The first most influential idea I learned about was from one of my ted talks talking about independence and reliance as dominos and trying to tip the right ones. The second most influential idea I learned about was the idea that reliance in relationships can be healthy but they are also dangerous. I remember seeing a video online once that talked about how men of color and white women were similar in the way that they both only have “1” level of oppression. Of course it was a stupid video I saw online but honestly after my research I kind of understand where they are coming from. I am not at all saying there exists any sort of competition of who can be the most oppressed but there is something to say about women of color. For my research I watched a ton of Ted Talks essentially about independence and learning to fight through oppression and it was really interesting to see their resilience.
I think my project is interesting since it provides insight on a part of racism and sexism and isn’t talked about as much. Instead of focusing on the oppressor it focuses much more on the victim’s ability to be resilient and I think that is important to learn for anyone, not just the voice I was focusing on.
The most important thing that I learned about my community is that everyone is way more human than they seem. The idea of making new friends as a freshman is something that seems like an impressive feat, but in reality when you look at your peers as exactly that, your peers, things become a lot simpler. Everyone has their own struggles and triumphs in life and when you realize that being compassionate and getting along with those around you isn’t so hard.
Advice I’d give future NNHS seniors: maximize your fun. Try to do everything you can to savor everything as it comes because this year is the year of a lot of lasts.
I’ve been trying to eat healthier recently, and with that comes restricting myself from indulging in my favorite fast food restaurants as often as I had before. In light of this, I want to rate some of my favorite fast food burgers I’ve tried.
Shake Shack 7/10
I actually really like Shake Shack. It is a Chicago classic and whenever I take a trip to the city I make sure to get something there. My favorite order is typically the Smoke Shack which is basically just the classic burger but with some peppers and a special sauce. However, for this rating I will be looking at each establishment’s basic burger. For the classic Shack Burger there is a choice to double up on toppings which I do recommend, as well as adding the extra applewood smoked bacon. The patty is dense — thicker than the majority of the ones on this list. It has a strong taste and is all good and juicy. However, it isn’t the most well seasoned patty. Here’s something wrong with the Shake Shack’s hamburger. Despite the thick patty, the burger is very thin in size. The consistency is always unpredictable, and you have a fair chance of having a bad patty if luck isn’t on your side.
SmashBurger 7.5/10
Smashburger’s Classic Smash consists of a beef patty sandwiched between two egg buns with cheese, lettuce, tomato, cabbage, pickles, and their signature Smash Sauce. Although the seasoning is normally mild, the patties are large and are usually nice and crispy around the edges thanks to getting a good sear on the grill. Since the beef is never frozen, you won’t find any of the usual fast food nonsense here. The toppings, on the other hand, are absolutely normal and hardly worth noting — even the Smash Sauce is essentially just a mix of mustard and mayo. There’s nothing to get worked up for.
Wendy’s 8/10
The Dave’s Single is the nearest Wendy’s has to a traditionally prepared hamburger. You get cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle, mayo, and onion on top of their patty. There’s a lot of good things about Dave’s Single — on the bright side, there’s the toasted bun, which is a staple to every good burger and notably absent from any of the earlier entries on this page. Along with that the advertised never frozen patty is actually noticeably juicer and tastier than any of Wendy’s direct competitors like McDonald’s or Burger King.
Five Guys 9/10
Two patties in a toasted bun with the customer’s pick of (totally free) toppings make up the Five Guys hamburger. Lettuce, pickles, peas, fried onions, grilled mushrooms, fresh onions, jalapenos, green peppers, ketchup, mayo, mustard, relish, BBQ sauce, chili sauce, and A.1. Sauce is only a few of the ingredients. The patties are well fried, succulent, and big — though a little thin for my taste. Good thing each burger comes with two of them.
I’m not sure what else to suggest. The sesame buns are fluffy, the toppings aren’t too heavy to get in the way, and each burger can be bursting at the seams if you pick the right combination. Really good, and not to mention the fries are also delicious.
