Joe Schwarcz > Quotes

“pretty soon, there will be ten billion people coming to dinner. And there is no way they are going to be fed organically.”
― Joe Dr Schwarcz, Science, Sense & Nonsense

“Salt was so important that Roman soldiers were given extra money to purchase it. This was referred to as a “salarium,” from which our word “salary” derives. Soldiers who performed their duties particularly well were said to be worth their salt!”
― Joe Schwarcz, Is That a Fact?: Frauds, Quacks, and the Real Science of Everyday Life

“Progress always comes at a cost, but if we fear the unknown, we will never get anywhere. Nothing in life is risk-free.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“oat soup recipe. Ah, heck. I’ll give you the recipe anyway. Bring twelve cups of chicken stock to a boil. Add six sliced carrots, three sliced parsley roots, one cup of peas, one cup of diced onion, two tablespoons of canola oil, two tablespoons of soy sauce, two mashed garlic cloves, and two cups of rolled oats. Simmer for forty minutes and add salt and pepper to taste. I bet even Baby Bear would love it.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“apocrine”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“Believe it or not, there is such a thing as water poisoning. And it can be lethal. If body fluids become too diluted, then sodium concentrations in the blood drop dramatically. Sodium is an essential mineral in the body, and it plays a critical role in the transmission of nerve impulses in the brain and the muscles. Our bodies regulate the concentration of sodium in our blood by moving water in and out of the blood. If you have a high sodium concentration, then water moves from your cells into your blood, increasing your blood pressure. As water moves from your brain cells into your blood, your brain actually shrinks, and you may experience confusion and seizures. If your sodium concentration is low, then the reverse happens: water moves out of your blood and into your cells. This can be disastrous to your brain, since, as your cells absorb water, your brain swells. This, in turn, can lead to lethargy, loss of consciousness, and even death.”
― Joe Schwarcz, Dr. Joe & What You Didn't Know: 177 Fascinating Questions & Answers about the Chemistry of Everyday Life

“White phosphorus is highly toxic, and people who made matches routinely developed “phossy jaw,” a terrible condition in which the jaw bone disintegrates.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“biotechnology is the provision of useful products and services from biological processes. It does not necessarily involve scientists in white lab coats hovering over petri dishes. In fact, biotechnology goes back thousands of years. It probably began the first time someone used yeast to convert sugars and starches to alcohol. Yeast is a little living machine that takes in food and produces excrement. But don’t pooh-pooh that excrement. Many humans like it. It’s called alcohol. Molds are also neat little machines that produce a variety of by-products. When the ancient Egyptians applied moldy bread to wounds as a poultice, they were exploiting biotechnology. The mold probably churned out penicillin — which, of course, the ancients did not recognize as such — and it helped heal the wound.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“In spite of the weakness of the epidemiological evidence linking nitrites to cancer, and the established fact that 95 per cent of all the nitrite we ingest comes from bacterial conversion of nitrates naturally found in vegetables, many consumers have a lingering concern about eating nitrite-cured processed meats. But one person’s concern is another’s business opportunity.”
― Joe Schwarcz, The Right Chemistry: 108 Enlightening, Nutritious, Health-Conscious and Occasionally Bizarre Inquiries into the Science of Everyday Life

“phosphatidylserine”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“Some unfortunate people, by their own account, sweat like pigs, no matter what they do. The expression is actually inappropriate, because pigs have no perspiration apparatus. That’s why they wallow in mud.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“eccrine glands”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“Stainless steel is durable and does not tarnish. We make it by alloying iron with other metals, most notably nickel and chromium.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“promyelocytic”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“In the middle 1800s, North American doctors frequently diagnosed their patients with a condition they labeled “neurasthenia.” It was a catch-all term that described occasional fatigue, insomnia, depression, and achy muscles — in other words, the symptoms of life.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“The hangover is actually multifactorial. Dehydration plays an important role, as does hypoglycemia caused by the alcohol-mediated loss of sugar in the urine. But, in all likelihood, the greatest contributor to the hangover is methanol. This alcohol is found in small concentrations in many beverages; it’s a by-product of fermentation. Methanol is metabolized by the same enzymes as ethanol, but the products this time are formaldehyde and formic acid, which produce the hangover symptoms. Why does this happen only the morning after? Because the enzymes prefer to work on ethanol instead of methanol. Only when all the ethanol has been metabolized do they switch to methanol. This then explains the “hair of the dog†hangover remedy. A drink in the morning supplies ethanol for the enzymes to act upon so they’ll leave the methanol alone. As the enzymes busily metabolize the ethanol, methanol is excreted in the urine without being converted to formic acid. A Bloody Mary may be the best choice here, because vodka contains very little methanol. Confirmation of the critical role methanol plays in hangovers comes from a study showing that treatment with 4-methylpyrazole, a drug that blocks the breakdown of methanol, can eliminate the symptoms.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“Once acetylcholine has carried out its job of triggering a reaction in an adjacent cell, an enzyme present in the synapse decomposes it. Overstimulation is therefore prevented. It is this enzyme, acetylcholinesterase, that nerve gas deactivates. The result is overstimulation of the nervous system, eventually leading to convulsions, paralysis, and respiratory failure.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“The body eliminates toxins via the liver and kidneys, not through sweat.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“A recent survey showed that a third of all Europeans believe that only genetically engineered tomatoes contain genes. Otherwise, the fruits are “gene-free,” and, presumably, “risk-free.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“armpits and private regions”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“(adenosine triphosphate),”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“Gluten is a three-dimensional network of protein molecules that forms when we knead dough with water. By adding water, we cause the proteins in the flour to unravel from their natural coiled position and form cross-links to each other. This sets up the molecular scaffold that supports the other ingredients. If the scaffold is strong, with many connections, the resulting texture is tough. High-gluten flour is great for bread, because for that we need a sturdy texture, but it is not suitable for cakes or cookies.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“A study published in The British Medical Journal examined the beer-drinking habits of a group of people who had suffered heart attacks and the beer-drinking habits of a group randomly selected from the Czech population. The Czech Republic is especially appropriate for such a study, because it is a country where beer is the beverage of choice. Perhaps surprisingly, in both groups the lowest risk of heart attack was found among the men who drank nine to twenty pints a week. Their risk was a third of that seen in the men who never drank beer. But if they drank more, they lost that protection and developed problems. Dark beer seems to be especially protective. Researchers discovered that it even reduces the potential harm caused by the notorious heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs) that form when food is heated to a high temperature. Serving dark beer at a barbecue is a good idea. Maybe Benjamin Franklin was on to something when he said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.—
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“secretagogues,”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“adrenaline”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“Clostridium botulinum bacterium.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“Our word plumbing actually derives from the Latin plumbum, meaning “lead,” and that is also why this element’s chemical symbol is Pb.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

“overly enthusiastic headline”
― Joe Schwarcz, Is That a Fact?: Frauds, Quacks, and the Real Science of Everyday Life

“Where do these underarm odors come from? We can blame bacteria that inhabit the surface of our skin. There are millions of them, and they feed on us. Indirectly. Our apocrine sweat glands, which are mostly found in our armpits and private regions, produce a yellowish fluid that harbors fats, proteins, and various steroids. The fluid has no smell, but its components are great food for bacteria. As they digest these components, the bacteria produce a variety of malodorous compounds. To put it bluntly, unless we take care, we’ll end up reeking of bacterial poop.”
― Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life