Some 40 million tons of reusable plastic cutlery get thrown away every year, most of them after a single use. This plastic can take up to 1,000 years to break down in the environment. Meanwhile, they collect in our oceans, adding to an already long list of environmental concerns we face today.

Bakeys, an edible cutlery manufacturer based in India, might have a promising solution. The company launching the world's first edible cutlery line. Yes — that's a spoon that you can eat. Earlier this month, 9,293 backers on the popular crowdfunding website Kickstarter pledged $278,847, to the startup — 14 times more than its initial $20,000 goal.

Bakeys' products, which include a line of spoons, forks, and chopsticks, are completely biodegradable and edible. The spoons come in savory, sweet, and plain. 

We tried them for a week, and learned quite a bit:

SEE ALSO: Yes, bacon has been linked to cancer AGAIN — here's how bad processed meats actually are for you

UP NEXT: We tried the science-backed 7-minute fitness routine that's going viral, and it actually works

On a typical day at work, whether I bring my lunch or buy it, I usually pick up disposable plastic cutlery.

But this week, I had a set of Bakey's spoons, which I carried throughout the week in my backpack. My first impression of the spoons: they look sturdier than expected given how light they are, and they smell really good!

I get lunch — some sweet potato stew — from one of my usual spots, and skip the disposable cutlery section, feeling pretty good about myself.

Chocolate Chair in Los Angeles has a dessert made with liquid nitrogen. When you eat it, you can blow a fog-like gas through your mouth and nose. It makes you look like a dragon.

Story by Jacob Shamsian and editing by Kristen Griffin

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In New York, there are nightlife impresarios and then there are nightlife kings.

The heads of Tao Group, the ubiquitous nightlife empire stretching from Las Vegas to Sydney, are kings. They basically invented the "clubstaurant" concept with massively successful venues like their namesake Tao and Lavo.

Wall Street money loves Tao Group, and it's almost guaranteed that you'll find groups of second-year bank analysts, private-equity VPs, and hedge fund managing directors at any of its properties at any given time.

But that doesn't mean the food is good.

The new hot Tao clubstaurant is Vandal. It serves nonsense items like a knish Reuben and something called the "banh mi'eatball slider." Ryan Sutton of Eater just gave it a blistering zero-star review.

From Eater:

The space is fascinating enough that if Vandal simply served competent brasserie fare, the entire endeavor would be somewhat civilized, a place for the cool kids to congregate and look at art. But what Vandal serves is not competent brasserie fare.

This is a good time to talk about Vandal's banh mi'eatball slider. The name of the dish is a portmanteau of three trendy foodstuffs: the banh mi, a Vietnamese sandwich of pate, pork, pickled carrots and chiles; the slider, a tiny White Castle-style burger; and the meatball, an Italian-American symbol of thrift. Now here's what you actually get: a single dense ball of spiced ground lamb, sandwiched within a slaw-stuffed baguette. The menu says the dish includes foie gras, none of which I detected. This two-bite travesty costs $8, which is more than what you ought to ever pay for an entire banh mi, a single meatball, or a solitary slider.

Brutal. Sutton, at least, has the courtesy to mention that Tao Group's properties are popular, money-making machines, and that Vandal is constantly host to glamorous people like Hannah Bronfman and "Snap Packers" like Barron Hilton.

But again:

At Vandal, [chef Chris] Santos smears beef tartare over a hot pretzel, resulting in hot mush. The menu is "inspired by street fare from around the world," the restaurant's website asserts, a statement that raises the question of what precisely is "street" about a two-pound lobster scampi that costs $68.

It should be noted that Sutton is a repeat offender in the business of bashing Tao Group. He wrote a devastating takedown of Tao Downtown in Bloomberg in 2013, when it opened. He managed to get another Tao jab into this Vandal piece, too:

Then there is the Tao juggernaut itself, a trio of hot spots in Midtown, West Chelsea, and Las Vegas, where the diverse foodways of the global East are diluted down to overpriced Red Bull, wontons, and Wagyu. Tao sells "Asia," a bro-friendly bacchanalia where everyone is fluent in the universal language of loosened ties. I'll take two Grey Goose sodas... no, make that three!The food ranges from awful to passable, but I've found that sitting on Tao's candlelit staircase while overlooking the 24-armed Buddha statue is as surefire a way to impress one sort of date as cocktails at Bemelmans is another. Really, where else can New York diners pay gustatory tribute to the life of the humble Siddhartha in a way that would make both Lil Wayne and Michael Bay proud?

For the full review, if you can take it, head to Eater >>

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NOW WATCH: A restaurant in Brooklyn is serving Trinidad's most popular street food

Staying in someone's vacation home can offer travelers increased privacy and access to some pretty impressive amenities. 

TripAdvisor Vacation Rentals rounded up 10 of the most expensive vacation rental properties in the US for this summer, based on the highest weekly booking rates for July and August. 

Weekly rates for these breathtaking homes — found in prime locations like Miami and Malibu — range anywhere from $39,000 to $49,000. 

From a house with a built-in jet ski dock to one hosting waterfalls and home theaters, here are 10 of the swankiest vacation pads you can rent in America.

SEE ALSO: The 20 most expensive US cities for renters

DON'T FORGET: Follow Business Insider's lifestyle page on Facebook!

The Jungle is a villa in the Venetian Islands of Miami Beach, Florida. It's adorned with elegant touches like a baby grand piano, a dining room overlooking the Miami skyline and harbor, and stunning waterfront views from its master bedroom.

Weekly rate:$39,200

Other amenities at the villa, which sleeps six people, include a private boat dock, basketball court, billiards room, two outdoor wet bars, a rooftop terrace, hot tub, and a fire pit.

Weekly rate:$39,200

Palazzo Beverly Hills is a private retreat accessed via a quarter-mile gated driveway. The home features breathtaking panoramic views, a glass domed roof for stargazing, a gourmet chef’s kitchen, and a double-story living room with a custom pool table and home theater.

Weekly rate:$46,550

Is the internet ruining the English language? Has the original meaning of "beg the question" been forever lost? Who of all the presidential candidates are closest to being standard speakers of English?