In-N-Out 10/10
I don’t want to hear any of the overrated nonsense that I see people talking about when it comes to this burger. I’ve been there a few times and I can say that it is a genuinely good fast food restaurant and it 100% deserves the hype it gets. The toppings are simple (lettuce, onions and tomatoes) but compounded with a special sauce that more than makes up for it. Everything is entirely fresh, vegetables are hand-selected, while pretty much everything is regionally-sourced and free of additives and preservatives. The patties themselves are cooked on the grill to the point of perfection, of course, and the toppings on each burger are generous in quantity without ever becoming clumsy or overbearing. You can tell they’re fresh, too, with every piece of lettuce, onion or tomato tasting like a genuine vegetable, and although that doesn’t seem like a huge deal it isn’t something you can say for many other fast food places.
In last week’s blog I touched up a bit on one of my sports, gymnastics, so I think it would only be appropriate to talk about my other one this week, golf. I sort of have a love-hate relationship with golf. My dad has always loved golfing and since I was young he’d drag me out to the driving range to hit balls with him. Nonetheless, the weekend trips to the driving range started to turn into trips to the golf course and then eventually to lessons and before I knew it I was a freshman trying out for the golf team. Now, I’ve been with North’s golf team for four years and I wanted to recap some of the types of golfers that I’ve seen wandering around the course in my time there.
The Sore Loser
Playing high school golf you’d think that you might see a couple of freshmen who still throw temper tantrums when things don’t go their way but for the upperclassmen these reactions to losing become much more refined. We’ve all seen them, and they usually fall into one of two categories: the exploder or the sulker. Expect screaming, clubs wrapped around bushes, and much of the fairway digging up as a result of the exploder. Sulkers are quiet and have a hurt expression; they should be left alone before they realize how silly they are. Unless, of course, you just want to wind them up – in which case, do so at your own risk.
The Self-Proclaimed ‘Coach’
You’ve just finished your drive off the first tee, and you hear their approach with dread. They are the golfers who think they know the most (a lot of the times they don’t) and enjoy sharing their knowledge. And if they know how to fix your swing, they’ll be sure to point out where you’re going wrong. They also use overly confusing vocabulary.
Cheaters
Sort of similar to the sore losers in the way that they don’t like losing but these guys are much worse. These characters will emerge as a result of being a bad loser in secret. Sometimes they make it known that they intend to play loosely that day, but sometimes they are law enforcers, ensuring that everybody else follows the rules precisely. You might even see them dropping the odd ball down their trouser leg or shimmying their ball along just an inch or so closer to the hole. The worst part is how bad these people usually are at hiding it. You’re not sure whether or not you want to go through the drama for calling them out but also you don’t want them to have an unfair advantage if it’s an actual match. It’s usually best to just confront them though.
The Explorer
He spends eight minutes searching for each missing ball, and he normally starts his search 75 yards further than where the ball actually landed. You hack through the fescue digging for his ball as he half-heartedly pokes around in the short rough, risking lyme disease in the process. Then, when you’re getting to the next tee, he’s nowhere to be seen because he’s still back at the 6th greenside lake looking for spare balls to replenish his stock.
The Premature Praiser
He’s congratulating the shot as soon as the ball leaves your club. “Great ball,” he says, just as it hooks left, caroms off the cart lane, and flies straight into the window of a house surrounding the green.
I remember when the pandemic first started I sort of predicted that it wasn’t going to be going away anytime soon. I knew the initial 2-week break that the school said they were going to give us wasn’t going to do anything to actually minimize the spread of the virus so it didn’t make sense for us to actually go back until way later, at least when there were some precautions set in place or a vaccine. As such, I was extremely excited for the break of school I’d be getting.
It was around this time last year meaning it would have been right in the middle of the second semester of junior year, the apparent hardest period of high school. For me though, the online classes made everything so much easier. It was the beginning of zoom classes and virtual homework and all of that stuff so a lot of teachers didn’t really know how much work to give or anything like that, and luckily for me, that meant I just didn’t have a lot of work.
