Body acts as brewery so drunk driving charge dismissed and other food and drink news

New York drink driver says her body is a brewery - A US woman in New York state has avoided drink-driving charges after arguing that she suffers from a rare condition called "auto-brewery syndrome". The 35-year-old schoolteacher told the court that her digestive system sometimes converts food into alcohol. After her arrest, her doctor conducted tests that found that high levels of yeast in her intestines ferment high-carbohydrate foods. Prosecutors are seeking to have the charges against the woman reinstated. "She can register a blood alcohol content that would have you or I falling down drunk, but she can function," her lawyer Joseph Marusak told the Buffalo News.

Spain Has Little Appetite for Truffles, but Plenty for the Truffle Trade - Last year, France produced 56 metric tons of truffles, compared with a peak of 1,040 tons in 1904, according to historical data from the French federation of truffle growers. At the same time, Spain’s production has been growing rapidly — to about 45 tons a year. Luckily for the French, and others, however, Spanish cuisine rarely uses the truffle. In fact, about 95 percent of what Spain produces is exported to France and other markets — even if some of it gets relabeled as Périgord truffle.

Netflix And Chew: How Binge Watching Affects Our Eating Habits

‘The Diet Myth,’ ‘The Good Gut’ and ‘The Hidden Half of Nature’ - Using the improved detection capacity of genetic sequencing techniques, scientists have discovered that 100 trillion microscopic creatures live in and on the body, influencing everything from the intensity of our immune responses and our moods to our dietary preferences and propensity to gain weight.

‘The War on Alcohol,’ by Lisa McGirr - McGirr makes two major contributions to the historical record. First, she vividly shows how enforcers targeted immigrant and black communities. ... Second, McGirr tells us that Prohibition gave birth to big government — an argument that could have a major impact on how we read American political history. The audacious effort to remake drinking habits required unprecedented authority: Federal police powers grew, jail construction boomed and courts turned to plea ­bargaining and parole.

Learning from the hunter-gatherers and other food and drink news

What the Hunter-Gatherers from ‘In Defense of Food’ Can Teach Us About Our Diets - At the heart of the new documentary based on Michael Pollan’s best-selling book is the story of a Tanzanian tribe that still eats the way it has for millennia.

The Year In Eggs: Everyone's Going Cage-Free, Except Supermarkets

The future is pinot, says wine expert and Taste of Tasmania keynote speaker Brian Schmidt - NOBEL Prize-winning astronomer and winemaker Brian Schmidt says Tasmania is Australia’s home of pinot noir and because of climate change may bec­ome the only region able to produce the wine. On Wednesday, Professor Schmidt will give the keynote add­ress at the Taste of Tasmania, a venue he says has some spectacular reds.

Why many restaurants actually don’t want you to order dessert

Use the sausage as a breakwater - does England make the world's most delicious breakfast? and other food and drink news

Does England make the world's most delicious breakfast? The English breakfast is a cholesterol-laden calorie bomb usually consisting of two eggs, sausage, bacon, baked beans, fried tomato and toast. It’s a symphony of deliciousness on a plate, enough to ward off the worst hangover and fill you up until dinnertime. ... As we waited, [food writer Lizzie] Mabbott let me in on her own personal fry-up rules. “Hotly contested is the brown-sauce-versus-tomato-sauce debate. I put brown sauce on the sausage and tomato sauce on anything that’s fried.” That wasn’t all, though. “I don’t like my egg yolk touching my tomato,” she said, adding, “and that’s not an uncommon complaint.” Mabbott is right: she’s not the only one with fry-up rules.

According to I’m Alan Partridge, the long-running BBC TV show featuring actor Steve Coogan, the eggs and beans should be separate when served. “I may want to mix them, but I want that to by my decision,” Coogan said on an episode in which his Russian girlfriend makes him a traditional English breakfast. “And use the sausage,” he added, “as a breakwater.”

