Category: fun things

Today is Read in the Bathtub Day, which is to say Saturday. Don’t most of us read in the bathtub at least once a week? Well, I’ll put it this way: normal, sane people read in the bathtub regularly, and by that metric at least, I am both normal and sane. (Pauses to reflect on the implications…) Now, I’ve been reading in the bathtub pretty much since I was old enough to read, and over years of intensive practice, I’ve developed the skill of, you know, not getting the book wet. But if you lack such a skill, if (like me) you prefer to read ebooks, or both, there’s a great solution. The latest Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is waterproof and prices now start at just $99.99. Now run a nice hot bath and get reading!

Image credit: Book Catalog [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

The longest castle in the world

On my first visit to the Louvre, I was astounded by the amount of stuff there was to see—everything from da Vinci to Dührer to ancient Egyptian papyri. The collection is simply huge—the museum displays around 29,000 works of art in its endless halls. If you were able to stand in front of every object in the museum for only twenty seconds it would still take a full week, day and night. Not surprisingly, the “container” for all this stuff—the former Louvre palace—is gigantic as well. From its origin as a fortress during the reign of Philippe Auguste in 1190, to its present state today, successive governments and royal regimes have modified and beautified and expanded it along the length of the Seine into what it is now: a very large frame for the Mona Lisa.

After walking what seemed like miles past more Madonnas and children than I ever hoped to see, I had to keep reminding myself that there is a castle in Europe that is even longer than the Louvre. At age 16, I visited this castle while I was at a summer language camp in Bavaria. On one of our field trips, we went to Burghausen castle, 68 miles (110km) east of Munich, and 31 miles (50km) north of Salzburg. At the time, being a naive North American kid, castles and centuries-old European culture were still a novelty, and Burghausen made a huge impression on me. Heavy rain could not dampen my delight in visiting this imposing fortress, even though for my European friends it was just another castle. I was particularly wowed by its history, its size, and the fact that Napoleon had once stayed there.

The Long and the Short

Burghausen may not have the high profile of the Louvre, or even of other Bavarian castles (Neuschwanstein springs to mind), but it does have a long and complex history. It was built on a ridge overlooking the Salzach river, in an area that was once the site of a Celtic settlement (around 100 BCE), and was then occupied by the Romans before becoming a power center for various Bavarian aristocratic dynasties. The longest-lived of these dynasties, the Dukes of the Wittelsbach family, ruled Bavaria from 1180 until 1918 CE. During their reign, the castle was built up in stages (as was the Louvre), beginning in 1255 and continuing until around 1480–1490. In its finished state, the castle had six linked courtyards, and ran for over a kilometer along the ridge, making it the longest castle in the world.

In more recent history, Napoleon made use of Burghausen’s strategic position on the banks of the Salzach during his campaign against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From April 28 to May 2, 1809, the one-time Emperor of France quartered his 100,000 troops and their horses in the area while a pontoon bridge was built to replace the one destroyed by the Austrian troops across the river. Despite the inconvenience of having tens of thousands of soldiers hanging around the town, this visit put Burghausen on the map for a time, and its local newspaper proudly declared: “We are the center of Europe: Napoleon stayed inside our walls.”

Modern Burghausen

Besides its fascinating history, Burghausen is a wonderful place to visit for its modern incarnation as well. The Altstadt (“old town”) at the base of the fortress is extremely charming, filled with colorful row houses along the river, and narrow pedestrian-only streets replete with cozy shops. Every March the town hosts International Jazz Week, featuring world-class jazz musicians, and in July it celebrates a festival recreating 16th century life in the town and castle.

Another interesting aspect of Burghausen is its location right on the border with Austria. When I visited, I found it fascinating that I could to travel to another country by simply walking across a bridge from the town center over the Salzach river into Austria. It was a much shorter walk than a stroll through even one of the galleries of the Louvre.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on June 21, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on November 6, 2004.

