Adam Fields (weblog)

Our food labeling standards are completely out of whack.

As an example, let’s take “100% fruit juice”. I’m pretty sure that at some point, “100% fruit juice” meant that what you got in the bottle was, prior to being put in the bottle, a piece of fruit that was crushed and maybe filtered. I’m 100% sure that that’s what most people still expect when they buy something that’s labeled “100% fruit juice”.

Except that’s not what you get anymore. Now, it’s reconstituted from concentrates, mixed from different kinds of fruit juice concentrates (which may have vastly different nutritional profiles), and blended into whatever they like, but it’s still the healthy choice kids, because it’s 100% fruit juice!

Right off the labels:

—-
Kedem concord grape juice (which, incidentally, is among the sweetest of the grapes):

The label says “100% fruit juice”.

Ingredients: Grape Juice, Potassium Metabisulfite Added To Enhance Freshness.

It has 150 calories per 8oz.

—-
Welch’s grape juice:

The label says “100% grape juice”.

Ingredients: Grape Juice From Concentrate (Water, Grape Juice Concentrate), Grape Juice, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), No Artificial Flavors Or Colors Added.

It has 170 calories per 8 oz.

—-

They’re not using grapes that have 13% more sugar in them, they’re dickering with the proportions to make their juice sweeter.

This is just one particularly egregious example, but it’s all over the place - many “100% juices” are sweetened with cherry juice or other concentrates. It’s a complete sham. Even the Kedem is pushing it because it’s got preservatives, but at least the juice is actual juice. No way does that Welch’s bottle contain “100% juice”.

Our food labels don’t mean what they say anymore, they have very detailed technical specifications to go with them, and it’s impossible to know what they mean from common sense without understanding those specifications. This isn’t even about making dubious health claims - it’s about defining away the actual contents of the package.

Tags: grape juice, sham, 100% juice, welch’s, kedem

I happened to take my 6-month old to Target this weekend, and we bought him some socks. He was playing with the package and put them in his mouth, and managed to get the little hanger plastic piece out. There’s certainly enough to say about parental responsibility, and not letting the baby get into dangerous things, but until this little plastic piece disappeared (it turns out he dropped it on the floor), we didn’t even give a second thought to the idea that a pair of socks for a 6-12 month old might contain this kind of incredible choking hazard. I’m normally pretty paranoid about this. Didn’t these things used to go all the way across? Is this REALLY the place where Target wants to save a tenth of a cent of plastic? It seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Be careful out there…

Tags: circo, dangerous, choking, hazard, target

I used to get a Cadbury Creme Egg a year about the same time I had my annual McRib. Since I’ve realized over the course of the past few years that you’re only supposed to eat food, I didn’t know that Cadbury reduced the size of the Creme Egg this year. And then they lied about it! And they blamed it on the increasing size of their consumers (possibly from eating too many Creme Eggs)! And then they got busted on National TV! At least they could have had the dignity to release the “New Creme Egg”, and then release the “Creme Egg Classic” in the smaller form factor when people complained about the new formula.

http://consumerist.com/consumer/cadbury/cadbury-our-eggs-arent-smaller-you-are-bigger-250559.php

Tags: creme egg, stupid, smaller, insulting, lying, cadbury

http://www.diabetesmine.com/2007/04/an_open_letter_.html

Tags: apple, open letter, design, medical

Wow, the future is now!

The Italian expert has used the robot surgeon for at least 40 previous operations, some of which have been described in detail in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The novelty of this latest experience is that the robot was able to conduct the entire procedure by itself. In the past it needed specific orders from its operator along the way.

http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2006-05-18_1186367.html

Tags: robot surgery, future, heart surgery, arrhythmia, holy crap

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/05/how_to_make_tamiflu.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

Tags: tamiflu, pandemic, flu, avian flu, vaccine

Someone had fun with the Flash physics engine.

Warning: not porn, but does include bra-related breast physics.

http://www.shockabsorber.co.uk/bounceometer/shock.html

Tags: breasts, bras, bra, flash, physics, breast physics, bounce, shock absorber

Interesting tidbit from Snopes, via (Kottke).

Apparently, it’s about the same price to take a perpetual cruise as it is to live in a nursing home, and at least a few people have been doing this for years.

http://www.snopes.com/travel/trap/retire.asp

Tags: retirement, cruiseline, senior discount

Scientists at UC Irvine are planning to equip pigeons with small bird-sized backpacks containing pollution detectors, GPS, and wireless data access, so they can post realtime smog data to a blog.

The mind boggles.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18925376.000&feedId=online-news_rss20

Tags: pigeon, smog, blog

This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s a low-cost portable still for purifying water with a pretty ingenious design.

http://www.watercone.com/product.html

Tags: water, purification, plastic, potable

Conclusion: tinfoil hat makes it easier for the gummint to read your brain. It’s a conspiracy!

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

This is incredibly cool. A complete working ribosome has been described in a computer simulation.

Via Perry:

http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php?fuseaction=home.story&story_id=7372

Some VOIP and computer phones don’t support 911 dialing in a way that’s equal to the conventional phone system. In an emergency, you probably don’t want to accidentally grab the wrong phone and use it to dial 911.

