—and Okinawans are notable fish eaters, even by the standards of a piscivorous country like Japan. In contrast, many studies suggest that diets which are rich in trans- and saturated fatty acids, such as those containing a lot of deep-fried foods and butter, have bad effects on cognition. Rodents put on such diets show declines in cognitive performance within weeks.

Cognition Nutrition: Food for Thought

Image: Ellen von Unwerth, Vogue Italia 1990

Title: The Good Girl

OM NOM NOM

The very qualities that make bugs so hard to get rid of could also make them an environmentally friendly food. "Nature is very good at making insects," says David Gracer, one of the chefs at the Richmond festival and the founder of future bug purveyor Sunrise Land Shrimp. Insects require little room and few resources to grow. For instance, it takes far less water to raise a third of a pound (150 g) of grasshoppers than the staggering 869 gal. (3,290 L) needed to produce the same amount of beef. Since bugs are cold-blooded invertebrates, more of what they consume goes to building edible body parts, whereas pigs and other warm-blooded vertebrates need to consume a lot of calories just to keep their body temperature steady. There's even a formula, called the efficiency of conversion of ingested food to body substance (ECI), that can be used to compare the weight different animals gain after eating a certain quantity of feed. Beef cattle have an ECI of 10. Silkworms range from 19 to 31. German cockroaches max out at 44.
Incredibly efficient to raise, insects are also crawling packets of nutrition. A 100-gram (3.5 oz.) portion of cooked Usata terpsichore caterpillars--commonly eaten in central Africa--contains about 28 grams (1 oz.) of protein, slightly more than you'd get from the same amount of chicken. Water bugs have four times as much iron as beef.
Bugs can be tasty too--Gordon swears by his white chocolate and waxworm cookies--but Americans first need to overcome the "eww" factor. We think bugs are dirty, disease-laden or otherwise dangerous to eat--though they're not, as long as you cook them properly, are not allergic to shellfish (which, like insects, are arthropods) and aren't collecting bugs from fields that have been hit with pesticides. We're revolted by their alien appearance, but then again, lobster could hardly be described as cute and cuddly. And food taboos are not eternal; think of how unlikely it would have seemed 50 years ago that there would be more than 9,000 sushi restaurants in the U.S. There's also the possibility that someday the exploding global population and the damage of climate change could bring about the collapse of our resource-intensive food supply. "At that point," notes Gracer, "insects could become a pretty attractive option."

Eating Bugs

Residents of at least 113 nations eat bugs, says Julieta Ramos-Elorduy of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. This practice, known as entomophagy (en-toh-MOFF-uh-jee), makes sense, she says, because insects tend to be quite nutritious. Indeed, many scientists around the world have put insect eating on their research menus. It was also the focus of a February United Nations conference in Thailand, where researchers discussed insect-eating trends and evaluated the nutritional value of bugs and the environmental aspects of entomophagy.

Insects: The Original White Meat

when the sun grows on your tongue

It’s the French paradox redux: Why don’t the French get as fat as Americans, considering all the baguettes, wine, cheese, pate and pastries they eat?

Because they use internal cues — such as no longer feeling hungry — to stop eating, reports a new Cornell study. Americans, on the other hand, tend to use external cues — such as whether their plate is clean, they have run out of their beverage or the TV show they’re watching is over.

“Furthermore, we have found that the heavier a person is — French or American — the more they rely on external cues to tell them to stop eating and the less they rely on whether they felt full,” said senior author Brian Wansink, executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.
[read more...]

awom :P

"Twenty years ago, a business lunch of raw fish and rice was unthinkable. Now you can stock up on maki at the 7-Eleven. Similarly, calamari went from scary, tentacled oddity to ubiquitous bar food, and balsamic vinegar—once considered an odiferous foreign sap—is a standard flavor in designer chocolates. So what's next? We'll tell you."

this condiment is made from mustard seeds

"Courses? Poppycock! We only serve experiences."

"...Shortly after the GREY POUPON company was born, a group of enthusiasts came to believe that mustard, no mere condiment, actually had the power to elevate a meal (and even a whole splendid occasion) to something transcendent.

"Mad!" they were deemed. "Charlatans!" they were called. "Balderdash!" people yelled. Only this was in France, so they used different words. Probably French ones.

They took a vow of secrecy and began subversively demonstrating mustard's correct use—and the joy it can bring—by using it at social gatherings for the world's truly wealthy and sophisticated. They formed The Elite Mustard Cabinet."

even the makers of grey poupon like to poke fun at how pretentious it is.

[grey poupon website]