Image credit: Pixabay

Every year, the second Friday in February is International Winter Bike to Work Day. Cycling on snow and ice is, of course, a wee bit more treacherous than on dry roads, but it can be done—and many people do it. If you commute by bike only in the summer, today’s the perfect day to challenge yourself and find the best way to bike in winter, too (assuming the temperature is somewhere north of –40°). Of course, here in San Diego, commuting by bike is a year-round activity since there’s never any snow or ice…and for those of us who work at home the whole notion of commuting is moot anyway. But I’ll cheer on the rest of you!

Image credit: Bike Calgary [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr

The Plastic Age

In the autumn of 2000 I went on honeymoon to Somerset—a beautiful rural region in the south-west of Britain. Unfortunately, our trip coincided with widespread fuel blockades, and many petrol stations had run dry. We had enough fuel to drive to Somerset, and enough to get back, but very little to spare for travelling around during our stay. This didn’t bother us too much (we were planning to do a lot of walking anyway), but when the weather was bad it presented a bit of a challenge. On one particularly drizzly day, we found a flyer for the Bakelite Museum. I think that the unspoken thought in both of our minds was, “It will probably be a bit boring, but at least it will be dry.” As it turned out, we were utterly wrong about the appeal of Bakelite: it’s fascinating stuff.

Great Balls of Fire

Around the turn of the 19th century, some plastics were already in use. Early plastics were not wholly synthetic, even though that’s how we think of plastics today. Instead, they were formed from a mixture of synthetic and organic compounds. The realisation that natural materials like ivory, horn, and tortoiseshell were becoming scarce because of over-exploitation prompted chemists to search for synthetic alternatives. Cellulose nitrate (more commonly known as celluloid) was the first commercially successful product, and was developed by the British inventor Alexander Parkes. Produced by reacting cellulose (the organic part derived from plant cell walls) with nitric acid (the synthetic component), celluloid was a very adaptable material. It was thermoplastic, meaning that it could be moulded into almost any shape with the application of heat and pressure. It could also be coloured with dyes and pigments so that the products did not need to be painted, and had a tough, durable finish. Celluloid was soon being used to replace ivory in objects like billiard balls, but there was one big drawback; celluloid is highly flammable and sometimes explosive. An enthusiastic break in billiards sometimes resulted in exploding balls—something that in my opinion would considerably improve its appeal as a spectator sport today. Early celluloid cinematographic film also had the tendency to burst into flames, burning down cinemas and causing problems even today for the conservation of early films. This also meant that celluloid was useless as an electrical insulator, something that was becoming increasingly sought after as the early electrical industries flourished.

The compound used for electrical insulation at the time was shellac. This was a lacquer manufactured from the resin secreted by a small south-east Asian insect, Laccifer lacca. It was a labour-intensive and expensive process, requiring around 300,000 insects to produce 1 kg (about 2.2 lb) of shellac. With the new electrical industries booming, supply was not keeping up with demand. Chemists around the world began to see that anyone who developed a synthetic substitute for shellac would become very rich.

Promising Goo

Leo Baekeland (1863–1944) was a Belgian inventor who emigrated to the United States in 1889. He had developed (pardon the pun) a photographic paper called Velox which could be exposed using artificial light rather than sunlight, giving photographers much greater control over the process. He sold the full rights to Velox to George Eastman of the Kodak corporation in 1899 for a staggering US$1 million, and used the money to set up a laboratory in Yonkers, New York. There, he worked on the “synthetic shellac” problem. He had an idea that the reaction between phenol (derived from coal tar) and formaldehyde might be promising. The German chemist Adolf von Baeyer had already noted that such reactions resulted in a sticky substance that he dismissively called Schmiere (“goo”). Von Baeyer’s interest was in dyes rather than insulators (he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1905 for his synthesis of indigo), but Baekeland saw the potential of the “goo.” He experimented with different combinations of the raw products subjected to heat and pressure in an iron pressure cooker he invented called a ‘bakelizer,’ and finally found the magic combination in 1907.

