Adventures in Tech

At work I always enjoy chatting with our lead designer, who is also a strongman, and competes in strongman competitions. In addition to talking about design, I love to pick his brain about how to become more healthy and fit, and he is very generous with his advice and the lessons learned during his training. One day I noticed that he is filling a huge one gallon bottle of water, and I could not resist to ask why. He explained that he needs to drink more than a gallon of water everyday, and that without measuring how much water he consumed, at the end of the day he's not sure if he hit his goal or not. I was intrigued, and decided to see how much water I drank everyday, even though I had no intention of matching his consumption. I bought a 1 liter bottle of water, and set to drink 3 liters of water a day, as the  Mayo Clinic recommends . To my surprise I discovered that I am no where near the recommended quantity, even after factoring in the incidental drinks I consume everyday...

Documentaries about food and health are almost always controversial, especially if they include a view on dieting and weight loss. They end up espousing a myopic view of how to lose weight and be healthy, and lose the viewer who is a long time skeptic after seeing a lot of fad diets come and go. The documentary "Hungry for Change" was a pleasant change. It focused on giving out balanced information on how the US as a nation has a high percentage of obese individuals, despite all the health awareness, and diets in circulations. The premise of the documentary is that we have strayed from eating the foods our bodies evolved with through million of years to consuming highly processed foods, and if we change that by eating less processed foods, we'd have a better health. The documentary starts with some eye-opening highlights: Supermarket foods are engineered to have a long shelf life, to be appealing and addictive, and be not fulfilling so that we buy more The proto...