Clean or unclean? Close encounter with clean labels I distinctly remember my first encounter with clean labels. A food scientist from a Georgia company came to campus to describe some of the innovations that were going on in his company. He described the push in the food industry to simplify labels as consumer activists were turning against food additives, particularly those that sounded like chemicals. … Continue reading Eating clean

To anyone expecting a review of Pottlikker Papers this week, I apologize. Unforeseen circumstances have caused me to postpone that review for one on The Angry Chef. I fully intend to provide the promised review sometime in the next two months. Many of us are tired of hearing about the dangers of processed food and how the most recent diet trend can solve all our … Continue reading The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating

Books that spread an unwarranted message of certainty on food, health and wellness As we try to keep up with what is happening in the world, we are bombarded with BREAKING NEWS. It may be a major international event, a shooting within miles of our current location or the latest breakthrough in health and wellness. I always approach such stories with caution.  We live in … Continue reading Merchants of Certainty—reading too much into a single study

The microbiome is a hot topic on the internet. What can we do to promote a healthy gut? We are only a google search away from getting answers, but how do we separate sound advice from hype? Here are some perspectives I gained recently from surfing the internet. First, a response to my review of Let Them Eat Dirt The current way of looking at the … Continue reading Gut health and the internet

Food scientists and and real people have very different concepts of the microbes that inhabit our foods. As I have stated before, we are obsessed with shelf life. From the first day of any food microbiology course students become scared witless as they learn that food kills, or at least the nasty microbes in food kill. Food-micro students also learn that other non-lethal microbes in … Continue reading What kinds of microbes inhabit the food that we eat?

It may be the hottest area in health research going these days—the microbiome and its relationship to disease. Our microbiome is considered an organ in and of itself and encompasses the myriad of microbes that inhabit us both inside the gut and outside our bodies on our skin. These cells outnumber those that make up our human tissue. Let Them Eat Dirt by R. Brett … Continue reading Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World

In November I focused the attention of this site on genetic modification of foods. I asked a colleague and the foremost defender of GMOs, Dr. Wayne Parrott, to write a guest post for the website. The stresses of teaching and other duties at the university precluded an article in November, but he was able to send me this article over Christmas break. I am pleased … Continue reading Beware of bejeweled watches (and GMO labels)

Natural ingredients are in and artificial ones are out, but how natural are some and how artificial are others? Regulations make this question even more complex. Life is complicated, and we look for shortcuts. We are particularly risk averse, but it takes time to adequately assess risk. In How Risky is it Really, David Ropeik explores many of the terms that we use as shortcuts … Continue reading Are natural flavors better than artificial ones?

by Tracy Jaico In a continuing effort to defend processed food, I am working to provide some insight into the perspective of food scientists who work in the food industry. This week I introduce Tracy Jaico who took my two graduate courses—Flavor Chemistry and Evaluation and Food Research and the Scientific Method. She also happens to be in my Fantasy Football League and has reached … Continue reading Flavor: Trends with Some Science

One of my favorite classes to teach at the University of Georgia was called Flavor Chemistry and Evaluation. We had no textbook and no formal lab, although we usually read a book as supplementary reading such as Taste or Cookwise. The class met twice a week focusing on a specific aspect of flavor for those two sessions. One period featured a class discussion of two to … Continue reading Flavor 101–properties and cooking