The Food Pyramid Was Supposed To Show Us How To Eat. Why It Did That In The Worst Way.

What if the food industry knew things about food that we didn't know, things about taste, addiction, and sickness? Meanwhile, we're fed a glut of faddish diets and super exercises so that we can lose weight. What this documentary gets right is that the problem isn't with us — it's with the companies that feed us.


Note: That said, we don't think this documentary gets everything right. At 1:04, for example, the voiceover says "It is making us sick. And fat." Let's be clear that sickness is not purely tied to either weight or body size. Regardless of our shape, we can all fall prey to the food industry.

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

This story was originally shared on Capital One.







Keep Reading Show less


Have you ever known someone who was educated, well-spoken, and curious, but had a real knack for making terrible decisions and bringing others down with them? These people are perplexing because we're trained to see them as intelligent, but their lives are a total mess.


In 1976, Italian economist Carlo Cipolla wrote a tongue-and-cheek essay called "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" that provides a great framework for judging someone's real intelligence. Now, the term stupid isn't the most artful way of describing someone who lives unwisely, but in his essay Cipolla uses it in a lighthearted way.

Cipolla explains his theory of intelligence through five basic laws and a matrix that he belives applies to everyone.

Keep Reading Show less





