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The Ultimate Geek Food
Triune writes, "Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has started Scott Adams Foods in order to sell their new burrito-type snack that contains 100% of most, if not all, the daily requirements. The
Dilberito!" The ultimate geek food? You'd elect this over ramen noodles? Note to Andover execs - exploit marketing possibilities of the CmdrTaco.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
Wait just a minute... what's this about daily requirements?? Here's the excerpt from the Indian Dilberito page:
Total Fat 5g 8% 8%
Saturated Fat 0g 0% 0%
Cholesterol 0mg 0% 0%
Sodium 630mg 26% 28%
Potassium 230mg 9% 10%
Total Carb 53g 18% 21%
Dietary Fiber 3g 12% 12%
Sugars 4g
Protein 8g
While the page *does* say that it provides 100% of many vitamins and minerals, the above is clearly not 100%.
Also, note that Total cereal DOES THE EXACT SAME THING in their marketing. You've seen the ads where they scroll down the Nutrition Facts and everything says 100% - that doesn't count the PROTEIN you need, it's only the vitamins and minerals.
If something with "100% of your Daily Requirements" were the ultimate geek food, Total would be much more popular than ramen.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
About the Taco Bell delivered food...why they don't do it. I work for Pizza Hut Delivery, which, as some of us know, is the same company as Taco Bell and KFC...and I can explain to you why you won't ever get a Grande Meal brought to your door: construction problems. Around here they have Taco Bell/KFC/Pizza Hut combo restaurants that used to deliver all three foods to people using the pizza drivers, but all this did was create problems with the Taco Bell food because it falls apart and gets messed up relatively easy. Fried chicken and Pizza are incredibly durable, a Chalupa is not. You can order KFC and Hut food delivered and get it intact(trust me, it goes through hell getting there in one of our cars), but tacos just don't fare as well.
This may be off-topic, this may be a "troll" according to some of the recent moderation, but it is meant as informative or to be left alone...
Dan
I remember reading about this a long time ago. Basically, Scott Adams was grossed out by something and became a vegitarian. He couldn't find any good vegitarian foods out there, so he decided to make his own. No preservatives. I prefer Pizza Rolls myself.
Slashdot poll: Which snack food do you like best?
They spray it with vitamins and stuff. Now I'm going to be sick.
d /index.html
http://cnn.com/FOOD/news/9910/20/functional.foo
jpowers
-jpowers
So, say what you will about Adams, it seems that, by investing his own money to develop the Dilberito, he's trying to help people eat healthier without having to become "nutrition geeks." The "Dilbert" name and packaging is just a way to market it to people (like sugar-coating on pills, perhaps).
It's a noble goal, whether or not its actual execution is flawed. (And I've never tasted or even seen a Dilberito, so I can't yet judge for myself, but next time I'm in the local King Soopers, I'll have a look for 'em.) So, before you condemn Adams out of hand, ask yourself how healthy you eat on a regular basis (and I know I for one am flawed in that respect). If Adams can leverage the Dilbert brand to get a few more people to eat healthy for once, isn't it worth it?
Eric
--
"Free your code...and the rest will follow."
Be who you are...and be it in style!
if you're really looking at this from the hacker perspective, you view eating from a utilitarian and pleasure-oriented point of view. first, you need to eat, and second, you can have very happy sensations when you eat certain foods. the utilitarian bit is what makes you want to eat one thing that contains all your vitamins and minerals and whatnot so that you can stay alive as efficiently as possible. the pleasure-oriented part is what make you eat doritoes and coke and unhealthy stuff that tastes yummy.
what I propose is the following - get as many vitamins and minerals as possible through the use of dietary supplements. quite simple - you can eat a handful of pills and never work about scurvy or any other wierd deficiency no matter what other shit you eat.
then you eat a lot of something that fills you up but isnt loaded with fat. I prefer Fla*Vor*Ice, sometimes I switch to bleached white Wonder bread (mmmmmmmm); you might like cheez-its or doritoes or any number of things. IMPORTANT - do not pick something like "pork rinds" or "lard" for this unless you want to turn into a disgusting blob. eat this food all day, every day.
then, every time you feel like eating something else specifically, go get some. i.e., if suddently you want a pastrami sandwich, or some steak, or some carrots, or some tofu, get it. your general sense of fullness will prevent you from pigging out on these sporadic demand-items, but you won't die of protein deficiency or anything of the sort, because when your body needs something, it will tell you.
