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1. Profit Margins by Decade

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2. Apple iPhone Slumps to Third Place in China

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3. 30-Year Mortgage Rates Up 7%

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4. Least Affordable Cities in America

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5. Share Total of U.S. Debt by Presidential Term

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6. Iran Exports 90% of Oil to China

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7. Ultraprocessed Food Half of American Calories

U.S. home consumption of ultraprocessed foods increasing at faster pace than consumption outside the home.

A new analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that more than half of calories consumed at home by adults in the U.S. come from ultraprocessed foods.

Ultraprocessed foods contain substances with little or no nutritional value, such as colorings, emulsifiers, artificial flavors, and sweeteners. Examples cover a wide range of products, from chips and hot dogs to prepackaged meals. Researchers have long understood that a substantial proportion of the U.S. diet comes from ultraprocessed foods but it was not clearly understood where those calories were consumed.

Consuming high amounts of ultraprocessed food has been linked to chronic health conditions—cardiovascular disease, obesity, colorectal cancer, among others. The new findings suggest additional measures are needed to promote healthier alternatives for preparing meals at home. 

The study was published online December 5 in the Journal of Nutrition. 

“The perception can be that ‘junk food’ and ultraprocessed foods are equivalent,” says Julia Wolfson, PhD, MPP, associate professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of International Health and the study’s lead author. “Yet ultraprocessed foods encompass many more products than just junk food or fast food, including most of the foods in the grocery store. The proliferation and ubiquity of ultraprocessed foods on grocery store shelves is changing what we are eating when we make meals at home.” 

For their analysis, the researchers used data from the 2003–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a nationally representative annual survey of more than 34,000 adults over 20 years of age.

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8. Increased ChatGPT Use

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9. Luxury Train Trips Booming

From Bloomberg: Travel advisers agree. Some of the most sought-after journeys are already sold out for the entirety of 2025 and booking well into 2026. “Think about how River Cruises blossomed in the past decade,” says Jack Ezon, founder and managing partner of luxury travel consultancy Embark Beyond. “Train travel, which is super niche and limited, will go prime time in the same way by 2030.”

“Requests for train trips have grown 158% in the past five years, especially among a younger generation,” he adds, as part of a zeitgeisty obsession with throwback luxuries. “It’s the millennial and Gen Zer obsessed with vintage record players and Polaroid cameras, buying the $1,000 cashmere Ritz Paris Frame hoodie and clamoring for a room in an uber-traditional hotel.”

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10. Seth Godin on Building a Process Culture

From Seth’s Blog: Process is the investment we make in inefficiency now to prevent errors from costing us later.

Jet airlines are the safest form of travel ever created, largely because of the inefficient process that we put in place. They’re over tested and over staffed, with checklists and feedback loops in place to ensure that errors don’t occur. It would be way less costly if one person simply jumped onto the plane with you and took off–less costly, but less reliable as well.

If you want to see this taken to a higher level, consider a typical hospital emergency room. If you’ve ever sat waiting, you’ve noticed that it seems inefficient and very process focused. But as a result, the system doesn’t rely on good luck or heroics to save the day. Instead, they’ve invested in process.

An institution that is 100% contemptuous of process may create vividly creative outputs, but it won’t last long. And one that’s 100% process focused will rarely create a breakthrough. We can take a hard look at our culture and decide if we need more (or less) process.

What does it cost to be wrong?

What does it cost to avoid being wrong?

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