Blogs / Discoblog

The elite online dating club BeautifulPeople.com (yes, this is a real Web site), trimmed 5,000 members from its service because they appear to have indulged in too much Christmas ham.

Feast your eyes on this excerpt from the company’s statement, via CNN:

“As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld,” said Robert Hintze, founder of BeautifulPeople.com. “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

Publicity stunt? Probably. Shocking? Hardly. When vain folks sign up for a service so they can be rated by a group of narcissistic pretty people this is bound to happen.

If you’re one of the expelled 5,000, don’t let this get you down. The company says you’re welcome to reapply—after the love handles are gone, of course.

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Image: Beautifulpeople.com

A pair of genetic sleuths from New York City’s Trinity high school discovered a bit of food foul play.  Seniors Matt Cost and Brenda Tan collected DNA samples from items around their homes and school, sequenced the fragments and analyzed them with a publicly available database, and found there is little truth in advertising, according to Cosmic Log:

The real detective work came into play when [they] matched the DNA code against a couple of publicly available databases for animal species. They found out that an expensive brand of sheep’s-milk cheese was actually made from cow’s milk, that “sturgeon caviar” was actually Mississippi paddlefish, and that dog treats supposedly made from venison were actually made from beef.

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It’s amazing what artifacts you can find buried in the ice. (No I’m not talking about that leftover turkey that’s been in your freezer since last Thanksgiving. Though if you consider that an historical find, more power to you.)

Last month Discoblog brought you the story of the century-old whiskey that British explorer Ernest Shackleton left on Antarctica, which New Zealanders recovered and plan to replicate. Now scientists have analyzed a soup can found in the Canadian Arctic that dates to around the time of the famous Franklin Expedition, and could point to how its members met their doom.

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Take Andy Rooney’s advice and prepare your Thanksgiving feast from scratch this year. After you’ve bravely hunted down a flightless bird and plucked its feathers, turn to science for the proper way to prepare a turkey. However, cooking it the scientific way won’t be easy, according to a classic article from Physorg.com:

…you can see you will need to make a series of compromises to cook a “perfect” turkey. The outside needs to be heated to between 140 and 200°C to make sure the Maillard reactions provide plenty of the “Turkey” flavour for the gravy. The tender breast meat wants to be heated to no more than 55 to 58°C to keep the muscle proteins from contracting and becoming tough. The tougher, collagen rich, legs and wings need to be heated to a higher temperature (say around 65 to 70°C) to denature some of the collagen.

Did you get all that? Good. The problem is that the different parts of the turkey require different treatments, yet it absolutely must be cooked whole so the elder males can battle over who gets to carve the bird in front of the family. This rules out the obvious solution of cooking the parts separately. Luckily, Physorg.com suggests an elegant solution: covering the turkey breast with aluminum foil for most of the cooking process.

But if this kitchen chemistry doesn’t have a big enough wow factor, and you don’t trust yourself with a deep fryer full of hot oil, DISCOVER’s list of hi-tech ways to cook your bird will give you plenty of reasons to be thankful on turkey day.

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Image: flickr / stevevoght

In the latest installment of “science ruins your guilty pleasure,” a new report confirms what everyone pretty much already knew–movie popcorn is terrible for you.

Via the Los Angeles Times:

A medium-sized popcorn and medium soda at the nation’s largest movie chain pack the nutritional equivalent of three Quarter Pounders topped with 12 pats of butter, according to a report released today by the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Popcorn from Regal Entertainment Group, AMC and Cinemark, were analyzed in lab. Regal was the worst offender, packing 1,200 calories, 60 grams of saturated fat, and 980 milligrams of sodium into a medium popcorn–before adding butter! The gooey buttery sauce adds 200 calories and 3 grams of saturated fat per 1.5 tablespoons.

Both Regal and AMC pop their popcorn in coconut oil, which is about 90 percent saturated fat, noted the study’s authors. Cinemark uses canola oil, which is healthier, but a medium popcorn from Cinemark will still add around 760 calories and 3 grams of saturated fat to your diet, according to the analysis, which is published in the December issue of CSPI’s Nutrition Action HealthLetter.

On a positive note, no trans-fats were detected in any of the samples.

Apparently, there aren’t any plans to include a low calorie popcorn at any of the movie chains’ snack bars, so if you want healthier options, just do like everyone else and sneak in your own food.

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Image: flickr / jennie-o

New Zealand explorers are Antarctica-bound to rescue a cache of rare whiskey left on the continent by British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton during his journey in 1909.