the funny thing is.. why does scott adams avoid mentioning this? it's nowhere on the website or in any of the press releases. it's like he's trying to sneak veganity past the unwashed masses. I suppose that's what the "nobody knows how to eat healthily" and "make the world a better place" doublespeak is about.
the other funny thing: my vegan friends tell me that caseinate (one of the main ingredients in the "non-dairy cheese") is milk-derived and not vegan-safe. maybe this is some kind of synthetic casein? maybe he's too vegan for real cheese, but not too vegan for artifical cheese with milk protein?
as far as people pointing out that it's not really a "complete day's nutrition," it's worth noting that the only things they don't have 100%usra of are the things you normally get much too much of. it is *just hard* to live in america and consume less than 100% of your recommended fat, protein, sodium etc intakes -- this is called dieting, and it's not something coders are known for. you wouldn't eat just a burrito in a whole day -- you'd grab some chips and jolt or something. one of these dilberitos plus a serving or two of unhealthy junk food will give you a great approximation of the rda's.
But in response to your question, I think a lot of this junk food ethic comes from college. I live in a dorm and we're not allowed to have hotplates or anything in our rooms (although I do have an "illegal" hotplate, but that doesn't really help prepare a huge meal). There is a kitchen in the building, but I live on the third floor and the kitchen is in the basement, so that's a no-go right there.
When I was on break, I cooked lots and lots. Hot dogs, pasta dishes, fancy meals, steaks, everything. I would love to be able to cook meals all the time but it's just not possible.
I realize many "geeks" (note, I don't really consider myself a true "geek") are no longer in college, but the move from college to work is often a matter of location. They find themselves doing the same thing at work as they did in college and so they fall into the habits they had in college. Pulling an all-nighter to get the server running? Well, eat the Dilberto.
Also, I usually get hungry around 2 am. There aren't many places that deliver at 2 am and preparing a huge dish that late is a pain. So there the Dilberto (or other quick/junk food) comes in handy.
These are just theories, of course.
_________________
rooooar
For those all-night hacks, pizza and microwaved burritos are big. Interestingly, though the mainstream culture has tended to think of hackers as incorrigible junk-food junkies, many have at least mildly health-foodist attitudes and are fairly discriminating about what they eat. This may be generational; anecdotal evidence suggests that the stereotype was more on the mark before the early 1980s. (Italics mine.)
Geeks' affinity for junk food is a stereotype that has its roots in reality but doesn't stretch its branches far enough to cover us all.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
Sounds like just the thing for me. I'm a 'not so strict' vegetarian, but my choices are still pretty limited. It's nice to have this option. I'll give them all a try anyway.
:)
:)
And Newton, NJ? Well, that's a helluva nod to Apple, huh? Especially for a discontinued product.
I think I see a pattern here... Newton, Apples, Macintosh, Healthy Burritos from Scott Adams, hmmm...
I think I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader...
In any case, they've gotta be better than 'Penguin Patties' (TM)
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
fish in a barrel indeed!
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Subject says it all. (Nearly)
What the hell is the point making something so *almost* healthy, and then ruining it with salt? I appreciate the attempt at vegetarianism, but this isn't quite what I was hoping for.
Think about it. If he were to have refrained from using the name "Dilberitos" and just called them "Scott Adams' Healthy Burritos" (or something along those lines), it seems likely that his primary response would be from people who already consume health food. People who aren't inclined to eat health food probably wouldn't try them. His product would become, basically, a "me-too" product, and would probably wind up losing out in the end to other, more popular or established brands. (Competition in the food business is murder, margins are generally low, and brand recognition is extremely important.)
On the other hand, most people in the United States have undoubtedly heard of Dilbert, via the comic strip, books, TV show, Web site, T-shirts, coffee mugs, you name it. The "Dilbert" brand, in the case of Dilberitos, is being used as a "hook" (to put it in entertainment industry terms). Seeing the name "Dilbert" on a food product might make some people more inclined to buy it, regardless of the fact that it's a healthy food...and if enough people buy and consume Dilberitos who might not have bought and consumed healthy foods otherwise, then Adams has achieved his goal, and his marketing strategy is vindicated thereby.
And, if people keep buying Dilberitos, Scott Adams makes money. As others in this thread have pointed out, this is not a bad thing. (At the risk of diverging from the topic at hand, I might note that, proverbially, it is "the love of money," not "money" itself, that is considered "the root of all evil." Money itself is a morally neutral tool, which may be used for either good or evil purposes.) And, if people don't buy Dilberitos, he doesn't make money, and he runs the risk of damaging the "Dilbert brand" and causing a backlash among Dilbert's hardcore fans. The point is, Adams believes strongly enough in this idea that he is willing to back it with, not only his own money, but the strength of the "Dilbert" brand, and I for one applaud the courage of his convictions.
