Good morning, it’s Tuesday.
So, not long ago, I wrote a post extolling the post-athletic performance recovery powers of beer – consumed in moderation, of course. Carbs are good, contrary to popular belief. They get a bad rap, but they provide your body with energy.
Of course, some carbs are better than others. Like, sweet potatoes are higher quality than, say, Doritos. But it also depends on what you’re doing, how long you’re going to be doing it for, and how quickly you’re going to need to be able to access the energy your carb source provides.
I know people who swear by Pop Tarts for quick pre-race energy, for example. And there’s some science behind that, too.
As for post-exertion recovery, you need to replenish the calories and water you lost while working out – especially if you broke a serious sweat in the process.
Protein helps grow and repair muscles, fluids help with rehydration (the shorthand is that for every pound of weight lost due to sweating, replace with 20 to 24 ounces of fluid, post-exercise), and carbs, again, fuel you up.
In recent years, there has been a lot of hype around chocolate milk (preferably a lower-fat, or fat-free version) as a recovery drink. Proponents point to the fact that it contains protein, and cite studies that have shown it is as good as – if not better than – carbohydrate-laden sports drinks.
Chocolate milk also provides carbs – mainly in the form of sugar – and the low-fat version has a 4:1 carbs-to-protein ratio, which is about on par with other beverages that are specifically (read: chemically) tailored to recovery.
Perhaps you are lactose intolerant, or just avoid dairy on principle. Almond and soy versions of chocolate milk have their own benefits, though they don’t contain the protein content that cow milk offers.
This seems like as good a time as any to mention that it’s National Chocolate Milk Day.
As per usual, there is disagreement about chocolate milk’s origin story.
One claim is that Sir Hans Sloane, an Irish botanist. “discovered” the drink while spending time in Jamaica in the early 1700s. The local people gave him cocoa, but he found it bitter and so mixed it with milk to make it more palatable. He brought the mixture back home with him, and it was marketed as medicine for years afterwards.
The Jamaicans, by the way, had been boiling freshly harvested cacao shavings with milk and cinnamon for many years – at least since 1494. And, of course, humans knew about chocolate as far back as 350 B.C., so the likelihood that someone else mixed it with milk long before anyone thought to document the process is pretty high.
Then again, if you want to talk about who created cocoa powder, the sort that one might mix into milk, that credit (reportedly) goes to a Dutch chemist named Coenraad van Houten. He figured out how to use alkaline salts to remove the bitter taste from cocoa mass and make the solids more water-soluble.
The result? “Dutch process chocolate” – as it’s still known today.
It’s going to be partly cloudy with temperatures in the high 60s today – not quite hot chocolate weather, so how about treating yourself to a nice, tall glass of chocolate milk in the meantime?
In the headlines…
NASA has successfully tested its Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, which collided with an asteroid last night.
Asteroid Dimorphos, which NASA said is the size of a football stadium, does not pose a threat to the planet, in this case. But the mission will help scientists test technologies that could prevent a potentially catastrophic asteroid impact.
Engineers of the DART mission expect images taken of the collision and the aftermath by a brief-case-sized CubeSat within the next coming days, but actual quantitative data on the impact of the mission will take about two months.
Controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab erupted with joy as Dimorphos filled the field of view on Dart’s camera just before then going blank. Initial calculations suggest the impact was a mere 17m off the exact centre of Dimorphos.
Top lawmakers proposed a stopgap funding package last night that would avert a government shutdown at the end of the week and set aside a major new round of emergency aid to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia.
With funding set to run out when a new fiscal year begins on Saturday, lawmakers are aiming to quickly move the legislation through both chambers in the coming days to keep the government funded through Dec. 16.
Congress has just three legislative days remaining to avert a fast-approaching government shutdown at the end of the week, and much of its ability to keep the government running will depend on whether lawmakers can navigate an impasse over energy policy.
Most expect that Congress will find a way to pass a short-term measure before midnight Friday, as it is not in either party’s interest to be blamed for a shutdown weeks before the midterm elections. But the timeline and disagreements won’t make it easy.