I continued to enjoy the break as a luxury where I could finally destress with all the free time I had at home, but eventually, I started having TOO much free time. As the months went by and I was forced to quarantine for my parent’s sake, I realized how much life I was missing out on. As kids, High School was always described as the highlights of one’s youth, and many defining events – such as homecoming and possibly graduation – had been canceled for the seniors, leaving me with the question of whether I would be getting the full high school experience. It quickly became evident that the class of 2021 would have a different story to tell than our parents, older siblings, and those in the future.
The beginning of my senior year was the hardest year in terms of workload and also my personal life. The usual loafing around of summer vacation was only accentuated by quarantine as well and it wasn’t common for me to leave the house and even less so for me to see my friends. When I had to start doing my college applications I procrastinated so much that I only actually had time to apply to 3 schools early, including my early decision. At this point, I was really stressed out. I had only applied to 3 schools when some of my friends had applied to maybe double or triple the number I had. I then realized that I had a lot of work to do so for the next couple of months. I was in complete hibernation-study mode and did applications for 18 more schools. This, combined with how naturally slow at writing I am and all of the work I had to be doing for my classes meant I basically had no social life.
Looking back on it though, it didn’t bother me much at the time. Of course, I was constantly busy and stressed out, but I had an obvious goal in mind. I knew what I needed to do each day, and whether I actually accomplished it or not wasn’t really the biggest deal. It was sort of like I was on autopilot mode and it made so many of the other problems in my life disappear. I had no social life but I didn’t even care because I just didn’t have the mental capacity to realize that fact.
This semester my life is drastically different. I remember the first couple weeks after all my applications were due I was still kind of getting used to not constantly having work. Even though there was nothing to be stressed about I still felt something nagging at me from somewhere. Eventually, that died off and got into a rhythm of more loafing. Now, I will admit life isn’t amazing. A lot of the days seem sort of the same as they blur into an unrecognizable mush of the same zoom classes, assignments, and practices, but I can see things returning back to normal. I hear a lot of people say that they hate the constant routine that quarantine life seems to give them. Wake up at 7:30 every day. Turn on their computer. Attend zoom classes. Do homework for a couple of hours. Eat. Sit on their phone. Go to bed. Repeat. And, as I’m writing this, I admit it sounds kind of miserable, but for me I kind of like having at least some sort of routine in my life.
It’s weird to think that it has been a whole year since all of this started, but at the same time it’s also weird to think about how it has ONLY been a year since this all started. The fact that one year, even less for some, has been enough to completely change their way of life into what quarantine is like today is bizarre. It really puts into perspective how adaptive we are.
I guess now I look forward to just being able to have a some-what regular end of my senior year. Spring sports, prom, graduation, all that.
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Walt Whitman
O, Captain! My Captain! was written by Walt Whitman closely following the end of the American Civil War. In a collection of 18 other poems, Whitman wrote in the same collection, O Captain! My Captain! is indeed the most iconic. At its most basic level, it is Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, but as the reader digs deeper, whether it be into its metaphorical nature, personification, consonance, or alliteration, the greater themes that have allowed this poem to resonate into the modern-day begin to reveal themselves.
One of the most prominent and obvious first impressions that this poem instills is its use of apostrophe, a literary device that is used to call something or someone that is dead, inanimate, or not present. An easy way to spot this is the use of “Oh”, or in this case “O” which works as an endearing address to the speaker’s many subjects throughout the poem.
This poem works as an extended metaphor of sorts. More specifically, The poem includes three extended metaphors split across three stanzas. The first expanded metaphor is “Captain,” which is used in the first paragraph of the poem. Here the Captain portrays Abraham Lincoln who has lost his life in battle. The second metaphor is “Voyage,” which is part of the Civil War. The trip is full of checks and examinations, but now the ship’s route to the port is the timeline of the Civil War. The third metaphor, “ship,” is that of the United States that underwent the Civil War.
Whitman also uses multiple techniques to emphasize certain subjects or themes throughout his poem such as personification and repetition. Whitman personifies the speaker’s walk as a “mournful tread” as well as on the shores on line 21 where he states “Exult, O Shores!” In terms of repetition, Whitman’s rhythmic restatement of the phrases “fallen cold and dead” and “O Captain! My Captain!” have a similar effect.