The Magic Plastic Bullet

Bakelite turned out to be extraordinarily versatile. It was a thermosetting plastic, which meant that once heat and pressure had been applied to mould the material into a particular form, it could not be reversed. It would not burn or melt (which made it a great insulator), nor could it be readily dissolved with the common solvents or acids of the time. If ‘fillers’ like fine sawdust or other fibres were mixed in before the mixture was set, the resulting Bakelite could be as strong as wood or even steel. It could be moulded or carved into almost any shape. Early Bakelite made with phenol tended to be dark brown or black, but a later process combining urea and formaldehyde produced a colourless resin which could be dyed with bright colours. The colourful age of plastics had begun.

The Age of Design

Bakelite enabled a new era of mass production. The moulding process meant that—while the initial investment in making the mould was very high—each item produced in the mould could be made relatively cheaply. The maximum return on the investment could be gained by producing as many items from the same mould as possible. At the same time, design became an important element in the marketing of products. The products were cheaper and the appearance of an item became as important in convincing customers to part with their money as its function. The Art Deco style of the 1920s and 1930s, with its sweeping curves and bold, geometric designs, was perfect for Bakelite. Almost anything that you can imagine being made of plastic today would have been available in Bakelite, but radios, telephones, clocks, jewellery, kitchen utensils, cameras, combs, and brushes were particularly popular. The new, colourful, glossy materials developed in symbiosis with the Art Deco style to form a confidently modern style, quite different from anything that had been seen before.

Bakelite was eventually superseded by newer plastics which were less brittle and cheaper to produce, but you can still find Bakelite items in many places today. Wandering around the Bakelite Museum was like seeing the distilled essence of five decades. The museum was packed with household objects of every kind from Bakelite condiment sets to an extraordinary Bakelite coffin, and I kept recognising things from my grandmother’s house. In particular, a set of fluted egg cups in 1950s pastel colours took me right back to having breakfast at my grandmother’s when I visited for the weekend as a child. All that nostalgia from something that starts off as sticky goo.

Editor’s note: As of early 2019, the Bakelite Museum is temporarily closed for relocation.

Guest author Jackie Chappell is a biologist at the University of Birmingham (UK).

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on May 2, 2005.

Image credit: Pixabay

The periodic table of elements has undergone numerous expansions and revisions over the years. Today, we celebrate the day in 1863 when J.A.R. Newlands published an early version of the table, featuring 56 elements in 11 groups based on what he called the “Law of Octaves.” We’re now up to 118 elements, and although there are various versions of the table in circulation, they’re all ways to group elements by shared characteristics, and they make the study of chemistry a great deal easier than a simple list would. I’ll award 5 bonus points to the first person who memorizes the entire table today and can reproduce it from memory.

Image credit: Dmarcus100 [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons

Breaking the ice rules

When I travel, I usually make a conscious effort to avoid having specific expectations. I plan out an itinerary, but I try to maintain a sense of equanimity about the experiences ahead. I like to be surprised—and I like to be able to experience new things in my own way, on my own terms. This sort of attitude has not only saved me some disappointment, it’s also helped me to approach fairly commonplace sights and events with a sense of wonder and delight. As a result—and frankly, without much effort—I found myself feeling neutral, perhaps even a bit blasé, about the prospect of visiting a glacier in Patagonia when we went there back in 2004. I’ve seen ice; what could this be other than a great quantity of it? I expected to be cold, so I packed appropriate clothing. I expected scenic vistas, so I packed my camera. And that was about as far as I thought about it.

Size Matters

The trip to the Perito Moreno glacier took us more than an hour by bus from the town of El Calafate, Argentina. When we rounded a corner on a mountain road and I got my first glimpse of the glacier, I thought, “Wow. That’s really big.” Later, from a much different angle, I realized what a tiny slice of one corner of one end of this glacier I’d seen earlier, and I was overwhelmed at the scale of what I was seeing. As glaciers go, I am told, this is not even one of the larger ones. Yowza. Even though I took dozens of pictures, including some panoramic shots, there is simply no way to capture how big this thing looks in person. No wide-angle lens could do it justice, because it’s not only impossibly wide but tall and long as well. Short of climbing a mountain or flying high overhead, you can’t take in the whole thing at once. So, yes: a lot of ice…but that doesn’t begin to tell the story.