Perhaps the most qualified person to answer these and other questions about English usage is Bryan A. Garner. The 57-year-old Texan has written 25 books, many of them award-winning, and he's the editor-in-chief of "Black's Law Dictionary," said to be the most widely cited law book on the planet.

In his new book, "Garner's Modern English Usage" (Oxford), Garner has made extensive use of big data to write more precisely than anyone ever before about English usage. Google gave him license to delve into its Google Books Ngram Viewer, which displays graphs showing how words have occurred in books over centuries.

In many ways, usage books have always been based on a good deal of guesswork. That's why Garner calls the use of ngrams "absolutely revolutionary" in the field of usage lexicography.

Here's a sample graph showing three terms, or ngrams, used in written English around the world in the past hundred years or so:

Recently, I spoke with Garner about his new book, whether language is really changing much in the age of the internet and social media, his late friend and coauthor Antonin Scalia, and other subjects.

Daniel McMahon: This new fourth edition of your main usage book, "Garner's Modern English Usage," replaces the third-edition "Garner's Modern American Usage." Besides the title, which we'll get to, what's different in the new book?

Bryan A. Garner: The biggest change is the level of empiricism underlying all the judgments. I made extensive use of corpus linguistics, and especially of Google Books and the ngrams, to assess the judgments that I've made in previous editions, and it was a most enlightening process. I've added almost 2,500 ratios of the most current available information about how many times one form — the standard form, let's say — would appear in relation to a variant form. That's enormously useful information for the connoisseur. But even for a less serious aficionado, those ratios can be extremely interesting.

If you want to know how often, for example, "between you and I" occurs in comparison with "between you and me" in print sources or current books, that information is now available to us, whereas previous lexicographers and usage writers simply had to guess. There's a lot of that empirical evidence spread throughout the book, and in some cases my judgments about terms changed. I've added about a thousand new entries, a lot of them for connoisseurs — plural forms, some arcane plurals that weren't in the book before. I've tried to make the book the most comprehensive treatment of English usage ever published. That was the goal anyway.

McMahon: What led you to add so much more empirical evidence? Did you feel challenged on some of your usage preferences?

Garner: Not really. Once the ngrams became available, it took me a little time to start playing with ngrams and realize this is absolutely revolutionary in the field of lexicography. The moment I played with a couple of ngrams, I realized this fundamentally changes the nature of usage lexicography. For a long time, some descriptive linguists have complained that usage books with a prescriptive bent are written by people who just sit back and say, "I like this better than I like that," and I don't think that's ever been so, because the best usage books, even prescriptive ones, have been based on lifetimes of study — when you consider people like H.W. Fowler and Wilson Follet and Theodore Bernstein and others.

But still, they were having to guess. Even the editors of the "Oxford English Dictionary" were having to guess based on the few citation slips in front of them. But now we can apply big data to English usage and find out what was predominant until what year. This is a typical entry — and there are thousands of examples in the book:

merchandise; *merchandize. The first is standard. The second is a misbegotten verb and noun. *Merchandize emerged as a variant of merchandise in both the noun and verb senses during the 17th century and flourished until the mid-19th century. Today, it's an anomaly of either part of speech. … Current ratio: 41:1

Now that is an extraordinary thing to be able to say with confidence that they emerged in the middle of 17th century and flourished until the mid-19th century. But we can now do that because of big data. Let's see if I can give you another example — I'm just flipping through the book. Look at an old entry from "Modern American Usage" and see which words I added and how it changed in the new book. Look at "candidacy":

[before ngrams]

candidacy; candidature. The first is the standard term in AmE, the second in BrE.

[with ngrams]

candidacy; candidature. The first is the standard term in AmE, the second traditionally in BrE. But since the late 1970s, candidacy has become the predominant form in British print sources. Current ratio: 5:1

McMahon: Do you think that's because of the effects of American usage?

Garner: Yes. Let me read to you a little bit from one of the last paragraphs of the new preface. It deals with this very point, and I thought it was kind of interesting:

One recurrent finding bears note. All varieties of English are powerfully influenced by American English. When my late friend Robert W. Burchfield was editor in chief of the Oxford English Dictionary Supplement in the 1970s, he noted that the center of gravity for the English language had shifted to North America. He was right. Again and again, one sees British English and World English following the lead of American usage, often with a lag time of 10 to 50 years. You’ll see this trend noted in many entries throughout the book — but of course it’s hardly a universal rule.

So often there will be entries that say, "This became standard in American English in 1880 and in British English in the early 1920s," or something like that. Again, the editors of the "OED" and the editors of Merriam-Webster— or any lexicographer using traditional forms — would have slips of paper, and let's say you wanted to look up the term "retributive," the adjective for "retribution." You might have seven slips of paper in front of you. One of them has "retributional," but all the others are "retributive," so you guess that "retributive" is the standard term. Now you can find the precise ratio. Some British commentators said this is a horrible Americanism. You can now prove it originated in British English. That's kind of fun. And in a sense, every page of the book got rewritten in that way.

Sometimes it won't even be close. Like “thalamus”:

thalamus (=[1] a part of the brain that relays sensory impulses; or [2] the receptacle of a flower) forms the plural thalami. Though not unknown in AmE, thalamuses is rare. … Current ratio: 431:1

So the ratio of “thalami” to “thalamuses” to is 431-to-1. Sometimes the ratio will be 17,000-to-1. Now you might say, why should I even include something that is 17,000-to-1? The answer is, when you're in a debate with somebody — let's say you're a copy editor— and somebody has used a form that you're quite certain is not the standard form, it's pleasing to be able to say, "Look, that form occurs only once compared to 17,000 times for the other form." It's all for settling debates. I suppose some would say, well, why have a usage book if you can just Google everything? But it does matter. There are a lot of judgment calls involved and some expertise.

Another example — "stated otherwise":

stated otherwise, when used at the beginning of a sentence, is a pompous version of in other words. The phrase emerged in the late 19th century and became widespread during the 20th. It shows no sings of waning.

That would be a very difficult thing to say with any confidence if you couldn't rely on big data, and that's why no other usage book has ever had statements like that — because you would have had to guess.

