Eat 'em and weep

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, food safety, research

Three stories about writing style:

Story 1: In one of his memoirs, prolific author Isaac Asimov writes of the article he wrote titled "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". It was a spoof, written for a purpose: he had been a published author of popular hard science fiction since he was 19, and he was wondering if he could write in the stodgy, hyper-objective style he would need to use for his doctoral dissertation in Chemistry at Columbia University. The article was as stodgy and hyper-objective as he could devise. He published it in Astounding, figuring that would be sufficient cover. His dissertation passed muster, but unbeknownst to him, his professors had read the article also. When they called him in to announce their (favorable) decision on his degree, the chair of his dissertation committee said, "Greetings, Dr. Asimov! Please tell us more about Thiotimoline."

Story 2: I worked a little more than two years as a machinist in the Physics shop at Cal Tech. We were building a precision radio telescope antenna; it was 34 feet across (10m), and had to be accurate within a few thousandths of an inch (100µ). During the final shaping of the parabola, the assembled dish was mounted on a rotating air bearing 8 feet across (2.4m). It spun slowly, as a specially constructed device cut into the aluminum honeycomb surface, a couple of mm per cut, as it was advanced up a specially-shaped track. Each cut took a full work day. I had to babysit it while the master machinists worked on other things, every day for a few weeks. Because machining uses hearing more than sight, I could move about the room, a huge space in which the mirror for the Palomar Telescope had been polished, which had later been half-filled with a synchrotron, a kind of atom-smasher. I found a cabinet filled with draft copies of PhD dissertations, based on research done using that synchrotron in the 1960's. This is all background: I have the kind of mind such that I can read, with some enjoyment, stodgy, hyper-objective dissertations, which is what I did for most of those few weeks.

Story 3: My brother had been a working artist, primarily a calligrapher and calligraphy instructor, for more than 20 years. The art market was slowly shrinking in the late 1990's, so he decided to return to school, get a Doctor's degree, and, he hoped, become a museum curator or professor. He first completed a Master's in Art History. However, he also was a published author, of nonfiction books, with a very readable writing style. Not having published his own "Thiotimoline" article, he had nothing he could use to convince a dissertation committee that he could write in a style appropriate to a history dissertation. So the History Department declined to admit him to a PhD program. One of them told him privately that the professors were embarrassed that their writing was so bad by comparison to his. Fortunately, a different department requested that he apply, and he was admitted. He received a PhD at age 50 and is now a professor.

I find in the book Did You Just Eat That: Two Scientists Explore Double-Dipping, the Five-Second Rule, and Other Food Myths in the Lab, two scientists who are moving in the other direction. Paul Dawson and Brian Sheldon studied various food myths with their students at Clemson University (Dr. Sheldon is now at N.C. State U). They studied myths about the 5-second rule, Beer Pong, restaurant menus, jet-air hand dryers, and several other things. Being professors, having written their own stodgy, hyper-objective dissertations, they are moving into the public arena. This is not unusual…but this book is unusual, in a good way.

This book is unique in my experience, being a mix of about 2/3 very refreshing text for the general reader, and 1/3 stodgy, hyper-objective reporting of their experiments. I have read many popular books in which the results of scientific experiments are discussed. This is the first such book in which every experiment is described in the kind of detail you'd find in a technical research report. The authors are kind enough to warn us about this in their Introduction, and to set off the stodgy stuff with "Science Stuff Ahead"; they give permission to skip these sections, to anyone who finds them too stultifying. Thus, for example, a few sentences from their chapter about the germs found on restaurant menus:

Swab-samplers (made by 3M Swabs, 3M Company) were used for menu sampling… The restaurant menus sampled fell into three general sizes of around 603, 768, and 1,207 cm². … Back in the laboratory, sample tubes containing the swab and sterile 0.1 percent peptone water were vigorously shaken by hand...

From the descriptions, and sufficient budget, and an army of willing students, you could reproduce each experiment exactly. That is why the writing is the way it is. Of course, I can read this stuff just fine, but most folks can't; the MEGO factor can be huge!

Let's cut to the chase. Is the 5-second rule true? ("If you pick up dropped food in less than five seconds it is still safe to eat.") Is it? How would you define "safe"? The outcome of the experiment, in which several kinds of food were dropped onto tile, wood, and carpet inoculated with a harmless variety of Salmonella, the most common cause of food poisoning, was that "safe" really just means "maybe a little bit safer". In general, if you can grab that grape in one second, it will have fewer bacteria on it than if it takes you 4 seconds, and if you wait, say, half a minute, there will be even more. But the number of bacteria transferred was never Zero. However, by this measure, carpet was "safer" than tile or wood. That is the opposite of what I'd have expected.

Consider this, though, based on other experiments: How many bacteria get on your food from your own hands? How thoroughly and carefully do you wash before handling food? Prior to washing, after almost any amount of daily activity, our hands are as dirty as the floor we are walking on, whether or not we wear shoes indoors.

Rather than be a spoiler about the results in this book, I will instead invoke a forensic principle, known for at least a century, as it applies to the transfer of germs (bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites) to and from our food and everything it touches: When two surfaces come into contact, material from each surface is transferred to the other. Numerous criminals have been convicted in part because, not only were their fingerprints found "at the scene", but, if they brushed against the wall, tiny flakes of paint from that wall got on their clothing.

To sum up, if anything touches food, we must assume it will contaminate the food unless steps were taken ahead of time to remove all contaminants. So, if you're going to enjoy Beer Pong, make sure you have really good medical insurance!