Nature's Perfect Food

I remember once having a conversation with my father and I don't even remember what we were talking about, but he said, in passing, that potatoes were natures perfect food.  I took this to heart and have used it to justify ordering baked potatoes with half a pound of butter and sour cream with my steak, for the last 30 years.  Some time later I heard someone else say that eggs are nature's perfect food.  And I suppose you could make a pretty good argument that they are.  But then I also heard that bananas are nature's perfect food and then I knew something was up.  Not that I have anything against bananas, but surely there cannot be THREE perfect foods.  Well, I was thinking about this a few nights ago as I was admiring someone at TGI Friday's who was eating a baked potato and decided to do a little research.  (If you can call googling for 30 minutes research.)  It turns out I was really wrong about the perfect food thing.  Here, according to several mildly biased and mostly anonymous people on the internet, is what is actually Nature's Perfect Food.

There are over 3 million edible plants on our planet, and no other single plant source can compare with the nutritional value of hemp seeds. Both the complete protein and the essential oils contained in hemp seeds are in ideal ratios for human nutrition. 65% of the protein content is in the form of globulin edestin, so that it can actually be used by the body in its raw state, unlike that in soya beans, which have to be cooked or sprouted. The word edestin comes from the Greek "edestos," meaning edible.

I can't say that I am terribly surprised that Hemp Seeds came up on the top of a google search.  The Hemp Nation is nothing if not organized and zealous.  One of the sites that is promoting hemp seeds was also saying how wonderful hemp seed butter is.  MMMMm.... I could use a good HSB&J sandwich right about now.

Algae has been eaten by man for centuries, but scientists have only recently focused on its nutritional potential. Blue-green algae grows in Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon, far from urban pollution, under the most natural Conditions possible. Also known as Aphanizomenon flos-aquae, blue-green algae contains no heavy metals or harmful bacteria, and supplies the most complete range of amino acids, vitamins and minerals available in any single food. It is a virtual powerhouse of nutrition.

Mmmmm...  Algae.  Now I'm sorry I've already filled up on that breakfast of eggs, bacon and coffee.  I could have had some Southern Oregon Algae.

Millions worldwide are taking Chlorella because it:  Lessens the severity of an illness, and you recover more quickly from it.  Reduces the effects of aging and increases longevity.  Relieves the effects of arthritis and fybromyalgia pain.  Protects the brain from age-related memory loss.  Normalizes blood pressure and promotes a lower 'bad' cholesterol count.  Detoxifies the body, removing even heavy metals and pesticides.  Protects against some cancer-causing agents found in food.  Boosts the immune system, increasing the body's resistance to bacteria, viruses, and toxic chemicals.  And regulates digestion and supports good bowel health.

Yeah, that's nice and all, but isn't chlorella just algae?  I'm sorry, but you health nuts may have tricked me into eating seaweed by wrapping it around fish and rice, but I won't be fooled into drinking green slime, no matter how good it is for my bowels.

And speaking of seaweed.

Move over seaweed! There is a new superfood to contend with. Acai is the Brazilian berry that is being hailed as “nature’s perfect food” by the US Health Science Institute.

I'm sure we've all been spammed a few thousand times now about how much Oprah loves Acai berry, but I've tasted this stuff.  And it is nasty.  I'll wait until it comes in a capsule, thank-you-very-much.

And for breathless excitement, this one seems to be the winner.

Green drinks are the superfoods that may be considered nutritional life insurance when they are taken as green food powder added to liquid or as green food powder incorporated into caplets.  Just such green superfoods should be taken daily with a diet that includes as many other superfoods as possible such as leafy greens, spirulina, cayenne pepper, garlic, onions, most types of seeds, turmeric, wheat grass and many others.

In the case of "Perfect Food", these superfoods seem to consist of Cereal Grass Juices, Phytoplanktons, Spirulina, Chlorella, Vegetable Juices, Acerola Cherry, Seeds, Legumes, and Grains.

