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We've been obsessed with calories for 100 years because of a book you've never heard of, but we're finally moving on

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BI Graphics_The Secret History of Calories 2x1

  • A little-known Los Angeles physician named Lulu Hunt Peters played a major role in popularizing the use of calorie counting for weight loss
  • Her 1918 book, "Diet and Health with a Key to the Calories," was the world's first best-selling diet book
  • Despite the ubiquity of calories today, recent studies reveal that they are an imperfect measure of nutrition
  • In recent years, there's been a positive trend away from focusing only on calories. Instead, experts are encouraging people to eat more real food — vegetables, grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats

Standing before a room of women in Los Angeles, Lulu Hunt Peters wrote a word on a blackboard that she said held the keys to empowerment. It was a word most of her audience had never heard before. Peters insisted it was just as important as terms like "foot" and "yard," and that if they came to understand and use it, they would be serving their country and themselves.

The word was "calorie." It was 1917, and although the calorie had been used in chemistry circles for decades — and is often credited to scientists such as Wilbur Olin Atwater and Nicolas Clément — it was Peters who was responsible for popularizing the idea that all we need to become healthier is knowing how much energy is in our food and fervently cutting back the excess. But her teachings weren’t all academic. She also referred to overweight people as "fireless cookers" and accused them of hoarding the valuable wartime commodity of fat "in their own anatomy." Nevertheless, Peters' weight-loss program has become so popular that some experts worry it now eclipses more important aspects of nutrition.

Yet while Peters' concept of calories has managed to stick around for 100 years, few have heard her name. As one of a handful of female physicians in California at the turn of the 20th century, Peters occupied a tenuous role as a health authority. After initially opening up her own private practice, she struggled to feel satisfied with her career. It was only after America entered the first World War that Peters had the opportunity to find her voice — first as a leader of a local women's club and finally as America's most enduring diet guru.

'Hereafter, you are going to eat calories of food'

Lulu Peters was the picture of 1920s fashion. She wore her dark hair in the flapper style, bobbed and adorned with glittering headbands, and sported luxurious furs. Her ears were decorated with gleaming pearls. She wasn't rail thin, as the social mores of middle-class white America said she ought to be, but she was 70 pounds leaner than she had been when she'd graduated from medical school — a point she emphasized with pride in a pamphlet she sold for 25 cents and later turned into the world's first best-selling diet book.

lulu hunt peters 1923 press photo

When it came to the science of nutrition and weight loss, Peters was in many ways decades ahead of her time. While ads in local newspapers pushed women to try everything from smoking ("Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet!") to wearing medicated rubber garments to lose weight, Peters was breaking down complex scientific concepts like metabolism into accessible ideas that could be used to slim down.

In 1910, when the average life expectancy was 49 years, most Americans had never heard of things like calories, proteins, or carbohydrates. Even the science of vitamins was a fledgling endeavor characterized by a great deal of pseudoscience. Through her newspaper columns and clubhouse talks, Peters introduced hundreds of people to these ideas, and even began to link unhealthy eating with specific diseases. She went so far as to recommend intermittent fasting for those struggling to lose weight, a topic that is only now beginning to emerge in the scientific literature.

reach for a lucky instead of a sweet

Still, it is what Peters taught her followers about calories that has endured the longest, that all you need to do to lose weight is consume fewer than you burn.

”Instead of saying one slice of bread, or a piece of pie, you will say 100 Calories of bread, 350 Calories of pie," she wrote in 1918. "Hereafter, you are going to eat calories of food."

'How dare you hoard fat when our nation needs it?'

In 1909, Peters was one of about a thousand women across the country to graduate as a doctor of medicine. War and its demand for medical workers had helped temporarily ease some of the barriers blocking women from entering universities, and in 1910 the percentage of women physicians was at an all-time high at 5%. Shortly after receiving her degree from the University of California, Peters got a job leading the Los Angeles County Hospital's pathology lab. Several years later, even as the percentage of women medical school graduates receded to below 3%, she secured a role as the chair of the public-health committee for the California women's club federation of Los Angeles, a position that a local newspaper described as having "more power than the entire city health office."

Still, she occupied a tenuous position in a society led by men. Even as a leading physician with two medical degrees, most of Peters' roles were unpaid, including a one-year stint with the American Red Cross in 1918 during World War I. Many of the public-health events she attended were derided in local newspapers as nothing more than "supper parties" for "female physicians." And these roles, which were already constrained by gender, were made even more exclusive by the fact that they were volunteer-only. Women who didn't have access to money — many of them women of color — were simply barred from participating. Those who did attend made a show of their wealth. With her high-society flapper fashion, Peters was no exception.

Whatever signs of excess she displayed when it came to clothing, however, Peters made up for in her approach to eating.

After having struggled with her weight for years early in her career, Peters lost 70 pounds by carefully restricting the amount of food she ate. Her diet was a seemingly logical extension of basic chemistry: If you want to "reduce," you need to put less energy into your body than it uses up. To do that, a unit of measure she'd applied frequently as a student of child nutrition at several Los Angeles hospitals, was key. She and her peers had relied upon calculating the caloric content of baby formula to ensure premature babies and other infants under their care were properly nourished. Now, the measure seemed an easy way to calculate the energy needs of adults.

