Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 October 20

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October 20

Dedicated dehumidifier efficiency vs air conditioner

I have an Alaska mac 12010 air conditioner which I only use for its dehumidifier function but it still separates the hot and cold air. I was wondering whether it might be more energy efficient to have a dedicated dehumidifier but I'm not sure. This one happens to have an efficiency rating of B. Does that mean it would be equivalent to a dedicated dehumidifier of the same efficiency rating per unit of extracted water? ----Seans Potato Business 10:10, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

It all depends on whether you want the temperature inside to be hotter or colder. A dehumidifier typically creates heat. An A/C unit creates heat, too, but dumps that heat outside and takes some of the inside air's heat with it. So, if you want it hotter and less more humid, then use a dehumidifier. If you want it cooler and less humid, use A/C. StuRat (talk) 23:46, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Presumably a typo, you probably meant "hotter and less humid"? Gzuckier (talk) 04:55, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, typo fixed. Thanks. StuRat (talk) 20:14, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

The A/C unit I'm using has a dehumidification mode and is not vented to the outside. The hot air comes out of the back and cold air out of the front but both are contained within the apartment. I live in Scotland where there is little use for air conditioning but I was able to get it fairly cheaply. ----Seans Potato Business 10:10, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

An A/C unit that vents the hot air and cold air into the same airspace sounds horribly inefficient. The only way I'd use one that doesn't vent outside is if I built a Styrofoam wall around it, so half the room was hot and half was cold, as then I could just move to the side of the room presently at a comfortable temp. StuRat (talk) 19:31, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

A dehumidifier passes the cooled air over the condenser to reheat; the condenser can dump its heat at a lower temperature so the compressor has to perform less work. An airco doesn't do that, it wastes energy to separate the cold and hot air.

I only found a Danish(?) manual for your airco, so I don't know what it exactly does in every mode, from what I read about other airco's there's usually a "dehumidifier" mode" which slows down the airflow, extracting more moisture from the air while providing less cooling (and using less energy), and there's a mode in which the condensed water is evaporated and blown outside (which you obviously don't want). Unless your airco can run in "true" dehumidifier mode (passing the cold air over the condenser), it will be less efficient than a dedicated dehumidifier. Don't know if such airco's exist, are perhaps not commercially viable (more complex and expensive unit for the same BTU rating), but I could be wrong. Ssscienccce (talk) 13:09, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Couldn't find suitable figures to compare efficiency, but I assume the difference is considerable. Of course you get all the energy back as heat, but it costs you 2.4 times as much as heating with gas (assuming an old gas boiler with 65% efficiency and using the July 2011 prices for gas: 3.5 p/kWh and electricity: 12.9 p/kWh in Scotland). A decent dehumidifier should have an energy factor of 1.2 to 1.8 liter/kWh depending on size (bigger ones are more efficient). The real expensive ones can get 3.5 l/kWh, but cost 1000€ or more. When tested irl, measured energy factor was significantly lower. Ssscienccce (talk) 15:04, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Herpes varicella zoster virus

Since the virus is airborne, can't a person with shingles or chicken pox transmit the virus to his significant other during sex or by mouth-to-mouth contact? Why isn't it classified as an STD even though it can be transmitted during sexual intercourse by means of close physical contact/breathing? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 03:18, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

STD's are separately classified that way because they usually require sexual contact or the equal in intimacy. Otherwise every communicable disease would be an STD. The usefulness of the term is in dealing with sexual hygiene and sex education. μηδείς (talk) 03:33, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. That makes sense. Though, personal protective equipment also can protect the face and the eyes, in case something splashes. Apparently, eye protection does not seem to be one of the things that people advertise to maintain good hygiene, which may suggest that occupational PPE may actually be more protective than sexual activity PPE. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 04:24, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

If you want to look at it at a deeper level, consider the concept of virulence. Diseases which spread easily and widely tend to become less destructive over the years. Both the hosts become more resistant, and the diseases become more adept at spreading themselves without killing the host. When a disease can be spread by a sneeze, it tends to be very prevalent, but less lethal.

