Pseudoscience And Food!!!!

Jamie Oliver (Naked Chef) has a new show on Sunday (March 26 at 9pm ET on ABC). Sadly this is going to put a dent in a great tradition of pseudoscience in the food labs. You might not think there is pseudoscience in the lab at McDonalds,The Cheesecake Factory, or just about any food manufacturer. I was unaware too, so let us start on a little journey.

I started learning about the great tradition of pseudoscience by reading The End of Over Eating, by David Kessler. It seems that if you look at modern food, from Cheetos to... well the Cheesecake Factory. The book very carefully explains how the combination of sugar, salt, and fat cause our brains (and the well fed brains of experimental rats) are hypnotized into overeating.

Where is the Pseudoscience? I can hear you asking, "They are using rats, that is real science!" Yes, they have science, but they are leaving something out of the equation and that is why food science is usually pseudoscience  - especially when practiced by a food company. The little thing they leave out is the full equation in the cause and effect department.

If you make food really really good, people will eat a lot of food. This is because these scientific frankensteins of salt, sugar, and fat are cheap, and available in quantity. Nobody at the drive up window says you can't order two burgers and supersize the Coke and fries. Simply our brain treats the food like a light weight cocaine causes us to then gain weight.

Here is a great Boys Book experiment: Try to resist a good bowl of m&m's. There is a reward when you get the fatty sugar rolling around your mouth. Feel and hear that goodness packaged in that healthy celery stalk like crunch. Better yet, though branding, you know every m&m tastes like an m&m and has that same reward. You are going to be rewarding before you ever pick one up and when you do, reward! Why not reward yourself with another m&m for being a very perceptive bipedal mammal! Record how many you eat, despite feeling something has hypnotized you.

You should try this experiment with Cheetos or any other snack food, candy, frozen pizza, fast food, etc. Even juice boxes, fresh squeezed, boxed for your convenience, orange juice. Even fruit, if it is the right ripeness and sugar content, or dipped in dark chocolate (white chocolate to add a bit more fat).

The key parameter of this experiment is to put about ten servings in front of you and see how long and how hard it is to not eat it all in one sitting despite your propensity to look and sound like Jaba the Hut.

Back to the pseudoscience before we go. Remember that I said they were leaving out the fact  we will consume such food until we can cram no more in our mouths? Well that is just a part of the non science. You see the other missing info is that thing called nutrition. I also said fat, sugar, and salt. Where is the sugar coming from? When you eat a big mac, where is the sugar? Fries are covered in salt and fat right, not sugar? White Castle isn't sugar coated mini buns of goodness with syrup, right?

Wrong, these are all full of sugar in the form of starch in the bread or potatoes or 'gasp' rice. In fact simple carbohydrates hit your blood stream faster than table sugar! Pick up a simple blood glucose meeter and give it a try. Great fun to watch your blood sugar swing, especially if you are overweight and edging toward diabetes.

So watch Jamie Oliver's show, "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution". He will teach a lot about the missing science that makes up pseudoscience. Read the book, The End of Overeating too.

The Eucharist Experiment

Eucharist is the ceremony that some christians use to commemorate the last supper. Depending on the specific denomination, they believe the ceremony of drinking wine and eating bread is the actual consumption of the blood and flesh of Jesus. This is called transubstantiation.

Let's forget for the moment the odd cannibalistic hedonism and concentrate on the miracle. Somehow the wine and bread are transformed into flesh and blood (sorry, not knocking it if it is your religion, but it is a very yucky idea)).

Again, let's get this straight, not knocking religion. I say take advantage of these miracles! Here is a list of common ailments of our modern society that can be helped by a Christian miracle or two.

Gluten Intolerance: Turn that bread into something that has no gluten! Love it!\

Alcoholism: It may be yucky, but transformation to blood should fill you with the spirit rather than spirits.

Diabetes: Bread has long been an issue for diabetics, especially type II. The calories in the starch flood the bloodstream and spike glucose. Human flesh is more protean, so good all way round for nutrition and glucose control.

Dieting: This would also beat eating pork rinds as part of the Atkins diet.

Cannibalism reform: Think about the therapeutic applications for folks like Cannibalism Anonymous.

Look at the number of applications! Wow, such a miracle is going to really help the world.

There are some problems however. The simple issue is belief. Miracles come in two forms. The first is your general 'everyone' can bennefit from. Like a hurricane mising your city and destroying the heathens in the next town down. If transubstansation works like that miracle, all we need is a production line to bless this stuff for cinsumption and off we go to cure the world of its ills.

The second way that miracles can work is that you need to really believe before you can take advantage of miracles. This puts a bucket of cold water on a lot of my ideas for taking advantage of miracles. Simply you have to be a super duper believer and not just a Sunday Christian.

So, now a call to my pseudoscientists. We need some folks for experiments. Depending on your dedication, you can experiment on yourself, but say more the merrier and it means more data points.

There are a couple of things you can do:

1) Eucharist Production: I don't think you are going get a holly man to be your supplier. Why not bless the bread and wine yourself? If this works out, you might even start a new business supplying food and wine to the ill or obese for their diets.

2) The Gluten Test: Here you need a volunteer. See if this really works. Caution, gluten intolerance isn't pretty. Only perform this experiment in a well ventilated area. A Mass in an open field with a port-o-potty is advisable.

Both experiments should be some with believers and non-believers. You might want to add additional experiments to test for true believers.

What are your experiments? How would you take advantage of the miracle? That's what the comment section is for!