A plain old potato is one of the most filling foods (according to an imperfect satiety index). It's one of the reasons why I recommend potatoes as one of the better plant-based food options in Meat Health Academy. 

(FYI - in the Academy we talk at length about whether a person should include plant-based foods, and if they should, which one's, why, how much, when to eat these, etc...I just don't want you to take this out of context as me saying everyone should be eating potatoes.)

But according to a big study, potatoes are also one of the most fattening foods.

How can this be? Does it fill you up or does it make you fat?

 

Well this study followed over 100,000 people, who at baseline were free of chronic disease and obesity. Over the course of 20 years they noted what changes in diet contributed the most to weight gain. It was the potatoes!

 

 

Luckily, Tucker Goodrich dug into this anomaly. It turns out, potatoes aren't created equal. A boiled potato isn't the same thing as a French fry. One of the most satiating foods can turn into one of the most fattening simply by cooking it in vegetable oil.

A simple rule of thumb: Avoid vegetable oils.

 

Especially seed oils. Especially when heated. Get your fat from animals (ideally ruminants or those fed a species appropriate diet).

 

 

People are working on building a new world. The metaverse. I've followed progress towards this futuristic, Ready-Player-One-like, world over the last several years. It seems it's heating up. I can't go a day without seeing something about the metaverse. On Tuesday I saw an article in the Verge that said "Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse." Then on Wednesday I saw this picture:

 

 

It's possible that the metaverse is having a "light bulb" or "iPhone" moment when the convergence of several technologies (AR, VR, gaming, speed, crypto) make a breakthrough technology possible.

 

 

 

 

While we are talking about bridging the physical and digital worlds and (over-) hyped technologies, it seems appropriate to talk about NFTs (non fungible tokens). If the world does continue to move in the way of owning digital things over physical, proof of ownership of these digital things is critical, because, for the most part it's pretty simple to replicate a digital asset. Think pirated music, copy and paste, screen grabs. NFTs offer the ability to create digital verification and scarcity. Think digital property rights. Part of me thinks this is a move towards Web 3.0, another part makes me think of the little prince.

 

 

What lies at the intersection of NFTs and the metaverse? Deep sketching.

 

While I still have a lot of "blocks" to go in my soon-to-be NFT :) I will be checking out Mental Canvases next. Too cool.

 

 

 

– Steve Jobs and Walter Issacson
What You Can Learn from Histories Greatest Innovators

 

 

 

One of the reasons I haven't talked much about metaverses or NFTs in this newsletter is that these new technologies seem to quickly lead people into "altcoins," affectionately known as s*** coins. While some of these altcoin projects may hold promise (like Ethereum), I think the real innovation and world changing technology is bitcoin. If you're tempted to stray from bitcoin into the other worlds of crypto, I highly recommend reading why only the strong survive.

 

By the way, I hope you spent some time celebrating the new all time high this week! It's been a good month (and I think the real fireworks are still on the way)!

 

 📽️ What I'm watching:

A Saturday morning roundup on health and wealth, art and science, creativity and innovation, laughs and life by Kevin Stock.