Pizza And Ramen Are Hurting Your Startup
blog.500startups.com
blog.500startups.com
1. Fact is, in your teens and early 20s your body can digest pretty much anything. Eat a bowl of cereal in the morning (and I mean something like oatmeal or raisin bran rather than some sugary crap) and it barely matters what else you eat (other than calorific content);
2. Eating the same thing every day gets real old real fast;
3. There is an investment required in cooking in terms of equipment, etc;
4. Cooking takes time between shopping, cleaning and the actual cooking. That's time that could be better spent doing many other things.
5. Even getting something for lunch can be a huge time sink and minimally takes half an hour unless you're eating out of a hot dog stand right outside your office.
This is why I'm a huge fan of companies providing a cafeteria or some find of catered meals. Of course, this requires both being a certain size and obviously costs money but, I would argue, the cost is well worth it in terms of:
- variety of meals - not needing to shop, cook or clean - time saved in not going out for lunch and other transit - time that can be spent talking over work-related stuff while eating with your colleagues - other intangible benefits such as the team-building aspects of socializing with your colleagues
These benefits are so huge I think that it'd be worth having everyone chip in to pay for something like this and would probably be an economic form of eating.
Now I'm lucky enough to work somewhere that has almost legendary catered meals (Google), which must cost them a fortune (eg dinner was steamed mussels, beef stroganoff, garlic whipped potatoes, green beans, steamed broccoli and a pineapple and blueberry salad, and that's just what I had) but IMHO they make their money back in terms of employee satisfaction and saved time on all of the above things.
Fact is I have more variety of food than I'd ever cook myself (or probably even buy).
That of course is a cafeteria type situation. Like I said, on a smaller scale, catered meals are a cost-effective doing this on a smaller scale. Your best bet would probably be to hire a cook rather than outsourcing the entire process (eg someone in or just out of culinary school).
I think you are seriously overestimating the nutritional value of a bowl of cereal, even a relatively healthful one. You may not see the worst of the consequences until you reach your 30s but they will still be accumulating.
Buying some groceries & cooking a simple meal as described in the article takes me at most half an hour (usually less - a lot less if I still have enough groceries from previous days and I just need to cook it) - which you can probably afford to take & is likely to be good for you anyway (simply taking a half an hour break that is, regardless of the quality of the food).
That of course is a cafeteria type situation.
Like I said, on a smaller scale, catered
meals are a cost-effective doing this on a
smaller scale. Your best bet would probably
be to hire a cook rather than outsourcing
the entire process (eg someone in or just
out of culinary school).
My total investment has to be under $100. I've been using the same stuff for 5 years now. I assume you have a toaster, a microwave, and a coffee maker already.
You'd be surprised the difference in your day between having a bowl of cereal to start off, and having a bowl of cereal, an english muffin, and a bannana. That doesn't take any extra time to do (toast the muffin while you eat the cereal).
For lunch I make myself a sandwhich and throw in some other stuff. Sure, that takes 2 minutes.
Dinner is the only meal you actually cook. You definitely save money cooking yourself. Compare $7 to $15 for chinese, sushi, pizza, burgers etc to $3-5 per meal. If you can cook pasta (boil water, add sauce, its the same as ramen. throw some freezer meatballs in the oven at the same time and your're done), chicken (throw a little olive oil in a pan, put it on medium, flip once in a while, cut it and make sure there is no pink left, don't over cook it) and steam vegetables (boil a little water, put the lid on top, steam it to taste) you can eat 3-4 nights a week really healthy with some variety.
Then fish is just a variation on cooking chicken, you just do it quicker. Your variety comes from the spices or condiments you throw on the chicken.
Total time is around 1/2 hour per day including cleaning up and eating. Each of those meals takes under 10 minutes.
Can, vs. should. I'm 25 and already feeling my metabolism slow down. Working at a desk isn't helping matters. Your brain really does function better with proper nutrition and exercise.
>2. Eating the same thing every day gets real old real fast;
In my experience, I can eat the same thing for about a week before getting bored. Pizza and Ramen get pretty tired immediately, if you are used to real food.