It's Like Uber, But for Farmers' Markets - A startup called Farmigo is trying to create a better food system for both eaters and farmers

Startups seek meat alternatives for the masses - Patrick Brown is on an improbable mission: to make a meatless burger that Americans still love. Veggie patties have been around for decades, but Brown and others want to make foods without animal products that look, cook and taste like the real thing — and can finally appeal to the masses. “We are not making a veggie burger. We’re creating meat without using animals,” said Brown, a former Stanford scientist who has been scanning plants in search of compounds that can help recreate meat. Brown’s company, Impossible Foods, is part of a wave of startups aiming to wean Americans off foods like burgers and eggs. Their efforts are attracting tens of millions of dollars from investors. The goal is to lessen the dependence on livestock for food, which they say isn’t as healthy, affordable or environmentally friendly as plant-based alternatives.
Our Year in Meals - The New Yorker's  tables for Two correspondents revisit some of their most memorable meals of 2015.

Eating "Unclaimed Babies" and sweet acts of pseudo-cannibalism

Sweet success: Unravelling the Jelly Baby's dark past - As you pinch the last Jelly Baby out of the bag and sink your teeth into its plump little body, have you ever stopped to wonder if there's a method to your mastication madness. Do you, for instance, nibble away at its arms and legs until you are left with a helpless torso? Or are you the ruthless type that goes straight for the kill and chops off its head, Henry VIII-style? ... The process by which you eat these innocent-sounding sweets has probably never occurred to you, least of all struck you as bordering on the macabre. But this act of pseudo-cannibalism isn't the only disturbing chapter in the history of the much-loved jelly baby. Confectionery historians believe the earliest jelly baby was the work of an Austrian confectioner who worked for Fryers of Lancashire. It is thought that in 1864 he was asked to make a mould for jelly bears, but the resulting sweets looked more like newborn infants and were subsequently given the ghoulish name, Unclaimed Babies.

Italy's youth shun the Mediterranean diet - The fabled Mediterranean diet is at risk of dying out, according to a new study which claims just 33 percent of all young Italians are now eating according to tradition. The study, published in the journal Eating and Weight Disorders this month, revealed that less than half of all Italians now follow the Mediterranean diet, with only a third of those aged 15-24 conforming to the traditional and healthy way of eating. The famed Mediterranean diet is less a strict set of dishes and more a general nutritional model based around seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables, olive oil, pulses and seafood. But the study, carried out by scientists at Rome's University of Tor Vergata, suggests that these dishes are disappearing from Italian tables.

Is it a beer? Is it a wine? Marlborough craft wine to hit stores next year - Chili, chocolate and hop flavoured wines will be available in off-licence stores in February, thanks to a Marlborough wine company. Allan Scott Family Winemakers have been making craft wines, inspired by the experimentation of craft beer, since March this year. The first of these, the Green Hopped Gooseberry Bomb Sauvignon Blanc, combines Marlborough sauvignon blanc grapes with green sauvin hops from Nelson, while other varieties have added chili, coffee and chocolate.

The Year In Food: Artificial Out, Innovation In (And 2 More Trends)

Still life with entremets - Delicious depictions of antique feasts – and medieval displays at the table, including squirting fountains, mechanical swans and musicians bursting out of pies

NYC Jewish Delicatessens: The Ultimate Guide - Here's everything you need to know about New York's Jewish delicatessens, and the people that make them tick

First catch your jellyfish - the age of theoretical cookbooks and other food and drink news

First catch your jellyfish - As restaurant cuisine becomes ever more elaborate, so cookbooks have become increasingly theoretical - at least for us amateurs

A global glutton shares the 15 best things he ate in ’15

Chicken soup indeed good for colds - Stephen Rennard, a pulmonary expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaba, has found evidence that the soup, long enjoying the reputation as salvation for the sniffly, contains anti-inflammatory properties that may help prevent a cold's miserable side effects. In the lab, Rennard found that some ingredient in the chicken soup, dubbed the Jewish penicillin, blocks or slows the amount of white blood cells gathering in the virus-infected area in an inflammatory response to a cold, possibly relieving the development of cold symptoms. But he could not pin down the specific biologically active material.

Minimum alcohol pricing plan 'may breach EU law' - A European court has said the Scottish government's case for a minimum unit price for alcohol is contrary to EU law if other tax options exist. The European Court of Justice ruling instead recommends the introduction of alternative tax measures. The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon have both welcomed the ruling. The legislation to bring in a minimum price of 50p per unit was passed by the Scottish Parliament in May 2012.

