Food Processing & Additives – Ace in the Hole or Ambush?

Yesterday’s post regarding visitor’s ideas about nutrition revealed that many people are curious about what exactly is in our food. What are all those chemical names on the ingredients list, what is ‘food processing’ and is it good for you? It’s your body; it makes sense to know what’s being put in it.

According to the British Nutrition Foundation, food processing “includes any action that changes or converts raw plant or animal materials into safe, edible, and more palatable foodstuffs.” Food processing even includes peeling apples. That doesn’t sound bad. What’s the fuss about? Where the concern lies is when food processing includes the addition of additives.

Advantages of additives are said to be improving the look, colour, and texture of food; extending shelf life; and helping prevent food poisoning. Disadvantages include destroying vitamins and some may be harmful to humans. For example, certain additives injected into fresh-meat are a health risk for people with kidney disease and some are linked to hyperactivity in children.

Want more information? Try Food Standard Association, World Health Organization or Truth About Food Additives?

Image: Telstar Logistic - Flickr

Nutrition: What’s On Our Visitors Minds?

At the Science Museum we are interested in your ideas and opinions, so today 16 Antenna Gallery visitors were asked about their thoughts on nutrition. Here is a summary of their views and concerns:

1. What exactly is in our food? What are all those big chemical formulas on the ingredients list, what happens in ‘food processing’ and is it good for me?
2. We’ve all read the news reports, one week food ‘x’ is good for you and next week it’s bad for you. Who and what should we believe?
3. How do factors like genetics, metabolism, environmental conditions, age and geographical location affect what I should eat?

From this survey, a theme emerges; we are disconnected from our food supply, most of us don’t know what is in our food or where it’s been. And, it worries us, rightly so.

Let’s hear more from you, tell us:
What issues about nutrition are important to you?
What aspect of nutrition would you like to know more about?
What worries/excites you about nutrition?

Image: PR® - Flickr

Winter Weight Loss Program: Sunlight

Okay, sunlight isn’t the next miracle weight loss solution, but it is associated with the activity of Brown fat, which is the fat that burns more calories than any other tissue and is more active in the winter.

You have two types of fat in your body Brown adipose tissue (BAT) and white adipose tissue. BAT can produce 300 times more heat per unit than all other tissue. This means more energy expenditure, which means more calories burned. However, we naturally have less BAT as adults, and on top of that, research has shown that BAT activity is reduced with obesity.

New research led by Professor Michael Symonds at The University of Nottingham has shown for the first time that one of the main mechanisms that control BAT activity is sunlight. So…this winter turn off the central heating, head outdoors and get some sun. That is if it’s not cloudy, which it often is in the winter...

On the bright side (no pun intended), when it is cold outside, we'll be exercising to keep warm. It's a win, win situation.

Image: Odalaigh – Flickr

I carried a watermelon

Baby may have carried a watermelon to fuel her crush on Johnny in Dirty Dancing, but now it seems watermelons will be able to fuel our cars.

The sweet juice of watermelons has been found to readily ferment to produce ethanol.

Each year around 20% of the watermelon crop goes to waste due to surface blemishes or being misshapen. Instead of just ploughing these left overs back into the field the researches from the Agricultural Research Service in Oklahoma, USA, say that they could be used to produce 220 litres of ethanol per hectare of farm.

But wait - There's more. Just when you thought that producing vast amounts of bio fuel from a waste product was great, it turns out that watermelons are also a source of the 'nutraeuticals' Lycopene and L-citrulline. (Nutraeuticals are compounds found in foods that are thought to have medical benefits). In fact the research team suggest that there is enough demand for these chemicals that extracting them is economically worthwhile. Then after you have extracted the chemicals you can still use the juice to make ethanol.

Watermelons may not have made super-food status but perhaps we could start a new list of Superior-foods, where their benefits are more than just nutritional.

Are there any other foods that should be given Superior-Food status?

Image courtesy of Jamelah

Water Born of Bacteria

''How can we be short of it? It doesn't go anywhere. The only time it does is when people take some into space and don't bring it back!?'' Despite Jason Manford's (Channel 4's excellent '8 Out of 10 Cats') comic incredulity towards the idea of a world short of water even western countries have to consider options to avoid a future in which the tap drips dry as improving lifestyles and changes to the global climate put the squeeze on water supplies.

While it's true we aren't short of water per se, it takes a huge amount of electricity to convert sea water into the fresh unsalted variety we like to drink, bathe in or sprinkle on the garden.

An ingenious proof-of-principle system has been developed using bacteria to remove 90 per cent of the salt from a seawater-like solution.

The researchers swapped the external source of electricity with a microbial fuel cell, essentially a 'bacteria battery'. When the bacteria breakdown nutrients they generate protons and electrons. The researchers then used these positive and negative charges to drive desalination by electrodialysis.

