"science" news and stories

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.

Source

More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile (C. diff), a bacteria that can cause intestinal distress and, very rarely, death. About 40 percent of the cooked products and nearly 48 percent of the ready-to-eat products showed evidence of C. diff. Nearly 30 percent of the tainted samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff that's a growing problem in hospitals across the country.

But there are no proven cases of humans getting C. diff from food; it's almost always hospital transmitted. And if food-person transmission is possible, it's not known if the levels of bacteria in the supermarket meat are high enough to cause infection. But it does seem to add to the growing evidence that overuse of antibiotics, both at home and in meat processing plants, are leading to nasty superbugs. Yet another reason to eat sustainably-raised hormone and antibiotic-free meat.

Source

Lots of people love a good piece of sashimi and nigiri sushi, and most of us are willing to pay more for a higher quality fish. The only question is whether or not you're getting what you paid for.

Last week there was an article in the New York Times about two teenage girls and their fish-y experiment. The students got 60 different samples of fish from 4 sushi restaurants and 10 supermarkets and sent them off to a lab in Canada. About 60% of the fish were mislabeled, and in general cheaper fish were masquerading as more expensive fish. Apparently no one knows what red snapper is.

There's a lot more science in the New York Times article, but what's really important is that so many people who should know what fish is what have been selling it under the wrong name. I'm sure that there are some unscrupulous vendors out there willing to make a quick buck, but I prefer to think that it's mainly just people making mistakes. What do you think about possibly paying more for cheaper fish?

When I was in high school, I had a love-hate relationship with science classes. Geology was fine, biology was okay, and chemistry...well, chemistry was hell. Mrs. Olech, the troll who taught the class, regularly flunked half her students and had a teaching manner that made Alan Greenspan seem bouncy and exciting.

Ironically, while I flunked chem, I aced my cooking classes. Even at the time, I thought that this was a little weird; after all, what is cooking if not a chemical process? The subtle adjustment of flavors, the cultivation of certain bacteria, the measured combination of leavening chemicals are all, basically, a mix of applied chemistry and biology. However, cooking class captured my imagination and attention in a way that chemistry didn't.

Reading a recent profile of Alton Brown, I realize that the problem lay with Mrs. Olech and her ilk. The simple fact is that science can be a lot of fun, if it is applied in a way that is relevant and exciting. I was surprised to learn that, like me, Brown found his science classes "boring beyond words." Even now, as he has built his own store of scientific knowledge, he admits to having discarded academic journals and scholarly papers because of their inability to engage his interest.

Exam stress and breakups are notorious for driving people to the ice cream and M&Ms, but did you know that thoughts of mortality can make you hit the Oreos harder as well?

Research from Arizona State University and Erasmus University in the Netherlands observed how many cookies subjects ate while writing an essay on one of two topics: a trip to the dentist or their own death. Those writing about shuffling off their mortal coils ate more cookies than those writing on root canals. The exception? People with high self-esteem, whose consumption was little affected by the essay topic.

The authors hypothesize that people eat to subconsciously escape self-awareness. I think anyone who has ever crammed down another donut in a moment of anxiety or depression (uh, probably all of us) can relate.

Source