Eric
--
"Free your code...and the rest will follow."
Be who you are...and be it in style!
But this doesn't mean we can simply eliminate one important ingredient from our diet indefinitely without any ill effects. We *need* animal products, for calcium, proteins, and some enzymes. Sure, we can get those from vegetal products too, but our bodies aren't optimized for a vegetarian diet. In the long run, we will have health problems if we don't consume any animal products.
Animal products do have unhealthy components in them, so we should not abuse them. Balance is the key. If you are serious about not consuming *anything* at all that has deleterious side effects, you should learn to live without oxygen. It's the presence of oxygen in the body that creates the free radicals that are among the more important causes of aging.
I have a friend who had a strictly vegan diet, "scientifically" balanced, for twenty years. One day, her shoe got stuck in a crack in the pavement and she broke her leg. She was two months in bed, and has needed crutches for walking since then, over six months ago. A healthy carnivore person would get a slightly sore ankle from the same stumble. It's all a matter of not having the right enzymes to digest calcium. If you consume large amounts of calcium from vegetable sources, all you will get from that are gallstones. There are some enzymes the human body needs to digest calcium that can't be found in any vegetable food.
Moderators, take note:
1)Read the moderation guidelines before moderating anything
What you have said is incorrect (so much bullshit if this were RANT mode
Visit my page of vegetarian resources and read Realities if you wish to learn something
that has not been influenced by the Beef, Egg, and Dairy Council as it seems your current information has been.
To address your claims regarding calcium, a diet consisting of animal protien will cause calcium to be extracted from a person's bones to assist in digestion of the highly concentrated protein. Green cruciferous vegetables contain far more calcium than can ever be obtained from cow milk. Do some research for Chrissakes before you come off sounding like an idiot!
Thank you for your time.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
One package ramen noodles
One Steak-um philly steak
One egg, beaten
Green onions, finely chopped
Soy sauce
Bring 2 cups water to a boil. Add ramen noodles, stir occasionally for two and a half minutes. While noodles are cooking, cut philly steak into strips and fry in its own juices; drain fat. Pour egg into noodles and stir for 30 seconds, reduce heat, add steak and onions. Add soy sauce to taste (I usually use 2-3 tablespoons), remove from heat, and serve. Serves 1.
I've been thinking of starting up an open recipe archive which caters to the geek population (none of that "better homes and gardens"-type crap as you find on recipes.com and the like). Anyone interested?
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Gods, and I thought that I was cynical.
If he was just out to make money, probably the last ingredient he would use would be a vegan cheese-substitute. It would probably be a damn sight easier (& cheaper) to use normal cheese - lots of cheese is made with vegetarian rennet, so using veggie cheese wouldn't have been a problem. But these things are deliberately vegan - not something that's normally a money-making strategy. If he was just trying to rake in the cash, they'd probably simply be junk food, without the vitamins & other (supposedly) healthy stuff.
If they sell 'em in the UK, I'll try 'em. They sound & look pretty good.
HH
--
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
What's-his-name... Mark Mathew Braunstein, the guy who wrote Radical Vegetarianism, briefly made the point you make- some people just can't eat a completely vegetarian diet, and for them it makes sense to continue to eat meat. Of course, Braunstein is a loon (for other reasons), but it's a good point anyway.
On the other hand, most people can do just fine on a careful vegan diet. Dwelling on the fact that some people CAN'T do it for health reasons just makes it that much easier for some idiot to say, "Well, I just can't do it either. I've GOT to have my cheeseburger!" Also, some people think that vegetables are deficient when in fact it's just the way they're eating. Iron and calcium are good examples- there are wonderfully good vegetable sources of both, but a lot of vegetarians/vegans find themselves deficient because they don't eat well-balanced foods. (Amazingly, going to McDonald's and ordering just the french fries and coke is not the path to perfect health.)
So perhaps I was simplifying things a bit much. But I do actually think that "it hurts animals, so don't do it" is a pretty compelling argument, if fleshed out a bit more (but it doesn't need much more fleshing out- it's not a complicated idea.) On the other hand, what do you expect in a reply to a message titled "vegans can go to hell or California"?
-jacob
It is a precursor of serotonin, a neurotransmitter whose unbalance may cause you to fall into uncontrollable rants from time to time...
