The wealthiest 50 people in the world control a staggering portion of the world economy: $1.46 trillion — more than the annual GDP of Australia, Spain, or Mexico.

That's according to new data provided to Business Insider by Wealth-X, which conducts research on the super-wealthy. Wealth-X maintains a database of dossiers on more than 110,000 ultra-high-net-worth people, using a proprietary valuation model that takes into account each person's assets, then adjusts estimated net worth to account for currency-exchange rates, local taxes, savings rates, investment performance, and other factors.

Its latest ranking of the world's billionaires found that 29 of the top 50 hail from the US and nearly a quarter made their fortunes in tech. To crack this list, you'd need to have a net worth of at least $14.3 billion. And for the most part these people weren't born with a silver spoon. More than two-thirds are completely self-made, having built some of the most powerful companies, including Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, Google, Nike, and Oracle.

From tech moguls and retail giants to heirs and heiresses, here are the billionaires with the deepest pockets around the globe.

SEE ALSO: The 20 most generous people in the world

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49. TIE: Aliko Dangote

Net worth:$14.3 billion

Age: 58

Country: Nigeria

Industry: Diversified investments

Source of wealth: Self-made; Dangote Group

At 20, Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote borrowed money from his uncle to start a business that dealt in commodities trading, cement, and building materials. He quickly expanded to import cars during the country's economic boom. Four years later, in 1981, he formed Dangote Group, an international conglomerate that now holds diversified interests that include food and beverages, plastics manufacturing, real estate, logistics, telecommunications, steel, oil, and gas. At $14.3 billion, Dangote's fortune is the largest in Africa and equal to 2.5% of Nigeria's GDP.

The majority of Dangote's wealth stems from his stake in Dangote Cement, which is publicly traded on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. He owns cement plants in Zambia, Senegal, Tanzania, and South Africa, and in 2011 invested $4 billion to build a facility on the Ivory Coast. Dangote bought back a majority stake in Dangote Flour Mills — which had grown unprofitable after he sold a large stake to South African food company Tiger Brands three years ago for $190 million — in December for just $1. He is also chairman of The Dangote Foundation, which focuses on education and health initiatives, including a $12,000-per-day feeding program.

49. TIE: James Simons

Net worth:$14.3 billion

Age: 77

Country: US

Industry: Hedge funds

Source of wealth: Self-made; Renaissance Technologies

Before revolutionizing the hedge fund industry with his mathematics-based approach, "Quant King" James Simons worked as a code breaker for the US Department of Defense during the Vietnam War, but was fired after criticizing the war in the press. He chaired the math department at Stony Brook University for a decade until leaving in 1978 to start a quantitative-trading firm. That firm, now called Renaissance Technologies, has more than $65 billion in assets under management among its many funds.

Simons has always dreamed big. About 10 years ago, he announced that he was starting a fund that he claimed would be able to handle $100 billion, about 10% of all assets managed by hedge funds at the time. That fund, Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, never quite reached his aspirations — it currently handles about $10.5 billion— but his flagship Medallion fund is among the best-performing ever: It has generated a nearly 80% annualized return before fees since its inception in 1988.

In October, Renaissance shut down a $1 billion fund — one of its smaller ones — "due to a lack of investor interest." The firm's other funds, however, have been up and climbing. Simons retired in 2009, but remains chairman of the company.

47. TIE: Laurene Powell Jobs

Net worth:$14.4 billion

Age: 52

Country: US

Industry: Media

Source of wealth: Inheritance; Disney

The widow of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs inherited his wealth and assets, which included 5.5 million shares of Apple stock and a 7.3% stake in The Walt Disney Co., upon his death. Jobs' stake in Disney — which has nearly tripled in value since her husband's death in 2011 and comprises more than $12 billion of her net worth — makes her the company's largest individual shareholder.

