Long Game

During his years as a top executive, Roberts often tried to push the chain toward healthier fare, such as mango strips, slinky-shaped carrots, and yogurt. At one point he even explored the possibility of a vegan McNugget. (“People would look at him like he was a Cyclops,” Donahue says.) In 2006 he resigned; soon after his noncompete agreement expired, he pulled together two of Oprah’s celebrity chefs, Art Smith and Tal Ronnen, and had them create a sample menu for what was to become Lyfe Kitchen.

Market research Roberts did at McDonald’s convinced him that mothers, the dominant decisionmakers about mealtimes, are more focused than ever on healthy food. So this time around, brussels sprouts and quinoa will enter the picture. This time around, the end result—the food—will look and smell and taste more like an entré from some bistro in Brooklyn than a 30-second stop along Fast-Food Alley.

In other words, Roberts will take all the tricks he learned from old-style fast food and apply them to the next phase of American eating. Which brings us back to that free-range chicken. The new poultry supply chain is not just about procuring as much chicken meat as quickly and cheaply as possible. It’s about delivering wholesome chicken from birds that are fed hormone-free food and raised on farms that don’t produce the environmental degradation of a Tyson or Perdue.

The story of Lyfe’s local brussels sprouts begins at one of the two farms that Synergy’s Campbell has enlisted in San Mateo and Monterey counties. After spending the first 50 to 60 days of their lives in nurseries, the sprouts head to the fields. The tightly wrapped leaf balls grow from axils that form a helical pattern around the stalks and can be harvested for the first time after roughly 110 days. Later the plants can be harvested again, up to five times over a period of seven weeks, delivering as many as 100 sprouts from every stalk. After they’re cut from the stalks, the sprouts are washed, cooled, sanitized, packed, and stored in a cold room. At this point, the clock begins to tick: Their shelf life is just 20 days. And so the brussels sprouts are carried by refrigerated trucks to Lyfe’s Bay Area distributors, where they are usually turned around within 24 hours. Stored at 34 degrees Fahrenheit, they await their second truck ride, which will deliver them to Lyfe. There they are immediately stowed in the walk-in cooler at the back of the restaurant.

Unlike the sit-down bistros where gourmet food is generally prepared and served, Lyfe sees each brussels sprout as merely a cog in a vast clockwork, a system that is set into motion as a customer approaches the counter, gives their name, and places an order. Once that order is sent electronically to the kitchen, a cashier hands the customer a coaster. RFID strips beneath every table pick up the signal from the coaster and send it back to the kitchen. That’s how the runner—someone other than the person who took your order—knows where you are sitting, what you have ordered, and your name. Now that the order has gone into the kitchen, the software-based cooking system kicks in. It’s smart enough to separate the elements of your order and send each of them to the monitor that hangs above the relevant food-prep station. The flatbread maker sees flatbread orders; the pantry chef, who makes all the salads and desserts, sees the salad order; the rôtisseur at the broiler station—you get the picture. So everything everyone needs to cook shows up in a queue, and the chefs each hit a plastic button beneath the screen to signal that they have begun. When they’re done, they press a button that “bumps” the food order to the “quarterback,” who gathers the finished product and puts it on a plate with all the other stuff you want to eat.

Also left unmentioned is the problem of seasonality. As of now, no one at Lyfe claims that 100 percent of ingredients can be obtained from organic sources year-round. “The answer has always been no, it cannot be done,” Campbell says. No matter how energy-efficient the kitchen, no matter how technically astute the procurement practices—weather happens. Too much rain rots tomatoes. Oranges freeze. Texas onions shrivel in a drought.

None of this troubles Mike Roberts, though. Lyfe sees Whole Foods as a model for how responsible food consumption can shift the marketplace. “We’re really, really early,” Roberts says. “There are 80 million people who have become much more aware of the food they eat. And that’s going to continue as far out as we can see.”

We can go for about six hours in this glucose-burning mode, which is why we tend to get a bit cranky if we have to go without food for longer than that.

Now, whether you like it or not, you will enter into a state of ketosis should you go without food for six hours or more; this represents the first significant metabolic phase shift as you enter into starvation.

Fascinatingly, humans may be the only species who have brains that don't require the ongoing ingestion of glucose to function. Most animals are forced to break down skeletal muscles at a higher rate. The going theory is that, because we humans are so greatly dependent on our intelligence to survive, we have evolved the capacity to stay cognitively sharp while in the midst of prolonged starvation, thus allowing us to search for food.

You have now entered into the regrettable phase called autophagy where your muscle mass starts to waste away. You are literally cannibalizing yourself. Thankfully, our bodies are able to selectively decide which cells will break down and which will not — a process that balances the metabolic needs of the body, along with the critical need to prolong our ability to remain active (and look for food).

