Pies and cobblers, crisps and clafouti are all fine desserts, but when ruby red cherries are in their prime, there’s a fast and fancy dessert that tops all the others. It’s easy enough to pull together any night of the week, and finishes on the stovetop with a dazzling flambé before getting spooned over ice cream. If you make just one thing with cherries this summer, this is the dessert to keep at the top of your list.
Picture this: You’re doing your weekly grocery shop and there’s a great deal on a family pack of chicken thighs. And now that you’re looking in the meat section, you were thinking maybe you’d have a cookout this weekend and the ground beef is on sale. And you might as well stock up on buns because, well, it’s summer and you always need buns.
Somehow you walk out of the store with more than enough to feed you, your family, and then some. You’re still feeling pretty good though — until you get home and you are hit with that sinking feeling that comes from knowing that you can’t possibly eat everything before it goes bad. No worries, though, right? That’s what the freezer is for.
But what if those thighs come out covered in ice and freezer burn? Are they still safe to eat? We investigated.
If you’re reading this article, chances are I’ve caught you in a sweatpants and froyo-devouring phase listening for your ex’s car outside. Trust me, I was just there. Over the last few months, while going through a breakup from my former girlfriend of four years, I honestly wondered if it was possible to keel over […]
Sour cherries are one of my most eagerly awaited fresh fruits of the summer. Thin-skinned and tart, they aren’t really best for eating out of hand. We who love them use them as creatively and quickly as we can, putting their bright, acidic hit to good use in jams, cakes, pies, cocktails, and even in the occasional savory dish. Picture your classic cherry pie, bright-red and glowing with orbs of juicy fruit. Well, you’ve just pictured sour cherries.
My friend, former co-competitor, business partner, and writing buddy Brad Kearns had been on a “Quantified Self” kick, tracking biomarkers, testing blood sugar and ketone levels, and staying abreast of all the various ways we can quantitatively check our progress. He’s months into a ketogenic experiment and had hoped to marry his subjective impressions to objective measurements to strengthen his intuition and improve his results.
Then, several weeks ago, it all changed. Using the same finger prick sample, he checked his fasting blood sugar using three separate devices. Same blood sample, three devices purporting to give accurate readings. You’d think the results would be similar, if not identical. They weren’t:
That’s not just a few points here or there. That disparity is well outside the standard deviation. The numbers can’t be trusted, because which one’s right? And if you can’t trust the numbers, what’s the point of gathering them?
Brad’s results were extraordinary, but making any conclusions from the measurement of an organism’s secretions, emissions, and fluids must be tempered with the fact that biology is chaotic. It isn’t clean, neat, and predictable. If you dig deep enough, it might be predictable, but we don’t yet have the technology capable of untangling it.
This isn’t just limited to over-the-counter glucose monitors either.
Gut Biome Testing: The different gut biome sequencing services can produce different results. One person had about as contradictory a pair of results as you can get from the same sample. In another case, taking samples from different sections on the same poop gave different bacterial readings. Bacterial strains do not have uniform distribution throughout the turd.
Blood Testing: Each blood drop is different from the next. This is where services like Theranos ran afoul of reality—they claimed they could test individual drops of blood for dozens of biomarkers. That’s all well and good, but a single drop is not representative of the the rest of the blood.
Sleep Tracking: Commercial sleep tracking is notoriously inaccurate, overstimating sleep duration even comparing poorly to established medical devices for tracking sleep, likepolysomnography (used in sleep studies) and actigraphs. They give a false sense of security. That’s dangerous. If you’re only sleeping 6 1/2 hours and feeling lousy, but the machine insists you’re getting a full 8 hours a night, and you trust it (it’s “objective” after all), you will jeopardize your health.
Let’s say the numbers are even accurate. This is only a snapshot of one drop of blood in one minute in a living organism, so trying to discern the truth from a single blood test is like trying to understand the plot of Gone with the Wind by looking at a movie poster. Then, when you factor in how inaccurate the numbers can be from machine to machine or from lab to lab, it makes it even more ridiculous to try to craft any kind of lifestyle strategy based on them.
Almost a decade ago, a routine visit to the doctor for a skin checkup almost got me placed on blood pressure meds. It was 140/100. I refused, opting to track my own blood pressure over the next week at home using a store-bought device. The results were stunning:
Across 50 readings, I never got the same numbers twice.
My highest was 133/92, taken after leaving the doctor’s office. My lowest was 102/66, that same night after dinner. So, I went from needing drugs and a low-salt diet to l0w-normal BP over the course of 24 hours.
At night, my BP settled in around 110/67 on average.
That cemented for me how ridiculous it is to determine someone’s long-term health trajectory based on a single reading. Blood pressure, as with any physiological biomarker, fluctuates for a reason. When you’re exercising, it’s high to help shuttle oxygen and nutrients around the body. Stress also heightens the need for oxygen and nutrients—so you can deal with whatever stressor ails you—and thus increases blood pressure. It’s helpful when required, bad in excess.
Even in that perfect world where every blood drop is identical to the next and every lab machine and OTC device are interchangeable, I’m just not sure if the objective measurements have any real use compared to the subjective measurements.