As a leading member of the women's club federation, Peters became a diet guru, frequently sharing bits of her dieting wisdom with her fellow members. One day, shortly before leaving for her World War I service with the Red Cross, she delivered a talk about weight loss. In order for her audience to understand how she lost weight, she had to introduce them to the unit of measure at the foundation of her plan. The calorie, she explained, was a measure of what she called "food values."

"You should know and also use the word calorie as frequently, or more frequently, than you use the words foot, yard, quart, gallon, and so forth, as measures of length and liquids," Peters said.

santa_fe_hut_at_los_angeles_1918 1919_american_national_red_cross_collection_prints_and_photographs_library_of_congress_0

Losing weight wasn't merely about meeting societal expectations, though, at least in the way Peters chose to present it. Being severely overweight was also linked with chronic illnesses such as heart and kidney disease, she wrote. At the time, it was an idea that was just beginning to circulate among scientists. More important, Peters offered calorie counting as a moral, patriotic duty. Hungry troops at the front lines, Peters explained, needed the calories that women like her could do without. What was fat, she said, if not a high-energy resource that should be distributed to the soldiers abroad?

"In war time it is a crime to hoard food, and fines and imprisonment have followed the exposé of such practices," Peters wrote. "Yet there are hundreds of thousands of individuals all over America who are hoarding food, and that one of the most precious of all foods! They have vast amounts of this valuable commodity stored away in their own anatomy."

food rationing poster wwi

Peters even went so far as to describe the discomfort of dieting as a physical reminder of their American loyalty and an easier way to deal with rationing. If the food they didn't eat didn't go directly to the troops abroad, their leftovers could be used to feed their children: "That for every pang of hunger we feel we can have a double joy, that of knowing we are saving worse pangs in ... little children, and that of knowing that for every pang we feel we lose a pound."

It may have sounded like a noble goal at first, but Peters had taken the idea of calorie counting too far.

An imperfect science

In a world dominated by celebrity fad diets that range from the absurd, like Reese Witherspoon's alleged "baby-food diet," to the absurdly unaffordable, such as Gwyneth Paltrow's $200 "moon dust"-infused breakfast smoothie, calories can seem like the most scientific option for improving your health. But there is more guesswork involved in calorie calculations than you might think.

The current system of calorie counting on which our nutrition labels are based "provides only an estimate of the energy content of foods," Malden C. Nesheim, a professor of nutrition at Cornell University, said at a 2013 meeting of the international nonprofit Institute for Food Technologists.

Traditionally, scientists calculated the energy content of foods using a large piece of machinery called a bomb calorimeter. The process involved placing a sample of food into the device, burning it, and measuring how much the water in a surrounding container heated up. Since a Calorie raises the temperature of a liter of water by 1 degree Celsius, the calorie count would be found by calculating the change in the water's temperature multiplied by the water's volume. Today, we use a shortcut called the Atwater system, named after agricultural chemist Wilbur Olin Atwater.

bomb calorimeter

Atwater — who actually wanted to use his work in the 1890s to help poor people get the most calories for their money— determined the average number of calories in four main energy sources: carbs, fats, protein, and alcohol. Fats, he found, were the most energy-dense, being worth about 9 calories per gram, while proteins and carbs were roughly equal at about 4 calories per gram. Alcohol was worth about 7 calories per gram.

The Atwater system is how the calorie counts on nutrition labels have been determined by the US Department of Agriculture since 1988. Before that, they were done by hand. Using this method, you'd be able to determine that a slice of wheat bread with 3 grams of protein, 9 grams of carbs, and 1 gram of fat had roughly 60 calories.

Here's the problem: Not all of us process all foods the same way.

"It's definitely not just 'calories in and calories out' because two people could be [burning] more and consuming less and one person gains and one doesn't," says Cara Anselmo, a nutritionist and outpatient dietitian at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "There are metabolic differences person to person."

These variations mean that each of us needs a different amount of energy from our food, and it can vary substantially by the day. One issue that the Atwater system will never account for, Anselmo says, is the delicate balance of hormones that guide everything from appetite to digestion. These hormones can be influenced a great deal by our previous history of weight loss or weight gain.

"We find that with people who lose a significant amount of weight, hormones play an important role too. So someone who's always been at 150 pounds can actually get away with eating more calories than someone who was at 250 pounds and lost 100 pounds. Your body is producing fewer of the hormones that make you feel full and more of the hormones that make you hungry," Anselmo says.

This means that Peters, who lost a substantial amount of weight before writing her best-selling diet book, might have had to limit her diet more than someone who had always weighed what she did.

Other factors that scientists are just beginning to understand also influence the number of calories we actually get from food.

In a large review of studies published in the Journal of Nutrition, Purdue University scientists found that whole tree nuts and peanuts have roughly 15% fewer calories than the figure calculated using the Atwater method. Although nuts are high in fat, the researchers found, a significant portion of those oils end up being secreted when we eat them. Another study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2012 came to a similar conclusion about pistachios, finding that they had about 5% fewer calories than originally assumed.

When calories aren't king

Let's say that at lunchtime you're given two options with the exact same number of calories. You can either have a ham sandwich, potato chips, and a can of soda or a salad and a whole-grain roll. Which would you choose?

You might be tempted to pick the sandwich and soda. After all, if they stack up the same in terms of calories, you might as well pick the one you can taste, right?

