Prechewed food for adults

Because I've been traveling a lot the past month (and therefore, eating packaged foods and in restaurants a lot), the book "The end of overeating" by the former head of the FDA was like a punch in the gut.

This is how he describes Chili's (a typical restaurant chain) "Margarita Grilled Chicken" (something, that because of the "grilled" in its name, I'd have assumed was relatively healthy):

The uncooked chicken had been in a marinade that combined orange juice, tequila, triple sec, sweet-and-sour mix, and artificial color, thereby including sugar, two kinds of oil, and salt.

The marinade is injected into the chicken using needles, or by tumbling in a "cement mixer". The idea is to prechew the chicken, to make the food go down easier and quicker.

In general, our bodies have evolved to crave fat, sugar and salt, but also to automatically regulate our appetite. But when we eat packaged or restaurant food, the level at which that appetite control kicks in is pushed upwards. So, we end up eating more.

Prechewed food. He even has the numbers. In the past, Americans typically chewed a mouthful of food about 25 times before swallowing. The food we are served now needs to be chewed just 10 times. Reasons? The processing of course: packaged/restaurant food is made easier to swallow by increasing the fat (lubrication) and removing bran and fiber. Vegetables, if any, are grated finely and mixed in high-fat dressing (the dressing is cheaper than the vegetables). It's applesauce vs. apples. "Adult baby food," one industry source calls it.

Internet via the power line

The last hotel I was in offered wired internet to all the rooms. The real cool thing was that they didn't do this through a cable or DSL modem. Instead, the internet signal traveled via the power lines, so that the modem was simply plugged into the wall socket:

Over cocktails, I tried to explain the internet delivery mechanism to another guest at the hotel but she was not a tech-nerd and couldn't grok how cool this was.

A griddle to make biriyani

What's a pizza griddle pan good for, besides making pizza?

Making biriyani. Heat the griddle and use it to cover the pot so that the rice cooks from the top and the bottom. (The traditional way to finish a biriyani off is to use indirect heat, to place hot bricks all around a clay pot. Needless to say, your favorite neighborhood Indian restaurant does not do that. They probably use an oven).

Teaching math the way art is taught

A friend's Facebook post pointed me to this amazing article by Paul Lockhart where he laments that mathematics is not taught the way art is ... students do not learn math by figuring out how to solve problems; instead, they learn to manipulate symbols without intuition:

If your art teacher were to tell you that painting is all about filling in numbered regions, you would know that something was wrong. The culture informs you— there are museums and galleries, as well as the art in your own home ... But if your math teacher gives you the impression, either expressly or by default, that mathematics is about formulas and definitions and memorizing algorithms, who will set you straight?

The reason to learn math is not because it's a tool used by scientists and engineers, he argues:

I’m merely suggesting that just because something happens to have practical consequences, doesn’t mean that’s what it is about. Music can lead armies into battle, but that’s not why people write symphonies.

And anyway, the formulae and facts which is how we learn math are useless devoid of context:

Sometimes we want one plus one to equal zero (as in so-called ‘mod 2’ arithmetic) and on the surface of a sphere the angles of a triangle add up to more than 180 degrees. There are no “facts” per se; everything is relative and relational. It is the story that matters, not just the ending

Read the whole thing.

Bogus list of best places to eat

The Guardian has a list of the 50 best foods in the world and where to get them. How can list of the best places to eat food not include Singapore? And the best foods not include Mee Goreng or black pepper crab?

Why is the best South Indian vegetarian restaurant in Delhi? Delhi? That's like saying the best barbeque is in Washington DC.

Linking healthcare to employment is a bad idea

The health care bills currently under consideration do very little for Americans who are covered under their employers' plans. It gives them peace-of-mind, yes, in case they change jobs, get fired or decide to strike out on their own -- they will always be able to get health insurance. But if you remain at your job, then health care reform does very little for you -- current laws already prevent insurance companies from considering preexisting conditions when offering tax deductible policies.

This is by design -- Obama promises that "if you like your insurance you can keep it". People who like their insurance fall into two categories:

1. The oblivious: Because employers pay for the plans, most Americans don't feel the impact of rising health costs. Few people realize that the reason their take-home income is stagnating is that their company is taking their raise and using it to pay their health insurance premium.
2. The invincible: You don't know how good your insurance is until you actually have to use it. I collapsed at an airport a few years ago and had to be taken by ambulance to a nearby (25 miles away) hospital. The bill for the ambulance ride was $1000! My insurance company (Aetna, Delta or Blue Cross, I forget which one my employer had at the time) paid just $300, saying the ambulance was "out of network". I had to pay the rest. So much for the $400/month my employer pays.
   

So this aversion to change, from a politician who ran on the banner of "Change", makes no sense. It just means that health care reform is not going to do anything for us middle class folks earning wages.

Oregon Senator Wyden wants to remedy that and force all employers to offer a low-cost, high-value plan. I think he intends that this plan would be the public option: a plan that will take all comers, emphasize preventive medicine and have a large enough buying power so as to pay Medicare rates. But unfortunately, the mechanism he proposes won't work. He would impose:

one requirement on employers — that they offer their employees a choice of at least two insurance plans, one of them a low-cost, high-value plan. Employers could meet this requirement by offering their own choices. Or they could let their employees choose either the company plan or a voucher that could be used to buy a plan on the exchange. They could also simply insure all of their employees though the exchange, at a discounted rate.

The problem is that he is allowing employers to offer their own choices. That simply won't work.

You may remember that the Bush administration had a similar idea to reform health care -- make consumers realize the cost of health care by forcing employers offer high-deductible insurance plans and allow employees to save the premium difference into health care accounts that they could control. The idea was that if you are going to pay a hospital fee out of your pocket, you'd be a better informed customer. The idea was sound, but the execution was poor. My employer did offer a high-deductible HRA but its premium was higher than the normal plan. Now, why would you buy an insurance plan with a $5000 deductible if you could get an insurance plan with a $1000 deductible for less? The insurance companies did this because they were afraid that all their healthy customers would migrate to the high-deductible plan otherwise, leaving them with an unhealthy pool. Allowing the employers to offer the low-cost high-value plan will lead to the same fate -- the choice will not be a choice any more.

Health care should be independent of employment. I don't expect my employer to pay my car insurance premium. Why should they pay my health insurance premium? Instead, just raise my wages by the corresponding amount and let me buy health insurance on my own. But ... regulate the insurance plans so that they insure everybody and not just the healthy. And ... subsidize the plans for the poor so that they don't go to the ER for routine treatment.

What's a tax?

The Economist has a graph that lists effective tax rates around the world. It seems to indicate that India is a high-tax country and the US is a low-tax area. But there are two problems with this.

One: it's not a tax unless you pay it. The effective tax rate in India is supposedly 42% on someone making $100,000/yr. However, in India, only employees pay taxes. Tax compliance by small businesses is non-existent (and an income of $100,000/yr in India is unlikely to be wages).

Conversely, it's a tax regardless of how you pay it. Canada's tax rate of 31% includes health care coverage. Since health care premiums in the United States (counting both employee and employer contributions) is on the order of $5000/yr, the comparable US tax rate is not 26% but 31%. It's a wash.

American tax rates appear so low only because many things that are "included" in other countries are "a la carte" here. Indian tax rates appear so high only because everybody hides their real incomes.