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What percentage of yoga classes have you been to that are truly great? For me, this number is 10% and probably less.

For starters, I don’t know what types of yoga exist and how they’re different. I know that yoga is good for me and helps me stretch out and re-balance. But did I know that the purpose of yoga is to connect the mind and body as a method to prepare you for meditation? Not until recently.

This is all coming from someone who has been to at least 100 classes in the past few years. Even with all that, I don’t really know what’s going on.

I don’t think we (the collective we) are managing complex, human issues very well at the moment.

Nutrition is confusing. Yoga is confusing. There aren’t many (?) trusted sources in our every day lives to help with this. Not without taking a sizable amount of time to seek them out and spend a few months learning. I think we could all use a bit more coaching.

CorePower (capitalism’s version of yoga) is proliferating. With probably 200 locations by now they are popping up everywhere. So I’m guessing they’re profitable. But are they good? Not really. Not in the form of yoga beyond a sculpting workout.

But perhaps, that’s all we’re looking for.

Currently you can purchase food from:

Restaurants and restaurant “like” entities – dine-in, fast casual, delivery, etc.

Grocery store and grocery “like” entities – supermarkets, club stores, home delivery of meal kits and produce, farmers markets

Someone is either cooking for you to make $, or you’re cooking for yourself. The burden of getting everything right for either party here is tremendous.

What if someone else cooked for you that you could trust to get it right? What if that help you build an entirely new supply chain to make all of the “good” and confusing decisions for you?

That would be something novel, eh?

Being able to cook a simple meal and feed your family at the end of the day really feeds your soul.

Rachael Ray, NYTimes interview Sep, 2008

Within a few years, more than 50% of food from a restaurant is expected to be take out or delivery. App based delivery companies (GrubHub, Uber Eats, etc.) are planning to grab their share of that market in a big way. Their plan involves infrastructure – physical kitchens – that do not have a store front or seating. They are kitchens designed to prepare multiple types of cuisines and serve the purpose of multiple types of restaurants.

Rather than having a Chinese food shop, pizza place, diner, etc. in a strip mall, why not just combine these all under one roof in a state of the art highly efficient cooking space. They’ll win on pure efficiency but also have full technological integration for the digital world. Most notably, a drive thru (probably multiple).

You probably won’t even know the store you’re buying from on the app isn’t real. It will be priced well and probably just as good. Existing restaurants have been trying to succeed at the delivery game, with mixed success. Does that strip mall ever make you feel good by going there? I’m guessing probably not given the trend towards take out.

If you consider this trajectory inevitable, we’re going to see a lot of restaurants going out of business. Those that will thrive will have a product so good the Uber monster can’t eat it. And they’re going to have to compete against Uber’s technical marketing arm to get noticed.

What’s the upside here? The restaurants that survive will have to be so good that you’ll want to go there and enjoy it. Is there a future where someone cracks the code and breaks the take out trend? Maybe. But it’s not going to be home cooks and it seems not Rachel Ray. A strong proponent of home cooking for most of her career, Rachael Ray just as happy taking a percentage of your take out.

It all seems so obvious once you know it. Children around the world are malnourished. Well, let’s give them vitamins.

Programs around the world are doing just that. But a recent study out of UC Davis highlights the impact of the issues that can not be solved by nutrition alone. There are major impacts to children related to how they are raised.

Sure, this seems obvious. But the “problems” keep getting bigger? I’m not sure what I mean by problem and I’m not sure what this actually means.

I think we are going to keep finding that nutrition is not the miracle cure for the current, global, human condition. It’s probably something more.

“Our study found that we can’t just focus on nutrition. Other aspects of nurturing care are just as, if not more important in supporting healthy brains,” said lead author Elizabeth Prado, assistant professor of nutrition at UC Davis.

https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/nutrition-programs-alone-arent-enough-support-healthy-brain-development/

“The association has been influential in prioritizing a global agenda to promote nutrition and growth,” said senior author Anuraj Shankar, with the Center for Tropical Medicine and Global Health at Oxford University. “However, our true goal isn’t just for children to grow taller but for them to fulfill their developmental potential. The study shows that won’t happen unless we target caregiving to nurture thriving individuals and communities.”
Globally, an estimated 156 million children younger than 5 years have stunted growth and an estimated 250 million are at risk of not fulfilling their developmental potential.

https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/nutrition-programs-alone-arent-enough-support-healthy-brain-development/

Most of my thinking has been based around the premise that your Apple Watch will eventually be testing the nutrients in your blood. Then you’ll supplement to fill these gaps. But the reality of the complexity of plants, your gut, etc. we are barely beginning to understand. Does your fiber supplement contain the correct types of fiber to feed a diverse microbiome? Or are you just taking one type of fiber. Endocrine disrupting compounds … new thing. Science on infant development … new thing.

