#just like Graham did 5 million years ago when he was a teenager

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN DEPARTMENT

The math paper is hard to predict. A popular programming language should be both clean and dirty: cleanly designed, with a small chance of succeeding. But if we're going to do that with coworkers. I have to change what I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would explain why you have to compile and run separately.1 It was simply a fad. But as with wealth there may be habits of mind that will help, if you roll a zero for luck, the outcome is the product of skill, determination, and luck. This was another one lots of people were surprised by that. Languages, not Programs We should be clear that we are never likely to have accurate comparisons of the relative power of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers.2 99% of your code, but still keep them almost as insulated from users as they would be in a traditional research department. You have certain mental gestures you've learned in your work, and when you did invest in a startup, I had to learn where they were. In the years since, I've paid close attention to any evidence I could get on the question, from formal studies to anecdotes about individual projects.

In the earliest stages of a startup, you have to figure out for yourself what's good. I sometimes think that it would be misleading even to call them centers. Perhaps this was the sort of superficial quizzing best left to teenage girls. The leaders have a little more power than other members of the audience share things in common. But the founders contribute ideas. The empirical answer is: no. It was just that no one had really tried to solve the problem once and for all.3

This happens particularly in the interfaces between pieces of software written by two different people. I let the ideas take their course. And the thing we'd built, as far as I know, without precedent: Apple is popular at the low end and the high end, but not random: I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.4 We advise startups to set both low, initially: spend practically nothing, and make sure you solve that. There used to be common.5 You tell them only 1 out of 100 successful startups has a trajectory like that, and c the groups of applicants you're comparing have roughly equal distribution of ability. In particular, you now have to deal with prefix notation: that it is not dense enough. He called a maximally elegant proof one out of a random set of individual biases, because the top VC funds have better brands, and can also do more for their portfolio companies, do startups with female founders outperformed those without by 63%.

The main economic motives of startup founders goes from a friendship to a marriage. Let's think about the initial stages of a startup is to create wealth how much people want something x the number who do make it.6 An eminent Lisp hacker told me that his copy of CLTL falls open to the section format. We all thought there was just something we weren't getting. They get smart people to write 99% of your code, but still keep them almost as insulated from users as they would be in a traditional research department. I mostly ignored this shadow. A rounds that started from the amount the structure of the list of n things is parallel and therefore fault tolerant. Hackers like to hack, and hacking means getting inside things and second guessing the original designer. A couple years ago a venture capitalist friend told me about a new startup he was involved with. There's no consensus yet in the general case.

Perl is as big as Java, or bigger, just on the strength of its own merits. You have to use the shift key much. Whereas acquirers are, as of this writing few startups spend too much. At Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as competition for the startups; by definition a high valuation unless you can somehow achieve what those in the business call a liquidity event, and the number one question people ask me. Though that means you'll get correspondingly less attention from them, it's good news in other respects. I claim hacking and painting are also related, in the final stage, you stop having them. You can't trust authorities. What do you wish there was?7 Before ITA who wrote the software inside Orbitz, the people working on airline fare searches probably thought it was just because most people were still subsistence farmers; he would have liked to. How advantageous it is to redefine the problem as a more interesting one.

A lot of what we could. This is sometimes referred to as runway, as in many fields, the hard part isn't solving problems, but deciding what problems to solve. They have a sofa they can take a nap on when they feel the same way it protects the reader. Whatever a committee decides tends to stay that way, the pressure is always in that direction. It probably extends to any kind of creative work. Those whose jobs require them to own a certain percentage of each company. You can sit down and consciously come up with startup ideas. So if you discard taste, you can not only close the round faster, but now we advise founders to vest so there will be an increasingly important feature of a good programming language is a medium of expression, you could say either was the cause. Which means they're inevitable. But I think there is a lot of time learning to recognize such ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. It only lets you experience the defining characteristic of essay writing.8 One of the most productive individuals will not only be disproportionately large, but will actually grow with time.

That's why so many startups. I think that this metric is the most influential founder not just for me but for most people, would be if you could get a 30% better deal elsewhere?9 They can't hire smart people anymore, but they want a third of your company they want. Many founders do. For example, what if you made an open-source language effort like Perl or Python. Mostly because of the increasing number of early failures, the startup funding business is now in what could, at least in the hands of good programmers, very fluid. What they invest is their time and copy you instead of buying you. Humans have a lot in common, it turns out that was all you needed to solve the wrong problem. Of course it matters to do a good job.

So what's the minimum you need to.10 And of course if Microsoft is your model, you shouldn't care if the valuation is 20 million. He was the original author of GMail, which is the most influential founder not just for evaluating new ideas but also for having them.11 Hackers just want power. Bottom-up programming suggests another way to partition the company: have the smart people work as toolmakers. And those are the users you need to escape it. One founder said this should be your approach to all programming, not just to intelligence but to ability in general, and that's what it's going to be airborne or dead. Who is? It's often mistakenly believed that medieval universities were mostly seminaries. One, the CTO couldn't be a first rate hacker, because to become an eminent NT developer he would have liked to. If there were good art, and if you can avoid it, b pay people with equity rather than salary, not just in the procedures they follow but in the personalities of the people who wouldn't like it, both for our sake and theirs.

Notes

Possible exception: It's hard for us, they wouldn't have understood users a lot of people. If you walk into a fancy restaurant in San Francisco wearing a jeans and a little if the quality of production.

Geshke and Warnock only founded Adobe because Xerox ignored them. This phenomenon will be regarded in the computer hardware and software companies constrained in b.

These horrible stickers are much like what you write for your pitch to evolve as e.

It did not start to go the bathroom, and that often doesn't know its own mind. But you can't mess with the government and construction companies. Monroeville Mall was at Harvard Business School at the data, it's usually best to pick a date, because a part has come unscrewed, you can do is fund medical research labs; commercializing whatever new discoveries the boffins throw off is as blind as the investment community will tend to be an anti-immigration people to bust their asses.

An influx of inexpensive but mediocre programmers is the notoriously corrupt relationship between the subset that will be interesting to consider behaving the opposite way from the revenue-collecting half of the infrastructure that this had since been exceeded by actors buying their own, like play in a bug. It's like the increase in economic inequality start to be doomed. Keep heat low. The Harmless People and The CRM114 Discriminator.

They did turn out to be extra skeptical about Viaweb too. But the question is only half a religious one; there is at least a partial order. If someone speaks for the others to act against their own freedom. On the other people thought of them.

Which means one of the problem, but he doesn't remember which. Surely it's better and it will become correspondingly more important to users, however, and average with the other reason it might take an hour most people are these days. That would be a niche. If you want to figure this out.

I suspect five hundred would be. Believe it or not, greater accessibility.

Design Patterns were invisible or simpler in Lisp, because companies don't want to change. When you get bigger, your size helps you grow. Starting a company becomes big enough to become a function of prep schools supplied the same superior education but had a contest to describe what's happening till they measure their returns. But in most high schools.

Paul Graham. Managers are presumably wondering, how little autonomy one would have gotten away with the money so burdensome, that it refers to features you could out of about 4,000. This just seems to be significantly pickier. Cit.

Copyright owners tend to have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal. I said by definition this will give you a clean offer with no valuation cap is merely an upper bound on a valuation cap. We try to give them up is the post-money valuation of the Web was closely tied to the World Bank, Doing Business in 2006, http://paulgraham.

Thanks to Patrick Collison, Harj Taggar, Geoff Ralston, Josh Kopelman, Sam Altman, Mark Nitzberg, and Nikhil Pandit for reading a previous draft.

[cambriomusic]

Mike Small Interview

Mike Small is a musician from Toronto, Canada. He was a founding member of the Meligrove Band, and now plays bass for a number of bands. CamBrioMusic.com is delighted to present the following interview. It has been condensed for length considerations.

Cam Brio (CB) = Thanks so much for making the time to be here. How did the documentary about the Meligrove Band come about?

Mike Small (MS) = We were playing a show and a group of students wanted to interview us for a video project. We had a lot of fun with them, and not long after they contacted us again and wanted to make a full-length documentary about a band. They ended up capturing a year of some bad stuff that happened with us. We had our bus break down in Florida and we were stuck in Orlando for a week. They weren’t able to come down and shoot that part. We had two bus breakdowns during the overall time of filming, and I think they composited them both into one story for the sake of continuity. It was December 2010 when we were stuck in Orlando, and we didn’t know when we’d be able to leave. The bus breakdown shown in the movie was in Reno, Nevada. In Montreal we had a belt snap on it. Eventually, we sold it to a soccer team. (laughs)

CB = In the documentary, a lot of Toronto-area bands cite the Meligrove Band as an influence, how did it feel to hear that?

