Freebie Friday 3.25.11

Worthy Things to Do, Listen To, or View that Won’t Cost You a Dime

TGIF. Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday. Food/Eating is the theme. Once again it’s a three tip Friday. 

• First up is the National Institutes of Health’s Portion Distortion Interactive Quiz. You may have heard that portion sizes in restaurants have become larger over the past 20 years. Once you take this short, 2-part quiz you should have no remaining doubts about just how much Americans have “biggied up” in the last two decades. Along with the new calorie counts, the answer section lets you know how much exercise it would take to burn up the difference in calories. Part I starts with a bagel and ends with a turkey sandwich. Part II covers coffee, muffins, pizza, and more. 

• Next is the Eat Well Guide which allows you to find good food wherever you are — at home or on the road. Find sustainable food options by entering a keyword, zip code, or city/state. You can use Eat Well Anywhere to help plan a road trip allowing you to eat good food along the way. The Eat Well Guide is a program of the GRACE Communications Foundation. 

• Finally, I offer up The Meatrix, the first in a trilogy of animated shorts inspired by The Matrix. In the first episode Moopheus introduces Leo the pig to the reality of The Meatrix (the factory farm), “the lie we tell ourselves about where our food comes from.” The second installment covers the dark side of dairy farming, and the third, meat processing facilities. Be warned that these shorts are not for young children. The site is rich in content for further education and action steps. The Meatrix is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation and Free Range Studios.

TGIF. Be sure to visit again on Monday for my third and final installment on the nutritional content of fast food. Have a great weekend!

FYI Why a piñata? Just like a blog link, until you open it, you won’t know what’s inside.