Collecting data on yourselfFollow

I think it would drive me crazy. I'll wait for the patch.

I think it would be a depressing reminder of banality and routine.

The only thing I log is exercise, just to keep myself motivated.

I think if I obsessively logged everything, my thoughts would be consumed with trivial data rather than music or humor or whimsy or weighty issues, and I'd also be consumed with anxiety about breaking from whatever norm I was trying to set.

Theoretically, if you had enough data about yourself, your havits, your history, your experiances, your brainwaves stored, someday someone could take all that data and recreate "you" as a thinking being of some sort. I doubt we have even close to the amount of recording sophistication it would take to make that possible now even if we could synthisize true AI. but the concept is still kind of neat.

Meh, awakening a ghola's original memories sounds easier. That or those new Face Dancers.

I suppose having some kind of quasi-continuous read-out on vitals might shed light how our body reacts to what we do, what we eat and so on.

I forget to sign myself in and out on our e-board at work. I still haven't managed to get into the habit of keeping an electronic calendar and hardly ever even bother tracking the money I'm spending. So, unless the info is being collected and transmitted automatically it would never be a complete data-set for me.

...and of course there is the paranoia/security argument to be made concerning who might be able to gain access to my personal data and how might it be used.

Not at most fast food places. Those salads are horribly loaded with sodium, fats and calories.

How sure are you about that? Those salad numbers are w/o the dressing, btw. The lowest calorie salad they have w/grilled chicken and dressing is just barely under the Double Cheeseburger on calories if you include the dressing of the same name.

Double Cheeseburger: 440 Calories, 23g fat, 1150mg sodium

Vs

Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad: 220 calories, 6g fat, 890g sodium
Caesar Dressing: 190 Calories, 18g fat, 500g sodium.


That's ignoring the croutons, btw. Now, it's true that if you go with the balsamic dressing, you'll save a ton of calories, and many people do. That said, that's not what a lot of folks do. A lot of folks assume that any salad must be healthier, and that just isn't true. Many of the salads at McD's are way worse than a double cheeseburger. Especially when you start considering crispy chicken.

Unless you're making all the right choices, choosing a salad at a fast food place really isn't much better than choosing a burger. And really, who makes all the right choices when eating a salad when you're at a restaurant, fast food or otherwise?

Edit: I will concede that the salad has a bit more in the way of vitamins, but considering it's usually iceberg lettuce with a tiny bit of other stuff, it's not really that much more.

Edited, May 5th 2010 9:41am by Poldaran

That is the idea...roughly. I was thinking more like pasta with just the right amount of meat/cheese for the protein and fat you need versus the right amount of pasta for the carbs you need. Perhaps with a piece of fruit for some extra vitamin C. As an example.

Edited, May 5th 2010 11:23am by yossarian

Well, right: it does NOT make it all better. However, it helps. Looks like the medium coke is 250 calories versus the 380 calories on the medium fries, and 400-700+ for a burger, of some kind. Caloriewise it is not insignificant, but it is not really a huge deal. But sugar is bad. In the last discussion we had on this matter, there was a link to a youtube talk on childhood obesity and sugar. The claim from this talk was that sugar is poison, similar in nature to alcohol. In moderation it is fine, perhaps even beneficial. But recently, sugar has become so cheap, included so broadly, it is not consumed in moderation. Consuming sugar with fiber helps: and my guess is that there is little to no fiber in the traditional burger/fries.

But beyond that the major difference in choice of what to eat is not only how many calories per meal, but how long it holds the person until the next one. And how that food choice effects the productivity of the person at whatever they are doing. Beyond that, of course, there is how many calories and what foods are needed for the activity level of the person.

In the article I linked at the beginning, it talks about a person who eliminated coffee (and, apparently, caffeine) from their diet. But because they tracked everything, they also noticed their work productivity dropped off.

Whenever I go to McDonald's I just don't order a drink. Everything there is bad for you so you may as well order whatever you like.

Edited, May 5th 2010 4:03pm by Sweetums

I've always thought the Diet Coke jokes were stupid. A 32 oz coke has over 300 calories, which is almost of what the calories in your average meal at McDonald's (the meals themselves trend around 700). Plus, most people get refills so it'll easily become a meal in and of itself.

Edited, May 5th 2010 4:40pm by Sweetums

I had to monitor my Blood Pressure for several months last year, until it wasn't dropping too low. I been on blood pressure medicine for several years now since hitting menopause, but when I got ill it suddenly was too low. To prevent the problem from causing more damage to my colon, I took my BP every morning before I took my medications. Then if it was low or not above 125/80, I would take it again through out the day, only taking my BP medication when it was > 125/80.

Now it back to being high so I only take it occasionally if I'm feeling light headed or my IBS is acting up again. Thankfully watching my diet to avoid any dairy and most processed foods has also given me more energy.

If I had to live with a Blood pressure cuff around my arm throughout the day, I would go nuts. Then i find that any medication I have to take every few hours drives me nuts and most likely forget. Once in the morning and again at bedtime is only schedule I can follow without fail.

Course if all it took was to wave a wand over ones body to be able to know if vital signs were normal like in Star Trek, I wouldn't mind having my house's computer keep track for me. I want my house to have personal anti-grav field first though.

And not eating at McDonald's would be better.

My real point is that anything that tells you that eating at McD's(or any fast food place) is anything more than terribly unhealthy is bad, as it gives you a psychological excuse to go there more than you should(which ought to be somewhere between never and a rare once in a while). From the salads to the diet cokes to whatever, don't delude yourself into thinking it's "kinda healthy", like so many people do. You're eating crap. Own up to it and don't do it often. That's all I'm trying to say.


I agree that a diet coke is more or less healthier than a regular coke(at least from a calorie perspective, I still say that a diet coke is unhealthy because it's helps condition your palate to crave sweets). My gripe is that just because you drank a diet coke doesn't mean your meal was healthy. Said gripe mostly comes from a friend I had a few years back who really and truly believed that she was eating healthy because she always drank diet coke. She ate primarily fast food, or would deep fry everything(and by everything, I mean there was nothing healthy to begin with) when she actually cooked at home. She wasn't the only person I've known like that, but she was definitely the worst.


And that's good. I, on the other hand, am not satisfied by one of their salads. But something homemade with the same number of calories(and a lot less sodium), usually does the trick. Or a 6" Subway 6g of fat or less menu sandwich loaded with veggies will also fill me up, but even then, it's loaded with sodium, so it's kinda not that good for you either.


You know, though, I kinda sound like one of those recovering alcoholics, with no room for a middle ground on my belief that fast food is godawful for you, no exceptions. I've done the damage to myself(and watched friends do the same), with the attitude that if I just do things a certain way, it's not gonna harm me and am now having to work hard to get past all that. I'm sure none of you here are as bad as I once was, and thus definitely not as bad as some of my friends have been. So I'm sure you're not eating out multiple times a week and deluding yourself into the belief that you're being healthy. But some people do, and in case any of them are here, then well, I hope something I've said resonates with them. To the rest of you, I probably sound like a douche. So, sorry, I guess.