According to Peters and the many popular modern diets she influenced, the answer is yes. But it's not that simple. While counting calories can be a useful tool in a bigger toolkit for weight loss, it is not a perfect solution for healthy eating, especially when it's used in isolation.

Nichola Whitehead, a registered dietitian with a private practice in the UK, summarizes the problem this way: "While calories are important when it comes to losing, maintaining, or gaining weight, they are not the sole thing we should be focusing on when it comes to improving our health."

Take the following two daily meal plans, for example, both of which are about 2,000 calories:

BI Graphics_2000 calories in perspective

While they tally up to the same number of calories, the two plans are far from equal.

"Both of these would give you the same number of calories, but only one of them will leave you feeling satiated and satisfied and give you the energy you need," says Whitehead.

That's because the meal on the right doesn't provide what Whitehead calls "balance" — essentially the right mix of proteins, complex carbohydrates, and fruits and vegetables that your body needs to be properly fueled in the long term. From the frosted cereal at breakfast to the white-bread sandwich at lunch to the refined pasta at dinner, the meal plan on the right is based around refined carbohydrates, which the body breaks down quickly. That means they'll give you a short burst of energy and make you feel full for a few hours, but probably leave you hungry before your next meal.

"Empty calories only give a temporary fix," Whitehead says.

avocado smoked salmon blueberries healthy food meal bowl tomatoes lunch

To keep energy levels up and keep you full and healthy for the long term, your diet needs to feed more than your stomach. It has to satiate your muscles, which crave protein, your digestive system, which runs at its best with fiber, and your tissues and bones, which work optimally when they're getting vitamins from food.

How we got to now, from grapefruit diets to Weight Watchers

It wasn't until 1990 that calories made an appearance on the food we buy, and they weren't required by law until four years later.

Before that, there was simply no way to know for sure what was in the food you bought. Several years after Peters gave her calorie talk, Spam debuted as one of the first processed convenience foods. When World War II broke out, the easy-to-eat, no-spoil food was a hit among soldiers, and for the next 20 years, conflict, rather than craving, shaped the American palate. "In the universe of processed food," Anastacia Marx de Salcedo writes in "Combat-Ready Kitchen," "World War II was the Big Bang." The 1960s saw the invention of two more processed-food milestones: The first chicken nugget and high-fructose corn syrup.

Perhaps in response to these unhealthy eating trends, severe diet fads emerged for each decade from Peters' day to the present. In the 1930s, about a decade after Polish biochemist Casimir Funk first recommended people get enough of certain micronutrients called "vitamines" (later found in abundance in citrus fruits and veggies), the first grapefruit diet emerged, followed by a banana-and-skim-milk diet promoted by United Fruit, the planet's leading banana importer. Several decades later, Weight Watchers surged in popularity, and in the 1970s, women were encouraged to take sleeping pills whenever they felt hungry.

Throughout history, most of these diets were heavily marketed to women, something that's still true today. Nevertheless, in Peters' day, she claimed to see weight loss as a tool that she and other women could use to liberate themselves, or, in her words, to become more "efficient."

Today, neither the mantra of "calorie is king" nor the allure of fad diets appears to have won out in the global battle for our waistlines. In a hint that calories are here to stay, President Obama in 2010 introduced a piece of legislation requiring every large American restaurant chain to display calorie counts on their menus. Just last summer, singer Katy Perry claimed the "M Diet," otherwise known as eating only raw mushrooms for one meal a day for two weeks, helped her lose fat in select areas of her body. Nevertheless, there is a move toward eating a more well-rounded diet based on vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats. It's a trend that dietitians and public-health experts say they're encouraged by.

eating healthy

Several recent studies suggest that whether you're looking for weight loss or to improve your health, the best eating plans are based around vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins. These diets generally also include a variety of healthy fats, like those from nuts, fish, avocados, and olive oil. In its most report on the best eating plans, US News and World Report described vegetable-based ("plant-based") diets as "good for the environment, your heart, your weight, and your overall health."

This means that while we can certainly use calories as a tool to guide our eating choices, we shouldn't live like Lulu Peters, focusing solely on one number.

"Calories should be a tool for information, rather than a way to live your life," says Whitehead.

SEE ALSO: A dietitian put two daily meal plans side-by-side to show the shortcomings of counting calories for weight loss

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The Golden Gate Bridge just turned 80 years old — take a look at its historic build

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golden gate bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge celebrates the 80th anniversary of its opening on Saturday, May 27.

"A necklace of surpassing beauty was placed about the lovely throat of San Francisco yesterday," wrote a San Francisco Chronicle reporter a day after the opening ceremonies in 1937.

The Golden Gate is neither the longest nor the tallest bridge in the US — but its marriage of engineering and art makes it one of the most stunning sites in the world.

These vintage photos show how the crown jewel of San Francisco's skyline came together.

SEE ALSO: The Brooklyn Bridge just turned 134 years old — here are 14 surprising facts about the iconic landmark

The proposal for a bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County overcame unlikely odds. Ferry companies fought it because it would cut into their profits carrying some 50,000 commuters a day into the city. Environmentalists thought it would be obtrusive.

Source: Kevin Starr



It is said that advocates of the bridge began to spread drawings of what it might look like, and its beauty won over the opposition. District voters approved a $35 million budget.

Source: SFGate



On July 9, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt pressed a button that that set off a charge of dynamite, starting construction work on the historic bridge over the San Francisco Bay.



