Zombie Nutrition

I have to point out that zombies instinctively follow a low-carb diet.

This Is How Zombiegeddon Starts

First there's a potential flu pandemic that starts in Mexico city then quickly spreads to New York. Then a mysterious fly-over of manhattan by a large jet panics the locals and gets explained away as a "photo op". This is obviously the military seeding a counter-virus. And this, of course, will be the cause of Zombiegeddon. What's not as obvious is that this is almost certainly the doing of Capcom as a viral (ahem) promotion of their Resident Evil 5 game title. Not to say that it's a hoax. Oh no, it is all too real. Creating the actual zombiegeddon to promote RE5 will go down as the greatest viral marketing campaign of all time. To be fair, there will be no future contenders since within the next few months we will all be dead.

worry much?

CNN International homepage currently lists the following as "hot topics":

• Influenza
• Taliban
• Iran
• North Korea
• Pirates
• China

Why Knowing the Causes of Obesity Matters

[aside from all the obvious reasons]

Gluttony and sloth are still roundly believed to be the causes of obesity by the general populace and by far too many public health officials. This is a sickly rewarding belief for the non-obese in that obesity becomes a moral failing that one has avoided. The science of the matter to date does not justify this belief, but that's not stopping conventional wisdom. The consequences of the "moral failing" school are themselves immoral, ranging from casual incivility to outright dehumanizing hostility towards the obese. Case in point: a Guardian review of a tv show on obesity generated the following bits from comments:

Too many fat idiots.
....
They should be kicked out onto the street and left to die.
....
Yet she 'couldn't understand why she was so fat'. It's because you keep stuffing food in your face you stupid cow! Hopefully social services will step in and take the kid into care before she deep fries it and eats it.

These are trivial examples but the sentiment is out there.

In The Loop

I heartily recommend In The Loop, a British film that is well-served by a lack of US-style slickness. Cringeworthy in moments of hilarity as well as in some on-the-mark satire. Unfortunately, it's saddled with an incredibly forgettable name. In between the time I decided I wanted to see it and the time I was in the theatre waiting for it to start (a span of maybe 10 hours), I repeatedly could not recall the title and had to keep looking it up. Oh well. Looks like it might not be in the states for a while.

Fructose Bad

There's a very nice writeup explaining results of a recent study comparing impact of fructose vs. glucose. Basically, fructose causes degenerative metabolic changes relative to glucose. I don't see that much coverage of this in the US press yet, and this will likely not do much to make the public better informed. For example, most people now seem to associate "high fructose corn syrup" with "bad", which is good, but I suspect equate "fructose" with "high fructose corn syrup" (hey, it's got fructose in the name!). This leads to things such as "pepsi raw" (in the UK), which proudly boasts of the use of cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. What seems to be a little-known, though, is that sucrose is 50% fructose, whereas high-fructose corn-syrup is 55% fructose. So replacing hfcs with "sugar" won't help much. Furthermore, the results of this study aren't surprising if you know that glucose can be used immediately upon entering the blood but that fructose pretty much has to be metabolized by the liver (thus you'd expect differing metabolic effects of some sort). This is also why fructosey foods will show up as lower "glycemic index" than similar non-fructosey foods, which is really misleading (and a good reason why glycemic index can be very useful but should not be the sole metric to judge quality of dietary items). Would be nice to see more popular press coverage of this study.

ST:TNFG

Against my own better judgment, I find myself looking too forward to the new Star Trek. And special kudos to the review that made me laugh out loud with "and an ominously unnamed colleague who's obviously not seen Galaxy Quest".

sunrise, sunset

You can keep your cute little flash games -- for fun on the internet I love stuff like this.

Chocolates

Just had the Lindt 90% for the first time, alongside the 85%, which is my current favorite. The 90% was... surprising. The difference in taste from the 85% was almost startling. It was very smooth, not bitter, but somehow less chocolatey. Not unpleasant, but I prefer the 85% still. Worth a side-by-side again, I think. I really need them to come out with 86%, 87%, 88%, and 89%. Of course, the taste difference could have been almost entirely due to variations in the batch and beans used.

Cheeses

Italy wins. I think British cheeses are underrated. I love British cheese. France makes awesome cheese. Great cheeses from Spain, Austria, Switzerland, etc. Wonderful artisan cheeses from the US, too. But Italy takes the cake. Depth, breadth, quality. Fantastic.

Vitamin D

Really good lecture on Vitamin D. Entertaining & well worth a watch.

What Speed Rail?

I'm a big fan of high-speed rail. I think stimulus money spent on infrastructure is a great idea, and also that high-speed rail in the US is long overdue. So Obama's newly announced rail plan is welcome. But... why is the bar set so low? The US govt considers anything that exceeds, or can exceed, 90mph to be "high speed". The Ocelot line or Ebola line or whatever it's called that's supposed to be high-speed between Washington and Boston travels at about 80mph, which is sad even by British standards. TGV lines reache 186 mph or more in regular service (test speeds much higher). Similar results from the Shinkansen. Even when construction of both of these networks was started 50 years ago the targets were more ambitious than the "100 mph" talk from Obama. The utility of these depends a lot on how long the trips actually take. The 2009 definition of high-speed rail should be: a train that reaches 186mph or more as part of regular service (i.e. pretty much every trip). The target for average speed for each corridor should be 150mph or more.

