This is Improbable

by Marc Abrahams

  Figure: ‘The relationship between craving, guilt, and the eating of chocolate bars … High craving but not guilt was associated with the eating of a higher number of chocolate bars’

  Afterwards, the researchers compared people’s scores on the Attitudes to Chocolate Questionnaire with their craving strength as measured in the press-the-lever-and-get-a-treat game.

  The questionnaire results accorded well with what happened in the game. In most cases, if the questionnaire said someone had a high craving for chocolate, that person was persistent at making the frustrating machine deliver up chocolates. Thus, the little questionnaire is a cheap, fairly accurate way to measure chocolate craving and also to measure guilt.

  In their report, the researchers announce that, using their new tool, they made an exciting new psychological discovery: that ‘craving but not guilt was associated with the eating of chocolate bars’.

  Benton, David, Karen Greenfield, and Michael Morgan (1998). ‘The Development of the Attitudes to Chocolate Questionnaire.’ Personality and Individual Differences 24 (4): 513–20.

  Cramer, Kenneth M., and Mindy Hartleib (2001). ‘The Attitudes to Chocolate Questionnaire: A Psychometric Evaluation.’ Personality and Individual Differences 31 (6): 931–42.

  PAH to Whisky

  Whisky and candlelight, consumed repeatedly over many years, involve some measure of danger. Two Dutch research projects tried to take that measure. They hoped to confront the spectre of death – to either confirm or disprove the worry that good whisky and sacred candles, singly or in combination, are very, very bad for a body.

  The very specific object to be measured, both in the booze and in the candle smoke, was a particular group of chemicals. Known by the acronym ‘PAHs’ (say it aloud, with pursed lips, to see how disgustingly nasty some people think they are) – these tasty, smelly molecules have a fairly well-deserved reputation for causing cancer and other illnesses.

  Jos Kleinjans, an environmental health professor at the University of Maastricht, led a pair of inquisitions. He joined with one bunch of colleagues to give whisky a good going-over. With a different bunch, he sniffed into church candle (and also church incense) fumes, in search of insidious nastiness.

  The whisky came first. As detailed in a report published in 1996 in the Lancet, Kleinjans and five friends obtained some of the finest whiskies on Earth. For comparative purposes, they also picked up some of the cheap stuff.

  From Scotland they got six malts – Laphroaig, Oban, Glenkinchie, Glenfiddich, Highland Park, and Glenmorangie – and also four blends – Famous Grouse, Chivas Regal, Johnnie Walker Red, and Ballantines.

  From North America, five bourbons – Southern Comfort, Virginia Gentleman, Jack Daniel’s, Four Roses, and Old Overholt.

  From Ireland, three whiskies – Bushmill’s Malt, Jameson, and Tullamore Dew.

  ‘Carcinogenic PAHs’, the scientists announced, ‘were present in all whisky brands’ but ‘it is apparent that Scotch malts have the highest carcinogenic potential’. Eye-pokingly, they revealed that the most expensive Scotch malts contain the highest levels of danger.

  No worries, though, or at least not many. The report concludes: ‘Compared with smoked and char-broiled food products ... PAH concentrations in whiskies are low, and are not likely to explain the cancer risks of whisky consumption.’ This is danger with a most tiny ‘d’. It is the spice of life, and also of whisky.

  An almost biblical seven long years later, Kleinjans and three other friends published a report called ‘Radicals in the Church’. It tells of their adventures in a Roman Catholic Church – the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Basiliek in Maastricht. There, they sampled the fumes from a standard (to the extent that such things are standard) nine-hour session of burning candles and incense. They also, literally for good measure, sampled the air before and after what they call a ‘simulated service’ in a large basilica. The PAH levels, they discovered, are higher than in a dose of whisky, but perhaps not high enough to shed clear light on the question ‘is it dangerous?’

  And so their report ends with a murky diagnosis: ‘It cannot be excluded that regular exposure to candle- or incense-derived particulate matter results in increased risk of lung cancer or other pulmonary diseases.’

  Kleinjans, Jos C, S., Edwin J. C. Moonen, Jan W. Dallinga, Harma J. Albering, Anton E. J. M. van den Bogaard, and Frederik-Jan van Schooten (1996). ‘Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Whiskies.’ Lancet 348: 1731.