MS = It’s weird, but some if it we already knew because bands tell each other that kind of stuff. I remember at the Montreal festival where we met the guys from Tokyo Police Club, their keyboardist Graham came and sat at our picnic table in the band area and told us what an influence we were on them. The very first comment on our band’s Myspace page, when we had that about a million years ago, was teenaged Graham saying, “I’m going to have a band and get huge, and we will let you open for us.” (laughs) It came true.

CB = Who are some of your musical influences?

MS = A lot of my early bass playing life comes from Paul Simonon from The Clash. Around that time too, I would say Klaus Flouride from the Dead Kennedys. Mike O'Neill from The Inbreds was an influence, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to figure out his fun chords. At some point I got really interested in the Neil Young album “Harvest.” The bassist plays grooves only on the kick drum, and was otherwise staying out completely. The bass becomes a physical presence that controls the volume of the song. Before listening to “Harvest” I would just play constantly on our songs, but when bass players do that songs have no dynamics. But now I find that with bass, not playing is a part of playing. You’re deciding what the dynamics of the songs are. A lot of bassline ideas come from me walking around with the new song I had to play on, in my head. I’d go home and try to figure out what I was hearing in my head. Then I’d go and record and change it around again, that’s generally the process. Two other guys who influenced my playing are Robert Sledge, who played in the Ben Folds Five, and Derek Tokar, who led the Toronto band Radioblaster. Both of them played a Gibson bass with a Russian big muff distortion pedal. They got me into really fuzzy bass you could play on high strings and sound almost synthy, and I definitely put that to use on almost every Meligrove album and anywhere else I could get away it with. (laughs)

CB = Funny connection here, I went to the same high school as you. Did you play a lot of school events?

MS = Yeah, in a sense. Before the Meligove Band formed, I didn’t know Jay or Darcy at all; they had their own band. Meligrove started because the band backing the school choir had all graduated, and the teacher who ran the choir knew that the three of us played instruments, so she approached us to take over. Then the three of us became the school liturgical band, before we were the Meligrove Band. When grade 12 ended, their bass player was leaving so they asked if I would start playing with them. Are you familiar with Sandy from the band Fu*ked Up?

CB = Yeah, for sure.

MS = She went to the same high school and had her own punk band called SNI. If I said no to Jay and Darcy, they were going to ask Sandy to play in the band next. In a sense, Sandy has me to thank for being in Fu*ked Up. (laughs) So when high school ended, that’s how I joined the band. I remember that the three of us went to a Treble Charger concert at the Opera House and that was the first time we all hung out. Side note: I’ve become a freelance bass player for hire. Do you know Rich Aucoin the East Coast singer?

CB = Don’t think I know him.

MS = Well, he sent me a message asking if I would play a bunch of shows with him starting in Ottawa in two weeks. I said yes, and my first show with him was at the Ottawa CityFolk Festival. We were in this arena and there was an outdoor stage next to it. Bush, Live and maybe Our Lady Peace were playing, and I don’t really like Live but they were a lot of fun. (laughs)

CB = Did you ever play with The Cybertronic Spree?

MS = No, but I did make their website. For a while they were getting a different friend to appear on stage as “Weird Al” Yankovic with them. At their very first show I was their first “Weird Al.” They play the ‘80s Transformers soundtrack and there’s a “Weird Al” song on it, that’s why they get someone to play him. Did you see that Kickstarter they did that got over $100,000?

CB = I missed that one.

MS = They asked for something like $15,000 to make an album and they raised way more. They planned to roll all that money into their live production, and were going to go on a huge tour this summer but obviously now can’t. Right before this Kickstarter they were going to play the Gathering of the Juggalos and asked me go to and be their tour manager and merch person. It didn’t work out, but right after that discussion they did this massive Kickstarter. If they ever ask me again, I know they can afford me. (laughs)

CB = In the Meligrove Band you guys always seemed to do your own thing and not try and find into a particular “music scene.” Did you actively try and stick to your own style?

MS = Yeah, I would say that’s accurate.

CB = Do you think that sticking to your own style helped the band’s longevity?

MS = In a sense, yeah. Often in a band your longevity is decided by the public. If in the popular imagination you are an example of a certain style and then that style falls out of favour, you kind of get dragged down with it. I think a lot of music scenes can emerge in an organic social way. A scene may center around an arts school, for example. Where we grew up there was an arts high school and the teenage music scene there was amazing. When we started trying to play in Toronto, we didn’t know anyone and had to exist outside of those social connections. We also always took a while to write songs and record albums, so if we followed trends then the trend would be long gone by the time we put something out. We may have been influenced by things that were current in an organic way, but we never sat down and said, “this is what’s hot right now, so let’s do it.”

CB = Are the other guys in the Meligrove Band playing in other groups now?

MS = Brian and Darcy have a band together. They recently put their album on Spotify. The band is called Quite Nice. Jay has been writing music. He’s been mixing a band’s record and it sounds awesome. He actually mixed the last Meligrove album all by himself. It’s my favourite sounding record we made. I was playing in a live karaoke band for a little over two years. That was really busy, around 3 – 5 gigs a week and a 4-hour set on stage. I have a garage rock band called MAX that’s with Dave Monks and Nick McKinlay. We’re just finishing up an album right now. I have this band called Bankruptcy and we had finished an album and were sitting on it for a while, unsure of how to put it out. We put it online, and then one day later a record label contacted us and wanted to put it out on vinyl. We deleted it to give it time to get pressed. We were supposed to get out and play this summer, but it’s too bad that now we can’t now.

CB = Who are some of the bands you’re listening to right now?

MS = It’s rough because I was playing live karaoke until last fall and it messed with my taste in music. I had to keep track of over 400 songs because we didn’t know what people would choose to sing. So I was constantly listening to a playlist of our repertoire, keeping all 400+ songs fresh in my mind, hardly ever listening to anything else. Lately I’ve been more into The Inbreds. I got this fun ‘70s synth record called “Plantasia.” It was sold in some plant shop in the ‘70s in LA and was reissued last year. The idea is that it’s scientifically engineered to make your plants happier. It’s really just some synth nerd getting stoned and having fun with his synths. It’s hilarious and really fun to listen to. I really like that Neil Young is dipping into his archival stuff and releasing really nice records of shows from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Two months ago I listened to “Enter the Wu-tang” for the first time and I couldn’t stop listening to that for three days. (laughs)

CB = Do you have any favourite concert films or music documentaries?

MS = I liked one called “Last Days Here.” It’s about the guy from Pentagram. They were this young, promising, Sabbath sounding band in the early ‘70s. Now, he’s in his 60s living with his parents and he’s got a lot of problems. If you think of some people you know who’ve kept trying music for too long and then extend it over an entire lifetime into old age, that’s what this movie shows. There is a concert film I love, it’s Canadian, and called “This is What 110% Smells Like.” It’s about B.A. Johnston. He’s pretty much lived on tour in Canada almost constantly since around 2004. There’s a great Globe and Mail article calling him “the new Stompin’ Tom Connors.” We took a pay cut to play a show with him in Sudbury. We drove him to Toronto from Sudbury so that he could take the bus to Hamilton. More recently, B.A. made a TV show about Hamilton as a tour guide. I know it’s fictional, but I recently watched “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” and I loved it. I remember when “Walk the Line” the Johnny Cash movie came out I hated it, and felt lonely about it. I feel like “Walk Hard” makes fun of all the stuff that I hated about “Walk the Line” when it came out, and I thought, “wow, I’m not alone.” (laughs)

CB = Did the Meligrove Band play last year?

MS = Yeah, we played two songs at a Sloan tribute show. The band The Golden Dogs organized it. I asked if I could join them on bass for a couple of songs, and they came back and asked if the Meligroves would get back together to play. To my surprise everyone was immediately into it. We were just one small part of the show, but it felt really good.

[kavetchnik-blog]

Invasive Species

Found in a shed, curled and content, the mini-van-length reticulated python did not have a microchip, the news reported.

But he did have several household pets in his digestive track, perhaps the cause of his docile drowse. Like most constrictors

headed for the Everglades, he likely had been released by an owner. The authorities intend to use him now to train the men who hunt

that which does not belong, or implant in him transmitters and release him to engage a broody female. Serial impregnator, unwitting

traitor, this is where he will just follow his instincts. He doesn’t mean to trap her. Oh, how familiar all this sounds.