Epidemiology To The Rescue

I don't often brag about this, but my think-tank keeps a small team of crack epidemiologists on retainer. With their help, this month we've looked at a couple areas and have come up with some outside-the-box problem-solving with truly world-changing implications.

We've examined the twin problems of flooding and drought. We will drastically help alleviate both simultaneously through a new program to get people in areas of too-heavy rain to stop using their umbrellas and furthermore donate those umbrellas to drought-stricken areas. It's genius.

We can also vastly improve reading comprehension and math skills in primary-school students by providing the children with larger shoes. Initially this innovative program was enthusiastically embraced by Governor Blagojevich of Illinois but we are currently without a sponsor.

Stay tuned! We're just getting warmed up.

A Few More Sample Meals

breakfast: spinach, ham, egg, butter
lunch: tuna salad -- tuna, mayo, cabbage, celery, garlic (used all olive-oil homemade mayo, generally use hellman's but thinking of just making my own as a rule)
snack: almonds, dark chocolate
dinner: tuna salad; green beans w/ melted cheese (double gloucester)

breakfast: spinach, ham, eggs, butter
lunch: coleslaw, green beans, cheese, olives (normally I'd have a slightly larger selection from the salad bar at work, including hardboiled eggs, but was just not hungry and nothing looked good)
snack: almonds, dark chocolate (2x10g squares lindt 85%)
dinner: an avocado; couple slices (cold) of roast turkey; mushroom soup -- portabello mushrooms, butter, olive oil, chicken stock, lemon juice, cayenne, salt, cream

Don't worry, I'm busting out the italian sausage and probably some burgers soon, maybe tomorrow: cheeseburger with jalapenos, served in large romaine leaf instead of a bun.

William Gibson

I was late to the Neuromancer party, having not read it until the 90s, but liked it of course. Then I gobbled up Virtual Light, the upshot of which was so pants I got annoyed and eschewed Gibson for over a decade, until I just recently picked up a copy of Spook Country in an airport. I'd not heard of it, but I guess it's been popular. For good reason, I'd say! Heartily recommended.

Financial Shenanigans

Popular press is reporting on "strong results" from Goldman Sachs. There's a bit more to the story, though. Goldman was on a fiscal year that ended in November. Due to changes in the type of institution they are with respect to the federal government and regulators, they are now required to adopt the calendar year as their fiscal year. So their first quarter of fiscal year 2008 included dec 07, jan 08, & feb 08. Likewise their most recent "Q4" results were reported for sep-oct-nov 08. The numbers cited for their 1Q09 results are for jan-feb-mar 09. This leaves December 08 in an unusual position. December was not included in 4Q08 results, nor in 1Q09 results. And here's where media such as the BBC are completely dropping the ball.

What you wouldn't know, just reading the BBC article, is that Goldman also now did a little mini-results reporting just for December, and posted a big loss -- not as big as the profits for 1Q09, but still significant. Their 1st quarter earnings were $3.39/share, approximately double analysts estimates (wow! "better than expected!"). Their december-only losses, however, were $2.15/share. So the dec-mar period has them earning $1.24/share, lower than estimates for the jan-mar quarter. They get a partial free pass on December, and take advantage of it, which is a bit dodgy, eh? They can get away with it because the reporting on it is so slack.

Small Rituals

I completed my newest small ritual of season-change today, the ritual of the ski boots: remove liner from boot, remove insole from liner, let dry completely over several days or a week, then reassemble, close clasps loosely, and stow somewhere dark and dry for the rest of the year. It's not exactly druids at stonehenge on the solstice, but nonetheless I do find it sad and satisfying in roughly equal measure (in very small ways, both, but still a comfort of sorts).

btw, happy easter

Good fodder for comics and comedians. And yes, "as long as we're making shit up, go hog wild" is one of my favorite phrases.

A Few Sample Meals

Interesting discussion in comments a few posts back about meal specifics. I've restarted a food diary so may in the future post a more rigorous sample of a typical day or week, but in the meantime, some sample meals from the past few days.

• Chicken breast stuffed with spinach & ricotta (spinach, ricotta, parmesan, egg), wrapped in bacon, served with rocket salad w/ olive oil & parmesan.
• thai(-ish) pork curry: meat from pork ribs, with addl spices, coconut cream, green beans, and fresh sliced red chilis
• eggs
  
• ham & eggs (I eat a lot of eggs, they may be a near-perfect ingredient)
  
• toasted ham & cheese (vacherin) on a large bed of rocket & fresh baby spinach leaves, with a little olive oil, and a glass of red wine
  
• snacks: garlic-stuffed olives, almonds, walnuts

This is not necessarily a good representative sample. This is a holiday weekend and I've had more time to cook than I normally would. I cook eggs for breakfast frequently because it's so quick, but after work I would almost never come home, grab a whole chicken and some fresh spinach and end up with what I cooked the other night. Also, quality counts. The "ham", above, is incredible quality, cut to order from the butcher, made and baked by the butcher. It never saw the inside of a factory or any cure other than a dry-cure in salt. Eggs and chickens are free range. Beef is grass-fed. Etc.

