food drink Archives - Page 5 of 7

The Difference Between Plant Food and Fertilizer

Posted on16/05/202307/12/2022Author

Like humans, plants need certain nutrients in order to survive. So if you have a plant, and it doesn’t look exactly like it’s thriving, you may decide to give it a little nutritional boost. But does it need plant food, or fertilizer? And what’s the difference between the two? Here’s what to know.

The difference between plant food and fertilizer

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, plant food and fertilizer are not the same thing. The biggest difference is that plant food is made by the plants themselves, while fertilizer is a synthetic or natural substance that is added to a plant’s soil. Here are a few more specifics:

Plant food

The easiest way to remember the difference between plant food and fertilizer is that only plants can make plant food: It’s not something that can be purchased (no matter what product labels say). To produce the simple sugar they use as food, plants convert water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight during photosynthesis, and absorb nutrients in the soil through their roots.

When a plant isn’t able to get the nutrients it needs through its soil, it may benefit from the addition of some fertilizer or compost to make up for the nutritional deficits.

Fertilizer

The nutrient content in soil depends on a variety of factors, including its texture (loam, loamy sand, silt loam), organic matter content, and pH. Testing your soil is the best way to figure out which nutrients are present in sufficient amounts, and which you may want to add to the soil using fertilizer.

G/O Media may get a commission

Commercial fertilizer comes in formulations with different ratios of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium—the nutrients a plant needs in the largest amounts. this Lifehacker article from May 2021 decodes the letters and numbers on fertilizer bags, and explains how to select the kind that would most benefit your plants.

Plus, this page from the University of Minnesota Extension provides further details on the different types of fertilizer, and when to use them.

Why don’t you need to drink eight cups of water a day

Posted on27/04/202307/12/2022Author

Comment

We’ve all heard the age-old advice to drink eight cups of water a day. But if you fall short, don’t worry: That advice is probably wrong anyway.

That’s according to new research, published in the journal Science, which found that for most healthy adults, drinking eight cups of water a day is completely unnecessary. The advice is partly misguided because it doesn’t take into account all the water that we get from our food and from other beverages such as coffee and tea. The research found that our water needs vary from one person to the next and depend on factors like your age, sex, size, physical activity levels and the climate you live in.

The authors of the study say that for healthy adults, there is no real benefit to drinking eight cups of water a day. Nor is it dangerous: Your body will just excrete the extra water you consume in your urine.

“If you drink eight cups of water a day, you’ll be fine — you’re just going to be spending a lot more time in the bathroom,” said Herman Pontzer, a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University and a co-author of the study.

The advice to drink eight cups of water a day stems from a 1945 recommendation from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, which encouraged adults to consume about 64 ounces of water daily. The recommendation referred to a person’s total daily intake of water, including from all their foods and beverages, but it was widely misinterpreted to mean that people should drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water every day.

Some experts have argued that the widely held belief was not rooted in science. One study of 883 elderly adults for example found that there was no evidence of dehydration among the 227 people in the study who regularly drank less than six glasses of water daily.

“Until we have more evidence-based documentation that fluid intake of eight glasses per day improves some aspect of an elderly person’s health,” the researchers concluded, “encouraging a fluid intake above a level that is comfortable for the individual seems to serve little useful purpose.”

Nevertheless, the advice is so widely ingrained that many companies use it to market products. You can buy 64-ounce water bottles designed to motivate you to drink the equivalent of eight cups of water daily, and water-bottle sensors that will track your water intake and remind you to “hydrate” every 30 to 40 minutes.

“We have guidelines telling people how much water to drink,” said Pontzer, who wrote a book on metabolism called “Burn.” “But the reality is that people have been kind of making it up.”

How much water do we really need?

To see how much water people really need, Pontzer and his co-authors analyzed data on 5,600 people in 26 countries who ranged in age from 8 days old to 96 years old. The participants included people from all walks of life, like farm workers, athletes and non-athletes, sedentary office workers in Europe and the United States, and people from farming and hunter-gatherer societies in South America and Africa.

The participants were tracked with a gold-standard technique called “doubly labeled water,” which uses water laced with tracers that can be used to track the body’s production of carbon dioxide, allowing the researchers to get precise measurements of the participants’ daily energy expenditure . It also allowed them to estimate the amount of water the participants generated from metabolism and the water they consumed.

“It’s really accurate at measuring how many calories you burn each day but also how much water you take in and how much goes out,” Pontzer said.

Using this method, the researchers determined how much water the participants lost and replaced each day, a measurement known as water turnover. They found that a person’s daily water turnover was largely determined by their size and their level of body fat, which contains less water than muscle and other organs.