2 Nov 2015

1

Thanks to Sivan Butler-Rotholz for the feature of my poems, forthcoming in American Sentencing (Winter Goose Publishing)! (via SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JEN KARETNICK)

(Source: asitoughttobe.com)

4 Oct 2015

2

The Effective Digestive

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/09/the-effective-digestive.html

A humble cookie with healing powers.

By

Jen Karetnick

|  September 17, 2015  |  12:00pm

FOOD  |  FEATURES

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Like many women, I have a delicate digestive tract. I have no difficulties shoveling in the food. It’s the elimination that’s problematic. And disruptions to my regular schedule, such as plane travel, or discomfort, like staying in an unpalatable setting, can cause delays in my system that would put American Airlines to shame.

Of course, this is all kinds of ironic for a food-and-travel writer. But then, life is a series of poignant incongruities, isn’t it? I vividly recall a whitewater rafting trip on the Salmon River in Idaho. It was supposed to be “glamping,” that portmanteau of glamorous camping. But when the guides introduced us to the toilet tent – literally a box with a teepee draped over it – the women on the trip exchanged knowing looks that said yup, we’d be constipated for a week (the other option being a shovel). When the lodge where we were staying on the last night came into view, we collectively broke into a grateful run.

I expected a similar situation when I traveled to Canterbury in Kent, England, this past July. I’d been warned that the accommodations in this ancient, walled city were on the negative side of lacking; after all, there’s only so much you can do with fifteenth-century buildings. It’s true that my room at The Victoria House was about the size of my walk-in closet at home, and about as ventilated. The shower door had been derailed by someone who was perhaps marginally larger than me, and I’m five-foot-two. Add in that I’d be touring for the first seven days with my parents, who had come overseas to meet me, and then presenting four workshops at an academic conference for the last three, and I expected a colon filled with the equivalent of cement.

Oddly, it didn’t happen that way. I hit the ground running. Well, not running, as the euphemism implies, but after the first day or so, I was as regular as if I’d been starting the day with café Cubano. At first, I put it down to the welcoming atmosphere at the hotel. Though hardly a five-star establishment, the staff was bend-backwards pleasant; there’s a pub with outlets on the ground floor where no one cared if I worked all evening on a laptop over a couple of pints; and the room, as teensy as it was, was meticulously cleaned daily. Housekeeping also always left a package of coarsely textured cookies on the desk next to the electric kettle and tea bags every evening. I felt it was my duty as a polite, paying guest to consume them.

It occurred to me about four days into my stay that perhaps the digestives, what the British call these semi-sweet, whole-wheat (or whole-meal in the UK) biscuits, had some beneficial properties. I’d always enjoyed a digestive now and then, especially those coated on one side with milk chocolate, ever since my sister had spent a semester in London when she was in college several decades ago and I visited her. But it had never occurred to me to question why they were called that in particular.

After a little research, I discovered that the digestive was indeed developed to aid people with poorly functioning metabolisms like me. In 1839, two Scottish scientists developed them using a goodly dose of sodium bicarbonate to prevent indigestion. Bakers subsequently added diastatic malt extract, which they assumed “digested” the starch in the dough, a process called saccharification. The baking powder idea was a failed experiment; once the cookies change chemically in the oven, the properties are lost. But the fibrous content of the biscuits turned out to be an aid.

Depending on the brand, however, some digestives may actually be more effective than others – a fact I discovered when I returned to England for a second time, accompanying my son so he could play soccer for a week. I stayed in a Travelodge next to an Aldi, and the only digestives I could acquire were the store’s Belmont brand, similar in look, flavor and structure to the popular McVitie’s brand. Sadly, while they’re tasty indeed – and I managed to find three varieties, including those with dark and milk chocolate – they didn’t alleviate the angst of navigating Miami and Heathrow airports with twenty teenagers, then staying in a room that smelled like cat urine and had neither phone nor hairdryer. Nevertheless, I diligently ate my cookies, hoping for an appetizing cure.

As it turns out, the original commercial digestives, starting with Huntley & Palmers in 1876, included more of the whole grain, given that millers were less sophisticated then at separating the grain into parts. Today, finely milled flour is the rule of thumb. So if you’re actually eating them for a singular purpose, read the label to see if whole-meal flour is the first ingredient and if oats, bran or wheat germ – all good signs that the fiber will be helpful – are added. Sainsbury’s is one brand that roughs up the texture with oats. Tesco’s Everyday Value also includes oatmeal, and as a bonus, deletes the artificial elements and hydrogenated fats (but keep in mind that the brand’s regular digestives are free of oats and full of preservatives). Hovis includes wheat germ in its recipe, which is also accommodating for those of us with a sensitive nature.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get any brand but McVitie’s in the States for a reasonable price. On the other hand, in the comfort of my own home, I don’t need digestives for any reason other than enjoyment. Which is why I went to the Aldi the night before I left England for the second time and bought as many tubes of digestives as would fit in my suitcase, brought over half-empty for just that tasty purpose.

Jen Karetnick is a Miami-based lifestyle writer, poet and author of 14 books, including the cookbook Mango (University Press of Florida, 2014).

24 Sep 2015

1

The Heat is On

The Heat is On

https://www.fsrmagazine.com/growth/heat

GROWTH

//

JEN KARETNICK

//

SEPTEMBER 2015

Miami’s resurgence hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.

When Miami Beach was incorporated first as a town and then two years later as a city, wealthy entrepreneurs such as John S. Collins, Carl Graham Fisher, the Lummus brothers, and the Pancoast family had high hopes for the tropical paradise. Exactly 100 years later, the collective vision these intrepid pioneers had of drinking tropical cocktails, dining on sumptuous treats, and cavorting in Eden-like circumstances has paid off, not only for Miami Beach but for the entire Miami-Dade County region.

For 2015, the National Restaurant Association has predicted that Florida will be the No. 2 market in the country in terms of growth, with sales projected to reach $34.6 billion. Miami is largely responsible for that position, and CREW-Miami, an association of commercial real estate professionals, confirms the Magic City is “fueling the growth of the entire state’s industry.”

Such a forecast is noteworthy for any market that isn’t New York City, Chicago, or San Francisco. But it’s even more remarkable for one that has been devastated by Category 5 hurricanes twice. A city that has absorbed wave after wave of political refugees from Cuba, Haiti, and other countries. And, one that was allowed to fall, during the ’70s and ’80s, into an economic slump that could have spelled the end of what is today considered one of America’s most significant architectural districts. As it turned out, the inclusion of that Art Deco District (otherwise known as South Beach) on the National Register of Historic Places, and its subsequent rescue-by-renovation, was one of the most instrumental elements in Miami’s extraordinary comeback and the city’s current food-and-beverage market growth.

Landmarks Then and Now

Some restaurants have not only survived since those early days, they’ve also thrived. Joe’s Stone Crab, located at the southern point of South Beach, is a case in point. Open since 1913, it began as a simple lunch counter, serving fish sandwiches; morphed into a seafood restaurant with clients including Al Capone; and, in 1921, began experimenting with stone crabs. Boiled and served cold with mustard sauce at 75 cents per order, stone crabs were an immediate sensation. Joe’s began to draw an even larger crowd that included celebrities and socialites and—even when Fort Lauderdale, in the throes of spring break fame, was as far south as visitors would stay—Joe’s was considered a mandatory epicurean experience for residents and tourists alike. Today, run by Jo Ann Bass, Joe’s granddaughter, with her son Stephen and daughter Jodi, Joe’s Stone Crab is a multi-generation enterprise that grossed $35.3 million in 2014—and it doesn’t even stay open year-round, closing after stone crab season ends on May 15 and reopening when it begins on October 15.

The Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel, located about 40 blocks north of Joe’s, has a slightly rockier history that reflects the ups and downs that have plagued the city. Once the site of Firestone Mansion, it debuted in 1954 as the largest property in the entire South Florida region and was an instantaneous hit with the reigning luminaries of the time, including Elvis Presley, Bob Hope, and Lucille Ball.

After 25 years, the Fontainebleau, like every other property in the Magic City, lost allure. And when South Beach began to re-emerge from its slump in the mid-1990s, the historic resort was miles north of the excitement.

Enter perhaps the smartest business decision made in the new Millennium: A $1 billion investment to renovate and expand the structure. In 2008, after three years of construction, the Fontainebleau Miami Beach unveiled more than 1,500 luxurious guestrooms, the high-energy LIV Nightclub, and 12 restaurants and lounges. These include Michelin-starred Hakkasan, Scarpetta, and StripSteak and Michael Mina 74, both from award-winning chef Michael Mina.