Anyway, a typical work day is more like: eggs for breakfast (cooked in butter, usually by themselves, or sometimes with meat or cheese or spinach); green veg, olives, hard boiled eggs from salad bar at work canteen; something meaty or fishy for dinner; nuts for snacks.

The last few months I've had the pleasure of enjoying the following meats: beef, pork, lamb & mutton, chicken, duck, goose, bison, venison, elk, caribou [rudolph == tasty!]. Fish I most commonly eat: tuna, salmon, trout, mackerel, sardines, cod. Dairy: I eat all manner of cheese (how cool is it that you can pan-fry or grill halloumi?), sometimes full-fat, unsweetened yogurt, sour cream, occasionally cream, and almost never (now) milk. Snacks: nuts (almonds, walnuts, pistachios mostly), seeds, olives, cheese. Veg, etc.: rocket, spinach, romaine (and other letti), green beans, broccoli, mushrooms mostly, peppers (mostly chilis rather than heaps of sweet peppers), celery, cabbage; sometimes courgette or aubergine or fresh tomato.

I try to avoid sugar (including sugary fruit), wheat, starch (spuds, rice) but attempting to limit carbs (say, to 50g/day) generally takes care of that for me (in that you end up taking off the menu all the things you would individually identify as "should avoid" solely by virtue of giving yourself a carb cap per day).

P.S. Black coffee good. And the chocolate: a few squares of Lindt 85%.

Snack Food Hall of Fame

Whoever invented garlic-stuffed olives needs an honorary statue somewhere.

Cooking For One

A lot of people I've known have said they won't cook just for themselves. They don't see the point. I find cooking relaxing. I enjoy cooking for others, but also enjoy it as a solitary activity. The process of cooking, for me, is gratifying in and of itself. It's more than just getting something good to eat at the end. That helps, though.

Stone

I must confess I've learned to love stone as a unit in which to express weight. I've lost 2 stone in 13 weeks. What an oddly gratifying arbitrary milestone.

Apple Juice & Bariatric Surgery

A couple of NHS-related items this week worth reading, that are not surprising, but still depressing: a good summary of what is being cut vs. funded, and trends in obesity-related spending. [Executive summary: (1) nhs will kill more people by cutting nursing staff but spend more money assuming people are stupid and need a visit to a doctor to tell them they're overweight, (2) staple your stomachs!]

Change4Life is an NHS anti-obesity initiative mentioned in both articles. Despite the site appearing designed for 8-yr-olds, I think it's supposed to be targeting adults. I guess the dumb nature of the site is an effective indicator of how seriously you should treat its advice. Too bad this is costing us a fortune.

Billboards have been popping up as part of this campaign. One large one on my daily commute shows kids drinking fruit juice and boldly exclaiming, "fruit juice is 1 of my 5 a day!" I confirmed on the c4l site itself that they do in fact endorse apple juice as healthy. Apple juice. Seriously, you'd be better off giving your kids Sprite to drink instead. (Both are equally worthless for nutritional needs, except Sprite has marginally less sugar and is marginally less inflammatory.) Randomly poking around, I discover c4l also thinks oven chips are healthy because, you know, they have less fat than fried chips. I challenge anyone involved in this NHS campaign who is overweight to replace an equi-caloric portion of their diet, any portion, with 5 cups/day of apple juice and some oven chips, and let me know how that works out for you.

More lives would be saved by canning c4l and adding a few nurses to hospitals that need them. The fundamental problem, the real kick in the gut, is this: while the idea quoted in the Guardian article -- "When it comes to tackling the obesity crisis, money would be better spent by focusing in the key areas of prevention and awareness" -- is spot-on, the causes of obesity are so poorly understood by the people making public health desicions that much of the prevention & awareness is misguided or ineffective. They're all pretending the science is a done deal, the "everybody knows" phenomenon, when it's not. This is the same old groundless crap being peddled but now it's consuming an increasingly hefty portion of public health funding. But maybe I'm being too pessimistic. This high-priced campaign to prevent obesity, diabetes, and stomach-stapling could be wonderfully effective. I should just go cool down with a refreshing juicebox.

More Ribs

As I said before, the upside of living in a country that has excellent farmers and butchers but lacks a clue as to what to do with ribs is that you can get them really cheap (when you can get them at all). My butcher sells them for the equivalent of $2.50/lb, and these are from some of the highest-quality pigs anywhere. I started a run on them today at the shop. It was me, the butcher, and 3 guys behind me in line (no civilizing presence of women at the time). I got slightly enthusiastic on the rib issue. We all walked out with ribs, leaving none, the butcher threatening to raise prices.