Oberlin’s Food Isn’t “Cultural Appropriation.” That Doesn’t Mean the Students Are Wrong. - The case of ciabatta-based bánh mì at Oberlin is a telling example. Making bánh mì with ciabatta instead of baguette is blasphemous, because it was the French, not the Italians, who colonized Vietnam from the 1870s to the 1950s. The Vietnamese appropriated the French baguette, but made it with rice flour in addition to wheat flour; then they added Vietnamese ingredients (cilantro, pickled carrots) to the French-influenced sandwich along with pâté. Thus, a bánh mì with the wrong bread and a mayo-based coleslaw instead of fresh herbs and pickled vegetables is no bánh mì at all, as Vietnamese students understand better than anyone. It is, rather, an inaccurate rendering, a bad translation of a dish that was itself a cultural appropriation of the most appropriate sort. Colonized groups are forced to do what they can with the cultural raw materials foisted upon them by colonizers, and the Vietnamese did this to create what is probably the world’s most perfect sandwich.

Academic proves that the bigger the wine glass the more you drink - and taller men wear longer trousers

Larger Wine Glasses Encourage More Drinking, Study Finds - University of Cambridge researchers found that wine sales were 9% higher when larger glasses were used

The Only Way to Save Your Beloved Bananas Might Be Genetic Engineering

How The Food Industry Helps Engineer Our Cravings

1 In 10 People Around The World Gets Sick From Food Every Year

Casella buys upmarket wine brand from McWilliam's - Griffith-based Casella Wines, maker of Australia's biggest selling wine, Yellow Tail, has accelerated its strategy of buying up wineries and brands in premium wine regions with the acquisition of Brand's Laira from McWilliam's Wines. The purchase by Casella comes a year after it snared Peter Lehmann Wines in the Barossa Valley in South Australia for $57 million as part of a plan to expand into higher-end wine brands, but retain the big-selling Yellow Tail commercial wine brand as the engine room of the operations.

How the Mast Brothers fooled the world into paying $10 a bar for crappy hipster chocolate

And you complain about restaurants charging for bread and butter - in China one's charging for "clean air"

China: Diners charged 'air cleaning fee' - A restaurant in eastern China has been caught charging customers an "air cleaning fee" on top of their food bills. Diners at the eatery in Zhangjiagang city, Jiangsu Province, were charged one yuan ($0.15; 10p) each to cover the cost of purifying the air inside

Ayahuasca related art is created by all kinds of people who have taken ayahuasca once or more.
This one is by Paulo Jales is a designer and artist from Brazil who shared his stunning artwork withe Ayahuasca website.
For more of his work, check out his website.

America Is Getting Its First Legal Ayahuasca Church - Fed up with the daily office grind and just need to get away from it all? You can go on the hunt for coffee beans in Ethiopia, get drunk in the temples of Japan, or, if you want something closer to home, you can visit a David Bowie-blasting bourbon distillery in Kentucky. But if you really want to expand your mind, you can visit the last frontier of human consciousness in Elbe, Washington. Peruvian spiritual retreat Ayahuasca Healings has recently been granted church status in the United States, which would make it the first legal and “public” ayahuasca church in America, according to founders, and the it has chosen a 160-acre chunk of land in Elbe as ground zero for spiritual healing. For those unfamiliar with ayahuasca tea, it’s a brewed Amazonian plant mixture which contains one of nature’s most potent hallucinogens. It can induce intense, life-changing visions, but also violent episodes of vomiting. Indigenous cultures have been using ayahuasca for centuries as a way of cleansing the psyche of underlying spiritual problems. Increasingly, in the disorder-fixated West, ayahuasca is being used increasingly to deal with psychological issues like depression, addiction, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

If 2015 Was a Dessert, It Would Probably Be an Ice Cream Blizzard

To Go Green, Bars Try To Reuse Their Booze

This Generation Of Teens Is Drinking And Driving Less

Vegetables Under Glass: Greenhouses Could Bring Us Better Winter Produce