It's practically impossible for me to decide what I like best about this video: The fact that it features both cloth coffee filters (sustainable!) and a hand coffee grinder (retro!), that the robot appears to let the coffee bloom before starting the proper brew, our little friend's deadpan expression, or the two-second outtake where the poor gal pours coffee all over the counter before a set of friendly human hands sets it right.

Actually, this little automated lady looks like she seriously knows what she's doing -- storing coffee in an air-tight container, grinding fresh, making coffee to order... She's a barista-bot after my own heart -- even if she's more likely to rust than over-caffeinate.

NYU chemistry professor Kent Kirshenbaum. Photo: Jeff Potter

Like many inquisitive scientists, Kent Kirshenbaum regularly scans the ingredient list of prepared foods to uncover the chemical composites lurking within. The substance that most recently piqued the New York University chemistry professor's curiosity is liquid smoke. "My immediate thought was that it was a horrible mix of chemicals," he told us.

After distilling the concentrated smoke and liquid mix (often sold at the grocery store by the bottle to enhance barbecue) down to its roots of water and more than 400 chemical compounds, the scientist (who in person comes across as one part Einstein, one part Malcolm Gladwell) learned that liquid smoke is actually "safer [for human ingestion] than untreated wood smoke."

Kirshenbaum discussed his discovery last week during a monthly gathering of the Experimental Cuisine Collective -- food nerds who love to make things like edible foam. We caught up with him to chat smoke, bongs and homemade liquid smoke.

What is liquid smoke?
Liquid smoke is very simply smoke in water. Smoke usually comes as a vapor, but there are ways to condense it and turn it into liquid and that liquid can then be carried in water.

Meet Chef Robot. It's the latest invention in food service, showcased on Tuesday at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo. According to the Associated Press, Chef Robot can gently grip fragile items like sushi and move them from Point A to Point B without ripping them to shreds.

One small movement for Chef Robot, one giant leap for sashimi? Who knows? But it did get us thinking about kitchen gadgets. Got a favorite?

[Via Tokyo Mango]

Scientists like to play with their food, too, as evidenced by this hot new video of Theo Gray demonstrating his "flaming bacon lance of death." The author of "Mad Science" crafts his lance with tubes made of bacon that -- when hooked up to oxygen and set aflame -- can cut through steel.

"It turns out that ordinary American bacon does not have the structural integrity that's necessary for this application," he says. "So I'm using an engineering grade of bacon which is known as prosciutto."

Gray has you vegans covered too. His "Vegan Thermic Lance" -- made of cucumber and breadsticks -- is a great destroyer too.

What do you think -- delicious fun or waste of precious prosciutto?

[via Boing Boing]

Ever learn about a food recall half an hour too late? There's nothing worse than finding out that there's been an e. Coli outbreak in the tomato crop right after finishing a nice, big plate of tomatoes and basil or discovering that the pistachio crop is tainted while in the midst of devouring a giant bag of the tasty little morsels.

Thanks to FoodRecalls, a new Twitter site, the latest food alerts can be delivered to your computer or cell phone in the blink of an eye. From the recent pull of Lian How brand spices to Sconza Candy Company's recall of its trail mix, you won't have to wait for the five o'clock news to tell you what you needed to know at noon!

The FDA itself has a Twitter page. However, while their recalls often come a half hour to an hour faster than Food Recall's, they do not seem to be as comprehensive as the private site. Furthermore, they aren't accompanied by Food Recall's endearing image of Winston, the "kitten with a paw over its eyes."

While we're on the topic, which recall do you reckon Winston is related to?

As anybody who's ever gone camping can attest, cooking in an unfamiliar environment can be a real chore. Pre-planning meals, carefully choosing ingredients based on weight and convenience, and foraging for fresh ingredients can tax anyone's patience. Add in a forgotten spice or a broken cooking implement, and you have a recipe for misery.

Still, as hard as it can be to find oneself on the trail with insufficient foodstuffs, these miseries are nothing compared to the total annoyance of floating thousands of miles above the surface of the earth, trying to cadge together a palatable cuisine out of preserved Russian and American meats and veggies. While the space program brought us delicacies like freeze-dried ice cream and Tang, it is also responsible for sausage in a tube and irradiated bread!

But, as Astronaut Sandy Magnus demonstrates in this blog, the possibilities of space cuisine are limitless ... as long as one packs enough dehydrated sausage and sun-dried tomatoes!

While organic food producers must follow certification standards, fraud is on the rise. After all, organic foods can cost up to two or three times more than conventionally grown products, meaning some unscrupulous producers are bound to be looking to line their pockets.

