One question I get a lot is “what kind of pot boils water the fastest?” Here’s the answer.
What kind of pot boils water fastest? All-Clad? Disc Base? Copper?
What’s the healthiest cooking oil?
Confused about which cooking oil is best to use? You’re not alone!
If you just want the short answer, scroll down. Else keep reading.
Manufacturers will claim all sorts of things, but when you get right down to it, all cooking oils may be categorized as polyunsaturated (PUFA), monounsaturated (MUFA), and saturated fatty acids (SFA). You can think of a fatty acid as a snake:
Eat Poop or Wash Your Hands
Years ago, we traveled through Turkey on a bus from Istanbul to Cappadocia (the Turkish equivalent to Yellowstone National Park).1 Along the way, the bus made lots of stops at the Turkish equivalent of truck stops and 7-11 convenience stores. The bathrooms were often short of warm water and soap and had faucet handles you needed to touch to use. I declined to wash my hands under such conditions and used alcohol wipes instead. Ann did wash her hands–with the dubious faucet handles and all. Later in the trip, she got the worst bout of diarrhea that she had ever experienced. For two days she had to stay within fifteen minutes of a toilet at all times and missed the balloon ride (above).
Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. But most people don’t wash their hands well enough. Normally, not washing your hands properly might only give you diarrhea or something you’ll probably survive, but occasionally you get stories about how people get tapeworms in the brain or hepatitis or norovirus. In any case, even if you “only” get a stomach virus, that’s more than enough incentive to wash your hands better. And as the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) puts it:
Blue Light Special: How to get more sleep in one easy step
Everyone knows that sleep deprivation is costly. You can do worse on school or employment exams, gain weight, become more forgetful, become depressed, prematurely age your body, lose some of your sex drive, or even crash your car if you aren’t getting enough sleep, because drinking under sleep deprivation is like driving drunk.1 In fact, a recent Harvard Medical School study estimates that sleep deprivation costs the U.S. $63.2 billion per year.2
Some causes of sleep deprivation are hard to stop–if you’re an airline pilot that changes time zones a lot, that’s hard to fix, short of a career change. But one big cause of sleep deprivation is easy to stop: blue light.
Mediterranean Diet May Help Stave Off Brain Atrophy
A Columbia University study is circulating on the internet right now; the study has found a correlation between eating a Mediterranean diet (heavy on vegetables/herbs, fish, legumes, nuts, and olive oil, but relatively low on meat) and staving off brain shrinkage.
This comes fast on the heels of a Scientific American article entitled Mediterranean Eating Habits Prove Good for the Brain: A Mediterranean-style diet may slow memory loss, even if adopted late in life, which also finds some potential brain health benefits to the Mediterranean diet.
Updated October 26, 2015 to add: In other news, WHO states the obvious that processed meats, especially red meats, are linked to cancer. Freshly cooked meat isn’t as bad as processed meats (bacon, sausage, deli meats, smoked meats, etc.), which have chemicals/preservatives added. Also, I’m working on an in-depth article about longevity which will touch on these kinds of topics, but it’s a huge topic with a lot of dubious science to sort through. Nevertheless, we’re starting to get more and more promising research about the relationship between nutrition and aging well.
In-Depth Product Review: Induction Interface Discs: The Inefficiency of Induction Converter Discs (aka Induction Interface Discs or Diffusers) and What Your Real Alternatives Are
THE SHORT STORY OF WHY INDUCTION CONVERTER INTERFACE DISCS ARE A SCAM AND WHAT YOUR REAL ALTERNATIVES ARE
There are two main instances in which you might even think about using induction converter discs (also known as induction interface discs):
- You already have some non-induction compatible cookware and want to use them on your new induction stove. (If a kitchen magnet strongly sticks to the bottom of your pots and pans, then they are induction-compatible.)
- You have an induction stove, but you heard that copper cookware is the best. And unfortunately, most copper cookware is not induction-compatible. (Exception: Prima Matera, which I reviewed here.)