> 3. There is an investment required in cooking in terms of equipment, etc;
How much $100 bucks? $300? You need a good pot, a good pan, a good knife, a cutting board, and some utensils (spoon, spatula, tongs?). Tupperware is also important.
> 4. Cooking takes time between shopping, cleaning and the actual cooking. That's time that could be better spent doing many other things.
I consider cooking downtime. I use it to ponder stuff, or to just think about work problems. Trying to make something new (to me, at least) that tastes good is a very interesting creative process. There is all of this interesting reflection about what certain things will take when they are cooked together in a certain way.
For me to cook, it takes 1 hour shopping, 1-2 hours cooking, 1/2-1 hour cleaning (once a week, sometimes twice). Cooking and cleaning can be pipelined, as a large chunk of cooking is waiting for something to simmer/boil/bake, and the kitchen sink is in the same room as the stove. I make enough food for a week.
> 5. Even getting something for lunch can be a huge time sink and minimally takes half an hour unless you're eating out of a hot dog stand right outside your office.
Stick whatever you made in the microwave; eat. you can still sit with your colleagues should you desire. Besides this, my best work is done cooking, showering, commuting (in my brain). The idea that you can (or should) be working all of the time (and still be sane, and normal), strikes me as odd.
The other night, for example, I made chicken simmered in a red wine and caper sauce with artichoke hearts, baby corn on spinach (seasoned-- I cant remember how). I did the chicken, artichoke, and baby corn in a large pan, spinach in a pot. Most of the time investment was listening to my iPod waiting for things to be done. I ended up very self-satisfied (as I'm sure you can tell), and it tasted good, to boot. Ingredients were not expensive considering what I used, and what I got out of it.
Simmered chicken dishes are easy to do, so are stir-fry, stews, chili, soups, baked chicken, anything grilled (if you have a grill), black beans and rice is also very adaptable, meatballs are extremely easy (I like the McCormick seasoning packets). To boot, my girlfriend loves it when I cook for her, and it is a lot cheaper than taking her out to dinner (though I still take her out to dinner anyway).
I work at a university, so have a number of options, but it still doesn't compare to what Google had available.
No, it's truly legendary.
Hm, that sure beats the spinach and cottage cheese I just mixed together and called a "salad". But hey, dinner took 40 seconds. Now a quick check of HN, and back to work I go...
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/the-minimalist-kitchen.htm...
Every sport climb and boulder problem is graded. Most of them you won't be able to do. You'll need to spend weeks at first to get good enough to even do the easy ones. The hard ones will take years to get strong enough for, and even then will still require you dedicate a month of specific training for that one single route.
Leveling up? It's got that too. Climb at the gym for a while and soon you'll get to the point where you've done your first V1 problem. V2 is an order of magnitude harder, as is V3. The scale goes to V16 (at the moment), and 15 years of motivation have thus far only gotten me as far as V8. Given the dedication of a recovering WoW addict, I think climbing would fit your psyche perfectly.
Oh, and it's crazy fun too, so no more of this "I should go to the gym" crap. You'll go. You'll be upset if work intrudes on your climbing time. You'll start taking climbing trips instead of vacations, and eventually forget when it was that you last boarded a flight without your rock shoes.
You'll start spending your winters climbing rocks at Tonsai beach [1] in Thailand. I'll buy you a beer when you get there.
SCUBA sort of works, but isn't really strenuous enough.
SCUBA has measurable goals, but alas they mostly just measure how much money you've spent on SCUBA diving instruction. (I've spent enough to get myself to Rescue Diver.)
Come back with a friend when they're not busy and get them to teach you how to tie knots and stop each other from hitting the ground when you fall, then give toproping a try.
While you're there, notice that most people around you aren't taking it too seriously, and are mostly there to socialize. Talk to some of them and you'll quickly find yourself invited out on the rock next weekend.
It's not zero energy, but I get more exercise loading and unloading cylinders on the boat than I do actually diving.
Great exercise and addicting in a good way. It's a side benefit that the girls that climb regularly are very fit and attractive.
