Food & Drink

A Healthy Rosh Hashanah: A Sweet New Year, Without the Sugar

At sundown Wednesday Jewish families will ring in Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, by feasting on sweet foods like apples and honey, rugelach cookies and round honey cakes. The holiday tradition is that a sweet meal will lead to a sweet new year. So what about the diabetics and health conscious relatives at your table?

The …

How Safe is Gulf Seafood?

Some reassuring news from the Institute of Food Technologists on the safety of seafood from the Gulf. Despite the photos of pelicans and turtles drenched in the oil from Deepwater Horizon, seafood from Louisiana, which provides one-third of the continental US’s seafood (that’s about 1.5 billion pounds a year) does not seem to be that …

Making Meat in the Lab

Sat in on an interesting session on meat substitutes at the Institute of Food Technologists meeting. So here’s the argument, which you’ve no doubt heard before – most of the western world, including North and South America and Europe is a carnivorous group. We love our meat. Since the 1960s, our consumption of animal-based protein …

What’s in Your Fruit Juice?

More news from the Institute of Food Technologists meeting.

It’s always disturbing to hear about intentional cases of food adulteration – the melamine in infant formula, for example, because it represents a concerted effort to deceive, and in many cases, harm the public. But how common is such nefarious manipulation of our food?

Making Breakfast Count

Hello from Chicago, where I’m attending the annual meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists. It’s an interesting gathering of food scientists from academia, industry and government who think about what we eat, how we eat and why we aren’t eating better. Over the next several days, I’ll be brining you some news from the …

Salt: “supertasters” and how obesity impacts sensitivity

New research from food scientists at Pennsylvania State University suggest that some people’s penchant for salt may be due to a broader hypersensitivity to taste. The researchers suggest that “supertasters” not only experience the taste of salt more intensely, but other flavors as well — meaning that they often rely on extra salt to

Report: FDA needs more proactive food safety approach

A new report released today by the Institutes of Medicine (IOM) and National Research Council suggests that lack of resources, less than optimal organization and a reactive instead of preventive approach are undermining the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) ability to effectively regulate food safety.

Mediterranean diet linked to lower child asthma risk

Children who consume a diet rich in fish, fruit and vegetables tend to have a lower risk for asthma and wheezing, while kids who eat several hamburgers a week may have a higher risk, according to new research published this week in the international respiratory journal Thorax.

Why urinary tract infections are getting harder to treat

Increasing antibiotic resistance stemming from the use of antibiotics in raising livestock is contributing to growing difficulty in treating urinary tract infections, according to new research published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. Dr. Pak-Leung Ho and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong say that genes which encode

Spicy research: peppers may help burn calories

Peppers are having a big week. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Center for Human Nutrition say that preliminary findings from a small study suggest that the chemical that gives spicy peppers their kick, capsaicin, may not only make you sweat when digging in to a hot dish, but may actually prompt your body to

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