When police in Western New York pulled over Gary Korkuc for blowing off a stop sign on Sunday, they found a live cat in his trunk, covered in cooking oil, peppers, and salt. Korkuc told authorities that his pet feline was “possessive, greedy, and wasteful” and that he intended to cook and eat it. Korkuc has been charged with animal cruelty. Is there a legal way to cook and eat a cat?
An international study of almost 500,000 people has confirmed that eating fruit and vegetables does not ward off cancer, debunking a 20-year-old edict by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
It also casts a shadow over the federal government’s $4.8 million advertising campaign, launched five years ago, to encourage people to eat two pieces of fruit and five serves of vegetables a day.
But cancer experts yesterday urged people not to disregard the advice, saying a high intake of fruit and vegetables was still beneficial against heart disease and that some cancers, such as bowel and breast, were linked to obesity.
photo { Jessica Craig-Martin }
Small Change is an album by Tom Waits, released in 1976 on Asylum Records. It was recorded, direct to 2-track stereo tape, from July 15 to July 20, 1976 at the Wally Heider Recording Studio, in Hollywood, USA under the production of Bones Howe.
At the time of the recording of Small Change Waits was drinking more and more heavily, and life on the road was starting to take its toll on him. Waits, looking back at the period said: “I was sick through that whole period […] It was starting to wear on me, all the touring. I’d been travelling quite a bit, living in hotels, eating bad food, drinking a lot - too much. There’s a lifestyle that’s there before you arrive and you’re introduced to it. It’s unavoidable.”
With the album Waits asserted that he “tried to resolve a few things as far as this cocktail-lounge, maudlin, crying-in-your-beer image that I have. There ain’t nothin’ funny about a drunk […] I was really starting to believe that there was something amusing and wonderfully American about being a drunk. I ended up telling myself to cut that shit out.”
photos { Joel Brodsky }
Doctors and experts are baffled by an Indian hermit who claims not to have eaten or drunk anything for several decades - but is still in perfect health.
Prahlad Jani, a holy man, or fakir, who is over 70 years old, has just spent 10 days under constant observation in Sterling Hospital, in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.
During that time, he did not consume anything and “neither did he pass urine or stool”, according to the hospital’s deputy superintendent, Dr Dinesh Desai.
Yet he is in fine mental and physical fettle, say doctors.
Most people can live without food for several weeks, with the body drawing on its fat and protein stores. But the average human can survive for only three to four days without water.
Followers of Indian holy men and ascetics have often ascribed extraordinary powers to them, but such powers are seldom subject to scientific inspection.
“A series of tests conducted on him show his body mechanism is that of a normal person,” said Dr Desai.
{ BBC | Continue reading | Thanks Douglas }
image { Joe Merrell }
A recent study examined the correlation between chocolate consumption and self-reported depression symptoms. (…)
The authors caution that cross-sectional studies have limited ability to explain correlations and are open to spurious findings. They note there findings are compatible with several possibilities:
• Depression drives craving for chocolate as a self-treatment
• Depression drives craving for chocolate for other reasons
• Chocolate may contribute to depressive symptoms
• A physiological factor could drive both depressive symptoms and chocolate consumption
• A more complex undefined relationship could exist
I’d vote for the last option. (…)
To be balanced, it must be noted that other studies found positive health associations with chocolate intake. In an older sample of Finnish men, chocolate preference as a sweet was linked to better overall health, optimism and better psychological well-being.
Does red wine always go with red meat? How about white wine with fish and chicken?
Forget the rules. Francois Chartier says it’s more important to match food and wine with their molecular aromas.
In “Papilles et Molecules (Taste Buds and Molecules),” named 2010’s Best Innovative Culinary Book in the World at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in Paris, the Canadian master sommelier provides a detailed reference guide for doing just that. (…)
Chartier examined the aromatic molecules behind our sense of taste and matched food and wine to their corresponding molecular families. He then developed simple charts that explain how to achieve perfect culinary synergy.
re-photo { Richard Prince }
…Mr. Sibayan’s prize was the equivalent in the world of rarefied coffees: dung containing the world’s most expensive coffee beans.
Costing hundreds of dollars a pound, these beans are found in the droppings of the civet, a nocturnal, furry, long-tailed catlike animal that prowls Southeast Asia’s coffee-growing lands for the tastiest, ripest coffee cherries. The civet eventually excretes the hard, indigestible innards of the fruit — essentially, incipient coffee beans — though only after they have been fermented in the animal’s stomach acids and enzymes to produce a brew described as smooth, chocolaty and devoid of any bitter aftertaste.
