If you've ever chopped hot chiles with hands unprotected by food-prep gloves, you've experienced the searing burn of capsaicin. The active component of chile peppers feels like torture when it gets into your eyes or mucous membranes, and it can irritate your fingers with a burning pain that lasts for hours. Obviously, your skin isn't actually burned, explains Dr. John Hayes, director of the Sensory Evaluation Center at Pennsylvania State University. Your body is just tricking you.

Hayes says the heat threshold for mammals is 42 degrees Celsius (about 108 degrees Fahrenheit). Chile plants figured out a way to fool the body's temperature sensors via the chemical capsaicin, which works on the receptor TRPV1 (Hayes calls it a "molecular thermometer"). Basically, the chemical punks the body into thinking it's burning tissue. In fact, the reaction with capsaicin is an inflammatory response, more like an allergy.

So how do restaurant workers, who have to cut hot peppers every day, deal with the faux burn? "You just wash with soap and hot water," says Alex Bhowjani, supervisor at Bun Mee, a Vietnamese sandwich joint in San Francisco that serves up to 600 jalapeño-packed banh mi per day. Restaurant cooks don't have time to bother with the fancy solutions floating around the Internet, ranging from applying vegetable oil to soaking in whole milk. Bhowjani says you stop noticing after a while. "You just get used to it." There is evidence this is true.

For home cooks, Hayes happens to agree with Bhowjani: The best remedy is actually washing with soap and water, although Hayes insists on cold water, not hot. The soap binds with the capsaicin to wash it away, and the cold water lowers the temperature of your hands so that TRPV1 isn't activated.

As for all the folk remedies out there, Hayes says they're a mixed bag. Milk and other dairy products? Fine, but probably mostly effective because they're cold. Tomatoes, vinegar, lemon, or lime? "It turns out the molecular thermometer works by sensing hydrogen atoms, so acids are the worst thing you can use." [Ed. note: Acids usually "donate" hydrogen ions to solutions.] Vegetable oil? It'll take the capsaicin off your hands but won't reduce the temperature unless it's cold. Rubbing alcohol? "That's an irritant in and of itself. Don't add an irritant to an irritated place!" Gasoline? "I guess it would work, but it's not very safe. You gonna put it in your sink?"

Topical skin-numbing creams containing benzocaine or tetracaine are, in fact, effective. Hayes says they work by temporarily shutting down the nerves that register pain.

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Not only is there no need to rinse or wash beef, pork, lamb, chicken, or veal before cooking it, says the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, but cooks who do increase the risk of cross-contamination. Any bacteria lurking on meat when it comes out of the package will die during cooking. Sadly, you can't say the same for your sink, counters, utensils, or cutting board, all of which should be washed with hot, soapy water, rinsed, and then air- or paper-towel-dried after being in contact with meat.

Another reason not to rinse: Excess moisture on meat's surface thwarts the Maillard reaction, the intricate chemical process that occurs when carbohydrate molecules react with amino acids, yielding the coveted sear on that steak. The interchange between the two produces hundreds of different chemicals, explains Harold McGee in his book On Food and Cooking: "pyrroles, pyridines, pyrazines, thiophenes, thiazoles, and oxazoles," which give a brown color to the meat along with rich, complex flavors. The Maillard reaction begins at approximately 230 degrees Fahrenheit. Water, which turns to vapor at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, simply won't get hot enough to allow the Maillard reaction to occur. That means a watery piece of meat won't start browning until all the water is cooked off, but by that time your T-bone might already be well done.

So no, don't rinse meat. In fact, once you lift it out of the butcher paper or wrench it from the shrink-wrap, you should dry off any existing moisture carefully with paper towels before putting it in the pan to brown. Then throw the towels away. And wash your hands really, really well, for a full 10 seconds. Remember?

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Yep, you can eat the rind of any soft-ripened cheese like Brie or Camembert. But just so you know: Sometimes it won't taste so good.

"Soft cheese bruises like an apple," says Maxx Sherman, director of national sales for the Marin French Cheese Company, which makes a number of soft cheeses in Petaluma, California. "If the cheese is mishandled and bruised, it'll have spots that are mocha-colored and ammoniated."