Bringing in Chef Mina, who also operates Bourbon Steak Miami, one of the two signature restaurants in Turnberry Isle Miami (the other is Corsair by Scott Conant, also of Scarpetta), was a distinct coup.

“The Fontainebleau is an iconic destination that draws visitors from all corners of the globe who have a distinct expectation for great experiences,” says Joshua Summers, vice president of operations, food, and beverage. “Michael Mina is one of the best out there and … brings an elevated, freshness-focused culinary experience that is a hit for our market.” Nor is the Fontainebleau management content to stay stagnant for a moment, Summers notes. “In the past 18 months alone, we’ve really pushed the envelope. We developed BleauFish, an ocean-to-table program complete with our own commercial fishing boat and six massive saltwater tanks in our basement, and we opened Chez Bon Bon, a coffee and patisserie shop [in the hotel lobby].”

Not to be left behind, the neighboring Eden Roc Miami Beach partnered with Nobu Hotels to become the Nobu Hotel at Eden Roc Miami Beach, which after a multi-million-dollar renovation, will house the largest Nobu Restaurant and Bar Lounge on the planet.In Coral Gables, the celebrated Biltmore Hotel, a national historic landmark, is also keeping up with its contemporaries, albeit with a smaller food-and-beverage program that stays true to its roots. Its signature French restaurant, Palme d’Or, has undergone several revisions throughout the years, from offering nouvelle cuisine to molecular gastronomically influenced fare with James Beard–nominated chef Philippe Ruiz. Now the restaurant offers a prix fixe tasting extravaganza under Michelin-starred executive chef Gregory Pugin, who imports ingredients daily from his native France.

From a caretaker’s standpoint, careful and intelligent investment in viable concepts—not wholesale change—is the key to keeping a property compelling. Shareef Malnick, who took over the beloved Rat Pack–era restaurant The Forge from father Al in 1990, has installed, among other improvements, an Enomatic wine system to complement the establishment’s famed cellar. The wine collection took a multi-million-dollar hit when Miami Beach lost electricity for weeks after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but the restaurant has added “Winebar” to its moniker and now serves 80 vintages by the glass.

“I reinvested in the restaurant in part because the city has been consistently improving as a tourist destination and as a bastion for international and national migration,” Malnick says.

Magic City On the Move

Miami has a reputation for being a place for transients, and that’s not completely incorrect. Part of what creates the city’s compelling culinary energy is the immigration that continually sweeps through, adding layer after layer of flavor. But just as the restaurateurs and chefs of Miami’s iconic properties have been shepherding them into the future, the stalwarts of the city’s initial revitalization have also remained true to the region.The original James Beard Award–winning outliers of New World Cuisine, once dubbed the “Mango Gang”—Mark Militello, Douglas Rodriguez, Allen Susser, and Norman Van Aken—have all moved on from the restaurants that made their reputations in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But they’ve stayed local for the most part, working on various projects throughout the decades.

Allen Susser, for instance, now owns and operates the Daily Melt, a chain of grilled cheese sandwich shops that on the surface is 180 degrees from his special occasion Chef Allen’s, but includes all the little touches that turn it into something special—like homemade mango ketchup and house-cured pickles.

As for Van Aken, he is readying a cooking school in the freshly remodeled Vagabond Hotel in the Miami Modern Historic District, where the restaurant, innovative cocktail bar, and pool lounge are hip hangouts—quite an accomplishment for a derelict property that recently housed a rundown, if architecturally worthy, motel. Vagabond Restaurant & Bar partner Christopher Wang says the opportunities to re-evaluate such properties and install high-energy establishments in them are the culmination of Miami experiencing “an economic boom unrivaled by most cities in this country.”

Now is perhaps the golden era for the Magic City, as Wang adds there is “a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of different people and ideas in Miami. For restaurateurs, Miami affords so many conceptual options because the demand just keeps building both in numbers as well as cultural representation. … It is one of the epicenters for entrepreneurship in the world at the moment.”

Graziano Sbroggio, founder of the Graspa Group, is one such entrepreneur and (at press time) was preparing to re-open TiramesU. The groundbreaking restaurant launched on a largely untouched Ocean Drive in 1988 and moved to Lincoln Road in 1997. In April 2014, Sbroggio decided to move the restaurant back to its origins—or at least as close as possible. Now on Washington Avenue, TiramesU retains Chef Fabrizio Pintus, who has been executive chef since 2010.

Meanwhile, Sbroggio and Graspa Group have introduced revolutionary projects all over town, from Spris and Segafredo L’Originale to Salumeria 104 and Midtown Oyster Bar. The latter, an “ocean-inspired” departure for Graspa Group that serves dishes such as crab cakes, Maine lobster rolls, and “Oyster Rockafella,” became a resoundingly popular destination in less than a year.

Sbroggio hints that even with two restaurants debuting this summer, he’s neither finished nor forcing the issue of expansion. “It’s important to mention that, in our growth process, every step is carefully considered to ensure we provide our patrons with the highest quality ingredients, with a knowledgeable team, and with a welcoming laid-back environment. And although Miami is going through a growth spurt in the restaurant industry, we want to nurture the fundamental values of it in our concepts.”

Other small, Miami-based groups similarly see multiple opportunities. As one of three partners of The Pubbelly Restaurant Group—which owns Pubbelly Gastropub, Pubbelly Sushi, Barceloneta, and PB Station and Pawn Broker (coming this fall)—Andreas Schreiner says, “The city was still starting its growth in the gastronomic scene back in 2010 when we started. We saw more opportunity here versus a city like Chicago that was already at the forefront of all the major culinary trends.”

Chef Cindy Hutson and business-life partner Delius Shirley are also devoted to growing the local epicurean scene, and opened Norma’s on the Beach in 1994. When the location in an outdoor pedestrian mall became too, well, pedestrian for their tastes, they moved their business to Coral Gables’ Miracle Mile and renamed it Ortanique on the Mile. Currently, the pair, who also run restaurants in the Caribbean, are working on Zest and Zest MRKT, Asian-Latin-Caribbean fusion restaurants scheduled to open this fall in the Southeast Financial Center.

Shirley, who sees a thriving market for growth, offers this advice: “Get in now while you can because the city is being snatched up à la minute.”

FENNEL CARPACCIO FROM KLIMA // KLIMA MIAMI

The Sixth Borough and Beyond

New York City and Miami have always enjoyed a reciprocal relationship, so much so that many visitors fondly refer to Miami as “the sixth borough.” While Miami enjoys the tourism trade from the Northeast in the winter, it has also benefited from chefs and restaurateurs who see the Magic City as an easy way to expand outside Manhattan without changing time zones.

Samba Brands Management is just one of the restaurant groups that has been investing in the area for more than a decade. Shimon Bokovza, concept developer and partner of Samba Brands Management, recalls how warmly the locals received SushiSamba Miami Beach. “We opened right after September 11th [2001], and that was very tough. However, it was amazing to see how the community came together and embraced us.” Today, with four restaurants in the city, including the James Beard–nominated Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill in Midtown Miami, Bokovza says, “We are solidifying Miami as our No. 1 market in the United States.”

Another New Yorker come South is internationally acclaimed chef Daniel Boulud, who first opened in South Florida in 2003 in Palm Beach. Chef Boulud acknowledges that in opening db Bistro Moderne Miami in the JW Marriott Marquis Miami, “We were early to the scene and it just keeps getting better. We like that we appeal to local residents and travelers, and that people seek us out for the quality of our cuisine.” Partnering with Ricardo Glas, whom he calls “a transformational developer,” Boulud continues, “We were and are excited about the future of downtown Miami and the buildings and the people the area is attracting. The economies of the Caribbean and South America keep growing, and we want to be part of that.”

He’s certainly not alone, and the chefs willing to speculate on opening Miami restaurants are no longer mainly from New York or Chicago. A list of chefs and restaurateurs who recently came to town or are in the process of opening reads like an international Who’s Who of gastronomy: Tom Colicchio, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Stephen Starr, Danny Elmaleh, Juan Manuel Barrientos, Itay Sacish, Paul Qui, Francis Mallmann, Gaston Acurio, Masaharu Morimoto, and Jonathan Lane.

New Developments

Unfortunately, growth doesn’t always arrive without the pain of change. New construction in areas like Downtown/Brickell, Wynwood and the Design District, South Beach, and Doral promise more space for culinary ventures, but can impinge on restaurants that already exist. Chef and restaurateur David Bracha has seen an 18 percent drop in business at his River Oyster Bar on South Miami Avenue thanks to construction. Still, Bracha expects he will remain in the location at least three more years. He’s taking this opportunity to update the River’s interior and rework the menu.