Though she's best recognized through her iconic husband, Jobs has had a career of her own. She worked on Wall Street for Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs before earning her MBA at Stanford in 1991, after which she married her late husband and started organic-foods company Terravera. But she's been primarily preoccupied with philanthropic ventures, with a particular focus on education. In 1997, she founded College Track, an after-school program that helps low-income students prepare for and enroll in college, and in September she committed $50 million to a new project called XQ: The Super School Project, which aims to revamp the high-school curriculum and experience.

Last October, Jobs spoke out against "Steve Jobs," Aaron Sorkin's movie about her late husband that portrays him in a harsh light, calling it "fiction." Jobs had been against the project from the get-go, reportedly calling Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale to ask them to decline roles in the film.

Gluten-free bread. Gluten-free cupcakes. Gluten-free cereal.

With all of the new options to avoid gluten, there's got to be something about the ingredient that's bad for you, right?

Wrong.

As Alan Levinovitz points out in "The Gluten Lie," the scary-sounding ingredient is not to be feared.

Far from a dangerous toxin, gluten is a type of protein found in wheat and other similar grains, from hearty barley to bitter-tasting rye. It's what makes bagels chewy and lets fresh-baked bread rise. 

While gluten isn't dangerous to most people, those who give it up may often feel better because they make other positive changes like cooking at home more. 

People who give up gluten may also feel healthier because they think gluten is making them feel awful — a so-called "nocebo" effect.

Only about 1% of Americans actually have celiac disease, a genetic, autoimmune disorder that causes people who eat gluten to experience damage to their small intestine.

Another 0.63% to 6% of people may be sensitive to gluten without having celiac disease, meaning that when they eat gluten, they experience some or all of the symptoms that people with celiac do. (This condition, called non-celiac gluten sensitivity, is a bit controversial, however, with several studies suggesting it's either overblown or doesn't exist.)

In other words, in a room of 100 people, chances are one has celiac. A few more could be sensitive. That's not a whole lot of people.

Big business

Nevertheless, gluten-free diets have caught on like wildfire. And lots of people— far more than a few in 100 — say they've experienced benefits from abandoning the ingredient, from losing weight to being in a better mood. Even celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga say they've gone gluten-free. 

Gluten-free alternatives have become a big industry: 30% of people want to eat less gluten. Sales of gluten-free products are estimated to hit $15 billion by next year.

So what gives?

When people go on a diet or stop eating a certain thing — be it fatty foods, processed carbohydrates, or sugar — they often make a whole host of other lifestyle changes as well, Levinovitz writes.

So while cutting gluten may seem like it causes weight loss or clearer skin, in reality, something else is probably the real cause, like swapping fast food for cooking at home. Peter Gibson, Monash University Australia's Director of Gastroenterology who's led multiple studies on gluten, tells Levinovitz: 

"I've noticed [this] lots of times, even with family members. They've decided they're eating a lot of takeaway foods, quick foods, not eating well at all. They read this thing about gluten-free, and then they're buying fresh vegetables, cooking well, and eating a lot better. Blaming the gluten is easy, but you could point to about a hundred things they're doing better."

All in their heads?

Gibson is also the author of a recent study that found that, out of 37 people with self-identified gluten sensitivity that wasn't celiac disease, a total of 0 people were actually sensitive to gluten.

The study revealed what's called a "nocebo" effect — when self-diagnosed gluten sensitive people thought they'd feel worse when given gluten, they actually felt worse (even if what they ate didn't actually contain gluten).

In other words, it was all in their heads. 

But this can be a tough pill to swallow. "When it comes to food sensitivities, people are incredibly unwilling to question self-diagnoses," Levinovitz writes. "No one wants to think that the benefits they experienced from going gluten-free ... might be psychological."

On top of that, connecting what we've eaten to physical symptoms is incredibly difficult. Not only have studies shown that we have trouble remembering what we ate when we ate it, we're also poor judges of what's healthy and what's not.

So rather than jumping to self-diagnose, see a doctor. And stick to the science.

UP NEXT: 6 'healthy' eating habits you are better off giving up

READ MORE: Researchers who provided key evidence for gluten sensitivity have now thoroughly shown that it doesn't exist

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Every guy who starts losing his hair has to make a choice: do I attempt to disguise it, or do I shave it all off and own the look? 

