Homaro Cantu doesn’t use fish to make sushi at the Motorestaurant in Chicago?he prints images of sushi on ediblepaper made out of soybeans and cornstarch, using edible ink.Chicago is a town that’s famous for its unusual eateries?itonce had a restaurant where everything, even desert,contained garlic?but this is the first restaurant where themenu is edible.
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California has a new law called Proposition 65, which requires warning labels on any food with known health risks. Restaurants there may have to start labeling Freedom fries, because like all heated carbohydrates, they contain acrylamide, which has been shown to cause cancer.
Not everyone thinks this is a good idea. Toxicologist Takayuki Shibamoto says, “We’ve been eating foods with acrylamide ever since the discovery of fire.”
You can create genetically-modified versions of food that won’t produce acrylamide when heated, but, as Shibamoto says, “In order to make just one potato chip, you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars.” And people who worry about acrylamide also tend to be wary of GM foods.
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Increased height has always been a sign of health and Americans have always been taller than Europeans?until now. Now they’re becoming taller than we are and researchers want to know why. John Komlos says, “There is much concern about the obesity epidemic in the U.S. because of health consequences, but the fact that the physical stature of Americans has been lagging well behind European levels has all but eluded comment. Within half a century a veritable metamorphosis in the shape of the American population took place without notice; from being the tallest in the world still around World War II, Americans have become one of the most obese at the start of the 21st century.”
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With the news about genetically-modified crops and Mad Cow Disease, it seems as if no food is safe to eat. Now the EPA has discovered that the fumes released into the air when a bag of butter-flavored microwave popcorn is opened can be deadly.
Exposure to vapors from this butter flavoring, which contain the chemical diacetyl, has been blamed for a rare lung disease contracted by popcorn factory workers in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. It’s not known if the amounts of this chemical released during popping at home are large enough to be dangerous.
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