Basically anyone who sleeps with a dozen partners in college is liable to get lice, herpes, and chlamydia. The latter two often don't even cause symptoms in many people. But a disease like AIDS, which lurked in wild animals until crossing over to humans, mostly through the sex trade, in the Belgian Congo in the early 20th century, was wildly virulent once the sexual transmission route through human vectors became available. There is some evidence that the most virulent strains of AIDS burnt themselves out, and that it is becoming more widespread, but killing fewer.

When chicken pox first appeared, it was probably devastating. now it is merely painful for most of the adolescent population during childhood, and recurs in some as shingles, which may be nasty, but which does not usually maim or cause large outbreaks. In my case, I got the shingles, but the case wase so attenuated I seriously thought I simply had a bugbite. μηδείς (talk) 04:49, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I think identifying something as an STD or just a regular communicable disease requires a judgment call. How much a disease is transmitted sexually depends on what one thinks as "primarily sexual" to "not necessarily sexual". If you examine the STDs, many of them are bloodborne, and even though sexual intercourse is one way to transfer bodily fluids, it is not the only way (i.e. breastfeeding, pregnancy, giving birth, open-mouth kissing, contaminated needles, etc.). And if you're the type of person that is not exposed to any sexual contact or does risky behaviors (injecting intravenously with contaminated needles) or has congenital STDs of any kind, then the likelihood of having an STD is extremely unlikely, because you've just eliminated all the typical routes of transmission. However, there is always the freak accident, in which a person may accidentally injure himself physically by stepping on a contaminated nail barefoot. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 23:36, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

permeability of my disposable eating vessels

OK, don't even know where to start searching for this, so of course I come here. I notice a couple of things, often:
when I put my big styrofoam cup of dunkin donuts hot coffee down on the table, when i lift it up again there is a circle of what appears to be water where it was sitting, despite it not leaking
and when I put my cheap paper bowl of hot microwave oatmeal down on the table, when i lift it up again there is quite a bit of what appears to be water where it was sitting, despite it not leaking.
now, in neither case does there seem to be any trace of dampness at the bottom of the thing when i hold it up, with my hand at the bottom, no matter how long; i.e. it's not only not leaking, there is no detectable diffusion. Yet the only conclusion I can come to is that a nontrivial amount of water vapor must be diffusing through both the styrofoam of the cup and the however waterproofed paper of the paper bowl, right? Gzuckier (talk) 05:46, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Is also my conclusion. One other possibility was water already absorbed in the styrofoam evaporating. But someone tested that hypothesis using a cup lined with aluminium foil here. Ssscienccce (talk) 10:44, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

The cup is not flat at the bottom. It is not conforming to the flatness of the table. The bottom of the cup has a protruding rim running around its circumference. The interior area of the bottom of the cup is an isolated volume of air. Despite the insulating properties of the material, the isolated volume of air trapped beneath the cup is heated relative to the external air which is "room temperature", approximately. The differential in temperatures is causing condensation of ambient moisture from the air mass that can hold less moisture. This would not occur or it would be minimized if the bottom of the cup were flat. Bus stop (talk) 11:12, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I seem to have stumbled on Nobel Prize science!!! Thanks, guys.Gzuckier (talk) 14:25, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

That makes no sense. How would heating the volume of air under the cup cause condensation? If the air isn't saturated at ambient temperature, the only way to get condensation (without adding water vapor to the air) is by lowering the temperature below ambient. Besides, if your theory was correct, you would get it with a metal cup or glass beaker as well. And certainly with the aluminium foil lined cup in the experiment "GratefulTony" describes in the reddit link given above. It doesn't happen. Some stoneware mugs may show the effect, but that's because the unglazed part can absorb water which evaporates when the mug is heated. Ssscienccce (talk) 15:34, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. As the experiment at the previous linked showed, the water vapor permeates the Styrofoam, and lining it with aluminum foil prevents that. As for why the OP got condensation on the table but not on the cup or their hand, that's because the table was initially colder than either the OP's hand or the outside of the cup. Specifically, the temperature of the table was initially below the dew point of the air (containing additional water vapor) right outside the cup.

Also critical is that the ring under the cup constrains the warm, moist air, so it can't just mix with the rest of the air, as it can while holding the cup in your hand. I suspect that if the OP put the cup down on a cool grill, where the air could circulate, they would get less condensation, perhaps even none. StuRat (talk) 18:02, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Is there any definition of vegetable which includes baked beans ?

