Blogs : Food Media
Food Media CHOW's roundup of food-related news from blogs, newspapers, magazines, cookbooks, and film.
Stop the Microwave Popcorn Madness
The Consumerist blog reports on Pop Weaver, the first microwave popcorn to expressly stop using the flavoring chemical diacetyl. Diacetyl, you may recall, gives microwave popcorn its buttery taste. It has also been implicated in bronchiolitis obliterans, a disease that destroys the lungs of workers in flavoring plants. A link between the chemical and the disease has long been suspected, and medical studies seem to support this, but government regulators have been dragging their heels over addressing the hazard (if you’re going to read one article about the issue, that last one is fantastically thorough, by the way).
Now, it looks as if the diacetyl issue is finally hitting home: A physician “may have identified the first known case of a man who ate popcorn at home and had the same disease as the workers.”
What can you do? Don’t buy microwave popcorn; instead make your own.
Posted by | Tuesday, September 4, 2007 at 4:53pm | 4 comments
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One only needs to work in an office where someone burns the popcorn to know that the stuff is a carcinogen! Honestly, if you mess it up in your house, that's your fault, but when the guy in the next cubicle is trying to give you some lung disease, that's just too much. Oh, the days of the incredibly loud air-popper...
Down with microwaving. Up with cooking.
I just got one of those Arcticware microwave cornpopping bowls at Target for around $8 and love it. it's a good compromise, and the popcorn's SO much better. (well, it better be. it cost $5 at Bristol Farms. which is why I'm at CH now, looking for "cheap gourmet popcorn" posts.)
...um, make that NORDICware, not "Arcticware", in my post above. damned cheap hooch's addled my brain... :)~