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What If We Were Able To Graze on Grass Like Cows?

20 Jun 2025

On a future field trip to Mount Royal, I imagine opening up my lunch box to find a small forest of fried insects flavoured with MSG and curry powder. On the side are some salmon rice balls. Noting...

An Ode to Yogurt

18 Jun 2025

Many years ago, when I first started teaching about the chemistry of food, yogurt was only granted a few minutes of lecture time. It appeared as one of the first processed foods, albeit...

Butyric Acid is an Enemy in the Fridge but a Friend in the Gut

7 May 2025

Smells are caused by volatile compounds that stimulate receptors in our nose. There is a large variety of such compounds with a great diversity of molecular structures. But many of the smells...

Are Your Refrigerator Habits Inviting Unwanted Bacteria

2 Aug 2024

As a kid I grew up being told that I had to let food cool down before putting it in the fridge. I was under the notion that placing warm food directly in the refrigerator could cause the other...

The Blood Microbiome Is Probably Not Real

28 Jun 2024

Up until recently, if bacteria were detected in your blood you would be in a world of trouble. Blood was long considered to be sterile, meaning free of viable microorganisms like bacteria. When...

Fighting Fire with Fire: how a Nobel Prize Winning Scientists Used Malaria to 鈥楥ure鈥 Syphilis

22 Sep 2023

The history of science is full of disproved experiments, revised textbooks, and rewritten hypotheses. Even Nobel prize-winning research, which is often viewed as the best work science has to offer,...

Does peeing after sex prevent UTIs?

11 Aug 2023

This article was first published in The Skeptical Inquirer.

The Microbiome and Its Myth-Making Machine

11 Aug 2023

As promising new discoveries are made in the health sciences, the telephone game begins. Scientists put their best foot forward when presenting their results. The public relations department at...

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