Either way, here's what you can't do: try and do a comb-over.

Comb-overs, as anyone who has eyes would tell you, don't actually hide anything. The long strands actually do the opposite, highlighting the bald head underneath.

The way a comb-over works is that you try and "teach" your hair, which naturally wants to grown down, to grow across your head instead.

This makes the strings of hair look wiry and limp. It usually moves the parting of the hair to a section lower on your head, so that more hair can be used as cover. This has the effect of making not only the balding spot look larger, but your head larger as well.

Basically, it's not a good look.

What else can men do to avoid the comb? We've recommended some haircuts that balding men can use to lessen the effects of balding without shaving it off, but a shaved or close-cropped buzz cut can also work very well provided you have the scalp for it.

Or, you could always just rock the power doughnut and own the hair pattern nature has given you, à la Larry David.

SEE ALSO: Here's how you should dress when you're losing your hair

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It's a great time to be a job-seeker. The US economy is humming, adding a total of 2.7 million jobs in 2015, and the potential for job growth in 2016 is bright as well.

U.S. News & World Report's recently published 2016 Best Jobs ranking provides a tool for job-seekers to compare professions based on important metrics like salary and expected number of openings.

To compile their ranking, U.S. News identified jobs with the greatest hiring demand — those with the highest projected number of openings from 2014 to 2024 — as categorized by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The jobs that topped the list were then scored using seven measures, including stress level, work-life balance, median salary, and employment rate. Read more about the full methodology.

U.S. News also broke down the best jobs by industry, including the best business jobs for 2016. The top business jobs this year are statistician, operations-research analyst, and accountant. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts more than 30% job growth for positions as statisticians and operations-research analysts and more than 10% job growth for positions in accounting.

Check out the 20 best business jobs for 2016 below, along with their average annual salary, according to 2014 figures from the BLS.

SEE ALSO: The 29 smartest questions to ask at the end of every job interview

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20. Loan officer

Average salary: $73,670

Best-paying cities: Grand Junction, Colorado; Ocala, Florida

Loan officers are available to help clients with financial milestones like paying for a college education or buying a new car or house. The best loan officers have excellent interpersonal skills and advise, evaluate, and authorize loans to people and businesses.

Positions are available in a range of settings from commercial banks and credit unions to mortgage companies and car dealerships. Employment growth of 8% is expected for loan officer jobs through 2024.

19. Fundraiser

Average salary: $56,840

Best-paying cities: Durham, North Carolina; Washington D.C.

Fundraisers raise money for nonprofit organizations like educational institutions, health-research foundations, and political campaigns. People in this position are relied upon to bring in the big bucks by making cold calls, writing grants, and organizing events. Fundraising jobs are expected to have a growth rate of 9% through 2024.

18. Administrative assistant

Average salary: $34,500

Best-paying cities: Trenton, New Jersey; Boston, Massachusetts

This position is defined by the employer, though many fill diverse roles such as operations managers, event planners, accountants, and maintenance workers. Administrative assistants provide support at all levels of an organization and are often tasked with keeping track of budgets and ensuring all departments adhere to their budgets.

In 2014, there were 2.4 million jobs in this position, but the BLS projects that number to grow by 3% within 10 years.

It turns out that eating on $2 a day is more than possible.

I know because I tried it in January. I was inspired by a young Elon Musk, who challenged himself to a minimal food budget as a teenager to see if he had what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

I don't recommend this tedious lifestyle if you can help it (and neither does Musk), but if you decide to take the "Elon Musk challenge" — or if you're looking to lower your monthly grocery bill — here are my nine best tips.