President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation plan will cost an estimated $400 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The C.B.O. also said the full price tag of the plan could push even higher because Biden extended a pause on federal student loan repayments through the end of the year, which could end up costing some $20 billion.
The estimates are the latest to put a price tag on the administration’s student-loan-modification plans, in the absence of a detailed accounting from the White House.
Biden announced his administration’s plans to crack down on fees and increase competition across various industries.
The president urged companies running gas stations, banks, and cell phones to lower costs for consumers struggling to cope with inflation.
Biden will host a state dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron in December, the White House announced.
Biden welcomed the Atlanta Braves to the White House, celebrating their 2021 World Series championship win with an event in the East Room.
Biden said the team will “forever known as the upset kings of October” for their improbable 2021 World Series win.
Biden has quickly backed demonstrators in Iran. When the country faced similar unrest 13 years ago, U.S. officials feared such a strong approach would be counterproductive.
Markets around the world trembled yesterday, extending a losing streak that has been fueled by mounting panic that the global economy is going to take a hit.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell to a new low for the year, dropping more than 1 percent and taking its decline for the year to more than 23 percent. Most benchmarks in Asia and Europe also dropped.
Goldman Sachs has begun laying off workers across the US — and the Wall Street giant is focused on culling mid-level investment bankers amid a downturn in dealmaking as the economy slows.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is set to reconvene its next live hearing today, putting the finishing touches on its case that former President Donald Trump was at the center of a plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The National Archives faces a deadline today update a congressional committee on a key question: Are there still documents from the Trump White House that are unaccounted for?
At 4:34 pm on January 6, 2021, a cell phone registered to a Capitol rioter who had stormed the building, received a phone call from a White House landline. The call lasted for only nine seconds, and who placed it and why remains a mystery.
Anton Lunyk, 26, of Midwood, Brooklyn, who is a Trump fan and admitted joining the attack with two buddies, is the owner of the phone that received the call.
More than half of principals said their schools were understaffed at the start of the current school year, according to a survey published today in the Education Department’s first national examination of the school staffing problem since the pandemic began.
Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE asked U.S. health regulators to clear use of their updated Covid-19 booster in children 5 years to 11 years.
Like the boosters that became available for older people earlier this month, these bivalent boosters target the original coronavirus strain as well as the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants.
COVID is no longer the chief health concern among Americans amid rising concerns about mental health, according to a 2022 Ipsos survey of 34 countries.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it has authorized an additional five batches of Moderna’s updated Covid booster shots made at a Catalent facility in Indiana, after it deemed them safe for use.
Travelers heading to Canada will have an easier time entering the country as it drops its COVID entry requirements starting Saturday.
Travelers, regardless of citizenship status, will no longer have to submit public health information, proof of vaccination, coronavirus test results before or after arrival or be subject to random P.C.R. testing, the Public Health Agency of Canada said.
Elected officials across Western New York are pleased with the lifting of all the requirements, saying it couldn’t have come at a better time.
New York’s weekly tally of COVID-19 cases ticked up about 8% last week, as many counties outside New York City faced higher coronavirus risk levels and spikes in other viral infections among children nationally prompted public health alerts.
With images of lawlessness, G.O.P. candidates are pressing the issue of public safety in places where worries about it are omnipresent. Democrats, on the defensive, are promising to fund the police.
Republican candidate for governor Lee Zeldin would not move to limit or restrict a law that expanded abortion rights in New York and doubts Democrats in the state Legislature would advance him such a measure to approve.
Good-government groups want a reset with the state’s new ethics and lobbying commission as the panel takes shape this month and after the prior regulator came under intense criticism for dysfunction, leaks and cozy relationships with elected officials.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie is nominating attorney Dolly Caraballo to the state’s new ethics and lobbying watchdog after one of his previous appointees was rejected by a panel of law school deans.
Transit boosters called on Hochul to better fund the MTA so New York City subways and buses can operate every six minutes.
New York is launching an effort to curtail unemployment insurance scams following an investigation that found $11 million in fraudulent benefit payments made last month.
The state has been attempting to deal with fallout from policies that expedited unemployment benefits for people who reported they lost jobs during the pandemic, leading to widespread fraud.
