Setting the French straight about croissants and other food and drink news

Editorial in London's Daily Telegraph

British Retailer’s Straight Croissants Leave Some Bent Out of Shape - LONDON — The croissant, the buttery breakfast pastry, means “crescent” in French. But don’t tell that to the British. Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain and a bellwether of sorts for popular tastes, is dispensing with the traditional curved pastry as of Friday and instead will sell only straight ones. The company offered a decidedly British rationale: It is easier to spread jam on the straight variety. The banishing of the crescent-shaped croissant spurred no shortage of dismay on both sides of the English Channel. “Is this a foretaste of Brexit?” an article in the French newspaper 20 Minutes asked, referring to the possibility that British voters might decide in a referendum to leave the European Union. The newspaper added that it appeared that Tesco’s move was not done “to antagonize the French (well, not solely).”

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An image that shows how polarized the salt debate has become.

The blotches of red and blue here represent instances where scientists cited  like-minded research; those in green show instances where scientists referred to research that challenges their results.

In a more perfect world, where scientists sought balance in the evidence they reviewed, you would see more green - signs that scientists were considering evidence that is contrary to their beliefs.

As you can see, the image is dominated by red and blue, a sign that scientists are more likely to cite the research that conforms to their outlook. Overall the papers they reviewed were 50 percent more likely to cite reports that drew a similar conclusion than  to cite papers drawing a different conclusion.

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The world's best bakers - and they aren't French - At the Coupe du Monde de Boulangerie - the baking world cup in plain English - the victory of a South Korean team of bakers is clearly a snub to the French. No doubt about it. After all, the competition describes itself as the planet's "most prestigious bakery contest", and is held in Paris - the capital of the baguette-eating world. President Hollande himself was there to witness his formerly great baking nation eat humble pie.

Is the American diet too salty? Scientists challenge the longstanding government warning - ... a review of hundreds of papers on the topic indicates that the inability to reach a consensus stems at least partially from the fact that the two groups of scientists operate, in essence, in parallel scientific universes. In one, the scientists write papers about the dangers of our salt consumption, and typically cite other papers that point to the same conclusion. In the other, the scientists write papers dismissing or minimizing the danger, and typically cite papers agreeing with their position. Each side, in other words, steers away from taking into account contrary results. “We found that the published literature bears little imprint of an ongoing controversy, but rather contains two almost distinct and disparate lines of scholarship,” according to the paper from researchers at Columbia University and Boston University, and published by the International Journal of Epidemiology.

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