Counting Calories to Stay Fit? There’s a Trillion Little Problems With That.
Matt Chinworth More than 120 years ago, a scientist named Wilbur Atwater launched what would become an enduring dieting trend: He started meticulously counting calories. In a series of experiments, Atwater set fire to hundreds of foods and measured the released energy. In another experiment, he and his team planted a grad student in an airtight…
A New Study Reveals Just How Toxic a Bee’s World Has Become
K_Thalhofer/iStock You can thank pollinating insects for one of every three bites of food you take. But as you may have heard, these bugs are in trouble: Since 2006, around 30 percent of US honeybee hives have died off each year, about double the previous loss rate. Honeybee populations are holding steady, because honeybees are…
Can Chefs Learn to Love Cooking Without Fire?
Koldunov/Getty Picture a chunky gas-fired stovetop. Twist a knob, and whoosh—a potent ring of fire licks at a metal grate. Now think of an induction range: a glass flattop etched with pot-sized circles. Push a button, and the reaction is silent and invisible. As a committed home cook who toiled on the fiery line of…
The Secret History of Why Soda Companies Switched From Sugar to High-Fructose Corn Syrup
Lemon_tm/iStock In a mesmerizing recent article, Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy recounts the surprising backstory of one of corporate marketing’s greatest flops: Coca-Cola’s quickly aborted 1985 effort to tweak its formula and convince consumers to accept “New Coke.” Tim Murphy is on this week’s episode of Bite, talking about New Coke and doing a blind taste-test:…
How a Revolutionary Genetic Discovery Is Changing What We Know About Anorexia
Nattakorn Maneerat/iStock/Getty “Why won’t she eat more? Why won’t he eat more?” Cynthia Bulik, a clinical psychologist, and founding director of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders, says this is the question she hears repeatedly from parents of children with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder which causes…
Trump Stings Honeybees While They’re Down
DanielPrudek/iStock/Getty Bees are in a world of trouble right now. A few years ago, the US Environmental Protection Agency took some steps to protect the insects by limiting the use of an insecticide called sulfoxaflor. Made by Corteva, the agricultural arm of DowDupont, sulfoxaflor is “highly toxic to bees and other pollinating insects,” and it also…