SEE ALSO: I took the 'Elon Musk Challenge' and spent only $2 a day on food for a month — and it was easier than I expected

1. Where you shop matters.

Luxury or organic grocery stores are out of the question — that's obvious. I also learned to stay away from certain, major supermarket chains. During week one, I popped into Gristedes and Food Emporium to do a bit of price comparison. While I didn't look at many products, there seemed to be enough of a price discrepancy between them and my go-to spot: the famously affordable Trader Joe's. Pasta, for example, cost about $1.60 at Gristedes (compared to $.99 at Trader Joe's) — and with a $2-a-day budget, every cent matters.

If you have an accessible Aldi, that chain tends to be even cheaper than Trader Joe's. Also, if I were to do it all over, I would've looked for steals at local markets, which I've heard have unbeatable prices.

2. Use cash.

When you have to stick to a tight budget, ditching your plastic cards for cash can make a world of difference. For one, you get a better idea of exactly how much money you're spending and how much you have remaining in your budget. Plus, there's something about physically handing over bills — watching your money disappear right before your eyes — that causes you to value it more.

At the start of January, I set aside exactly $62 in cash. After every trip to the grocery store, I would count my bills and ensure I was at (or below) my budget. The strategy worked — at the end of the month, I even had $1.07 to spare.

3. Stick to the basics.

Don't expect to whip up complex (or savory) meals. Pasta will quite literally mean plain pasta and oatmeal will quite literally mean plain oats. If you want enough calories to subsist on, flavor enhancers probably won't fit in the budget, so you might as well accept that everything is going to be considerably bland. 

That being said, I did splurge on a $2.99 package of butter. A serving of butter (1 tablespoon) ended up costing just $0.10 and the package lasted the entire month. Plus, it provided a few more calories to my day-to-day diet.

If you're going to make room in the budget for a flavor enhancer, and you'll probably want to, choose something versatile — like butter or salt — that can be used on multiple foods.

4. Don't divide your dollars by days.

I took a big picture approach to the challenge, thinking about how much money I had to spend for the entire month, rather than on a day-by-day basis. It's important to buy for value, which often means buying in bulk, so sometimes I would spend $8 at the grocery store for supplies that would last several days — other days, I spent nothing.

Of course, if you take the big picture approach, you have to be diligent about tracking exactly how much you're spending to ensure you don't run out of money down the road.

5. Accept that you'll be eating the same thing over and over again.

I purchased only nine items during the month-long challenge, which I ate repeatedly. I probably could have switched things up a bit more than I chose to, but the point is, there isn't a huge selection of dirt cheap food products that I wanted to eat.

While I predicted the monotony of eating the same things day after day would wear on me, it never did. One of the reasons I didn't get tired of my staples was because I allowed myself the occasional "luxury item": a sweet potato or egg. Not only did this strategy offer relief from pasta and oats, but it also put luxury into perspective — I've never appreciated something as simple as a baked sweet potato to the degree that I did last month.

6. Buy food you won't get tired of.

If you're going to be eating the same things day in and day out, you have to like what you're eating. I learned this the hard way during the food-stamp challenge. Everyone told me to buy beans — they're cheap and nutritious — but I hate beans, so much that I refused to touch one of the cans I bought, despite dealing with hunger pains and fatigue for most of the week.

I'm don't recommend you buy sirloin steak for the month — you still have to be smart about what you buy — but don't fall into the trap of buying just for the cheap price tag.

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Retail is an enormous and profitable industry. Global sales were projected to top $24 trillion in 2015 and are expected to grow another 3.2% this year, making the magnates who run the sector's largest companies even wealthier.

We recently released our list of the 50 richest people on earth based on data from Wealth-X, which conducts research on the super wealthy. Three people in the top 10 are in retail — including the visionaries behind Zara, Amazon, and IKEA — and 12 others cracked the list as well.

To find the wealthiest people in the world, Wealth-X looked at its database of dossiers on more than 110,000 ultra-high net-worth people and used a proprietary valuation model that takes into account each person's assets, then adjusts estimated net worth to account for currency-exchange rates, local taxes, savings rates, investment performance, and other factors. We narrowed that list down to just the billionaires in the retail industry.

