Have you ever stashed a Coke in the freezer, hoping to chill it quickly, then forgotten all about it, only to have it explode all over your frozen peas?

A recent study found that cherry tomatoes grown in salt water can turn out tastier and heartier than ones grown normally, partially because the plants have to fight harder to fight the environmental stress and produce more compounds to help them cope. These compounds contain antioxidants like Vitamins C and E, which have healthy effects on those who consume the fruit.

The solution only contains 20% seawater. Unfortunately, not all genotypes of tomatoes react in the same way to the salt water. Some die because they cannot counteract the free radicals from the solution, so don't try to do this with larger tomatoes; it probably won't work. In the study, the water was constantly circulated and the pH controlled by a computer, so the researchers promise that the tomatoes won't taste salty.

The researchers, based at the University of Pisaone in Italy, are encouraging the growth of tomatoes in brackish water, because it will not only lead to juicier, healthier tomatoes, but will help to preserve our freshwater supplies.

You've seen them before. Those fliers tacked onto telephone poles (wait, do such things still exist?!), duct taped to street light posts, or even stapled onto the bulletin board in your doctor's office: "Wanted: women for a [insert health condition here] study."

You've never thought about actually volunteering for one of those studies.

Until now.

Researchers in the UK want 150 women who are willing to eat one bar of chocolate every day for a year. The study's purpose is to determine whether a natural compound found in cocoa, the main ingredient of chocolate, could cut the risk of heart disease among women with diabetes.

Unfortunately, you don't get to pick which chocolate you get to eat. A Belgian chocolatier has created a chocolate especially for this study.

According to an article that appeared yesterday in British newspaper, The Guardian, the newest frontier in food is in the area of nanofood development. With nanotechnology, food could be manipulated to taste great, be low-fat and last forever, because it alters the food on an atomic level. For all the potential good this science could do, researchers are hesitant to move too far forward this work. Their reservations are due, in large part, to the backlash that genetically modified foods have received in recent years.

It's a lengthy article, with far more detail that I can neatly summarize here. It's eye-opening, in part because the possibilities are appealing and frightening. I personally believe that we should leave food alone, as it seems that every time we start messing with our food, we make the situation worse not better. However, with the food supply uncertainties we may in the years to come, it makes me wonder how science could help feed the world.

[via The Morning News]

When I was a kind my favorite part of the science museum wasn't the earthquake model or the Van De Graaff generator (the big silver ball that made your hair stand on end with static electricity) or even the animatronic dinosaur. Those were all cool, yes, but they didn't compare to the packet of astronaut ice cream I'd get at the gift shop at the end of the day.

Reading about the spacewalkers from the Endeavor mission today, I was reminded of my favorite childhood treat. Packaged in hard silver bags, the ice cream looked more like fat sticks of sidewalk chalk than anything else. Biting into it, it had the texture of sidewalk chalk as well, though strangely light, until it melted in my mouth in a fizzy puddle and was gone in an instant, leaving me with a sticky mouth and the lingering taste of fake chocolate. Loved it, loved it, loved it.

I looked into whether it's possible to make freeze dried ice cream at home, and unfortunately it looks like it's not (but if I'm wrong, please let me know!), but I did find this cool description of how astronaut ice cream is made. The ice cream is frozen to -40° Fahrenheit and placed in a vacuum chamber. The chamber is heated, vaporizing the ice and dehydrating the ice cream. Can I really not make this at home?

Remember when everyone went crazy over soy? Products from breakfast cereal to cookies touted their "soy isoflavone" content, credited with protecting against heart disease. Now a number of studies show that soy consumption has no affect on cardiovascular health and people are fretting that it may even increase the risk of some cancers.

The jury is still waaay out on just how specific foods affect the body.

So I rolled my eyes a bit reading this article in the New York Times about California restaurants claiming to serve immunity boosting foods.

Crustacean, a Vietnamese restaurant in Beverly Hills, puts a special icon next to menu items it claims boost immunity. Its Buddha roll, made with shiitake mushrooms which contains iron and Vitamin C, gets an icon, as does its lemongrass soup (lemongrass has folate, zinc and iron).