However, the seemingly most glaring element of this poem is its employment of juxtapositions through poetic structure as well as diction to create a contrasting theme. The poem follows a rhythm in which each line alternates between a primary statement and a succeeding statement that either elaborates or expands on the primary one. For example, the first line of the poem introduces the idea of a journey “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done”, and the succeeding line elaborates on the outcome of that journey “The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won”. Furthermore, the joyous scenes depicting “ringing bells”, “bouquets”, and “wreaths” directly juxtapose the description of the captain’s body as “cold”, “dead”, “pale”, and “still”. Even the rhyming patterns that the poem employs alternates between consonance, the repetition of consonant sounds like “flag is flung”, and assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds such “ship” and “trip”. The alternating patterns along with the contrasting diction construct an overarching theme of victory and loss throughout the poem. This theme of victory and loss works as a reflection of the history of Abraham Lincoln. Although they had triumphed in the war, that victory isn’t whole due to Lincoln’s eventual assassination. A yin and yang of sorts in which victory cannot exist without loss. While there is much to celebrate for the victory of the north, there is equally as much to mourn for the death of the Captain.
I remember back in the prime of college admissions season all I could think about was finally able to be done, to be able to bask in the infamous stress free hue of second semester senior year. But, for whatever reason, my measurable stress level, at least from my perspective, hasn’t changed much. From when I was juggling 4 or 5 essays I needed to finish by the end of the week, to now, only having a few assignments and emails burdening my planner, I feel more or less the same.
According to psychologists, this phenomenon is called “Hedonic Adaptation” or “The Hedonic Treadmill”. The most common example is after a person wins a lottery. At first, the person is ecstatic to become a millionaire overnight. Over several weeks or months, however, the new millionaire becomes used to his or her lifestyle change and suffers a subsequent drop in satisfaction. I kind of think of it as emotional homeostasis. Of course, there are two sides to this kind of thing as the hedonic treadmill runs in the opposite direction as well—where people frequently revert to earlier stages of well-being after they have initially been hit. In other words, resilience.
As someone who is majorly motivated by milestones or goals I feel like I react especially taken aback when I end up reaching one of those milestones and finding myself somehow unsatisfied. On the hedonic treadmill there is a set point, and then there are crests and troughs that one’s emotions fluctuate between. Meaning, for a lot of people (myself included) getting straight A’s finding a girlfriend or boyfriend, or getting into their dream college is irrelevant to their overall and long term happiness.
So, how does one retain happiness? Well, I feel like a better question would be how does one slow the adaptation process? When I look back on my own life, I realize that my most memorable milestones aren’t necessarily the ones that had the greatest net impact on my life. For me, there have been two factors which determine what events have generated the most lasting effect in my emotional state: variety and appreciation.
Variety, as we all know, is the spice of life. But it’s also an effective anti-adaptation tool, so we don’t get used to good events when our interactions are new or unpredictable. If, on the other hand, a good experience is repetitive—when you know exactly what to expect—you don’t get the same kick out of it(think diminishing marginal utility if you’ve taken Micro).
The second tool, gratitude, is in many ways the reverse of adaptation—going out of the way to reflect on something, rather than taking it for granted or allowing it to slip into the background. Appreciating can mean paying attention or remembering, but it is much more powerful when you take it further—when you eat anything, rejoice in its quality and relish how it makes you smile, or when you experience happiness, feel grateful to be in your present circumstances relative to others or compared to where you have been in the past.
Novelty and variation are daunting because they need us to interrupt the routine. The routines are easy. It’s hard to try new things. But boredom is heavy. It can cause us to take for granted the valuable things we have in our lives. But, of course, this can still be matched by daily appreciation sessions because a parade of thrilling experiences may not always be enough.
Obviously, I am no guru when it comes to happiness, but in my own experience I’ve found that the more I think about these types of the things, the better I am able to make a real change in the way I think and feel.
With my 18th birthday and my entrance into “adulthood” coming closely around the corner, I want to sit down and reflect on how I’ve grown and look at some of the unique and interesting hobbies that have procured my attention in the past.
