Between the buns

On this day in ’84, Miss Clara exclaimed “Where’s the beef?” for the very first time. It was the perfect way for Wendy’s (whose square burgers came with four extra bites 😉) to stick it to the competition for their oversized buns!

Can you blame Clara for jonesing a juicy hamburger? After all, it’s long been thought that our ancestors survived on a carnivorous diet. However, new findings suggest that plant-based foods played a huge role for early humans! 

A healthy harvest = a heart of gold ;)

Most would rather look forward to the future than worry about the past, but that’s of course easier said than done. As retirement approaches for Stakers, many are probably wondering what retirees tend to regret most in order to stave off such concerns before it’s too late.

The number one regret seems to be not saving enough money. According to a new report by the nonprofit Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, less than 25% of retirees think they saved enough before hangin’ up their careers.

“More than 8 in 10 workers over 45 regret not taking retirement saving more seriously when they were younger,” said Suzanne Ricklin, vice president of retirement solutions at Nationwide Financial.

There are certainly more working days in the rearview mirror than ahead of Stakers, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to shore up those 401(k)s and other accounts set up for retirement savings.

On the other end of the spectrum (though certainly related) is the notion of retiring with too much debt. Significantly more Americans are retiring today with outstanding credit card debt than were even just a few years ago.

Roughly 60% of today’s retirees also retired earlier than they would have likedl. According to Transamerica, just 20% retired because they were in good enough financial shape to do so.

Mondelēz International is continuing to soften its approach, introducing Baked Bites, a square and chewy snack more similar to a marriage of banana bread and muffins rather than an offshoot of the classic Chips Ahoy! cookie.

“Our ambition is to be a very prominent sweet-snacking brand overall, and I think for us to achieve that, we have to venture out into new and different formats,” said Chris Park, director of Chips Ahoy! and cakes/pastry innovation at Mondelēz. We want to “see what the opportunities are beyond the chocolate chip cookie so that we can appeal to a more, broader usage occasion.”

Mondelēz already introduced cereal and muffins in recent years to expand its snack products beyond cookies, and Baked Bites are designed to lean into that strategy.

At the same time, make no mistake—the Chips Ahoy! brand remains king of the castle, generating $1 billion in sales with roughly 50% market share.

In that sense, it’s no surprise the company also recently introduced a bigger-sized cookie, a gluten-free cookie, and will soon launch a chocolate caramel flavor as well.

All in all, things are going well for Mondelēz, but perhaps more to the point, they’re going well for sweet-toothed consumers.

Days after Apple submitted a settlement for a class-action regarding its secret recording of users through the Siri voice assistant, Google is now facing a class-action of its own for tracking users’ data after they switched off the tracking function on their phones.

Both Android and non-Android devices were reportedly affected, and Chief Judge Richard Seeborg of the federal court in San Francisco agreed to let the case move forward after rejecting Google’s motion to dismiss, which included a claim that the type of record-keeping alleged in the suit “doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Seeborg wrote in his 20-page decision that Google’s conduct could be construed as “highly offensive,” particularly given records that revealed the company’s own employees flagged the issue, but senior leadership evidently ignored calls to make the terms of use regarding data-tracking less ambiguous.

He also conceded the employees calling attention to the issue could’ve simply been attempting to make the company’s products more customer-friendly rather than outright flagging potential legal issues.

“Whether Google or plaintiffs’ interpretation prevails is a triable issue of fact,” he wrote, setting up a trial as early as Aug. 18 should no settlement be reached in advance.

Drugs like Tylenol, Aspirin, and even stronger sedatives, barbiturates, and opioids have expiration dates on them, but in most cases, they don’t actually expire as quickly as the labels on them suggest.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration only began requiring expiration dates be placed on such labels in 1979, but didn’t instruct drug manufacturers on how to evaluate whether or not a drug has actually expired.

As a result, most companies simply chose an arbitrary date, waited until that date, tested the drug, and if it was still potent and safe, they assigned the amount of time that had passed as the length of time before that particular drug was considered “expired.”

In other words, in most cases, a drug’s expiration date shouldn’t be considered “bad after” but “good before.”

This isn’t just circumstantial, either. A team of California researchers in 2012 conducted an analysis of several drugs that supposedly expired several decades prior, including acetaminophen, phenobarbital, and the opioid hydrocodone. 86% of the drugs tested were actually still as potent and safe as when they were manufactured, and similar results were also found in a subsequent study conducted in Germany.

The Consumer Technology Association’s annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) took place in Las Vegas this week, and regardless of how likely it is that these displays will ever make it onto lots let alone roads, they were quite magnificent.

Have you ever imagined what a windshield with full multi-dimensional holographic display capabilities would look like? Hyundai Mobis showcased it.

Safety alerts and relevant statistics were shown all across the driver’s view of the windshield, along with entertainment options for the shotgun rider. What was visible depended on where the occupant was sitting, so as to remind onlookers of the importance of mitigating the growing safety concern of distracted driving.

“Driver distraction is a big concern with visual displays in vehicles,” said Ian Reagan, a senior research scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, while noting safety “doesn’t always win out” when it comes to manufacturers trying to win on aesthetics instead of protecting vehicle occupants.

There was plenty of other magic on display at this year’s CES that you can continue reading about here.

That story about the Consumer Electronics Show got us thinking about some wild tech that we were first introduced to back in the ’70s—albeit in a galaxy far, far away.

There were plenty of iconic lines of dialogue across the original Star Wars trilogy. If you’re a fan, then you’ll love today’s trivia. May the force be with you! ;)

Have a great weekend Staker!

Trivia courtesy of funtrivia.com. Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.