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Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and supermodel Miranda Kerr got married in an 'intimate affair' on Saturday (SNAP)

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Evan Spiegel Miranda Kerr

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and supermodel Miranda Kerr have officially tied the knot.

The pair got married at their home in Brentwood, California, on Saturday, according to E! News, who spoke to people who attended the ceremony.

E! reports that the wedding was an "intimate affair," with fewer than 50 people in attendance, most of whom were "high-profile attendees and some models."

Spiegel is known for being secretive, and that extended to his nuptials, too: Guests were picked up checkpoints and driven to Spiegel and Kerr's home in blacked-out limos, according to TMZ, which shared photos and videos of guests arriving at the couple's home.

The event also apparently featured karaoke: TMZ staked out a spot outside and captured audio of what they say is Kerr singing a pretty impressive rendition of Shania Twain's "You're Still the One" to Spiegel.

Kerr started dating the 26-year-old CEO nearly two years ago, and a whirlwind romance followed, leading up to their engagement last year. Kerr was previously married to actor Orlando Bloom and the two have a six-year-old son.

E! has more details about the wedding — including the fact that a pianist played "When You Wish Upon a Star" during the cocktail hour — so head over to their site for more.

SEE ALSO: How Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel and supermodel Miranda Kerr met and fell in love

DON'T MISS: The fabulous life of Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, one of the youngest billionaires in the world

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Japanese family life is falling apart — and the reasons why go back to World War II

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japanese family

Japan is in the midst of a fertility crisis, and it's 65 years in the making.

Saddled with long work hours and rising expenses, young Japanese couples are opting not to have kids. Even if they have the energy to start a family, many simply don't have the time.

As a result, spending shrinks on the small scale and the Japanese economy contracts on the large scale. Japan has seen trillions in lost GDP over the past years, in combination with a population decline of 1 million people. Harvard sociologist Mary Brinton puts it bluntly: "This is death to the family," she tells Business Insider.

Japan's case isn't just extreme in scale; it's also extreme in how far the ripples of the past have extended into the present. Policies implemented in the early 1950s, in the aftermath of World War II, still shape the lives of many Japanese young people in 2017.

During the early 1950s, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida made it his top priority to rebuild Japan's economy. Much of the country had just been decimated in some form — if not by the two atomic bombs, then by the resulting effects on business and daily life.

Yoshida's plan involved a pact made between businesses and their employees. He called on companies to offer lifetime employment to their workers, asking that those workers devote the whole of their beings to those jobs.

The pact worked. Japan's economy emerged from the rubble as one of the strongest in the world. Japan became a manufacturing and technological hub, and almost none of the work came from outside the country's borders, save for trace populations of Chinese immigrants.

Ultimately, Japan's economy ended up becoming the third-strongest in the world. Its present-day GDP stands at $4.3 trillion.

But there was a high cost to that initial pact: Family life began to deteriorate. As more people began staying later at the office, and women began entering the workforce en masse, Japan's fertility rate started to plunge because its corporate structure wasn't built to accommodate both.

What started as a healthy 2.75 children per woman in the 1950s fell to 2.08 by 1960. Today, more than 50 years later, Japan's fertility rate sits at 1.41.

Yoshida's plan worked, and yet Japan still clings to its intense work culture. Frances Rosenbluth, a Yale University political scientist, says the early competition between firms to attract top talent for life has cemented Japan's corporate structure.

"You are promoted gradually with your class," she tells Business Insider. "You're sort of on this escalator of very steady, slow promotion. And if you leave your job you have to start over somewhere else. It's not a fluid labor market where you can pick up a job at another place with the assets you've accumulated in human capital."

This has led to many Japanese couples having almost no free time. Men work 16-hour days at times, while their wives may work similarly long hours. Some couples achieve a work-life balance by becoming entrepreneurs, allowing them to set their own schedules. But many fall victim to a system that dictates the roles men and women should play.

"Despite that there's an equal opportunity employment law, firms will find ways to avoid hiring and promoting women just for the economic reason," which is that women may leave to have kids, Rosenbluth says. "We call it statistical discrimination."

Rosenbluth says Japanese family life can't repair itself until companies make it easier to balance the demands of a job and home life. And since many firms don't see any incentive to do that, the government has a duty to offer tax breaks to those offer balance, Rosenbluth says.

Brinton takes a similar stance.

"No matter what you say, what you hear out of Prime Minister Abe's mouth, it's not about gender equality," she says. "It's about productivity of the economy and addressing the fact that Japan is one of the most rapidly aging societies in the world and they're going to run out of labor unless women have more babies."

SEE ALSO: 'This is death to the family': Japan's fertility crisis is creating economic and social woes never seen before

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You've probably been applying your cologne all wrong

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applying cologne

Fragrance is a bit of a conundrum for many. Much is misunderstood about it, and there hasn't been much of an effort to clear up the misconceptions.

There are three big mistakes men (and sometimes even women) make when applying fragrance: Applying to the wrong areas, applying too much, and rubbing it into the skin after application.

Fragrance is tricky. The oils in it are designed to be absorbed and melded with your skin's natural oils, creating your own unique scent. That can't happen when you apply it to your clothing, so never apply fragrance to anything but your skin.

That means you shouldn't spray it in a cloud and walk through it, either.