Here are the 15 wealthiest people who made their billions in retail:

15. Leonardo Del Vecchio

Net worth:$19.7 billion

Age: 80

Country: Italy

Source of wealth: Self-made, Luxottica Group

Even at 80, Leonardo Del Vecchio still chairs Luxottica, the nearly $30 billion company he founded in 1961. The largest eyewear company on the planet, Luxottica not only owns Sunglass Hut, Ray-Ban, and Oakley, but also manufacturers glasses for nearly every luxury brand out there, including Burberry, Chanel, Prada, and Versace.

Though Del Vecchio started Luxottica as a tiny one-room enterprise in Milan, it now operates 10 factories worldwide, employs 35,000 people, and produces more than 65,000 pairs of glasses per day, holding a veritable monopoly on the eyewear industry.

Del Vecchio isn't all business, though. Last March, he showed his generous side by giving his Italian employees $10 million worth of shares in the company to celebrate his 80th birthday.

14. Dieter Schwarz

Net worth:$20.9 billion

Age: 76

Country: Germany

Source of wealth: Inheritance/self-made, Schwarz Gruppe

Dieter Schwarz joined his father's food-wholesaling business in 1973 and opened the company's first discount supermarket shortly thereafter. He took over as CEO when his father died in 1977 and rapidly expanded the business outside Germany, rebranding the company as Schwarz Gruppe.

The parent company umbrellas Lidl, a successful grocery-store chain and the second largest in Germany behind Aldi, and Kaufland, a chain of "hypermarket" stores similar to Walmart. Lidl has nearly 10,000 stores across 26 European countries and is set to break ground on US soil in 2018. Schwarz Gruppe now pulls in $85 billion in annual sales.

The German billionaire lives a quiet life out of the spotlight with his wife and two kids in their hometown of Heilbronn. He's reportedly a generous donor to educational causes.

13. Phil Knight

Net worth:$25.7 billion

Age: 77

Country: US

Source of wealth: Self-made, Nike

After a stint in the US Army, and with a Stanford MBA under his belt, Phil Knight convinced Tiger-brand shoemaker Onitsuka in the early 1960s to allow him to distribute Tiger shoes under the name Blue Ribbon Sports — the name Knight picked that predated his swoosh-logo-clad company Nike. Knight worked full-time as an accountant as he launched his new brand, and by 1968 he had built up enough of a rapport with customers that he was able to leave the CPA life behind.

Nike has built its success on celebrity and athlete-endorsement deals, starting with running prodigy Steve Prefontaine in 1973 and continuing with one of the most successful shoe marketers of all time in Michael Jordan. Nike signed him to a five-year endorsement deal in 1984 worth roughly $500,000 per year. The biggest NBA star today is still under the Nike roof, with LeBron James signing a lifetime contract with the brand in December for an undisclosed sum.

Though Knight announced plans in June to step down as Nike chairman, he's leaving the $30.6 billion — in sales — company in better shape than ever, with the stock and revenues at all-time highs.

On March 5, an asteroid about 100 feet across will fly close to Earth. But don't worry, experts at NASA's Center for Near Earth Objects Studies say there's no chance of the space rock impacting our planet.

In fact, a person's chance of dying from an asteroid impact are astronomical: 1 in 74,817,414, according to The Economist. The probability of dying from a dog bite or lightning strike is much higher.

Drawing from data collected by The Economist from America's National Safety Council and the National Academies, we made this graphic that puts a healthy perspective on the chances of dying from an asteroid compared to, say, walking. The numbers might surprise you:

READ MORE: NASA just released a jaw-dropping 360 degree photo that makes you feel like you're on Mars

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Theodore Roosevelt is widely regarded by historians as one of the greatest American presidents.

Born to a wealthy Manhattan family in 1858, Roosevelt grew up both sickly and pampered, but decided that he would not only overcome his debilitating asthma and become a cowboy but serve the American people through politics rather than relax with his father's money. This resilience and drive would inspire his distant cousin and future president Franklin D. Roosevelt decades later.