Bush Baked Beans has started running TV ads in the US claiming so, and suggesting that parents can serve children baked beans instead of "other" vegetables. I suspect they may have opened themselves up to claims of false advertising. (I can see where green beans qualify as vegetables, but not baked beans.) StuRat (talk) 17:49, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the definition given at vegetable:

“ In everyday usage, a vegetable is any part of a plant that is consumed by humans as food as part of a savoury meal. The term "vegetable" is somewhat arbitrary, and largely defined through culinary and cultural tradition. It normally excludes other food derived from plants such as fruits, nuts and cereal grains, but includes seeds such as pulses. ”

While the definition is indeed a bit arbitrary, few would argue that a bean is a fruit, nut, or cereal grain. Since beans are also not meat, "vegetable" is the common class of food that most English speakers would place them in. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:27, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

In fact, navy beans which are the normal beans in most commercial baked beans are generally considered pulse (legume), as per that article and Phaseolus vulgaris. The quoted definition explicitly says pulses are normally classified as vegetables.

While the US government sometimes considers legumes seperately [1], in other places like [2] they say "Dry beans (like pinto, navy, kidney, and black beans) are included in the meat and beans group of the Pyramid, but they can count as servings of vegetables instead of meat alternatives". Similar wording [3] and [4] (the later is from the USDA). While the beans in baked beans have been cooked and have an added sauce which may not necessarily be that healthy, the beans themselves could surely still be counted as vegetables per the US government's own definition. The British government evidentally came to a similar conclusion explicitly about baked beans [5].

I couldn't find an explicit comment about baked beans from the US government, but I strongly suspect it exists somewhere. The US government is after all the same government which gives tomato paste special credit when it comes to vegetables [6]. (BTW, by a similar token, cauliflower cheese may not be the healthiest way to eat cauliflower, but the cauliflower would still generally be considered a vegetable.)

If you want to get in to semantics, if they said "baked beans are a vegetable", then you could perhaps argue that's misleading. But if they said "baked beans can count as a serving as vegetables", that's almost definitely supported by the USDA and perhaps other areas of the US government. The wording you provided is close to the later. The only problem would be if you argue that the phrase would be intepreted to mean that parents can serve baked beans to the exclusion of all other vegetables. That would be problematic since the US government's advice is clearly that there should be multiple different kinds of vegetables. And that's unrelated to the argument over whether baked beans can count as a serving of vegetables anyway.

Nil Einne (talk) 18:59, 20 October 2015 (UTC) Edited for paragraphing and to add semantics bit at 19:15, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

...So Stu may not have grounds for a legal case against the good people at BBB. Nix_v._Hedden provides some relevant context though - it was decided by the US supreme court that tomatoes are legally vegetables, not fruit. Sometimes the legal classifications might be different from everyday usage or botanical classification, but I don't think beans are such a case. Here [7] is a nine-page document from the USDA devoted entirely to the labeling of beans, including canned baked beans. It specifically says that they fall under the Fruit & Vegetable division of the Processed Products Branch of the USDA. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:18, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

The bit about "excludes fruits" really needs to be qualified better. A great many things that are botanically "fruit" are not usually considered fruit for culinary purposes. Tomatoes are the obvious example that everyone thinks about (anyone who thinks tomatoes are a culinary fruit, you're a lost cause and there's no point in talking to you). But also green beans, cucumbers, squash, olives, and on and on. Maybe we should just remove the bit about fruit, because it already talks about it being used in the savory portion of the meal, and that usually excludes culinary fruits. (Not always; there are obvious exceptions in Chinese and Persian cuisine.) --Trovatore (talk) 19:08, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Well I admit to being a lost cause — I used to eat tomatoes with sugar, as a fruit! Is this a rare habit? Does it make me a deviant, to be ostracised? Dbfirs 20:23, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, well it sounds like you really do eat them as a fruit. I'm not judging. Heck, might be good, for all I know — never tried it. I'm talking more about people who refuse to allow any word but "fruit" for tomatoes, just because of their botanical classification. --Trovatore (talk) 20:29, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

