The mice had been genetically engineered to have the same gene variant, apoE4 that is found in 15 to 20 percent of humans, and known as a risk factor for Alzheimer’s. They were then given food high in fat, sugar, and cholesterol. After nine months, says the study’s lead researcher Susanne Akterin, the brains of the mice exhibited “a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain.
“We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors … can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer’s.”
”… you hang around for a while with the rest of the Greenmarket crowd, listening to bluegrass and trading recipes for fig tarts. And maybe you feel good about yourself … And yet, something feels off. There’s an uncomfortable self-awareness creeping in … that, we’re mostly white and mostly rich.”
He goes on to question the concept that we’re “creating a better world through shopping,” and chastises himself for believing he’s a “better person” for having bought sustainable produce and meat.
HEAVEN FORBID one should support products one believes in. He should probably feed his kids Cheetos, McNuggets, and lots and lots of Coke cuz that’s what poor folk eat. He should make sure to only buy cheap meat that was raised in industrial feedlots, so that he has an equal chance of getting salmonella or E. coli as does the other half.
For God’s sake, man, stand up for what you believe in! Don’t worry that you look like some kind of bluegrass-lovin’ pansy because you’re paying $28 for a humanely-raised steak. Do you worry that recycling makes you look like a yuppie too, or did you get over that?
Slate caught my attention with this one:
“Why food writers secretly hate the November feast” by Los Angeles Times contributor Regina Schrambling. She laments that editors have to come up with a new tortured twist on turkey day, even though readers will just make the same old stuff they always make.
Schrambling writes:
“In a country that worships sickening candied yams under marshmallows, I know that almost no one will try something like sweet potatoes Anna—a gratin of thin slices layered with thyme, Aleppo pepper, and lots of butter.”
She then admits that she, herself, will be making the same old stuff she always makes.
Yeah, it’s true that readers don’t want something weird or too clever when it comes to the biggest food holiday of the year. Last year’s interactive Neoslacker Interactive Thanksgiving on CHOW was kind of a bomb. Lesson learned.
But I was surprised that Schrambling plays it safe at her own feast. As long as you have the turkey, potatoes, and stuffing covered, I think Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to make your relatives try stuff they wouldn’t usually eat that you happen to like. In my case, I’m making CHOW’s Chicory, Tangerine, and Pomegranate Salad, as well as an appetizer of puréed carrots with harissa and dukkah from the Spice cookbook by Ana Sortun. It’s part of my secret plot to add more colorful botanicals to what’s essentially a very brown meal. What’s the most unusual thing you’re making for Thanksgiving?
Just in time for holiday dinners and lots of red wine drinking, I spied this great invention. It’s called Drop Stop, and it’s a simple circle of shiny silver plastic-y stuff that you roll up and stick in the mouth of an open wine bottle for pouring. It acts like the metal versions you see in restaurants, so that when you set the bottle back down, the wine doesn’t dribble out the side. No ruined tablecloths.
You gotta love the Estonian food blogger Pille, who works her magic over at Nami-Nami. No, seriously, it’s important that you do: Few bloggers writing from anywhere do such a skillful job of capturing the unique atmosphere of where they’re from.
Here’s her intro to a recent recipe for “kohvikook,” or coffee cake:
“When I first started reading English-language cookbooks I was baffled by coffee cake recipes that had no coffee inside. You see, in Estonia we bake and eat lots of cakes (I’ve baked a cake to go with coffee each day this week), but they’re not called ‘kohvikook’ or ‘coffee cake’. They’re called just cakes, and we enjoy them with coffee. Meanwhile, I’ve been baking a coffee cake — that is, a cake that contains coffee crumbs — for over a decade now.”
The cake includes three heaping tablespoons of ground coffee and four tablespoons of cold coffee or coffee liqueur for the frosting. Estonia represent!
Calling Snow’s little-known, at least in the big-name world of Texas barbecue, may be an exaggeration—it’s more like unknown. A few reasons why: It’s only open Saturdays, and only from 8 a.m. until the meat runs out. It has two employees. The pitmaster—that is, the employee who isn’t also the owner—Tootsie Tomanetz, is 73 and works during the week as a middle-school custodian. The owner? He’s an ex–rodeo clown.
1. Taco Bell challenges hip-hop maestro 50 Cent to change his name to 79, 89, or 99 Cent in order to better promote the Fauxican restaurant’s value menu.
2. America collectively enjoys the wit and wisdom of the Taco Bell ad campaign.
3. 50 Cent files a $4 million suit against the restaurant for trademark infringement, presumably because Taco Bell had the temerity to use his name in its ads.
TMZ reports on the latest and posts the lawsuit itself: The rapper’s lawyer tells us “Taco Bell needs to be stopped” and that “Mr. Cent intends to vigorously pursue this case.”
The only question innocent bystanders have to answer is for whom to root: the guy who raps “Bitch what the f∗∗∗ you mean I can’t sing bitch /
Bitch I’m Luther Vandross in the shower,” or the restaurant that brought us the Volcano Taco?
The secret’s out: One surefire way to get the Internet talking about a taste test is to try stuff that’s pretty much guaranteed to be rank and nasty. Table Matters bought into the formula by sucking down a bunch of “college beers,” the generally watery or downright skunky things that most of us drank before we had money and/or taste.
Milwaukee’s Best Light fared surprisingly well (“I was worried we would run out of it before the tasting started”), and Schmidt took the coveted honor of dag-nastiest, meriting the relatively straightforward verdict of “Quite possibly the worst beer ever created.”
Sadly missing from the roundup was Grain Belt Premium. It’s a regional collegiate favorite of the Upper Midwest, which includes national drinking powerhouse Wisconsin. It’s also surprisingly drinkable even after exposure to better-regarded brews.
Previously, astronauts wanting to enjoy their morning coffee in a zero-gravity environment were forced to suck it from a bag. And as we all know, bags are for doughnuts, not coffee!
As shown in a NASA video found via Boing Boing, a recent discovery involving a specially shaped cup now makes it possible for astronauts to have a cuppa in space.
The shape of the cup, which is similar to an airplane wing, takes advantage of surface tension forces that make the liquid “stick” to one edge. In fact, drinking liquid from the cup in zero gravity is even easier than drinking liquid on Earth, because the liquid wicks up to the drinker’s mouth “to the last drop,” says astronaut Dr. Don Pettit.
Next, someone needs to create a doughnut-holes-as-edible-asteroids video in space. Needs to, I tells ya!
It’s already debatable whether any fish can, or should, be labeled organic. The USDA previously ruled out all wild fish: The Chicago Tribune explains the agency’s logic: “The whole notion of ‘wild’ is at odds with the government’s rigorous criteria for classifying organic livestock production. Wild, after all, can’t be controlled.” But somewhat perversely, the USDA says organic farmed fish can eat fish meal that’s made from wild fish. (Wild fish that aren’t threatened species would be allowed to make up 25 percent of farmed feed.) That’s angered the Consumers Union, which says that allowing partially nonorganic feed would set a lower standard for fish than other organic foods, amounting to what the CU calls “a dangerous precedent.”
In any case, you won’t see organic fish soon: A USDA spokesman told Scientific American that there’s no timetable for taking up the recommendations. And even if the criteria are approved, organic fish won’t be easy to find: So few fish farms meet the proposed standards that George Leonard, a marine ecologist on the advisory board, told the Post the criteria are essentially for “a sustainable farming practice that does not yet exist.”
