July 16, 2015
When Bryan Singer’s X-Men hit theaters in 2000, one of the big issues among fans was how the movie more or less abandoned all of the character costume designs from the comic books, trading their vibrant colors for shiny black costumes that were all the rage thanks to The Matrix. It’s not that Wolverine looked bad in black, he just didn’t look exactly like he did in the comics.
Now we’ve seemingly come full circle, with the next issue of Entertainment Weekly offering a first look at the new characters in Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Their costumes aren’t afraid to be colorful and weird and, in some cases, remarkably faithful to their comic counterparts. And as a result, they may look a little, well, weird and colorful, but it’s cool because that’s kind of how the ’80s were, which is when Apocalypse takes place.
Above you’ll see Alexandra Shipp as Storm, Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse, and Olivia Munn as Psylocke. Apocalypse may not be the instantly intimidating badass fans are expecting, but we’re sure that’ll change as soon as you see him in the actual movie. But at least Shipp is rocking that Storm mohawk hard.
Not everyone is colorful, though. Here we’ve got a shot of Raven and Quicksilver wearing the fairly standard black designs, looking like they’re aboard the Blackbird.
And if you want to see a first look with some better coloring, here’s the actual EW cover.
X-Men: Apocalypse hits theaters on May 27, 2016.
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Pamela Moore/iStockphoto/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The vast majority of kids in America play sports.
But while about three-quarters of adults played sports when they were younger, only 1 in 4 still plays sports today. Among them, men are more than twice as likely as women to play.
Why do we tend to give up sports as we grow older? A poll conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health offers fresh insights into how and why adults and kids play sports, and also why they don’t.
What are the obstacles that keep adults off the field? How can sports help keep kids and adults in good health? What are the best ways to encourage more widespread participation, particularly among women and lower-income adults? And what role do parents play in helping children become active and stay that way?
As part of our series “Sports and Health in America,” Harvard presented a webcast Thursday in collaboration with NPR and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to explore these questions and more.
Joe Neel, deputy senior supervising editor on NPR’s Science Desk, moderated a discussion with:
- Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Kennedy School
- Elizabeth Matzkin, chief of women’s sports medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
- Caitlin Cahow, former member of the U.S. Women’s National Ice Hockey Team and current member of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition
- Ed Foster-Simeon, president and CEO, U.S. Soccer Foundation
- Cobi Jones, three-time World Cup U.S. men’s soccer player
Update 1:35 ET: The webcast is over. We’ll add an archived video when it becomes available.
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Cottage cheese peaked in the early 1970s, when the average American ate about 5 pounds of it per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. iStockphoto hide caption
itoggle caption iStockphoto
As you know, here at The Salt we’ve been a little obsessed with
Cottage cheese peaked in the early 1970s, when the average American ate about 5 pounds of it per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. iStockphoto hide caption
itoggle caption iStockphoto
As you know, here at The Salt we’ve been a little obsessed with yogurt lately.
But there’s a flip side to the story of the yogurt boom. What about that other product made from fermented milk that had its boom from 1950 to 1975, and has been sliding into obscurity ever since?
Cottage cheese took off as a diet and health food in the 1950s.
It makes a cameo in the show Mad Men, that time capsule of the 1960s, as poor Betty Draper describes her last meal before going to the hospital to give birth: “Toast, cottage cheese, pineapple,” she tells her unsympathetic nurse.
On the day that he announced his resignation, Richard Nixon ate this meal of cottage cheese and pineapple slices. Robert Knudson/Nixon Library hide caption
itoggle caption Robert Knudson/Nixon Library
Cottage cheese peaked in the early 1970s, when the average American ate about 5 pounds of it per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Richard Nixon apparently ate even more.
The same hidden tape recorders that helped bring down our 37th president also recorded him repeatedly ordering cottage cheese, often with pineapple.
Since then, though, Americans have cut their cottage cheese consumption in half. For comparison, per capita consumption of yogurt has increased sevenfold over that time.
Nobody can be sure of the exact reasons for this.
Tim Noll, who worked for decades as plant manager for a now-shuttered cottage cheese manufacturer called Bancroft Dairy in Madison, Wis., thinks it’s partly due to the difficulty of making cottage cheese of consistently high quality. “I think it’s safe to say that in just about every plant that makes cottage cheese, it’s regarded as the hardest product to make,” he says.
Robert Bradley, who’s taught cheese-making at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for 50 years, agrees. “It takes personal attention. It’s a very fragile product,” he says.
Making cottage cheese starts with milk and bacteria, as yogurt does, although the two products use different types of bacteria. A semi-solid curd forms, and just at the right moment, you have to cut the curd into small cubes. Then the curd is cooked and washed. Sometimes cream is added. It all takes careful handling.
A USDA poster promoting cottage cheese. U.S. Department of Agriculture hide caption
itoggle caption U.S. Department of Agriculture
“We don’t have the degree of dedication to this manufacture that we used to have,” Bradley says.
As a result, quality varies. Bradley says that sometimes the product doesn’t taste quite right.
Noll, though, points to another difficulty that has nothing to do with manufacturing. The people who run big food companies these days seem to feel that cottage cheese is a little old-fashioned. “I haven’t heard anybody on the marketing side trying to do anything exciting with cottage cheese in quite a while,” he says.
That, of course, is very different from yogurt.
When I recently visited the dairy aisle of one supermarket, I found five whole sections of shelves filled with Greek yogurt, Australian-style yogurt and yogurt with all different flavorings. Off in the corner, there was one set of shelves with generic-looking cottage cheese.
Gerry Berman, a shopper, says there’s lots of marketing about how “Greek yogurt is so good for us.” Cottage cheese doesn’t have the same marketing behind it. “Nobody talks about it anymore.”
“When we were younger, it was really promoted for your salad,” says her friend Madeline Anglin.
“Cottage cheese and peach slices!” says Berman. “And a hamburger patty!”
A younger shopper, Mary Scott Bogatz, tells me that she hasn’t tasted cottage cheese in years. “It’s really good for you, I know, but I just don’t like the chunky and the creamy; the texture freaks me out,” she says.
She walks off with a big container of plain yogurt.
But then, a few minutes later, she comes back. Just talking about cottage cheese got her thinking about it, she says. She’s ready to try some again.
Maybe there’s hope for cottage cheese after all.
