Hospitality/Recreation

Protein Ratios in Food Bars

Thursday, July 4, 2013 

I’ve always been annoyed by the way food nutritional content is reported. It isn’t hard to find a food item with 1,000 calories per serving that claims to be be “high” in iron because it has 5% of the US RDA. The ratio of the RDA of iron to calories would be 1:10. You couldn’t eat enough to get the full allowance of iron in a day and you’d become a human blimp trying.

In an age of obscene abundance, the trick is not so much getting the minimum nutritional value, but getting it at the minimum caloric cost. I looked through some reviews of “good” protein bars and popular ones on Amazon and tabulated the nutritional data in Excel and then computed the ratio of grams of protein to three bad things: kilo-calories, grams of saturated fat, and dollars of cost. Thus, higher values are better. It is interesting to see a huge range in all three values. Sadly, it is common to get closer to the maximum recommended value of saturated fat per day than calories, meaning that eating only enough calories of these “healthy” bars will result in increased risk of disease compared to normal, “unhealthy” food. That’s pretty inexcusable.

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I’d like to change the way nutritional labels are printed from hard to read tables presenting only favorable values to simple bar graphs of all basic, essential nutrients, all of which would always be included so that empty calories foods would have a big red block of bar graphs pointing to the left indicating a food that had better be a pleasure to eat to compensate for the lack of nutrition.

But back to food bars: the ratio of protein to calories is a good way to select a food bar for healthy people. Finding one with the best ratio of protein to saturated fat can be important for some people and avoiding the worst ratios is good for everyone. Finding the most protein for your dollar may have merit as well (though prices are just Amazon prices and may vary significantly by outlet).

The Excel table for your editing pleasure protein bars.xlsx

Posted at 11:55:41 GMT-0700

Category: ReviewsTechnology

A Friendly Arrival in Iraq

Wednesday, February 20, 2013 

I got through immigration in record time, no complications at all. Only a few questions about the power supply in my luggage at customs.

I thought I would get a cup of coffee from the stand an acquaintance operates at the airport, but I arrived as they were having breakfast. As this is Iraq, that meant I had to join them for a jovial breakfast of eggs, fresh tomato, cucumber, potatoes, and meat pastries while they told me funny stories about each other in a mixture of Arabic, English, and Spanish. They would not let me pay anything, a really pleasant and friendly welcome into the country.

But I couldn’t stay long, I had to take a taxi out to meet my friends at the arrivals lot, where the in car is a B6 Land Cruiser.

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Posted at 20:23:39 GMT-0700

Category: photoPlacesTravel

Visiting the Burj Khalifa

Saturday, February 2, 2013 

Dubai is an interesting contrast to Iraq. The first time I went through DXB from BSR it was more than a little culture shock. Getting out of the airport only amplifies the experience.

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Jared and I had dinner at the Mall of Dubai and before eating had a little walk around the fountains – the largest dancing fountains in the world at the foot of the tallest man-made structure in the world.

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Dubai is an good place to spot cars. Obviously the gold accented rolls is more pose-worthy than the $450k GTO. Then again they were probably posing with the license plate number which I think was 1, and therefore cost as much as 20 Ferrari GTOs.

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The fire fountains:
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Posted at 17:58:15 GMT-0700

Category: MapphotoPlacesTravelvideo

I <3 Germany

Saturday, February 11, 2012 

Where else can you find a store like this at the airport?

Posted at 04:07:17 GMT-0700

Category: FunnyOddphotoPlacesTravel

Halloween at Borgo a Mozzano

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 

Borgo a Mozzano hosts the biggest Halloween festival in Italy and this year was the biggest yet. The streets were so packed with people it was almost impossible to move in some places. There were at least 8 stages, each hosting several different bands through the night playing all sorts of music from heavy metal to gypsy punk to polka, but one of the best was the marching band which had our town butcher out dancing with a cows head.

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Posted at 10:42:55 GMT-0700

Category: EventsPlacesTravel

Passaggio del Terrore

Monday, October 31, 2011 

The first night of Halloween at Borgo a Mozzano (it is a 3 night extravaganza here), we visited the famous Passaggio del Terrore. The highlight was seeing the owner of our local hardware store as a crazed psychopath.

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Posted at 17:40:44 GMT-0700

Category: EventsphotoPlacesTravel

Scrapper

Thursday, October 20, 2011 

I went to see Scrapper, the documentary by Stephen Wassmann, that was showing as part of the SF Documentary Film Festival.   It is the story of the people who live between the Salton Sea and the Chocolate Mountain Bombing Range and make a living gathering scrap metal off the range between bombing runs.

It’s quite a frank and intimate portrayal of some extremely eccentric characters.  They spend their time divided between driving around the range gently prying the aluminum tail fins off unexploded ordinance, heating the booty over open fires to loosen the scrap-value-reducing steel rivets, and doing crystal meth and drinking, though the last activity isn’t so much divided from the former two.

The most entertaining character is an old guy who set up camp on the isolated East side of the range, far from humanity, and cruises around the range in a highly modified VW bug living a life pretty much straight out of the Road Warrior.

It is definitely a movie where every moment seems to balance precariously on the edge of a ravine or on a delicate trip wire on a 2,000# bomb that failed to release when it buried itself fins-deep in the desert sand.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11457549[/vimeo]

Posted at 04:18:18 GMT-0700

Category: FilmsGeopostPositiveReviewsvideo

TFF D1F3: Albert Nobbs

Saturday, September 3, 2011 

Albert Nobbs is an great film.   See it.

It is the story of a curious butler in 1890s Dublin who suffered a difficult childhood and to survive took a job as a waiter, and the worked his way up to being a butler in a small but swanky hotel.  The thing is, he’s a woman played by Glenn Close.

His carefully controlled life is turned upside down when he has to share his room with a painter working on the hotel and his view of the world and of his own future changes dramatically.

Glenn Close introduced the film an described it as a labor of love that she has spent 15 years working on.  Her acting is superb and the story is very funny when it tries to be and truly touching without being cloy or saccharine.  While Glenn’s performance stands out, none of the cast come up short and Janet McTeer is also particularly strong.

Posted at 00:52:45 GMT-0700

Category: FilmsPositiveReviews

Cambridge Morning

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 

Breakfast in the euphonic Wolf Abdias and Stanley Esdras Jules Square

Posted at 05:39:23 GMT-0700

Category: PlacesTravel

Yard Berries are Fruiting

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 

The urban blackberries and raspberries are starting to fruit.

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Posted at 11:57:36 GMT-0700

Category: Geopostphoto