A food that is good for you.. and tastes good?!?!?

http://health.yahoo.com/experts/eatthis/54828/the-chocolate-milk-diet/

This article is titled "The Chocolate Milk Diet", and it talks about the nutritional power of chocolate milk along side a well balanced diet. Downing three glasses of low fat chocolate milk every day (morning, pre-exercise, and post-exercise) helps people shed fat and build muscle, and this is accredited to four characteristics of chocolate milk. 1) Calcium has been shown to impede the body's ability to absorb fat. 1000 mg of calcium is the recommended daily dose, and you can reach that dose with three glasses of CM. 2) The calcium you get from food is transported to your body by Vitamin D. Most diets are low on vitamin D, and people spend too much time indoors to benefit from vitamin D from sun exposure. Chocolate milk is full of vitamin D. 3) Everyone drinks electrolyte-replenishing sports drinks, thinking this will give them the extra boost in performance that they're looking for. However, studies have shown that the naturally occurring electrolytes and natural sweetness of chocolate milk can give you endurance a boost. 4) The more muscle you have, the more energy you use and the more fat you'll burn, so building muscle is key. The one thing everyone who exercises knows about building muscle is that is requires protein. That's why powdered whey protein has become so popular over the past years. The ideal amount of protein for packing on muscle is around 10-20 grams, split between before and after you work out. With around 8 grams per cup, a glass before and after you work out will give you the right dose of effective whey protein, without having to shovel out tons of money for supplements.

I would consider myself both an avid [weight] lifter and chocolate milk drinker. I have heard from multiple sources that chocolate milk is one of the best things you can drink after a work out. Low fat chocolate milk is obviously the best, as mentioned in the article, but unfortunately, the Cornell Diary isn't a 'low-fat' kind of place. The only chocolate milk available on campus is the Cornell Diary's full fat chocolate milk. I used to down a carton of this day, until I realized that each quart had 800 calories in it. I don't care how good chocolate milk is for you, nobody should be getting 40% of their daily calorie intake from a single food. Variety is the key.

Fast music cues us to eat more

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/3-reasons-why-restaurants-are-so-loud-1302266/

This article talks about why restaurants have such a loud atmosphere. It talks about how faster and louder music makes people eat and drink more and faster. Sound waves energize us, altering our brain chemistry and enhancing our senses. Research suggests that the enjoyment of this stimulus is what causes people to eat more.

After participating in a Food and Brand Lab experiment, I re-read the "Mindless Eating" article. Loud music is an example of the hidden persuaders mentioned. It can subconsciously affect the food related decisions we make, causing us to mindlessly eat more food than we would have normally.

Why solve tomorrow's problems if you are living today?

The Future of Food Warren Belasco

This article talks about food production, population, and their impact on each other. The worldwide population had been doubling over smaller and smaller time intervals, while the production of food was growing at an even faster pace. A main concern is the exhaustion of natural resources like farm-able land, and the plague we are forsaking the future inhabitant of Earth with.

On average, well-off people have less children, making some think that prosperity is the answer to slowing down population growth (maybe even bringing it to a complete halt) . However, the more luxurious lifestyles have been proven to leave a disproportional larger 'ecological footprint'. If people from other countries around the world increased their consumption to a level equal to that of Americans, grain, oil, water, soil, and other resource requirements would skyrocket. 67 percent more agricultural land than the world has would be needed, or some even say three planets worth of resources.

This article draws a lot of parallels between the ecosystem and business/investing/marketing (as an engineer, I'm not quite sure the difference between the three). Putting emphasis or investing in something like irrigation will have its benefits (profits) like increased yield and decrease wind erosion. However, it will also have its drawbacks like creating conflicts over water rights, depleting nutrients, and requiring energy. "The only way to treat soil is like a bank account... husband it carefully by careful farming and make a deposit once in a while."

At one point he asks 'In the future will we be competing with our cars for food?'. I don't see this as a concern considering how we are currently producing such a large surplus of grain (corn), we can't even find a use for it all.

One proposed outcome is a technological fix that human creativity and our boundless desires will be the driving force for continuing to develop solutions so that we may all have the desirable lifestyle. Even if this is the case, wouldn't the negative repercussions from our developed solutions eventually be too detrimental to outweigh the benefits? And the features of this technological solution (food that makes you lose weight, completely degradable packaging, green means of transportation) seem more like a dreamed up Utopian than feasible features of society.

The second solution, lowering our standards and expectations of the food industry, seems like a much more feasible goal. However, I feel it is much less appealing than the first solution. Do you think people will ever admit that the technological solution is unattainable and settle for less than what they want?