However, where you apply it on your skin also matters. You want to apply it somewhere warm, which will heat up and dissipate the oil's smell throughout the day. Too warm, however, and the smell might dissipate too quickly. Somewhere too cold, like a wrist, and the smells won't really travel far enough for people to notice you're wearing it.

The ideal place to apply cologne is the area between your chest and neck, inclusive of both. A bonus is that some men have chest hair, which can also trap some fragrance oil, increasing how long the smell might last on their skin.

As for amount, remember the cardinal rule of applying cologne: less is most certainly more.

"Cologne should be discovered, not announced," as Art of Manliness says. Overdo it, and you'll give everyone around you a headache, and probably yourself, too.

The purpose of wearing cologne is still to smell it, though, so make sure you're not too shy about it. Be brave but judicious.

Finally, after you apply the cologne, pat it into your skin but do not rubThis is not a lotion meant to be absorbed — it is an oil meant to sit on top of your skin and mix with your natural oils. Rubbing it in can cause it to be absorbed by your skin faster, and it can even distort the scent.

As for when and where you should wear cologne or fragrance? Well, that's entirely up to you.

SEE ALSO: The 9 biggest misconceptions everyone has about cologne and perfume

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The 21 best science movies and shows streaming on Netflix that will make you smarter

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Michael Pollan cooked

Sometimes, the best way to spend a long weekend or a hot summer day is to curl up on the couch and enjoy a film.

If you're looking for something entertaining and beautiful that'll also make you knowledgeable, there's an incredible variety of science- and nature-focused documentaries and TV episodes streaming on Netflix right now.

You can find compelling documentaries that'll captivate you with the beauty of the planet, you can delve into the details of how food arrives on your plate, or you can explore the mysterious and alien world that exists in oceans around the globe.

But there's a downside to all of that choice: It's a lot to choose from. So to make it easier, we've asked our colleagues to pick out some of their favorites from the Netflix documentary selection.

Here are our favorites, listed in no particular order:

Films come and go from Netflix every month, but as of the date of publication, all these films should be available on Netflix.

SEE ALSO: 24 health 'facts' that are actually wrong

"Cooked" (2016)

What it's about: Journalist and food expert Michael Pollan explores the evolutionary history of food and its preparation in this four-part docuseries through the lens of the four essential elements — fire, water, air, and earth. 

Why you should see it: Americans as a whole are cooking less, relying more on unhealthy, processed, and expensive and prepared foods. Pollan aims to bring viewers back to the kitchen by forging a meaningful connection to food and the joys of preparation. [Click to watch]



"Blackfish" (2013)

What it's about: This film highlights abuses in the sea park industry through the tale of Tilikum, an orca in captivity at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida. Tilikum has killed or been involved in the deaths of three people while living in the park. 

Why you should see it: This documentary opens your eyes to the troubles of keeping wild animals in captivity through shocking footage and emotional interviews, highlighting potential issues of animal cruelty and abuse when using highly intelligent animals as entertainment. Sea parks make billions of dollars off of keeping animals captive, often at the expense of the health and well-being of its animals. This documentary played a huge role in convincing SeaWorld to stop their theatrical "Shamu" killer whale shows. [Click to watch]



"Particle Fever" (2013)

What it's about: This documentary follows six scientists as they prepare for one of the biggest and most expensive experiments in history: recreating conditions from the Big Bang with the launch of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. Their aim is to unravel the mysteries of the universe and the origins of matter.

Why you should see it: Physics is often considered a forbiddingly dense subject, but 'Particle Fever' gives you a window into physics without breaking your brain. It documents the discovery of the famous Higgs boson particle that many physicists think holds the key to understanding the universe. Instead of getting bogged down with the complexities of particle physics, the film focuses more on the human drama of the discovery, and how it could change our understanding of the world around us. [Click to watch]



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

There's some evidence that the experiment to end tipping in restaurants might not work

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Le Pigeon in Portland OR

It's been less than a year since the owners of Portland, Oregon-based sister restaurants Le Pigeon and Little Bird Bistro decided to enforce a no-tipping policy.

Now they're bringing it back, Eater reported last week. 

Le Pigeon and Little Bird Bistro, both co-owned by Chef Gabriel Rucker and Andrew Fortgang, ditched service charges in June 2016 and January 2017, respectively. 

"We feel this is the direction that dining, and certainly fine dining, is headed over the next few years," co-owner Fortgang told The Oregonian in March 2016, when the decision about Le Pigeon was initially announced. "We want to get there and start living in that world."

Gabe Stulman, who owns Fedora in New York City, also announced that he would be walking back his restaurant's no-tipping policies earlier this month.

These business owners had followed the lead of famous restaurateur Danny Meyer, who started the impetus to ban tipping in the restaurants that make up his Union Square Hospitality Group, including the famous Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe. Meyer has said that tipping is a "hoax" that was brought in after slavery was abolished as a way to get away with not paying workers.

"Tipping started in our country right after the Civil War," Meyer said in an interview for the "Sporkful" podcast that we first saw on Yahoo Finance. "The restaurant industry as well as the Pullman train car industry successfully petitioned the United States government to make a dispensation for our industries that we would not pay our servers, but it wasn't considered slavery because we would ask our customers to pay tips. And therefore no one could say they that were being enslaved."