Here's "movable" without an E in the middle:

movable has been predominantly so spelled in AmE since about 1840 and in BrE since about 1870. Moveable is a variant spelling. Current ratio: 3:1

So it became standard without the middle E in 1840 in AmE and in BrE from 1870. That's amazing — it's new information. Every entry has essentially been rewritten using the information to be gleaned from ngrams.

And I tested. I was a little bit doubtful about how much I could rely on the ngrams. How reliable were they really? I had a couple of interviews with the inventor of ngrams at Google. Google gave me a written license to use the ngrams in my work fully, to the extent that I wanted to, and I cross-checked as much as possible. Everything I did confirmed the reliability of this big-data tool after, let's say, 1750. Before 1750, it's a little bit shaky because there are some anomalous things, and the optical character-recognition program, OCR, is a little bit tricky with a lot of the older text, so I don't trust the stuff from 1500 to 1750 all that much. But from 1750 on — really, from 1700 on — it's very reliable.

McMahon: How has the use of ratios transformed your Language-Change Index?

Garner: The index now has less guesswork in it. There was some guesswork involved in deciding whether something was Stage 4, Stage 3, Stage 2, but by doing the ratios I was able to tell that if something were 2-to-1 or 3-to-1, it might be Stage 4.

If it’s 4-to-10, it might be Stage 3. If it's 10-to-20, it might be Stage 2, and if it's 20 or above, it might be Stage 1. I came up with a whole series of gradations that I was able to verify, based on print sources, what stages we had reached on the Language-Change Index. The index has now become much more scientifically based.

McMahon: Are there words that you once shunned that have now been accepted or are on their way to being accepted?

Garner: "Nauseous" — though I'd call that a skunked term [a word likely to distract some readers]. I call it Stage 4. But interestingly, in 1940, the phrase "felt nauseated" versus "felt nauseous" was 9-to-1 in favor of "felt nauseated." The current ratio is 1, "felt nauseated," to 1.5, "felt nauseous," so usage has flipped in about 75 years. I just don’t use the term — I say "nauseated" or "nauseating." But you’re going to be able to find all kinds of interesting ratios.

There are some words like "nauseous" where the bad form is now in the majority of instances, but it still says Stage 4 — it's not Stage 5 yet. If you take "has drunk" versus "has drank," I call that Stage 2 — "has drank" is Stage 2 — and the ratio of "has drunk" to "has drank" is 12-to-1.

I tried to contextualize all my searches, so if you want to do "home in on" versus "hone in on," you can't do "home in" versus "hone in" because you end up with a lot usages such as "She has a home in Malibu." So you have to use "homed in on" versus "honed in on" and then you get a good read on it. I showed exactly what my searches were so that anybody else can verify the results.

McMahon: Are there any words you’d like to see disappear?

Garner: "Irregardless." All the words I have under "nonwords." I have a list in the book.

irregardless

muchly

seldomly

thusly

uncategorically

doubtlessly

analyzation

Stuff like that. All the nonwords.

McMahon: The title of the third edition reads "American Usage," but the new fourth edition reads "English Usage." Why the change?

Garner: Well, in a way the title "Modern American Usage" was always slightly misleading because the book dealt heavily with British English as well as American English. The reason for it, originally, was some sensitivity about not competing with Burchfield's third edition of Fowler ["Dictionary of Modern English Usage"]. And Burchfield's third edition was really not a third edition of Fowler but his own usage book — but that was "Modern English Usage." Then Oxford added "Garner" to the title, I guess in the second edition, and it became “Garner’s Modern American Usage.” But in the second and third editions I even deepened the treatment of British English, so the name “American” was less and less apt.

With what I was able to do with ngrams and searching World English, British English, and American English, the word "American" was even more misleading to speakers of English around the world. And because "Garner" had already been added to the title — what, 12 years ago — Oxford felt comfortable with making it "English Usage" as opposed to "American."

The other thing is that, because of the dual meaning of "English," when you see "American Usage," people don't know what "usage" is, people don't know what usage books are. But if you see the phrase "English Usage" you know it's about the language. I think there were problems in bricks-and-mortar bookstores, even figuring out where to put the book. And what is a book on "American usage" anyway? Only true connoisseurs know what a usage book is, so the new title is more descriptive as well, to the everyday book person.

And the book now makes all sorts of pronouncements, not only about British English but also about World English, because it's now possible to search that corpus. So it's true; it has its origins in North America, and it has North American sensibilities, but it is very inclusive in terms of treating varieties of English throughout the world.

McMahon: There's going to be an app as well. I'm very happy to know that.

Garner: I think you’re really going to like it. The Kindle format for “Modern American Usage” was not good, and there were complaints about it. I had nothing to do with it. But I’ve had a lot to do with this app, and we’re very excited about it.

McMahon: I have to say this is the most readable and intriguing usage book I’ve ever read.

Garner: It’s the kind of thing that any writer of reference books would like, I think — to create a reference book that is compulsively readable so that you want to look up more things. That’s the idea. And that’s the way the best reference books for a very long time have been. I think the ratios make it even more that way — you want to find out what’s the ratio on this, what’s the ratio on that.

McMahon: How much has the internet changed English?

Garner: The facile answer is that language is changing more rapidly because of the internet and because usage spreads more quickly, people are exposed to new terms, new usages. I think that’s actually overstated. The language — the literary language, anyway — remains very stable. And apart from technological innovations that need new terminology, for the most part, literary English is exceedingly stable and very slow to change. So apart from technological innovations and new media, such as Twitter and Instagram and things of that kind that come into the popular vocabulary, I don’t think the internet is speeding up change all that much.

Now, one thing it’s doing is confirming that a lot of people — maybe a majority of Americans — don’t seem to know the difference between the possessive your and the contraction you’re, and that’s very surprising to many of us. And more and more people are communicating with comma splices— perhaps in text messages and in email messages — and it could be that comma splices will soon be somehow considered standard. I don’t think so — I would say over my dead body. One is seeing more and more of these all the time. I’m sure there are lots of other examples that we could point to. But, on the whole, I think the fundamentals of language remain very much the way they’ve always been.

McMahon: What observations have you made about the presidential candidates?

Garner: [Laughs] There are so many fascinating things. One is, when you listen to Donald Trump, he has this very thumping style in which he repeats sentences almost verbatim the second time. Whenever he wants to underscore something, he repeats the sentence. And of course he has a series of about eight favorite adjectives that he uses again and again.