But even a cheese that hasn't suffered any mishaps can have a rind that doesn't taste very good, Sherman says, depending on how it's been ripened. Mass-produced cheeses are laid on racks, and the mold culture that ripens the cheese is misted. The cheeses ripen from the outside in, and by the time the center is soft, the outside is likely to be a little overripe and stinky.

But cheese that's made with more care has mold culture applied to the outside and the inside, so it ripens more evenly. Sherman says that when you eat a good rind, "it sort of crumples a little, has a nice little crush in your teeth, maybe [tastes] a little bitter, and then you sink into the interior and it's soft and sweet from the milk."

So how do you know whether you're getting a good cheese or a literal stinker? If the rind looks good, smells good, and tastes good when you sneak a surreptitious pinch, go for it. If not, Sherman says you can lessen the reek by letting the cheese sit for a half-hour out of its packaging, to let the ammonia dissipate a little.

Image source: CHOW.com

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This question has baffled scientists for over half a century. In 1956, British researchers divided the population into two categories: excretors (those whose urine smells after they eat asparagus) and nonexcretors (asparagus eaters who remain odor free).

Since there’s no documentation of the asparagus-pee phenomenon before the 1700s, about the time farmers began using sulfur to fertilize soil, this and subsequent studies hypothesized that a particular gene allows people to process a sulfur-containing compound in asparagus (most likely asparagusic acid). The theory was that if you have that gene, your pee won’t stink. However, they were relying on the test subjects’ own reports and weren’t considering the subjects’ ability to smell.

In 1980, Israeli researchers performed a similar experiment but asked the nonexcretors to smell the excretors’ urine. Shockingly, they found that everyone’s urine smells after eating asparagus; it’s just that some people can’t smell it. So they, too, divided the world into two camps: perceivers and nonperceivers.

This story was originally published in January 2007.

When we first started chasing this down, we headed in the direction of phosphates, those eco-enemies that pollute waterways by fertilizing the algae already living there, causing massive blooms that choke out other plants and animals in the ecosystem. Phosphates are so wicked, in fact, that in 2010, 16 states banned the sale of high-phosphate detergents.

Phosphates do clean beautifully. The salt of phosphoric acid acts "like a little fatty acid that gets around food particles and makes them slippery, so they can't stick to each other, or the pan," says Daryl Thompson, a food scientist for Florida's Global Research and Discovery Group. That's how the crud on your dishes washes away easily with water. With phosphates effectively banned in automatic dishwashing detergent, manufacturers of detergents are getting besieged with complaints from consumers who say the reformulated products don't work as well.

But dishwashing liquids (soaps you squirt out of a plastic bottle to do dishes by hand, as opposed to those for the automatic dishwasher) haven't had phosphates in them for a long time—like, decades. If you did dishes in the '70s or '80s, you may have run across liquid dish soap with phosphates, and if you did, you probably noticed how effective it was.

Since phosphates have already been ruled out, what's the difference between ecofriendly and regular dish soaps? Mainly, ecofriendly soaps don't contain cleansing agents sourced from petroleum. Instead of using substances like dipropylene glycol n-butyl ether, a fine product from Dow found in the ingredient list for Dawn Power Dissolver, ecosoaps use plant-derived ingredients like lauramine oxide, derived from coconut oil and found in dish liquids from both Method and Seventh Generation.

Does the plant-based stuff work? As of yet, there have been no definitive studies comparing plant- and petroleum-based cleansers. (Interestingly, Dawn is the preferred cleanser for cleaning up birds after oil spills, which is ironic, since Dawn contains ingredients derived from the very same oil.)

Representatives from Colgate (maker of Ajax and Palmolive dish soaps) and Procter & Gamble (Dawn, Joy) also point out that some formulations are "concentrated" or "ultra-concentrated," i.e., contain higher proportions of active ingredients relative to water. You'll need less of a concentrated brand to do a sinkful of dishes, so be aware of what you're buying.

At home, Global Research and Discovery Group's Thompson doesn't even bother with store-bought dish soap—he uses a nonpolluting mix of equal parts baking soda, borax, and citric acid (use a packet of powdered lemonade mix if you can't find citric acid). Borax and baking soda are gentle abrasives, and the mixture of citric acid with water and baking soda softens the water, allowing dirt and grease to dissolve more easily. Plus, the reaction of borax with water, particularly hot water, creates hydrogen peroxide, a weak bleach.

