Farmer's Fridge: Incredible $1 Salads Sold From a Vending Machine
J Thoendell stashed this in Food
Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archiv...
At a drab community center on Chicago’s West side, there’s a room where families sit around idly. Unemployment is high here, and so is crime: Last month, East Garfield Park was ranked the seventh most violent out of 77 Chicago neighborhoods. The center offers everything from domestic-violence help, to financial assistance, to warmth during the long winter.
It also offers salads, which visitors can purchase from a futuristic-looking vending machine. The salads are made from high-end ingredients like blueberries, kale, fennel, and pineapple. Each one comes out in a plastic mason jar, its elements all glistening in neat layers, the way fossils might look if the Earth had been created by meticulous vegans. They cost $1.
The salad machine is the invention of 28-year-old entrepreneur Luke Saunders, who launched his company, Farmer’s Fridge, a year ago at a nearby warehouse. His goal is to offer workers a fast, healthy lunch option in areas where there’s a dearth of restaurants. Instead of popping into McDonald's out of desperation, they can simply grab salads from their buildings’ lobbies and eat them back at their desks.
Stashed in: Founders, Nutrition!, Fast Food, Chicago!, Vegetables!, Vegans!, Vending Machines
Ordinarily I'd never trust food from a vending machine but this is pretty cool.
Nutrition can become habit.
Recent research on the science of “parental flavor learning” suggests that fetuses that are exposed to certain foods while in the womb will go on to like that food later in life. For those whose moms didn’t munch on kohlrabi, however, there’s still hope: It takes eight to 14 attempts, on average, for kids to learn to like a new food, says William J. McCarthy, a health policy professor at the University of California Los Angeles. And unlike Sturm and others, McCarthy argues that fruits and vegetables can be a weight-loss aid. Nutritionists tend to push eating more produce because fruits and vegetables contain more water and fiber than most processed foods. They make the eater feel full on fewer calories.
McCarthy also believes adults can learn to like new foods, or at least be coaxed to try them more often. When poor New Yorkers were given vouchers for free vegetables at a nearby farmer’s market, they spent more money at the markets overall.
One problem, according to McCarthy, is that convenience is crucial when it comes to mealtimes. A 2009 study in the journal Obesity found that convenience was a major motivator in people's decision to buy fast food, and suggested that public education about the unhealthfulness of burgers and fries was not likely to be as effective as simply making nutritious meals easier to obtain.
3:43 PM Nov 13 2014