/oss/taxonomy/term/1842/all en /oss/article/nutrition-general-science/king-fruits-needs-deodorant <p>“Your breath will smell as if you’d been French-kissing your dead grandmother.” Anthony Bourdain, chef, journalist, travel documentarian certainly had a way with words. Here he was describing the consequences of partaking of the flesh of the durian, known in Asia as “The King of Fruits.” The problem, as Bourdain discovered, is that the king needs a deodorant. I once had the pleasure of getting close up and personal with a durian, and never having French kissed a corpse of any sort, I would describe the fragrance as a blend of locker room aroma and car-squashed skunk.</p> Fri, 21 May 2021 19:37:16 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 8741 at /oss /oss/article/nutrition-general-science/its-egg-time <p>No, Paul Newman did not really eat fifty eggs in an hour in the 1967 film classic, Cool Hand Luke. But that would hardly be a challenge for Joey Chestnut, the world’s best-known competitive eater. Joey polished off 141 hard-boiled eggs in just eight minutes and holds the world record for this event. That is about 16 pounds of eggs and around 11,000 calories! His girth was visibly greater after the event but as far as his blood cholesterol goes, one can only guess that it spiked but since competitive eating has no rules about any kind of blood testing, one can only guess.</p> Fri, 02 Apr 2021 20:20:39 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 8677 at /oss /oss/article/did-you-know-health/theres-condition-can-cause-human-blood-turn-green <p>If you have clear blood you may be a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachiopod#Taxonomy">brachiopod</a>, if you have blue blood you may be an <a href="/oss/article/did-you-know/snails-spiders-and-octupi-all-have-blue-blood">octopus</a> (or just a rich human), but if you have green blood you may have sulfhemoglobinemia.</p> Fri, 22 Nov 2019 15:00:00 +0000 Ada McVean B.Sc. 8000 at /oss /oss/article/technology-history/most-important-industrial-chemical-worldand-lesson-learned <p><span>The thick liquid used to be called "oil of vitriol," since it was originally made by the distillation of "green vitriol," or iron sulfate as we know it today.  It was so corrosive and nasty that the term "vitriolic" entered our vocabulary to describe language that was particularly disagreeable.</span></p> Tue, 03 Jul 2018 21:35:40 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 7156 at /oss