  De Kok, T. M. C. M., J. G. F. Hogervorst, J. C. S. Kleinjans, and J. J. Briede (2004). ‘Radicals in the Church.’ European Respiratory Journal 24: 1–2.

  Standard Food Glops

  When food manufacturers put nutrition info on their labels, they can either (a) invent the numbers (and risk going to prison) or (b) chemically analyse the food to see how much of it is saturated fat, or sodium, or vitamin A, or some other particular nutrient, mineral, or vitamin. The analytical chemists, if they are honest and honourable, must know whether they can trust their own measurements – and so they test their equipment by first analysing some officially measured and certified ‘typical’ foodstuff.

  For just $839 (£534) one can buy the essence of an officially measured and certified ‘typical diet’ – officially prepared and bottled by the US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The money gets you twelve grams of blended, ‘freeze-dried homogenate of mixed diet foods’, delivered in a pair of six-ounce bottles.

  An accompanying NIST document, called ‘Certificate of Analysis, Standard Reference Material 1548a, Typical Diet’, makes no claims as to tastiness. The certificate notes that these possibly delicious dollops are ‘not for human consumption’.

  Each portion contains a soupçon of mystery, a hint of inexactitude in its numbers. The Certificate of Analysis makes mention of ‘uncertainties that may reflect only measurement precision, may not include all sources of uncertainty, or may reflect a lack of sufficient statistical agreement among multiple methods’. (The certificate goes on to mention, with a metaphorical twirling of its moustache and twinkling of its eyes, that ‘there is insufficient information to make an assessment of the uncertainties’.)

  Despite the imprecision, it would be wrong, very wrong, to say that the diet is slopped together carelessly. To the contrary, it was ‘prepared from menus used for the metabolic studies at the Human Study Facility’ of the US Food and Drug Administration. ‘Food items in prescribed quantities representing a four-day menu cycle were pooled/combined into a master menu ... The material was freeze-dried, pulverized, sieved, and radiation sterilized at a dose of 2.5 mrad to prevent bacterial growth’, then ‘blended, bottled, and sealed under nitrogen’.

  In addition to the typical diet, NIST produces items conceivably of appeal to more specialized palates: baby food composite, peanut butter, baking chocolate, meat homogenate, and Lake Superior fish tissue. The latter includes standard amounts of fat, fatty acid, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury, and methylmercury.

  NIST offers many kinds of useful and, to the connoisseur, delightful Standard Reference Materials. Their catalogue runs to 145 pages.

  Prospective purchasers can peruse page after page of bodily fluids and glops, among them bilirubin, cholesterol, and ascorbic acid in frozen human serum. There are other specialty products in dizzying variety: toxic metals in bovine blood, naval brass, domestic sludge, and plutonium-242 solution, to name four.

  Prices are mostly in the $300 to $600 range. At the high end, you will find New York/New Jersey waterway sediment for $610. There are bargains to be had, including an item called ‘cigarette ignition strength, standard’, on offer at one carton (two hundred cigarettes) for $192. Alas, ‘multi drugs of abuse in urine’ was out of stock, the last time I looked.

  National Institute of Standards and Technology (2009). ‘Certificate of Analysis – Standard Reference Material 1548A: Typical Diet,’ https://www-s.nist.gov/srmors/view_detail.cfm?srm=1548A.

  Sharpless, Katherin
e E., Jennifer C. Colbert, Robert R. Greenberg, Michele M. Schantz, and Michael J. Welch (2001). ‘Recent Developments in Food-Matrix Reference Materials at NIST.’ Fresenius Journal of Analytic Chemistry 370: 275–78.

  In Brief

  ‘Distinction Between Heating Rate and Total Heat Absorption in the Microwave-Exposed Mouse’

  by Christopher J. Gordon and Elizabeth C. White (published in Physiological Zoology, 1982)

  According to the authors at the US Environmental Protection Agency, ‘This investigation assesses the ability of the heat-dissipating system of the mouse to respond to equivalent heat loads (e.g., J/g) administered at varying intensities (e.g., J/g/s or W/kg). Use of a microwave exposure system provided a means to administer exact amounts of energy at varying rates in awake, free-moving mice.’