The more “fat-free” mass a person has, the more water they need. Since men tend to have larger bodies and less body fat compared to women, they generally use more water. “Men use more water every day because we have a bigger system to keep hydrated,” Pontzer said.

The research showed that how much water you need changes over your lifetime. In general, our water needs peak between the ages of 20 and 50 and then decline in parallel with the slowing down of our metabolisms. That’s because the amount of water you need is partially dependent on your metabolism and how many calories you burn.

“All of the work that your cells do every day is water-based,” Pontzer said. “The ratio of the amount of

Filipino American Standout Boonie Foods Will Leave Revival Food Hall

Posted on04/02/202307/12/2022Author

When Boonie Foods debuted in 2020, Joe Fontalera pumped some excitement into the Revival Food Hall with his Filipino American dishes, bringing global tastes to a food hall stocked with staples like burgers, Nashville hot chicken, and salads.

Revival needed to adapt during the pandemic in downtown Chicago without crowds of office workers eating lunch in the Loop. Along with vendors like Minahasa, which serves Indonesian food; and Art of Dosa, which specializes in Southern Indian cuisine; Boonie gave Revival robust dinner options for takeout and delivery. Night-time service represented a change in strategy for a food hall built for the afternoon crowd.

But despite success, Boonie’s two-year-run will end on Thursday, December 22, Fontalera announced last week. He tells Eater Chicago he’s bringing his silogs, spring rolls — and perhaps new favorites like dinugaun — to Lincoln Square where he’ll take over the Crab Pad, 4337 N. Western Avenue. Crab Pad’s original Logan Square location will remain open, but the second location will close on Saturday, December 17.

Fontelera will make some changes in Lincoln Square. He promises something big, including a name change. He’s not ready to share what he’s planning, but he’s excited.

Before Revival, Boonie popped up at the Logan Square location of Crab Pad, which is owned by Theresa Tran. It’s a family operation; Tran is married to Fontalera’s cousin. Tran says construction along Western Avenue hurt the restaurant, which opened on January 4, 2022. Winter sales have been especially brutal, Trans says.

Over Thanksgiving, Fontalera, already planning to leave Revival, proposed that he could take over the Lincoln Square location. Trance thought about it for a week before making a decision.

“I just had a lot of success with Joe, his brand, his drive and passion with food,” she says. “It’s a better fit for him and me.”

“I feel he can succeed over there,” Tran adds.

Crab Pad’s original location opened in 2016 along Milwaukee Avenue. It’s not a typical Cajun and Asian seafood boil restaurant, Tran says. There’s a focus on hospitality in a family-friendly atmosphere. Tran is especially fond of their build-your-own popsicles, “they’re essentially gelato” covered with toppings like Fruity Pebbles and chocolate and vanilla drizzle.

“Leaving the Crab Pad Lincoln Square was such a tough decision because I really wanted to make it work,” Tran added. “However, knowing someone like Joe who is talented, passionate, and genuine is coming into this space makes it easier to say goodbye. I wouldn’t want to give this space up if it wasn’t for someone like him because I know he will make great use of the space and do great as he always does.”

Tran has been a big supporter in pushing his cousin to hold pop-ups and to embrace his love for his culture. US soldiers coined the term “boonie,” a bastardization of an Ilocano word for “mountain.” Fontalera’s grandmother’s last name is also “Bondoc.”

Fontalera appreciates the support Tran has provided and wants Crab Pad’s last few days on Western Avenue to be packed. He’s the former executive chef at Arami — one of the city’s premier sushi restaurants — the time had come for yet another chapter in his career. Food halls are often a place where chefs can practice running their own restaurants without having to worry about paying electricity or other overhead expenses. Fontalera, like Tim Flores — the chef at Michelin-starred Kasama — is Filipino American. Both cooked from different cultures — Flores also prepared sushi for a spell at Mako in the West Loop — before seeing how mainstream American tastes were willing to embrace Fil-Am cuisine. It hasn’t always been about building confidence — customers have to show open-mindedness.

Beyond dinner service, Revival’s pandemic shift was to bring in fresher names. When the food hall opened in 2016, the vendor lineup included established names like Mindy Segal (HotChocolate), Smoque, and Furious Spoon. Finding investors proves a larger challenge for newer operations like Boonie. In that spirit, Fontelera is crowdsourcing to assist with moving expenses. His campaign is shooting for $15,000.

Lincoln Square is no strange to strong Filipino American options. For 17 years, the standout Isla Philippines called the neighborhood home. The restaurant’s new incarnation closed this year at the Urbanspace Food Hall in the Loop.

Meanwhile, Fontelera’s next endeavor should be one of the more exciting new restaurants of 2023. Stay tuned for updates.

Boonie Foods project, name TBA, 4337 N. Western Avenue, scheduled to open in 2023