They have to be ripe and preferably home-grown, but I admit that I more often eat them as vegetables. Pleased to know that I'm not completely a lost cause. Dbfirs 20:36, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I've just come back from a trip to Okinawa, where I found a market stall selling dried fruit, including sweetened dried tomatoes. They seemed to be just as "fruity" as any of the more conventional dried fruits. Iapetus (talk) 13:22, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

The fruit article has a whole section on the culinary v.s. botanical definition, and the sentence is hedged with "normally" -so to my reading that sentence is fine... I tried for a minute to work in something like "fruits (construed culinarily)" but that just seemed more awkward. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:18, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

• See Animal, vegetable, or mineral. --Jayron32 19:32, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
• Broad agreement across a wide variety of sources indicates that classifying beans as vegetables is fine, but that their nutritional profile (especially protein content) makes them important meat substitutes for vegetarian and vegan eaters. --Jayron32 19:34, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

This is an interesting topic. On its own, there's really no problem whatever in classifying beans as vegetables; the problem is entirely with the bizarre hodge-podge group we've decided to call vegetables. Hell, if ketchup is a vegetable... 64.235.97.146 (talk) 19:42, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

If tomatoes are vegetables, then so is any type of tomato sauce. If beans are vegetables, then baked beans are a cooked vegetable. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:56, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

In the UK, baked beans are commonly accepted as a vegetable portion, so much so the National Health Service suggests they can form one of your 5 a day, so I'd get over it and start eating them. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:03, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I think what's going on here is that health agencies and others often promulgate what you might call "rules of thumb" for healthy eating. So many vegetables a day, "added sugar", and so on.

They don't have any useful literal meaning. Sugar, for example, is sugar, and it's perfectly possible to get too much sugar without eating any added sugar at all; it's just less likely (and more likely that you'll accidentally get some other useful nutrients in the process, not that that cancels out eating too much sugar, but at least you'll get those desirable things too).

So there's a rule of thumb about how many "servings" of "vegetables" you should eat a day. If you decide to have canned baked beans as all of those "servings", my personal guess is that you're not really going to accomplish what the rule of thumb is after.

But to be sure, you'd need to break it down. What's the goal behind the guideline? How much of various vitamins is it intended to furnish? How much of other phytochemicals, for example polyphenols? How much dietary fiber, specifically soluble and insoluble? Which of those are in the beans to start with, and how much of them survive the canning and cooking process? --Trovatore (talk) 21:35, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Re: "it's perfectly possible to get too much sugar without eating any added sugar at all". Honey is about the only completely natural and unprocessed food I can think of that might give you a sugar overdose (although technically it is processed to remove the excess water and make it sweeter; this is done by the bees fanning it with their wings to evaporate the water). Maple syrup is quite sweet, but the sap from which it is made is not, most of the water has to be boiled off to make it so sweet. I believe the same is true of sugar beets and sugar cane. StuRat (talk) 21:59, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh, it's not even hard. You can get too much sugar just by eating too much fresh fruit. Nutritional public-service types are understandably reluctant to emphasize that, because they think (and I assume they're probably right) that most people probably don't eat enough fresh fruit, and they don't want to confuse the message. But that doesn't change the facts. --Trovatore (talk) 22:39, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I have a hard time imagining giving yourself diabetes by eating too much fruit (although eating fruit exclusively, and thus missing out on all the other nutrients you need, might mess you up pretty badly). StuRat (talk) 03:10, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, what you are able to imagine doesn't change anything. I'm not an expert on the pathogenesis of type II diabetes, but what I am pretty sure about is that, when you eat sugar, your body can't tell whether it's "added" or not. Sugar is sugar.

(Of course "sugar is sugar" isn't quite true — there are different sugars, and it's possible that the different sugars have different effects. But the main sugar in fruit is fructose, and that's also the main sugar in high fructose corn syrup, which is one of the main things people have been singling out as a villain in the American diet.)