  Implications of Custard

  There is one individual who, above all others, has plumbed the effects of custard.

  René A. de Wijk is based at the Wageningen Centre for Food Sciences in the Netherlands. During a four-year burst of scholarship, demonstrating his stunning productivity, de Wijk published more than ten custard-centric research reports, each of them a substantial contribution to our understanding of, and relationship with, custard.

  Do not think of custard researchers as being solitary, asocial creatures. Certainly de Wijk is not. He shares co-authorship credit with a happy variety of colleagues.

  In 2001, de Wijk teamed up with H. Weenen, L. J. Van Gemert, R. J. M. Van Doorn, and G. B. Dijksterhuis. The result was ‘Texture and Mouthfeel of Semi-Solid Foods: Commercial Mayonnaises, Dressings, Custard Desserts and Warm Sauces’, which delighted readers of the Journal of Texture Studies.

  Two years later, de Wijk, together with Weenen and two others, published a pudding-studies instant classic, ‘The Influence of Bite Size and Multiple Bites on Oral Texture Sensations’. This carefully worded document describes a pair of experiments.

  First, the scientists observed what happens when a person takes carefully measured bites of a vanilla custard dessert. Eating custard in single bites, they observed, ‘affected perception of thickness, temperature, astringency, and creaminess’. In the other experiment, the custard-chewing volunteers began taking bites from one vanilla custard dessert – but then suddenly switched to biting an entirely different vanilla custard dessert. The effect was fairly subtle: ‘sensations of thickness and fatty afterfeel’ became more noticeable.

  In 2003, de Wijk and colleagues issued two reports about the interaction of saliva and custard. In one, they tested the effect of adding saliva to custard prior to eating that custard. The report carefully notes that ‘saliva had previously been collected from the subjects and each subject received his/her own saliva’. The other report looked at ‘whether and how the amount of saliva a subject produces influences the sensory ratings’ when that person then gobbles a vanilla custard dessert. The results are summarized memorably: ‘A subject with a larger saliva flow rate during eating did not rate the foods differently from a subject with less saliva flow.’

  Another de Wijk report from that year explored the effects of manipulating custard inside one’s mouth. The activities ‘ranged from simply placing the stimulus on the tip of the tongue to vigorously moving it around in the mouth’. To gain some perspective, the test subjects also had to manipulate mayonnaise, although that was done separately.

  De Wijk, together with four colleagues, then came out with his magnum opus, a distillation of what is known about the sensation of mouthing custard and an intellectually, gustatorially stimulating read. For some readers, ‘Amount of Ingested Custard Dessert as Affected by Its Color, Odor, and Texture’ will recall the work of Marcel Proust, for it deals entirely with what happens when a sensitive human being takes the very first bite of custard.

  Weenen, H., L. J. Van Gemert, R. J. M. Van Doorn, G. B. Dijksterhuis, and R. A. de Wijk (2001). ‘Texture and Mouthfeel of Semi-Solid Foods: Commercial Mayonnaises, Dressings, Custard Desserts and Warm Sauces.’ Journal of Texture Studies 34 (2), 159–79.

  De Wijk, R. A., L. Engelen, J. F. Prinz, and H. Weenen (2003). ‘The Influence of Bite Size and Multiple Bites on Oral Texture Sensations.’ Journal of Sensory Studies 18 (5): 423–35.

  Engelen, L., R. A. de Wijk, J. F. Prinz, A. M. Janssen, H. Weenen, and F. Bosman (2003). ‘A Comparison of the Effects of Added Saliva, Alpha-Amylase and Water on Texture Perception in Semi-Solids.’ Physiology and Behavior 78: 805–11.

  Engelen, L., R. A. de Wijk, J. F. Prinz, A. Van der Bilt, and F. Bosman (2003). ‘The Relation between Saliva Flow after Different Stimulations and the Perception of Flavor and Texture Attributes in Custard Desserts.’ Physiology and Behavior 78 (1): 165–69.

  De Wijk, R. A., L. Engelen, and J. F. Prinz (2003). ‘The Role of Intra-Oral Manipulation on the Perception of Sensory Attributes.’ Appetite 40 (1): 1–7.