Now, the New York Times reports that scientists are investigating the feasibility of lab testing organic foods to keep companies honest.

German scientists have found that organic milk has higher levels of a certain fatty acid than regular milk, a result of different cattle feeding practices. Labs can reliably discern which milk is organic by testing for this fatty acid. And we've already seen that it's possible to test for the presence of non-organic, synthetic fertilizers in fruits and vegetables, but the high cost of testing means the practice is unlikely to be implemented on a large scale.

While this is all preliminary stuff, it will be interesting to see whether we eventually find more "organic markers" to test food, and whether buyers will find this worthwhile.

Your fridge consumes about 8 percent of a home's electricity, reports Planet Green, but there are plenty of ways to keep its energy use down - cleaning the coils, covering food, etc.

Here's a new one: install carpeting. A new book, Carbon-Free Home, suggests covering the fridge with insulation boards which are in turn covered with carpet or corkboard. Apparently this can reduce energy use by about 50 percent.

Check out the Planet Green site for the (very simple) four-step instructions. Or take a look at the Chelsea Green site for much more detailed directions. Neither site, however, suggest whether shag or pile would look better next to your ketchup bottle and Chinese takeout cartons.

Have any of you tried this?

In case you didn't already have enough to worry about, a recent article by the Journal of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology asserts that today's vegetables have fewer nutrients than the ones produced 50 years ago. While today's broccoli, tomatoes, and other produce tend to be larger and more beautiful than the puny specimens of the late 1950's, they allegedly contain between 5% and 40% fewer vitamins and minerals.

One reason for this drop is the so-called "dilution effect." Today's veggies, although bigger than in those of the 1950's, contain roughly the same amount of nutrients. Consequently, their vitamins and minerals are combined with a lot more cellulose and carbohydrates, leading to far fewer nutrients per serving. As larger vegetables are selectively bred to maximize size, this dilution effect grows more and more pronounced.

Another cause that some researchers cite is the industrialization of agriculture. Apparently, monoculture and accelerated growing cycles deplete soil nutrients and ensure that produce spends less time absorbing the nutrients that do exist. Ultimately, these practices further dilute the nutrients in produce.

While dilution is endemic to most forms of agriculture, the industrialization effect can be mitigated by organic and local farming. Organics spend more time in the ground and are exposed to more nutrient-rich soil. While this results in lower yields and higher prices, it also produces vegetables that are more nutritious. In other words, while you might not be able to feed your kids the same high-quality Brussels sprouts that grossed out poor Beaver Cleaver, organic produce might just offer a comparable experience!

The word "natural" gets bandied about a lot these days. It's used both cynically, by corporations trying to promote processed foods by evoking imagery of simplicity and rustic good health, and sincerely, by food-lovers applying it loosely to mean anything from "hand-made" to "unprocessed" to simply "healthy."

But what does it really mean?

When it comes to FDA food labeling, not much. Except as applied to meat and poultry products, for which "natural" labels can only be put on foods not containing "artificial flavoring, colors, chemical preservatives, or synthetic ingredients" (whatever that may mean), the "natural" label has no official definition and can be used without any USDA approval.

So forget the FDA - what does "natural" mean to us, as it applies to our food? Does it mean that a food grows on its own in the wilderness, without human intervention? Does it mean the food can be grown by humans, but can't have anything added to it (pesticide- and wax-free apples, maybe)? Does it mean it can't be processed in a factory (nothing canned or frozen)? Does it mean it can be processed in a factory but can't include anything made in a lab (nothing containing flavorings, natural or artificial alike)?

The fact that food corporations use the "natural" label to sell anything from toaster pastries to salad dressing speaks to the fact that many many people take the word to mean "not man-made" which they take to mean "healthy." This is certainly not always the case. We can all agree that many things which occur in nature are unhealthy or even lethal for humans - arsenic (an element!), certain mushrooms, hemlock, etc. And all but the most extreme of us agree that many man-made things improve the lives of people all over the world - injectable insulin for diabetics, sewage systems for clean water, salt with iodine to prevent goiters. Some of these things - like the insulin - are even made in labs, a further step away from many common definitions of the word "natural."

My favorite book dealing with the natural vs. unnatural debates as they relate to food is sociologist Barry Glasner's The Gospel of Food, which discusses, among other things, just how strange and often illogical the laws over what can be called "natural flavoring" and "natural colorings" are, and how food companies often capitalize on the word "natural" to sell food that is more expensive and no healthier than similar products on the market.

What do you think "natural" means? Is it a meaningful designation? Should we come up with a more precise definition, or keep it off food labels entirely?