I think we should keep real food on the table. Further, we can improve our food systems to support a healthy future.

I think we will get back to “some cooking for many.” You don’t always have to make your own lunch, and maybe we’ll take the opportunity to make eating social again. But it can’t be Sweetgreen (at least not in its current form.) Can food become local again? Not just farmers market for the privileged local, but a core part of trusted society?

I had not previously considered that frozen food reduces waste. If the food doesn’t spoil, can that offset the cost (also emissions) of shipping it across the country while frozen? There is some math to be done here, but there is also a PhD to be had on that math.

Food waste is a big problem and big money. I’ve seen a few concepts to solve this but it’s tough to build a commercial case behind any of them. Can you gather energy from composting? Maybe. But why would grocery stores care? As long as they are optimizing what is on their shelves, they don’t care if you throw it away later.

About one-third of the food produced and packaged for human consumption is lost or wasted, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. That equals 1.3 billion tons a year, worth nearly $680 billion. 

Link to NYTimes article

From 8 to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are related to food lost during harvest and production or wasted by consumers

Same NYTimes article

From 2009 write up (supporting UN Millennium Development Goals):

Kids around the world are suffering from malnutrition (a lot of them.) (Up to 2 billion people are suffering the consequences of vitamin and mineral deficiencies per the study) What should we do about it?

• Set up salt iodization legislation
• Set up national standards for food fortification
• Provide micronutrient supplements to children (vitamin A, zinc, others)
• Provide micronutrient supplements to women of child bearing age
• Integrate micronutrient programs into existing food support systems

What are these vitamins needed for:

• Vitamin A – immune development and vision
• Iodine – brain development
• Iron – motor and cognitive development
• Zinc – immune development and nervous system development
• Folate – critical for fetal development

“However, although vitamin C can be easily lost during storage, antioxidants like carotenoids and phenolics may actually increase.”

Brown, healthline, 2017

I assumed this would be easier.

Fresh if X and frozen if Y. But without investing a ton more time, this healthline article will suffice. The variables are complex and I found it difficult to share guidelines. How many days old is the spinach at your grocery store? Was this bag of broccoli blanched? WTF is a phenolic?

Generally, (I say this without confidence) fresh are good but lose “water soluable” nutrients over time. Frozen are also good but can lose nutrients when they are flash boiled to remove bacteria prior to freezing. There is also another entire chapter on carbon footprint to consider.

Idea- What if food retailers (grocery stores, restaurants, meal kits displayed”days since picked” information?

Idea – What if food retailers had an accurate count of nutrients for the food real time as you bought it? Is looking at it enough? (again, another chapter about what happens to nutrients as you cook them)

Idea – Can you test nutrient levels before and after eating? How many nutrients can be used by your body when you eat them?

We can incentivize shorter, fresher supply chains. We can also inform consumers when and how to buy frozen veggies. Right now it’s tough to decipher.

I’m sorry canned but I didn’t even get to you. Your handling of BPA liners is enough for us to ignore you for now.

Take a look at this article from 2018. Have you heard of this bacteria?

The Bacteria Babies Need – Kristin Lawless

The answer appears to be clickbait, clickbait and clickbait. No wonder this is confusing. Based on the clickyness of this bait, I’m guessing people actually care about this one. Today I’m left with more questions than answers.

• Which type of nutrients deplete from vegetables quickly?
  • How long does it take?
• Which type of nutrients are not as time sensitive?
• What other considerations are necessary when evaluating fresh, canned or frozen? (BPA, carbon cost of refrigerated / frozen shipping, could local farming support population demand / etc…)