The "added sugar" thing is probably not a bad thing for many people to track, because if you avoid added sugar, it's harder (but by no means impossible) to get too much total sugar, and because what sugar you do get will normally come with other nutrients (which don't cancel out the sugar, but may help you in other ways). Just don't kid yourself that natural sugar "doesn't count". It all counts. --Trovatore (talk) 04:06, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Remember "the dose makes the poison". In this case, so does the concentration. To eat too much sugar, from, say, watermelon, would require eating so much you would vomit, and hence not absorb it all. Not so for Pixy Stix. StuRat (talk) 17:00, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

The dose makes the poison. The concentration does not. I think the concentration (and I want to be clear that I'm not an expert on this, but I don't think you are either) is pretty much irrelevant here.

You can definitely eat too much sugar in the form of, say, grapes, which are basically little packages of sugar water. Watermelon might be harder, but I think you could do it. --Trovatore (talk) 17:38, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

The concentration certainly does make the poison, since, if it's too low of a concentration, you can't possibly consume the dose required to make it a poison. A good example is poppy seeds, which contain a minuscule amount of opium, but it's not possible to get an overdose of opium by eating poppy seeds. StuRat (talk) 18:04, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

That is certainly possible in principle, yes, but I don't think it's true of sugar and fresh fruit. I'm also starting to suspect that you have a different idea of how much sugar is "too much". I don't mean enough to make you immediately sick, or that's going to give you diabetes as a direct and traceable consequence. I just mean so much that you probably ought to be eating less. (By which definition I certainly eat too much sugar, and I'm going to guess that you do, too.) --Trovatore (talk) 18:18, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

You're both partly right. Check out this comment from the Mayo Clinic: [8] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:18, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Trovatore's basically hit on it. First, concepts are made by humans, the concept "fruit" as opposed to the concept "vegetable" is not something one digs up in a fossil bed. Secondly, all plant matter is vegetable. So fruits are by that definition a subset of vegetables. But fruits are usually noted for their sweetness and sugar content. That's why I can eat the fruit corn (maize) without my blood sugar spiking, while the vegetables potatoes and carrots, as well as fruit juices and beans (in excess) can indeed make my sugar spike. If Stu wants a nutritionist's opinion on a medical matter he should seek one. I can recommend a great endocinologist for anyone who wants to email me and visit the East Coast. Otherwise, asking about definitions as if they were objective absolutes is about as helpful as buying a book on dream interpretation or watching Bill O'Reilly. It might help; you decide. μηδείς (talk) 01:59, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

And you've hit on it further. The original usage of "fruit" meant anything produced by agriculture, and soon after it both expanded to include any type of product, and narrowed to include only the sweets we commonly call "fruits".[9] Hence, the same word for several related but distinct concepts. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:24, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Quite sure the claim about sugar cane is not true or at least highly misleading. Anyone who has every tasted Sugarcane juice can tell you it's plenty sweet. And if you've seen it being made the traditional way, you know there's no boiling to make it that way, it's just the juice extracted from pressed cane. Of course you don't really need that much sugar to make something sweet when there's only limited other taste and definitely no sour or bitter taste but still [10] suggests 11-13% (by weight or volume I'm not sure) which may be lower than a number of other drinks but isn't exactly low. The stuff produced commercially for the production of sugar may not be that sweet, or at least after many pressing (presuming it isn't all combined) since they likely want to maximise profits by extracting as much sugar as they can until it's no longer profitable (given whatever extra steps need to be taken for extraction or processing after extraction), but that's a different point.

I have no idea about sugar beets, but since it a common commercial sugar source albeit one that tends to be more expensive than sugarcane (but suitable for different environments) I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar and our article actually says "75% water, about 20% sugar, and 5% pulp[6] (the exact sugar contents can vary between 12 and 21% sugar".

Even less sure about maple syrup. For the production of the syrup it's boiled, but you'd have to do the same to sugar cane juice if you wanted to produced a somewhat viscous syrup rather than a sweet juice/water. Maple syrup aside, maple isn't used for the commercial production of sugar, although growing a big tree for that and then harvesting it from the sap, when there are far better sources doesn't exactly seem likely to be effective anyway so this isn't that surprising. Our article suggests 2-5% sugar in the sap, which seems fairly low, but depending on what else is present, I wouldn't be surprised if it's still enough to be sweet.