  De Wijk, R. A., et al. (2004). ‘Amount of Ingested Custard Dessert as Affected by its Color, Odor, and Texture.’ Physiology and Behavior 82 (2–3): 397–403.

  Janssen, A. M., Marjolein E. J. Terpstra, R. A. de Wijk, and J. F. Prinz (2007). ‘Relations Between Rheological Properties, Saliva-induced Structure Breakdown and Sensory Texture Attributes of Custards.’ Journal of Texture Studies 38 (1): 42–69.

  The Garlicky Family

  ‘This study assessed the effects of the odor and ingestion of garlic bread on family interactions.’ With those words, Alan R. Hirsch of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, in Chicago, declared the purpose and the breadth of his research. However, Hirsch did not analyse the matter as deeply as he could have.

  This is not to say that Dr Hirsch was lazy. His experiment examined the interactions of garlic bread and fifty families, an undertaking that involved the preparation and consumption of not just fifty, but a full one hundred meals. Each family was made to experience dinner with garlic bread, and also dinner without. For each family, the order of those two experiences was determined randomly.

  Hirsch published details in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. The families ranged in size from two to twelve people. In their breaded meal, each family had to endure a full minute before being exposed to the garlicky aroma. Hirsch’s published account reads like the science adventure tale it is. ‘During the second minute’, he writes, ‘the garlic bread aroma was presented. During the [third] minute the bread was ingested.’

  The rest of the story can and is told in numbers. ‘Smelling and eating garlic bread decreased the number of negative interactions between family members’, the report says, and ‘the number of pleasant interactions increased.’ Hirsch reached the conclusion that: ‘Serving garlic bread at dinner enhanced the quality of family interactions. This has potential applications in promoting and maintaining shared family experiences, thus stabilizing the family unit, and also may have utility as an adjunct to family therapy.’

  But what, biochemically, is the mechanism for this effect? On that level, Hirsch is mum.

  For an answer, one must look elsewhere, perhaps to the Journal of Biological Chemistry, which published a study called ‘The Active Principle of Garlic at Atomic Resolution’. The German authors of that report caution that ‘despite the fact that many cultures around the world value and utilize garlic as a fundamental component of their cuisine as well as of their medicine cabinets, relatively little is known about the plant’s protein configuration that is responsible for the specific properties of garlic.’

  This scarcity of knowledge also obtruded itself in 1998, when three scientists in Wales published ‘What Sort of Men Take Garlic Preparations?’ Their conclusion: ‘Men who take garlic supplements are generally similar to non-garlic users.’

  Hirsch, Alan R. (2000). ‘Effects of Garlic Bread on Family Interactions.’ Psychosomatic Medicine 62 (1): 103.

  Kuettner, E. Bartholomeus, Rolf Hilgenfeld, and Manfred S. Weiss (2002). ‘The Active Principle of Garlic at Atomic Resolution.’ Journal of Biological Chemistry 277 (48): 46402–7.

  Th
omas, H. F., P. M. Sweetnam, and B. Janchawee (1998). ‘What Sort of Men Take Garlic Preparations?’ Complementary Therapies in Medicine 6: 195–97.

  Teabagging in the Name of Science

  Political teabagging and sexual teabagging have attracted lots of controversial attention in recent years, but a lesser-known variety – research teabagging – has much to recommend it.

  In case you have not encountered the word ‘teabagging’, here’s some linguistic background. Political teabagging takes its name from a twisted, angry dip into American/British history: the ‘Boston Tea Party’ anti-tax protest of 1773, while sexual teabagging involves dipping one particular body part into another, a bit like a teabag is dipped in a mug.

  Research teabagging, in contrast, confronts rather different matters – using teabags to explore scientific and medical questions.

  In 2009, a group of nine Japanese researchers told how they used bags of green tea to fight a disgusting odour that arises from the hands of extremely unlucky stroke victims. Their report, published in the journal Geriatrica and Gerontology International, ‘Four-Finger Grip Bag with Tea to Prevent Smell of Contractured Hands and Axilla in Bedridden Patients’, found that clutching a bag filled with green tea ‘could substantially control smell in these bedridden patients’.