Ingredients

Zusatztext "In a slyly brilliant bait and switch, what is framed as a book about what we should eat becomes a thriller about the scientific method itself. . . . Mr. Zaidan argues persuasively [that] the disagreements between nutritional epidemiologists and other scientists on this subject show science working as it should: It's messy and imperfect, but the struggle is a struggle toward truth." The Wall Street Journal "If you crossed Bill Nye with Stephen Colbert, you'd get George Zaidan. Ingredients is a masterful piece of science writing." Daniel H. Pink, New York Times best-selling author of When and Drive I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that food is very important, and yet we are terrible at talking about it. Nutrition is a mess of marketing, classism, science, truth, guilt, confusion, and outright hucksterism. Ingredients lifts the film from our eyes with humor and reassurance. Hank Green, author of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing "At last, a book on nutrition that tries to make you understand how little we know instead of offering blanket prognostications. If instead of a simple solution, you want a guide to how to think about health, this is it." Zach and Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times best-selling authors of Soonish "If you are looking for a guide in understanding the everyday chemistry of our lives, you could not do better than George Zaidan. And his book, Ingredients , is everything that should lead you to expect: funny, edgy, fascinating, dismaying, reassuring, and overall, just incredibly smart." Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poison Squad "By all means, pick up George Zaidan's high-octane Ingredients if you want to know more about Cheetos, sunscreen, butter substitutes, and other fascinating bits of everyday chemistry. But above all, you should buy Ingredients because it teaches you how to think betterlike a smart, informed, and wickedly funny scientist." Sam Kean, author of The Disappearing Spoon and The Bastard Brigade "If you ever thought that chemistry might be really interesting (it is), but your eyes glazed over in high school chem class, this is the book for you. George Zaidan will keep you laughing out loud as he shares the wonders of our most useful, practical science, with brilliant analogies that even an eleven-year-old can understand." Daniel J. Levitin, author of Successful Aging and This Is Your Brain on Music "Omfg this book is FABULOUS! It's hilarious, insightful, sassy, and reassuring. A delightful roller-coaster of science communication." Kallie Moore, co-host of PBS's Eons "George Zaidan's mix of razor-sharp wit and pinpoint accuracy are rarer in science than a T. rex performing nuclear fusion. Ingredients has the answers to age-old questionshow many Oreos are too many Oreos?and many more you never thought to ask. Like an optometrist performing stand-up, Zaidan is eye-opening and hilarious." Daniel Stone, author of The Food Explorer "Everything in our lives is made of chemicals. But unfortunately very few of us are chemists. Ingredients is a road map for navigating the confusing polysyllabic world we find in product labels and in viral news stories. Zaidan's blend of humor and science will not only make you a better-informed consumer of all things chemical. Ingredients will also make you appreciate the chemistry that makes our world possible." Joe Hanson, creator/writer/host of It's Okay to Be Smart "Through incredibly weird and wonderful analogies (and delightfully nerdy wit), George helps you understand how scientists work toward the truth. I wish he'd rewrite a...

Autorentext

George Zaidan

Klappentext

* "When it comes to chemicals and our bodies, there are no simple answers. Thanks to George Zaidan, there are beautifully clear, elegant, accurate explanations. And they're funny.  Zaidan has accomplished something I would not have thought possible. He has written an entertaining book about chemistry.  Thank you, George, for this much-needed breakwater against the tide of misinformation that sloshes onto our screens."  
—Mary Roach, author of Stiff

• Cheese puffs. Coffee. Sunscreen. Vapes. George Zaidan reveals what will kill you, what won’t, and why—explained with high-octane hilarity, hysterical hijinks, and other things that don’t begin with the letter H. *INGREDIENTS offers the perspective of a chemist on the stuff we eat, drink, inhale, and smear on ourselves. Apart from the burning question of whether you should eat those Cheetos, Zaidan explores a range of topics. Here’s a helpful guide:
   
  Stuff in this* book:
• How bad is processed food? How sure are we?
• Is sunscreen safe? Should you use it?
• Is coffee good or bad for you?
• What’s your disease horoscope?
• What is that public pool smell made of?
• What happens when you overdose on fentanyl in the sun?
• What do cassava plants and Soviet spies have in common?

• When will you die?

  Stuff in other books:

• Your carbon footprint
• Food sustainability
• GMOs
• CEO pay
• Science funding
• Politics
• Football
• Baseball

• Any kind of ball, really
   
  Zaidan, an MIT-trained chemist who cohosted CNBC’s hit Make Me a Millionaire Inventor and wrote and voiced several TED-Ed viral videos, makes chemistry more fun than Hogwarts as he reveals exactly what science can (and can’t) tell us about the packaged ingredients sold to us every day. Sugar, spinach, formaldehyde, cyanide, the ingredients of life and death, and how we know if something is good or bad for us—as well as the genius of aphids and their butts—are all discussed in exquisite detail at breakneck speed.

  Leseprobe

PART I: Why Does This Stuff Even Exist?

"How to Do a Coffee Enema (Behind-the-Scenes in My Bathroom)" -Title of a YouTube video

Chapter One: Processed Food Is Bad for You, Right?

This chapter is about ingredient labels, diabetes, uninhabited islands, porn, and homemade Cheetos.

The road to hell sure isn't paved with butter anymore.

It's cobblestoned with Reese's, studded with Gushers, and sprinkled with Cheeto dust. Your chariot is made entirely from Snickers and Twix, with Oreo wheels, pulled by Haribo horses.
The road to hell is a bunch of industrial, unnatural chemicals made in unholy imitation of food, embalmed in a bright box, and marketed to within an inch of its life. Simply put: processed food is poison.

Right?

Well, it's clearly not a literal poison. Eating a Cheeto isn't going to immediately kill you unless it's laced with a gram or two of cyanide. But what if you eat two bags of Cheetos every day for thirty years? That's 21,915 bags-more than 1,300 pounds-of Cheetos. How would that change your risk of a heart attack, or cancer, or death? And how would we know Cheetos did the deed? You can't drag a Cheeto into Judge Judy's courtroom. And even if you could, you'd be unlikely to get a conviction without grainy CCTV video of that puffed piece of cheese-coated cornmeal taking a machete to the victim's heart. And you can forget about the other Cheetos in the bag incriminating their friend. Cheetos don't snitch.

Processed food legal proceedings notwithstanding, there must be answers to these questions out there somewhere. Processed foods either do or don't increase your risk of cancer. They either do or don't increase your risk of a heart attack. They either are or are not bad for you. If you're thinking: I already know they're bad for me, because when I eat them, I feel like crap, I hear ya. I'm all for listening to your body, and that's a valuable data point for your everyday life. But you could just be experiencing a nocebo effect, which is like the placebo effect for bad stuff: if you expect something to feel like crap…