Sounds like a good way to sell more Buddha rolls. And to make a dinner out a little more like a trip to the doctor's office. I'll stick to my reasonably balanced diet (with the occasional unreasonable quantity of ice cream or pork barbecue) and pop a vitamin pill now and then for good measure.

What do you think? Any foods you believe boost your immune system?

A group of scientists at Nestlé Research in Switzerland have come up with a machine that will rapidly taste and rate as many as eight different kinds of espresso. The ratings, they say, will be as accurate as if tasted by...well, actual people.

According to an article in Live Science, the machine analyzes the gases released by the espresso, and then interprets the data as "cocoa," "citrus," or "toffee," for example.

Sounds intriguing, and it could definitely save time. But do we really want to let a machine take the place of a task that people already perform well? It's not as if there is a sudden, increased demand in coffee taste testers, or that they are not adequately performing their jobs. ("Toffee?! No way. I distinctly detected citrus notes...you're fired.") I don't think that we're somehow missing out because our coffee isn't properly classified. Perhaps the machine is more discerning?

Cool invention, but for right now, I'm comfortable in the notion that my espresso has been categorized by humans, thanks.

Maybe you've heard about "eating green," but aren't quite sure what it entails. Or you already try to eat organic, but sometimes wish there was more you could do for the earth. Or maybe you're already aware of eating green but could use a refresher.

Well, our friends at GreenDaily have done the research for you, and come up with a handy little guide to everything you should know about eating green. Each part of the guide features handy, straightforward information about topics like gardening, artificial growth hormones, and fair trade, complete with online resources and opportunities to learn more.

Forget your percolator: this is siphon coffee.

The newfangled machine looks more like it belongs in a chemistry lab than your local cafe, but that seems to be half its appeal. It's a siphon bar, it costs $20,000, and it lives at Blue Bottle Cafe in San Francisco, California. And it's certainly is fun to watch:

Essentially, there are several burners, each with a glass or metal bulb suspended above. You put your coffee grounds into one, and your water into the other. You light the burner, and as the water heats, it is pushed through a pipe into the coffee grounds. The coffee brews, and when it is finished, it is sucked back through the pipe to the first canister, where it waits patiently until it is consumed. The bar allows baristas to do this process several times simultaneously, like in the photo above.

Now, just to reiterate: this machine doesn't make espresso, or froth your milk, or contain storage containers for cocoa and cinnamon. It just makes plain ol' coffee. But fans of the machine say the taste is extraordinary, because the process keeps the water at just the right temperature when it mixes with the grounds, creating a heavenly cup.

If this sounds appealing to you, luckily, there are cheaper siphons (also called 'vacuum coffeemakers') currently on the market, like the Bodum Santos Vacuum Maker (from $55 to $80, depending on where you look) or the Yama 8-cup Vac Pot Siphon Brewer (about $50).

But if you want to get the true experience of the siphon bar, you'll have to head over to the Blue Bottle Cafe.

Designboom, a mod blog devoted to the latest and greatest in product design, recently came out with the winners of its 2006 Dining in 2015 contest. The challenge was exactly as it sounds: to design a food-related product that would be useful in 2015 at work, in travel, or at home.

Chefs and designers from Italy and Japan judged the entires and came up with the top three and an honorable mention.

Let's start from the bottom and work up. The honorable mention [ed. note: shown in photo] was an eco-friendly solution to dinner prep: silicone and nylon triangle-shaped buckets that allow the cook to boil three different foods all in one pot, thereby saving energy, time, and water. I totally expect it to be selling out on QVC in no time.

Third place? A creative ceramic salt and pepper shaker that forces you to physically break open the canister to access the spices inside. The goal of the project? There isn't any, really, but we bet it's really, really fun to break open. Save it for a day when you're really pissed off at someone, and then smash away. (But don't get carried away - - then you'll just have a mess of salt, pepper, and white ceramic shards to clean up).

After six years testing the safety of cloning, the Food and Drug Administration has deemed cloned animals fit for consumption.

