Daring as brassica
What could be the impact on younger adults and younger youngsters of seeing optimistic expressions on the faces of strangers who’re consuming uncooked broccoli?
Katie Edwards at Aston College, UK, along with colleagues there and on the College of Birmingham, additionally within the UK, tried to seek out out.
The journal Urge for food printed a first-hand account of that journey, together with the title “Publicity to fashions’ optimistic facial expressions while consuming a uncooked vegetable will increase youngsters’s acceptance and consumption of the modelled vegetable“.
No must mince phrases or broccoli about what they discovered. Of their phrases: “contrary to the hypotheses, models’ facial expressions whilst eating broccoli did not significantly influence initial willingness to try broccoli”.
Circles of life
Within the Sixties, younger intellectuals in Western international locations urged one another to undertake the philosophy and methods of Zen (Zen Buddhism). To have a considerate, sensible, good life, folks had been inspired to “go the ways of Zen” and to “be at one with the universe”.
Six many years later, ideas and chatter have superior.
Though no substitute has been extensively adopted within the West as a counterpart within the 2020s, Suggestions suggests Venn (Venn diagrams).
Venn, like Zen, goals for an easier understanding of issues that appear complicated. Venn masters generally describe their observe this fashion: a Venn diagram makes use of overlapping circles or related shapes for instance the logical relationships between completely different varieties of things.
Undertake the philosophy and methods of Venn. Understand and domesticate the overlaps in your life. Draw a Venn diagram of the qualities of each individual, place and factor out of your total life, from delivery till now. The overlaps within the Venn diagram will reveal the commonalities. Embrace them. Be at one with the few.
Go Venn.
Expertise for titration
Superpowers, trivial or in any other case, have the repute of being all or nothing. John Hancock tells Suggestions of an exception – possibly a partial exception – to that.
He says: “It seems I am able, consistently, to pour out almost exactly half of a 339 ml bottle of beer, such that 2 identical glasses have the same level of beer within 1 or, at most, 2 mm. This is done in one pour without any aids – I just seem to know when to stop pouring!”
(Suggestions notes that Hancock’s identify is acquainted to residents of the US. On 4 January 1776, a earlier John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence, a doc that advised Britain to go suck eggs. That Hancock wrote in lettering so huge and daring that his identify grew to become a synonym for “a person’s handwritten signature”. Within the US, folks nonetheless inform one another to “sign your John Hancock”. That earlier John Hancock, in contrast to this present John Hancock, disdained half measures.)
Questionable discomfort
There’s one other latest addition to Suggestions’s assortment referred to as The Title Tells You Every part You Have to Know.
“The possible pain experienced during execution by different methods” maybe introduced shock to readers of the journal Notion in 1993. It additionally received the 1997 Ig Nobel peace prize for its creator, Harold Hillman on the College of Surrey, UK.
In case you discover an equally placing instance, please ship it, with quotation particulars, to Telltale titles, c/o Suggestions.
The Teflon weight loss program
Teflon, a lot appreciated as a “non-stick” coating on frying pans and different cookware, may turn into an on a regular basis additive to meals, particularly in weight-control diets.
Readers of a 2022 research referred to as “Engineering properties of Teflon derived blends and composites: A review” get a fast trace of that in a single, barely cryptic sentence: “By quantity of Teflon decreased energy in meals and noticed passable outcomes accepted by group“. That sentence refers to a paper printed in 2016 within the Journal of Diabetes Science and Know-how.
The 2016 paper has an intellectually yummy title: “Polytetrafluoroethylene ingestion as a way to increase food volume and hence satiety without increasing calorie content“. The authors, Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich and Frank Greenway, in the US, explain that polytetrafluoroethylene – also known as PTFE or Teflon – is a plastic. They propound its merits: “Animal feeding trials showed that rats fed a diet of 25% PTFE for 90 days had no signs of toxicity and that the rats lost weight.”
They go on to hypothesise “that increasing the volume of food by mixing the food with PTFE powder at a ratio of 3 parts food to 1 part PTFE by volume will substantially improve satiety and reduce caloric consumption in people”.
Polytetrafluoroethylene, they write, “contributes no flavor (evident by its use in tongue piercings) and hence does not detract from the eating experience”. It is usually “extremely inert… so it will not react within the body”.
It’s thus “an ideal material for use as a nonmetabolized food volume bulking agent” – and in meals that undoubtedly received’t stick with your ribs.
Obtained a narrative for Suggestions?
Ship it to suggestions@newscientist.com or New Scientist, 9 Derry Avenue, London, W8 5HY
Consideration of things despatched within the submit shall be delayed
You may ship tales to Suggestions by e-mail at suggestions@newscientist.com. Please embody your property tackle. This week’s and previous Feedbacks may be seen on our web site.