This is the first time the possibility for a new method for water desalination and power production that uses only a source of biodegradable organic matter and bacteria.

In this instance the researchers fed the bacteria expensive laboratory-grade acetate but work is in progress on cells nourished by waste water. This would bring our little man-made water cycle full circle and is almost too good to be true. Which is why it will be fraught with technical obstacles, stultifying politics and folly or asLars Angenent, a microbial fuel cell researcher at Cornell University in Ithaca, puts it: "It is possible, but is it economical? I'm sceptical, but after a couple of beers I'm much more positive." Like all good science then.


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The Metabolic Detective

I have yet to hear this on a CSI-type show, “Take him into custody, we’ve got a metabolic profile match.” However, the latest research in metabolism is showing that your metabolic profile is as unique as your fingerprint. Could this mean personalized medical care or individual diet and nutrition advice is on the horizon?

You see, metabolism is a set of chemical processes that organisms perform to maintain, well, life. These chemical processes help your body use medication, repair damage from disease or injury, turn food into energy and grow.

It is an organism’s metabolism that determines what substances it will find nutritious. And, it is our metabolic rate, or speed of metabolism, that influences how much food we require.

One article on this subject, explains the implications of this discovery as “[doctors] could pick drugs and treatments that are best for each individual, rather than today's one-size-fits all medicine.” Similarly, if we understand our personal metabolic profile, it seems that we could make informed decisions about our own personal nutritional needs. Apparently, you can do this…for a fee. For example, this is being done for weight loss and sports training programs.

Does this news help explain why the latest ‘miracle diet’ really is a miracle, as in, “it’s a miracle if it actually works?”

Image: Paurian – Flickr

Going Around About Caffeine

A recent study reports that caffeine causes headaches…I mean cures headaches. No wait, it does both. This study is giving me a headache.

Norwegian scientists published a report in the Journal of Headache and Pain concluding that people who consume high amounts of caffeine each day are more likely to suffer occasional headaches than those with low caffeine intake.

Now before all those tea and coffee junkies get upset, listen to this, those that consume low amounts of caffeine are more likely to suffer from chronic headaches (defined as headaches for 14 or more days each month).

Once again, a study about what we put in our bodies leaves me feeling slightly confused (see posts on junk food and organic food). I’m going to quote the comment from Kelly C. Porter on the Junk Food Wars post because she sums up my feelings nicely in that the final decision on what we should put in our bodies comes down to our “own biology, activity-level and health-risks, and those are best assessed by a physician.“ I do believe that it is important to eat a balanced and nutritious diet, but I’m starting to think that the details of exactly what that looks like are very personal.

In the In The Future exhibit at the Science Museum there is a game about a futuristic toilet that could analyse your…well you know what it analyses…and then tells you what you need to eat to be healthy. I want one.

Image: Joe Penniston - Flickr

Junk Food Wars

Popcorn and cereal are finally getting a little respect. Researchers have found that these delicious snacks, commonly deemed as junk food, are high in disease busting antioxidants.

Specifically, it is popcorn and other whole grain cereals that contain “surprisingly large” amounts of polyphenol antioxidant which is linked to lower risk of heart disease, cancer and other diseases.

Looking to boost your polyphenol antioxidant intake? Here are some other tasty options:
1. Drink more red wine and coffee.
2. Consume lots of chocolate.
3. Go ahead and get the large tub of popcorn at the cinema.
4. There are old-fashioned options, like eating more fruits and vegetables.

This research begs the question, is popcorn and cereal “junk food” or not? Do we need to consult Jamie Oliver for help here? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been known to pop a few kernels in my day, but should I overlook the high sugar, salt and fat content in many of these snacks? For a while now, fibre has been touted as the “healthy” aspect of certain cereal and snack brands. Do I smell a new marketing campaign? Oh no, that is just my buttery, salty, healthy snack coming out of the microwave?!

So let us know: what do you consider junk food?

Image: Darren Hester - Flickr

Straw with that?

Pigs learnt the hard way not to build houses out of straw but who knows what Mr Wolf would make of a chair made from drinking straws. Glaswegian designer Scott Jarvie seems to think it's a good idea and after being inspired by the tube like structure of the inside of trees decided to build the 'Clutch Chair' from 10,000 standard drinking straws.

Trees use a series of long capillary tubes called Xylem to shift water large distances with little more than the sucking action created by the evaporation of water from its leaves and the strong 'hydrogen' bonds between water molecules which creates a moving column within the tree. This structure also provides lateral strength as the tree grows upwards and the chair will be suprisingly resistant to compression and light weight due to the thin tubes supporting each other.

Apparently the designer feels it 'passes comment on our disposable culture'. Quite how I'm not really sure - it is ultimately just a disposable item made from small disposable items. Comfy? maybe not, but it is pretty eye catching.

The Bionic Tongue

Here's some science to chew on. Scientists in Illinois have developed a small, inexpensive, chip sensor or “electronic tongue” that accurately identifies one of the five primary human tastes, sweetness.