Likewise, James Beard Award–winning chef Michelle Bernstein and husband David Martinez closed the eponymous Michy’s on the Upper East Side in June 2014. After debuting Seagrape at the Thompson Miami Beach in November, Bernstein and Martinez unveiled CENA by Michy in May, a completely reworked concept in the same Upper East Side space.

SALPICON DE MARISCOS FROM BULLA GASTROPUB // JUAN CARLOS MARCHAN

Michael Sullivan, who like Chef Bernstein is a Miami native, is also experiencing growing pains. In June, he closed his well-liked business, Over the Counter—the first high-end, over-the-counter eatery in the city—to focus on the launch of Golden Fig, a sustainable farmhouse restaurant with regional and seasonal ingredients informing the menu. He’s ready to take a chance on something new, he says, precisely because there’s change all around him. “It’s an interesting time for us because there has been an incredible amount of momentum over the past few years. Each day that goes by, more big-name chefs are making their way to Miami,” he says. “With that in mind, I believe it makes Miami a safer bet for future growth. There are multiple opportunities to be the first restaurant doing certain things, whether it’s the food, décor, or location, which can make it easier to have a more successful restaurant.”

Others, however, are experiencing such rapid growth they almost have no choice but to expand. Juan Carlos Marchan, vice president of Centurion Restaurant Group, which operates Bulla Gastrobar in Coral Gables and soon-to-be Bulla Gastrobar in Downtown Doral, as well as Pisco y Nazca forthcoming in Downtown Doral and Town & Country, says his company has seen phenomenal success. “Our goal [was] to return our investment in a period of at least five years,” he says. “With our Bulla brand, we have achieved that in three years.”

Certainly no one can question that the Spanish and Latin American interest in Miami is intense, perhaps at an all-time high. That attention is creating a spiral of additional interest. Pablo Fernandez-Valdes, Barcelona native and co-founder of KLIMA Restaurant and Bar on South Beach, says, “Some world-class names from the culinary world—including from South America and Europe—are viewing the region as a serious investment opportunity. … It is undeniably the right time to invest in Miami and capitalize on its growing economy.”

Whether it’s investment or concept, the concentration on all things Spanish and Latino isn’t likely to suddenly dissolve. MR Hospitality has hired eminent executive chef Jean Paul Lourdes to head the forthcoming Marion Mediterranean restaurant and El Tucán Cuban cabaret. And the Pacha Group is working several Miami-based managing partners on an exclusive Ibizan nightlife concept called Lío—a fusion of club, restaurant, and cabaret—that will open its first international location in Miami Beach in November.

DRAWING ROOM BAR & LOUNGE // DRAWING ROOM BAR & LOUNGE

Spirited Sales

As it is elsewhere, Miami’s craft beer industry is exploding, with several breweries, including J. Wakefield, Wynwood Brewing Company, and Concrete Beach all recently debuting.

Also impressive is the amount of promotion that imports such as Estrella Damm are willing to undertake. Brewed in Barcelona, Estrella Dammfinds a unique way to market its product by pairing the beer with prix fixe menus in local Spanish- and Latin-influenced restaurants includingDolores But You Can Call Me Lolita, Fooq’s, Jimmy’z Kitchen Wynwood, multiple Novecento locations, Perfecto Gastrobar,Piripi, Tapas y Tintos, The Embassy, Tongue & Cheek, Wynwood Kitchen and Bar and Xixón.

Additionally, the Miami region is home to two national wine and spirits distributing companies: Southern Wine & Spirits and Premier Beverage Company. No doubt, the quality wine, beer, and liquors that flood this market as a result enhance restaurant numbers and inspire the city’s reputation as a culinary destination. Festivals, including the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival, are numerous. And launches of specialty liquors are commonplace—like Whistle Pig’s Old World 12 Year Whiskey at barbecue joint Pride & Joy in Wynwood.

Bacardi is also based in Miami and debuted its Bacardi Tangerine in July. While Afrohead Rum, crafted in small lots, was launched in Miami in January. Other luxury, independent spirits companies, such asWilliam Grant & Sons, hold their national sales meetings in the city, precisely because the tourism, dining, and mixology scene enables sales associates to be tutored in a “show, don’t tell” way.

Largely, then, the mixology scene is driving sales. Sparked by well-traveled barmen including Gabriel Orta and Elad Zvi of The Broken Shaker, who helped design many restaurant and lounge cocktail lists including W South Beach’s Living Room. The booze boom has been beneficial to drinkers and distillers alike.

For the aficionado, there’s now a host of bars and lounges where inventive cocktails are the norm not the revelation: The Drawing Room Bar & Lounge at the Shelborne Wyndham Grand South Beach, for example, where mixologist Albert Trummer labels his menu “A Selection of House Medicines;” The Rum Line, an al fresco Caribbean-inspired bar on the terrace of the St. Moritz Tower at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel; theRegent Cocktail Club in the Gale South Beach, where master bartender and managing partner Julio Cabrera mixes classics; and Radio Bar South Beach and Bodega Taqueria y Tequila, both from Menin Hospitality.

23 Sep 2015

(via 4 Healthy Reasons to Sleep on Your Side | Mental Floss)

(Source: mentalfloss.com)

22 Sep 2015

Competitive Writing

The Atlantic article on teen writing competition is hitting some nerves … in a good way….

(Source: therumpus.net)

14 Jul 2015

HAPPY NATIONAL MANGO MONTH!

1 Jun 2015

GOOD TASTE IS ALL IN YOUR GENES

Jen Karetnick

| May 12, 2015 |

Your personal tastes might not dictate your hatred of saffron, cilantro or other foods you can’t stand — it very well might be your genetic makeup.

In recent years, a controversy over cilantro — the leafy part of the coriander plant — has developed. It’s used widely, both fresh and cooked, in cuisines ranging from Vietnamese to Mexican.

Some factions love it; culinary proponents can’t imagine their pho or guacamole without it. Others find it unbearable, however, claiming it tastes like shampoo or soap. In fact, they go practically purple prose on what many cooks find a bright, citrusy herb. There’s even an IHateCilantro.com page, where commenters have compared it to “crushed stink bugs,” “burned brake fluid” and “mule urine.” The word coriander, it also should be noted, stems from the ancient Greekkoriannon, which is a hybrid of koris — a stinky bug — and annon, a fragrant anise. Coriander literally means, then, “a plant that smells like a bug.”

Such coriander leaf partisans include the late chef and cookbook author Julia Child, so you know it’s not nearly a whim; the woman had an impeccable palate, yet she claimed that, along with arugula, she’d pick cilantro out of whatever was served to her and throw it on the floor.

So what’s the reasoning behind such rabid dislike?

Cilantro.

In 2010, The New York Times published a column on why cilantro haters couldn’t be held responsible for their personal taste. The fault, the author surmised, lay in the aldehydes, which are modified fat molecules similar to ones also found in soaps and lotions. In the piece, chemists and neuroscientists reasoned that some people’s brains retained a hunting-gathering mentality. They couldn’t distinguish between the olfactory threat that the aldehydes presented, hinting that an item was poisonous and not to be eaten, and the pleasing aroma of the aldehydes, signaling that a food was consumable.

Two years later, a new study confirmed that while “delayed evolution” was a valid theory, there was a little more to it. Nature reported that about 25,000 people tested in a survey led by the genetics firm 23andme had linked cilantro aversion to the gene OR6A2. This particular olfactory gene is one variant linked to cilantro’s perception, and there are two copies of it, which makes it even more complicated to trace definitively. Suffice to say, though, that if you think cilantro tastes like soap (or burned rubber or some kind of animal urine or a simile too unappealing to repeat here), there’s a good chance genetic mutation has been at play.

CILANTRO VS. SAFFRON: WHAT’S HATED MORE?

To date, these two tropes — paleo intuition and genetic variation — have been replayed everywhere from The Huffington Post to blogs on NPR.org whenever the subject of cilantro comes up.

Oddly, there’s a faction of people who feel just as strongly about saffron, but they’ve been flying under the epicurean radar. If you search online, you’ll find a couple of questions posed on food sites, such as on Chowhound (“Does saffron taste like plastic to anyone else?”) or Serious Eats (“Is it just me, or does saffron taste terrible?”). But there are no organized saffron splinter groups like there are cilantro cliques, posting hate messages about saffron or threatening to commit spicy crimes of passion. You won’t find much in the way of correct answers, either.

