The author of the Murrmurrs blog discusses placenta-eating: The very day I first heard about placenta-eating, I mentioned it to a man and woman who joined us for beer-thirty, and scored a hit right away. It was the man who had eaten the placenta. It wasn’t his wife’s, either. It was at some sort of […]
Tag: Food
Radioactive instant noodles (probably no cause for alarm)
“Radioactivity is invisible, tasteless and not mentioned on food labels” – a phrase that applies, perhaps just as much as with any other food, to instant noodles. Enthusiasts of which might have noticed that radiation levels are rarely, if ever, stated on the packaging. This fact has not escaped the attention of Professor Ali Abid […]
Analysis of gunpowder in Frankfurt
Last week, in the midst of the Ig Nobel EuroTour, we encounter this item—item #1— on a menu in a restaurant in Frankfurt, Germany: Our colleague Merry (“Corky”) White, a food anthropologist based at Boston University, tracked down an explanation of the most colorful named ingredient—gunpowder. The explanation, written by Priyadarshini Nanda, appeared in the […]
The nature and structure of crumpets [research studies]
Remarkably, given the extensive scientific literature on bread-making, there is very little recorded research on crumpet-making. If you’re not familiar with the crumpet, here is an introduction from one of the few formal crumpet studies, performed by Professor Pyle of Reading University, UK, c. 2005. “Crumpets are, it seems, a particularly British product. They are […]