I sell a set of stickers that you can cut out and stick on phones that don’t support 911:

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/prod.aspx?p=adamf.33930969

[Update: 50% of all profits from this will be donated to the EFF.]

http://www.backlesslingerie.com/index.html

Clever solution to a problem.

Put a contact in your phone that starts with ICE (In Case of Emergency). That way, if you’re ever incapacitated and someone finds your phone, they know which of the many entries to call.

This seems to be getting some press coverage, so I suppose there’s a chance before not too long that emergency responders will actually know to check.

Kottke asks:

As members of the human species, we’re used to dealing with the death of people we “know” in amounts in the low hundreds over the course of a lifetime. With higher life expectancies and the increased number of people known to each of us (particularly in the hypernetworked part of the world), how are we going to handle it when several thousand people we know die over the course of our lifetime?

http://www.kottke.org/05/06/death-in-the-celebrity-age

Interesting question. I think, like everything else, the lack of novelty will acclimate us to the experience and we’ll just get used to the fact that lots of people we know will come out of our lives as easily as they entered.

Via hackaday:

http://www.casualty-maps.com/

[Update: another map (not a Google map), this one with casualties plotted over time by country and location in Iraq: http://www.obleek.com/iraq/index.html]

Apparently, it’s just been discovered that buckyballs are water-soluble and antibacterial.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-05zzl.html

So, this is an article about how high-altitude mountain climbers have high instances of gastroenteritis because other climbers are shitting in the woods instead of disposing of it properly, and when it’s freezing cold, washing your hands with soap apparently isn’t a high priority.

But it goes on to say:

“Furthermore, fewer than half said they always washed their hands after defecating, with 16% admitting using rocks and snow instead of toilet paper. A shameful 11% confessed to pooping directly into the snow.”

Rocks?

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7492

“Men who view pornographic images of two men and a woman produce better-quality sperm than men viewing pornographic images of just women, an Australian study reveals.

The finding suggests that humans may be capable of subconsciously increasing semen quality when faced with the possibility that their sperm will have to outrun those of other men in a woman’s reproductive tract.”

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7487&feedId=online-news_rss20

This does not, however, explain hot girl-on-girl action.

Seems like pretty big news.

‘Only recently has it been discovered that the bacteria assembled in biofilms have a network of communication between them called “quorum sensing,” which controls their collective activity (or lack thereof). These sensing signals control the physiology and pathogenicity of the bacteria in the biofilms. A boron-based molecule that is produced by these bacteria, called auto inducer-2, controls the signals in this quorum sensing process.’

http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2005/06/a_novel_way_to.html

“Scientists have not only identified a critical gene involved in heroin addiction relapse, but they have also successfully blocked it, eliminating cravings for the drug.”

That’s huge.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7445

It sounds like it doesn’t block the effects of the drug, only the cravings. I wonder if that means that more people will be inclined to try heroin. Of course, that’s not a good reason not to do it.

“Researchers Pinpoint Brain’s Sarcasm Sensor”

http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2005/05/23/hscout525874.html

Underwear that moisturizes your skin while you wear it.

http://www.popgadget.net/2005/05/moisturizing-underwear.html

“The solution looks, smells and tastes like water, but carries an ion imbalance that makes short work of bacteria, viruses and even hard-to-kill spores.”

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67472,00.html?tw=rss.TOP

Apparently, there’s a way to centrifuge your own blood to concentrate its mystical healing powers, and this is illegal according to some sports.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7375&feedId=online-news_rss20

Via jwz:

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw111596760144B215

http://www.yulex.com/technology.html

But, you never know when this knowledge might come in handy later.

If, perchance, you need this at some point in the future, and it saves your ass, I expect you to take me out for dinner at Lugers.

http://www.trackertrail.com/survival/fire/cokeandchocolatebar/

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/04/25/mercury_pyramid/index.html

I love my Foodsaver - I use it all the time for sealing bulk items for storage, particularly meats for freezing.

They have a good guide to estimating portion sizes by comparison to real-world physical objects.

http://www.foodsaver.com/quicktips_portions1.ad2

I love my Foodsaver - I use it all the time for sealing bulk items for storage, particularly meats for freezing.

They have a good guide to estimating portion sizes by comparison to real-world physical objects.

http://www.foodsaver.com/quicktips_portions1.ad2

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/health/features/11700/index.html

Yick.

http://www.rent-a-dildo.com/howitworks.htm

(Given their rental model, I’d have gone with something like “NetPrix” instead of the name they chose.)

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7228

Interesting tips on bike riding safety and common accident types.

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:Z6XmI1hh4NAJ:www.hurlburt.af.mil/basewide/sentinels/docs/cars.doc+%22ten+ways%22+newsletter+filetype:doc&hl=en

(Update: Novitz points out this link, which is much better: http://bicyclesafe.com/)

Wow.

A study was was published this week in Nature that “suggests that plants, and perhaps other organisms including humans, might possess a back-up