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Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What…
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Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us (edição: 2020)

de George Zaidan (Autor)

MembrosResenhasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaConversas
993272,391 (3.63)Nenhum(a)
"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 that Cheeto, Zaidan explores a range of topics"--… (mais)
Membro:davesmind
Título:Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us
Autores:George Zaidan (Autor)
Informação:Dutton (2020), 320 pages
Coleções:Sua biblioteca
Avaliação:****
Etiquetas:read in 2020, health, chemistry, food

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Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us de George Zaidan

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The cover art alone clued me in that George Zaidan's book Ingredients would be an entertaining approach to science.

I must confess, I did not do well in high school chemistry. The class met at 2 pm in the afternoon; the classroom was too warm, the subject too dry, and I was not the only student who dozed off. Mr. Heald would kick the metal trash can to wake us up.

Zaidan is a 'science communicator' who understands people like me and knows how to make chemistry understandable. He draws pictures and diagrams and talks us through. He is our personal decoder, translating the language of scientific research into English "as accurately and entertainingly as possible."

In the Preface, Zaidan admits that his readings surprised him.

Facts are shifty things. Because science, we learn, is not exact. There are so many ways to set up and twist results, so many variables, that we can't trust all the trial results that we read about.

You know the ones I am talking about. Wait five minutes and you will hear a study from Podunk U that reverses yesterday's study from Wossamotta U.

Caffeine is good for you, caffeine is bad for you. Eggs are good sources of nutrition, eggs are bad for your heart. Butter is bad for you, butter is better than margarine, olive oil is better than anything and its used in the Mediterranean Diet which will extend your life.

Life's big questions are the center of Zaidan's quest for knowledge:

How much life does every additional Cheeto suck from your body?
Are e-cigarettes really a healthier choice?
Is coffee the elixir of life of blood of the devil?
Does chlorine create that public pool smell?
Does sunscreen absorb photons like Whitney Houston's bodyguard absorbs bullets in The Bodyguard?
Should we pay attention to newspaper headlines about food and health
How can I add three years to my life expectancy
Does prayer reduce the risk of death?

His conclusions are not as conclusive as we would like. The biggies are still there: Don't smoke. Be active. Eat reasonably well.

I appreciated how Zaidan broke down the way tests and studies are carried out. It was the most interesting aspect of the book for me.

I was given a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. ( )
  nancyadair | Apr 13, 2020 |
Ingredients is misleading. You could be forgiven for thinking it is a book about what goes into our food, about how chemicals interact with each other and our organs, or comparing the damage done by alternating, well, ingredients. It is none of those.

George Zaidan has instead written a book about data. The ingredients he’s writing about are the data that go into and come out of scientific studies of consumption. From every conceivable angle, he shows that scientific studies are faulty and can be legitimately criticized. Garbage in, garbage out. That decisions should not be made on the basis of a single study. That fraud, incompetence, forgetfulness, bad math, preconceived notions and garden-variety malice can all play significant roles in the outcomes cited in scientific studies.

As such, the book is a terrific educational tool, thickening the skin of readers who like to peruse and believe the health, fitness and food pages on the internet. Forewarned is forearmed. He shows that coffee alone has been the subject of endless thousands of studies, which have claimed to show cause and effect with the full range of health, from glowing to early death. If you like chemical bond drawings of compounds and dissecting full studies — and not just the topline summaries you get in internet news — this is a helpful introduction.

Except it’s weird too. Zaidan loves swear words. He seems to prefer them to scientific words. For example, he has two words for feces: poop and s-it. They make an odd couple, especially in the context of scientific studies. It might be the new level of presidential language, but it still stops the eye in a science book. He also likes dropping pop cultural references into explanations, which cuts down the number of readers who can understand what he’s writing.

So while it might be valuable for those who are serious about their food science, it seems to be written for 16 year-olds, who pay no mind to the process of making Cheetos (a favorite reference throughout the book. It is also the cover image). But then, there’s lots of humor, too. Often just corny. He likes making absurd juxtapositions to show that no one would ever think such a thing. He also enjoys making up absurd titles to fictitious studies. So I’m not really sure who the audience is for Ingredients.

There is no question Zaidan did the research. He did. He says he read north of a thousand papers to put the book together. He interviewed famous names like Willett and Ioannidis. And Zaidan himself has a track record in the field. He also spends a lot of time explaining how much of an old-style nerd he is personally. So it’s not a slapdash effort. It’s just garishly overdecorated.

There are precious few non-data takeaways in the book. The only one I can remember now was that indoor swimming pool smell (It gets its own chapter, disconnected from everything) is not just chlorine in water. That doesn’t smell like a swimming pool. No, only human excretions mixed with chlorine and water produce that smell. That’s why they insist on chlorine to begin with. That you smell it means people have not been totally — considerate.

There is also a non-food chapter wrapped around sunscreen creams. It doesn’t seem to break any new ground though. Sunscreen works, but only what it’s meant to do, not what sunworshippers think it does.

The conclusion from all this is that highly processed foods might do you no good, but science has not achieved the exalted level of proving they will kill you, either. Oh, maybe shorten your life a year or so, but nothing to get hung up on. A toast to Cheetos, then.

David Wineberg ( )
  DavidWineberg | Mar 23, 2020 |
Zaidan answers questions, I'm sure, of which many if us wonder. Explains the science, chemistry behind them and where the fault lays with different stories. Subjects include, pre-processed food, is vaping betters than cigarettes, does sun screen actually work, and is coffee good or bad? Many other common things as well. He does so in a witty manner, using graphs, data collected and the pot hole theory if measurement.

Parts of this were very interesting, though I thought at times he over explained. I have to admit chemistry is not my forte, in fact it is one of my weakest subjects. Of course, it didn't help that my teacher was an elderly gentleman, who spoke in s monotone. I can definitely see where statisticians and budding chemists will understand much more of this than I. I did get answers though and loved seeing the molecule dance steps.

ARC from Netgalley. ( )
  Beamis12 | Mar 9, 2020 |
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"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 that Cheeto, Zaidan explores a range of topics"--

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