Added 16 January, 2014
The trend for foods to be natural, organic, local, hand-made, small batch and the like is pervasive; we are seeing it everywhere, from restaurants that only use produce that was picked the same day to organic vodkas that use sustainably harvested quinoa instead of wheat. Not even chewing gum is immune from this trend. Simply Gum claims to be the...
Added 8 January, 2014
There are lots of new brainwave-reading devices coming to the market that allow wearers to manipulate external objects just by thinking about it. We have already covered some of these, like the headset with furry "ears" that you can move just by thinking about it, the video game controllers that can your thoughts to moves to the screen, and the...
Added 4 January, 2014
We've seen a lot of brain wave-reading technology lately. Some has been frivolous, like the headset with furry "ears" that you can move just by thinking about it. Some has been fun, like the video game controllers that can "read" your mind and translate your moves to the screen. And some have been jaw-droppingly transformative, like the wearable...
Added 20 December, 2013
eCigarettes have been operating in something of a legal limbo for the past few years as lawmakers struggle to make sense of them, battle corporate action committees, and design rules that regulate this new habit. Trends, as we often say, usually keep getting stronger, until something stops them or changes their direction. Extending strict smoking...
Added 18 December, 2013
It seems almost unbelievable, but in the United States and some other countries it is common practice for pharmaceutical companies to pay doctors to promote their drugs to patients. Additionally, those same companies have established sales quotas for the detailers of their prescription drugs, pushing dealers to push them on patients. This seeming...
Added 10 December, 2013
In recent months we've seen many fast-food giants promote healthier menus, including a new type of french fry from Burger King that has less fat than normal fries. It's certainly a trend when the biggest companies get on board, and that is the case with food. The major players know that customers are clamoring for choices that are healthier and...
Added 26 November, 2013
To anyone looking at consumer culture, the rise of energy drinks and eCigarettes represent two of the biggest trends of the decade. Energy drinks, the older of the two, has already matured into lots of other markets, from energy shots to energy sprays. eCigarettes are far newer, but also potentially much larger as most major tobacco brands have...
Added 10 November, 2013
Farm-to-table, a moniker that's short for fresh food, locally sourced and unadulterated from the time it is picked to the time it reaches the kitchen, has been part of the dining lexicon for a while now. The trend has become so pervasive, in fact, that it is showing up in other parts of our lives. Take spas, for example. Put in the spa context,...
Added 28 October, 2013
There are several names for the routines, including P90X and Power 90 Extreme, but the drill is basically the same: intense spurts of exercise separated by lower-intensity periods of recovery. Workouts, like diets, come in fads. Taibo, mud runs, and Zumba, a form of dance workout, had their days. Now the trend is towards intensity intervals that...
Added 4 October, 2013
It's one thing to wear a bracelet that measures your rates of activity. But from a medical perspective, it's quite another order of magnitude to constantly measure your body temperature, down to a percent of a degree. Precision thermometry of the skin, along with other measurements, can provide clinically relevant information about cardiovascular...