In 2002, New York Times Magazine published an article that shattered the way Americans thought about food.  The so called Atkins Diet, developed by Dr. Atkins, blamed carbohydrates for America's weight problem and claimed that people can lose weight and become healthy by simply restricting their intake of carbohydrates.  Never mind the scientific studies or Dr. Atkins' qualifications, the low-carb diet quickly spread across America, as people suddenly began to eat lettuce wrapped hamburgers and omit rice in their barbecue.

Eight years has passed, and nearly every literate man, woman, and child in the United States cry out in unison that carbs are what to blame for our ever growing obesity epidemic.  But as more people in the world begin to suffer from over-nutrition than malnutrition, why is our obesity problem getting worse?  If everyone "knows" the root of the problem, why aren't we seeing a drop in the number of obese & overweight population?  And how could it be that people from two skinniest developed nations in the world, Korea and Japan, happily eat pounds after pounds of carbohydrates (rice) yet stay so skinny?  Why is it that French, who eat loads of pasta with their triple cream cheese, does not have an obesity epidemic the size of United States?

To all the chipotle fans in the world:

http://www.chipotlefan.com/index.php?id=nutrition_calculator

enjoy, and don't have a heart attack.  Well, I suppose you'll have one either way har har.

 

*It turns out McDonald's divested their interest in 2006. 

Immortal Technique - Leaving the Past

[Verse 1]
They told me I would never make it, I would never achieve it
Reality is nurishment, but people don't believe it
I guess its hard to stomach the truth like a bulimic
its a dirty game and nobody is willing to clean it
But this is for the paralygics, people dreamin' of runnin'
ladies married to men who don't please 'em, dreamin' of comin'
urbanly murderous like David Berkowitz when I'm gunnin'
Some cowards on the internet didn't think I would sell
scared to talk shit in person, cause they stuck in a shell
and couldn't understand the pain of being stuck in a cell
Hell is not a place you go, if you not a Christian
it's the failure of your life's greatest ambition
It's a bad decision to blindly follow any religion
I don't see the difference in between the raw and the wrong
Soldiers emptyin' their clips at little kids and their moms
I'm just like a desperate motherfucker strapped to a bomb
Humanity is gone, smoked up in a gravity bong
by a democrat republican Cheech and Chong
Immortal Technique, you never heard me preachin' a song
I'm not controversial, I'm just speakin' the facts
Put your hands in the air like you got the heat to your back
and shake your body like a baby born addicted to crack
And since life is a gamble like the craps tables at Vegas
I freestyle my destiny, it's not written in pages

[Verse 2]
I hate it when they tell us how far we came to be
as if our peoples history started with slavery
Painfully I discovered the shit they kept us secret
this is the exodus like the black Jews out of Egypt
I keep it reality based with the music I make
brought the truth to your face with the style I run wit
like the navy missile that shot down flight eighthundred
I'm like the Africans who came here before Colombus
and from the 15hundreds until after the model
I watch Latin America get raped in the sorrow
You see the Spaniards never left despues de Colon
and if you don't believe me, you can click on Univision
I never seen so much racism in all of my life
every program and newscast, all of them white
It's like Apartheid with 10 percent ruling the rest
that type of stress 'll make me put the fucking tool to your chest
Step in my way nigga, I wouldn't wanna be ya
I burn slow like pissing drunk with gonorrhea
I'll do a freak show in North Korea, burning the flag
while Jay Edgar Hoover politicians dress up in drag
Try to confuse you, makin' it hard to follow this:
capitalism and democracy are not synonymous

You swallow propaganda like a birth control pill

sellin' your soul to the eye on the back of the dollar bill

But that will never be me, cause I am leavin' the past
like an abused wife with the kids, leavin' your ass
Like a drug addict clean and sober, leavin' the stash
unbreakable Technique leavin' the plane crash
I'm out with the black box and I refuse to return
I spit reality, instead of what you usually learn
and I refuse to be concerned with condescending advice
cause I am the only motherfucker that could change my life

[Ending]
Some people think I won't make it
but I know that I will
Escape the emptiness
cause that shit is slow and it kills
the flow and the skill
I made y'all believe that it last
You can make the future
but it starts with LEAVING THE PAST

I really should write more often; if I don't, my technique suffers.  Since I'm currently reading "Omnivore's dilemma," by Michael Pollan, I will write about his book until I feel like sleeping.

What should we eat?  is a question we ask multiple times a day.  Such a question is unique to omnivores - After all, most animals rarely think about this question.  A carnivore such as a lion will hunt for meat when hungry - it does not contemplate whether he/she will eat an apple pie or a salad for lunch.  Other animals graze on grass without thinking.  But omnivores?  We were created to intake different nutrition from various sources, including the sunlight (did you know very little foods contain vitamin D?  We get most of our vitamin D from the sun).  Omnivores are not designed to eat solely one type of food like a lion (e.g. eating nothing but tofu for a whole year) for a prolonged period of time - that would be a nutritional fiasco.  So what will YOUR dinner be tonight?  This is the omnivore's dilemma.  A dilemma unique to omnivores.

But it seems to me (or Michael Pollan) that people are becoming increasingly confused about what they should eat.  After all, do most Americans even know what they are eating?  Let's take a look at the modern American supermarket, where there are virtually no seasons (we often forget all fruits and vegetables have seasons in nature).

Starting from the vegetable section - this is quite easy.  Everyone can differentiate between a broccoli from a tomato.  The next easiest section would probably be produce.  Even though these animals are chopped into small pieces, it's quite easy to distinguish between a cow and a pig.

But as you walk down further the aisle, differentiating becomes increasingly difficult.  Cereals?  Fruit loops?  Twinkies?  Well, isn't it true everything you're eating must have been either a plant or an animal at some stage?  We all know that a steak used to be a cow, but what about a waffle?  The frozen chicken nugget surely must contain chicken, but where does its 37 other ingredients come from?  Which plant or animal are we eating when a food contains "xanthan gum" or "maltodextrin?"  Is mayonnaise made from wheat, barley, chicken or what?  Most of us have no idea. 

Ever since The New York Times Magazine article ran an article about carbohydrates and the Atkins diet in 2002, it seems to me that nearly everyone in America became a nutritional expert, demonizing carbs in the process.  The number of so-called nutritional/diet experts, however, seem to be indirectly correlated to the obesity epidemic, as Americans are becoming fatter every year.  The truth is, very few people know about food and food industry in America, and even fewer people know what's really in their food.

So what's really in our food?

Surprisingly enough, there's actually a dominant ingredient to virtually all processed food.  Thousands of food you buy at the supermarket is actually a cleverly engineered output of a single plant that triumphed over all fauna and flora in terms of human consumption.  What does beef, chicken, coca-cola, twinkies, mayonnaise, frozen waffles, margarine, salad dressings, candies, canned fruit, MSG, and frozen yogurts all have in common?  Corn.  If we are what we eat, we're nothing but processed corn walking.  Creation of food has become an industrial process in America, with corn being the dominant raw material.

Photos that changed the world

Jonathan klein, president of Getty images:

let there be light

when I tell people that light matters in photography, they really don't understand why.  So instead of explaining, let me just show everyone.


(If you haven't noticed already, glass is transparent)

I wouldn't necessarily call this either bad or good lighting, but it is boring in my opinion. This is how glass normally looks - what's so special about it? nothing.


So let me change the positioning of the lights (and nothing else) and let's see what happens:



'nuff said. no photoshop or post processing on either pictures.  Light matters.