The more you listen to Donald Trump — even if you kind of like the message the first couple of times — if you're listening critically and you hear the same airy characterizations and adjectives over and over again, and the same speech patterns, it becomes very trying. I think even people who might be drawn to it will end up being repelled by it if they are thinking critically.

I find Bernie Sanders's dialect to be very unpleasant to listen to. I could also understand why so many people in New England considered George W. Bush to be unlistenable, because he overdid the Texas twang. And in fact even to a Texan — it made this Texan cringe. But Bernie Sanders is very difficult to listen to because one doesn't expect an educated American to have that kind of accent.

From the viewpoint of public speaking, Hillary Clinton is interesting to listen to — how often she just sounds cross, as if she’s shouting. But then again, Donald Trump does that, and Bernie Sanders does that as well.

This is a very strange political season, and in terms of presidential contests, a very strange linguistic season as well.

If you were judging based on standard English among the frontrunners, Ted Cruz and Clinton are the closest to being standard speakers of English. With Cruz, the difficult thing about listening to him is the nasality of his delivery, how nasal his voice is. I'm speaking about much more than just grammar and usage now in terms of speaking styles, but the nasality of Cruz makes it difficult for listeners.

Kasich is quite listenable.

McMahon: You were very close to Justice Scalia, and your bond was through language. What was your relationship like?

Garner: I think that had it not been for David Foster Wallace’s review of "Modern American Usage," my collaboration with Justice Scalia would have never come about. He was a fan of that essay in Harper's. Actually he had forgotten by the time we were having breakfast for the first time that Wallace’s essay was about my book. He brought up the essay, and when I told him it was about "Modern American Usage," he said, "Well, your stock has just gone way up in my estimation." And we just hit it off over language.

He was a snoot, and I’m a snoot, according to Wallace’s definition— that was the bond between us. And I think his having a professional snoot to bounce ideas off was very appealing to him. Our ideas about language were very similar. He spent 48 hours here at my house on the way to a trip to Asia, and I showed him the page proofs — we spent about 30 minutes going through the page proofs of "GMEU" together — and he loved the ratios. He was very excited about them. I showed him his name in the front matter, and he was very appreciative of that. It occurred to me last night that I might have to have to add the phrase “the late” before “Antonin Scalia” in the front matter, in the acknowledgments, which was very sad to me. But he cared a great deal about language, and we would frequently looked things up, both in my usage books and in Fowler when we were working together in his chambers.

McMahon: Did Justice Scalia have any big pet peeves?

Garner: He thought I was a little too soft on “begging the question.” He was insisting that “begging the question” must always be about circular reasoning, but of course the empirical evidence is that very few people use it that way today. He could not stand it when somebody would say “cite to” — “you cite to a source” — as opposed to “citing a source.” That was a red flag for him. There were quite a few of them.

When we did the audiobook of “Making Your Case” together, we read sections in the book, our first book together. We were at the Supreme Court, in the conference room of the justices, and we were reading into this professional recording equipment, and there was a staff there monitoring the recording. We would frequently stop each other and correct each other’s pronunciation. We'd call for "Webster's Second International Dictionary," or "Webster's Third," and the "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary," and we would have these debates about how do you say this, how do you say that.

And he was surprised a great deal about standard pronunciations, so a word like “gravamen” — I think he said “grah-və-mən” and I persuaded him to say “grə-vay-mən,” only by showing him "Webster's Second." But we loved having these little debates.

He was very competitive — we were both competitive — so we liked trying to prove each other wrong on various things. And that’s a great game for snoots to play, to try to prove each other wrong.

McMahon: Have you been happy with the sales of your books?

Garner: Oh yeah — and thank goodness for online booksellers because it used to be that a book author was dependent on a few book buyers' decisions, the bricks-and-mortar stores. If they didn't carry your book, then it simply had no opportunity to sell.

Now the internet has opened up the marketplace and leveled the playing field so that anyone who writes a good, solid, useful book has a shot at selling it.

There was a time when the first edition of "Modern American Usage" came out, some of the bricks-and-mortar stores were declaring usage books to be a dead category, and they refused to buy any at all. That was very frustrating. But the internet has proved that judgment to be wrong.

McMahon: The internet has been pretty good to you — Google ngrams, online booksellers.

Garner: I can't complain. I'm a big fan.

McMahon: It's cool that you're pretty active on Twitter too.

Garner: It's a fascinating new genre of writing. But it can be very addicting, and you have to try to keep some balance and not just look at it all the time.

McMahon: I like it when you poke fun at news anchors' pronunciations.

Garner: I enjoy tweaking Bill O’Reilly from time to time on his mispronunciations, especially when he mispronounces his "Word of the Day." That is fascinating.

SEE ALSO: 'Garner's Modern English Usage' on Amazon

DON'T MISS: 22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From One Another

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NOW WATCH: The 4 Most Persuasive Words In The English Language

Lisa Schroeder has a pretty sweet job.

For the past 16 years, Schroeder has worked for Mars Chocolate — a segment of the $33 billion Mars candy, petcare, and beverage company. Mars Chocolate produces 29 candy brands in total, including the billion-dollar global brands M&M's, Snickers, Dove, Milky Way, and Twix.

As a sensory technologist for the company, Schroeder's job is to taste-test chocolate. We recently spoke to her to find out how she landed this dream job, what she does all day, and what advice she has for aspiring taste testers. 

Here's what she had to say:

SEE ALSO: Here's what a professional taste tester actually does all day

Schroeder's path to becoming a taste tester was anything but traditional.

After high school, Schroeder went to the Katharine Gibbs secretarial school in Montclair, New Jersey, where she majored in advanced secretarial studies.

She went on to work in a variety of administrative support roles while raising her children. Then, in 2000, she heard about the taste panel at Mars from a neighbor who worked for the company.

"When the opportunity to apply to become a taste tester presented itself I jumped at the chance," she recalls. "I never thought about working with food when I was growing up, but I have always loved chocolate. Some of my earliest and cherished childhood memories are of my mother and I snuggling on the couch with a bowl of M&Ms between us while we watched television."

She says her background and journey to where she is today "was definitely not the traditional route of getting a job in research and development."

