The connection between what you eat and your mood

Stress-Busting Diet: 8 Foods That May Boost Resilience : The Salt : NPR:

"Given what we know about how different foods affect the risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes, "why should it be so surprising that the nature of the foods we eat can also affect our emotional and mental well-being?" Ludwig says. 

So, if eating lots of refined carbs and sugar may exacerbate our responses to stress, are there other types of food that make us more resilient? Researcher Joe Hibbeln of the National Institutes of Health believes the answer is yes. "I think there's a very strong connection between what you eat and your mood," Hibbeln says. 

He has spent the past two decades investigating links between the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and emotional health. "One of the most basic ways that omega-3s help to regulate mood is by quieting down the [body's] response to inflammation," Hibbeln says. When you get walloped by something, whether it's a virus or an emotional stressor, you want to bounce back as quickly as possible, he notes. "You can either be good at weathering stress or you can be brittle. And omega-3s make your stress system more flexible," Hibbeln says. 

He points to studies showing that omega-3s can help protect neurons against the damage that can be done by chronic stress. He also points to clinical trials that have found that omega-3s may help control depressive symptoms. And a study of schoolchildren in England linked omega-3s to more pro-social behavior. 

Hibbeln knows that some people shy away from fish due to the cost, so he points to affordable options such as canned light tuna and sardines, which are good sources of omega-3s. There are also plant-based sources of omega-3s, such as flaxseed and chia seeds."

Would you like them with garlic and butter?

They are as big as the palm of a human hand. weigh almost a kilo and are a West African delicacy when peppered, then sautéed with onions and tomatoes, garlic and chilies. But not something that is likely to be on US menus anytime soon.
A shipment of 67 of these Archachatina marginata, or banana rasp snails, were recently seized by customs inspectors at Los Angelese airport after arriving from Nigeria. The officials described the snails as "highly invasive, voracious pests" that eat paint and stucco off houses and can munch their way through 500 plant species, if they can't find fruits and vegetables.
They were consigned to an incinerator rather than a cooking pot.

Beer from, the yeast on old whale bones

Captain Ahab's Revenge: Brewing Beer From An Ancient Whale Bone : The Salt : NPR:

What happens when an amateur paleontologist with a love for beer teams up with a microbiologist? Bone beer, or beer made from yeast scraped from a 35-million-year-old whale fossil, to be precise.
The new brew, dubbed Bone Dusters Paleo Ale, is a concoction created by amateur fossil hunter Jason Osborne of Paleo Quest, a nonprofit paleontology and geology advocacy group, and microbiologist Jasper Akerboom of the Lost Rhino Brewing Company in Ashburn, Va.

Like many scientific innovations, Bone Dusters came to Osborne late one night while he was drinking a beer.
Osborne was hunched over his desk, studying ancient whale bones he'd collected on an underwater expedition, when he took a sip and began to ponder how beer has yeast — an organism that transforms sugar into alcohol — and yeast can be found almost anywhere. His gaze shifted from his glass to his fossil.
"I thought, even though this is dead, there's got to be things living on it," he tells The Salt.
And an idea began to brew.
Osborne enlisted his friend Akerboom to swab the fossil and a dozen more from the basement drawers of the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland. Akerboom, a former research specialist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, didn't think the prehistoric bones could sustain yeast's appetite.
But in the name of science and great beer, he swabbed away. The results, he said, surprised him. While most fossils failed to create suitable yeast, Akerboom found one that fermented.
What he discovered was a wild yeast subspecies, which the pair named Saccharomyces cerevisiae var protectus, after the yeast's host, protocetid whale "Eocetus wardii," an early whale ancestor that Osborne had described in a 2011 paper in the journal BioOne.
The whale was a prehistoric beast that had hind legs, molars and canine-like teeth. Scientists say it may have been amphibious, dwelling on both land and water.

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Kelp gives a new taste in beer

Craft Beer Reaches New Depths As Mainers Brew A Batch From Seaweed : The Salt : NPR:

More craft breweries are using exotic ingredients in their creations these days. There are ales made with all kinds of fruit, beers infused with coriander and other spices, stouts brewed with oysters — even beer made from yeast scraped off 35 million-year-old whale bones. But what about a beer made with seaweed?
At the Marshall Wharf Brewing Company on the Belfast, Maine, waterfront, new beers begin their journey into draft lines and pint glasses inside two large tanks. Marshall Wharf has a reputation for making some unconventional beers — a stout with locally-sourced oysters, for example, and a wheat-infused kolsch with jalapeno and habanero peppers. A few years ago, David Carlson, the brewing company's owner, discovered a beer from Scotland, called Kelpie, made with seaweed.
"If there's seaweed in Maine and it's a good product," he says, "why not try putting it in the beer."

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Like a little wood pulp with that?

From McDonald's To Organic Valley, You're Probably Eating Wood Pulp : The Salt : NPR:



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Do not be alarmed, but you may be eating wood pulp. Or at least an additive that started out as wood.
If you buy shredded cheeses, including brands such as Organic Valley and Sargento, or hit the drive-thru at McDonalds for a breakfast sandwich or a smoothie, or douse some ribs with bottled barbecue sauce, there's likely some cellulose that's been added to your food.
Cellulose is basically plant fiber, and one of the most common sources is wood pulp. Manufacturers grind up the wood and extract the cellulose.
It's odd to imagine the same kind of pulp that's used to make paper turning up in our food. So, it's no surprise there's buzz over a spate of recent posts, from Quartz to the Los Angeles Timeson the food industry's widespread use of cellulose to help add texture and fiber to foods.
But there's not much new here. The FDA long ago green-lighted the use of added cellulose in foodstuffs. And, in our bodies this cellulose passes right through our GI tracts, virtually unabsorbed.

Explaining some of the mysteries of absinthe

A delightful explanation from Evan Rail as he explores the original distillery homes of absinthe - the spirit banned for a century throughout Europe but now back on sale and increasing in popularity.

On the Absinthe Trail - NYTimes.com:

A friend in Prague had started hosting upscale absinthe tastings at a bar there last summer, including several of the new — or renewed — versions coming out of France and Switzerland. Although both countries had banned the drink about 100 years ago, following widespread panic about the hallucinogenic and deleterious effects of absinthe, production was legalized again in Switzerland in 2005, followed by France in 2011. After a century, people no longer seemed to fear the Green Fairy, and the growing popularity of cheap, inauthentic absinthes from countries where the drink had never been banned — primarily the Czech Republic — put pressure on authorities to lift the ban in absinthe’s traditional homelands.

After sitting in on one of my friend’s tastings, I found myself unable to stop thinking about the complexity of the drink’s anise aromas, the starkness of the bitter herbs on the tongue, and deeply disappointed that I couldn’t find anything similar, not even at the city’s best bottle shops. (And though I certainly didn’t hallucinate, I missed the pleasant dreaminess the drink seemed to evoke.) As I began reading more about absinthe, I discovered that some of the most highly praised versions came from the Val-de-Travers. Indeed, it turned out that the area and the nearby province in France even had something called la route de l’absinthe, or absinthe trail, a semi-organized list of attractions related to the drink: distilleries, museums, restaurants and destinations like the Fontaine Froide. 

"Absinthe Antiques: a Collection From la Belle Époque"

The Scotch whisky drinking table

Australia clearly drinks at the cheaper end - placed 13th by volume but 15th by volume.

(Click to enlarge)