"test" news and stories

For his science experiment this year, a middle school student from Boca Raton, Florida decided that he would test the effects of energy drinks on blood sugar. He came up with the idea because the drinks are hugely popular with his friends who feel that the drinks give them a "boost" and was already familiar with blood sugar and testing it because his cousin is a diabetic. Lucas Peel's hypothesis was that the drinks with the greatest amount of sugar and caffeine would produce the greatest increase in blood sugar, giving the drinker a burst of energy.

Over the course of about a week, Lucas drank Red Bull, Rock Star, Amp and water, testing his blood sugar levels twice after each of the three times he tried each drink. He found that, contrary to his original theory, it was "the energy drinks with the least sugar [that] increased blood sugar level." Red Bull boosted blood sugar more than any of the other drinks.

Lucas says that he avoids energy drinks and hopes that his project will help some of his fellow students to realize that they are not a good replacement for a real breakfast.

This isn't the first time that a middle-school student has conducted a science project that attracts a far-ranging interest. Earlier this year, for example, a student in Tampa, FL tested samples of water from the toilets at fast food restaurants and compared it to the ice from the soda machines, only to discover that there were more bacteria in the soda machine than the toilet.

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The LA Times conducted a test that pitted a silpat against parchment paper in a holiday cookie bakeoff. (I'm not going to get into the fact that the article also states that "traditionally, careful home bakers have used clarified butter when greasing is required," though I have yet to meet a home baker who "traditionally" has done this.) They concluded that, while both parchment paper and silpats performed better than "untreated" pan in terms of spread and even cooking, the silpat performed better than the parchment paper in two out of three trials.

This is not a very fair test for the simple reason that the two things, although they share some of the same functionality, are designed to do different things. Would you compare a fork and a spoon, both useful utensils, and declare the fork to be superior because it is more proficient at stabbing food with its prongs?

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When I read the article in the New York Times where a chef tested Crisco, coconut oil and other fats for frying and baking, I was very surprised to hear that Crisco came out on top in just about every test. I'm familiar with how shortening works, so it wasn't the performance that surprised me, rather it was the fact that there was not a crowd of foodies (or at least readers of Gourmet magazine) outside the test kitchen complaining that an all-shortening tarte tatin, which usually has a very buttery puff-pastry base, beat out butter. Butter unquestionably tastes better, especially in such a simple dish, and the only way to really screw it up is if you have a lot of difficulty working with pastry in general. To get a "firm and crumbly" crust with butter, it sounds like the testing chef seriously overworked his dough.

But to get back to the main point, the thing that was really surprising was not the tarte tatin result, but the fact that they didn't consider testing trans-fat free Crisco in addition to regular Crisco. Surely a taste test that pitted this against an alternative with trans-fats would have been more useful to professional and non-professional chefs alike! Crisco Zero has been on the market for about a year and a half now. It's not quite as widely available as regular Crisco, but it can usually be found at regular grocery stores. It offers the same performance - resulting, for example, in a flaky pie crust - but does not have any trans fats per serving. I've used it before with good results and it seems like a potential alternative for chefs trying to reconfigure their recipes to exclude trans-fats.

After green onions were identified as the source of contamination for an E. coli outbreak at several East Coast Taco Bells, the company not only recalled all the scallions at its 5,800 locations nationwide, but sent out samples of the rest of their food products for testing to ensure that no other foods were at risk. The tests have come back negative, leaving the green onions as the sole source for the bacteria.

Taco Bell has switched produce suppliers, but with 61 cases identified, including 48 hospitalizations and 7 cases of kidney failure, the company is not out of the woods yet. Lawsuits are already being filed on behalf of some of those who were victims of the contamination, and because most chain restaurants have indemnity agreements with their suppliers, the company will be the one held accountable in these cases.

The company is working to sanitize and reopen stores that closed as a result of the outbreak.

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A quality homemade cake is going to trump a cake mix cake every time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that cake mixes are never worth using. After all, they are quick, easy and inexpensive -- a tough combination to beat. In a recent issue, Cook's Country collected eight different brands of cake mix to see if any could come close to homemade.

They were quick to point out that none of their testers were fooled by the store-mix cakes, easily identifying the unusually uniform crumb and the ultra-fluffy texture that is created by the emulsifiers and other additives in the ingredients. Even so, five out of the eight mixes were still recommended: Betty Crocker Super Moist Butter Recipe Yellow Cake, Betty Crocker Super Moist Golden Vanilla Cake, Pillsbury Moist Supreme Classic Yellow Cake, Betty Crocker Super Moist Yellow Cake and Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Butter Recipe Golden Cake. While the textures and colors of the winning cakes varied slightly from mix to mix, all had nice butter and vanilla flavors that make them worth eating, and only a very minimal (if any) artificial-ness to their flavor.

The cake mixes that didn't make the cut were panned by tasters for both poor texture and "insipid, stale" flavors. If you're going to buy a cake mix, stick with one of the brands above and avoid Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Classic Yellow Cake ("a 'spongy Twinkie' "), Jiffy Golden Yellow Cake Mix ("dry and terrible") and King Arthur Flour Vanilla-Butter Cake Mix ("grainy, crumbly ... strong almond extract aftertaste").