To Be Healthier, Happier, And More Productive, Stand Up From Your Desk Right Now

“Sitting is the new smoking.” - Nilofer Merchant

If you must sit for work, the proper posture and breathing can help.

Here’s how.

If you eat processed food and you’re not a vegan, a decent portion of your diet probably comes from factory-farmed eggs. Sure, you may stick to cage-free eggs when you’re cooking omelets, but 95% of eggs in the U.S. come from battery-caged facilities where birds are packed body to body in impossibly small spaces.

A San Francisco startup wants to change that. It makes a plant-based egg substitute so believable that it’s about to sign two deals with Fortune 500 food companies that want to use the stuff in sauces and dressings.

Inside the company producing the most realistic fake eggs you’ll ever taste

fastcodesign:

A new app called Moves could be the simplest fitness app ever.

• It lives in your iPhone and tracks your activity in the background, so there’s no separate device to learn how to use or remember to carry (you already have your phone on you at all times).
• There’s no setup: You install it, turn it on, and that’s it.
• And there’s no management, syncing, or any other “interactive” bullshit to forget to do or get bored of and stop doing altogether. You don’t even have to launch it—Moves will simply ding a little summary of your physical activity into your Notifications Center every day, where you’ll end up seeing it regardless of what you’re doing with your phone.

Essentially, Moves gives you no more excuses.

4 Ways To Prevent Burnout Before It’s Too Late

This is what happens when you log one too many Red Bull-fueled 80-hour work weeks:

I remember coming home and curling up into a ball. I was so emotionally and physically exhausted, I couldn’t even move. My productivity was cut to nothing. The next day at the office, I found myself just staring into my computer, for hours. No movement, just staring.

That’s Andrew Dumont, the creator of Strideapp.com, describing his first startup experience. Just pushing through wasn’t an option—dude was burnt out.

Understanding burnout

• Exhaustion: feeling over-extended by your work
• Depersonalization: feeling alienated from your work
• Personal accomplishment: feeling like you can never get enough done

Preventing burnout

John Coates’ book, The Hour Between Dog And Wolf, goes deep into the physiology of stress. In it he observes that exhaustion, fatigue, and anxiety are all “messages sent from our body telling us what actions we should take”—which means that we need to listen closely. To get an idea of how, read our excerpt.

As the Burnout Inventory suggests, burnout isn’t only physical, but also emotional.

An antidote, then, is to do work that’s meaningful.

Thing is, you won’t have time to ponder the meaning of your days if you’re filled up with meaningless tasks.

If we don’t carve out the time to reflect, we sure won’t.

And remember: busy is the new lazy.

Finally, you won’t be able to think unless you eat well.

According to Dumont, “eating the right food can help extend your runway.”

And eating with the right people can extend your network. 

Avoiding Burnout

[Image: Flickr user Jan]

Inside the making of Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco

Since it launched in early 2012, Taco Bell has sold more than 450 million Doritos Locos Tacos.

But its creation started back in 2009 with a trip to Home Depot. To show executives how the companies could fuse the flavor of Doritos with taco shells, the dev teams “basically went out to Home Depot to buy a paint-spray gun, and then sprayed [Doritos] flavoring onto our existing yellow corn tacos,” recalls Taco Bell CEO Greg Creed.

“It was pretty funny watching people from behind glass spraying our tacos with a paint gun. But it was enough for us to know conceptually that we had a big idea.”

In order to create the DLT, the teams had to consider everything from seasoning mechanics to the taco’s structural integrity throughout 2010 and 2011. “Frito-Lay wanted what’s called a ‘teeth-rattling crunch,’ so they wanted it to snap and crunch more than the current Taco Bell shell snaps and crunches,” Creed says. “So we had to get that formula changed, then we had to find a way to deliver the flavoring, and then the seasoning. I mean, it was actually important that we left the orange dusting on your fingers because otherwise, we’re not delivering the genuine Doritos [experience].”

Keep reading…

Jawbone, maker of the UP activity monitoring wristband, announced today that it will acquire BodyMedia to bolster its efforts in the wearable technology space.

The UP device currently tracks more than a billion steps and 610,000 hours of sleep every day, but the acquisition of BodyMedia, a company which has been doing similar work in the space since 1999, will open the company up to a swath of new data. Just how much data? Its monitors have collected more than 500 trillion body sensor data points. 

More…

Nuclear Fallout Kills 370x Less People Than Coal

A nuclear reactor meltdown is mankind’s worst sci-fi nightmare. And NASA says, it’s not nearly as lethal as the coal we burn every day…

Here’s the story.

Doctors Determine The Enormous Body Count Of Sugary Drinks

We know in the abstract that sugary drinks are bad for us, but exactly how bad? When researchers crunch the numbers, they find that 184,000 people a year are dying from diseases directly related to consuming soda and other heavily sugared beverages.

Find out more here.

Having Friends Could Save Your Life

So grab that drink with your friend after work.

Here’s a new health risk to worry about as you get older: A lack of human contact. According to researchers from Brigham Young University, low social interaction has the equivalent lifespan impact as smoking 15 cigarettes daily, or being a raging alcoholic. Cutting yourself off from others is worse, even, than inactivity. And twice as bad as obesity. So, you better start making friends.

Read the full article here.

An experimental gene therapy program in Pennsylvania has helped numerous patients fight leukemia by using a disabled form of HIV to reprogram their bodies.

Photo source.

Where do the healthiest people in America live?

A Map Of Healthy Eating In The U.S.

Red meat is a large portion of the American diet (the proliferation of awesome burger joints in New York City isn’t helping much). A new study suggests some terrifying risks that come with eating even just a little read meat.

Infographic: Red Meat Is Killing Us