We took a boat across the lake into which the glacier drains, then hiked along the shore to a point near the face of the glacier. There, we were outfitted with crampons for a 90-minute hike on the glacier itself. After about five minutes of climbing on the steep ice, our guides mentioned that it would become much more strenuous from here on, and two members of our group decided to turn back. The rest of us got a good workout, some extraordinary views, and a few surprises.

Like all glaciers, this one begins high in the mountains—in this case, the Andes, which separate Argentina from Chile. At the source, snowfall is nearly constant, and the weight of all this snow compresses the lower layers into virtually solid ice. As the snowfall continues, gravity pushes the thick mass of ice outward—downhill in this case. So a glacier is basically the same as a river, except that the water is frozen. This river moves quite slowly—about one meter per day—from its source roughly 30km (19 miles) away. As it descends, it encounters higher air temperatures and begins to melt. Some glaciers melt into the ocean; this one melts into a lake. The end of the glacier is a sheer wall of ice about 5km (3 miles) long and standing 60m (200 feet) above the water’s surface. When pieces fall off—a process known as calving—they make a tremendous roar and splash.

Stand and Deliver

The Perito Moreno glacier also has several unique features. For one thing, it is, at the moment (according to some experts, at least) the only glacier in the world in a state of equilibrium—neither advancing nor retreating. Retreating is the norm, due to global warming—numerous glaciers have disappeared in recent decades, and many others are shrinking rapidly. The Perito Moreno glacier, however, advances at the same rate ice breaks off, and has done so for many years.

Another unusual characteristic is that this glacier empties into a lake right at the point where two branches connect through a fairly narrow channel. From time to time, the glacier’s face reaches all the way to the outcropping of land on the other side of the channel—sealing it off to create, in effect, two separate lakes. As the glacier continues to melt, the water level in one of the lakes rises at a faster rate than the other, causing significant flooding. Eventually, the warm water melts enough of the ice that an underwater tunnel forms between the lakes; as the tunnel expands, the water levels equalize. Before long, the tunnel becomes more of an underpass for a giant ice bridge; when this inevitably collapses, it’s a spectacular sight. (The last such collapse occurred on March 13, 2018, and the previous several were in 2016, 2012, 2008, 2006, and 2004.) The glacier then advances to block the channel again, and when we visited in December 2004, a small tunnel had recently formed and the water from the higher lake was still rushing into the lower one.

It’s a Floor That’s Also a Dessert

Hiking on a glacier is like hiking on a giant snow cone—the surface is rough, and gloves are mandatory, as you could seriously lacerate your hand if you fell. Although we were not hiking close to the face of the glacier, our guides were careful to point out that the structure was not reliably stable. We had to steer clear of numerous fissures and holes, some of them filled with water and shining with a beautiful but eerie blue glow. We noticed a thin layer of dark sediment on the ice; the guide said this was sand and dust carried by the wind, and that the water itself was the purest you’d find anywhere. This made sense; after all, the ice came from snow that fell many years ago and would not have contained any airborne pollutants—and the ice would have been an inhospitable environment for most microorganisms. “You can drink it,” the guide said. We exchanged puzzled looks at the notion that we could actually drink the glacier on which we were currently standing. I took off my gloves and tried a few sips—incredibly delicious. They should bottle this stuff, eh? Then I noticed that the picture on the bottle of water in my hand looked suspiciously like the mountains directly in front of us. Ah.

Just before we went around the last wall of ice on our way off the glacier, the guide said there was a special treat waiting for us. They’d set up a little table on the ice with complimentary glasses of Scotch for everyone—on the rocks, of course. Yes, those rocks. We didn’t even mind the blatant product placement—it was a delightful treat. We left tired, sweaty, sunburned, and satisfied. And to think: all I had been expecting was a lot of ice!

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on February 21, 2005.

I like to think we run a tight ship here at Interesting Thing of the Day. We have a master spreadsheet of national/international/world/galactic whatever days (some official, most not), carefully compiled by our staff using a proprietary method that sometimes involves up to a full minute of casual web searching per day. So when the spreadsheet says National Frozen Yogurt Day is on February 6, well, that’s what we put on the site. Except…I could have sworn we already celebrated it back on (checks notes) yep, June 3 of last year. We reasonably jumped to the conclusion that this celebration was supposed to happen in June because said date appeared on a bunch of different calendar sites. However, as further research has shown, the evidence weighs more strongly in favor of today, given that such authoritative sources as the International Frozen Yogurt Association, Yogurtland, and TCBY all say it is. And because lots of FroYo shops are giving out free or discounted frozen yogurt today.