Teddy Roosevelt served as a New York assemblyman, the New York City police commissioner, lieutenant colonel in the Spanish-American War, assistant secretary of the Navy, the governor of New York, and then President William McKinley's vice president. After McKinley was assassinated in 1901, he became the country's youngest president at age 43.

Roosevelt brought the US into the Progressive Era, breaking up corporate monopolies, forming the conservation movement, and greatly increasing American influence around the world. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for brokering the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

He was also a master orator and prolific writer. We've gone through speeches, interviews, and letters for a few of his most memorable insights.

SEE ALSO: Theodore Roosevelt used this productivity trick to get more done in a couple hours than most people do in a day

On effort: "Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty."

Source: "American Ideals in Education," 1910

On inaction: "To sit home, read one's favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men's doing."

Source: "The Higher Life Of American Cities," December 1895

On courage: "A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage... For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out."

Source: Campaign address, October 1898

On Tuesday, the US agreed to authorize nearly 110 daily commercial flights to Havana and nine other destinations on the communist island — a historic move that restores commercial air travel for the first time in nearly 50 years.

While political and economic negotiations are underway to end the stiff US-Cuba relationship, the world is flocking to Cuba to experience the surreal time warp of this tropical nation.

Business Insider decided to do the same and sent three reporters in June to Cuba's capital, Havana.

Here's an overview of our Cuban adventure.

Graham Flanagan and Tyler Greenfield contributed to this report.

SEE ALSO: Here's what it's like to stay in an Airbnb in Cuba, where everything looked great but was actually broken

We booked our visa with Cuba Travel Services and paid $900 for a round-trip charter flight with Sun Country Airlines from JFK in New York City to José Martí in Havana.

We noticed a lot of people on our flight brought flat-screen TVs and other large electronics for their Cuban relatives.

We arrived five hours before our flight and needed every minute to pick up our tickets and visas, check in, and go through security. The process, thus far, was quite painless.

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We at Business Insider are pretty conservative with our black tie rules. If it can be avoided, we prefer that you don't wear sneakers with your tuxedo.

But if you do, we suggest you do it the way DJ Khaled did at the 2016 Grammys Monday night.

The 40-year-old rapper paired his rather staid patterned tuxedo with a pair of all-black Kanye West's Adidas collaboration Yeezys.

We've panned red carpet sneakers in the past, but these are different. There is something understated and elegant about the suede sneakers.

Here's why we think they work:

• The sneakers are not loud or obnoxious, and they don't look anything like running shoes.
• They are a uniform black suede, without much ornamentation or distraction apart from the nylon strap.
• They aren't shiny and don't draw the eye away from the overall ensemble.
• They're perfectly suited to the Grammys' more relaxed red carpet dress code.
• The houndstooth-printed jacket tones down the tuxedo's formality just enough so the sneakers can slot right in.

We're as surprised as you are that DJ Khaled had the best style move of the 2016 Grammys, but we must give credit where credit is due. His Yeezy 750 in pirate black were a major key to that success.

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For more than 200 years, Madame Tussauds has been making wax figures that are so lifelike you might think you're standing next to the actual person they were modeled after.

Madame Tussauds' more than 20 global locations are home to wax figures of famous people like Jimmy Fallon, Jennifer Aniston, Adriana Lima, and even Barack Obama. The opportunity to take a photo with their favorite celebrities (even if in wax form) is highly appealing to tourists, and Madame Tussauds is usually packed. 

When it comes to a celebrity's wax replica, every single detail is carefully recorded — from exact eye color to visible tattoos, moles, and beauty marks.

Each figure is made at Madame Tussauds' central studios in London, then sent to their assigned location around the world.

Here's how the incredibly lifelike wax figures are made.

SEE ALSO: An entrepreneur has made stunningly beautiful creations you won’t believe you can eat

Each figure takes a total of 15 artists three to four months to complete. The New York City location adds seven new figures each year, and globally the company aims to make about 230 figures in total. The first step of the process is a sitting with the celebrity.