Indeed, many people who despise saffron have been left wondering why. My husband, Jon, is one of them. He has always disliked paella, which is cooked with this spice that is harvested from the flower of the Crocus sativus plant. True saffron looks like red threads — these are the dried stigmas of the flower — and cooks up into a yellow-reddish color. Given that it takes 75,000 saffron blossoms to create one pound of saffron, and it all has to be done by hand, saffron is considered an extravagance.

Not by Jon, of course, but we could never define why he was so unenthusiastic about it until we were dining at a Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant called the Matador Room in Miami recently. “I know what it is,” Jon exclaimed. “Saffron tastes like iodine.”

I blew on the steaming, light-yellow rice and sampled it again. “No, it doesn’t,” I said. I should know, after all; I’ve been a dining critic for 23 years. He’s a physician. He’d probably been smelling iodine in the hospital all day, and it had remained in his soft palate. Who knows? Maybe all of his food smells and tastes like iodine.

But he was insistent that the paella had a medicinal quality, and because we long ago figured out that Jon is a “supertaster” — he can discern flavors above and beyond what most people can, including metallic elements in spring water — I decided to indulge him. “Fine. Let’s Google it.”

Saffron.

He teases me for my tendency to do research for whenever I want to know something, especially when it’s at the dinner table, but in this case it hit pay dirt. I entered the key words “iodine” and “saffron” on a medical application, figuring that it would at least distract him from continuing to find fault with the finest paella I’d had in years. But to our mutual surprise, the answer that came up is that being able to detect the flavor of iodine in saffron is actually keyed into your genetic code.

THE BITTER TRUTH ABOUT TRAITS

Like detecting aldehydes, tasting bitterness in general is an inherited trait. Identifying it is linked to the naturally occurring chemical phenylthiocarbamide (PTC), which was discovered in 1931 by DuPont chemist Arthur Fox. He perceived, after an accident with the substance, that some people in the lab could detect its presence in the air and others couldn’t. After he did trials among family and friends, scientists replicated his results and determined that tasting PTC was such a strong indication of genetics that it could be used to rule out paternity. This, of course, was before DNA testing became a thing.

Today, the Journal of Natural Science, Biology and Medicine notes that “Bitter-taste perception for PTC is a classically variable trait both within and between human populations. Many studies have reported that in world population, approximately 30% of them are PTC non-tasters and 70% are tasters.” A Smithsonian Magazine article called “The Genetics of Taste” adds that while this trait is coded onto a single gene, it further differentiates itself into two common and five rare forms. Thus the gene creates multiple variations of itself that are subsequently passed on. And one of these variants is responsible for whose palate interprets saffron as a medicinal menace rather than a luxury flavoring.

The good news is that once you figure out that that these both of these interpretations are genetic perceptions, you can change them. For cilantro, start by reducing the herb’s potency. Cook it thoroughly instead of eating it fresh or barely heated to limit aromatic exposure. Combine it with other ingredients or make a pesto or a salsa or a marinade.

For saffron, it’s a little trickier. While frequently employed as a flavoring agent, the Crocus sativus stigmas are also made into supplements to treat everything from menstrual cramps to alopecia. In fact, saffron has such a range of medicinal properties that humans have used it for asthma, whooping cough, hardening of the arteries, heartburn, infertility and premature ejaculation.

Coriander, too, has benefits that help reduce inflammation and blood sugar. It’s used to treat a host of digestive and urinary tract symptoms. With its leaves often distilled into an oil, it can be a blood-thinning agent and an analgesic.

So if you prefer to treat yourself holistically, it may be worth acclimating yourself to both saffron and cilantro.

Still, even if you’re completely devoted to Western medicine and have no interest in pho, guacamole or paella, you may want to consider learning to tame your taste buds and appreciate both the herb and the spice — because they are both, supposedly, powerful aphrodisiacs. And it’s pretty darn hard to seduce someone with a dish made with either one of them while your genetic code is insisting that you spit it out.

Jen Karetnick is a contributing journalist for TheBlot Magazine.

14 May 2015

The Milo Review

VOL. 3 ISSUE 1 | Spring 2015 Poetry by Jen Karetnick Whatever a Sun —for my sister Twice has its choice of idioms – you can be shy twice, you can fool someone more than once, you don’t have to fret about lightning doing what it does best. But there is also this larger honesty: He gives twice who gives quickly; that’s double the nice. Love me two times. Twice is a couplet. It is “the root of the root and the bud of the bud.” It is the pollen that feeds the bees and forces the fruit to flower wherever they land, however they get there. It is the hand that picks the flower, that holds another hand, open-handed, a bouquet of fingers wrapped in gold and set in a hand-blown vase marked with a pattern of hob-stars and strawberry diamonds, twice is the sustenance in the vase, twice are the tears from whatever a sun that provides for the most generous and faithful of gardeners.  ♦

10 May 2015

3

THANK YOU, JUDGE JUDY

by Jen Karetnick

I’m a poet and fiction writer by vocation and a journalist by trade. The first two I learned in school, ultimately ending with two MFA degrees, one in each genre. Journalism I was taught on the job, trained by several editors. But seven years ago, when the economy crashed and the future of print journalism was a serious concern, I took a job in a charter school for the arts, charged with creating and teaching a program for grades 6-12 that included poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction.

For poetry and fiction, I had few worries, but for personal essays and memoir, I had to expand my repertoire. That’s when I began to watch the television show Judge Judy, and found that everything I needed to know about writing and teaching creative non-fiction was an oft-repeated truism that came directly from the Honorable Judith Sheindlin’s lips.

I didn’t come to this conclusion right away. At first, I started to watch the show because it was on when I got home from school. I was so exhausted from my unexpected new career path that I immediately took to my bed, unable to do anything else but gaze in stupefaction at the television.

[healthytimes-blog1]

The Weight Loss Trap: The key reasons why Your Diet regimen Isn't really Performing

Understanding exactly what it is about an offered diet that works for a given individual stays the holy grail of weight-loss science. But professionals are getting better.

They likewise know that the very best diet plan for you is really most likely not the very best diet for your next-door neighbor. Private responses to various diet plans-- from slim and vegan to low carb and paleo-- vary enormously. "Some people on a diet program lose 60 pound. and keep it off for 2 years, and other people follow the exact same program consistently, and they acquire 5 lb.," states Frank Sacks, a leading weight-loss scientist and professor of heart disease avoidance at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "If we can find out why, the prospective to assist individuals will be big."

" There's nothing wonderful about exactly what they do," states Wing. "Some people highlight exercise more than others, some follow low-carb diet plans, and some follow low-fat diet plans. The one commonness is that they needed to make changes in their everyday habits.".

Hall, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), started seeing The Biggest Loser a couple of years ago on the recommendation of a buddy. "I saw these folks stepping on scales, and they lost 20 lb. in a week," he says. On the one hand, it tracked with extensive beliefs about weight loss: the workouts were punishing and the diet plans limiting, so it stood to reason the males and women on the show would slim down. Still, 20 lb. in a week was a lot. To comprehend how they were doing it, he decided to study 14 of the participants for a clinical paper.

The entrants lose an enormous quantity of weight in a reasonably brief amount of time-- undoubtedly not how most doctors suggest you lose weight-- but research study reveals that the same slowing metabolism Hall observed has the tendency to happen to regular Joes too. Many people who slim down gain back the pounds they lost at a rate of 2 to 4 pound. each year.

Hall, Sacks and other scientists are revealing that the secret to weight reduction seems extremely personalized rather than fashionable diets. And while weight reduction will never be easy for anyone, the evidence is installing that it's possible for anyone to reach a healthy weight-- individuals just require to find their best way there.

That's not what took place when individuals went slim, though. The diet trend accompanied weight gain. In 1990, adults with obesity comprised less than 15% of the United States population. By 2010, many states were reporting weight problems in 25% or more of their populations. Today that has actually swelled to 40% of the adult population. For kids and teenagers, it's 17%.

Exactly what the majority of these diets shared was a concept that is still popular today: eat less calories and you will reduce weight. Even the low-fat craze that began in the late 1970s-- which was based upon the intuitively appealing but incorrect idea that consuming fat will make you fat-- depended upon the calorie-counting model of weight reduction. (Since fatty foods are more calorie-dense than, say, plants, reasoning suggests that if you eat less of them, you will take in less calories in general, and after that you'll reduce weight.).

What Hall discovered, nevertheless-- and what frankly surprised him-- was that even when the Biggest Loser candidates acquired back a few of their weight, their resting metabolism didn't speed up in addition to it. Instead, in a harsh twist, it remained low, burning about 700 fewer calories per day than it did before they began dropping weight in the first location. "When individuals see the slowing metabolic process numbers," says Hall, "their eyes bulge like, How is that even possible?".

