[cross-posted from TAPPED.] Confession: Every so often, I go to Subway. I don’t like Subway sandwiches, and don’t even really regard them as subs. They’re their own particular form of sandwich most aptly called subways. I was a sandwich artist in my hometown in high school, and I forever smelled of bread and pickles. My Read More
A lot of jokes have been crafted over the last week or so with KFC’s vaguely evil chicken-cheese-bacon-chicken sandwich as the punchline, but one of the things that’s so surprising about the reaction to it is that, nutritionally speaking, there really isn’t anything about it that is especially outrageous as far as fast food goes. Read More
Cross-posted from TAPPED. After I wrote a column supporting New York’s latest effort to tax sugary drinks, I read RaceWire’s column on how it’s just another tax to hurt poor people. While, yes, sales taxes are regressive, decrying this tax as a social justice issue misses the point. For starters, as I wrote in my Read More
You’re gonna be humming this ridiculousness for the rest of the day. You’re welcome. [h/t The Awl]
I’d like to make you all aware of a new post category we’ll be employing: “X May Very Well Be Racist, But This Doesn’t Prove It.” It’s a phrase we at PB say a LOT amongst ourselves when it comes to the various racegates that seem to pop up regularly. After calls from Barack Obama Read More
It’s not so hard to say goodbye. Via Anna N. at Jezebel, we learn: Whole Foods will offer steeper employee discounts to people with lower BMIs. […] Whole Foods CEO John Mackey explains the program in a letter, reproduced below. Apparently it’s part of an initiative to reduce health care costs, which is interesting since Read More
Fresh from the “WTF?!” Files: Taco Bell has a diet menu? Not to be left behind by other fast food chains plugging more healthy options, Taco Bell has bumped up the marketing of their “Fresco” menu items, dubbing it the “Drive -Thru Diet”. Their spokesperson Christine Dougherty claims to have lost 54 pounds over the Read More
I’ve been a vegetarian* for a little over four years now, and a big reason was Eric Schlosser‘s meticulously reported Fast Food Nation. In it, Schlosser argued that the big, unsanitary factory farms which produce our meat were breeding grounds for bacterial infection and possibly even mad cow disease — an unsettling state of affairs Read More
The other day, I mentioned on Facebook that I was looking forward to my aunt’s macaroni and cheese at Thanksgiving. An old (white) buddy from college subsequently lamented that there would be no macaroni and cheese at his family’s get-together, and that he wished he could change this. A little bit later, Dr. Bitch tweeted Read More
Michael Specter, a New Yorker science writer, has written a new book accusing Americans of being stupid about science. It’s not that I don’t agree with him. I just have one quibble. I have to caution: I haven’t actually read the book. But I have heard him on several radio shows promoting it. He is Read More