When Schroeder joined Mars in 2000, she had no food science experience — but luckily for her, "your educational background really has no bearing on your ability to taste," she explains.

Despite not having any prior experience with taste-testing, she decided to go for the job.

"I couldn't pass up the opportunity to taste chocolate for a living," Schroeder says. 

The first step of the hiring process is to fill out a screener, which asks questions to find out how you describe food and your experience with tasting food.

"Taste testers are hired based upon their ability to identify and describe flavor, basic tastes, and textures — not their educational background," she explains.

Next, there's an in-person screener and interview, where they test you on basic tastes and further test your ability to use descriptive language.

"Once you're selected as a taste tester, you go through a six-month intensive training program to learn how to become a Mars taste tester."

Schroeder says her four years of experience as a descriptive panelist — also known as a taste tester — was "one of the best educations I could have received in preparation for joining the sensory team here at Mars."

After four years taste-testing chocolate, she was promoted to a sensory technician role.

After spending four years as a chocolate taste tester, Schroeder was offered a sensory technician role for the company's Hackettstown, New Jersey plant, where Mars makes half of the country's M&M's.

"In my current role, I am responsible for training and leading the descriptive analysis panel, which is our panel of trained taste testers who gather data to help maintain the quality of our products. This program makes sure that our most loved brands — such as M&M's — taste the same as they did 75 years ago and that our new products taste like our consumers would expect. Consistent quality is an important principle for Mars," she explains.

Schroeder says there are only four descriptive panels like this around the world.

"Mars Chocolate has given me the opportunity to travel nationally and globally to share best practices, helping to ensure that wherever around the world you taste a Mars Chocolate product, the quality and experience are just the same."

In addition to running and training tasting panels, she also recruits Mars' taste testers, and collaborates regularly with sensory scientists. 

"I don't think my job is a dream job. I know it is."

Chen Forng-Shean is a Taiwanese artist with a very unconventional medium: grains of rice. His latest work is a portrait of Taiwan's new president-elect, Tsai Ing-wen.

Story and editing by Ben Nigh

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Luxury real estate photographer Evan Joseph fell in love with New York City in 1992, when he moved there after graduating from Vassar College and made his first venture down into an underground record store on 8th Street. 

Now, more than 20 years later, Joseph is flying high above the city in a helicopter, capturing sweeping aerial images of the beloved skyline.

His newest book, "New York From Above", is an ode to One World Trade Center. Completed in July 2013, the newly finished structure was for Joseph — and many New Yorkers — a form of healing after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"When One World Trade was finally completed, I felt that the city had been restored in some meaningful way, and I wanted to capture all-new cityscapes that featured this 'new' New York," Joseph told Business Insider.

Ahead, 13 photos from the book that celebrates Joseph's cherished city. 

SEE ALSO: What New York City's most famous buildings would look like in the middle of nowhere

Joseph has been flying above New York and capturing its fantastic views for over 10 years.

When the weather permits, he'll fly multiple days in a row.

His favorite time of day to shoot is at sunrise. "It's just sublime ... so still and full of anticipation," he said.

Anthony Bourdain is a master storyteller.

In 2000, at 44, he was propelled into stardom by his bestselling memoir, "Kitchen Confidential." It's the tell-all of a Manhattan chef unafraid to talk about the grittier side of the restaurant industry, as well as his own past struggles with drug addiction.

Its success led to another book deal, with an accompanying Food Network show, both called "A Cook's Tour." He left his role as executive chef of the Manhattan French restaurant Les Halles and became a television personality who traveled the world, next with the Travel Channel shows "No Reservations" and "The Layover," and then the CNN series "Parts Unknown."

Over the past 16 years, Bourdain, now 59, has explored the cultures and cuisines in locales across 80 countries, and he's won three Emmys and a Peabody award.

Bourdain has intentionally avoided leading any food projects since leaving the restaurant industry, but next year his name will be attached to a 155,000-square-foot (think three football fields), $60 million international market in New York City's Pier 57.

We recently spoke to Bourdain about the seventh season of "Parts Unknown," premiering on April 24, Bourdain Market, his favorite place in the world to eat, and his extraordinary career.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Richard Feloni: What about your experiences from your travels in this upcoming season surprised you?

Anthony Bourdain: I knew a little of the Philippines already, but this was a chance to learn about the Filipino character, and why so many of them end up as caregivers, essentially, looking after kids, looking after sick people — that instinct to give. There's also a musical aspect that seems ubiquitous. We're trying to tell a very personal Philippines story, and that was a highlight.

Senegal was a surprise. It's unlike any country I've been [to] before. It's a slice of Islam that I think most people haven't seen, with a very different colonial history than a lot of people have seen. I think that's going to be a real eye-opener.

The situation in the Greek isles, where we shot, is very different from the mainland. They're doing fairly well in Naxos, mostly off predatory tourism, people looking for cheap prices in a buyer's market. They're doing pretty well compared to the mainland. So it's sort of an off-center perspective. And there is a shadow looming, however paradoxical it might seem, from the refugee crisis that has become an increasingly big factor in the country.

Feloni: You're now shooting an episode in Rome based on its dark fascist past.

Bourdain: It's not so much that it's a historical show. I think primarily I'm always looking to look at a place from a different perspective, and everybody's seen classic Rome, and the Colosseum, and the buildings of antiquity.

So I said let's look at a completely different side of Rome, the EUR [Esposizione universale Roma, the district Mussolini intended to be Rome's new center], fascist-era architecture, early [film director] Pier Paolo Pasolini, Brutalist architecture— I deliberately tried to stay away from antiquity and monuments. But from that, I certainly think it is obvious that — once I made that stylistic decision, I started to read a lot of history of when these structures were built and why.

I've been boning up on Mussolini-era Italy and there are a shocking number of similarities to current-day America, unfortunately.

I think it's worth remembering that Mussolini was elected. He was very, very popular, and basically could say anything he wanted on any given day of the week, completely reverse himself from his opinion yesterday and yet no one minded. I think that apparent need for a man on a horse, we might be in a similar time. I mean, I hope not.

Feloni: Are you getting at Trump specifically?

Bourdain: It won't appear in the show at all, but I hope it hangs in the air.