It's a good skill to have in general, but it's difficult to beat in terms of a workout (especially if you go to a gym that doesn't coddle). When I run, sometimes I get lazy and go slowly for a bit. When working the bag, though, I slow down and the guy that runs the gym will notice and yell. Even better, when sparring, if you slow down and get lazy, you will get hit, so you squeeze every ounce of energy out. It's valuable for the mind, too, as it keeps your mind from wandering and forces you to pay attention to what you're doing because if you stop thinking about strategy or recognizing patterns the other fighter is showing, again, you get hit. And it begins to be the most relaxing thing you do, when you go into a room where there is no computer, no cell phone, no distraction, just what you're doing now. (It's also surprising how much strategy goes into hitting people; it broadens the mind.)
I've found that increasing the demands I make on my body causes me to naturally eat better. Your body makes demands; for example a lack of iron may cause you to crave beef. Training made me start drinking more water and less coffee, and fast food started to actually taste bad. It's like turning up the volume on your body's demands, so what is healthy and what tastes good to you start to align.
The first two weeks are the worst, but it's addictive after that.
Deal?
Though not in the context I was under. I was listing organizations that the general swarm of liberal types on sites like HN may feel strongly polarized against.
I could extend the list to something like BNP/Republican Party/Microsoft/SCO's legal fund/the Nazi party - the list is valid even though comparing Microsoft to the Nazi party makes little sense in any other context.
I rather doubt they have any real influence or electability, though. As bad as the dichotomy in US politics is /now/, there are some levels to which we just can't quite stoop to.
I think a lot of it is the routine or your habits... for example, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I perform better at my work when I take at least 30 minutes in the morning to walk and listen to something positive. More bonus points for taking even 5-10 minutes to meditate. Yet historically my stick-to-it-iv-ness for those activities always seem to go away when presented with the days urgencies or more mindless 'busymaking' like random surfing.
For anyone near Springfield, MO, look up this guy: http://czechusout.org/meet_pavel.php
For exercise purposes, you might want to look into energetic dances, like collegiate shag or the lindy hop. But even slow waltzes provide a surprising amount of exercise, and nothing motivates like interacting on a physical basis with the opposite sex.
just get a pull up bar and some weights and do it at home.
You'll save like an extra hour in the process by not having to go to/from the gym.
In this case, peer-pressure is a good thing.
For example, the amount of cilantro they sell at the grocery store is for a dozen servings of this meal.
I just finished throwing out pretty well every ingredient (except the chicken) given in that recipe, because I was away for 3 days!
Cooking for one sucks!
Seriously tho, this is little bit of advice completely revolutionized my diet. Also, since the frozen veggies are already chopped/peeled/etc, it speeds up meal prep a LOT -- useful on those busy days.
The best thing about frozen veggies is the various mixes you can get. I usually buy a giant bag of brocoli and then a giant bag of whatever mix I'm feeling.
Boiling in water seems to be one of the worst methods, which makes sense because the water can easily leach all of the nutrients[1].
Everyone does agree the best way is simply to steam them.
[1]http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/250016/how_to_cook_...
A recent study conducted in the U.K. showed boiling vegetables that are members of the cruciferous family, including cabbage, broccoli, and brussel sprouts, significantly reduces their anticancer properties.
And MW specifically
If you choose to microwave your vegetables, use as little water and as short a cooking time as possible to minimize loss of vitamins.
Also, look at CSA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture) deliveries. In many places (certainly the Bay Area) you can get a small weekly box delivered right to you door for a totally reasonable price!
Also, homemade chicken stock is one of my favourite things (boil a chicken carcass from the butcher with a halved onion, roughly chopped carrot, celery, some herbs, a little salt and pepper, bit of garlic, for a bit over an hour) and is super easy to do, freeze and then use as a base in a ton of recipes, or even just add some pasta and you've got a rough and ready chicken soup.
Cooking need not be difficult. By focusing on good, fresh ingredients you only need a couple to put together a great meal.
Also, great tip: Cook with spice (heat) and lots of flavour. You'll get full faster and feel satisfied longer.
protip: homemade chicken stock makes an excellent base for risotto milanese!
