A Little More Knowledge

The curiosity of one of my co-workers, QueenCanDo, was aroused by yesterday's post, and she said I should do more research on brominated vegetable oil. I replied, of course, that because she was the one who was so all-fire curious, she should do more research.

She did. And this is what she found. (And here is where she found it: http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1999/jul/29/what-brominated-vegetable-oil-and-why-do-soda-comp/) With thanks to Matthew Alice of the San Diego Reader, I steal the following:

Mr. Matthew:

Here is a query that has been torturing the curiosity lobe of my poor little brain for months. What, exactly, is brominated vegetable oil, and why do soda companies put it in their drinks? It seems citrus is a favored flavor to which to add the...uh...zesty tang? of brominated vegetable oil. I have asked top chemists from the most prestigious institutes in the San Diego area and have stumped them all. The stumper is, why combine bromine, a toxic element at best, with vegetable oil, which seems like a gross substance to be adding to fizzy thirst-quenching drinks?

—Rene Hayden, Normal Heights and UCSD

Until we looked into the matter, Rene, Squirt was the official soft drink of the 1999 Robitussin-Matthew Alice Invitational. Well, we forgot to send the invitations anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Brominated vegetable oil is a semi-disreputable substance that in the U.S. and Canada can legally be added (in amounts no greater than 15 parts per million by weight) to citrus-flavored drinkable substances. More than 100 countries ban it; the World Health Organization can't even bring itself to say the letters BVO — but you know how touchy those foreigners can be. Spend all day eating yak yogurt or Vegemite and you think you know cuisine.

Anyway, without brominated vegetable oil, your favorite lemony-limy soda would look like the Gulf of Alaska in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez. To get fat-soluble citrus flavorings to waft evenly throughout a can of sugar water thickened with seaweed or tree gum, you have to make the specific gravity of the flavor droplets match the specific gravity of the rest of the goop. Bromine has two, maybe three distinct advantages. First, bromine atoms weigh a ton. Pound a few into the vegetable oil molecules, lighten with a soupçon of citrus oil, and you've got a darn near perfect match for the sugar water. Second, bromine ionizes at the drop of a hat. And third, brominated vegetable oil gives lemony-limy-citrusy drinks the hazy appearance we gullible shoppers associate with fresh, tangy, real-fruit taste. BTW, the drink need not be fizzy. Check out your next tub-o-Gatorade for the telltale BVO.

Bromine is extracted from seawater. You don't want to know how. In its liquid or vaporous form, it's lethal. But once you've got the stuff, you're set to make light-sensitive surfaces for photographic paper, lead-eating additives for gasoline, fire-extinguishing material, agricultural fumigants, and lots of other handy stuff. Until 1975, you could make sedatives too. But science got suspicious when droves of overmedicated people were wheeled into psychiatric facilities, diagnosed as loony but actually suffering from bromism — so much serum bromide that they couldn't stand up or remember their names.

The downside of our oil-soluble friend is that it can build up in fat cells. Fat cells in laboratory pigs, anyway. How big a leap it is from pig science to people science is still in doubt. And not much happened to the brominated pigs anyway. Conservative countries banned BVO, we just limited its use. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, never too shy to yell "Fire!" in a crowded supermarket, lists BVO as an additive that "may pose a risk and needs to be better tested." They put BVO in the same slot with aspartame and quinine; though it must be safer than Olestra, saccharin, and sodium nitrate, things they say no rational person would consume.

One extrapolation from the pig studies was the estimate that a 165-pound adult would have to drink 353 12-ounce cans of soda per day for 42 days to have detectable bromine in his/her fat. Laughable, you say? Your intrepid investigator has read the medical report of a man whose diet included three or four liters of BVO'd soda every day. In a month, he was in the ER with confusion, headaches, tremors, memory loss, and fatigue. By the time he was correctly diagnosed two months later, he couldn't walk and was pretty much down for the count. Luckily, the diagnosis of bromism and six hours of hemodialysis brought him around.

A Little Knowledge

If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, then it just may be possible that a lot of knowledge is absolutely catastrophic. I recently found out far too much about Sun Drop® Citrus Soda.

It started out, as most of my journeys of discovery do, innocently enough.

I was casually strolling toward the self-checkout lane at my local ginormous-box grocery superstore when I heard a nasally voice, emanating from somewhere around knee level, ask, “Would you like a free bottle of Sun Drop® Citrus Soda, sir?”

