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Or, maybe those kids' taste buds are actually signalling them to get the nutritious food first

Except that's not what is happening.

Eating crap like chicken nuggets teaches kids to crave foods with crazy amounts of sugar and salt, and it skews their tastebuds to preferring crap. Chicken nuggets aren't more nutritious. They're full of more crap.

What's the nutritious value of broccoli, anyways?

Quite a lot, actually

Broccoli is an excellent source of vitamin K, vitamin C, chromium, and folate. It is a very good source of dietary fiber, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6, vitamin E, manganese, phosphorus, choline, vitamin B1, vitamin A (in the form of carotenoids), potassium, and copper. Broccoli is also a good source of vitamin B1, magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids, protein, zinc, calcium, iron, niacin, and selenium.

Broccoli is also concentrated in phytonutrients. In one particular phytonutrient categoryâ"glucosinolatesâ"broccoli is simply outstanding. The isothiocyanates (ITCs) made from broccoli's glucosinolates are the key to broccoli's cancer-preventive benefits.

In other words, it's really really good for you.

There's a reason vegetable gardens used to be wayyyy smaller than the main crops.

Yes, because you were selling your main crop, you were surviving off your vegetable garden.

The problem is we're now on second (or third) generations of kids who have only ever eaten crap food, have been conditioned to find that food tastier, and utterly refuse to eat good food.

Look around, you can see entire families who eat like spoiled children. They won't eat vegetables. They don't cook. It's either fast food, or prepared food.

What I see is a generation of kids who never learned to eat vegetables raising another generation of kids who never will learn to eat vegetables. And I routinely see young kids as fat as I am ... and it took me a lot of years to get here.

Some of these kids are going to start keeling over in their 20s and 30s.

Even if you do live in such a place, if you eat any amount of seaweed, iodized salt, deep sea fish, or meat regularly you have enough iodine to protect your thyroid. Heck, if you have any sort of well-balanced diet and eat whole foods instead of just doritos, twinkies, and Mt Dew, you'd have nothing to worry about.

http://www.weightlossforall.com/foods-rich-iodine.htm
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=69
http://www.brighthub.com/health/diet-nutrition/articles/45140.aspx

Besides, the amount of iodine you would need even if the worst case were to occur is minisule and easily absorbed through a balanced diet. Check out the radiation emergency section of the following article:

http://www.drugs.com/mtm/potassium-iodide.html

Why not spend the trivial amount for potassium iodide? Because unless you really, really need to take it (because you were within range of a criticality event, are working in a damaged reactor, are within fallout from a severe Chernobyle-scale accident which cannot happen with these Japanese reactors, etc) the risk to your liver is much higher than the risk of incidental radiation. Besides, you get exposed to more radiation from the TSA's crappy full body scanners than you would from the fallout from the reactors.

http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/sanjuans/isj/news/118092749.html
http://www.9news.com/news/article/187711/188/Radiation-fears-Who-needs-nuke-pills-and-who-doesnt-

Perhaps you have magic eyes that can look at a piece of fish and see the mercury in it. Do you have any useful advice (i.e. not platitudes) for those of us with normal vision?

The cocksucking regulators do. As do a large number of medical, consumer, and environmental advocacy groups.

List of nutrition and benefits:
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=43

Recent research says that "phytosteroids" in spinach improves muscle growth but I consider any new research with big claims to be bullshit until enough time has passed for it to be vetted.

In general, it really does have a lot of nutrition and a lot of flavor. If you've gotta eat your leafy greens, might as well down some tasty spinach. Raw is good. Cooking enables better digestion. I like to just wilt them a bit rather than render them down into goo.

Perform some Ba duan jin's. You can do them at work, throughout the day. You do not need much space, It does not build muscles, but it will relax your muscles so that blood circulation is improved, and if you do them regularly it will do wonders for your health.

Also, change your eating habits. Replace anything that contains carbohydrates with fat & proteins, and you will shed body fat very quickly. Read the excellent book Life Without Bread, written by a guy who is now 96. Ive replaced all sugary snacks I normally ate throughout the day with almonds, peanuts (unsalted!), and 90% chocolate. Especially unsalted almonds are the perfect finger food. They are highly addictive AND healthy, and although they contain lots of fat you will loose weight eating them.

Ive switched from coffee to green tea. It is a hell of a lot healthier. Just have a look at this study: for men, 12% lower risk of dying from any cause, 22% lower risk of dying from CVD, 42% lower risk of dying from stroke. Its even better for women.

I ran the numbers recently as well, here is what I came up with. Note that I didn't do any actual measurements and relied only on what I could find in google with a few minutes searching. I've made some pretty generous (read, unrealistically optimistic) assumptions about what the human body is capable of and what people will put up with to have power.

Here is a ballpark estimation of the practicality of human power generation.