Incidentally, none of this should be really that surprising, apple juice without any added sugar or much (if any) concentration is a very common alternative to other sweeteners in commercial fruit juices (so the product can be sold as fruit juice with "no sugar added"). Most commercial apple juices even those which aren't concentrated and have no added sugar are plenty sweet. (Possibly more sweet than sugar cane juice per the earlier source.) I mention commercial here primarily because it's possible you could make a apple juice which people wouldn't really consider sweet (although I suspect it'll still have a lot of sugar) depending on the apple cultivar used. (This is another important point which I hinted at earlier. Whether or not something is sweet, depends a fair amount on what other tastes it had. If something is fairly sour or bitter, you'll generally need more sugar before people are likely to identify it as sweet than if the sugar/sweetness is the only real taste.)

Not sure what you mean by "sugar overdose" but neither sugarcane juice nor apple juice are particularly diabetes friendly. [11]

It's perhaps also worth remembering that there's a big difference between "not sweet", and "so sweet you'd have to be an idiot to drink it". Maple syrup and honey, for example are primarily intended to be used to add additional flavouring & sweetness to other things. Even if you have a real sweet tooth, you're not going to want to drink/eat them in large quantities. Sugarcane juice and other such things are not that sweet so you can actually drink them in reasonable quantities, but unless you have a really warped sense of what's sweet, they are most definitely sweet.

Nil Einne (talk) 07:13, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Note that extracting juice is itself a way to concentrate sugars. That is, removing the pulp (fiber) makes it into an item with a higher concentration of sugar than if you ate the item (such as an apple), directly. StuRat (talk) 17:09, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

As others have said, this is an issue of the meaning of a word in the English language - not an issue of what you should eat and in what quantities. The words "fruit" and "vegetable" have two quite distinct and often contradictory meanings - the culinary sense, and the scientific sense. So you first have to pick which definition you care about - then apply that definition to baked beans to decide whether they should be classified as one or the other under that set of definitions. We humans have this problem all the time. If I ask you how many cars are travelling down some particular road every hour - you'll probably count passenger cars, light trucks and SUV's. But if you ask me whether I'm going to buy a car or something else for driving to work, then I won't think of a pickup truck as a "car". So we have two different definitions for the word "car" and we use whichever definition best fits our needs on a moment-to-moment basis!

Since this is ultimately a question about what one should eat and what one should not - the other question becomes important - which is "Why do you need to know?" In this case, you ultimately need to make sure you have a balanced diet in order to remain healthy - and if that's the real question, then we really don't care whether beans happen to have been arbitrarily stuffed into the "fruit", "bean", "vegetable", "pulse" or any other arbitrary category by Victorian scientists or 16th century French chefs - we only care what nutrients they provide and in what quantities.

So we can't easily tell you whether it's OK to stop eating carrots and replace them with baked beans because we don't know what else you eat. If you also regularly eat, say tomato and cabbage - then the answer is going to be different than if your other vegetable choices are (say) green beans and peas.

The best answer (without getting very detailed) is that you should eat a wide variety of plant-based foods - and it's perfectly OK if baked beans show up in the mix from time to time. But if you're one of those "vegetable-haters" and fondly imagine that you can dump all other vegetables and just eat baked beans instead - then you're sadly wrong - and it doesn't matter a damn whether baked beans "count" as a vegetable or not.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:02, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that did seem to be the suggestion of the commercial, that kids can stop eating (other) vegetables and just eat beans instead. StuRat (talk) 18:12, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Also be aware that the focusing on nutrients and micronutrients solely is also a controversial matter. While one should certainly understand how one can achieve a balanced diet, there are nutritionists who shy away from assuming that all one needs to do is calculate exactly how many grams of each nutrient one needs to survive, and then subsist solely on dietary supplements that provide exactly that quantity of nutrients (not to say that you're doing that, but when you say "we only care what nutrients they provide and in what quantities" that implies to some people that you can get those nutrients from any source, and by any means, and that's not necessarily so, and I wanted to make that explicit. Your post does indicate that isn't what you meant, so this is not a criticism, but an elaboration). The premise of the whole food movement is that the manner in which one acquires the requisite nutrients does matter, and focuses on getting the nutrients through a wide variety of natural sources. --Jayron32 18:53, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I have a conflicted attitude towards the whole-fooders. I think the belief you describe, as you literally describe it, is nonsense, on a par with homeopathy.

