Moon dusts and shilajit resins
Originally published June 12, 2016
- Not long after encountering this treatise on the demise of the cutesy tone of voice in marketing, which has been superseded by artisan-ese, I was introduced to the new Bloomberg podcast, Material World. 'Craft Is Dead. Long Live Craft' examines the growth of craft beer, artisan ice-cream and the like by talking to, er, the Hanson brothers, amongst others - apparently their brew, Mmmhops, is big news in the Midwest.
- While being pickier about the provenance of what we consume makes us feel nice and righteous, we are still at the mercy of those doing the telling - and restaurant supply chain claims may not be all they seem. This, of course, follows hot on the heels of the Mast Brothers craft chocolate scandal.
- Snake oil has always been a large (and delicious!) part of the marketing of food. The current trend for wellness (what does that word actually mean? And why is it in the bio of so many Instagram 'influencers'?) capitalises on the suspicion that, if we haven't heard of an ingredient, and it sounds kind of organic, it must be good for us. Throw in the approval of Gwyneth Paltrow, and suddenly preposterous people like this are doing very nicely for themselves.
- Extra Crispy, a new site dedicated to (oh yes) breakfast, recently sampled the moon dusts and shilajit resins of 'the LA wellness breakfast trail'. 25 years after LA Story, it makes that movie's satirical restaurant scene seem rather quaint.
- And in case you missed/are in the wrong country to have caught BBC's The Truth About Healthy Eating the other week, they asked a nutritionist to compare the following: kale v. spring greens, coconut oil v. rapeseed oil, chia seeds v. linseeds, quinoa v. pearl barley and goji berries v. frozen summer fruits. There were no discernible differences in the health benefits of any of them.
Where to find podcasts
Some newsletters I subscribe to that help me decide what to pipe into my cochleae:
- The Audio Signal
- Adolescence is a marketing tool
- Earbud.fm
- Hot Pod (focus tends to be more on the business of podcasting, but in the process it introduces me to new stuff)
Otherings:
- I very much enjoyed having my mind blown by this headline: 'Elon Musk believes we are probably characters in some advanced civilization's video game'.
- Brain.fm provides lyric-free music to help you work/study/whatever.
- Small Victories is a thing that turns the files in your Dropbox into a rudimentary website.
- A month and a half after the Hillsborough verdict, David Conn's comprehensive analysis of the nightmare is still with me.
- What it's like as a non-founding contributor to the Silicon Valley startup economy.
- Partridge Cloud.