Another way to cook eggs We’ve discussed one well-known way to cook eggs before. (Repeatedly!, In scientific detail!) As a quick guest post, I thought I’d mention a somewhat more exotic way to cook eggs – meringue. What’s a meringue? In its simplest form, a meringue is simply egg-whites with sugar, whipped into a foam and baked gently until it hardens. The end result can take a range of forms. It can be a squishy, wet foam like the top…
It’ll be a short one tonight, but since I’ve been discussing zombies and things that can go wrong with brains, how about a quick blogmas post on a fungal infection that turns ants into zombies? Trying to come up with a topic, it was suggested that I just do a short write-up about a “strange disease”. The strangest disease that came to mind is not one that infects humans, though. Fungal Infection of Carpenter Ants The disease that came to…
Kuru: The Rarest Infectious Disease in the World! Here’s another blogmas guest post for you all, with another reason to avoid eating brains if you’re not a zombie: a prion disease called “kuru“. Kuru was once listed in the “Guinness Book of World Records” as the rarest (transmissible) disease in the world. It was a type of brain disease. Another name for it is “laughing sickness” because one of its symptoms is sudden bursts of laughter from its victims. It…
Healthy Eating, Probiotics, and your Microbiota We’re still on the general subject of things you may not want to eat. The idea that what you eat has an effect on your health has been well known for centuries. Modern research has been probing this concept more deeply and has shown that it’s not just what you eat, but what happens to it afterwards. After the food you eat gets attacked by acids and digestive enzymes in your stomach, it moves…
Today’s topic is cholesterol by an invited author. | This is the short daily Merry Blogmas science post for December 20. CHOLESTEROL IN EGGS AND OTHER FOODS Since we’ve been discussing eggs, here’s another egg-related topic you’ve probably heard of. Cholesterol is a fatty substance that’s generally considered a problem: High amounts of it in the bloodstream are associated with potentially fatal heart disease. It also makes up a large part of gallstones. Paradoxically, cholesterol is absolutely vital to human life. It…