Make steak, not war!

Slashdot:

A study out of Canada claims that seeing meat actually calms a person down. From the article: "Contrary to expectations, a McGill University researcher has discovered that seeing meat makes people significantly less aggressive. Frank Kachanoff, who studies evolution at the university’s department of psychology, had initially thought the presence of meat would provoke bloodlust, believing the response would have helped our primate ancestors hunt. But in fact, his research showed the reverse is true."

How to make a BLT

MMMMMMmmmm

Factoid of the day

The human brain is 2 to 3% of body mass, but consumes 25% of the body's energy. This is "metabolically expensive", and technologies like cooking food were important for facilitating the evolution of our large brains.


(From a TED talk: Heribert Watzke: The brain in your gut)

Survival of the fittest

There can be only one.

Unclear on the concept

What kind of idiot would build a pyramid next to a Pizza Hut!?

Yes, this photo is real. Quoth a redditor:

An empire built on slave labour in such close proximity to a cultural landmark? Shocking.

But I'm not sure which one is which.

Chart of the day

But do note that it's misleadingly based at 25 mil.

NYT: "one in eight Americans and one in four children" receive food stamps.

I suppose that if we were to replace all welfare with a negative income tax, as I advocate, some of the resulting tax credit for low earners could be provided in the form of food stamps if we're worried that too much of the money is wasted on non-food items.

(ht nc)

How to eat a chicken wing

We've been doing it wrong our whole life! No, seriously.

Quote of the day

"Because Democrats hold power at the moment, they face the greater peril of paternalistic overreaching. Today’s morality cops are less interested in your bedroom than your refrigerator."

—Jacob Weisberg and Will Saletan

A fitting epitaph

Norman Borlaug (1914–2009)

The man who saved more human lives than any other.

(meme)

Against the Agri-intellectuals

A great rant about agriculture, written by a farmer (ht Ezra Klein)

And you thought food was expensive

Casual Kitchen:

It's pretty easy to find articles in the media and in various food blogs complaining (or worse, whining) about how expensive food is these days. But the chart below tells quite a different story:

Now stop bitchin' and go enjoy that $5 footlong.



(via Perry)

Oscar Mayer dead at 95

Obligatory 1965 jingle:



Story:



(Via TMV)

Neocon humor

Quoth Michael Goldfarb:

In the course of Donald Morrison's review of Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger, we learn that McDonald's is the largest private employer in all of France, which is sort of like being the largest provider of health insurance in North Korea, but nonetheless, it feels like a major triumph for American culture and cuisine.

I once ate at the McDonald's right next to the Arc de Triomphe. My quarter pounder tasted like hegemony.

(ht Will)

Nanny state cometh

Politico:

President Barack Obama eats his vegetables and exercises every day — and he really wants you to do the same.

[..] The president is filling top posts at Health and Human Services with officials who, in their previous jobs, outlawed trans fats, banned public smoking or required restaurants to provide a calorie count with that slice of banana cream pie.

Even Congress is getting into the act, giving serious consideration to taxing sugary drinks and alcohol to help pay for the overhaul.

[..] The whole situation has libertarians craving a basket of onion rings and a beer.

“If you care about the sorts of things I do, then you are going to be losing big-time for the next four to eight years,” said David Harsanyi, a Denver Post columnist and author of the book “Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America Into a Nation of Children.”

Don’t get them wrong, critics such as Harsanyi say — they like broccoli and they lift barbells and they have no particular beef with a healthy president who was once described by his physician as having “no excess body fat.” They just don’t like it when government becomes the messenger and the enforcer.

The appointment last month of New York Public Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden as director of the CDC really made the libertarian-minded nervous.

Frieden is a big part of the reason New Yorkers no longer smoke in bars or eat trans fats at restaurants and find calorie counts on their menus. Frieden once said that when anyone in New York dies at an early age from a preventable disease, “it’s my fault.”

[..] libertarians like Michael D. Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, aren’t looking forward to it.

“At the very least,” said Tanner, “we are going to get nagged a lot.”

Facts of the day II

Ezra Klein at his new perch:

A small milkshake at McDonald's has more calories than a Big Mac. And tuna salad sandwiches? Way worse than roast beef.

Thinking outside the bun

Via Bruce McQuain:

Officials say a suspected drug dealer who led police on a 90 mph chase in Indiana was arrested after he stopped suddenly at a Taco Bell parking lot.

Fort Wayne police Sgt. Mark Walters says 36-year-old Jermaine Askia Cooper told officers he “knew he was going to jail for a while” and wanted to get one last burrito.

Would you eat 16 cubes of sugar?

39g                       65g                               108g     

Think about that the next time you order a drink.

Mammalian taste buds evolved to attract us to foods like apples; that much sugar water is definitely an overstimulation.

TMV discusses junk food taxes and libertarian paternalism.

100 days in seven haikus

Via Democracy in America, from the editor of More Intelligent Life:

In 100 days
A super-majority.
What next? A hushed Rush?

Seventy percent
Of Americans dig him
The dog didn't hurt.

As long as his foes
Hold lame "tea-party" protests
The force is with him.

A plump government
Is grand if it means cheap meds,
Not water-boarding.

Such ambition! Well,
Roosevelt would be impressed
If not Kim Jong Il.

It is a fine thing
To have a smart president
Whose sentences work.

A fine amuse bouche
For what promises to be
A grand, filling meal.

Seems I need to continue working on my effete librulness, for I didn't know about amuse bouches.

Let's just say my idea of a pre-meal snack is more pedestrian. Why not order a few packs? It's $0.37 a stick, half the price of brick and mortar stores.

Holy food week