All of which means we are inadvertently responsible for eating—and encouraging the rest of you to eat—frozen yogurt on a day that was not appropriately sanctioned.

Well, I feel just terrible about that, as you can imagine. How will I ever deal with the guilt and shame? Well, I’ll tell you how: I’m going to drown my sorrows in a big ‘ol bowl of frozen dairy product with lots of toppings. I might even have to add an extra cherry in penance.

And, fair warning: this isn’t the last time you’ll read about an ambiguous “holiday” date here—indeed, it’s not even the last time you’ll read about it this month. I just hope there’s enough frozen yogurt to get us through all this uncertainty.

Image credit: Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt [CC BY-SA 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

Siestas revisited

I recall being unenthusiastic about taking naps as a child, much to the consternation of my parents. Fortunately, as with so many other childhood dislikes, that attitude disappeared as I got older. By the time I was in college, I had realized naps were among the most wonderful things in life, right up there with chocolate and computers. I love a good nap.

As much as I enjoy napping, though, it’s easier said than done. For a number of years, my job involved sitting behind a desk in an office all day, and my employers would have frowned upon my spending any portion of the workday asleep. And so I conquered the early-afternoon sleepies with caffeine instead. These days, it’s my kids’ school schedules more than anything else that interfere with a good afternoon nap. But I always felt that countries where siestas were common had it right: people tend to get drowsy soon after lunch, and when they’re drowsy, they’re less effective at their jobs. If, instead of suppressing the urge to sleep, we give the body what it wants, we end up being more alert and more productive.

So I’ve been delighted in recent years to notice that this message is finally getting through to businesses in industrialized countries. All it took was a change in terminology. No longer do we take catnaps; instead, we take power naps. Unlike “dozing off,” which is presumably involuntary and thus a sign of laziness, power napping is deliberate and thus a sign of responsibility. People take power naps to enable them to get more work done and endure longer work hours, things employers tend to like. Although I’m not a fan of long workdays either, I’d certainly rather work long hours with a nap than without.

Nap Time

The term “power nap” was coined by James Maas, a psychology professor at Cornell University. In his 1997 book Power Sleep, Maas made the case for napping as a legitimate tool for enlightened businesspeople, parents, and anyone else with a busy schedule. Numerous studies in recent years have shown that napping can be amazingly effective in improving alertness, memory, and overall cognitive performance, not to mention one’s mood.

However, opinions among sleep researchers differ when it comes to the ideal length for a power nap. Twenty minutes or so seems to be a popular length—it’s long enough to be demonstrably effective without allowing you to fall into deep, REM sleep, from which it can be harder to awaken. On the other hand, some studies suggest that an hour-long nap, including a REM phase, may be much more effective, proportionally speaking, than a half-hour nap. But if you awaken during a particularly deep part of the sleep cycle, the nap can have the opposite of the desired effect, making you feel groggy for hours afterward. And if your nap is too long, it can also prevent you from sleeping properly at night. The solution is to experiment and find the nap length that works best for you. Ideally you’d time yourself so that you wake up at the end of a natural sleep cycle, but because most of us can’t precisely control the moment at which we fall asleep, this is tricky to do without the use of expensive monitoring equipment. (Personally, I’d find a 20-minute nap break almost useless, because it often takes me nearly that long to fall asleep in the first place.)

Power napping can help to overcome sleep debt, making it feasible for some people to sleep fewer hours at night than they normally would. However, experts warn that napping shouldn’t be considered a substitute for a solid night’s sleep. While any given person may need more or less than the 8 hours dictated by conventional wisdom, even power naps can’t keep a person healthy and sane with only a few hours’ sleep per night. (Polyphasic sleep may be a way around this constraint, but it relies crucially on several carefully spaced naps during the day!)