In fact, this MUST be Nature's Perfect Food, because this guy seems to have trademarked the name "Perfect Food".  So, there you go, then.  Case closed.  But again, putting a bunch of algae in a powder or a capsule is not really going to make me salivate.  I was ok with the grains, legumes, garlic, onions and cayenne pepper, mentioned above.  Maybe I could take all that and make a bean burrito.  But I'm pretty sure that putting algae in a burrito isn't really going to help the taste.  

A bit more googling turned up more candidates for 'perfect food'.  These included Bananas, Bee Pollen, Raw Milk, Lentils, Chia seeds, Eggs, and Egg Whites.  So maybe I was right about bananas and eggs.  Nevertheless, by the time you get into the third and fourth pages of a google search, you have finally uncoverred the REAL perfect foods.  On that list is Bacon, Kielbasa, Pizza, Chili Dogs and McDonalds French Fries.  See that?  French Fries.  So Dad was right about potatoes after all.  That's good to know.

Idle Thoughts

Hey, I'm man enough to admit that I watch American Idol every week. And enjoy it. And I'm man enough to admit that I miss the Wednesday morning recaps I used to have with my boss, Dave. But since my wife thinks I'm unqualified to form an opinion on music, I'll have to inflict my opinions on you, my dear readers. And just for fun, I'm going to steal liberally from other Idol blogs, because there are a few people out there who are nastier AND funnier than me.

Allison Iraheta sang "Don't Want To Miss A Thing"
"You know I would scrub Allison's dirty panties in the sink if she asked me to, but even her voice couldn't save that wreck!" (Michael K). Yeah. That's how I feel too. I LOVE Alison. And I love Aerosmith. But these two things do NOT go together. I think she did a good enough job to stay on the show another week, but that's about it.

Anoop Desai sang “Everything I Do”
As Michael K says, this guys has a voice like a tall glass of cold Silk Soymilk. For me, I wonder if even Brian Adams could have stayed awake during that performance. This guys is just increasingly boring. And the really sad thing about that is he could have been an older, cooler Sanjaya. If this guy actually makes an album, I won't even bother to steal it off the internet.

Adam Lambert sang "Born to be Wild"
In spite of a voice that would have been annoying on a 80s hair metal band, I will admit that Adam will be the winner or at worst, second place in the competition this year.

Danny Gokey sang "Endless Love"
Danny tried every trick in the book to play the 'widower' card, short of singing to a life sized cutout of his dearly departed wife. It will probably work. I'll be glad to get to next week, though, when the theme will be Disco. Yes, I said Disco.

Kris Allen “Falling Slowly”
Matt Giraud "To Really Love A Woman"
Both Matt and Kris gave performances so boring that I can't even find any blogs that have anything bad to say about them. I do note that most blogs think these two and Lil Rounds will be in the bottom three with predictions on who is going home split between Matt and Lil. Oh, I just found a nasty comment by the Vulture at New York Magazine. They said "Kris sang flat for two whole minutes, delivering what was unquestionably the episode's worst performance." I wouldn't know. I fell asleep.

Lil Rounds sang "The Rose"
Ken Levine said "For weeks Simon has been trying to zero in on just what kind of singer she is. I can tell you that. Background." That may be a little more harsh than my feelings, but it a really good singer like Melinda Doolittle (had to look up her name) can be forgotten after a great season on Idol, then there is no future for Lil. (insert sad face here)

Because of last weeks show going long and everyone in the country missing the last 4 minutes of the show (except the 3 people in the country who actually watch the show live) the judging was switched up to just two judges per performance. It still didn't work and most people missed Lil Rounds back-sassing Simon. Next week I recommend that they limit Ryan Seacrest's Liberace entrance to 3 minutes to keep the show on schedule. And don't let Paula spout her Vicodin-fueled gibberish at all. Let's just take a stopwatch and time her dancing to each performance, and call that a critique.

Big Company. Stupid Mistake.

