Cupcakes for Gamers

To get back in the swing of blogging, I thought I’d start off with something easy and fun.  To ring in the New Year, this group of people combined their two passions (which I happen to share): cupcakes and games.  They made individual cupcakes honoring 100 different games that ran the gamut from board games [...]

June 6, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts  One Comment

Lobbyist Run Non-Profit Scams

Rachel Maddow is pretty awesome.  She tells it like it is.  Listen to her dish it out against the Center for Consumer Freedom.  Really, that should be “consumer freedom“:

If you are further interested in what a crackpot Richard Berman is, you can find out about him and his expertise at bermanexposed.com.  Essentially, there are a [...]

October 5, 2009  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health, Politics  No Comments

The Man Who Fed The World

Dubbed the father of the green revolution, Norman Borlaug helped to create high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties around the world. He is attributed with saving over one billion lives from starvation worldwide. As just one example of the profound changes he made in agriculture, between 1965 and 1970 wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan [...]

October 2, 2009  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Science & Technology  No Comments

Food Fortification – Too Much Of A Good Thing?

A Short History of Fortification
The first widespread use of fortification was in the early 1900’s.  In some areas of the United States, upwards of 60% of the population had enlarged thyroid glands, also known as goiters.  In 1924 officials all over America began iodizing salt and within ten years goiters all but disappeared.
Just before World [...]

September 9, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Science & Technology  One Comment

“Smart Choices” A Dumb Move?

Diet Pepsi, Kraft’s macaroni & cheese, Kid Cuisine, Lunchables, and Froot Loops (now with added fiber!) are just some of the 500 processed foods getting the green “Smart Choices” label. “Smart Choices” is front-of-the-package labeling meant to help rushed or confused consumers pick healthy(er?) foods.
Sure, Diet Pepsi and Kraft’s macaroni and cheese are smart [...]

September 7, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Science & Technology  2 Comments

Food–In Space!

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, it’s high time we celebrate what keeps astronauts going on those trips.
First of all, the one thing that should be celebrated in conjunction with food in space is that microgravity does not affect natural swallowing processes–something scientists were rightly worried about before John Glenn (the [...]

August 12, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Science & Technology  No Comments

Lab-Grown Meat, The Future Is Soon

Flipping to the resources page of the New Harvest website, a non-profit whose mission is to promote and advance meat substitutes, you find twice as many popular articles on the subject of lab-grown meat as there are technical articles on it.  Test-tube meat, in vitro meat, cultured meat or whatever name you call it may [...]

July 20, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Science & Technology  No Comments

Watermelon, It’s Your Summertime Stimulant …Err…Refreshment

Let’s start off the summer right by reminding ourselves how good watermelon tastes. It’s about now that watermelon is transforming from dry pink mush into lush, juicy pieces of cool refreshment.  There is even more reason to love watermelon because it:

is concentrated with a ton of antioxidants
helps reduce inflammation
may help prevent asthma when eaten
is [...]

June 17, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health, Science & Technology  One Comment

Mathematically Finding The Biggest Nutritional Bang For Your Buck

Studies have shown once again that when it comes to cost cutting, diets inevitably suffer. Researchers from University of Washington’s Center for Public Health Nutrition analyzed the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan” (TFP) and found it, well, lacking. TFP basically takes the USDA’s healthy eating pyramid and puts it on a tight budget. [...]

May 20, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Science & Technology  3 Comments

How To Curb An Outbreak

Excerpted from Mental_Floss (Volume 5, Issue 3):
In 1918 and 1919, one-fifth of the world’s population contracted influenza, and nearly 50 million people died as a result. That’s more fatalities in a single year than the 14th-century Black Plague caused in four. Even scarier, at the time of the flu outbreak, public health officials [...]

May 12, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health  No Comments