Putting the Power in Power Naps

Nothing could be more natural than sleeping, but judging by the numerous power-napping gadgets that have appeared on the market, you shouldn’t try this without technological assistance. You might start with recordings of soft music and soothing voices guiding you into, and out of, your nap. Or, move up to audio with embedded binaural beats, which help to coax your brain into quickly achieving a restful state. You can buy apps that create audio sleep sessions on your smartphone or tablet. And if your office chair isn’t comfy or private enough for a nap, you may be able to find a nearby MetroNaps EnergyPod—a sort of lounge chair with a large bubble over the head to reduce outside noise and light. Slip into the chair, put on the noise-cancelling headphones with soft music playing, and you’re all ready for a 20-minute power nap. Of course, this nap will cost you more than lunch, but just think how much more money you’ll make with a clear head.

As for me, when I decide to rest in the afternoon, it usually turns out to be a literal catnap. That is to say, as soon as I lie down on the couch, my cat cuddles up with me. After licking my neck for a few minutes, she’ll fall asleep, and shortly thereafter, so do I. When she’s decided I’ve slept long enough, she starts meowing. It’s an admittedly low-tech approach, and the cat’s snooze alarm feature is unreliable. But there’s just nothing like a power catnap to improve my energy level and my spirits.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on November 1, 2006.

Image credit: foam [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr

At one company I worked for, I took it upon myself to bring in bagels and cream cheese for the other employees every Friday. It just seemed like the right thing to do. One day I brought in a jar of Nutella, as an option for people who wanted something different on their bagels. This seemed to me to be an uncontroversial move, and indeed I assumed most people would react joyfully to the presence of this delicious condiment.

But one coworker, who shall remain nameless, said, “What’s that?” He hadn’t heard of Nutella. I told him it was a hazelnut-chocolate spread. “Yuck!” he said forcefully. I was…puzzled. I said, “Do you not like hazelnuts?” He said he did. “Do you not like chocolate?” He liked that too. He also liked peanut butter. And yet, somehow, a spread made by grinding a different sort of nut and combining it with another ingredient he liked struck him as disgusting. I just… I mean… ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I can’t even.

Today, on World Nutella Day, don’t be that guy (even, and especially, if you are in fact that guy).

Image credit: Janine [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

The raw facts about the raw-food movement

I’ve always liked the expression “all things in moderation.” I’m not sure it represents some sort of universal law, but it seems to be a reasonable attitude with which to approach most situations in life. It suits my personality, too, because I like novelty and variety while I resist both excesses and prohibitions. When it comes to food, this sort of mindset means I wouldn’t categorically say no to any class of food—vegetables, meat, dairy, alcohol, junk food, and genetically modified organisms are all valid options. However, I try to be aware of the nutritional properties and likely health implications of what I eat, and to make food choices deliberately. So I’ll eat that occasional crème brûlée without guilt, but I’ll probably also back off on sugars and carbs the next day.

The problem is, I can’t always figure out whose opinions about nutrition and health I should believe. Among the many paths to optimal health I’ve heard are these: avoid all carbohydrates and eat mostly protein; eat only plant products; eat only fruits; eat just one particular fruit; take vitamins; stay away from vitamins. I’ve heard that eggs are bad for your health; I’ve heard that they’re great for your health. Ditto for coffee and wine. I’ve heard that foods like honey and tea will help you live to be 100 and that they’ll lead to an early grave. Many of these contradictory claims were made by trained health professionals with years of experience, and have a stack of studies and anecdotal reports supporting them. For this reason, I take any proclamation about a particular diet’s virtues with a large pinch of kosher salt.

I say all this by way of qualifying today’s topic: anopsology. Also known as instinctive eating, instincto, anosology, or the raw Paleolithic/raw Paleo diet, it’s the practice of eating only raw foods—and specifically, those raw foods that humans would have eaten before the development of agriculture or fire. So fresh fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, honey, and even raw meats are in; dairy, grains, and all processed foods are out. By “processed,” I mean “altered in any way.” In other words, you can’t grind, press, or squeeze your foods. Nor can you season them. In fact, a central tenet of anopsology is that foods should never be combined in any way in the same bite. And, worst of all, you must never apply heat to foods in any fashion; in this respect, anopsology differs from conventional (non-raw) Paleo diets.