As New York faces down a winter of ballooning heating costs and brutal electric bills, more than 50 state lawmakers demanded a public hearing on future Con Edison price hikes.
The state’s Stretch Limousine Passenger Safety Task Force meeting held on Sept. 16 likely should have been open to the press and public, and not held in secret as it was that day, according to a new advisory opinion from the Committee on Open Government.
Democratic socialist Assemblywoman Marcela Mitaynes (D-Brooklyn) formally introduced legislation to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day in New York.
Data from DOCCS show that since HALT went into effect nearly six months ago, prisons have sent hundreds of people with mental or physical ailments to solitary, including dozens with the highest levels of health care needs.
Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to house hundreds of Latin American migrants in tents in a Bronx parking lot drew skepticism from the Borough President Vanessa Gibson, who charged that the site is not suitable for several reasons.
Detailed daily schedules from Adams’ first six months in office appear to confirm that the new mayor is getting to the city’s business earlier in the day than his predecessor, clocking in on average at 7:57 a.m. on weekdays during the first half of the year.
Only one in five of the more than 13,000 migrants who’ve flooded into the Big Apple since the spring — wreaking havoc on the city’s shelter system — were sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, his office claims.
Discriminating against tattoo-sporting employees and job applicants would be illegal under a new bill that Democratic New York City Councilman Shaun Abreu is planning to introduce this week.
Pedro Hernandez, 23, the one-time poster boy for bail reform, was arrested for a shooting near Manhattan’s famed St. Patrick’s Cathedral over losing a game of three-card monte, police said.
The NYPD and other urban police departments could save hundreds of millions of dollars by farming out “non-core” services to private outfits and have their officers focus almost exclusively on combating and preventing crime, a new study finds.
Borough President Vito Fossella wants the New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC) and interested developers to “roll the dice” and consider building a casino on Staten Island.
Almost 10 years after Hurricane Sandy, the Army Corps of Engineers unveiled its vision of how to protect the region from future storms: a $52 billion proposal to build 12 movable sea barriers across the mouths of major bays and inlets along New York Harbor.
The plan would be by far the region’s largest project to address storms that are growing more frequent and intense as the planet warms from the burning of fossil fuels and the only one attempting to defend the whole New York Harbor region.
Disgraced defense attorney Michael Avenatti must pay more than $148,000 in stolen memoir proceeds to the client who made him famous, porn star Stormy Daniels, a Manhattan judge has ruled.
Watervliet City School District officials rescheduled a home football game Friday and moved it to Schuylerville after police said they believed teenagers planned to shoot at each other during the game.
Lo Porto Ristorante Caffe, the landmark downtown restaurant on Fourth Street in Troy, sustained damage from smoke damage when a vacant building next door caught fire Sunday night, city fire department officials said.
Jon Romano, 34, the victim in the Aug. 29 sword attack at a Sheridan Avenue homeless shelter, has been chronicling his recovery from a hospital bed on TikTok.
The final Troy City Council race before redistricting takes effect will be held on Nov. 8 to fill the remainder of the 2nd Council District office’s two-year term.
Western Floridians were bracing for impact as Tropical Storm Ian morphed into a hurricane slated to hit the Tampa Bay area as a category 4 in the middle of the week.
Cubans overwhelmingly approved a sweeping referendum that will allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt children, a resounding victory for advocates of L.G.B.T.Q. rights in a country that once sent gay men to labor camps.
New Mexico prosecutors have indicated they may charge actor Alec Baldwin over the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his movie Rust last year, after the actor handed over his cellphone to be considered as evidence.
While the district attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies, made it clear in her funding request that her office had not yet decided whether to bring charges, it also went into greater detail than she has in the past, noting that her office could charge up to four people
Jim Florio, who was elected governor of New Jersey in 1989 by persuading voters that he would not raise state taxes but who then pushed through a record increase shortly after taking office, incurring public wrath and making him a one-termer, has died at 85.
NASA will move its moon rocket back to a storage facility in part to protect the towering vehicle from Hurricane Ian, further delaying the agency’s inaugural Artemis mission.