But tipping is so ingrained in our culture that some restaurants are struggling to get rid of it without putting customers off. To compensate for missing service charges, Fortgang had raised food and beverage prices by 20%.

"Even though the final cost of any given item was the same, the perception that things were a little too expensive was there," Fortgang told Eater.

According to Michael Lynn, a tipping expert and a professor at Cornell University School of Hotel and Administration, there's not really an obvious solution to the problem.

"The biggest reason for restaurateurs to replace tipping is that it takes revenue away from them in the form of lower prices and gives it to servers in the form of excessively high tip income," Lynn writes in a report for Cornell. "The biggest reason for restaurateurs to keep tipping is that it allows them to reduce menu prices, which increases demand."

Lynn concludes that restaurateurs should look at the level of income disparity between employees, specifically front-of-the-house versus back-of-the-house, and base their decision on that. This means, he says, that many expensive restaurants should replace tipping, as this is where the highest pay discrepancies exist. 

SEE ALSO: Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer calls tipping a massive hoax that was born out of slavery

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RANKED: The dirtiest objects in your kitchen

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It shouldn't come as a surprise that your home is one of the dirtiest places you come into contact with on a daily basis. Your bed sheets, towels, mattress, and kitchen sponge are all swarming with microbes. Most of these are harmless, but sometimes disease-causing germs — such as viruses and bacteria — can sneak onto your skin or into your mouth, eyes, or nose and make you sick.

Your kitchen is one of the biggest sources of these germs. In fact, many cases of food poisoning in the US are from cross-contamination of germs during food prep.

Here is a ranking of some of the dirtiest objects in your kitchen, based on a study that sampled three types of bacteria from kitchen objects in 10 homes in 2006.

While this report found that dish towels contained the most bacteria, microbiologist Philip Tierno has told us that sponges are actually the dirtiest object in the home — given that they're in regular contact with pathogenic substances such as those from raw poultry, vegetables, and humans. This discrepancy is likely because Tierno has taken more factors into account than just the presence of bacteria.

Dirtiest Object in Kitchen

Julia Calderone contributed to an earlier version of this article.

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NOW WATCH: Your kitchen sponge is disgusting, and there's only one good way to clean it

Try this renowned steakhouse marinade recipe for the ultimate steak

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Most steak gurus will tell you that a dry rub is best. But when you are feeling bold, try this marinade recipe from Quality Meats Steakhouse of NYC. It is the perfect tangy mixture that explodes with flavor.  

The Quality Meats steak marinade works best with bavette, skirt, flank and flatiron steaks. Mix the ingredients below and marinade steak for at least an hour. Grill steak for 2-3 minutes on each side. 

  • 7 tablespoons garlic finely chopped
  • 8 tablespoons sugar
  • 24 tablespoons oyster sauce
  • 3 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 1/2 tablespoon ground pepper
  • 6 tablespoons soy sauce

Enjoy!

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11 grammatical mistakes that instantly reveal people's ignorance

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boss, meeting, work, employee

All it takes is a single tweet or text for some people to reveal their poor grasp of the English language.

Homophones — words that sound alike but are spelled differently — can be particularly pesky.

Regardless, you should never choose incorrectly in these nine situations:

1. 'Your' vs. 'You're'

"Your" is a possessive pronoun, while "you're" is a contraction of "you are."

Example 1: You're pretty. 

Example 2: Give me some of your whiskey.

2. 'It's' vs. 'Its'

Normally, an apostrophe symbolizes possession, as in, "I took the dog's bone." But because apostrophes also replace omitted letters — as in "don't" — the "it's" vs. "its" decision gets complicated. 

Use "its" as the possessive pronoun and "it's" for the shortened version of "it is."

Example 1: The dog chewed on its bone.

Example 2: It's raining.

3. 'Then' vs. 'Than'

"Then" conveys time, while "than" is used for comparison. 

Example 1: We left the party and then went home.

Example 2: We would rather go home than stay at the party.

4. 'There' vs. 'They're' vs. 'Their'

"There" is a location. "Their" is a possessive pronoun. And "they're" is a contraction of "they are."

Use them wisely. 

5. 'We're' vs. 'Were'

"We're" is a contraction of "we are" and "were" is the past tense of "are."

6. 'Affect' vs. 'Effect'

"Affect" is a verb and "effect" is a noun.

There are, however, rare exceptions. For example, someone can "effect change" and "affect" can be a psychological symptom. 

Example: How did that affect you? 

Example: What effect did that have on you?

7. 'Two' vs. 'Too' vs. 'To'

"Two" is a number. 

"To" is a preposition. It's used to express motion, although often not literally, toward a person, place, or thing.

And "too" is a synonym for "also."

8. 'Into' vs. 'In To'

"Into" is a preposition that indicates movement or transformation, while "in to," as two separate words, does not.

Example: We drove the car into the lake. 

Example: I turned my test in to the teacher. 

In the latter example, if you wrote "into," you're implying you literally changed your test into your teacher.

9. 'Alot'

"Alot" isn't a word. This phrase is always two separate words: a lot.

10. 'Who' vs. 'Whom'

Use who to refer to the subject of a sentence and whom to refer to the object of the verb or preposition. Shortcut: Remember that who does it to whom.

Example: Who ate my sandwich?

Example: Whom should I ask?

11. 'Whose' vs. 'Who's'

Use "whose" to assign ownership to someone and "who's" as the contraction of "who is."