I said: If you consume large amounts of calcium from vegetable sources, all you will get from that are gallstones.
You said: Green cruciferous vegetables contain far more calcium than can ever be obtained from cow milk.
At least, in this point you don't seem to disagree with me. We both said that one *CAN* get large amounts of calcium from vegetable sources.
Moderators, take note:
1)Read the moderation guidelines before moderating anything
I remember the book, and what he was talking about wasn't a snack with synthetic vitamins mixed in, but a one-stop solution for healthy eating, for the lazy geek who doesn't care too much about variety in his food.
There isn't enough protein, and too many of the calories are from carbohydrates. You can't just eat three of these things per day and have an ideal diet, which was the idea (would it even be safe, with 100% of the recommended intake of so many nutrients?). You have to eat other foods in appropriate quantities.
This doesn't really simplify anything, unless you think multivitamin pills are too complicated.
Granted it's not easy to live on a vegan diet, but it is possible. It takes time to prepare meals and make sure that you get all of the stuff you need. If someone is willing to make these sacrifices, there's no reason they can't live a healthy life.
I have been vegan for two years and I still perform all of the physical activity that I used to. I haven't slowed down, at least from I can tell (measured by comparing my performance with my meat-eating friends). I really do think it's possible that you can be a vegan and maintain proper fitness, stamina, and strength. As some proof to that, the only 5-time winner of the Ironman Triathalon (or at least he was the only 5-time winner when I first heard about this 2 years ago), Dave Scott, is vegan. I think it takes some stamina and strength to swim 2 miles, run 26+ miles, and bike however-the-hell-far-they-bike miles. I realize that this is only one example, but it's a pretty high-profile one. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who could serve as examples, but aren't as well known.
I'd write more, but I have to go have supper. I think tonight I'll have some vegan burgers and some peas.
Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual.
For instance, I treat the humble taco like this- I'll fuss around for an hour dicing tomatoes and shredding cheese and ripping lettuce into neat little pieces and cooking a beef filling based on the way they used to make the Old El Paso mix (which was _ruined_ in recent years- gah!) from scratch or semi-scratch. Or I'll make a stirfry curry chicken dish that involves breading chicken slices and some peanuts with straight curry powder and making rice and presoaking raisins to mix with the rice, all to be mixed with mango chutney. There aren't a huge number of recipes, but the common factor is: they taste good, and take maybe an hour or more to prepare. Which is _normal_ for really posh food when you have to dice fresh tomatoes or cut fresh gourmet Bell and Evans organic chicken breast into stirfry slices and bread them each individually in a big bowl of curry powder.
Therefore, this explains why I will also be found eating Ramen (after my Dad took me out to a noodle restaraunt- before that, I wouldn't touch Ramen, but that's when I discovered oriental noodles had an interesting style all their own), or freezer burritos (my attempts at making my own gourmet freezer burritos have not really measured up to _cheap_ freezer burritos- some things are meant to be cheap, not posh), or mac and cheese (which I will put sour cream and nice butter into, tho) or even eating raw spaghettios out of the can (the _serious_ don't-distract-me-with-meatspace dinner).
I like the idea that I epitomize _both_ extremes ;)
Everyone has "studies" and "facts" supporting their claims, but most of it is just sophistry to support emotional judgements.
If you want real truth about nutrition, just look at the diets of primitive societies. They didn't cheat on their diets, because they couldn't. There is no confusion over supposed mechanisms, because you are looking at the actual results, without even considering mechanisms.
Yes, eating lots of meat reduces the calcium in your bones, that must be true. Yeah, that's why european explorers and researchers marveled at the incredible strength in the teeth of the eskimos, who ate a diet consisting almost entirely of meat. One notable anecdote is of a fellow, whose fingers proved unequal to the task, removed a tight nut from a bolt with this teeth. They had their problems, but fragile bones weren't an issue.
That's why tribal humans often go to great lengths to acquire meagre servings of meat when they have little of it: because it's bad for them and nature's brutal teaching process has slowly shaped their society into the pursuit of poor health. That makes perfect biological sense, doesn't it?
Actually, a diet of nothing but raw meat contains everything a person needs to be healthy. Every essential nutrient is present in adequate quantities. Mind you, cooking the meat destroys some of these nutrients (like vitamin C), and eating uncooked meat has many dangers, not to mention the cost of meat.
A little meat goes a long way toward fixing all sorts of dietary deficiencies. That's why it's so highly valued in so many cultures.