Buried under the floorboards of a hut where his crew spent a long, dark winter are two crates of an extinct brand of McKinlay and Co. whiskey. Experts say the historic booze has been preserved in ice, according to Stuff.co.az:

The New Zealanders will use special drills to free the trapped crates and rescue a bottle from the crates, discarded near the Cape Royds hut used by the Nimrod expedition, or at least draw off a sample using a syringe.

However, they won’t be sipping the whiskey if they can remove it. International protocols say the crates can be removed from Antarctica for conservation only. Whyte & Mackay, the distillery that owns McKinlay and Co., says if they can draw a sample, the blend could be replicated and put back into production. So one day soon, you too could be sipping on Shackleton’s preferred hooch.

Let’s hope their drilling adventure goes more smoothly than other recent trips to Antarctica…

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Image: flickr / individuo

Pulses of certain Turkey Day food ingredients are detected in the water supply in the days after the holiday, according to researchers. But as reported in National Geographic News, it doesn’t stop there:

For instance, thyme and sage spike during Thanksgiving, cinnamon surges all winter, chocolate and vanilla show up during weekends (presumably from party-related goodies), and waffle-cone and caramel-corn remnants skyrocket around the Fourth of July.

A research team from the University of Washington tracked pulses of food ingredients that enter Washington’s Puget sound to learn more about how our actions on land affect the water supply, and to determine what slips through sewage treatment plants. Similar monitoring is underway worldwide, and scientists have turned up things such as flu vaccines, cocaine, heroine, rocket fuel, and birth control in waterways.

Click on over to team leader Rick Keil’s lab Web site to learn more about the Puget Sound research. But Keil told National Geographic News that the no one knows yet whether the subtle seasoning of the water is having an impact.

For now, there’s no evidence that a sweeter and spicier sound is a bad thing—salmon, which can smell such flavors, could be enjoying their vanilla-enhanced habitat, Keil said.

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Image: flickr / Lana_aka_BADGIRL

What’s the most important scientific research in the world, you ask? Obviously it’s the quest to transform ice cream into a healthy food. Of course, the brain freezing goodness will still be chock full of fat and calories, but hey, toss in some healthy stuff and you can binge guilt-free, right? Right?

Via LiveScience:

In addition to ice-cream’s fat- and calorie-filled ingredients, the researchers hope to add dietary fiber, antioxidants and probiotics (gut bacteria that support a healthy digestive system) to your delectable dessert. Antioxidants could protect cells from damage caused by molecules called free radicals and are suspected of helping to prevent a slew of diseases.

Researchers hope to have a taste-testable prototype within six months, but it may not be entirely delicious; some antioxidant ingredients have a bitter flavor, the researchers note, and adding fiber might give the ice cream a gritty texture. Still, the research team is optimistic they can strike a balance between health and taste, and they hope to have shelf-ready tubs within two years.

Check out the video below of these scientists working in the best laboratory ever.

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Ever wondered if your Florida grapefruit is really from Florida? After all, how can you trust those flimsy little stickers. Well, researchers have a solution to this important problem: lasers!

Via Physorg.com:

Laser labeling of fruit and vegetables is a new, patented technology in which a low-energy carbon dioxide laser beam is used to label, or “etch” information on produce, thereby eliminating the need for common sticker-type labels.

In the United States, the FDA is in the final stages of approving this “tamper-free labeling technology.” Laser-etching of fruits and veggies is already underway in New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific Rim countries, and it has been been approved in many other regions.

There’s actually some science behind laser-etching. A recent study in the journal HortTechnology concluded “the fruit quality remains high as the invasion of the epidermis does not incite decay [or] provide an avenue for food pathogens,” as the laser essentially cauterizes the peel of the fruit. “The technology will offer the grapefruit industry a safe alternative to adhesive sticker labeling without enhancing decay susceptibility.” Thank goodness for that.

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Image: Agricultural Research Service and University of Florida

The weekend is finally here, and to make sure that you don’t stray off your diet, we’ll leave you with a new video on the science of overeating.

Basically your eyes are your enemy. The evidence lies in a bottomless soup bowl experiment devised by the 2007 Ig Nobel prize winner in Nutrition, Brian Wansink. Participants in the experiment were 73 percent more likely to eat a larger portion of soup if their bowl was imperceptibly refilled as they ate, according to the research titled Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake, published in the journal Obesity.

For Wansink’s take on the results, check out the episode:

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Video: minimovies.org