It's now common knowledge that a glass of red wine can lower the risks of heart disease. Last month, "60 Minutes" covered a story explaining that scientists have identified the substance in wine that protects the heart: resveratrol. Scientists are discovering that resveratrol, in high concentrations, can do a lot more than keep your heart healthy. It can significantly prolong your life.

How much longer can this "fountain of youth" pill extend life? Scientists predict as much as twenty years. Dr. Christoph Westphal states: "Our goal is to prevent and forestall many of the diseases that strike us as we reach 50, 60, and 70. All with one pill." The resveratrol pill works by slowing down genes that control the aging process.

According to our recent Valentine's Day post, you can already purchase resveratol in the form of a necklace. However, if you are now concluding that you can drink enough red wine to get the same benefits, think again. To get the same effects from just one pill, you would have to drink over 1000 glasses of red wine. Nevertheless, this discovery may explain why there is such a low incidence of heart disease in France, despite a high fat diet. So, until the pill becomes available, a glass of red wine with every meal can't hurt.

Let's play the old "Which Item Doesn't Belong" game:

A. Greens and cornbread.
B. Penn and Teller.
C. Food and drugs.

If you picked C, reasoning that the pairs in A and B go together swimmingly while food and drugs don't at all, then you and I and Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro are all on the same page. According to a New York Times editorial focused on the current peanut product salmonella crisis, Rep. DeLauro has proposed that food and drugs have no business being united under one umbrella agency.

This idea is not even close to new; I remember hearing it from food scientists a couple years ago. This is the first time I've seen it mentioned in a major news publication, though. Here's hoping the proposal will gain momentum. Not only is the science of regulating food versus approving and regulating medication almost totally separate, but also the drug part of the agency hogs all the resources and, as the NYT points out, all the clout. Compared to crazy side effects and Viagra and cures for debilitating disease, routine checks of food processing facilities is unsexy to say the least. But it is every bit as important, affecting, as it does, everybody.

Sure, we can all forgo our daily Luna bar fix for a bit, but what if a bacon recall is next?

I was always the kind of kid who put stuff in my mouth that didn't belong - wooden stacking blocks, my mom's car keys, the occasional earthworm. I loved the feel of a bit of sand in my sandwich, and I could never keep my teeth off my deliciously grimy fingernails. Now, as an adult, I rarely get sick, despite my predilection for taco trucks, Indian street food and pork products of dubious origin. Is there a connection?

In this week's New York Times health section, Jane Brody writes about what's known as the hygiene hypothesis - the theory that ingesting plenty of bacteria and viruses as a child can help develop a healthy immune system. Though no one disputes that public health measures like sewer systems and food production regulation have improved overall health immeasurably, studies have also shown higher rates of autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma in people raised in ultra-clean environments. Basically, their systems don't "learn" to deal with foreign bodies, and become ultra-sensitive, attacking even normal tissue. Some research even suggests that deliberately infecting patients with worms can help treat certain auto-immune issues.

While most of us aren't going to go out and deliberately swallow pig whipworms, I think the hygiene hypothesis lends support to the increasingly widespread idea that it's OK to eat foods that fall outside the (supposedly) sterile confines of corporate agriculture. So let's all eat some raw milk cheese, cook some antibiotic-free meat, buy some gnobbly farmers market carrots with clods of earth still clinging to the tops. And maybe a little mud pie for dessert.

Like so many things in life, oysters defend themselves against being desirable by being potentially deadly. The maxim used to be that it's safe to eat oysters in any month with an "r" in it -- i.e., September -- April. Well, January has an "r" in it, but after a recent mishap, I got curious: when, exactly, is it safe to eat oysters, when not, and what makes an oyster safe to eat anyway? Here is some information for molluskophiles, molluskophiliacs, and molluskophobes.*

What is an oyster? An oyster is an animal that belongs to one of the groups of bivalve mollusks which live in brackish marine habitats and belongs to the species Ostrea, Crassostrea or Saccostrea. From the human perspective, oysters are used as food or to grow pearls (though the oysters that do the one do not typically also do the other).

Good news for me and most everyone I know - a new study has linked coffee consumption to a lower risk of developing age-related dementia. Swedish and Danish researchers tracked coffee-drinking habits in a group of 1,409 men and women for an average of 21 years. After controlling for various socioeconomic and health factors, the researchers found that subjects who drank three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed age-related dementias, including Alzheimers, as those who had two cups or less.

Scientists are unsure how or why coffee might have a protective effect against dementia, but speculate that it might be due to an antioxidant effect. Coffee-drinking has already been shown to have a link with lower risk of type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's disease.