We spend hours every day on Instagram and Pinterest (It’s for work, we promise!), and yet we still can’t resist the lure of good food porn. The Internet was particularly good to us this week in terms of top-notch food stories, from beautiful pancake art to the myth of the Freshmen 15. Rather than selfishly savoring all of this goodness on our own, we decided to make this week’s edition of The Greatist Things on the Internet all about food. Read on and try to tell us your stomach isn’t grumbling by the end.
1. I Ate With a Food-Shaming Fork for a Week (New York Magazine)
Thinking back to all of Mom’s dinner-table wisdom, the sayings we remembering hearing the most include: “There’s no need to shovel food into your mouth;” “Take time to enjoy the taste, savor the flavor;” “And for goodness sakes, chew with your mouth closed!” But there’s no mom needed with the HAPI (pronounced—perhaps ironically—“happy”) fork. If you start to inhale your food without much time between bites, the fork buzzes as a not-so-friendly reminder to slow your roll. There’s plenty of science that shows eating slowly is good for digestive health and prevents overeating. We’re just glad someone else volunteered to be the guinea pig here.
2. The Great Wheel of Food Mashups(Fast Company)
Want an almost foolproof way to come up with the next trendy food? Take two items with little in common and start marketing them as a food hybrid. Pop-Tart Ice Cream? Ramen Burger? Sushiritto? Sure, why not!? (And yes, all of these food hybrids already exist). Our friends at Fast Company put together a snazzy interactive graphic that showcases food hybrids from the iconic (Cronut) to the bizarre (Cheetos macaron).
3. The Origin of the ‘Freshmen 15’ Myth (The Atlantic)
With the nearly endless supply of desserts in the dining halls and booze in the frat quad, the Freshmen 15 seems logical, if not an inevitable right of passage for newly minted college students. But it turns out that most freshmen gain fewer than six pounds in their first year. And for the most part, that kind of weight gain is normal as we transition from adolescents to adults. Other countries call the weight gain the First Year Fatties, the Fresher Five, and the Fresher Spread. While these names might be more apt, they aren’t any more appealing.
4. Ridiculously Cool Pancake Art You Have to See (People)
We’ve gawked at latté art (and even sandwich bag art) before. But pancake art? That’s a canvas we never thought of. It turns out there’s a budding group of amateur pancake artists crafting everything from Sherlock Holmes to Spongebob. Lucky for us, our friends at People collected a list of some of the best artistic confections.
5. The Science Behind Baking Your Ideal Chocolate Chip Cookie (NPR)
Some like it buttery, some like it crispy, and some like it hot. We’re talking about chocolate chip cookies, of course. It turns out there are actually people who study the science behind baking your favorite type of chocolate chip cookie—talk about a dream job! The endless hours spent by these scientists tolling away in the kitchen have resulted in easy-to-follow variations: substitute bread flour for chewy cookies, freeze the batter for 30 minutes for thick cookies, and opt for light brown sugar for a butterscotch flavor. We couldn’t make it through all the variations without salivating.