Though the microwave is a misunderstood device. It's fantastic at defrosting frozen items, but it should usually be an intermediate step used to ensure that thawed items are at room temperature when they go into the pan.
It's also fantastic at a variety of simple one-step things. Melting butter, baking potatoes, melting cheese, and other things like that. Used properly, it speeds up and even improves cooking. But if it's treated as a range/oven replacement, yes, it causes problems.
The best way to use the microwave is for meals that will benefit from being steamed, like vegetables. Failing that, regular stirring and occasionally protecting some thinner bits with foil are the way to go.
Metal is not microwave kryptonite, it is the bouncer to the mighty power of NUCLEONIC ENERGY! ... But only where the foil is.
Say you're cooking a piece of salmon, you've got a comma shaped profile with a VERY thin edge and a much thicker body. You can cook the entire thing until the thin edge is almost done, then fold foil only around that part of the salmon. Microwaves will not reflect off and be absorbed by the exposed food instead.
As long as something in the microwave is exposed that can absorb the waves sufficently, no harm will come to you or the microwave.
I made excellent scrambled eggs with ham and goat cheese a week ago in the microwave because that's all that was available. Takes some care to not have it turn into a frittata, but otherwise easy to do.
There are books dedicated to creating freezer meals. I'm not sure if I have enough experience with them to recommend one, I doubt there's all that much variance to them. There are some tricks to the process, but not all that many. I still recommend at least starting with their recipes though of course we branched out once we were comfortable with the idea in general.
The primary effect of working for freezer foods is simply the loss of range; obviously you can not, for instance, freeze a lettuce-based salad. I say that's the primary effect precisely because losing flavor and quality is not the primary effect. Freezer food probably has the single largest quality gap between commercial food and home-prepared food there is. Some meals take a slight hit, many you can not tell, a small number actually have their texture slightly improved by freezing them. If this sounds interesting I strongly recommend trying it, a bit of Googling will probably scare up enough resources to try a couple recipes without even investing in a book.
You can make, in the microwave: * Almost Poached Eggs * Bechamel Sauce, and thus any other sauce in that family that doesn't require second cooking * Almost any grain with a decent microwave rice cooker, including lentils, polenta, oatmeal (Which can be savoury), rice, brown rice, bulgur, pearled barley, beans, cous cous and chickpeas. * Brownies * Poached Chicken Breasts
You just need to be a little less 1-minute-button-pushy.
Since you cooking the pasta fresh it will be just as good the next day. I do basically the same thing with sauce for Indian and recook the rice.
Much of the time I enjoy cooking for 1/2 rather than more, lets you prepare things for multiple days and save time/money.
Tupperware™ may seem expensive in comparison to other plastic products (especially in Australia)… but it really is good value, especially considering you get replacements for free. To quote a friend (who is a Tupperware demonstrator), it's like getting a perpetual license to use the product.
Disclaimer: I DO NOT work for Tupperware™The results: in 3 weeks the bag was a sloppy mess, the container florets had loosened up.
After 5 weeks, the container florets started to bloom.
Then I ate them. They were a little bitter. Cest la vie.
And yeah, the way it works it's basically a perpetual license.
But I can finish vegetables and fruit. I shop once a week and it takes like an hour, and everything I get lasts all week. Get your bannanas a little green and it will be fine. Vegetables usually last longer than that.
I also get a lot of frozen broccoli, green beens, peas, corn. They last forever and are simple to make but very healthy. They also double as ice packs if you hurt yourself.
For example, Richard Branson credits working out and staying in shape with much of his success.
I kind of see physical fitness on two sides--internal and external.
Internally, if you're in better shape you're capable of performing better for longer periods of time. Less time sick, etc.
Externally, there is a lot of social science that thinner, i.e. more attractive, people are viewed as more disciplined, get better promotions, make more money, etc.
That doesn't mean you can't be successful as someone that's not attractive or thin, but all things constant, why put yourself at a disadvantage? I say all of this not as someone who is thin, but someone who's taken a prolonged approach to being in better shape. When I graduated college I was at 255, and now I'm at 200. I could stand to lose some more weight, but the effects of eating better, working out and sleeping better have been of immeasurable benefit.