Violations of the USDA's organic labeling rules can earn companies civil penalties of up to $11,000. If that seems small, it should. The low penalties and the volume of organic products flooding the markets have led to skepticism that the USDA is properly enforcing the label, inspecting foods, and punishing violators. Some worry that "organic" has turned into a marketing term with little meaning. Still, when you buy organic goods at most stores and from most known brands, you can be largely sure that it meets the guidelines.

Granted, the latest study is far from the last word on nutritional value and organic foods, but it's important to note that nutritional value is neither in the stated mission of the USDA's organic food certification program (and, from what we can tell, not in that of other countries either).

A sharp eye would note that this could be because organic yields tend to be lower and there are fewer organic farms in general.

The study had two things to say about contamination: that conventionally farmed meat and produce were more likely to be contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but both had equal risk of being contaminated overall.

The Americans - Capt. Donald B. Stewart and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr. - hated the Nazis and didn't want to believe the Germans. They had seen German cruelty up close, and the Soviets, after all, were their ally. The Germans were hoping to use the POWs for propaganda, and to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and its Western Allies.

This newly released evidence strongly indicates that Roosevelt and other members of the top brass knew about the Katyn Massacre, but deliberately ignored it and kept the information hidden for the sake of maintaining an alliance with the Soviet Union. And by 1950, aware of the implications of hiding this information during the war, the U.S. government continued to issue a gag order on the entire affair. The directive was to "never to speak about a secret message on Katyn." During the 1951-52 Congressional hearings, for example, no material was presented to demonstrate that Washington knew about Katyn as early as it did.

Another test had volunteers rating people whose photos they saw in everything from conventionality to whether they would have lifelong happiness. The more attractive people always scored higher. Studies in which people were shown pictures of people and asked to grade papers supposedly written by them also favored the pretty. Even mock-jurors were more likely to let the beautiful people go, thinking they couldn't be guilty of a crime.

The reality is quite different. Based on Wolff (2010), the bottom 40% of the population combined has only 0.3% of wealth while the top 20% possesses 84% (see Figure 2). These differences between levels of wealth in society comprise what's called the Gini coefficient, which is one way to quantify inequality.

When economists consider the desirable level of inequality, they usually define the ideal inequality from the perspective of economic efficiency: What level of inequality will motivate people to be the most productive and move up the wealth ladder? What level of inequality will allow those at the top to lift up society as a whole (say, by having the resources to invent new technologies)? What level of wealth will keep salaries low and competition high?

inequality is not just about economic efficiency. It's also about our day-to-day experience as citizens, the influence of envy, our social mobility, the importance of equal opportunity, our mutual dependency on each other, etc.

We took a step back and examined social inequality based on the definition that the philosopher John Rawls gave in his book A Theory of Justice. In Rawls' terms, a society is just if a person understands all the conditions within that society and is willing to enter it in a random place (in terms of socio-economic status, gender, race, and so on).

First, we asked 5,522 people to create a distribution of wealth among the five buckets such that they themselves would be willing to enter that society at a random place.

When we examined the results by other variables, including income and gender, we again found no appreciable differences. It seems that Americans -- regardless of political affiliation, income, and gender -- want the kind of wealth distribution shown in Figure 3, which is very different from what we have and from what we think we have (see Figure 2).

in another task, we made things simpler (see Figure 5) and asked people to choose between two unidentified distributions (again under the veil of ignorance). The first option, unbeknownst to participants, reflected the distribution of wealth in America. For the second option we modified the distribution found in Sweden, making it substantially more equal (we referred to this fictional nation as "Equalden").

similarity across the political spectrum is far more substantial than the differences.

The first is that we vastly underestimate the level of inequality that we have in America.

Second, we want much more equality than both what we have and what we think we have.

A third lesson concerns the political gap between Democrats and Republicans

One reason for this could be our inability to separate our ideology from our current state of wealth.

Another reason could be politicians, who, in order to rally people to their side, try to generate feelings of greater difference and opposition--and therefore conflict--than actually exist.

The veil of ignorance accomplishes something similar to blind taste testing.

when we express opinions about politics and life in general, we can't help but be influenced by our own varying degrees wealth and ignorance of others' lives. The veil of ignorance works to separate our core beliefs from the biases and prejudices we develop over time and through the subjective experience of being part of a certain class and demographic.

Social justice and optimal wealth distribution are highly complex topics, and it's hard to imagine that any study could dramatically change opinions about education, welfare, or tax reform. But consider this. When we ran the same basic experiment in Australia, we found Australians did not differ much from Americans in their views of the ideal distribution. When we ran another version of it with NPR listeners, and then readers of Forbes Magazine, the results were still basically the same. And most likely, if you participated in one of our tests, your response too would have fallen in line with these findings.

It is hard to say how many people are involved; avowed atheists are still a tiny sliver of the population. But people with no religious affiliation are the country’s fastest-growing religious category.