Yoyos
From the ages 9-10 I was obsessed with yoyos. I distinctly remember where I had originally developed this interest and it was while I was watching the third Suite Life on Deck.(amazing show) episode Broke N Yo-Yo. The next target run that my parents and I went on, I went straight for the toy aisle and bought the first colorful yoyo that I saw—the Duncan Butterfly. Although I never really got that good before I quit, yoyoing was a really interesting hobby where I think the skill gap is limitless. Watching a real professional yoyo-er makes the hobby all the more intriguing but actually picking one up and trying to replicate even one of their tricks is extremely difficult. I think this is what happened to me. Although I never stopped thinking yoyoing was cool, it was so difficult to improve that I ended up giving up.
Skateboarding
Skateboarding is another one that professionals make look easy. I picked up skateboarding when I was in 6th grade after my yoyo craze ended. Similar to my yoyo phase, however, I found my interest in skateboarding through entertainment media as well while watching “street dreams”, a skateboarding movie. Honestly, a lot of the tricks that skateboarders do aren’t that visually different from another, but I’ve realized that there are so many minute subtle differences that create huge variations in difficulty in execution. Even what is considered the first real trick that skateboarders learn, the kickflip, is one that typically is said to take 8 months to learn. At the time, I didn’t have the time nor natural talent to pursue skateboarding and I gave it up rather quickly.
YouTube
I think that YouTube often gives off the spectacle of the “dream job”. And, although this may be true for ma ny, during my endeavour to become a Minecraft YouTuber when I was 12, I realized that there is so much more than just having fun. After making 2 poorly edited 30 minute Minecraft “let’s plays”, I was out of juice. For the onlooker, it is easy to assume that being a YouTuber is basically getting paid to have fun. Since we watch videos purposely curated to entertain us, we assume that entertainment is all there is. In reality, there are hours of editing and reshooting required that truly makes being a YouTuber a commitment. Although my YouTuber journey was short lived, it was one that I think was ultimately valuable for the perspective it gave me.
When I was younger, exploring and discovering new interests in it of itself was a hobby for me. With little pressure from the outside world to work as a productive cog in its great social machine, both my drive and time I had to be curious were vast. I think it’s easy to get caught up in the rat race of life, especially recently thanks to both college apps and the semester drawing near. For me personally, I am stuck constantly looking forward to my next goal, to my next accomplishment that will drive me further into a field that I assume will bring happiness. Although I won’t be skateboarding, yoyoing, or making YouTube videos in my foreseeable future, the experiences that I gained from simply trying will continue to stick with me. My past hobbies are obviously things that ultimately won’t be useful for my future or my success, but they allowed me to explore more about myself which I think is something that we all need to learn to do more.
Roughly for the past 20 years, Google has been keeping a public record of all of its users’ searching habits, and although this may be of some sort of privacy concern, it makes for an interesting blog topic so that’s what I’ll be reviewing today. Google Trends is a feature of search history that indicates how much, over a given period of time, a given search word is inserted into Google’s search engine compared to the overall search volume of the web. With it, you’re able to compare multiple searches within different time periods and regions and sometimes it leads to some pretty interesting findings.
I recently stumbled across Google Trends after seeing it mentioned in an article about coronavirus. The article was talking about some pretty alarming stuff. In the past few months, the relative interest in Coronavirus buzzwords in the U.S have gone down to almost nothing when compared to what it was at the beginning of the pandemic. For example, in this graph, you can see that the term “social distancing” went from having a value of 100 interest during around mid may to having around only a value of 1 interest in late October, around Halloween. The values are ranked relatively so if a specific search has a value of 5 interest on some random date, that means that on that day, that search was mentioned 5% as many times as the day that it was mentioned the most.I think this trend specifically is somewhat important and concerning as it could imply that many Americans’ mindsets on Coronavirus and its dangers are becoming more lenient, despite the virus not physically changing at all. When compared to the chart of COVID-19 cases in the U.S, you can see that it’s basically the Google Trend chart but reversed.
Pretty scary stuff.
Anyway, on a lighter note, Google Trends is also a pretty cool tool just to look at even for less alarming subjects so here are some more Google Trends that I found interesting.