The truth is that most vegans must be extremely careful with their diets, or end up weak and sickly (and many end up that way no matter how careful they are). They need to take supplements, because there are some things (like B12) that are either very hard or impossible to get from plants. People with normal, balanced diets which include reasonable servings of meat need only be careful not to eat too much (quite possibly the dumbest nutritional problem to face the wealthy areas of the world: too much food).
IMHO, while it's pretty good for most people, in the standard nutrition system taught in schools, grains and dairy products are overemphasized. Milk is a great food... for some people. Others it just makes sick. I haven't seen studies, but I wouldn't be surprised if ancestry was a factor: in some areas of the world, people have been drinking cow's milk as a staple for millennia, while in other areas milk was only recently introduced. At any rate, people can get by without milk. I like to think of it as being similar to wine and beer; alcoholics tend to be rather unsuccessful individuals, and correspondingly a tendency toward alcoholism is much rarer among peoples who have had booze for millennia (smallpox wasn't the only disease europeans brought to the Americas). The point is that some people can drink several servings of alcohol each day, enjoy lower stress, have no long term damage, and show no signs of addiction, while others who try to follow a habit of daily moderate consumption will be destroyed by it. One human isn't biochemically equivalent to another. Grains tend to be processed into nutritionally worthless starch - great for athletes who have trouble keeping up their short-term glycogen stores, but they just make sedentary people fat.
It's a fuzzy area, due to the rather large variations between humans and the rather narrow samples in typical studies, but when you go dramatically against the conventional wisdom of most cultures going back thousands of years (such as the claim that meat is bad for you), you are almost certainly wrong.
Finally, who says cereals don't go well with colas? Pour a handful of Cap'n Crunch into a wide-mouthed tumbler of Jolt Cola. Drink the Jolt straining it through the crunchy things as they release extra sugar into the acidic pool of cola. Yum!
(Damned if I know why it works, my guess would be that it prevents you from chugging the Jolt all at once, encouraging you to sip slowly... turning a slam-blast of caffeine into a slow IV-drip-style dosage all night long. At least for me, 2-3 cans' worth of Jolt makes the second consecutive all-nighter go pretty well...)
ObGeekFood:
- Pound of ground beef.
- 1 yellow onion
26-oz jar of tomato sauce.
- 15-oz can of stewed tomatoes.
- 6 cloves garlic, finely-chopped
- Butter/olive oil/other-frying-liquid.
- Assorted spices - oregano, basil, chili powder for me...
- Start with garlic, finely-chopped, until sizzling in about 1 tablespoon olive oil or butter.
- Add beef. Fry until half-cooked.
- Slice onion while beef cooks, throw into mix. Add your spices at this time.
Dump in tomato sauce.
- Let simmer while you throw in the stewed tomatoes.
- Add any other spices to taste, and let simmer for at least an hour, bubbling off the water and turning the runny liquid sauce you get from a can (made even more liquid with the goop from the stewed tomatoes) into a rich, thick, brownish-red sauce.
The recipe is versatile and amenable to tweaking. The default mode makes killer spaghetti sauce. Use about half as much tomato sauce, and add more chili powder or swap the stewed tomatoes for chopped chilies, and you've got taco filling.
For the single geek, take half the sauce and put it in the fridge for use during the next few days. Take the other half and put it in the freezer, for that "it tastes like it took 2 hours to cook" feeling when you only have 10 minutes. There's at least a week's worth of pasta meals, probably two weeks if you stretch it, in the recipe outlined above.
Insight #1: For me, food, like hacking, is about experimenting.
When I need a caffeine fix, a can of Jolt is at the ready. When I need pure sugar, I call for the Cap'n. When I wanna make a week's worth of supper for $10.00 ($2.00 for sauce, $3.00 for beef, $2.00 for veggies and spices, $1.00 for the tomatoes, $2.00 for a pound and a half of pasta), I put in two hours and do the sauce thing.
Insight #2: It's cheaper to eat well than to eat poorly.
Cap'n Crunch: $4.00+ per box. Pure sugar.
Jolt Cola: $1.00 per can, at least where I live. Pure sugar.
Supper for a week-and-a-half: $10.00, or $1.00 per night. Contains fats from beef, protein from beef, carbs from pasta, and whatever nutrients in the veggies survive the cooking process. But dollar-for-dollar, a hell of a lot better eatin' than the first alternatives.
Insight #3: Cooking good food doesn't take that long after all.
2 hours for the pasta sauce sounds like a lot - but amortized over 10 days, it's 12 minutes a day.