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Not quite. A medium-size stalk of celery contains roughly six calories, and you'll burn less than one of those digesting it. "Eating does burn calories," says Toby Smithson, a registered dietitian and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, but that only works out to about 8 percent of caloric content on average. (Fatty foods require fewer calories to digest, while protein-rich items require more.) In other words, your digestive system needs roughly 32 calories to process that 400-calorie ham-and-cheese sandwich you had for lunch.

You might think that chewing uses up a lot of celery's calories, but that's not the case either. According to Smithson, chewing only expends about five calories per hour—not a very effective method of exercise.

That said, it's pretty much impossible to get fat eating celery. Compared to most of what we eat, celery and other water-rich, low-calorie foods like cabbage, lettuce, and cucumbers have a negligible impact on calorie intake. However, celery does have some nutritional benefits: It's an excellent source of vitamin K and a pretty good source of vitamin A, folate, and potassium. Not what you wanted to hear, we know.

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According to FDA spokesperson Tamara Ward, butter will last up to 10 days at room temperature before turning rancid. Rancid means that enzymes that are naturally present in milk begin to digest the fats in the butter, causing a sour flavor and aroma. The butter isn’t unsafe at that point, it just tastes bad.

Be sure to keep your butter well wrapped or covered in a butter dish, however, and safe from cross-contamination from dirty knives or hands. Butter, whether it's on the counter or in the fridge, will pick up strong smells if exposed to the air.

“Butter, and every other lipid, acts like a solvent—like acetone or hexane,” says Dr. Scott Rankin, the chair of the food science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Lipids will absorb volatile aroma compounds from the air. So don’t leave butter unwrapped next to onions or garlic, unless you want those flavors on your morning toast.

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Aging wine is a complex process that depends upon the proper amount of air being allowed into the bottle. A vessel that's airtight doesn't allow flavorful compounds to develop, while one that's completely open to the air causes the wine to quickly oxidize and taste bad. You've experienced this if you've left an open bottle of wine in your fridge or on your counter too long. A properly corked bottle is just airtight enough to keep wine fresh yet allow the wine to mature: The glass is airtight, but the cork allows in .01 to .1 cubic centimeter of oxygen a day. Box wines, not so much.

"The bags used in the boxed wines that I have seen are not very good oxygen barriers," says Dr. Joseph Marcy, professor and department head of Food Science and Technology at Virginia Tech; Marcy specializes in food packaging.

Because wine companies realize customers won't be buying box wines to age, they don't bother packaging the kinds of wines that would age well into boxes, adds Marcy.

That said, one of the strong points of box wine, says Katie Vandermause, the PR manager for Black Box Wines, is that it can hang out on a counter for up to four weeks, much longer than an uncorked bottle. Bag-in-box packages have a vacuum-sealed bag inside cardboard that collapses on the wine contents as the box is emptied. That means less air touching the wine, and wine that stays drinkable longer. But ultimately the bag lets in too much oxygen over time to allow wines to age properly.

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The adhesives used on fruit stickers are regulated by the FDA as "indirect food-contact substances," says Soo Kim, a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service. (The ingredients that may be used are outlined in the Code of Federal Regulations part 175.125.) The same rules apply to adhesives for both organic and nonorganic fruit, says Barbara Haumann, a spokesperson for the Organic Trade Association.

So the glue isn't necessarily organic, but could it contain any animal products? It's possible, but unlikely. "Although adhesives made from animal products would not be prohibited, most of those that are specifically approved for this use [on fruit stickers] are not formed from animal products," says Doug Karas, a spokesperson for the FDA.

Karas says that for any food-contact substance to be approved, the FDA considers its composition, the amount a consumer might eat, short- and long-term health effects, and any other safety factors. The FDA then sets a threshold "much lower than what would be expected to have any adverse effect." Still, Karas says, "whether there are labels on fruit and vegetables, we would advise anyone to wash produce before eating it."