Starting off with a pretty mild and predictable one, the term “Thanksgiving” always peaks around the time of Thanksgiving. Cool.
Here’s an interesting one, the term “Kale” seems to jump during January. My guess is that this is related to the many new year’s resolutions on getting that are set this time of year.
Corn virus.
The Beatles are slowing fading away :(. From 75 in 2004 to about 15 today, their search value has greatly diminished.
This may look like an electoral map, but this is actually the comparison between Americans that googled Fox News and CNN in the last 12 months. Hmmmm…
I think this is cool. This is the distribution of the most searched of each of these religions in every state.
During the months of July, the term “irony” dips in searches for some reason. I honestly have no explanation for this one, this one’s weird.
The term “flat earth” has significantly increased overtime. I feel like this graph should be reversed, but I guess with the internet you never know.
This will conclude my Google Trends tour. There is a lot more to explore through Google Trends, but I hope gave a good glimpse into what it looks like. I think that this kind of stuff is really interesting since it shows an unsaid and often unnoticed sense of togetherness of the world. With how divided it may seem over the media, I think these trends are a fun way to look at how similar we all are sometimes. I urge you to go look into these for yourselves because I think they are somewhat valuable and definitely interesting. There is much more weird stuff out there and I’d love to hear other trends that you guys find interesting.
Disclaimer: I’m not the most qualified person to be writing this blog as I am not an avid chocolate lover nor eater, but, I’m assuming I’ve done more research than the average person, so, I am going to do it anyway. Furthermore, only chocolate BARS will be included on this list—no M&Ms, no whoppers, etc.
This year I missed out on fully celebrating all of the festivities that come along with Halloween partly due to the pandemic and partly because I didn’t really want to. As such, my ratings will be based off of past Halloweens, random chocolate tastings, and my personal opinions/biases.
KitKat. Although the wafers lack flavor, KitKats make up for it with their crispy quality that truly adds a lot to the eating experience. The chocolate is good, nothing incredible, but solid all around. However, the thin nature of the chocolate due to the thick layers of wafers brings in the validity of whether KitKats are even chocolate bars. Nonetheless, KitKats did very well on the packaging and design of the bar. 6.5/10
Crunch. This bar gives me a sense of nostalgia. I remember this was my favorite candy bar growing up. I don’t even think it was the actual bar that intrigued me the most, instead it was the bright blue packaging and the big bold red letters. However, now, as a more sophisticated and well educated person, I will try to ignore this bias; I am no longer blinded by the alluring, nymphatic packaging of the Crunch bar. Don’t be fooled, although Crunch bars seem very large, a king size Crunch bar has the same mass as a king size KitKat or really any other king size chocolate bar. Though, the bar itself is rather good. The two main ingredients, milk chocolate and crisped rice, allow for a simplistic yet satisfying eating experience. 7.5/10
Milky Way. Whoops, another nostalgic one for me. This has turned into less of a chocolate bar tasting review and more of a how I feel about certain chocolate bars. Sorry! As a car-loving kid I remember watching a milky way commercial from 1989 where a red car races a blue car and for some reason I thought that it was the coolest commercial ever. Ever since then, Milky Ways have been ingrained into my brain and honestly I have no choice to think they are good. However, objectively the bar isn’t amazing. The chocolate is decent, as well as the marshmallow filling, but the caramel can be a little distracting at times. But… according to my nostalgia index 8/10
Snickers. I really despise snickers. Usually I don’t mind nuts in my chocolate bars, but Snickers, Snickers are just different. When I eat a chocolate bar I expect a good mouth feel, it should go down easily, not 16 peanuts in a single chocolate bar!(Yes, that is the actual number). I know this will be a controversial one. I have come across many people who say this is their favorite chocolate bar or even candy and I honestly don’t know why. Not only is the chocolate bar itself not that interesting or stand out compared to Milky Ways, Three Musketeers or Baby Ruth, the texture is also a little much for me. 4/10
100 Grand. This is undoubtedly the ugliest chocolate bar on this list. Besides the obvious warty outside, the cylindrical shape of the candy is somewhat reminiscent of feces. Sorry. It’s true though. However, looks aside, this bar is actually really good. The rice krispies on the outside, which give the bar it’s warty nature, remind me of a jacked up crunch bar. Furthermore, The chocolate is very strong, and very rich. In the center of the bar there is a layer of caramel that adds much needed chewiness to the bar. Overall, this bar is my favorite tasting, but, minus one point for appearance. 9/10
This will conclude my very subjective review on chocolate bars. I predict that my views will likely be very different than a lot of other people’s simply because I base my ratings more on my personal memories rather than the actual chocolate itself. As such, this may be an unreliable and therefore useless information, but I hope that at the very least this arouses some sort of discussion(especially about Snickers, I really don’t understand the intrigue of Snickers)
The question “If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life what would it be?”, only has one logical and defensible answer in my opinion: potatoes. I love potatoes.