As a note, I love unhealthy food. It’s
delicious and I’m not saying it’s evil.
I’m just saying it’s not a productive
addition to a 14-hour, high stress work
day.
I'd be all for preparing the meal he suggests, but with shopping, prep, cooking, and cleanup it's a significant time investment compared to pizza so I'd like evidence it's doing my startup better.
He ended up with some organ issues that put him in the hospital for a little while and when he got out he had to take it easy for awhile.
"Fatty foods slow down the brain and impair mental function, nutrition researchers have found. But they also make people more sociable." - http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/28/081.html
"Eating fatty food appears to take an almost immediate toll on both short-term memory and exercise performance" - http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/fatty-foods-affect-...
"The greater your weight, the lower your IQ, say scientists" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1531487/The-greater-y...
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I think the culture change is needed.
Unless you're starving, your brain pretty much only runs only on glucose. That means that whatever you eat, good/bad fresh/packaged, whatever, just gets converted to glucose.
Assuming you're getting basic levels of required vitamins, I don't see any reason why one diet would be beneficial over another in terms of brain performance.
When you eat fats, proteins and slower-digesting carbs the glucose regulation problem doesn't occur, at least not on the same scale, so your brain and body can perform undistributed for potentially many, many hours. Consequently the only problems come from nutritional content and digestive efficiency.
For elite endurance athletes there is still reason to "carb up" to pump as much glyogen into the muscles as possible, but that isn't most of us, and it isn't something you need for brain work.
That's "reduced brain effectiveness" too.
That's sort of beside the point though. I'm just tired of the ridiculous amount of misinformation in the diet, nutrition, and exercise fields. It's not like there isn't a long history of claims that are "just common sense" turning out completely wrong ("eating fat makes you fat", "eating high cholesterol food gives you high cholesterol" (mostly genetics), "diet and exercise are equally important to losing weight" (reality is that it's mostly diet), etc.)
Bottom line, if you're going to make a claim that certain food improve your brain's performance, you should have just a shred of evidence.
No, you're making the claim you should already have more evidence to back it up than a snark.
it boggles the mind.
as it turns out, happy meals are, in fact, a great replacement for breast milk.
This doesn't even include the fact that some things in food directly affect the brain, such as caffeine.
I grew up eating nothing but TV dinners and ramen, in college I added pizza and fast food to the mix. Since I've gotten married I eat regular healthy meals. Anecdotally, I don't notice any difference in my brain function, but I do weigh 40 pounds more then college :)
http://bolthouse.com/our-products/beverages/proteins
..or you can eat it with water...
http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Food-Bar-Pure-Powerful-Bar/dp/...
Yes, it is more expensive than $0.25 per meal eating ramen noodles but it uses even less time than cooking the ramen and you can eat while you keep working easier.
To put it another way, how many startups that depend on doing original research get funded? I (perhaps foolishly) believe startups bring technology to the masses, but only after research shows it can be done.
I guess another argument would be, if you were to invest in a company, would you tie your investment to the founders to sleeping a minimum number of hours? Lack of sleep is easily as detrimental to mental fitness as poor diet.
However, not knowing which one is useful to you at any time, it's hard to know which is the most effective for work. But being mostly sober/mostly healthy is known to be the best (long-term) for staying alive and well, and startups are, on a human scale, a long-term game. You don't make $1,000,000 because you stayed up all night to ship.
Junk foods tend to send me off to sleep or procrastinate... the opposite of coffee.
The specifics are easily found on Google–go for it. The article I linked has some good information as well.
Just nitpicking here - by definition fiber is 'the indigestible parts of plant food'(1). So even if it can possibly be said that the body uses fiber - it is probably used in some non-nutritious way - we can be certain that the fiber does not reach the brain.
There are a million ways to spend an hour a day on something to improve your startup.
Maybe. Personally, I know if I'm going to block off time to do a certain thing (such as cooking a new recipe then I work more efficiently.
Not to mention it's entirely possible to make one large batch of something that could feed you for a couple meals.