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The poppy seeds on your bagel come from the plant Papaver somniferum, the same one that produces opiate drugs like morphine and heroin. The notion that eating a poppy-seed bagel might get you branded as a smack addict seems like urban legend. But "it's not a myth at all," explains Cynthia Whiteman, a senior analyst at Norchem, a forensic drug-testing laboratory in Arizona. "Every part of the plant does have morphine. The seeds have a very small amount but still will get positive results [on a drug test]."

In fact, poppy-seed-related positives are such a legitimate concern that the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration actually increased the positive reading threshold for opiate drug tests from 300 nanograms (ng) per milliliter of urine to 2,000 nanograms per milliliter in 1998 (for government workplace drug tests) to lessen the risk of false positives.

It's hard to say exactly how many poppy seeds you would have to eat to test positive, since factors like body weight vary from person to person. But according to a 1998 study published in the Forensic Science International journal, eating two poppy-seed rolls with an average of about .76 grams of seeds each caused positive test results for up to six hours in one individual, ranging from 47.9 ng/ml to 832 ng/ml, depending on how long it had been since ingestion. And poppy-seed cake? The same study found that eating a slice (which contained an average of 4.69 grams of seeds) caused all four subjects to screen positive for up to 24 hours—four times as long as the rolls—citing one individual's results ranging between 83.8 ng/ml and 302.1 ng/ml.

But don't relax and binge on poppy-seed muffins: "Different testing agencies require different levels of certification," says Whiteman, noting that some even have zero-tolerance policies. The choice of cutoff is the client's, she says, and many choose the lower government option of 300 ng/ml, such as all of Norchem's clients that test people on probation in Texas. So, to be safe, if you need to take a drug test—in Texas or elsewhere—skip the poppy seeds.

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Dumping used cooking grease down the drain can clog your pipes: It may be liquid when you pour it, but it will cool and harden quickly. "Even if it doesn't mess up your pipes, [everybody's plumbing] dumps into the city pipes and the grease builds up, eventually causing a blockage, which leads to sewer spills," says Donna Souza, the program manager of the Food Establishment Wastewater Discharge Program in San Diego, California. The best way to dispose of grease is to keep it out of the plumbing system entirely by reusing it or recycling it.

If you have some high-quality grease you actually want to keep, say, rendered duck fat or highfalutin-bacon grease, let it cool down a little and strain it into a jar, then store it in the refrigerator. You can use it to roast potatoes or start an unending cycle of greasy bacon-frying (see video below). If it's a large quantity of oil from deep-frying, you can cool it down, store it, and use it again. But beware of what you've fried in it: Flavors linger. Don't fry doughnuts in oil you've already used to fry seafood.

If you don't want to reuse your grease or cooking oil, just cool and collect it in an old container for recycling: Many city recycling facilities, from Columbia, South Carolina, to San Diego, California, are starting to accept it from residential homes. If your city doesn't, Souza says the grease or oil should be poured into an unrecyclable container and thrown in the garbage.

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Fruit flies are the small, gnatlike nuisances that buzz around the fruit bowl. They belong to the family of insects called Drosophilidae. Once they are spotted in your kitchen, a sense of doom may set in. "Unless breeding sites are cleaned or removed, the problem will continue," says Dr. Linda Mason, professor of food pest management at Purdue University. Here is her recommended plan of attack.

SEARCH
• Find where the flies are breeding. "They only need a bit of moisture and organic matter to develop," says Mason. While it's true they're especially attracted to ripening fruits and vegetables, they will also breed in drains, the garbage disposal, recycling bins, the trash, the compost bucket, and even mops, sponges, and any other spots where water is caught or leaking.

• If the suspected breeding ground is hard to inspect, like a drain, tape a clear plastic bag over it and leave it overnight. "If flies are breeding there, the adults will emerge and be caught in the bag," she says.

DESTROY
• Remove any potential breeding sites such as rotting fruit entirely. Clean out sites such as a recycling bin with soapy water.

• If the flies are in your drain, clean with a stiff brush, then pour boiling water down along the sides of the drain to kill the eggs. Follow with a bacterial drain cleaner.

• Finally, set up a simple trap to catch the adult flies. Roll a sheet of paper into a cone and put it in a jar with a little apple cider vinegar at the bottom to attract the flies. Once they're in, they won't be able to get out. Even better, says Barb Ogg of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Lancaster County Extension, is baiting a trap with yeast, a little sugar, and water, because the flies are attracted to the carbon dioxide that is produced during fermentation. A dish filled with soapy alcohol will also do the trick. Mason says not to bother spraying insecticide around, since "eliminating the source and trapping is probably more effective, safer, and less work."

