Philosophers’ delight: Fast food lesson plans for teachers

Merely by existing, this web site — which offers “fast food nutrition lesson plans” for teachers — raises a question some philosophers chew on endlessly: What is reality? A related question, also perhaps of interest to philosophers, and maybe to criminologists: Who is behind the site? The site itself offers this nearly-factless answer: “FastFoodNutrition.org is the nation’s leading independent website devoted to […]

Frozen chicken, wild fish, and fingernails

Frozen chicken, wild fish, and fingernails all come together in a single, scientific investigation: “Frozen chicken for wild fish: Nutritional transition in the Brazilian Amazon region determined by carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios in fingernails,” Gabriela B. Nardoto, et al., American Journal of Human Biology, Epub May 31, 2011. The authors explain: “Amazonian populations […]

Nutritional value of eating stinkbugs

If you have a hangover, and are tempted to eat a few stinkbugs (Encosternum delegorguei) as a cure, you might be concerned about their nutritional properties. Fortunately, there are a handful of scholarly papers available on the subject. May we recommend : • Nutritional and Medicinal value of the edible stinkbug, Encosternum delegorguei Spinola consumed […]

The high-carb milky lifestyle of Inuit infants (1878)

The Jardin d’Acclimatation in Paris’s Bois du Boulogne, now a children’s amusement park, was founded in 1860 as one of Europe’s first major zoos. In 1877 the directors followed the lead of Carl Hagenbeck and started incorporating ethnological exhibits, of humans indigenous to the strange lands being opened up by imperialism. These attracted huge crowds as […]

Involuntary Hippophagia (1): Horsemeat, a view from Croatia

As our UK readers will know, Britain is currently reeling from the effects of an outbreak of  ‘Involuntary Hippophagia‘. (We hereby suggest that name.*) But not everyone agrees that eating horsemeat is inadvisable. If you’re going to eat meat, they say, then maybe horsemeat isn’t such a bad choice. For an example of this viewpoint […]

Hamburgers, and nothing but, in a man in the 1930s

The Minnesota Medical foundation described, a while ago, a hamburgers-and-human experiment that took place a good while before that. Their blog in 2008 called it “an unusual hamburger experiment” done in the 1930s by Jesse McClendon [pictured here] of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Physiological Chemistry. Some details: He planned to feed a single experimental […]

An effect of colorful, carefully placed potato chips

Ig Nobel Prize winner Brian Wansink (honored in 2007 for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding them with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup) has conducted an experiment with potato chips. The Cornell Chronicle (with this photo taken by Robin Wishna) reports: red chips were interspersed at intervals designating one suggested serving […]

Nutritive cardboard disks

Cardboard enthusiasts of a certain age may remember W. Schonherr’s somewhat influential 1958 study: “Nutritive Cardboard Disks Combined With Lattice Mesh Membrane Filter as Adjuvant in Hygienic Milk Supervision” [article in German], W. Schonherr, Zentralblatt für Bakteriologie, Parasitenkunde, Infektionskrankheiten und Hygiene, vol. 171, no. 8, June 1958, pp. 616-23.