I mean, Mussolini served his country in combat and did a credible job, and I don't think you could say that about, you know ... this guy.

Feloni: Moving to some brighter news. When did the idea for this Pier 57 market first start? When did it move forward in a real way?

Bourdain: We've been working on it for about four, five years. I've always loved those Southeast Asian hawker centers and the big wet market of Hong Kong and São Paulo and Barcelona, and I was sort of bitterly resentful as a New Yorker that we didn't have that. We should. We're a big international city, our diversity is our strength, we have millions of people from all over the world, why don't we have a big market with democratically available, diversely priced food?

It's something we're missing, and given the opportunity to be part of a project that brings that to New York — I led that, and I don't know when it started to become something serious that looked like it was going to happen, I really couldn't speak to that.

This was an opportunity that arose in New York, and I'm a New Yorker. If I was thinking if this is an extension of me, I would have had little eateries in airports years ago.

This is not a supermarket or a food center, a food hall, or any of that. This is a market that will sell produce and fish, and there will be butchers and bakers. But it will also have one-chef, one-dish specialized, independently owned and operated stalls.

And we're doing absolutely zero Italian, no Italian anything. I mean, Mario Batali does that very well with Eataly, and I don't see any need to duplicate efforts. So we'll assiduously stay away from that. It's not of any interest or expertise in any case.

Feloni: How much time will you spend working on it once it's launched?

Bourdain: There will certainly be no business within the market that I didn't say yes or no to. Will I be driving a forklift? Probably not.

Feloni: What does it mean to you to have this giant project with your name attached to it?

Bourdain: I wish my name wasn't on it! [laughs] I think this is a great idea whether my name's on it or not. Personally, I would have been happy to live without my name on it. But wiser minds than me apparently thought it was a really important thing. I could live without that. I don't know. I've never done anything like this.

Artist's rendering of a portion of Bourdain Market, from Roman and Williams.

Feloni: Speaking of New York, I saw that you shared your favorite restaurants with The Daily Beast ...

Bourdain: Well, somehow it morphed from "What New York restaurants do you eat at when you come home from a long trip abroad" to "What are your favorite New York restaurants of all time"?

In any case, look, it's a respectable list and it accurately represents some aspects of my favorite places.

Anyways, date night is Korean barbecue. Also I love Tori Shin, I love to go for yakitori. That's sort of a go-to for me.

Feloni: What do you think of the New York restaurant scene right now?

Bourdain: I think it's good. I mean, it's come so, so, so, so far in just my lifetime. I mean, it would have been unthinkable, so much of what we have now would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, 25 years ago when I was still in the business.

You've got, like, tattooed young people all over the city and all over the country making their own sausages and curing their own meat and rotting things in their cellars and acutely aware of the seasons and aping obscure subgenres of Basque-specific restaurants. It is a wonderful thing. And chefs are themselves empowered by this admittedly bizarre and frequently hilarious celebrity-chef phenomenon.

But what it's done is it's allowed them to cook as well as they know how, because people are interested in their best game now, they're not showing up at their restaurant saying I'd like the chicken. They come in wanting to try Eric Ripert's food or Daniel Boulud's food, they don't go in there with a specific menu item in mind, and I think that's a really important change in the landscape over the last 20 years.

Feloni: Why do you think that's happened?

Bourdain: I think the celebrity chef thing. People started to put a face to the person in the kitchen, and they started to care about their opinion. And there are a lot of other factors as well, but I think that's an important one.

Feloni: How do you consider your influence? Xi'an Famous Foods, for example, blew up after you featured it on your show.

Bourdain: Look, I try not to f--- places up. You know what I mean? I'm aware of the fact that sometimes if we put this wonderful little neighborhood bar that's beloved by locals and no one else knows about it, if we put that on TV, that we could change its character forever, or that the owner might be happy for the additional money, but the other customers will be miserable and angry and I've basically ruined an important part of their lives.

I think about that a lot, and there have been occasions where we won't even give the name of the establishment that we put on camera. And there have been times where we deliberately shoot in such a way that you'll never find it.

I don't want to hurt people. I don't want to change the world in a bad way, if I can avoid it.

Feloni: In your book "Medium Raw," you start off by saying how your perspective has changed since writing "Kitchen Confidential." That was six years ago. When you look back at each of those versions of yourself, what do you see?

Bourdain: I know the guy who wrote "Kitchen Confidential" very well. He's not me anymore. I'm not boiling with rage. I don't live in this tiny tunnel-vision world. I had such a limited view of what reality was like outside of the kitchen doors, I had no clue! I never lived with normal people. I lived in the restaurant universe for my entire adult life.

I'm no longer the star of the movie. At all. That's it!

It's a huge relief in a lot of ways. And it's such an understatement to say that having a kid changes your life. You're just no longer the first person you think about or care about. You're not the most important person in the room. It's not your film. The music doesn't play for you — it's all about the girl. And that changes everything.

Feloni: And in those past six years, do you see a change in your relationship to celebrity food culture, or cooking competitions, or branding?

Bourdain: I work really hard to not ever think about my place in the world.

I'm aware of my good fortune. I'm very aware of it, and I'm very aware that, because of it, people offer me things. Opportunities to do extraordinary things. The ones that are interesting to me are collaborations. I get to work with people who 10 years [ago] I wouldn't have dreamed to have been able to work with. And that's a big change professionally, and it's something that I think about a lot. How can I creatively have fun, do some interesting stuff, not repeat myself? Have fun. Play in a creative way. I like making things.

Feloni: Are there any aspects of food culture, on the Food Network or elsewhere, that still bother you? Everyone likes to talk about the tension between you and Guy Fieri, for example.

Bourdain: No. I keep saying it's fodder for comedy, but I basically do a stand-up act in 10 or 12 cities a year. I stand up in front of an audience at a theater and I'm expected to talk for an hour. If you're sitting there in front of a couple thousand people who paid a lot of money to see you, they don't really want to talk about sustainable agriculture for an hour and a half. They would like the occasional dick joke. And the dick jokes better be funny!

So if you're a middle-aged dude walking around in a flame jacket, there will be the occasional joke about you.

Feloni: Was it about the personality, or the level of food, as well? In your own show, you visited Waffle House with chef Sean Brock.