During the sitting, more than 250 measurements of the celebrity are taken, including finding their exact hair, eye, and skin color.

After the sitting is done, the figure is sculpted in clay.

Qiao Dewei and Liu Shixiu have been married for 67 years, according to Chinese state media. This year, the Year of the Monkey, is also their birth year, so Qiao wanted to make it extra special.

Story by Jacob Shamsian and editing by Ben Nigh

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Soup cleanses are supposedly replacing juice cleanses among the wealthy and elite. 

"Souping is the new juicing," The New York Times declared recently.

On the surface, juice's new rival has its merits. Soup is warm, comforting, and feels like real food. 

I'm dubious of most crash diets, but soup specialists, like Nicole Chaszar of New York's Splendid Spoon, claim they're just out to help you eat better.

I set out to see what the big deal is about souping, and if it really is the new juicing.

SEE ALSO: I tried the $109-per-day diet that many Victoria's Secret models use — here's what happened

Going into this experiment, I'm willing to guess that souping is probably more pleasant than juicing.

Juicing is not pleasant for most humans, unless you are Gwyneth Paltrow or a holier-than-thou skinny rich person. Juice on its own can be good, but nobody does a juice cleanse for fun, unless that person is a masochist.

But soup reminds you of your grandma or your mother who made killer chicken soup. "[Soup is] really connected to a lot of really positive emotional memories and experiences that people have," Chaszar said to me.

She has a point: when you look back at your life, you'll never fondly recall your greatest memories sitting around the dinner table drinking juice with your loved ones unless you are this woman. You might, however, recall dining on soup with your family.

And juice cleanses are frequently criticized for their questionable nutritional value. Chaszar, who studied at the French Culinary Institute, pointed out how the process of pressing juices strips vegetables and fruits of fiber. Juice can have high sugar content, too. Soup maintains the vegetables' fiber and still packs many doses of nutrients — it's a lot easier to have a soup composed of ample vegetables and healthy oils than it is to eat ten pounds of kale. Additionally, soup cleanses often contain beans and lentils (and some even have meat) as opposed to pure raw juice, so you get more protein. 

And guess what! You don't have to punish yourself on a soup cleanse.

Here's the soup cleanse, in all its glory. A cleanse day costs $65, not too dissimilar from a day of juice cleansing.

The Splendid Spoon offers an approximately 720 calorie cleanse. I personally am not comfortable with eating that little amount of calories — and I need to function as a human being — so here's my disclosure: I planned to try all of these soups to see if they were any good. I did not solely soup. (Chaszar defended the 700 calories as something rooted in the notion of intermittent fasting, a semi-trendy form of dieting. She does not condone eating that little every day.)

Fortunately, Chaszar told Business Insider that my choice to semi-cleanse wouldn't make me a failure — a soup 'cleanse' isn't supposed to be punishing. Splendid Spoon suggests having a plant based protein and an apple midday if you're famished, and she told me I could have a regular breakfast in the morning, or soup all day and have a hearty meal at night. I decided to do some variation on that, so that I could simulate some of the experience a diehard souper might have. Was this, indeed, a cool and comforting way to suffer?

The Splendid Spoon offers a "weekly" plan — here's what comes with that.

This includes one day of pure souping and five days of ingesting a soup instead of your lunch; this plans costs $95. These swappable soups are heartier, such as lentil and kale, and Ikarian stew. (I didn't try all of these.)

"Our program is really rooted in the concept that small simple changes made every day can have a really profound impact on your health," Chaszar said to me.  

And then, on the seventh day, it's " no rules" so you margarita cleanse. I'm kidding about the last part. 

There are only 6,500 snow leopards left in the wild, but a lucky group of foreign tourists skiing in Gulmarg, India, managed to stumble right on top of one.

Video taken by one of the skiers, Owen Lansburry, shows the group spotting the endangered animal before it runs into the woods.

Story by Tony Manfred and editing by Stephen Parkhurst

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With our ever-growing to-do lists and so much technology at our fingertips to amuse ourselves with, boredom rarely seems like an option anymore.

