Fast food via drone takes flight

MARON KRISTóFERSSON is looking forward to the completion of a new roof on his office in downtown Reykjavik. It is not that the old roof leaked, but rather that the new one will be heated. Mr Kristófersson is the boss of aha, which delivers on behalf of restaurants and shops in Iceland's capital. The heated roof will let his delivery drones take off from and land on the top of the building throughout the winter, without anyone having to clear away the snow.

When drones, in the form of small, electrically powered rotorcraft, came to public attention around a decade ago, various commercial uses were proposed for them. Some of these, such as surveying, aerial photography and law enforcement, have now become routine. But one, in particular, has not. This is the idea of household deliveries. In 2013 Jeff Bezos, Amazon's boss, said that the online retailer was testing just such a system. Others suggested using drones to deliver medicines and fast food. Apart from various demonstration flights, however, not much then happened.

This slowness was caused less by technological inadequacy than by caution on the part of regulators. In most countries people are not allowed to fly drones above other people, near buildings or out of sight of the operator. Commercial activities are strictly regulated and some flights need clearance from aviation authorities. This has kept drone operators on a tight leash while regulators got to grips with what is, after all, a new form of aviation. Slowly but surely, however, as operators have gained experience and demonstrate a good safety record, some regulators have begun to relax the rules.

Dinner is on its way
Iceland is a typical example. In August 2017 Mr Kristófersson teamed up with Flytrex, an Israeli drone-service company. The pair persuaded Iceland's transport authorities to let them start a drone delivery service across Viðeyjarsund, an inlet that divides Reykjavik from its eastern suburbs. Delivery drivers would load goods weighing up to 3kg into a drone on one side of the inlet and it would fly autonomously along a fixed route to land on the other side, where the goods would be collected by another team of drivers who would take them on to their final destinations.

“We learnt a lot,” said Mr Kristófersson. One thing was the impact of weather. Iceland is often wet and windy, but the drone used for this operation could not fly in rain—and for safety reasons aha avoided gusty conditions. This meant that the drone was grounded for about half of the time it might otherwise have been flying. Nevertheless, when it could fly it saved time and money because the flight took four minutes instead of the 20 or more required to drive around Viðeyjarsund.

The experience they gained in running the trans-Viðeyjarsund service allowed aha and Flytrex to obtain permission to run 12 other routes across Reykjavik, including journeys over land. And operations have just been extended again, permitting drones to deviate by up to 700 metres either side of those fixed routes. This means deliveries can now be made to the backyards of registered customers who have obtained their neighbours' permission for flights to pass overhead.

Those customers can order goods using online apps and, weather permitting, select a drone delivery. Most of the shops and restaurants taking part are close to aha's office, where they drop off goods to be delivered. These are then loaded into a drone by a company employee, who dispatches the craft after entering the destination using a hand-held device. The customer gets a message to say the drone is on its way, and can use the app to follow its progress on a map. When it arrives, the customer enters a PIN into the app to accept delivery and the drone lowers its package on a line. Should someone try to pull the line, it detaches from the drone.

With a third drone on order—this one a waterproof version that can fly in the rain—Mr Kristófersson hopes to deliver to more places more often, with the potential of as many as 100 flights a day. The drones, made by DJI, a Chinese firm, do not use cameras or radar to navigate. They rely solely on the Global Positioning System (GPS) to know where they are—though, for safety's sake, they have three, independent GPS-based systems on board. But even though the drones fly out of sight of aha's office, they are monitored constantly during their journey and can be recalled if something appears to be going wrong, or ordered to make an emergency landing by slowly fluttering down while making a loud warning noise.

Yariv Bash, Flytrex's boss, says delivery-by-drone services which, like the Icelandic example, start with fixed routes that gradually become more ambitious, are beginning to appear in other places. His company, for example, is about to help launch one that will use drones to deliver packages in Holly Springs, North Carolina. Uber, a ride-hailing service, is also planning to launch drone deliveries for food.

Next month, in Singapore, a drone made by Airbus, a European aerospace group, will begin ferrying supplies and spare parts to ships moored offshore. Airbus is working on the project with Wilhelmsen, a marine-services company. Wilhelmsen reckons that using drones will reduce delivery costs to vessels by up to 90%, and will be safer than employing launches to carry those deliveries by sea. Alibaba, China's biggest e-commerce firm, is making drone deliveries on a number of fixed routes across the vast Shanghai Jinshan Industrial Park and has plans to launch similar operations in other areas.