On the other hand, I do kind of suspect that people who try to follow the whole-foods methodology, at least as long as it doesn't keep them from taking things they ought to be taking, probably are by and large likely to eat healthier than those who don't.

So I'd put "whole foods" in the same "useful rule of thumb but not literally meaningful" category as the "avoid added sugar" thing that I brought up above. --Trovatore (talk) 19:55, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, it depends on what you mean by "whole fooders". The notion that one can (and probably should) subsist mostly, if not entirely, on food which has seen minimum processing from its natural state (beyond seasoning and cooking) is not entirely unfounded. The elevation to pseudoreligious status of people who look at it as a "movement" rather than "a sensible approach to healthy eating" I agree with you entirely. But the notion that any person should ever need to consume nutrients in non-food form is pretty silly when you think about it. We have methods of food preparation, that by the nature necessary to create shelf-stable and widely inoffensive tastes have removed many necessary nutrients from them, which is why people need supplements. If people ate the unprocessed foods before the nutrients were removed they'd be healthier on the balance. Of course, one should approach these things with a full understanding of the chemistry and biology involved; a blind adherence to "processing bad!" concept would actually work against a person (for example, a type of food processing called Nixtamalization is a necessary step before consuming many types of maize; to eat the unprocessed maize as a staple grain, without this step, would result in a loss of niacin, a necessary nutrient. The Wikipedia article has cn tags all over this, but the related article pellagra has the requisite references). But there are many facets of eating more fresh foods which have well-documented health benefits. --Jayron32 23:28, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Improving A Specific Memory

(I'm asking this under science because memory involves the brain.)

I don't have a problem with remembering things in general, just this one thing. Any help?

(Hopefully this doesn't count as "medical advice") Theskinnytypist (talk) 21:53, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Can you tell us what it is ? A mnemonic device may be in order. For example: "Many Equestrian People Buy Pretty Happy Horses Of Noble Descent" is to remember the first letter of the first 10 molecules in the methane series. StuRat (talk) 22:02, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Let's see if this helps - it's cleaning the dishes. Theskinnytypist (talk) 22:22, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Prospective memory is a form of memory that involves remembering to perform a planned action or intention at some future point in time. Sticky-notes, knotted handkerchiefs, or string around the finger all exemplify cues that people use as strategies to enhance prospective memory. Bestfaith (talk) 23:05, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I would think a sink filled with dishes would be a sufficient memory cue. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:22, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Only if you have occasion to pass them on a regular basis. I suggest an alarm, say on a cell phone. StuRat (talk) 03:05, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

That could work. The real question would seem to be, how to motivate oneself to do a boring task. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:17, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

A shock collar. If the sink has dishes in it for over 30 minutes, you get a shock. Every 10 minutes, it increases until you are motivated to clean the dishes. It works in animals and most humans have enough intelligence to qualify as an animal. So, it should work in humans as well. 199.15.144.250 (talk) 13:28, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

What works for me is linking things in my mind. Say I want to remember to do something when I get home. I tell myself "when I see my couch think of xxx". I might forget all about it in between but when I get home I'll see the couch and remember. (Although it has happened that I remembered that I need to do something but could not remember what.) So for dishes link in your mind something that you already do that you do approximately as often as you want to remember the dishes. Take off shoes? Drink water? Walk in bedroom? Things like that. Ariel. (talk) 07:44, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

It's often a matter of creating a routine. For example, we have a nice, old grandfather clock that I could never remember to wind. It runs for about 8 or 9 days without winding, so I started to get into the habit of winding the clock right before taking out the garbage cans to the street every Tuesday. Since that's an event that I never forget - the idea that winding the clock is a part of the 'dealing with the garbage cans' event fixed that problem and now our clock is regularly wound. SteveBaker (talk) 12:42, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

• Put a dish on the seat or the bed you go to after having forgotten to do the dishes. Or put one on top of the tank of your toilet. An object out of place is a great reminder. μηδείς (talk) 15:54, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. I'll try these and see which one works the best. Theskinnytypist (talk) 07:05, 22 October 2015 (UTC)