I looked down toward the source of the sound and saw a ginormous-box grocery superstore employee reaching his hand up to offer me a coupon.

Well, a display of the soda in question was right there, and the coupon for a free bottle was right there, and the available spot in the self-checkout lane was right there…so sure, “I would like a free bottle of Sun Drop® Citrus Soda, yes sir.”

We had pizza for dinner that night, which was an excellent opportunity to open my free bottle of Sun Drop® Citrus Soda and give it a test run. It tasted like Dr. Pepper/Seven Up Inc. was trying to come up with its own version of Mountain Dew®, but missed the mark because they gave Sun Drop® Citrus Soda some actual…you know…flavor.

The similarity to Mountain Dew® made me curious as to whether Sun Drop® Citrus Soda was caffeinated. It was exactly at this point that I should have beaten myself about the head and shoulders with a blunt object and gone to bed with my curiosity sternly rebuked, but nooooo, I picked up the bottle and read the list of ingredients: carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup [Is that corn syrup that is high in fructose content, or fructose corn syrup that has been violating the controlled substance act?], and contains less than 2% of citric acid, orange juice concentrate, sodium benzoate (preservative), caffeine, natural flavors, acacia gum, yellow 5, ester gum [Do you remember her? Nice gal.], brominated vegetable oil.

None of these ingredients surprised me except for that last one. What the farnsworth is “brominated vegetable oil”? And to be more precise (because I have a fairly firm grasp on what vegetable oil is), what the farnsworth does it mean to brominate something?

Rather than do the sensible thing and distract myself with an episode of Alias Smith and Jones on Hulu, I attacked the slippery slope of “a little knowledge” and consulted dictionary.com.

In its normal helpful style, dictionary.com told me this about what it means to brominate:

brominate [broh-muh-neyt]–verb (used with object), -ated, -ating. Chemistry: to treat or combine with bromine.

You would think this would satisfy me to no end…but you would be wrong. And what follows is the bit of knowledge that I really wish I would have avoided:

bromine [broh-meen]–noun Chemistry: an element that is a dark-reddish, fuming, toxic liquid and a member of the halogen family: obtained from natural brines and ocean water, and used chiefly in the manufacture of gasoline antiknock compounds, pharmaceuticals, and dyes.

They’re treating or mixing vegetable oil with this stuff and putting it in my Sun Drop® Citrus Soda, which I am pouring over a pile of ice and allowing to slide down my throat.

I’ve finally gotten a grip on the True Truth the Apostle Paul recorded in Philippians 1:21: “…to die is gain.”

Fab Four FaceBook Fandango

I unilaterally declared February "Beatles Name That Tune" month and posted a different bit of Mop Top lyric as my status update on FaceBook every day (except Sundays). What no one in his or her right mind would have anticipated is how the whole list holds together as a semi-coherent conversation...which is the only kind of conversation I have, anyway.

Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something I think you’ll understand. I've been in love before, and I found that love was more than just holding hands. Love you every day girl; always on my mind. One thing I can say girl: love you all the time.

When you told me you didn't need me anymore, well, you know I nearly broke down and cried. Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be. Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping. Pools of sorrow, waves of joy, are drifting through my open mind, possessing and caressing me.

Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend. There's nothing you can do that can't be done; nothing you can sing that can't be sung. With our love, we could save the world; if they only knew.

Been away so long I hardly knew the place. Gee, it's good to be back home. When I'm home everything seems to be right.

Who finds the money when you pay the rent? You know how hard it can be. The wild and windy night that the rain washed away has left a pool of tears crying for the day.

Would you believe in a love at first sight? The minute you let her under your skin, then you begin to make it better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My love don't give me presents. And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me.

The girl that's driving me mad is going away. The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still. And of course, Henry the horse dances the waltz!

How gifted is that doggie in the window?

Reading is a wonderful thing.

Through the magic of the printed (or pixelated) word, a person can go from being ignorant to being informed; unlearned to knowledgeable; not even knowing what it is you don't know to knowing something you never even knew you didn't know.

An article by Jesse Ellison in the February 21 issue of Newsweek has, like Paul Simon said in "Sounds of Silence," planted a vision in my brain that still remains.

The bad news is, the vision is not all that attractive. But first, the info, and I quote:

Labs [as in Labrador Retrievers] can detect colorectal and bowel cancer with 98 percent accuracy by examining stool samples, according to a recent study. The current technology is correct only 10 percent of the time.