A common factor among these new drone services is that they are not operating in densely built-up areas. Despite the early predictions that drones would be used to deliver fast food and other goods to city dwellers, the reality is turning out to be rather different. For a start, there are flight restrictions on all aircraft in high-rise places like Manhattan and central London. There is also the difficulty of finding places for drones to land or hover outside apartment windows. Nor do the economics stack up. In cities, typical distances for delivering fast food might be under a kilometre, which makes it efficient to use mopeds or bicycles. Reykjavik, however, is a low-rise, spread-out sort of place. The average distance over which a meal is delivered is about 7km.

If regulators continue to relax requirements for line-of-sight operations, long-distance delivery by drone will become particularly appealing. In some cases, though, a different sort of drone may be needed. One such has just completed six months of test flights in Tanzania. This drone is built by Wingcopter, a German firm, and is of a type known as a “tilt-rotor”. That means it uses its rotors for vertical take-off and landing, but for horizontal flight it tilts them forward to operate like the propellers of an aeroplane. This arrangement, which is beginning to be used for manned helicopters as well, results in a big increase in speed and range. In neighbouring Rwanda, meanwhile, a firm called Zipline does not even bother with vertical take-off. Its drones are small, fixed-wing aircraft launched by catapult.

In the Tanzanian trials, DHL, an international delivery company, used a Wingcopter to fly medical supplies from Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria, some 60km to a clinic on Ukerewe Island. Blood and other samples from the clinic's patients were then flown back to Mwanza for laboratory analysis. The drone journey took 40 minutes, compared with six hours by road and ferry. Zipline, though, is beyond the stage of trials. Its drones are now in regular use delivering blood for transfusion to rural clinics.

Flight-safe mode
Flying life-saving medical supplies around is, to be sure, more important than getting pizzas to customers while they are still hot. But with technology improving, and provided that operators can continue to run safe operations, more companies are likely to follow in aha's footsteps and move into the business of delivering by drone. And safety, too, is improving all the time. Drones can already be “ring-fenced” electronically to stop them straying into dangerous areas, such as airports. Small, automated collision-avoidance systems are also under development, to prevent them crashing into things. Eventually, no doubt, drones that can safely navigate the canyons of tall cities will emerge. But for the immediate future, it is the hungry folk in the 'burbs and out in the sticks who will have first call on the drone-delivery option on their fast-food apps.

Good food - fast

After a long day at work, it might seem easier to zap a frozen dinner in the microwave than to cook something on the stove.

But it doesn't have to be that way, said Leslie Cerier, an Amherst-based vegetarian chef and educator with more than 40 years of cooking experience.

"For me, it's about being creative, flexible and stocked," she said.

Cerier, 65, runs the blog "The Organic Gourmet" and has taught culinary workshops around the world, as well as locally, at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge and for the Northeast Organic Farming Association in Amherst. She has also published several cook books.

In her own cupboard, Cerier said she stocks quick-cooking grains like kasha, amaranth, roasted buckwheat, quinoa and teff, a fine grain about the size of poppy seeds. Those grains are particularly good for fast meals because they're packed with protein and carbohydrates on their own, she said. Red lentils are another good option.

Using those staples, Cerier said she can make seemingly complex dishes like coconut curry lentils and quinoa pasta with cilantro pesto in about 15 minutes.

"I'm always thinking about nutrient-dense, nutritious food," she said. And if a dish doesn't have enough protein or carbohydrates on its own, she adds in seeds, nuts or vegetables.

"If I make eggs, sometimes I'll make an omelet with veggies and cheese, and that's delicious and quick. Or if I fry up two sunny side eggs and put some dulse next to it, and have that with chai tea, I'm pretty happy."

Buy in bulk so there's always something in the cupboard, she advised. And to maximize the shelf-life of grains, which can keep for months at a time, she suggested moving uncooked grains into progressively smaller and smaller jars as they're used to minimize oxidation.

To add flavor, Cerier stocks a diverse array of spices and herbs that include parsley, rosemary, dill, thyme, dried cayenne, fennel seeds, coriander, cumin, curry powder, black pepper and high quality sea salt, to name a few. Herbs and spices can be a good way to reinvent familiar dishes, Cerier said.

