Category: Health & Food

The team over at Harry’s recently approached me and asked if I’d like to review some of their shaving gear. Free stuff? Well of course Harry, send it on over!

They kindly sent me a “Truman set” to try out. Being a new dad, shaving is fairly low on my list of priorities, so this review has taken the better part of a month to write, simply because I haven’t had the chance to use the razors all that much! This point is important to my review because this meant that I often had a good amount of stubble or growth on my face when I used the razor.

First of all, the presentation of their gear is top notch. Everything is done with class and you feel like you’ve bought some really premium products, even though you’re not paying outrageous prices. The Truman set is only $15 and they imply that it will last up to three months (depending on your preference on when you like to replace your blades), so you’re looking at about $5/mo. Incidentally, Dollar Shave Club’s mid-tier products run at $6/mo, so it’s even a little cheaper than the guys that pride themselves on cheap blades for all.

We’ve owned a SodaStream for a few years because my wife loves soda water. We don’t actually drink any soda but she just likes to use it to carbonate water. It touts itself as a cheaper alternative to buying fizzy drinks at the store but after a few CO₂ refills it quickly becomes apparent that it’s not saving you quite the amount of money that you had hoped for.

Let’s take a look at the numbers. A Sodastream refill contains 14.5oz of CO₂ which is apparently enough to carbonate 60l of water and it costs $15.That’s 25¢/l of water. This compares with $1 for a 2l bottle of seltzer water (50¢/l) at the store. A 50% savings isn’t bad, but when you factor in the need to go to a special store to get the CO₂ refill or to have it shipped to you, the hassle and the cost quickly gets eaten up and becomes moderate at best.

Convenience, cars, cholesterol and carbohydrates are so pervasive in American society that it really is no wonder that America is so overweight.

Urban sprawl is rampant and forces people to live such distances from their place of employment that jumping in the car is the only viable option.

However, to see just how little health is engineered or considered in all areas of American society, we need only to look at a recent safety tip we were given at work, where we were advised to “avoid using the stairs to prevent falling down them”. While we’re at it, we should probably avoid walking so that we don’t trip and we ought not to exercise in case it raises our pulse rate and elevates our risk of cardiac arrest.

Come on America, you’re better than that. Grow up and take responsibility for your own actions. Take your health into your own hands and own it. Live a little and maybe even live dangerously by taking the stairs.