As connoisseurs in the United States, Europe and East Asia have discovered civet coffee in recent years, growing demand is fueling a gold rush in the Philippines and Indonesia, the countries with the largest civet populations.
photo { Christophe Kutner }
What makes a fruit “super?”
First of all, we have to define what characteristics a fruit has to have to be labeled “super.” The superfruit craze seems to have hit a tipping point in 2004, however there appear to be no clear standards as to how a fruit attains a “super” status. Marketing and exotic appeal rather than science have given select fruits a more salubrious appeal. As most health claims however, these are based on perception rather than evidence.
One thing that superfuits do have in common, however, is a high ORAC value.
The Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) assay was developed to directly test the antioxidant capacity of biological samples. There are however many different tests of antioxidant capacity that have been developed and utilized, each with various shortcomings.
drawing { Ellsworth Kelly, Tangerine, 1964-65 }
Will booze make you skinny? (…)
Best case scenario is the study has indeed accounted for all variables and the association is causal and if you’re a woman, drinking 2 glasses of wine daily will help you not gain roughly a third of a pound extra per year.
Worse case scenario? The study proves just how difficult it is to study nutritional variables and that it’s one of those association doesn’t prove causality pieces.
{ Weighty Matters | Continue reading | unsourced photo }
Sometimes you hear a word for the first time and think: “Of course.” How better to describe Paris Hilton than as a “celebutante” or the frequent tabloid target Alec Baldwin as “the bloviator”? (Thanks, New York Post!)
Now make room for “prehab.”
Prehab made its debut on Feb. 23, the handiwork of GlasgowRose, a commenter on Gawker, after a publicist for Charlie Sheen announced that the star of “Two and a Half Men” was entering rehab as a “preventative measure.”
{ NY Times | Continue reading }
A respected scientist set out to determine which drugs are actually the most dangerous — and discovered that the answers are, well, awkward. (…)
The list, printed as a chart with the unassuming title “Mean Harm Scores for 20 Substances,” ranked a set of common drugs, both legal and illegal, in order of their harmfulness - how addictive they were, how physically damaging, and how much they threatened society. Many drug specialists now consider it one of the most objective sources available on the actual harmfulness of different substances.
That ranking showed, with numbers, what Nutt was fired for saying out loud: Overall, alcohol is far worse than many illegal drugs. So is tobacco. Smoking pot is less harmful than drinking, and LSD is less damaging yet.
{ The Boston Globe | Continue reading }
Andy was one of my best friends. We hung out together several nights a week for over ten years. We used to go to Studio 54 — an amazing place.
{ Jerry Hall interview | Index magazine | Continue reading }
photo { Andy Warhol and Jerry Hall, Studio 54, NYC, late 70s }
Where will the next food crisis strike and how to face it? (…)
Satellite observation is the key instrument that will allow to double in 2010 the number of countries monitored in real time for detecting first indications of adverse agricultural outcomes. (…)
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 1 billion people go to bed each night with an empty stomach.
related { Premier Foods declares war on own-label goods. }
The promise—and the hype—of changing your DNA through behavior.
Studies showing how experience alters genes have been few and far between—which is why a new one on smoking and diet caught my eye.
The study of these kinds of changes in genes is called epigenetics. Crucially, the changes do not involve alterations of gene sequences, those famous A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s that the Human Genome Project figured out. (…)
Scientists are now making specific, actionable discoveries in epigenetics. This week, for instance, researchers are reporting that eating leafy green vegetables, folate (found in these veggies as well as in some fruits and in dried beans and peas), and multivitamins can affect the epigenetics of genes involved in lung cancer in a way that could reduce the risk of getting the disease, especially from smoking.
State Representative James Tokioka did some research and drafted a bill that prohibits catching, selling or even possessing walu in Hawaii.
“I talked [to] many people who sell fish, some of the hotel who [buys] fish, they are aware of it and they’re not buying it anymore,” said Rep. Tokioka.
Tokioka said people have shared their nightmares of severe diarrhea after consuming a large portion of the fish. The oily walu or Escolar contains a high-level of wax esters in its tissue that are beneficial to its deep-sea survival, but can be unkind to humans.
illustration { Mathias Schweizer,
