Chinese food is everywhere 🥡🥢
This edition: Chinese culture through food, the impact of food on our brains, and building good environments for good habits
A hobby of mine is talking about food or watching food being made while eating food. Ask me about my favorite ASMR videos and I’ll send you some (to be clear, they’re NOT mukbang).
Another hobby? Cooking and baking—but not really eating. Ask me to bake you something like a galette and I just might.
Have a great week, folks! Be well.
—Connie
Around the world in 100 images: the global reach of Chinese cuisine
<Link to article> | <Link to gallery>
One of my favorite ways to learn about a culture is through their food. But one culture I’ve taken for granted all my life is Chinese food. Even though my DNA says I’m 100% Chinese, I don’t feel fully Chinese.
Being born in and growing up in America, especially in a small town where I was one of two Asian kids in my entire grade, being Chinese was reserved for home and during the weekends. My mother would cook dinner nearly every night (ordering out and going to restaurants was not a thing in my house), and we’d trudge to Chinatown on Sundays, scarfing down freshly pan-fried dumplings as a consolation prize before being forced into a few hours of mind-numbing Chinese school curriculum.
But this? This digital gallery curated by Jenny Lau of Celestial Peach hit in a way that I never thought I could feel, like a part of my Chinese core woke up.
Such vibrancy! Diversity of artistic styles and flairs!
What a visual treat to see all these familiar foods interpreted by talented folks. So take a moment, scroll at your leisure, and hopefully you feel even just a bit of joy that I do when looking at food as art.
You are what you eat: food has a bigger influence on us than we realized
Nutrition is a huge deal, and the science behind how it affects us is still ever-evolving—which is cool but poses a challenge for those of us trying to maximize our lives (e.g., longevity, quality of life). Should we be consuming more egg whites? Less salt? What’s the deal about alternative sugars?
It’s a complicated mess of questions and answers. Your vitamin and mineral levels can be measured through blood work, which is a great starting point if you’re not sure how to tackle improving your health via food. And then to understand the best diet (as in, the foods you eat, not the weight-loss regimen) that works for you takes a bit of trial and error.
For example, I bloat and get a bad case of brain fog after eating greasy carbs that have been fried in low-quality vegetable or soy oils. So I’ll keep as close to keto as I can when I need mental focus for an extended period of time.
The article talks about niacin deficiency, a B3 vitamin that depletes when you drink too much alcohol. I’ve had my fair number of run-ins with this deficiency, feeling the telltale sign of rough skin near my lip in the morning after a drinking session.
Does this mean we should deprive ourselves of all joys? Certainly not, but there’s always a case for moderation, like nearly everything else in life.
Note: No part of this newsletter is medical advice, so if you wish to, work with a medical professional to figure out what works best for you and your health situation.
For realsies: your environment can make or break your habits, like working out
During the pandemic lockdowns, working out daily was easy. Even to this day I work out nearly every day; I’d built a positive environment for myself, which counted for more than just simply being motivated to do it.
While I highly recommend reading the entirety of James Clear’s Atomic Habits, if there’s one lesson I think most people would benefit from, it’s this article. If you’re in an environment that sets you up for success, you’ve just improved your odds of success. Easy peasy.
Fun finds
Iced coffee versus cold brew? Not sure of the differences? School yourself with this clever Instagram story-styled primer.
Cats, cats, and more cats! This Hawaiian outdoor cat sanctuary is a purrfect refuge for ferals living on Lanai.
Weatherman discovers his monitor has a touch screen... immediately turns into a kid. If this doesn’t make you smile, you’re dead inside.