High-Tech Coffee Mug, Alcohol-Related Eating and the Best Gas Grills
The Humble Mug-Side Message Goes High-Tech: It may be time to retire your old "Hang in There" or "World's Best Boss" coffee mugs. Finnish coffee company Paulig has come up with a creative way for you to mix things up a little, mugwise. Its new Muki mug features a heat-powered epaper screen connected to a special app that not only indicates when your coffee is the right temperature to drink, but also allows you to upload and display different photos, comic strips, inspirational quotes or messages sent by friends. Watch a video showing the mug in action here. Cool … or, er, hot! [ YouTube via Business Insider]
"Bottoms Up!" = Bigger Bottoms? The key to losing weight may be not only eating less, but drinking less too. Drinking more than three large glasses of wine may spur people to consume about 6,300 extra calories over the next 24 hours, according to a new British report. A little more than half of the 2,042 people surveyed said they tended to binge on fast food after drinking — not just while they were feeling the effects of the alcohol, but the next day as well. Dr. Jacquie Lavin, head of nutrition and research at the U.K.-based weight-loss organization Slimming World, which commissioned the survey, blames the loosening effect of alcohol on self-control. Plus, she said, "Alcohol makes the food even more rewarding. It tastes good and feels even better than it would do normally." [ BBC News]
Dairy Queen and Coke? That's Rich! You might expect a guy with a fortune the size of Warren Buffet's to dine on champagne and caviar, but when the billionaire investor ate at New York's Four Seasons restaurant, you know what he ordered? A hamburger, a Cherry Coke and a dessert from Dairy Queen. (Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway owns Dairy Queen and a significant percentage of Coca-Cola.) Four Seasons co-owner Julian Niccolini had to send someone out to a local drug store to fetch Buffet's requested beverage, because, he told the New York Post, "We don’t carry that kind of stuff." But because there's currently no Dairy Queen in Manhattan (the first is set to open in May), he had to settle for chocolate chip cookies instead. Poor thing — though perhaps poor isn't quite the right word. [ New York Post]
In Other Food News: Just in time for burger season, Consumer Reports has rated gas grills of all sizes, concluding that "paying more doesn't guarantee you a better gas grill." [ Consumer Reports] A giant cake in the image of Wrigley Field made for a charity event honoring the baseball stadium's 100th birthday was tossed in the trash uneaten, prompting the Chicago Cubs to issue a statement that the organization "disappointed" at how the partly celebratory cake had been disposed of. [ Yahoo Sports] If you've ever been curious about the famous Nathan behind Nathan's Famous hot dogs, a new documentary, made by one of Nathan Handwerker's grandsons, aims to fill you in. Or you could just read about him here. [ New York Times]