Bourdain: I think Waffle House is such an important part of Sean Brock's career and life. And he just was so overwhelmingly enthusiastic about it in an earnest way. And I appreciate the mechanics of what they do. By the way, the way Waffle House works, the whole system is really interesting, and the fact that they're so completely forgiving of outrageously disgusting drunken behavior. Which is, of course, the only way to really appreciate the Waffle House. [laughs] I gather the food tastes really good because you're drunk. But if you're drunk and at the Waffle House, it's pretty awesome.

I could think of a couple of times I ended up in the Fieri Zone. Sean Brock took me to a place that he loved and that was important in his life. And David Choe took me to Sizzler, which was genuinely important to his life.

Ordinarily, these are not establishments I would have thought of going to. I'd never been to a Waffle House, I felt kind of stupid. I wish I had known more.

Feloni: What do you think the worst thing in food culture right now is?

Bourdain: I mean, there's always snobbery, of course.

A couple years ago, I'm holding my daughter's hand and I walk into the supermarket in my neighborhood — I live in the Upper East Side. We're there to buy oranges and lemons, right? And there's the organic produce and the nonorganic sections. And I automatically head over to the nonorganic and I look around and there are all these Upper East Side housewives looking at me like I'm a f---ing war criminal and they're about to call child-protective services. It was so bad that I slump over to the organic section just so these ladies wouldn't hate me.

Feloni: So it's just snobbery over nonsense?

Bourdain: I don't need a 10-minute description of my food. Look, it's annoying but not the worst thing in the world. At least people are interested enough to want to know the details. You'll hear the name of the farm, the name of the farmer, what my cattle was fed — I don't need to know all of that.

But I'm glad that people are aware and think about these things, and I'm glad when waiters and servers know. And I'm glad that chefs are making the real effort to get the best quality ingredients and that the public is more and more likely to appreciate it and even understand it. So I mean, it's good.

I just think that the great food writers, the great enthusiasts — like A.J. Liebling— is that they're not snobs. You can't be a great food writer and a snob about food and just want fancy, expensive ingredients. You have to appreciate the qualities of a properly greasy fast-food burger. Or a short-order burger, at least.

Feloni: How do you determine how your trips will unfold? Are there ever times on a shoot when you just get vicious food poisoning — do you still abide by that early philosophy that if you eat something and get sick, it might be worth it just for the experience?

Bourdain: I've found that you're not going to have the really great travel experiences if you're not willing to experience the bad ones. If you don't leave yourself open for things to happen to you, nothing really is going to happen to you, good or bad.

The great travel epiphanies seem to sneak up on you because you kind of f---ed up, you took a wrong turn, and you ended up in a place where you permitted events to unfold. That means you're going to eat some bad meals in your life.

Because I'm with a camera crew, people are being nice to us, they're giving us their hospitality, and often a lot of their self-image or their image in the neighborhood counts on that. I try very hard to be polite — meaning, I may end up at grandma's house and I may not like grandma's turkey, but I'm sure as hell going to clean my plate and compliment her on it because it's her house. And that's a really important part of being a guest. You eat what's offered wherever you are. That's ... [why] the show works the way it does, because not just me but my whole crew take that attitude, that we're happy and grateful to be there and we're willing to try anything that's offered in good faith.

I get ill very infrequently.

Feloni: So you just have to be up for things you normally wouldn't be?

Bourdain: It depends what you're looking for. I had a very good idea when I went to Libya and eastern Congo, I had a pretty good idea what the risks were, and what it was going to be like, and I made a calculated decision. In some cases, it was worse than we anticipated, or more difficult. In others, it ended up working out pretty well.

I try not to travel stupidly. I'm not looking to go full Geraldo [Rivera] out there in my flack jacket and sticking my head out of the foxhole just for a good shot. I have the responsibility to try to stay alive for my daughter, and to not get my camera people killed on some narcissistic television show.

Feloni: And when you are back home in New York and aren't going out, do you still cook?

Bourdain: Yes. Oh, I cook a lot. I cook for my daughter every day. I prepare my daughter's school lunch every day and I'll cook dinner every night I'm home.

I have some go-to dishes. But if my daughter doesn't like the idea of something, we're sure as hell not having it. I do Christmas and Thanksgiving and often New Year's at home and invite friends and family. Then all summer long I take an inordinate amount of pleasure in being a super-normal dad, like standing in the backyard with an apron and grilling cheeseburgers and hot dogs. Though I'm a little more organized than the average dad!

I do clambakes, steamer clams and lobster. Basically the greatest hits from my summer vacations as a kid. I try to inflict them on my family. Pasta, spaghetti and meatballs, I make a decent meatball. I love making meatloaf. I cook home food. I'm not doing anything too fancy. Even when I have friends over it's pretty straight-ahead. My daughter's birthday's coming up, I'm doing roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, gravy, succotash — and, oh yeah, my daughter asked for foie gras! This is a bad sign!

Feloni: After traveling the world several times over, is there a cuisine or part of the world that continually draws you in and surprises you?

Bourdain: Japan is endlessly, endlessly interesting to me. I just returned from shooting yet another episode there with Masa Takayama and, oh, it was just amazing. I've made more shows there than any other country and I don't think I've even scratched the surface and I don't think I ever will.

Feloni: Do you have a particular favorite Japanese dish?

Bourdain: Oh, God. Give me some good uni, a really good soba with duck dipping sauce — duck dipping dressing is really amazing — and I adore good yakitori.

SEE ALSO: Ray Dalio, head of the world's largest hedge fund, explains his succession plan for Bridgewater and how its 'radically transparent' culture is misunderstood

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Conventional wisdom says you can never have too many dress shirts.

And while that's true, the color still matters. Sure, white shirts will go with every suit you can think of, but that's not the only type of shirt you should own. (Plus, they can stain easily.)

We recommend you have at least three shirts: one in a standard, stark white for when you need to look clean and pressed, along with a backup in a pale blue to mix it up. These two will be the workhorse of your work and suiting wardrobe, not matter how often you need to wear them.

We also recommend you throw in one shirt in a fun pattern like window-check or Tattersall for more adventurous days, when you still need to wear a suit but want to have a bit of fun with it.