Example: Whose backpack is on that table?

Example: Who's going to the movies tonight?

Christina Sterbenz contributed to a previous version of this story.

SEE ALSO: The 10 best MBA programs you can finish while keeping your day job

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Here are all the jaw-dropping looks from the Cannes Film Festival red carpet

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Charlize Theron Cannes Chris Jackson Getty

The big stars are in the South of France looking their most glamorous for this year's Cannes Film Festival and getting their photos shared across the world.

Following her eye-catching red dress at last year's Cannes, model Bella Hadid returned to the festival to grace the legendary red carpet. But fellow model Emily Ratajkowski also showed up and was turning everyone's head. Then there are the movie stars like Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Elle Fanning, Robin Wright, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Williams, Charlize Theron, and Uma Thurman. 

And Rihanna pretty much put everyone to shame.

But the person having the best time has to be festival jury member Will Smith. When he's not arguing about Netflix with jury president Pedro Almodóvar, he's having an incredible time walking the carpet and waving to the fans.

Here are photos of all the stars looking fabulous at this year's Cannes:

  

SEE ALSO: RANKED: The 11 best movies of the year so far

Here's Robert Pattinson for the premiere of his movie "Good Time."



Here's Pattinson with his "Good Time" directors Benny and Josh Safdie.



David Lynch celebrated the return of "Twin Peaks" with a smoke on the red carpet for its Cannes premiere.



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A podiatrist explains why flip-flops are terrible for your feet

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Podiatric surgeon Dr. Jacqueline Sutera explains why flip-flops aren't sensible footwear, and outlines some of the long-term consequences of overwearing them. Following is a transcript of the video.

Flip-flops are really bad, again, because they're very flat, and they're super thin.

There's just those thin little thong straps that are holding your foot to the shoe. When you're wearing the flip-flop, your toes tend to overgrip a little bit and that can cause a lot of different types of pains, especially if you overuse them.

They really should be reserved for just poolside and the beach and kind of just casual, not for everyday, walking around.

You can develop plantar fasciitis, which is a common one. That just means that there is inflammation at the bottom of the foot. There's a ligament called your plantar fascia, and that runs along your whole entire arch.

So, arch pain, heel pain — if you have bunions and hammertoes flip-flops can make them a lot worse because, again, you're overgripping. And, even different types of tendonitis and ankle sprain, because you're not really stable inside that shoe.

A bunion is basically a dislocation of the big toe joint. There's a bony prominence, like a big red bump that starts to form on the big toe joint on the side. This can lead to all kinds of problems. You don't fit well into your shoes, you'll start having pain when you walk, and it'll also start to contribute to different other problems like hammertoes, and corns, and things like that.

The good news is that there's some versions of those flip-flops that are better than others. So, look for a type that has a thicker sole, maybe a little bit thicker strap, and definitely has, like, an arch support. And, there's really great brands that have that.

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An artist put a statue of a urinating dog next to 'Fearless Girl' in protest

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fearless girl

People are still deeply unhappy about "Fearless Girl," the sculpture that was installed near Wall Street to promote women in leadership and stare down "Charging Bull."

The New York Post reported on Monday that the sculptor Alex Gardega installed a statue of a small dog called "Pissing Pug" that aims at the left leg of "Fearless Girl."

The sculpture doesn't exactly look like a dog, but Gardega said that was intentional to convey how "Fearless Girl" downgrades "Charging Bull," the fixture that precedes both.

"Fearless Girl" was installed with a temporary permit on International Women's Day, March 8, by the mutual fund State Street Global Advisors as part of a campaign to pressure companies to add more women to their boards.

Arturo Di Modica, the creator of "Charging Bull," called it an advertising trick and appealed to New York City officials to remove the sculpture that stares at his own. He's suing State Street over copyright infringement.

After a petition and lots of tourist selfies, the city extended its permit until 2018.

Gardega said his pug was not a statement against feminism but was meant to show that "Fearless Girl" was disrespectful to the creator of "Charging Bull," The Post reported.

"Charging Bull" was installed outside the New York Stock Exchange after the 1987 stock-market crash as a symbol of America's resilience.

According to NY1 News, the pug statue was removed early on Tuesday.

SEE ALSO: A likely shift in the mortgage market is creating 'prisoners' in housing

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Inside the $12 million home where Snap CEO Evan Spiegel reportedly just married model Miranda Kerr

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evan spiegel LA house

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel married supermodel Miranda Kerr during an "intimate" event in their Brentwood, California, home on Saturday, E! News reported.

Spiegel and Kerr bought their lavish home for $12 million last year, as TMZ first reported. The 7,164-square-foot home came with city views, a pool and pool house, a home gym, and a guest house.

Take a look around the home that hosted an estimated 50 people for the wedding ceremony and reception on Saturday.

SEE ALSO: No one wants to buy this $20 million townhouse owned by a real-life 'Wolf of Wall Street'-er

Renowned California architect Gerard Colcord designed the house.



It's in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.



There's more than 7,100 square feet of living space.



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New York's hottest bar was once an office for a millionaire railroad executive

This all-American vodka adds a serious bite to classic cocktails

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Tito's Vodka

In the world of vodka, innovation has been rampant for decades.

When I was first starting to drink "grown-up" spirits, vodka was supposed to be Russian. But that's all changed.

