The New York Times has an interesting article (free reg req.) about the economics of food sold in supermarkets.

It is important enough, that I’ll quote some of the key findings:

Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

It starts to get interesting when the cause is investigated:

For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill.

…

Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.)

And thanks to the close trade ties we in Australia have with the US, similar economics are at play in our local supermarkets. Brings to light the recent increase in the average Australian weight.

Sad, sad times.

Hugh has gone back to incredibly interesting with his recent move to Microsoft. Over the last few months, his blog hasn’t been as interesting as it was in the days of his innovation with Stormhoek and English Cut. Check out his commentary on Open Source and Microsoft.

Guy has lost my attention very quickly, and is running the risk of being unsubscribed. The signal to noise ratio is not looking good, as his blog now feels like it is more about him than his audience. A sad change from what was once a great source of information.

Seth continues to be brilliant. Constant stream of insight on many topics. Check out the blog for his new book, the Dip.

Trizle has rapidly risen in grabbing my attention. Daily insights into all aspects of entrepreneurship, with Kathy Sierra style fun.

Eric Schmidt was interviewed recently by Wired. Some of the hightlights from the discussion include:

Architecture

Now, with the Internet protocols you can pretty much plug in your own interpretation of how email should work and your own interpretation of how voice over IP should work.

And so was spawned a swarm of Web 2.0 companies all attempting to re-invent the wheel, now in a web browser. The interesting piece for me is the potential of sync. Newsgator is my favourite for this (multiple clients all sync’d to a central server allowing online and offline).

Google docs and spreadsheets don’t work if you’re on an airplane. But it’s a technical problem that is going to get solved. Eventually you will be able to work on a plane as if you are connected and, then when you get reconnected to the Internet, your computer will just synchronize with the cloud.

Could I have this? Please? Like yesterday?

Advertising

The other interesting thing about pageviews is that we make our money by improving the quality, not the quantity, of ads showed on a page. This is very confusing to people. In a normal media business, you make money by showing more ads.

Organizational Structure

Google’s biggest scaling problem may actually be their culture. It is obviously something on their CEO’s mind.

It’s a constant problem. We analyze this every day, and our conclusion is that the best model remains small teams running as fast as they can and tolerating a certain lack of cohesion. The attempt to provide order drives out the creativity. And so it’s a balance.

Innovation

Virtually all of the innovation at the company is still coming out of 20 percent time.

Innovation doesn’t happen by accident, it happens due to a good environment that encourages it. Part of this is allocating time to let it happen. The other part is providing incentives. At Google, a good 20 percent time project has the potential to turn into a fully branded Google product. One heck of a carrot for a developer.

Search

We also know Google News, for example, which we don’t monetize, has had a tremendous impact on searches and on query quality. We know those people search more. Because we’ve measured it.

Interesting.

There is a lot of useful information in the interview and it is well worth a read.

Update: Wired has posted an earlier interview with Eric Schmidt. (link via daring fireball’s linked list)

Ronan Thomas Lampert arrived this morning to his proud parents. All are doing well.

Happy 0^th Birthday Ronan!