Basic Instinct

My first reaction upon hearing about anopsology was that it’s highly kooky. After reading more about it and considering it in greater detail…OK, I still actually think it’s highly kooky. But there’s also more to it than meets the eye. The rationale behind the notion of eating raw, unprocessed foods is not without some merit, and while I wouldn’t choose that path for myself, it does provide, shall we say, food for thought.

Anopsology was the brainchild of Guy-Claude Burger, a Swiss cellist and physicist born in 1934. Burger was diagnosed with cancer, and decided to treat himself by eating only raw foods. The cancer went away, so Burger concluded the raw foods had cured him. He went on to study, write about, and promote the virtues of raw foods. Although Burger was not trained as a physician or nutritionist, he developed an extensive theory to explain how and why anopsology works.

The gist of the theory is that humans evolved over millions of years eating only raw foods (as would have been necessary before the advent of agriculture and the use of fire for cooking); therefore, the human body must be genetically adapted to function best when only raw foods are consumed. Further, the theory goes, humans can instinctively tell (by smell and taste) which foods are good for them. After consuming a certain quantity of any “original” (or raw and unaltered) food, its taste will change to become less appealing; this is the body’s signal that you’ve had enough and it’s time to stop eating that food. By mixing, cooking, seasoning, or processing foods, you mask these taste changes, so the only way to guarantee that you can detect and respond properly to the changes in taste is to eat foods completely separately from each other.

By eating raw foods in this manner, proponents say, one can cure or prevent a long list of diseases (everything from athlete’s foot to cancer) and ensure a long and healthy life. Anecdotal stories of miraculous cures abound. Unfortunately, very little medical research exists to support or refute these claims. Meanwhile, according to another set of anecdotal stories, some people who have religiously followed a raw-food diet for decades have still somehow gotten sick and died.

A Raw Deal

That’s just the beginning of the criticism of anopsology. Some observers point out that instinctos (as they call themselves) typically eat a lot of foods that didn’t exist in the pre-fire, pre-agriculture world—hybrids and selectively cultivated plants that have only been available relatively recently. They also, curiously, avoid foods such as rhubarb and kidney beans, which are toxic until cooked. Furthermore, contrary to anopsologists’ claims, some foods are demonstrably easier for the body to digest when cooked.

Then there’s that whole notion that humans haven’t evolved appreciably since cooking was invented—at least 10,000 years ago, and more likely 40,000 years ago. That strikes me as unlikely, but even if it’s true, it’s a stretch to assume that before that time, humans were perfectly adapted to eat any, all, and only raw foods. In addition, it’s ridiculous to assume that no one ever ground, squeezed, or combined foods before the discovery of fire. Even if there is a process by which raw foods change in taste to signal us that we’ve had enough, evidence is scant that our ancient ancestors relied on it. And if smell and taste are truly such outstanding indicators of what’s good for us, then I think it’s odd to say that mechanism couldn’t apply to, say, baked goods—to assume that because the ingredients have been processed, they must be fooling our senses.

Interestingly, vegans have been among the most vocal critics of anopsology, saying that it goes too far by permitting meat. Some vegans, on the other hand, say it’s also too limiting in not allowing all plant products. And then there are the fruitarians, who advocate eating only raw fruit (including seeds and nuts); according to them, anopsology and veganism are too broad.

Meanwhile, Burger has been convicted on separate occasions of fraud, illegal practice of medicine, and sexual abuse of minors (for which he was given a 15-year prison term in 2001). Of course, these facts have no bearing on anopsology as such, but they cast a generally dim light on Burger’s thought processes.

Personally, I find the arguments in favor of anopsology unconvincing. Although I can see the appeal in wanting to eat those foods for which the body is best adapted, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever determine conclusively what those are, or that they’re the same for all people for all time. Unless or until such proof is forthcoming, I’ll carry on eating my balanced diet of raw and processed foods.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on September 27, 2006.

Image credit: Pixabay