However, if loving a food was the only constraint on that question, this would be much less interesting. Of course you have to take into consideration the attainability, versatility, affordability, and the potential health risk from only eating one food for the rest of your life. But potatoes check all of these boxes!
Attainability: Potatoes are super attainable. Obviously they are readily available at almost any grocery store, but even if you don’t live near one, they can easily be grown in a home-garden. In fact, Potatoes can even be grown inside of your kitchen. With a couple toothpicks, a cup, and some water, a potato can be grown with very little effort.
Versatility: This category is one that I don’t even feel like I must argue, but for the sake of being thorough…You can mash them, roast them, bake them, steam them, boil them, grill them, braise them, deep fry them, pan fry them. You can make twice baked potatoes, make them into a hash, make tater tots, cut them thin and make chips. There are russet, yukon gold, sweet, red, and purple potatoes. Yes, there are purple potatoes—here’s a picture, they have a lot of antioxidants 😀. Nonetheless, Whichever way you choose to cook them though, they always taste great.
Affordability: There are a lot of different ways you can measure a food’s cost. You may look at the unit price or the actual price per pound, for instance. However, for potatoes I think cost per edible cup equivalent is the easiest way to calculate vegetable prices. Per this measurement and according to MyMoneyBlog, potatoes cost around 20 cents per edible cup. This is cheaper than cabbages, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, and many other popular foods since the potato is not only completely edible but, as shown before, very easy to grow. The average potato is 2 edible cups; say you ate a generous 8 potatoes a day, that would mean the monthly cost for your meal plan would be around $95. Compare this to the average cost of food per month for the typical American which is about $220. This means that potatoes are more than two times cheaper than a regular diet.
Health Risks: A common concern when it comes to eating one food for the rest of your life are the potential essential nutrients you are missing out on, and while I agree that there are probably healthier alternatives to eating only potatoes for the rest of your life, potatoes are still very satiating. In fact, a man named Andrew Taylor proved this. Andrew Taylor ate potatoes for all of 2016 with a few exceptions: he ate both white and sweet potatoes and occasionally combined them with soy milk, tomato sauce, salt or spices. He also took B12 supplements. But, overall, for breakfast, lunch , and dinner, all Andrew Taylor ate were potatoes. During the year, he took four blood samples, which all came back with normal results. He was even said to have lost weight and felt more energized. And this makes sense, if you visit the blog The World’s Healthiest Foods, Potatoes are a very good source for vitamin B6, as well as potassium, zinc , vitamin C, manganese, arsenic, niacin , pantothenic acid and dietary fiber—All very important to healthy digestive and immune systems. Furthermore, potatoes actually include a number of phytonutrients that have antioxidant properties which protect cells which many studies say are beneficial for reducing risk of cancer.
When I started writing this I hadn’t done too much research about the specifics of potatoes. All I really knew was that I liked a lot of foods that have potatoes in them and they are sorta of a vegetable. But, the more I looked into the many benefits of potatoes the more I realized how right my answer was. In almost every category, potatoes dominate. Not only are they well rounded but they are simply better than many other
foods in all categories. Hopefully after reading this you too will appreciate the many absolute benefits that potatoes have given us whether or not it would be the only thing we ate for the rest of our lives. However, I implore you to challenge this and try to find another food that can dethrone potatoes as the number one food. For now, though, potatoes remain on top.
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