"That helps me make the same meal twice if I want to, or change it," she continued.

Planning ahead and incorporating leftovers into future meals is equally important. Don't think of leftovers as another round of the same meal, Cerier said. Instead, think of them as ingredients for the next meal.

"Let's say I just made a pot of beans. One way to make a new dish with those beans is to turn those beans into a dip, a stew, or add them to a salad," she said. "I could get local organic tortillas, refry them with spices and eat them as a taco with cilantro."

Ultimately, Cerier said cooking fast requires an understanding of each individual ingredient and its cooking attributes.

"For me, I'm very sensual - I want to taste it, smell it, see it, engage with the food, and then, when I have a relationship with the food, be quick with it," Cerier said.

To that end, Cerier said it's important to experiment with flavor combinations, try new foods and learn to enjoy the process.

"So many people who come to my class have never tasted amaranth, or made a peanut sauce. (Students) will immediately leave class and go shopping. All of a sudden, they're tasting things they've never had," Cerier said. "People should always cook from their hearts. Your joy of cooking is also the nutrition."

Coconut Curried Red Lentil Soup

The red palm oil and red lentils give this soup a beautiful orange color, Cerier said. Feel free to use any greens you like - spinach, collards, kale, mustard greens or even nettles. You can also swap ghee or extra virgin coconut oil for the red palm oil.

Be Careful! Fast Food Effects on Health

Fast food is cheap, convenient, filling, and to many of us it tastes good. If you are eating out, a fast food restaurant is often the cheapest option, but unfortunately not a healthy one. Eating just one fast food meal can pack enough calories, sodium and fat for an entire day or more. Eating fast food on a regular basis can lead to a host of different health problems, both physical and psychological.
Still, in a bad economy the quick-and-cheap temptation can often be hard to resist. As an informed customer, though, you can make healthier choices and still enjoy the price and convenience of fast food restaurants.

Well, plenty "“ fast food is all good tasting, except that it is not nutritionally balanced and, therefore, unhealthy in the long run if consumed on a regular basis.
Fast food is loaded with calories from refined sugar and fats (especially, the artery-clogging saturated and hydrogenated fats, which are repeatedly reheated to high temperatures for frying purposes).
It is also very high in sodium, coming from common salt and other additives. On top of all this, fast food is deficient in dietary fiber and essential micro-nutrients like vitamins and minerals.
To make matters worse, heaps of fast food are normally guzzled down with gallons of sugar-rich colas which many fast-food restaurants serve free with food as an incentive.
To make a long story short, all this results in piling up of unused empty calories in the body, which get stored as body fat "“ till one day you look in the mirror and realize that your great figure has been replaced by this creature in the mirror.

But that's not the end of the story, it's just the beginning "“ consuming too much fast food not only turns a handsome guy into an unsightly obese man, but as Eric Schlosser points out in his book it is a big health hazard too.
And being physically inactive only adds to the problem of obesity. Not many people who love fast food are ready to acknowledge that obesity is not simply an eyesore "“ it is a major risk factor for a large number of deadly diseases like hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, and even many types of cancers.
Recent scientific studies have shown that high-calorie foods rich in fats, refined sugar and salt could reconfigure the hormones in the body in such a way that they make you crave for such foods and always leave you asking for more.
In other words, fast food is kind of addictive; you get hooked on to it and continue consuming it in an uncontrolled way in spite of knowing that it is unhealthy. The more you consume, the more difficult it is for you to opt for healthy foods.
The situation is worse in case of children who from a very young age get hooked on fast food. Making them change their food habits from fatty and sweet foods and develop a taste for health-promoting fruits and vegetables is a task easier said than done. Such children would grow up to be obese adults who have never felt the advantages of being a healthy weight.
To sum up, consuming fast food on a regular basis leads to many health hazards. But bringing about changes in eating habits is not easy.
To start with, a simple change that one could make is to successively reduce the frequency of eating fast food and eat more frequently home-cooked food, with plenty of fresh foods and vegetables.
If your a female there is a great free suport group called Diet Bug. They are there to encourage and help you.
Slowly your taste will change and your body will respond with new found energy.That doesn't mean you can never have fast food again. All it means is that you cut the fast food way back. I still occasionally(once a month)will have my #1 at McDonalds. Big Mac Rules!