health

Well, sort of. ;) Researchers have found that tea companies have been over-touting the health benefits of their tea products (big surprise, I know). Turns out the antioxidants in bottled tea are no where near the amount available in old-fashioned brewed tea.

NPR: "Bottled Tea Comes Up Short In Antioxidant Tests".

Reseachers [sic] tested bottled teas for antioxidants called polyphenols and found that most brands contain very little of them.

“Out of 49 samples, half of the bottle teas contain less then 10 milligrams of polyphenols,” says Shiming Li, a natural products chemist at WellGen, a company that's working to develop foods for medical use.

A cup of home-brewed green or black tea has 50-150 milligrams of polyphenols. So you'd have to drink between 5 and 20 of those pint-size bottles of tea to get the same amount of antioxidants. That’s a lot of tea.

So, yeah -- take a few minutes and brew your tea. Or let the sun do it, like my wife Denyse has been doing lately.

More about:

• Polyphenols
• Tea
• Sun Tea
• The Mad Hatter

(Photo: "Disney - Mad Hatter Rides the Tea Cups" by Joe Penniston.)

For some reason known only to the BBC News website gnomes, the story "Guinness good for you - official" is #1 in their lists of most popular stories today. Which wouldn't be that interesting, except that it's a story from 2003.

It momentarily confused me as I remembered what I thought was a similar BBC story from a few years ago, linked to here at Celsius1414 in the story "Guinness good for you. And the Pope is Catholic.", wherein I said:

Since I always feel better after having a pint of Guinness, this seems to confirm my findings.

Indeed. So, turns out it isn't a similar but the same story, popular again six and a half years later. The salient point being, of course, that Guinness is good for you. Still.

Michael Specter: The danger of science denial

Vaccine-autism claims, "Frankenfood" bans, the herbal cure craze: All point to the public's growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human progress.

As Denyse and Pharaoh can attest, running like crazy around a grassy field is the best thing ever. :)

Tom Shannon: The painter and the pendulum

TED visits Tom Shannon in his Manhattan studio for an intimate look at his science-inspired art. An eye-opening, personal conversation with John Hockenberry reveals how nature's forces -- and the onset of Parkinson's tremors -- interact in his life and craft.

Tom Shannon's mixed-material sculpture seems to levitate -- often it actually does -- thanks to powerful magnets and clever arrangements of suspension wire.

Dan Buettner, writer for National Geographic, and a team studied communities around the world where a higher percentage of people lived to older ages, even into their 100s. In this TED video, Dan describes three communities they found where folks both grow older and grow older better. He refers to the talk as "How to Live Past 100+", but really it's about how to better your chances of a longer, healthier life -- more years and better ones.

At the end, he outlines the nine common elements they distilled from studying the Nuoro Province in Sardinia, Okinawa, and Loma Linda, right down the road here in Southern California.

The big do's:

1. Move Naturally -- physical activity every day, but not in gyms.
2. Right Outlook -- downshifting intensity during the day, sense of purpose.
3. Eat Wisely -- wine, plants (legumes, nuts, leafy greens), some meat, but don't overeat.
4. Connect -- belong in your family, friends, tribe.

Fascinating talk. I was worried it was going to be a bit snake oily, but it wound up being quite interesting.