Health
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Background: For the vast majority of human history, a top survival concern was obtaining food. The Issue: It easy to become fat, and difficult to lose weight: “overabundance of food” is an unusual situation that was not frequently encountered in evolutionary history. However, it’s unclear how (in modern society) a person could replicate the food-acquisition…
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Background: Some restaurants serve beers in “flights”: a “sampler pack” of several small servings of a variety of different beers (Figure 1). The Issue: Strangely, very few foods are available in this format, with a few common exceptions: sliders (tiny hamburgers), charcuterie-style meats, cheese platters, and the nebulously-defined “appetizer platter.” Proposal: More foods should be…
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The Issue: When eating, sometimes the most appealing thing to do is to immediately wolf down all the food in front of you. People then occasionally regret this overeating, and wish there were some way to more easily exercise self control despite the presence of delicious food. Proposal: We can solve this wolfing-down of food…
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The issue: Frequently, people buy exercise equipment but then don’t actually use it. Instead, barbells gather dust and exercise bikes are used as a supplementary clothing racks. Proposal: One effective way of encouraging a person to use their exercise equipment is to have the equipment physically block access to the owner’s bed (Figure 1). This…
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Background: There is an idiomatic expression, “like a hot knife through butter,” indicating something that is extremely easy to do. The issue: Yet, somehow when people make toast, they frequently use a COLD knife (or at least, a room temperature one) to cut a piece of butter. This is particularly troublesome if butter is stored…
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Background: A substantial amount of food that is produced is wasted at the consumer (household) level. Additionally, if you’re reading this text in English in the middle of the 21st century, it’s statistically likely that you, the reader, are not highly concerned with famine as a day-to-day hazard. Proposal: Ideally, we would like to both…
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Background: Architects normally design homes and offices primarily to suit the needs of their occupants. The issue: Unfortunately, an easy-to-navigate floor plan is also easy for burglars to navigate! Proposal: Luckily, we don’t have to make any architectural changes to fix this problem—by adding a few strategic (and cheap!) furnishings, a house can become MUCH…
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Background: When sleeping outdoors, humans often enjoy sleeping inside an insulated sleeping bag (Figure 1), rather than directly on the ground. Fig. 1: A basic sleeping bag—now obsolete, thanks to advances in science! The issue: The problem here is that, to a gigantic man-eating carnivorous animal, the sleeping bag is just an inedible wrapping surrounding…
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Background: Yoga is often thought of as an activity that requires focus, and is thus incompatible with meaninglessly scrolling through random Internet content. And it’s true that most yoga positions do not leave the yoga practitioner’s hands free to casually browse a cell phone while yoga-ing. The issue: Unfortunately, the result of this is that…
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Background: In today’s decadent sedentary world, it’s easy to barely walk around at all. This puts humans in danger of having their legs become vestigial, atrophying and causing the species to evolve into a slug-like form. Proposal: In order to solve this, we need to get people walking again. And what better way than by…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 