The best bet is to keep the pests out of the house in the first place. Mason suggests being sure windows have 16-mesh screens, particularly if you have fruit trees, as well as cutting any damaged spots out of fruit and vegetables you bring into your kitchen and tossing them outside, as they might be harboring eggs. Finally, try to keep the kitchen particularly clean during late summer and early fall when it's prime fruit season. "A single rotting piece of fruit or spill in a recycling bin can breed thousands of fruit flies," says Mason.

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While cookbooks and smoking fanatics alike differ on what specific temperature delineates a hot versus a cold smoke, Paul Kirk, also known as the Kansas City Baron of Barbecue, says that “at the low temperatures of a cold smoke, all you’re doing is flavoring the meat or ingredient with smoke, whereas with a hot smoke, you’re both flavoring and cooking it simultaneously.” He marks a cold smoke as below 100 degrees Fahrenheit, while for Elizabeth Karmel, founder of the website Girls at the Grill and author of Taming the Flame: Secrets for Hot-and-Quick Grilling and Low-and-Slow BBQ, a cold smoke lies between 90 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Bacteria breed fast at temperatures under 140, so hot smoking is generally understood to lie between 165 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit, though Karmel finds the optimal hot smoking temperature to be between 275 and 300 degrees Fahrenheit, where fat “turns into liquid and makes the meat moist and meltingly tender.”

Harold McGee, culinary scientist and author, explains a further distinction in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen: Hot-smoked products are smoked in the same chamber as the burning wood, whereas cold-smoked products are held in an unheated chamber through which smoke is pumped (the smoke originating from an external firebox).

While traditional hot and cold smoking used to be limited to proteins, contemporary chefs are experimenting with the technique in innovative ways. Portland bartender Evan Zimmerman hot-smokes ice, then refreezes it to use as cubes in his cocktails, and Chef Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park cold-smokes yogurt: “We serve it with a light salad, and the smokiness is a nice addition to the dish. It reminds me of summer.”

A general rule of thumb: Cold-smoke ingredients to impart a smoky flavor to food that doesn’t need to be cooked (e.g., dairy products like butter or cheese) or that you plan on cooking later, on the grill or in the oven; hot-smoke ingredients to both flavor and cook them (e.g., meats). See CHOW’s recipes for smoking.

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Bananas, like other tropical fruits, are prone to “chilling injury”; that is, damage from cold storage. The most obvious sign of it is when yellow banana skins turn black after refrigeration.

If the bananas were fully ripened before you refrigerated them, they’ll still be fine to eat, though they’ll be mushy and the flesh might also have turned brown.

Banana skins are made up of plant cells. In each of those cells there is a vacuole, a little fluid-filled compartment that’s contained by a membrane. When a banana gets too cold, the membranes weaken and leak. Adel Kader, a professor emeritus in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, explains that phenolic compounds that are in the vacuole along with the fluids mix with polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme found in the cell’s cytoplasm (that’s the jellylike stuff that parts of a cell hang out in). The phenolic compounds oxidize and form a brown compound called melanin.

If the bananas weren’t ripe to begin with, Kader says, they probably won’t ever ripen properly, another symptom of chilling injury. The best bet for banana storage is to keep the fruit at room temperature.

It’s no typo: Macarons and macaroons are “entirely different things,” says Paulette Koumetz, owner of Paulette Macarons, which has stores selling the single-o version in San Francisco and Beverly Hills.

Macarons, she says, are French cookies made with almond and egg whites that are sandwiched around a cream-based filling (see our recipe for French Chocolate Macarons). They come in a rainbow of colors and flavors: At Paulette you can find violet and black currant, Earl Grey, and passion-fruit macarons. Some bakers even dabble in savory versions like ketchup and cornichons.

Macaroon is the American word for our version of a flourless egg-white-based cookie. Most often made with coconut (like in this recipe), it can also include nuts or nut paste. Macaroons are often served for dessert at Passover celebrations, since they don’t contain flour. The same linguistic confusion doesn’t exist in France, says David Lebovitz, author of Ready for Dessert, where the coconut macaroon is called rocher à la noix de coco, or “coconut rocks.”