Unfortunately for us, this may be a bad thing.

Research suggests that we could be missing out on a lot by not being bored. Here's why it's a good idea to unplug and get back to boredom for a while:

SEE ALSO: 7 ways being single influences your success

DON'T MISS: 7 ways being married influences your success

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As far as jewelry goes, for men, simple is better. As Askmen.com notes, the "less is more" adage applies to jewelry above all else.

Most men should be seen with only three main accessories decorating their appendages: a nice watch, a good pair of cuff links, and, if they're married, a simple wedding band.

Why? Because unless you're a movie star, pro athlete, or pirate, it's extremely hard for today's man to pull off anything more extravagant than those three pieces.

Earrings, metallic chains, and even bracelets look out of place on most men who try to pull them off. They just make it look like you're trying too hard — more Tony Soprano than James Bond.

This doesn't mean your accessories have to be boring, though. There is plenty of room within the confines of these three pieces to make a statement with your accessories. There are a millionkinds of watches to choose from, as well as a set of cuff links for everyinterestunder the sun.

As always, however, once you know the rules you are able to break them a bit.

Men's style expert Barron Cuadro of Effortless Gent shies away from absolutes in regard to male jewelry.

"It all depends on a man's personal style and how eccentric he is in his day-to-day wardrobe," he told Business Insider. "Some guys (e.g., Pharrell, Johnny Depp) can wear a ton of jewelry and they look great, because it fits their personality and aesthetic. If, say, Don Draper showed up at SC&P one day in the same jewelry, it wouldn't make sense."

If you can get away with it and it fits your personal style — more power to you. But just keep in mind it might not fit in with your financial firm's conservative dress code.

SEE ALSO: 18 things every guy should keep in his work bag

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NOW WATCH: 10 fashion mistakes men make over and over at the office

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a single mission: to connect people around the world.

It's one reason why he decided to launch a Facebook-based book club last year, with a reading list that focused on "different cultures, beliefs, histories, and technologies."

Although the birth of his daughter, Max, kept him from hitting his goal of a book every two weeks, he ended the year with 23 selections in his A Year of Books reading group.

We've put together a list of his picks and why he thinks everyone should read them:

SEE ALSO: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares 4 business books he thinks everyone should read

'The Muqaddimah' by Ibn Khaldun

"The Muqaddimah," which translates to "The Introduction," was written in 1377 by the Islamic historian Khaldun. It's an attempt to strip away biases of historical records and find universal elements in the progression of humanity.

Khaldun's revolutionary scientific approach to history established him as one of the fathers of modern sociology and historiography.

"While much of what was believed then is now disproven after 700 more years of progress, it's still very interesting to see what was understood at this time and the overall worldview when it's all considered together," Zuckerberg writes.

Find it here »

'The New Jim Crow' by Michelle Alexander

Alexander is a law professor at Ohio State University and a civil-rights advocate who argues in her book that the "war on drugs" has fostered a culture in which nonviolent black males are overrepresented in prison, and then are treated as second-class citizens once they are freed.

"I've been interested in learning about criminal justice reform for a while, and this book was highly recommended by several people I trust," Zuckerberg writes.

Find it here »

'Why Nations Fail' by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

"Why Nations Fail" is an overview of 15 years of research by MIT economist Daren Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist James Robinson, and was first published in 2012.

The authors argue that "extractive governments" use controls to enforce the power of a select few, while "inclusive governments" create open markets that allow citizens to spend and invest money freely, and that economic growth does not always indicate the long-term health of a country.

Zuckerberg's interest in philanthropy has grown alongside his wealth in recent years, and he writes that he chose this book to better understand the origins of global poverty.

Find it here »

Sports Illustrated is making Ashley Graham its first-ever curvy model in this year's swimsuit edition, and while you'd think she has confidence in spades, Graham worked for it. Here's her advice for women in need of a confidence boost.

Story and video by Adam Banicki and Aly Weisman

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