This article has been much-discussed the past day: Juicing is bad for you and the Earth. The article calls juicing “a privileged, wasteful form of food consumption” and makes the following points:
- A basket of fruit, when juiced, serves less than half the people than if it were served whole
- The skin of the fruit, filled with heart-healthy and cancer-fighting flavonoids, is lost when juiced
- Fat is also lost. The body needs fat to absorb many vitamins including A, D, E, and K. Without fat, the vitamins are not absorbed and pass right through you. (I wonder if this is why people who juice poop a lot?)
- The liver is the body’s cleanser; human-invented cleanses are not necessary to maintain health
- Pulp is left behind after juicing and thrown into landfills, emitting methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide
So you can put down that glass of disgusting kale-avocado-banana juice and pop open a Mountain Dew instead. It’ll be okay. Really.
Random thing I learned this weekend: Bicycles were considered a moral threat in the 1890s. The outfits women wore when riding were considered indecent by many. Also, on Sundays – the one day off work for many people at the time – people skipped church to ride their bikes instead. I wonder if Grover Cleveland or William McKinley had an anti-bicycle plank in their party’s platform.
The Flyer has Soup Sunday winners and a photo gallery of the event by photographer Frank Chin.
Sunday is Senior Day for the Memphis Tigers basketball team, and the Memphis Flyer pays tribute to four-year starter Shaq Goodwin. I will miss seeing Shaq on the court when the 2016-17 Tigers take the floor. As the Flyer writer points out, he has one of the best smiles in the history of the program. I too admire the way he has stuck by Coach Pastner when many of his teammates left for perceived greener pastures. Thank you for the four years you gave Memphis, Shaq.
Memphis is perhaps the only city where you bring Shaq up in conversation, and someone stops you to ask, “O’Neal, or Goodwin?”
In other basketball news, Grizzlies point guard Mike Conley becomes a free agent this summer. It’s almost unthinkable that he would leave Marc Gasol and the foundation those two have built in Memphis. However, his former coach Lionel Hollins believes Conley will chase the money if other teams offer him more than Memphis wants to spend. The Grizzlies do own his Bird rights, so they can sign Conley even if it sends them over the salary cap; but will the team be willing to pay luxury tax to keep him? (I hope so.)
Once a month Wiseacre Brewing Co. out on Broad Avenue does industry nights, and then next one will be a Leap Year Masquerade from 6 to 11 PM on Monday, February 29. If you are in the industry (and show proof) you get 20% off beer and merchandise, and those in costume get $1 off beer. The Mighty Souls Brass Band will play 7 to 10, and the Rawk’n Grub food truck will be there. $50 gift card to the winner of the blind tasting game.
If you’re wondering what the crepes at Scoops are like, they tweeted a photo of their veggie crepe.
The MBJ has an inside look at the futuristic new branch of Regions Bank set to open at the corner of Main and Union next Monday. It’s said to feel more like an Apple Store than a traditional bank.
Time to get to work. Possibly another post around lunchtime or 5:30.