Lebovitz says that the sandwich-cookie-style macaron is most often found in Paris. Another French cookie, resembling Italian amaretti (also a flourless egg white and nut cookie), is also called a macaron.

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Honey is often touted as a natural way to treat hay fever symptoms. The theory, explains Anna Almeter, co-owner of Wee Bee Honey in Cowlesville, New York, is that by eating raw, unfiltered, unstrained honey that has been collected locally during the allergy season, you’ll be exposed to the culprit pollens in small doses and build immunity.

But there’s no documented medical study that verifies the claim, says Dr. Neil Kao, an allergist and immunologist in South Carolina. “I tell patients it’s OK to try, because honey is safe and won’t harm them, but I have to tell [them] I don’t know of any objective evidence that honey can help.”

The only study we could locate that tested honey’s effectiveness in treating allergy symptoms was conducted in 2002 by researchers at the University of Connecticut. In the study, 36 allergy sufferers ate a tablespoon a day of either raw, locally collected, unfiltered honey; nationally collected, filtered, and pasteurized honey; or corn syrup with honey flavoring. At the end of the study, the results of the honey-eaters were no different than those of the placebo group.

Still, there’s an awful lot of anecdotal evidence. “Some people say they don’t have to have shots anymore; some say they don’t have to take pills anymore,” says Helene Marshall of Marshall’s Farm Honey in American Canyon, California.

If you’re going to try to self-medicate, Almeter says to keep the following in mind:

• • Know what you’re allergic to and get the honey from that floral source: “If you are going to buy clover honey and you aren’t allergic to clover, that’s not going to do you any good.”
• • Look for honey that has never been heated, strained, or filtered.
• • Make sure the honey is from the correct season. “If you are allergic to fall plants [don’t] buy spring honey.”
• • Start small! “If you start out too high, you can have a reaction. Start with something like a 1/4 teaspoon two times a day and see how you do; monitor yourself. All year you need to do it to keep building yourself up.”

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The stinging nettle is a plant used as a cooking green for its nutty, earthy, spinachlike flavor; its bright emerald-green color; and its texture—it is firmer than spinach and doesn’t get as squishy or slimy when cooked. You can make nettles into pesto, sauté them to top crostini, put them on pizza, incorporate them into pasta dough to make it a vibrant green, and do just about anything else with them that you would do with a mild green such as chard or spinach.

But the term stinging nettle is literal. Nettles are covered in tiny, hollow, needlelike hairs filled with a toxicant that irritates people’s skin, producing red, stinging, burning welts that can last for hours. Cooking, drying, or freezing nettles renders them safe to eat though, says Richard R. Halse, a senior instructor in Oregon State University’s Department of Botany and Plant Pathology.

While there are 45 species of nettle worldwide, says Halse, the primary nettle for culinary use is Urtica dioica, which is found throughout most of North America and Eurasia. It’s common to see it growing as a weed in cultivated fields of other crops.

Andy Griffin, the owner-operator of Mariquita Farm in Watsonville, California, says, “When we pick them on the farm, everybody wears rubber surgical gloves, to keep from getting stung.” If you are handling nettles raw at home, wearing rubber dish gloves should do the trick, although the plants might be less liable to cause any harm because they’ve already been handled and the needles may have been crushed.

Just remember, says Griffin, “this is not a raw food. Nettles are always to be cooked.” And don’t worry if you see clusters of light green and yellow things on the nettles that look like aphids. Most likely they are not. “I can’t tell you how many times people have screamed, ‘There are bugs in them!’” says Griffin. “If you look close you’d see that they are tiny little flowers.”

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Anecdotal experience shows that, upon boarding a plane, a thirst for ginger ale strikes. Is it true? “Fliers really do seek out ginger ale as an in-flight beverage,” says Rob Gallagher, veteran flight attendant and Virgin America’s manager of “inflight guest experience.”

Why ginger ale, and not Coke, 7UP, or Bloody Mary mix? The most popular theory among flight attendants is that it relieves nausea. “If [passengers] have motion sickness, it settles their stomach,” says Elizabeth Rogers, a flight attendant for Mesaba Airlines.