Don't like it? Well, you don't have much of a choice. The FDA also decided that labels won't have to divulge whether or not they contain parts from cloned animals, because the ingredients are no different from that of animals raised the old-fashioned way. Besides, aside from the creep-out factor, most people probably wouldn't choose to eat a cloned animal to begin with; they cost ten times as much as your average, farm-raised cow or pig.

Americans should be used to to science and industry playing a starring role in our food choices. From pesticides to force-fed ducks to hormone-laden dairy products, it shouldn't be any surprise that cloned animals were the next step.

And our food is already meddled with, sometimes without our knowledge (ever wonder how you can perfectly fresh peaches and strawberries in the middle of February?), and sometimes quite obviously (plutots, anyone?) But while this shouldn't come as a shock, this newest agricultural development does seem like an eerie foreshadowing of events to come.

We've all heard the warnings that pregnant women should steer clear of fish because of mercury concerns. The FDA recommends that pregnant and breast feeding women eat no more than 12 ounces of fish a week. Most of my pregnant friends have heeded that advice, giving up tilapia, salmon and trout almost entirely until their children are weened. However, the Washington Post reported today that a group of scientists from both the public and private sectors are planning to announce that they believe that pregnant women should eat AT LEAST 12 ounces of fish per week.

The issue comes down to mercury concerns verses nutrients in fish being excellent for brain development. Since the FDA issued the fish warning, mothers and mothers-to-be have dropped their fish intake to the point where they are no longer getting enough of the Omega-3 oils that are so helpful for baby development and the prevention of postpartum depression. So, what's the answer? At the present time, it's murky at best.

Vanishing bees? "Pshaw!" you might be thinking about a mysterious killer that is wiping out America's population of honeybees. "So we won't have honey for our tea. Big deal!" you say.

Not so fast. Honeybees don't just make honey. If we lose bees, we lose the cross-pollination of all flowering crops, like fruits from trees, nuts, and other foods. In fact, with about 1/3 of the human diet coming from pollinated plants,and honeybees accounting for the majority of that pollination, vanishing bees could be "the biggest general threat to our food supply." SInce cattle also feed on alfalfa, the beef supply could be affected, too.

No word yet on what exactly the problem is, but bee experts are working on it.

Acrylamide is a chemical compound that can be found in fried or baked goods, produced by the reaction of a naturally occurring amino acid, asparagine, and sugars. More acrylamide is found in overcooked fried or baked foods. It can also be found in coffee and in microwaved foods. You can see a list of the amounts found in some foods here.

The reason that acrylamide is a carcinogen that is found in fairly high amounts in cigarettes, as well as in foods, and because it is a carcinogen, eating it might be associated with an increased risk of cancer. Some lawmakers have campaigned for warning labels to be added to foods in an effort to make sure that the public is properly informed, but without much success. Fortunately for them, Chinese scientists may have found a way to reduce acrylamide in foods by simply soaking he food in question in a bamboo leaf extract before cooking.

"Bamboo extract has potent antioxidant properties" that apparently contributed to the nonformation of acrylamide. Raw potato pieces soaked in the stuff had 75% less acrylamide when fried into french fries and potato chips afterwards - and the scientists noted that the bamboo extract did not change the food's flavor.

Garlic is one of those foods to which a very high number of cures are attributed. A quick search reveals citations that it can cure asthma, back pain, yeast infections and even prevent cancer. An analysis undertaken by the researchers at the Stanford Prevention Research Center at Stanford University found that the studies that showed allicin, the ingredient in garlic said to lower cholesterol levels, were all sponsored by the supplement companies that used it and that many of the studies used poor methodology. They did their own test of the stuff and found that, while allicin does lower cholesterol in cells in test tubes and in rats, it does nothing for humans. Stanford says that theirs was the first independent, long-term study to look at both raw garlic and garlic supplements in relation to cholesterol levels and they feel very confident about their results.

Participants and garlic fans alike have reported disappointment on learning that garlic-heavy diets aren't always a medical fix. Fortunately, the study didn't find that it has a negative effect on health, so they can still eat all the garlic they want. And, from the comments of the researchers, it is clear that many of them will because they simply don't believe the study results. One researcher said, "They were such zealots. They were going to keep taking it [in spite of the conclusions found]."