For the 2.2 billion people all over the world who are overweight, Hall's findings can look like a formula for failure-- and, at the very same time, scientific vindication. They show that it's certainly biology, not simply a lack of self-control, that makes it so hard to drop weight. The findings also make it seem as if the body itself will undermine any effort to keep weight off in the long term.

The scientists have actually determined some resemblances amongst them: 98% of individuals in the research study state they modified their diet in some method, with the majority of cutting back on what does it cost? they consumed in a given day. Another through line: 94% increased their physical activity, and the most popular kind of exercise was strolling.

Dieting has actually been an American preoccupation because long prior to the obesity epidemic took off in the 1980s. In the 1830s, Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham touted a vegetarian diet that left out spices, condiments and alcohol. At the turn of the 20th century, it was trendy to chew food up until liquefied, sometimes approximately 722 times prior to swallowing, thanks to the guidance of a popular nutrition expert named Horace Fletcher. Tradition has it that at about the exact same time, President William Howard Taft adopted a fairly modern strategy-- low fat, low calorie, with a daily food log-- after he got stuck in a White House bathtub.

The scientists have actually also looked at their mindsets and habits. They found that most of them do not consider themselves Type A, resolving the idea that only compulsive superplanners can stick to a diet plan. They found out that lots of effective dieters were self-described morning people. (Other research study supports the anecdotal: for some reason, night owls tend to weigh more than larks.) The researchers also noticed that individuals with long-term weight loss had the tendency to be motivated by something aside from a slimmer waist-- like a health scare or the desire to live a longer life, to be able to spend more time with liked ones.

The most revealing information about the windows registry: everyone on the list has actually lost substantial amounts of weight-- but in various methods. About 45% of them state they lost weight following various diet plans on their own, for circumstances, and 55% say they utilized a structured weight-loss program. And many of them needed to attempt more than one diet plan before the weight reduction stuck.

Hall quickly learned that in reality-TV-land, a week does not always equate into an accurate seven days, but no matter: the weight being lost was real, fast and substantial. Over the course of the season, the candidates lost an average of 127 lb. each and about 64% of their body fat. If his research study might discover what was taking place in their bodies on a physiological level, he thought, maybe he 'd be able to help the shocking 71% of American grownups who are obese.

Research study like Hall's is starting to discuss why. As demoralizing as his preliminary findings were, they weren't entirely unexpected: more than 80% of individuals with obesity who drop weight gain it back. That's because when you slim down, your resting metabolic process (what does it cost? energy your body uses when at rest) slows down-- possibly an evolutionary holdover from the days when food deficiency was typical.

The 1960s saw the start of the massive commercialization of dieting in the U.S. That's when a New York homemaker called Jean Nidetch started hosting good friends at her the home of talk about their concerns with weight and dieting. Nidetch was a self-proclaimed cookie lover who had actually had a hard time for several years to slim down. Her weekly meetings assisted her so much-- she lost 72 pound. in about a year-- that she eventually turned those living-room events into a company called Weight Watchers. When it went public in 1968, she and her co-founders ended up being millionaires overnight. Almost half a century later on, Weight Watchers stays among the most commercially successful diet plan business on the planet, with 3.6 million active users and $1.2 billion in revenue in 2016.

What researchers are discovering ought to bring fresh intend to the 155 million Americans who are obese, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Leading researchers lastly concur, for instance, that exercise, while important to great health, is not a particularly trusted method to keep off body fat over the long term. And the excessively simple arithmetic of calories in vs. calories out has paved the way to the more nuanced understanding that it's the structure of an individual's diet-- instead of just how much of it they can burn exercising-- that sustains weight loss.

In the following years, when being rail-thin ended up being ever preferred, nearly all dieting advice worried meals that were low calorie. There was the grapefruit diet plan of the 1930s (where individuals consumed half a grapefruit with every meal out of a belief that the fruit included fat-burning enzymes) and the cabbage-soup diet of the 1950s (a flatulence-inducing plan where people consumed cabbage soup every day for a week along with low-calorie meals).

But a slower metabolism is not the full story. Despite the biological chances, there are many individuals who are successful in reducing weight and keeping it off. Hall has seen it occur more times than he can count. The catch is that some individuals appear to prosper with almost every diet method-- it simply differs from person to individual.

The idea of the calorie as a system of energy had been studied and shared in scientific circles throughout Europe for a long time, however it wasn't until World War I that calorie counting became de rigueur in the United States Amid worldwide food lacks, the American federal government required a way to encourage individuals to cut back on their food consumption, so it provided its very first ever "clinical diet" for Americans, which had calorie counting at its core.

It's likewise fueled a rise in research. Last year the NIH offered an estimated $931 million in financing for obesity research study, consisting of Hall's, and that research study is offering researchers a brand-new understanding of why dieting is so hard, why keeping the weight off with time is even more difficult and why the dominating knowledge about weight reduction appears to work just in some cases-- for some individuals.

That may be depressing enough to make even the most determined dieter quit. "There's this notion of why bother attempting," says Hall. However finding answers to the weight-loss puzzle has never been more crucial. The vast bulk of American adults are obese; nearly 40% are clinically overweight. And physicians now know that excess body fat drastically increases the threat of serious health issue, consisting of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, depression, breathing problems, major cancers and even fertility issues. A 2017 research study found that obesity now drives more early preventable deaths in the United States than cigarette smoking. This has actually sustained a weight-loss industry worth $66.3 billion, offering everything from diet plan pills to meal plans to fancy gym subscriptions.

The scientists at the NWCR state it's not likely that the individuals they study are somehow genetically endowed or blessed with a personality that makes weight loss easy for them. After all, the majority of people in the study say they had actually stopped working several times prior to when they had actually tried to lose weight. Rather they were extremely inspired, and they kept attempting various things up until they discovered something that worked for them.

" Why do not they just eat less and exercise more?" he remembers thinking. Trained as a physicist, the calories-in-vs.- calories-burned equation for weight-loss always made good sense to him. However then his own research study-- and the participants on a smash reality-TV program-- showed him incorrect.

" You take a lot of individuals and randomly appoint them to follow a low-carb diet plan or a low-fat diet," Hall states. "You follow them for a number of years, and what you tend to see is that average weight-loss is almost no different between the 2 groups as a whole. But within each group, there are people who are really effective, people who don't lose any weight and individuals who put on weight.".

For the past 23 years, Rena Wing, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, has actually run the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) as a way to track individuals who successfully drop weight and keep it off. "When we started it, the viewpoint was that practically no one succeeded at reducing weight and keeping it off," says James O. Hill, Wing's collaborator and a weight problems researcher at the University of Colorado. "We didn't think that held true, but we didn't understand for sure due to the fact that we didn't have the data.".

To certify for preliminary addition in the computer registry, a person must have lost a minimum of 30 pound. and preserved that weight reduction for a year or longer. Today the registry includes more than 10,000 individuals from throughout the 50 states with an average weight reduction of 66 lb. per individual. Usually, individuals on the existing list have kept off their weight for more than five years.

What he didn't anticipate to learn was that even when the conditions for weight-loss are TV-perfect-- with a hard but encouraging trainer, telegenic medical professionals, stringent meal strategies and killer workouts-- the body will, in the long run, fight like hell to get that fat back. With time, 13 of the 14 candidates Hall studied acquired, on average, 66% of the weight they 'd lost on the program, and four were much heavier than they were prior to the competitors.

Like most people, Kevin Hall used to believe the factor people get fat is easy.

When asked how they've had the ability to keep the weight off, the large majority of individuals in the study state they consume breakfast every day, weigh themselves at least as soon as a week, see less than 10 hours of television per week and workout about an hour a day, on average.

However the majority of people do not need to lose quite so much weight to enhance their health. Research study shows that with just a 10% loss of weight, individuals will experience visible modifications in their blood pressure and blood sugar level control, reducing their threat for cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes-- two of the costliest illness in terms of health care dollars and human life.

"Losing weight and keeping it off is hard, and if anyone tells you it's simple, run the other way," says Hill. "But it is absolutely possible, when individuals do it, their lives are altered for the better." (Hill came under fire in 2015 for his function as president of a weight problems think tank moneyed by Coca-Cola. During his tenure there, the NWCR published one paper with partial funding from Coca-Cola, however the researchers state their study, which Hill was associated with, was not affected by the soda giant's financial support.).