The lack of caffeine may be a further motivating factor, both for people worried about becoming dehydrated during the flight and for those who don’t consume caffeine for health or religious reasons. “Mormons don’t drink caffeine, so they have a tendency to drink ginger ale,” says Gail Phillips, a flight attendant for United Airlines. Then there’s the novelty factor: “They hear someone else order it, and then everyone else wants it too,” says Penny Sandahl, a flight attendant for Mesaba.

Ginger ale, of which the best-known brand is Canada Dry, originally rose to popularity in the United States as a mixer during Prohibition: Its sweet effervescence masked the taste of homemade hooch. Though people don’t typically order it as a mixer on planes, it’s not a bad idea. On Virgin America’s inaugural Fort Lauderdale flights in November 2009, the airline successfully used the soda in a cocktail called Elevate, which included VeeV açaí-infused organic vodka, ginger ale, and fresh lemon.

Interesting factoid: The type of ginger ale most commonly consumed in the U.S. is “dry” ginger ale. Another, older variety, called “golden” ginger ale, is more flavorful, colorful, and full-bodied. Ginger beer is an even fuller-bodied, more flavorful version of either of these ginger sodas, and can sometimes contain trace amounts of alcohol due to fermentation.

You can make your own ginger beer using CHOW.com’s recipe and instructional slideshow. But remember: You won’t be able to bring it on an airplane.

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Left-handed people have a lot to complain about, starting with semantics (sinister, gauche, goofy) and ending with the unproven claim that lefties die younger than righties. Somewhere in the middle lies a valid complaint about kitchen tools, especially vegetable peelers, most of which are made for right-handed people. The culprit appears to be old or cheap peelers where the manufacturer has only sharpened one side of the blade.

“If it is symmetrical in all ways, it should not be handed,” explains Timothy Yee, director of marketing for DKB Household, which makes Zyliss vegetable peelers. “It would make a difference [for lefties] with one side sharpened. You’d have to flip it over and pull up,” he says. A peeler made with a bend in the handle might likewise be awkward to flip over and use. Y-shaped peelers are ambidextrous by default, says Michelle Sohn, a category director at OXO.

The people we spoke to from Kuhn Rikon, OXO, and DKB all told us they sharpen both sides of their blades, creating ambidextrous peelers. Yee says the main reason a manufacturer wouldn’t do this is to avoid extra costs: If a company uses grinding equipment that requires the blades to be taken out and flipped to hit both sides, it will just make a peeler one-sided to save time and money.

The only other kitchen tools that are handed are scissors and can openers, says Sohn. (Although serrated knives and some Japanese knives are handed.) With a can opener, you have one hand squeezing and one turning, so if you want to turn the knob with your stronger hand, you can’t do that as a lefty. “But lefties have just sort of learned to do it,” Sohn says, noting that can openers with the knob located on the top are universal. She says OXO tries not to exclude lefties: “Even our pie server is serrated on both sides.” Despite this, a cottage industry has grown up around servicing the underserved, with products such as measuring jugs with the measurements on the opposite side, corkscrews that twist counterclockwise, and more.

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“In the U.S., there is no difference between a sweet potato and a yam,” says Sue Johnson-Langdon, executive director of the North Carolina SweetPotato Commission. What Americans commonly refer to as a yam is simply a variety of sweet potato with a particularly moist, bright orange flesh, explains Johnson-Langdon.

It’s all the result of a marketing ploy on the part of Louisiana sweet potato growers in the 1930s who wanted to differentiate their variety of sweet potatoes from the drier, white-fleshed varieties that were being grown on the East Coast, says Tara Smith, a sweet potato extension specialist at the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center. The growers chose yam, the English word that derives from West African words meaning either true yams or “to eat.” (The USDA requires that the vegetables still be identified as sweet potatoes though, so the label will say both yams and sweet potatoes.)

True yams have rougher, scalier skin than sweet potatoes and are often pale-fleshed. They are generally starchier in texture, and are hard to come by in the United States (though Chowhounds have tried). True yams belong to the family Dioscoreaceae, whereas sweet potatoes are in the Convolvulaceae family. Sweet potatoes originate from Peru and Ecuador, while true yams are from West Africa and Asia.

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