Absolut brought Sweden into the picture and set off on a flavor odyssey that continues today. The revelation here was that countries outside the former Soviet Union could do transparent firewater.

Grey Goose — a French vodka — eventually created the premium vodka market, a remarkable thing, as I had been raised to believe that outside Stoli, all vodka was essentially global moonshine, a basic spirit made from whatever was lying around and could be cooked up in the still.

American wines and craft beers became a thing in the 1980s and 1990s (and beyond), so it was only a matter of time before somebody decided that American vodka was a good idea. Not the kind of stuff the revenuers would run you down for making in the backwoods — rather, something you could sell in respectable establishments.

Enter Bert Butler "Tito" Beveridge II, a Texan who discovered that he could legally set up a distillery in the Lone Star State. The rest is history: Tito's Handmade Vodka went from being truly handmade, distilled six times from corn, to being one of the biggest success story in American booze since Prohibition was repealed. 

Some folks have turned away from Tito's as production has surged, but I'd never really bought much of the stuff, even though at $20, it's quite reasonable. My vodka of choice is Finlandia, also priced at about $20, with a relatively smooth mouthfeel and some spicy nip. 

Tito's sent me some vodka to sample, and over a month I used it to mix my two main vodka cocktails, with a focus on making one of them as all-American as possible. They were the Bloody Mary and the Dirty Vodka Martini. (I also sampled Tito's straight, over a bit of ice, just to test the overall flavors, which as many reviewers have noted, tend to be sweet-ish, due to the corn used in the distilling process. I don't really like straight vodka, but Tito's was a tasty quaff.)

martini cocktail

Let's talk about the martini first. I make a very specific style of Dirty Vodka Martini, and with Tito's I noticed almost immediately something that would define the spirit for me: its bite. Mind you, Tito's doesn't have a reputation for being a harsh drink, and it wasn't harshness that I was detecting. It was just an edge. For the olive brine, I used a Canadian brew (despite some searching, I couldn't find anything from the USA in my neck of the woods), so I guess I ended up with a NAFTA Dirty Vodka Martini, but it was certainly better than taking brine straight from a jar of olives.

The bite persisted with the Bloody Mary, which I make using either a basic, store-bought mix — often good old Mr. and Mrs. T, but modified with pepper, Tabasco or some other hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce — or my own, which I make from scratch using tomato paste and a variety of other ingredients. I like my Bloody to have some snap from the liquor that cuts through all the other flavors, and Tito's performed well in this respect. (And I guess made for a true all-American vodka cocktail!)

Bloody Mary Cocktail Drink Celery

On balance I'd say that if I were making Bloody Marys, I'd reach for Tito's in a heartbeat. For martinis, I might think otherwise, but that's more of a personal thing, given that I prefer a more silvery and smooth texture. I'm also not so sure I'd go for Tito's with sweet mixers, although a summertime vodka tonic would be on the agenda. Something about that sweetness blending with the tonic and the lime would be pleasant, and the bite would give that otherwise boring concoction some character.

One can now find plenty of American vodkas at varying price points, and we really do owe a debt to Tito's for setting off the surge. It's always been easy to be cynical about vodka as a spirit, largely because it's easy to produce a vodka that's effectively just see-through hooch in a bottle (or a plastic jug).

The great thing about Tito's is that it is widely distributed and the quality is uniform. The price is also just right. Again, I wouldn't use it for every cocktail that requires vodka. But I'd definitely use it for some of my favorites. 

SEE ALSO: These 22 whiskeys just won the highest honor at an international spirits competition

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NOW WATCH: Here's how to make the perfect Old Fashioned cocktail

The salary you need to earn to buy a home right now in 19 of the most expensive housing markets in America

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beautiful neighborhood homes

If you want to buy a home, it will cost you.

Mortgage site HSH.com has updated its estimate of how much annual income a household would need to buy a home in major metropolitan areas in the US, according to first-quarter 2016 data.

In Q1, the site found that the prices of sold homes in the majority of the markets it examined dropped from Q4 2016, but an increase in 30-year mortgage rates more than countered that drop. Between the mortgage rates and the prices — which may have been less than Q4 but were still more than a year prior — the average home price increased by about 9% across all markets.

HSH.com looked at median home prices from the National Association of Realtors. It took into account interest rates for common 30-year fixed-rate mortgages and property taxes and insurance costs to figure out how much money it would take to pay a median-priced home's mortgage, taxes, and insurance in each city, and how much you'd have to earn to afford it.

HSH.com emphasizes that this is only the base cost of owning a home, without taking into account maintenance and other incidentals.

The site also calculated how it would change the salary needed to buy a home if a buyer were to put 10% down instead of the recommended 20%. No matter where you are, putting down less makes things more expensive — you can visit HSH.com to see both numbers.

Salaries are listed from lowest to highest needed and are rounded to the nearest $500.

SEE ALSO: Here's how much you need to earn to live comfortably in 15 major US cities while still saving money

19. San Antonio

Population: 1,409,000

Median home price: $202,600

Monthly mortgage payment: $1,186

Salary needed to buy: $51,000



18. Philadelphia

Population: 1,517,628

Median home price: $209,000

Monthly mortgage payment: $1,221

Salary needed to buy: $52,500



17. Orlando

Population: 255,483

Median home price: $230,000

Monthly mortgage payment: $1,229

Salary needed to buy: $52,500



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