A New Kind of Cooking Class

I'd heard previously about the wildly successful "Kitchen Chemistry" class taught at MIT and how it combined chemistry and kitchen skills into a class about cooking that was based in science (and counted for a science credit). It turns out that this class might be part of a larger trend towards teaching the science behind what's happening in the kitchen. Classes are cropping up at other universities around the country, according to Chemical and Engineering News.

That's good news for several reasons. First, I think any topic that relates science to everyday life helps to engage students with science and results in more overall science literacy, which is important for a well-informed populace. Second, I think educating people about food and cooking helps to make them more enthusiastic and confident cooks. This in turn helps people that eat better, healthier food, increasing health and quality of life in our society. Lastly, it's great for me, since I'm pretty sure I can't think of  job I'd enjoy more than teaching such a class.

(via BoingBoing)

Antibacterials and Allergies

 Has everyone else noticed that, apparently, everyone is allergic to peanuts now? Or has some other serious allergy? One explanation is the so-called "hygiene hypothesis," which says that the reason allergies are on the rise is because our super-hygienic lifestyle has reduced our exposure to all sorts of microorganisms, both good and bad, and has prevented our immune systems from developing normally.

Now new support for this hypothesis has come in the form of a study showing that children with higher levels of antibacterial and preservative chemicals in their urine have higher incidence of food and environmental allergies. The levels of these chemicals found in the urine reflects the amount of exposure kids have to them, and come mainly from personal products including soap, mouthwash, and toothpaste. More exposure resulted in higher levels of IgE antibodies, involved in the allergy response. Children with the highest levels of exposure to Triclosan, one of the antibacterial agents studied, had twice the risk of peanut and environmental allergies as kids exposed to low levels of the chemical.

The researchers' hypothesis is not that these chemicals directly cause allergies, but that exposure to them inhibits proper development of the immune system, which leads to development of allergies later. It's a little more support for the idea that, while antibiotics and antiseptics are pretty awesome and have extended the human lifespan enormously, bathing your children in Purell and antibacterial soap every time they go outside might not be the best idea. Let them eat a little dirt next time.

(Image: Untitled, a Creative Commons 2.0 image from ms. Tea's photostream)

Strange Fruit

BBC Nature has an interesting feature on unusual and hybrid fruit varieties. It's worth a read, especially if you were wondering how to eat a durian, aka the world's smelliest fruit, or if you are curious about what fruits humans crossbred to make crazy hybrids like oranges and lemons.

(via BoingBoing)

Quick Hit: The Future of Food @ Slate

Slate has an interesting set of articles up on their Future Tense blog about technology and food production. It includes discussions of robotics in small scale agriculture, the future possibilities of genetically engineered foods, large scale agriculture in the face of climate change, and more. If you're interested in high tech food packaging, nanoparticles, genetic engineering, and laboratory-grown meat (and who isn't?!), go check it out.

The Tomato Code

What's got 31,760 genes and is red all over? Tomatoes, that's what! It's the moment we've all been waiting for folks: after nine years, a group of plant geneticists from 14 countries have finally decoded the entire tomato genome. Hopefully this will lead to tasty-yet-shelf-stable tomatoes of the FUTURE. Or, possibly, tomatoes that need less pesticide to thrive. For now, we can only hope.

For those of you who are counting, that means that tomatoes have about 7,000 more genes than humans. Although this isn't all that unusual, since many plants have extremely large genomes (wheat, for example, has a genome that is five times the size of humans'), I wouldn't turn my back on them. No one wants to be surprised by something like this.

(via the NYT)

Coffee drinking linked to reduced death risk

 So today, in health news that makes me happy (for once!), a recent study links coffee consumption with reduced death risk. The study followed 400,000 adults for 14 years and found that men and women who drink 4-5 cups of joe a day had the lowest death risk - 12% less than non-coffee drinking people. Even a daily cup of coffee reduced the risk of death compared to non-drinkers by 6%. Good news for those of us who have a rough morning without our daily dose of caffeine (although the correlation still exists for those who mostly drink decaf, suggesting that caffeine itself is not beneficial in this way).

Just a note: As usual, science reporting generally goes for the sensational above the technically correct. The statement that "Coffee may be the key to living longer" accompanying the above article is misleading because it implies that drinking coffee causes you to live longer, while the study has not proved that at all. Repeat after me, science scouts: "Correlation does not imply causation!"

(Image: Coffee in the morning, a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 licensed image from chichacha's photostream)

Fractal Pancakes

I think they probably require way more talent than I possess to make, but these fractal pancakes (via BoingBoing) are super cool.

Along with the Mobius Bagel, they make a mathalicious (if carb-laden) breakfast.