SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

If you google images for food radiation, you get an idea of the (misplaced) prejudices against killing bacteria with ionizing radiation instead of nutrient damaging heat or potentially health-threatening chemicals -- No wonder companies still avoid it. You may remember that I asked you to send in questions/research topics for the new SuppVersity Kitchen Science  series in my recent article about different frying methods . Well, until now, the response has been - to be honest - disappointing. The first of the readers' suggestions I am going to address is Boban's question whether the (meanwhile) common practice of food irradiation is (a) sensible and (b) safe. Now, I have to admit that the irradiation doesn't take place in the kitchen. I do, however, consider the act of grocery shopping part of "kitchen science"; after all, the choices you make in the super- or at the farmers' market will significantly affect the outcome of your "kitchen sessions...

Even if you don't get burned tanning beds pose a risk factor! I am not aware who invented the myth, but I am quite sure it's the tanning bed industry that propagates it: Tanning in what Germans call the "Asi-Toaster" (literal translation "a toaster for nackers") is safe! If we put some faith into the results of a recent study from the Department of Dermatology at the University of Minnesota this is a fatal error. "Toasting" yourselves on a tanning bed increases your risk of developing skin cancer by 287%! Or, if you like that better, it almost quadruples (4x) it! The results Rachel Isaksson Vogel and her colleagues from the University of New Mexico Cancer Center and the Brown University present in their latest paper in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) will probably be quite shocking for some of you who relied on the ability of the UV-filters in tanning beds to reduce the increase in cancer risk (Vogel. 2014). There ...