This business-card sized new sensor can identify with 100% accuracy a range of natural and artificial sweet substances, including 14 common sweeteners. The “lab-on-a-chip” works by converting the chemical properties of things that smell or taste into a coloured visual key (Image 2).

You may inquire, “What is it good for?”

Well, for those refined connoisseurs’ of fine fizzy pop, juices and other sweet beverages, such as, beer, quality and standard of taste is imperative. Ensuring a consistent and predictable flavour is the most likely use for this “sweet-tooth” sensor, at this time. Though the story doesn’t end there, doctors and scientist foresee using modified versions of the sensor for a variety chemical-sensing purposes including, monitoring blood glucose levels in diabetics or identifying toxic substances in the environment.

Do you think you’ve got a bionic tongue?

Might I suggest an experiment? Perhaps a blind taste test? I don’t recommend the common taste test of mapping out the four areas on your tongue that are associated with sweet, sour, salty and bitter, as a 2006 article in Nature reports this notion of tongue mapping to be bogus. Instead, test the palettes of friends and families on say, the subtle flavours of chocolate.

Here’s what you do:
1. Gather an assortment of chocolates or varying flavours and brands.
2. Find a blindfold.
3. Find a partner or two or three or ten and blindfold one person.
4. Place a small piece of chocolate on their tongue and see if they can identify the ingredients. You may want to check the labels to verify.

Okay, it’s not rocket science, but it can be fun. If you are not into chocolate try something else. Let us know how it goes and share other ideas in a comment. If you have video documentation of your experiment, post that too.

Image 1: Slightlynorth – Flickr
Image 2: Kenneth Suslick, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Nod to the pod

The idea of a personal transport pod has been banded about for the best part of half a century and is a staple in science fiction's visions of the future - from Logan's Run to Minority Report no far-fetched city scape would be complete without a network of shiny, zippy, self driving pods. A bit like 'proper' space ships and holographic displays it is an idea we know so well from fiction that we can be forgiven for being a little miffed that they are yet to be in common use.

The idea has had a bit of a chequered past with opinion ranging from it being the ultimate solution to our transport woes to it being an unfeasible idea and a potential waste of public money.

However, due to recent advancements in technology and computing the concept is set to step into the light and last week we hosted a very popular Antenna Live event featuring two ‘pod-cars’ from the new fleet of electric driverless vehicles going into Heathrow.


The £25 million project is the work of Bristol based 'Advanced Transport Systems' (ATS) and is the first example of a personal rapid transit (PRT) being implemented as a public transport solution in the world and will provide transport from the airport car park over to Terminal 5 with more destination options to come later.

Engineers, designers and content rich video displays engaged around 9000 visitors over the three days and most seemed enthused by the benefits the system may offer though many remained cautious of having a computer control their journey instead of a driver. In a similar way I imagine wealthy Victorians, faced with the unkown, sheepishly stepped into the 'horseless carriage' or how I still feel about my microwave (I have my eye on you). Strange new technologies need to keep the people onside if they are to have a chance of taking off - just ask the cube shaped tomato.

Windy happenings...

We were blessed with 3 days of fine weather as we hosted Greenbird - the record breaking wind powered machine - in a little used space outside behind the museum. Visitors were welcomed into the Antenna gallery by Simon Notley whose involvemnt as part funder made him an excellent guide to a video of the project’s history and designer and pilot Richard Jenkin’s record breaking run on a dried up lake bed in the US. Appetites whetted, visitors then headed out to see the vehicle and chat to Richard as well as George Seyfang whose work at British Aerospace in the area of aerodynamics made the project a perfect hobby horse for his retirement.

The project website has this great little slide show to explain how the vehicle got to a whopping 126 mph off a 35mph wind with what looks like such a small 'sail' to anyone involved in traditional sailing.

To Be Organic, Or Not Be?

The debate about organically versus conventionally produced food feels a bit like watching a tennis match. Here is the latest volley from a team of researchers, led by Alan Dangour, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Side 1: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (2009): “there are no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food.”

Side 2: The Organic Center (2008) “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods”

What is a poor, confused, conscientious consumer to do? I all ready struggle with tough questions at the supermarket like: What should I have for dinner? Or, is it really a good idea to shop for food when I’m so hungry?

There are other reasons besides nutrition and health benefits that a consumer may choose organic foodstuffs. In fact, the 2009 review admits to not addressing some of these concerns such as, the environmental impacts of organic and conventional agricultural practices. Nor does the study address “contaminant content,” meaning the residues of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides potentially found in organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. For instance, a recent study has shown a link between pesticides and increasing mortality rates of Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's diseases.

So, the question still remains organic or conventionally produced food? We’ll also have to wait for further research to find out if it’s a good idea to shop when you’re hungry.

Image: Marcin Floryan