Whether you're a chef, stay-at-home mom, or food euthanasiast, how food is handled and prepared is extremely important to preventing foodborne infections and food intoxications. As evident with how the coronavirus spread over to humans, millions of people suffer the symptoms of foodborne illnesses when an outbreak occurs. According to the CDC, millions of people are infected with foodborne illnesses every year. Most can be prevented by storing and cooking foods at their proper temperatures and preparing them under sanitary conditions. Here's a brief rundown on how to detect and avoid tainted food items.

These Foods...	Are Risky When:
Fresh poultry	stored raw in the refrigerator for longer than 1-2 days, (3-4 days for cooked poultry)  left unrefr

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The photo shown below was taken at a market in Shanghai, China.

Can you guess what they are?


Water caltrops (Trapa natans) are the seeds of a floating annual aquatic plant that's native to warm temperate parts of Eurasia and Africa. The plant grows in slow-moving water up to 5 m deep, and bear an ornately shaped fruit that resembles the head of a bull or the silhouette of a flying bat. Each fruit contains a single very large, starchy seed. T. natans and T. bicornis have been cultivated in China and the Indian subcontinent for at least 3,000 years for the edible seeds that are used in pastries, served steamed or boiled from street vendors, and even as a remedy for inebriation.

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Here's what happens when you pour 1 984°F/1 085°C molten copper on a Big Mac. This demonstration has nothing to do with the fact that McDonald's uses preservatives in its ingredients. This is simply a demonstration of the Leidenfrost effect - a scientific principle explaining the phenomena that occurs when a liquid comes in near contact with a solid that is significantly hotter than its boiling point; the surface of the liquid comes to a nearly immediate boil, and creates a thin layer of protective steam. It's much the same effect as when one drops water onto a hot pan and the droplet is seen to dance across the surface. In this instance, the inherent moisture in the burger protects it for a few moments before the copper (at nearly 2 000 d ...

You've probably heard the saying 'don't eat yellow snow', for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, you shouldn’t eat any snow. Snow has been found to act as a rather effective sink for tiny particles that are found primarily in car exhaust fumes, so any consumption of it is effectively like eating a pollution-flavored Popsicle.

Researchers of this study found that from just one hour of exposure, the levels of pollutants within the snow increased dramatically, with toxic particles becoming trapped within the small ice particles or dissolved within pockets of meltwater. This means that snow is a particularly effective “sink” for car exhaust pollution.

Sour ...

Someone who greatly enjoys sweet foods is said to have a "sweet tooth." Experimental evidence now shows us that eating sweets forms memories that may control eating habits. In other words, people may enjoy eating sweets because the taste is correlated with positive memories.

The findings, published online in the journal Hippocampus, show that neurons in the dorsal hippocampus, the part of the brain that is critical for episodic memory, are activated by consuming sweets. Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events experienced at a particular time and place.

In the study, a meal consisting of a sweetened solution, either sucrose or saccharin, significantly increased the expression of the synaptic plasticity marker called activity ...

Most foods today are fortified with essential oils like omega-3 fatty acids. Naturally, these oils are found in fish, and are known to benefit many parts of the body, including the eyes, brain, heart, and joints. So, are these so-called beneficial oils important for people who lack the DNA profile needed to metabolise them?

It turns out that the extra omega-3 might not do much good at all. According to a study published in Science, Inuit people living in Greenland whose traditional diet of fish and marine mammals have the right enzymes in their bodies needed to metabolise these foods that are very high fat content.

The researchers reported that their DNA that was most different was on chromosome 11, specifically among genes that control the ...

...And so do a lot of other things!