I'm getting really sick of really big companies making really foreseeable mistakes and then pretending the whole thing was unavoidable. Why? Because the chasm between the obviousness of the mistake and the lame excuses they make for them seems to indicate that they knew they were lying all along, but decided to blame it on some unnamed programmer or clerk. Here are two recent examples.

Amazon yesterday put into action a plan to remove 'sexually explicit' books from their sales ranking, but not from the site. In fact, depending on who you believe, they may have removed them from their search engine. Or maybe they didn't. There's a memo from them that says they did, and a memo that denies that they ever wrote the memo. And denies that they broke the search engine, in spite of the fact that it stopped working for some 'adult material' at the same time as the first memo said they would. And you will not be at all surprised to learn that every book that has a hint of a gay or lesbian theme, whether explicit or not, has disappeared. So you will be happy to note that wonderful old standbys like "The Anarchist Cookbook" 2002 edition is still ranked. (#6,484 in Books, #2 in Books > Nonfiction > Politics > Reference) But clearly dangerous stuff like The Joy of Sex is not ranked. Uh. Scuse me. I mean the hardcover version. Paperback is still ranked #1,944,082 in Books and #73 in Sex Instruction. And maybe the final cherry on this idiot sundae is that Amazon did this on a Saturday, and it immediately hit the Twitter Trend List as #amazonfail, and now they are scrambling (even as I write this) to put some of these books back in the rankings. So far they have restored Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawerence and Moll Flanders by Daniel Devoe.
But they continue to describe this as a 'glitch'.

And in other news, Apple decided to fiddle with the only music retailing model that is currently profitable. IN THE ENTIRE MUSIC BUSINESS!! The ubiquitous iTunes store and iPod and it's $.99 song downloads has been working for a few years now. Working so well that CD sales have been down in double digits stumbles ever since. So the smart thing to do now would be two introduce a 3 tiered pricing system. Right? Because clearly something is broken.... Right? Well that's what the brain trust at Apple decided. I'll just go ahead and quote Slashdot on this.

"Steve Jobs vowed weeks ago that when iTunes shifted to a tiered price structure in April, older tracks priced at $0.69 would outnumber the contemporary hits that are rising to $1.29. Today, several weeks later, iTunes made the transition. While the $1.29 tracks are immediately visible, locating cheaper tracks is proving to be an exercise in futility. With the exception of 48 songs that Apple has placed on the iTunes main page, $0.69 downloads are a scarce commodity.

So a bait and switch that results in a 30% price increase, and coincidentally at the nadir of the worst economic crisis in 80 years, perhaps ever, seemed like just the thing to do for the largest marketer of music in the business. Well, I'm no economist, but I have a hunch this is going to cause some trouble for Apple.

And in a final knuckleheaded irony, our friends at Amazon have NOT changed their music download prices to match iTunes. In fact, they have dropped the price of a lot of tracks to $0.89. So you can't find any Beatles or Rolling Stones on the cheap, but you CAN find 'You Really Got Me' by The Kinks for $.89. Also for 89 cents is 'I Can't Make you Love Me' by Bonnie Raitt, which Alison Iraheta sang on American Idol a week ago. Get it before she makes it famous again.

Now let me prognosticate for a moment. I think that Microsoft is about to pull one of these. MS released Windows XP nearly 8 years ago, and it has been universally loved and adopted since then. 5 years later, after at least a year delay, they released Vista and almost immediately withdrew support for a downrev install of XP if you decided that you don't like Vista. Well after 3 years, lots of people do not, in fact like Vista and want to go back to XP. But you can't unless you buy a copy of XP and even at that, you have to jump through some not inconsequential technical hoops to get there. But here is the prognosticating.

Microsoft will be releasing Windows version 7 any day now. (Well, probably October. Microsoft likes to release in the fall). And they are promising that they will still not support a downrev to XP. So if you buy a PC after next October, be sure to add another $100 or so to the price to support the downgrade to the only working consumer verion of Windows.

But again, like raising prices or censoring 300 year old erotica, no one could possibly predict that people will be upset when they have to run the newest, buggiest version of Windows.