The fairness of Trip Advisor reviews and how they should be judged

TripAdvisor gets Italian fine overturned - PC World Australia:

"An Italian court has overturned a €500,000 (US$550,000) fine imposed last December on the online travel company TripAdvisor for allegedly publishing misleading information in its reviews.

The fine was imposed by Italy's Competition Authority (AGCM) at the request of a consumer organization and a national hotelier association, who argued that TripAdvisor did not do enough to ensure that the hotel and restaurant reviews posted by users on its website were reliable.

In a ruling made available to the parties on Monday, the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio said TripAdvisor explicitly acknowledged that it was not able to check the truthfulness of its reviews and advised users to consider broader trends in user-generated recommendations.

"TripAdvisor never asserted that all its reviews were true, pointing out instead that it is impossible to exercise a blanket control and inviting users to consider 'trends' in the reviews rather than single contributions," the court said. "We do not understand the harm to the consumer identified by the Authority in its concluding arguments.""



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Herbal food supplement labels 'can be misleading'

Herbal food supplement labels 'can be misleading' - BBC News:

"Some herbal food supplements do not contain what they claim on the label, a study has found.
The BBC health series 'Trust Me, I'm a Doctor' teamed up with experts from University College London to test a selection of products bought from high street shops or online retailers.
Of 30 ginkgo products tested, eight contained little or no ginkgo extract.
In one case of milk thistle, unidentified substances were present in place of milk thistle.
All the evening primrose products performed well.
The UCL team tested around 70 products overall, using two methods - nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and high performance thin layer chromatography - to study their composition."



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Kale the silent killer?

Sorry, Foodies: We're About to Ruin Kale | Mother Jones:

Today's kale-fixated juice-heads may doing themselves a disservice.

That's a possibility raised by an article in Craftsmanship magazine by Todd Oppenheimer. The piece doesn't establish a definitive link between heavy kale consumption and any health problem, but it does raise the question of whether too much of even a highly nutritious food like kale can have unhappy side effects.

The article focuses on an alt-medicine researcher and molecular biologist named Ernie Hubbard, who began to notice an odd trend among some of his clinic's clients in California's Marin County, a place known for its organic farms, health-food stores, and yoga studios. Extremely health-conscious people were coming into to complain of "persistent but elusive problems": "Chronic fatigue. Skin and hair issues. Arrhythmias and other neurological disorders. Foggy thinking. Gluten sensitivity and other digestive troubles. Sometimes even the possibility of Lyme Disease."

Hubbard began to find detectable levels of a toxic heavy metal called thallium in patients' blood samples—at higher-than-normal leves—as well as in kale leaves from the region. Meanwhile, "over and over," he found that patients complaining ofsymptoms associated with low-level thallium poisoning—fatigue, brain fog, etc.—would also be heavy eaters of kale and related vegetables, like cabbage.

And he found, in the form of this 2006 peer-reviewed paper by Czech researchers, evidence that kale is really good at taking up thallium from soil. The paper concluded that kale's ability to accumulate soil-borne thallium is "very high and can be a serious danger for food chains." And here's a peer-reviewed 2013 paperfrom Chinese researchers finding similar results with green cabbage; a 2015Chinese study finding green cabbage is so good at extracting thallium from soil that it can be used for "phytoremediation"—i.e., purifying soil of a toxin—and a2001 one from a New Zealand team finding formidible thallium-scrounging powers in three other members of the brassica family: watercress, radishes, and turnips.'via Blog this'

The cake from 'To Kill A Mockingbird' whose whiskey made Scout tight

What Ever Happened To The Boozy Cake In 'To Kill A Mockingbird'? : The Salt : NPR:

"To mark this week's release of Harper Lee's long-awaited second novel, Go Set a Watchman, why not try an old-fashioned cake from Alabama, featured prominently in Lee's classic first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

In it, Scout Finch's neighbor, Maudie Atkinson, is known for her Lane cakes and guards her recipe closely. She bakes one for Aunt Alexandra when she moves in with the Finch Family. Scout gets buzzed from the whiskey in it and comments, "Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight."

I was determined to try a slice of Lane cake after learning it was invented in Clayton, Ala., around the same time my ancestors lived there during the late 19th century. But it's now difficult to find this layered sponge cake filled with a rich mixture of egg yolks, butter, sugar, raisins and whiskey anywhere. During my travels across Alabama, I've always been on the lookout for it but never spotted it in the wild. "



Recipe: Lane Cake



This recipe is based on the original that appeared in Emma Rylander Lane's cookbookSome Good Things to Eat. It called for baking four layers in pie tins, but, with modern day cake pans, it's better to bake it in three layers.



Cake ingredients:

3.5 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoons salt

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups sugar

1 cup whole milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

8 egg whites



Filling ingredients:

8 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup raisins, chopped

½ cup bourbon whiskey

1 teaspoon vanilla



Icing:

2 egg whites

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 tablespoons boiling water

3 tablespoons corn syrup



Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt, and sift together three times. In a separate bowl, use a mixer to cream together the butter and sugar for at least two minutes. Alternately add the flour mixture and the milk to the creamed butter and sugar, starting and ending with the flour. Stir in the vanilla and set aside.



In another bowl, beat the egg whites until they form firm peaks and then fold them into the cake batter. Separate the batter into three 9-inch cake pans and bake until the sides are well-browned (20 to 25 minutes). Remove from the pans and allow to cool completely



In a saucepan, beat together the egg yolks, sugar and butter. Place the saucepan over medium low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick. Remove from heat and immediately add the raisins, whiskey and vanilla. Spread the filling evenly between the cake layers and set aside.



For the icing, combine all the ingredients in a double boiler. Using a mixer, beat the ingredients constantly for seven minutes or until peaks form. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Then spread the icing evenly over the top and sides of the cake.



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Epicurean entertainment is luring Korean men into the kitchen

The food-show craze | The Economist:

“Mr Paek’s Home Cooking” is the latest of a host of new food shows in South Korea. “What Shall We Eat Today?” follows two male novices in the kitchen who do away with recipes and measurements. In “Please Take Care of My Refrigerator”, chefs use basic ingredients from the fridges of Korean celebrities to rustle up dishes in 15 minutes. “Three Meals A Day” is set in mountains and remote fishing villages; guests must forage and harvest to prepare dinners from scratch. Soaps, variety shows and even news bulletins are offering up food scenes. “My Chef from the Star” (taking its name from a hit drama of 2013) is about the stars of these cookbang, or cooking broadcasts.

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