These are the questions to ask. If you can answer affirmatively, what more do you want? I have trouble seeing how numbers on a device that may not even be accurate can improve on those subjective biomarkers.
Another danger of reliance on lab tests, not widely acknowledged, is that we lose touch with our bodies. When we have numbers for everything, why pay attention to something as inaccurate, imprecise, and subjective as “how I feel”? After all, nobody bothers remembering phone numbers anymore. This will only worsen the more technology improves and accuracy increases. You’ll have robot doctors or implants hooked up to your smartphone analyzing your health using complex algorithms based on biomarkers that are 100% accurate. “Trust the AI,” they’ll say, and there’s some truth to that. Who are you to disregard a supercomputer with 1000x the brainpower of John von Neumann?
Call me a Luddite, but we lose something important in that scenario. Humans are the thinking and feeling animal. We ponder the meaning of life and possess intuitive powers. That’s what makes us so dominant—the ability to use executive functioning to harness and direct our more base urges and instincts. If we no longer have to feel and can rely on flawless biofeedback relayed by sensors and trackers, will we cease to be human?
I don’t know the answer to that. That’s a tough one.
For now, stop rejecting your birthright as intelligent animals. Hone your intuition rather than surrender it. Don’t enslave yourself to the numbers and lab results. That doesn’t mean ignore them outright—particularly if you have a serious condition that requires treatment. I’m not suggesting anyone skip out on their medical care. But there’s this to keep in mind: Quantification is a tool, it’s not the full answer.
You come first. What you say matters. At least for now, it’s often the best biofeedback we have.
To sum up:
Test results are often unreliable and inaccurate.
Different devices/labs produce different results.
Most tests are single snapshots in time and do not represent the natural fluctuations that occur in any biomarker.
Subjective evaluations are more useful than objective numbers (that may be inaccurate/unreliable).
Relying on a machine to tell you how you’re feeling may atrophy our ability to feel.
What do you think, folks? How do you weigh objective biomarkers against subjective evaluations of how you’re looking, feeling, and performing? What provides the most value to your life and health? Thanks for reading.
Mornings! Right? Very few of us pull into our office parking lot looking as happy as this girl pictured above. It’s understandable: There are so many things that happen to us between waking up and walking into our office. A lot of these things are out of our control (the torrential downpour that came out of nowhere, the inexplicable traffic you hit on the highway, your toddler’s meltdown over his socks being orange).
Luckily, though, there are a few things you can control. One of those things? How enjoyable your morning commute happens to be! Try these tips for a better getting-to-work experience.
Welcome to a column from The Financial Diet, one of our very favorite sites, dedicated to money and everything it touches. One of the best ways to take charge of your financial life is through food and cooking. This column from TFD founders Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Ver Hage will help you be better with money, thanks to the kitchen. A version of this post originally appeared on The Financial Diet.
I think it’s probably no secret by now that I hate minimalism. I hate it as the incredibly tedious piece of personal performance art it has come to be in our society, but I also hate it as an aesthetic: your white-on-white-on-white life and meticulously crafted wardrobe of only the most wispy products Everlane and Aritzia have to offer are, frankly, a saltine cracker’s idea of what a Cool Girl would wear.
In terms of its visual merits, or as a capital-S Style, the hyper-curated minimalism really only conveys one thing: “I wanted to take the very safest route to chic, cut away every possible misstep or risk. I saw the French Girl Chic articles and I was like … that’s pretty damn homogenous, but smoking tests poorly in focus groups and those occasional striped shirts are too bold. Time to reduce my look even further until literally every item I purchase tells people ‘I could get something more interesting, but I have enough money to choose not to.'”
You know the drill: You resolve to eat healthy, you look up recipes, you head to the store and farmers market to stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables. You tell anyone who will listen that you’re going to start eating more fresh produce.
Then, life happens. You work late one night or someone drags you out for happy hour and the fresh foods you were planning on turning into a salad are in your fridge, wilting. You get mad at yourself, not only for not sticking to your resolution to eat healthy, but also because you’ve let good, nutritious, and expensive foods go to waste.
Even for the neatest eater, a meal outside almost always leads to some sort of mess. Sticky hands, a blob of ketchup on your thigh (hey, at least it missed your shorts!), corn on the cob guts all over your face — it’s all possible!
Sometimes, napkins just aren’t enough and you need a good old-fashioned hand (or thigh) washing. Of course, during a picnic, the nearest sink could be football fields away. And during a backyard cookout, guests will have to open doors and traipse through the house in order to wash their hands.
For now classes are 6pm and 640pm at 2840 Wildwood st in the Boise Cloggers studio.
Book your class NOW!
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My friend, former co-competitor, business partner, and writing buddy Brad Kearns had been on a “Quantified Self” kick, tracking biomarkers, testing blood sugar and ketone levels, and staying abreast of all the various ways we can quantitatively check our progress. He’s months into a ketogenic experiment and had hoped to marry his subjective impressions to objective measurements to strengthen his intuition and improve his results.
For now classes are 6pm and 640pm at 2840 Wildwood st in the Boise Cloggers studio.
Book your class NOW!
click this ==>
Me 'n Wilson