So you can colour me sceptical about the true value of eating "healthy" or freshly-cooked food.
Fortunately, the company I work for provides incredibly fresh organic salad that's as cheap as fast food.
I have to say that yes, getting started is a pain, and yes, the easy way seems, well, easier, but better food is a HELL YES reason to overcome the first two.
Just like your startup, starting to get a healthy kitchen going requires a lot of investment before you start to see any outcome. Deep Breath. You're going to need to go... Shopping.
But, once you're boot strapped with supplies, regular top ups is all that's required. I feel better when I eat crap less then I eat well. It's sorta annoying, but not once you get into the rhythm of it.
Provided food is a great idea if it's good quality. Providing junk at the workplace just exacerbates the issue. That said, it's not too hard to prepare extra meals at home and bring them to the office, especially if you can convince your founder/self to install a chest freezer. Sure, fresh stuff is usually better, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Microwaves rock when you don't use them as a magic-1-button-make-hot machine. You can cook grains, make sauces, steam things and even do some poaching in a Nucleonic Oven, as long as you're not totally impatient. If I can stand to wait, you sure as hell can.
Not having greasy fingers helps prevent your keyboard and mouse from getting manky, and stops colouring leaching out of where your wrists rest on your lappy:P
Sodium? Last time I made it, approximately... None. With the exception of what was in the chicken and the veggies.
Seriously, it's not hard. Slow cooker, veggies, chicken frame and water. 12 hours, strain, freeze.
I agree with you and all, and am working hard on eating healthy myself, but do you have any idea how much ramen $7 can buy you?
I'm certain there are people out there who would have trouble affording $4-7 per meal & funding the early stages of a company. And don't forget you have to own the facilities to cook properly- ramen can be made in a paper bowl with a $5 water heater or $20 microwave.
Flour + tomato + cheese + onion + garlic + olive oil + whatever you put on your pizza.
That said, if your goal is to lose weight then pizza may not be for you. But that wasn't the goal posed in the article.
- flour: lets say 200g for €0.10
- cheese: 100g for €0.40
- olive oil: say €0.10
- mushed tomatoes: €0.10
- onion: €0.10
- yeast, salt, water, etc: €0.10
I think I'm being pretty generous here with the amounts and the cost. Total is €1.
The first step is to get a rice steamer. The second step is to realize that you can, in fact, prep your vegetables, meats and sauces ahead of time and just leave them in the fridge. Feeling hungry? Pour a little oil into a pan, toss in some ingredients, and voila - stirfry in no time at all. Grab a bowl, stuff some rice into it, and top it over - lunch!
It's more cost-effective than takeout, at the very least. Timesink may be an issue - if you aren't working with one or two cofounders. If you are, the minimal amount of competence to use a rice steamer and heat up pre-prepped ingredients means you /should/ be able to safely rotate cooking duties without excessive risk to your health.
Or, at least, less risk than a diet of salty ramen and oily pizza.
You are what you eat.
That said I completely agree with the article. There's no point working/eating yourself to death if you can't enjoy the proceeds. Take some time out from work/coding. Cook a nice healthy meal and follow up with some exercise.
I think this would be better advice. First, spend a weekend reading "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. The take away from that is the healthy eating is a systematic thing, not a matter of individual ingredients.
Second, watch a lot of episodes of "Good Eats" on the Food Network.
The American Dietetic Association released a position paper stating that they believe vegetarian and vegan diets are perfectly healthy and sustainable. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12826028
This research has been around for 11 years and to my knowledge has gone unchallenged and mostly ignored:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10489816
Just like the research showing that diabetic complications could be averted via normalizing blood sugars in the 1970’s or that gluten could actually be an allergen and that celiac disease is a real condition in the 1990’s.
As a vegetarian or vegan you can definitely survive, but you won't thrive.
Hundreds of millions of people are perfectly healthy eating vegetarian diets. You should turn your attention to people eating the typical American diet... surely they need it more than people who eat big handfuls of vegetables all day.
Vegetables and gains do not (with the exception of quinoa)
That said, I also know someone with a sensitivity to meat, so there's no one-size-fits-all rule.
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