Reaching the unreachables is what RBMA is all about. It’s worrying. Especially when you consider what’s in the stuff.

In the 1990s, LaCroix was the favorite drink of Midwestern moms. How did it get so cool?

That MSG isn’t the poison we’ve made it out to be has been well-established. News stories are written regularly about the lack of evidence tying MSG to negative health effects. (Read here and here, for example. Or here, here, here, here and here.) Still, Yelp reviews of Chinese restaurants tell tales of racing hearts, sleepless nights and tingling limbs from dishes “laden with MSG.” Even when the science is clear, it takes a lot to overwrite a stigma, especially when that stigma is about more than just food.

There is ample evidence that we treat these foods as inferior, as Krishnendu Ray, the chair of nutrition and food studies at New York University, writes in his new book "The Ethnic Restaurateur." Ray points to the comparatively low price ceiling for various "ethnic cuisines," as a telling sign. Despite complex ingredients and labor-intensive cooking methods that rival or even eclipse those associated with some of the most celebrated cuisines — think French, Spanish and Italian — we want our Indian food fast, and we want it cheap.

Studies in humans in Britain, Denmark, Canada and in the United States could find no association between saccharin consumption and bladder cancer once they accounted for cigarette smoking (which does cause it). Based on these newer studies, saccharin was removed from the carcinogen list in 2000. But by that time, opinions were set. It did little to make anyone feel safe.

Some good tips.

An alternative for bread if you are eating low carb and diabetic. I saw this recipe on Diet Doctor, and loved it and wanted to share it.

A soft, easy to roll gluten free naan that you have to try to appreciate. Made dairy-free or not, these are the talk of the gluten-free community!

You know you’ve done something right with broccoli when the person you made it for describes it to someone else the next day as “better than biting into a steak.”

If the government were to redefine normal weight as one that doesn’t increase the risk of death, then about 130 million of the 165 million American adults currently categorized as overweight and obese would be re-categorized as normal weight instead.

…a series of small case studies of a handful of characters whose work then, and perspective now, sheds light on how the foods are created and sold to people who, while not powerless, are extremely vulnerable to the intensity of these companies’ industrial formulations and selling campaigns.

A fine way to school yourself on the finer points of Indian cooking—and be entertained by some of the more talented men in indie rock in the process—is to check out Dosa Hunt, a new short by filmmaker and music journalist (and Stereogum's Executive Editor) Amrit Singh.

The solution to the growing global food crisis will not be technical; it will be social and political. The Oxfam report offers a good start: The World Bank, which operates under the leadership of a president chosen by the US, should stop financing dodgy land deals in the global south—as it has been doing—and start advising the governments of low-income, food-insecure countries to set up strict protections for smallholder farmers. Further, Oxfam advises, the World Bank should cajole low-income nations to insist that any land deals be structured to ensure that local food security is enhanced by them.

An overview.

humanOS is a digital health training application that makes you better at health over time.

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.

“After all, if Starbucks can make a profit by putting its stores right across the street from each other, as it so often does, why couldn't a unique, well-run mom and pop do even better next-door? And given America's continuing thirst for exorbitantly priced gourmet coffee drinks, there's a lot of cash out there for the taking. As coffee consultant Dan Cox explained, ‘You can't do better than a cup of coffee for profit. It's insanity. A cup of coffee costs 16 cents. Once you add in labor and overhead, you're still charging a 400 percent markup—not bad! Where else can you do that?’ Until Americans decide they need to pay four bucks a pop every morning for a custom-baked, designer-toast experience, probably nowhere.”

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.

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.)

What to stop buying and what to replace those things with. A nice list.

I want to revisit this later; it is an interesting retort to Michael Pollan and others' condemnations of current farming techniques.

What you get when you order Thai curry. Helpful.

A blog featuring the best foods Americans ever invented.

"Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed, diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping into their eyes."

Typically disinterested in the tourism of Maine's lobster festival, DFW gives a great history of the lobster. The bulk of the article, most interestingly, is dedicated to the ethics of boiling a living creature alive (or otherwise killing it) in order to eat it.

"Scan Toaster: the USB toaster that prints news, weather and snapshots onto slices of toast, by Sung Bae Chang, Sejong University, South Korea. One of the nine finalists of the Electrolux Design Lab competition 08."

What Stephanie and crew made when I landed on Thursday. :-)

For your next "flavor tripping party." "It's called the 'Miracle Fruit' because it can alter the taste of sour items. Miracle Fruit is also easier to say, and spell, than its official name — synsepalum dulcificum." $90 minimum order, though.