Eat Drink or Die

Pork Stuffed Bacon Roll

You know, a lot of people look at a latticed sheet of bacon with ground pork rolled up inside of it as an unnecessarily extreme indulgence, sure to cause an instantaneous heart attack, but I look at that slab of protein and fat as — I’ll say it — health food. Ok, bear with me, please. I just read the book Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes. I know it sounds like a crazy fad diet book due to its unfortunate title, but it’s actually an obsessively researched tome that documents the history of the nutrition debates between doctors and scientists, and how the ‘fat is bad’ hypothesis won out more for political reasons than for hard scientific and medical reasons. Citing dozens of studies and dissenting researchers from the past century of medicine as well as describing clearly the physiology and science behind their claims, Taubes asserts that the increased consumption of refined carbohydrates such as bleached white flour and high fructose corn syrup are the real culprits behind the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. Read more

New York’s 71 Irving Place Cafe

71 is the kind of place which is small enough to miss, but once you see it, you realize everyone somehow knows about it. It’s set three steps down from the sidewalk level, and it’s always packed, except for week late nights and mid-mornings. Even though their service is not the friendliest — like any other spot in New York that’s too cool for school — 71 has a noticeably loyal clientele. Lots of writers hang out with their computers, while photographers check out the scene, and artists meet up with their reps. Besides hot and cold drinks, including their own coffee, they also offer a great selection of pastries, sandwiches and my friend Nicolas’ favorite chicken soup ever.

Alan Warburton’s food and politics series

Cambridge artist Alan Warburton collaborated with a non-art audience to produce this series of work in which he asked volunteers to use fruit to explain politics: ‘In Caracas, Venezuela, volunteers explained the complex and lively political scene using melons, and in Cambridge, diverse residents used locally picked apples to explain the issues that affect the city’, he says of how the series unfolded. Read more

Michael C. Hsiung

Michael C. Hsiung draws pictures of bearded and mustachioed men and mermen boxing kangaroos, growing branches, and riding unicorn porcupines. Unicorn. Porcupines. Read more

Portal

Forget everything you know about death metal. Forget there’s even a genre called death metal. Brisbane-based quintet Portal just made it completely irrelevant with their latest album, Swarth. Their avalanche of muddy, raspy, blown-out noise sounds like a thousand Roman torture devices used at once in a cave during an earthquake — sawing, crunching, growling, clanging, and evoking pretty much every bad thought you’ve ever had, every moment of agony. No clear riffs. No blast beats. Just unbridled, yet murderously and coldly precise mayhem. These guys are not to be messed with. There is no more bar to be set. It’s over. It’s done.

Procrastination animation by John Kelly

I found this great animated short by Royal College of Art graduate John Kelly on zefrank.com. It has a great retro quality about it, like weird little cartoons I used to see as a kid on PBS. It’s also infuriatingly true to life.