Food Renegade: The Secret Ingredient in Your Orange Juice
All orange juice tastes the same because the juice from the oranges has its oxygen (and taste) removed for spoil-free storage and then ‘flavor packs’ are added to the flavorless juice. The flavor packs are loaded with supplementary chemicals but still technically qualify as ‘orange juice’, so there is no ingredient listing requirement for them.
And: ‘Juice removed from the fruit is just concentrated fructose without any of the naturally-occurring fiber, pectin, and other goodies that make eating a whole fruit good for you.’
So don’t drink juice.
Information Is Beautiful: Snake oil? Scientific evidence for health supplements
Infographic on the scientific evidence for effectiveness of popular dietary supplements. ‘Showing tangible health benefits when taken orally by an adult with a healthy diet.’
AlterNet: How TV Superchef Jamie Oliver’s ‘Food Revolution’ Flunked Out
It’s not terribly shocking that a reality show about an ignorant millionaire trying to fix a school’s lunch program with his own special menu was a costly, exploitative, and ruinous failure, but the disastrous state of school lunch programs nationwide *is* shocking.
The Atlantic: Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science
A ton of scientific studies are flat-out wrong. And most of it doesn't really matter anyway.
"‘Science is a noble endeavor, but it’s also a low-yield endeavor,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality of life. We should be very comfortable with that fact.’"
Tim Ferriss: How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)
On how *all* grains contain bio-chemical defense systems that cause an inflammatory reaction in your gut and lead to a host of health problems, and how the paleolithic diet is a cure for it. The comments section is very long and bewildering in its inevitable conflict. (I should be following this diet already, but I cheat too often. At the very least, I should do what the post suggests and try to go 100% for a month.)
"Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more will power, more drive, but because they know productivity is a game of cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty which can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push ups."
Vocal Survival Techniques for Singers Who Abuse and Overuse Their Voices
Prof. Rosalie Loeding, voice teacher, and expert on singing problems discusses techniques for avoiding and curing throat and other medical problems of singers.
The world and the technology by which we take it in is becoming more and more "addictive" and what can we do about it? A concerted effort to stick to basics and saying no, says Paul Graham.
The New Yorker: The Velluvial Matrix by Atul Gawande
"Atul Gawande gave the commencement speech at Stanford’s School of Medicine last week. Here is what he told the graduating class."
On the need for building interconnected systems of care in medicine, rather than a hodgepodge of specialists not communicating with each other.
Washblog: Four Basic Kinds of Health Care Financing Around the World
The four most common types of healthcare that really work and don't really work and how ours is a jumble of parts of all four and all the proposals are pretty shitty.
So if people are naturally creative or not, to what degree does 'encouraging' creativity even work? And do we understand this enough to know what aspects of creativity we are encouraging, or rather I should say: do we know how to encourage the 'good' parts of being creative and not make people into schizophrenics/sociopaths?
"the Department of Health is considering plans to force tobacco manufacturers to sell their cigarettes in plain unbranded packets." "They'd be taking one of the most carefully branded products in the world, and de-branding it. And since they've already banned tobacco advertising, cancer sticks don't really have much else left except their branding. They'd be stripping them back to just their name, taste and cost."
Green, simple healthcare. "Our packaging is made from 100% recycled materials and it is compostable, which means one day, it will probably become a part of a large tree. Maybe you can cut down that tree and make it into a speedboat."
Body Modification Ezine: One Hand Jason: BIID Interview
Interview with a man afflicted with Body Integrity Identity Disorder who took care of the problem by staging an accident and amputating his right hand.
UK Telegraph: Apple to turn down the volume on iPod
Pressure from hearing charities and internal company concern has led Apple to patent a technology that would calculate how long a listener had been listening at high volumes and automatically turn the volume down.
From the US National Library of Medicine, a huge collection of free, public-domain images from anatomical atlases. A great wealth of material. Wish it were designed better and that the books were all scanned rather than some photographed.
Cooking 101: 20 Lessons to kick start your cooking skill
Cooking is not easy - for me as least. I can cook but only some very basic stuff. Found out a good site that can get me started on cooking something good