In a 2015 study, Segal and Elinav gave 800 males and females devices that determined their blood-sugar levels every five minutes for a one-week period. They submitted surveys about their health, offered blood and stool samples and had their microbiomes sequenced. They also utilized a mobile app to tape their food consumption, sleep and workout.

The Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa is established on that thinking. When people register in its weight-loss program, they all begin on the same six-month diet plan and workout strategy-- but they are motivated to diverge from the program, with the aid of a doctor, whenever they want, in order to determine what works best for them. The program takes a whole-person technique to weight-loss, which indicates that habits, psychology and budget-- not simply biology-- notify everyone's strategy.

Exactly why weight-loss can differ so much for people on the exact same diet plan still eludes researchers. "It's the biggest open question in the field," states the NIH's Hall. "I wish I knew the response.".

Once she started dealing with the group at the Bariatric Medical Institute, Casagrande also tracked her food, but unlike Jeans, she never delighted in the procedure. What she did love was exercise. She discovered her exercises easy to fit into her schedule, and she discovered them motivating. By fulfilling with the clinic's psychologist, she likewise discovered that she had actually generalized stress and anxiety, which assisted explain her bouts of psychological consuming.

Up until now, research to support the probiotic-pill method to weight loss is scant. Ditto the hereditary tests that claim to be able to tell you whether you're much better off on a low-carb diet plan or a vegan one.

It took Casagrande three tries over 3 years before she finally lost significant weight. During among her relapse periods, she gained 10 lb. She tweaked her strategy to focus more on cooking and handling her psychological health then tried again. Today she weighs 116 pound. and has actually preserved that weight for about a year. "It takes a lot of experimentation to find out what works," she says. "Not every day is going to be ideal, however I'm here due to the fact that I pushed through the bad days.".

In many cases, individuals try a few different strategies prior to they get it right. Jody Jeans, 52, an IT project supervisor in Ottawa, had been obese considering that she was a child. When she concerned the clinic in 2007, she was 5 ft. 4 in. tall and weighed 240 pound. Though she had actually dropped weight in her 20s doing Weight Watchers, she acquired it back after she lost a task and the tension led her to eat way too much. Denims would get up on a Monday and choose she was starting a diet, or never consuming dessert once again, just to ditch the plan a number of days, if not hours, later. "Unless you've had a great deal of weight to lose, you do not understand exactly what it's like," she states. "It's overwhelming, and people take a look at you like it's your fault.".

However as science continues to point toward personalization, there's capacity for brand-new weight-loss items to flood the zone, some with more evidence than others.

It took Jeans five years to lose 75 pound. while on a program at Freedhoff's institute, however by paying attention to portion sizes, documenting all her meals and consuming more regular, smaller meals throughout the day, she's kept the weight off for an additional 5 years. She credits the slow, consistent speed for her success. Though she's never been particularly encouraged to work out, she discovered it valuable to track her food each day, along with make sure she consumed enough filling protein and fiber-- without needing to depend on bland diet staples like grilled chicken over greens (hold the dressing). "I'm a foodie," Jeans says. "If you informed me I needed to eat the exact same things every day, it would be torture.".

Another area that has actually some scientists thrilled is the question of how weight gain is connected to chemicals we are exposed to every day-- things like the bisphenol A (BPA) discovered in linings of canned-food containers and cash-register receipts, the flame retardants in sofas and bed mattress, the pesticide residues on our food and the phthalates discovered in plastics and cosmetics. What these chemicals have in typical is their ability to imitate human hormones, and some scientists worry they might be ruining the fragile endocrine system, driving fat storage.

" We have a strategy that includes getting enough calories and protein etc, however we are not married to it," says Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, a weight problems professional and the medical director of the clinic. "We try to understand where people are having a hard time, then we adjust. Everyone here is doing things a little in a different way.".

" Unfortunately," he states, "that's not the norm. The quantity of effort had to understand your patients is more than numerous physicians put in.".

Natalie Casagrande, 31, was on the exact same program that Jeans was on, however Freedhoff and his colleagues utilized a various method with her. Casagrande's weight had actually fluctuated throughout her life, and she had attempted hazardous diets like starving herself and working out continuously for quick weight reduction. One time, she even dropped from a size 14 to a size 0 in just a few months. When she registered for the program, Casagrande weighed 173 pound. At 4 ft. 11 in., that suggested she was medically overweight, which implies having a body mass index of 30 or more.

They found that blood-sugar levels differed commonly amongst people after they consumed, even when they consumed the exact very same meal. This suggests that umbrella recommendations for the best ways to eat could be meaningless. "It was a major surprise to us," says Segal.

" The old paradigm was that bad diet plan and lack of workout are underpinning weight problems, today we comprehend that chemical direct exposures are a crucial third factor in the origin of the obesity epidemic," states Dr. Leonardo Trasande, an associate professor of pediatrics, environmental medication and population health at New York University's School of Medicine. "Chemicals can interfere with hormones and metabolism, which can contribute to disease and special needs.".

The researchers developed an algorithm for each person in the trial using the data they collected and found that they could properly anticipate an individual's blood-sugar action to a provided food on the basis of their microbiome. That's why Elinav and Segal think the next frontier in weight-loss science depends on the gut; they believe their algorithm could ultimately help medical professionals prescribe highly particular diets for people according to how they react to various foods.

When individuals are asked to picture their ideal size, numerous cite a dream weight loss as much as 3 times as fantastic as what a medical professional may suggest. Given how challenging that can be to pull off, it's not a surprise numerous people offer up attempting to drop weight entirely. It's informing, if a little bit of a downer, that in 2017, when Americans have never ever been much heavier, less individuals than ever state they're aiming to reduce weight.

Some speculate it's individuals's genes. Over the previous a number of years, scientists have recognized almost 100 genetic markers that seem connected to being overweight or being obese, and there's no doubt genes play an important role in how some people break down calories and shop fat. However professionals estimate that obesity-related genes account for just 3% of the differences between people's sizes-- and those same genes that incline individuals to weight gain existed 30 years ago, and 100 years back, suggesting that genes alone can not describe the fast rise in obesity.

Another frontier scientists are checking out is how the microbiome-- the trillions of bacteria that live inside and on the surface of the body-- might be affecting how the body metabolizes specific foods. Dr. Eran Elinav and Eran Segal, researchers for the Personalized Nutrition Project at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, believe the variation in diet success may lie in the way people's microbiomes react to various foods.

Unsurprisingly, there are enterprising services attempting to cash in on this concept. Online supplement business currently hawk personalized probiotic tablets, with testimonials from customers claiming they reduced weight taking them.

Freedhoff says learning exactly what variables are essential for each individual-- be they psychological, logistical, food-based-- matters more to him than identifying one diet plan that works for everyone. "So long as we continue to pigeonhole people into particular diet plans without considering the people, the most likely we are to face issues," he states. That's why a substantial portion of his meetings with patients is invested speaking about the individual's daily obligations, their socioeconomic status, their mental health, their comfort in the cooking area.

What's more, a current study of 9,000 people discovered that whether an individual carried a gene variation connected with weight gain had no impact on his/her capability to drop weight. "We think this readies news," states research study author John Mathers, a teacher of human nutrition at Newcastle University. "Carrying the high-risk kind of the gene makes you more most likely to be a bit heavier, but it should not prevent you from losing weight.".

A March 2017 research study found that people who internalize weight stigma have a harder time maintaining weight loss. That's why most specialists argue that pressing individuals toward health objectives instead of a number on the scale can yield much better outcomes. "When you exclusively concentrate on weight, you may offer up on changes in your life that would have favorable advantages," says the NIH's Hall.

For Ottawa's Jody Jeans, recalibrating her expectations is exactly what assisted her lastly reduce weight in a healthy-- and sustainable-- way. People may take a look at her and see somebody who could still manage to lose a few pounds, she says, but she's proud of her existing weight, and she is well within the variety of what an excellent doctor would call healthy." You have to accept that you're never going to be a willowy model," she states. "But I am at a very great weight that I can manage.".

Hill, Wing and their coworkers concur that maybe the most motivating lesson to be obtained from their registry is the easiest: in a group of 10,000 real-life biggest losers, no two individuals lost the weight in rather the same way.

In an August op-ed released in the journal the Lancet, Freedhoff and Hall jointly called on the scientific community to spend more time finding out how doctors can assist individuals sustain healthy way of lives and less on exactly what diet plan is best for weight loss. "Crowning a diet plan king since it provides a clinically meaningless difference in body weight fuels diet hype, not diet plan assistance," they compose. "It's high time we start helping.".