All three shirts should have:

• A semi-spread collar, since that is the most commonly accepted in the workplace.
• Button cuffs, since French cuffs are a little too much for a basic work wardrobe.

The most important thing for dress shirts is fit. It should be form-fitting, but not tight. A tailor is a good option if a shirt is too big for you, but not even the best needle-and-thread whiz can make a shirt larger.

You should find a shirt brand with a fit that works for you. Online services like Stantt, Shirtcycle, and Combatant Gentleman make it super-easy to do, but don't overlook dress shirt standbys like Brooks Brothers and Thomas Pink.

SEE ALSO: 17 things every modern gentleman should have in his closet

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Emily Breeze, 31, is an Olympic lifter and Crossfit competitor who is still shoulder pressing more than 100 lbs and dead lifting over 200 lbs at nine months pregnant.

The Charlotte, North Carolina, resident has done Crossfit nearly every day during her pregnancy, and has plans to teach a bootcamp only one week after giving birth. She says working out has made her feel more energetic while pregnant, and that her doctor has told her the baby has a strong, healthy heartbeat. 

Story by Lisa Ryan and editing by A.C. Fowler

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Gwyneth Paltrow can't stay away from the latest health and beauty fads. And so, it came as little surprise to most people when the actress divulged that she'd recently tried out bee sting therapy.

"I’ve been stung by bees. It’s a thousands of years old treatment called apitherapy," Paltrow told the New York Times. "People use it to get rid of inflammation and scarring. It’s actually pretty incredible if you research it. But, man, it’s painful."

The holistic practice entails placing a bee onto someone's skin and then stimulating the bee to sting the person and release the stinger, so that the person could reap the supposed benefits of the main component of bee venom, called melittin.

Bee venom allegedly boosts the immune system and improves circulation, in addition to fighting diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and shingles, according to the American Apitherapy Society. The therapy hasn't gone mainstream in the United States yet, and is only currently available at a few specialized natural health centers.

However, the medical community is largely skeptical about apitherapy.

New York City dermatologist Valerie Goldburt says that there isn't actually much scientific evidence to support apitherapy. "As with any therapy, it may work for some people for reasons that aren’t clear, but it certainly hasn’t been cleared by the medical community," Goldburt said.

Animal studies have shown that bee venom does have anti-inflammatory properties, says W. Clay Jackson, vice president of the board of the American Academy of Pain Management. But, there have been no randomized controlled trials showing any health benefits in humans, and so he noted that people should not pursue apitherapy as their primary treatment against inflammatory diseases.

Furthermore, apitherapy can be dangerous for certain people. "Many people are allergic to bee venom and also there have been reported side effects, such as hemorrhagic strokes," Jackson said. "Some people mistakenly assume that because something is natural, it has no side effects, and that is not the case."

And so, if someone is set on following Paltrow's advice and getting stung, they should consult with their doctor beforehand — because getting stung by a bee might not be worth the pain.

SEE ALSO: Here's what's in the $200 'Moon Dust' smoothie Gwyneth Paltrow drinks every day

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NOW WATCH: This Crossfit competitor is 9 months pregnant — and still lifting more than 100 lbs

German company Take2 Design created a spring-loaded nutcracker. It sells for $20. 

Story and editing by Carl Mueller.

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At over 262 feet in height, and over 1.6 miles in width, Iguazu Falls is one of the most imposing waterfalls in the world. Tourists can experience its force by riding a powerful jet boat up the Iguazu River rapids and right into the falls.

Story by Chloe Miller and editing by Jeremy Dreyfuss, footage courtesy of  Backpacker Travel 

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Business Insider is looking for sneakerheads in the New York City area for an upcoming video. We're looking for passionate collectors who have been in the game for decades or just starting out. Maybe you have a massive collection or maybe you have the ultra rare Jordans. Do you know all the locations to get new releases? Have you waited in line for hours at your local store? No matter your age, we want to hear from you. 

Email living@businessinsider.com with photos and a brief description of why you're a sneakerhead.

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NOW WATCH: Nike sneakerheads put Apple fanboys to shame

It's only a few short months until summer attempts to cook us all with sweltering, sticky heatwaves.

If you're gearing up to face the season without a full-fledged air conditioner, there may be hope, as a new startup is promising the world's first personal, portable air conditioner. 

Evapolar, the brainchild of Russian entrepreneurs Eugene Dubovoy and Vladimir Levitin, is billed as an easy-to-use device that casts a "cool ocean breeze" and humidifies dry air.

Rather than use chemicals like Freon, which power traditional air conditioners, Evapolar uses a patented filter and a refillable water container to purify and push out cooled air with a small fan.

Because Evapolar cools by filtering and humidifying the air around it, odds are its cooling effects will be best felt in drier, arid environments. In more humid areas, it's probably not going to be noticeably cooler than a fan, though the creators say they've tested it in wetter locales as well.

With a fairly small effective range, the eco-friendly device certainly won't replace a bona-fide AC unit, but could keep a desk chill. It is, after all, personal. 

Evapolar achieved its fundraising goal on Indiegogo in October of 2015, and will start shipping units out in May. It's available for pre-order in both white and black, and runs for $179, with additional cartridges currently selling for $20.

SEE ALSO: Designers created a sliding glass door that can turn around corners

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NOW WATCH: A designer created a new type of nutcracker that smashes nutshells into tiny pieces

For under $30 per person you can slide down epic sand dunes in Huacachina, Peru. 

Story and editing by Jeremy Dreyfuss

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Practice makes perfect, and this rings true for even the most seemingly mundane of occupations. From chopping onions at lightning speed to landing planes with expert precision, these people are amazing at their jobs.

Story and editing by Chelsea Pineda

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Little Teacup Pigs claims to breed the smallest pigs in the world that are the size of French bulldogs when fully grown. And they can be yours for $1,300 - $2,500. 

Produced by Jenner Deal

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At age 22, James Kim has figured out how to combine two of peoples' favorite foods into one delicious dish: waffle pizza.

Seoul Waffle Pizza, which Kim recently opened in L.A.'s Koreatown, is the new go-to for an Instagram pic of the latest viral food hybrid.

Story by Aly Weisman and editing by Stephen Parkhurst

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