Food & Diet, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 30, 2004

Cola Wars Fought in the Brain

One soft drink advertisement commands, Obey your thirst, but your taste buds may get trumped by the sway of brand names. All those commercials and jingles and celebrity endorsements get stored in the brain, apparently biasing preferences, new research shows. The study probed the effect of these cultural influences by...

Oct 31, 2005

The Chemistry of Great Coffee

High-end coffee is suddenly seeping into fast-food restaurants faster than you can ask for fries with that. McDonald's started offering organic coffee roasted by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters at 650 locations in New England and Albany, New York, this month. Burger King now lets you order coffee brewed one cup...

Apr 30, 2005

Study Reveals Why Raw Garlic is So Pungent

Cooks know there's a huge difference between raw and cooked garlic. If you've ever gnawed on the raw form, you know it too. What a bite. When cooked, it is mellower. A new study reveals why. Raw garlic is full of sulfurous compounds, including a chemical called alliin. When a...

Nov 30, 2006

Study: Saturated Fats an All in the Family Affair

Adults with kids in the home eat more saturated fat--the equivalent of about one frozen pepperoni pizza each week--than do adults who don't live with children, scientists report. This study really points out that we need to focus on the family as a whole, that the entire family needs to...

Oct 31, 2006

Science Confirms Diet Tactic: Eat Slow, Eat Less

Although the idea that eating slower inhibits appetite has been around for decades, there was no scientific evidence. Now the first study to evaluate the claim finds it to be true. It started in about 1972 as a hypothesis that eating slowly would allow the body time for the development...

Oct 31, 2006

Good Food Gone Bad

Pizza (Image credit: Afonso Lima / Stock.XCHNG)What a pity that most Americans have never eaten pizza and confuse it for the junk food advertised on television. In Italy there are laws defining pizza, which set allowances on the type of flour, tomato, mozzarella, olive oil, basil and oregano. Pizza is...

Jun 30, 2006

The Raw Food Diet: A Raw Deal

American ingenuity has found one solution to the energy crisis: food you never need to cook. There's no need for fuel when everything you eat---from salad to, well, more salad—is served up at piping room temperature. I'm speaking of the raw food diet, for those who find the vegan lifestyle...

Apr 30, 2006

Portable Dipstick to Measure Caffeine

While it might seem strange scientists would think to develop dipsticks to measure caffeine, how they're making them is even weirder. How about three llamas and two camels. The animals, both called camelids by scientists, are among the few whose immune systems produce antibodies that are not destroyed by hot...

Mar 31, 2006

Bullying Creates Vicious Cycle for Overweight Kids

A new study suggests that constant bullying prevents overweight children from exercising, and all the teasing can make it harder to shed the pounds as an adult. About one out of every five children is chronically bullied. Overweight kids are targeted more frequently, and oftentimes while in gym class or...

Jan 31, 2006

Myth Busted: Late Night Snacks Don't Add Weight

Giving in to those late-night munchies won't make you gain weight after all, according to a new study. Eating at night is no more likely to promote weight gain than eating during the day, said study co-author Judy Cameron, a researcher at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon...

Oct 31, 2007

The Dawn of Chocolate Discovered

Long before the Aztecs and other early Americans introduced chocolate to the world, ancient civilizations used cacao, the source of chocolate, to make a completely different tasty treat. In fact, new evidence from pottery shards shows that cacao was in use much longer than previously thought. Cacao beans, which come...

Sep 30, 2007

Hottest Chile Pepper Shatters Record

It's hot. Scorching hot. Guinness World Records hot. Researchers at New Mexico State University have discovered the world’s hottest chili pepper. It's called the Bhut Jolokia, a variety originating in Assam, India. In tests that yield Scoville heat units (SHUs), the Bhut Jolokia reached 1 million SHUs, almost double the...

Jul 31, 2007

Kids' Food Fussiness May Be Inherited

LONDON (AP) -- Having trouble persuading your child to eat broccoli or spinach? You may have only yourself to blame. According to a study of twins, neophobia -- or the fear of new foods -- is mostly in the genes. Children could actually blame their mothers for this,'' said Jane...

Jun 30, 2007

Ancient Peppers Reveal Early Taste for Heat

Shriveled peppers preserved for 1,500 years in two caves in southern Mexico are giving scientists a real taste of pre-Columbian agriculture and the spicy fare it yielded. The desiccated chilies belong to Capsicum annum, which includes modern-day jalapenos and ancho peppers, and Capsicum frutescens, whose most famous member is the...

May 31, 2007

Vacuum-packed Foods Breed Deadly Bacteria

Those sealed glossy packs of cheeses and lunchmeat on your grocer's shelf can provide a particularly friendly home for nasty bugs that cause food poisoning, new research shows. Vacuum-packed foods are deprived of oxygen to keep them fresh and boost their shelf life, but the same strategy is a boon...