Phelps, a big, barrel-chested man who delivers fierce rebuttals of his father’s theology and narrates the agonies of his fundamentalist upbringing, has become a star speaker at atheist rallies and gay-pride events around the country. At the Reason Rally, crowds cheered as he declared that the Sept. 11 attacks played a critical role in blasting away his lingering belief in any sort of deity.

DeWitt is something of a reality check for many atheists, whose principles rarely cost them more than the price of “The God Delusion” in paperback. DeWitt refuses to leave DeRidder, a place where religion, politics and family pride are indivisible. Six months after he was “outed” as an atheist he lost his job and his wife — both, he says, as a direct consequence. Only a handful of his 100-plus relatives from DeRidder still speak to him.

He appears to have reached his conclusions about God with reluctance, and with remorse for the pain he has caused his friends and family. He seems to bear no grudge toward them. “At every atheist event I go to, there’s always someone who’s been hurt by religion, who wants me to tell him all preachers are charlatans,” DeWitt told me, soon after we met. “I always have to disappoint them. The ones I know are mostly very good people.”

Having countries like Russia and China unwilling to see Iran crushed has helped. Iran can survive sanctions.

A failed military action would benefit Iran, proving its power. By contrast, a successful attack that dramatically delayed or destroyed Iran's nuclear capability would be a serious reversal.

The principle of mutual assured destruction, which stabilized the U.S.-Soviet balance in the Cold War, would govern Iran's use of nuclear weapons. If Iran struck Israel, the damage would be massive, forcing the Iranians to assume that the Israelis and their allies (specifically, the United States) would launch a massive counterattack on Iran, annihilating large parts of Iran's population.

Assuming the Iranians are rational actors, their optimal strategy lies not in acquiring nuclear weapons and certainly not in using them, but instead in having a credible weapons development program that permits them to be seen as significant international actors.

Up to this point, the Iranians have not even fielded a device for testing, let alone a deliverable weapon.

Both want to appear more fearsome than either is actually willing to act.

The Iranian strategy has been to maintain ambiguity on the status of its program, while making it appear that the program is capable of sudden success -- without ever achieving that success. The Israeli strategy has been to appear constantly on the verge of attack without ever attacking and to use the United States as its reason for withholding attacks, along with the studied ambiguity of the Iranian program.

If a country can develop nuclear weapons, there is no reason it can't develop hardened and dispersed sites and create enough ambiguity to deprive Israeli and U.S. intelligence of confidence in their ability to determine what is where.

first, whether the target had been destroyed when it was buried under rock and concrete; second, whether the target contained what Israel thought it contained; and third, whether the strike had missed a backup site that replicated the one it destroyed.

if the Israelis had an ultrasecret miracle weapon, postponing its use might compromise its secrecy. I suspect that if they had such a weapon, they would have used it by now.

The Americans emphasize these points, but they are happy to use the Israeli threats to build pressure on the Iranians. The United States wants to undermine Iranian credibility in the region by making Iran seem vulnerable. The twin forces of Israeli rhetoric and sanctions help make Iran look embattled. The reversal in Syria enhances this sense. Naval maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz add to the sense that the United States is prepared to neutralize Iranian counters to an Israeli airstrike, making the threat Israel poses and the weakness of Iran appear larger.

We see the Israelis talking as if they were threatened but acting as if they were in no rush to address the supposed threat.

It is the U.S.-Israeli byplay that is most fascinating. On the surface, Israel is driving U.S. policy. On closer examination, the reverse is true. Israel has bluffed an attack for years and never acted. Perhaps now it will act, but the risks of failure are substantial. If Israel really wants to act, this is not obvious.

Rather than seeing Netanyahu as trying to force the United States into an attack, it is more useful to see Netanyahu's rhetoric as valuable to U.S. strategy. Israel and the United States remain geopolitically aligned. Israel's bellicosity is not meant to signal an imminent attack, but to support the U.S. agenda of isolating and maintaining pressure on Iran. That would indicate more speeches from Netanyahu and greater fear of war. But speeches and emotions aside, intensifying psychological pressure on Iran is more likely than war.

fat cells generally do not generate after puberty -- as your body stores more fat, the number of fat cells remains the same. Each fat cell simply gets bigger!

A report published last year in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, which reviewed seven studies on the topic, found that "calorie labeling does not have the intended effect of decreasing calorie purchasing or consumption."

New regulations requiring operators of restaurants with 20 or more outlets to post calories on menus are expected to take effect by the end of next year.

Glenn Kikuchi, owner of 10 McDonald's franchises in Maryland, said he's already seen signs that the highlighted calorie counts are having an effect. "I see that a lot of the moms are looking at it, but also, curiously enough, the teenagers are looking at it, too," Mr. Kikuchi said.