Parents & Kids

Spoilage in milk, and risk of food poisoning, happens because of the presence of harmful bacteria. That is why pasteurization saves so many lives and the raw milk food fad has orders of magnitude greater risk of causing illness. So do you want milk to last for two months? A new science study shows it's affordable and works.
Assuming that the company Ava is able to successfully replicate wine by simply combining chemicals in a laboratory, a big question still remains: Would people actually buy it? ACSH President Hank Campbell and Senior Fellow of Biomedical Science Dr. Alex Berezow debate the issue.
The presence of a molecule that strongly enhances the flavor of other molecules may explain why garlic powder is such a commonly used ingredient in cooked foods.
Credit: Shutterstock In recent years pasta gained a bad reputation: it will make you fat. Obviously you could insert any food and get the same result, if you eat enough of it. So how does it happen that certain foods get called out and stick in the minds of the public?
Now that a Vermont law requiring labeling of GMO foods is about to take effect on July 1, the Senate has decided to act to prevent a plethora of state laws to confuse the issue. But wait! We can't really say that the Senate's bill will necessarily clarify anything.
A group of researchers is attempting to make coffee roasting more science than art. The team wants to improve consistency by using the tools of analytical chemistry to monitor the coffee roasting process in real-time.
Old science could be a new way to kill salmonella in meat. Research shows that treating meat products infected with four types of salmonella using Myoviridae bacteriophages during mixing led to the bacteriophages invading the cells of the bacteria and destroying them.
There sure are a lot of toxicology "experts" out there on the web, and they really don't like anything that is sweet (except maybe when they sell it). We recently wrote about sucralose (Splenda), which is trashed by these "Internut" know-nothings despite the fact that its safety profile is about as good as you'll ever see. But, these I-nuts are even more verbal about aspartame -- and the more verbal they are, the more they get it wrong.
Often, experienced chemists can look at the structure of a chemical and make good guess about whether it will be toxic. But "eyeball toxicology" is not foolproof. Many of us got it wrong with sucralose. We were suspicious that it might be toxic. But it isn't, and here's why.
Former New York Times columnist Mark Bittman enthusiastically endorses a tax on soda and other sweetened beverages that's now being considered in Philadelphia. While this may seem appealing to people who believe that sugar is a major contributor to America's health problems, when you really examine the logic of such a tax, there isn't much there.
Memorial Day weekend is a time, first and foremost, to remember and honor our country's fallen military heroes. It is, unofficially, a time to get outside, celebrate that summer is coming, and fire up the grill. Before you start marinating the meat though, a new study brings attention to a hidden danger associated with grilling - the wire-bristle brushes used to clean them. When bristles get loose on these brushes, they can fall out, stick to the grill, be transferred to food and ingested.
The language of science has been hijacked. Those who are looking to make a quick buck (or in the case of the organic industry, 43 billion bucks) have no qualms about twisting the definition of highly precise scientific terminology to suit their own profit-driven agendas. Here's a brief glossary of the some of the most commonly misused scientific terms. (Note: the health food and fad diet industries are among the biggest abusers.)