Let's assume that a person who's profession was power generation would be highly fit and well suited to long hours turning a generator at high output. If such a person could maintain an electrical output of 400W for 10 hours a day he would produce 4 kilowatt hours of electrical energy (ignoring conversion loss for the sake of simplicity). This is beyond mere 'Olympic' performance and well into the realm of the 'heroic', similar to a good bicycle sprint for 10 hours.

Given a heroic muscular efficiency of 30% (beyond the human normal range of 14-27%) this 4 kilowatt hours represents about 13kWh of input power, or food. This is about 11,000 dietary calories. I'll presume that the waste heat is too low-grade for power generation, but could be used to offset living space heating requirements during cold weather.

If we feed our hero nothing but soybeans (inexpensive and fairly energy dense at 1.75cal/gram and 0.00025 cents per gram in bulk ($6.80 for 60lb) he will need about 6.25 kilos of beans a day, at a price of about $1.60.

So your human power will cost in the range of 40 cents per kilowatt hour, or about 4 times the price of grid electrical power, presuming you can find teams of heroes willing to donate their time for free.

The US consumes around 4,000,000,000,000 kilowatt hours per year. At a rate of 1460 kWh per hero per year, you will need to employ 2,700,000,000 people (almost half the world population) each year to produce the required electrical power. Feeding them will require about 6,100,000,000,000 kilos of beans a year, or about 90 times the annual US soybean crop. You may be able to reduce the number of people required slightly with a methane capture system :) You can probably increase efficiency by feeding the heros that die in the line of duty to the living heros, thereby recyling a hundred or 2 pounds of material.

A typical household in the US consumes about 30 kWh per day. Consider that this is about 8 heroes pedaling generators in your basement, consuming a 40 pound bag of soybeans each day.

Powering a typical smallish refrigerator requires about one kilowatt-hour per day, so it would only take one hero two and a half hours to keep your food cold (or, if he is charging a battery, 5 hours after losses).

A typical real person could reasonably be expected to produce 200W for an hour a day (maybe 2 for extremely dedicated individuals), certainly enough to charge small devices like laptops, but just a drop in the bucket next to the power used by a typical person.

Kinda puts the power of fossil fuels into perspective.

refs:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us.ht ml
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html
http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?I ndicatorID=46&Country=US
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice &dbid=79
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/06032 2113511.htm
http://coachesinfo.com/category/rowing/77/
http://homepage.mac.com/moises.santillan/paper

First I've heard of it (black pepper in green tea), but it doesn't appear to be his own invention:

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice &dbid=146

An animal study suggests that consuming the spice, black pepper, when drinking green tea can significantly increase the amount of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) absorbed. In this study, rats and mice given green tea along with piperine (a bioactive component in black pepper) absorbed 130% more EGCG than control animals receiving EGCG alone.

Goodie, I want more EGCG in my diet!

Gulthek notes that tea is pretty quick and lets you select how much (if any) sweetness to have. One thing to note is that green tea is chock full of healthy stuff. The list of health benefits on that page goes on and on. Of the varieties of tea, green is the least processed which is usually a good indicator that it's the most healthy. Start off by getting some prepackaged stuff just to see if you could like it. If so, then you can start doing your own thing and getting some good-quality stuff.

I know you were asking for a soda substitute that isn't too bad for you. This is one substitute that is actually good for you. Give it a try. You might really like it.

GMD

Gulthek notes that tea is pretty quick and lets you select how much (if any) sweetness to have. One thing to note is that green tea is chock full of healthy stuff. The list of health benefits on that page goes on and on. Of the varieties of tea, green is the least processed which is usually a good indicator that it's the most healthy. Start off by getting some prepackaged stuff just to see if you could like it. If so, then you can start doing your own thing and getting some good-quality stuff.

I know you were asking for a soda substitute that isn't too bad for you. This is one substitute that is actually good for you. Give it a try. You might really like it.

GMD

In regards to the sun I work with my shirt off and let the window open for about an hour a day. I have a 'jekyl/hyde' tan where half of my body is becoming bronze as the other is pasty. I should look into knocking out this wall here and putting in a window.

~As stated on the Worlds Best Foods website:
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient& dbid=95

Actually, the whole title of beer or wine being "healthy" is rediculous. Alcohol is the most damaging food product you can put in your body. It's far worse than trans-fatty acids, artificial ingredients (e.g., pesticides, food coloring), or sugar. I defy you to find any reputable medical researcher who would encourage people to take up drinking for health benefits. You want the health benefits of wine or beer? Eat some grapes instead. You'll get the benefits of the flavonoids without the damaging effects of the alcohol.

Look, I have nothing against alcohol. I love wine and I'm fortunate to live in an area known for exceptional wine growing. But let's not kid ourselves about alcohol being some kind of health food. So put away your low-carb beer and your red wine and drink what you want -- in moderation.

GMD