I'm just...I mean, I really...when did...how the farnsworth has it been determined that Labradors can do that?!!?

Firstly, if the current technology can only correctly detect colorectal and bowel cancer with 10 percent accuracy by examining stool samples, how could we determine the dogs' accuracy? "Hey, Melvin, Fido here says the donor of this sample has cancer. Better run it through our technology again...not that we can trust it the second time any more than we could the first time."

Secondly, how does one go about training a dog to know the difference between a stool sample from a cancer victim and a stool sample from someone without cancer? How many years of medical school (and boxes of Beggin' Strips) does that take?

Thirdly, how does Doctor Doggie communicate his or her findings? It brings to mind the comedy sketches skewering Lassie...

LASSIE

Bark! Bark-bark!

MAN

Lassie! What is it, girl? What's wrong?

LASSIE

Woof! Arf-arf! Yalp!

MAN

What?!!? Timmy fell in the old, abandoned well and has multiple cuts and contusions, with a possible hairline fracture of his right femur?

Fourthly, think about how dogs sniff each others' hind parts when they get together. All this time we thought they were greeting each other or trying to determine if they had met before. In reality, they're just performing medical screenings for each other.

Fifthly, maybe the high percentage of accuracy stems not from the superiority of a canine's diagnostic skills as contrasted to a computer's, but the superiority of the canine's methodology of examination. Maybe we humans could be just as accurate if we "put our noses to the grindstone," so to speak.

Which leads me, sixthly, to revealing that the title of the article quoted above is "Are Dogs Stealing Our Jobs?" and answering the title's question with a question of my own: Who would want that crappy job, anyway?

For the record...pun intended.

Hey, how's the weather treatin' ya?

The January 10 & 17, 2011 issue of Newsweek shared some statistics (garnered from America's Health Rankings) that put my hectic life on hold and led me to ponder the cause, ruminate on the reason, and consider the source.

The stats were on binge drinking, defined as men pouring five or more drinks down the hatch in a single sitting (or, for women, four or more drinks...how sexist). The title of the bar graph was "Binge Drinking Prevalence, 2010," and listed state names and a percentage.

What the award-winning team of journalists at Newsweek failed to inform this reader on was what the farnsworth the percentages actually meant. For instance, Minnesota, which came in third (c'mon, Sven, you're not trying hard enough!), was listed at 20%. Does that mean that 20% of Minnesotan drinkers are binge drinkers? Or does it signify that Minnesotan drinkers binge it up 20% of the time? Or...could it possibly be true that one in every five residents of the Land of 10,000 Entitlement Programs is a binge drinker?

Whatever the significance of the percentages, what caused my pause to reflect were the names of the top four binge-drinking states: Wisconsin (23.2%), North Dakota (21.5%), Minnesota (20%), and Iowa (19.4%). If we could get South Dakotans educated enough to know how to open a brew, the Upper Midwest would have a solid lock on the top 10% in the nation!

The burning question is, does living here in the tundra drive a person to drink, or does a propensity to over-imbibe coincide with the lack of good judgment it takes to put down roots (in the 5 weeks of the year when the ground is thawed enough to do so) here in The Nation's Icebox?

Ask a Silly Question

Years ago, when I was earning a living subsistence by working with youth in a local church (i.e., The Youth Pastoring Daze), there was a particular day in which I went with a particular youth to visit her grandmother in a particular hospital. (Notice, it was not General Hospital. Nowhere near that much drama.)

While talking with the patient, I asked if the doctors and nurses were being good to her. Her reply was not only an education on the difference between her generation and mine, but an occasion for me to drop to my knees, clasp my hands over my heart, and cry from laughing so hard:

"In sixty-two years of marriage, I never once undressed in front of my husband, but around here, people come in and look at whatever they want to see!"

Hey! Look me over; lend me an earworm

It happens once a quarter: I post a list of those snippets of songs who force their way into my head while I am trying to sleep for just five more minutes.

NOVEMBER
1 – Yesterday (The Beatles)
9 – Younger Than Springtime (from South Pacific)
13 – America the Beautiful
15 – Daybreak (Barry Manilow) An earworm that actually made sense! Well, it would have made sense if daylight savings time hadn’t ended. As it is, day doesn’t actually break forth into all its splendor until I’m on my way to work.
16 – Good Morning (Beatles) Wait a minute…this is getting spooky.
17 – How Great Thou Art (There…that’s more like it)
20 – Babe (Styx)
21 – Midnight Blue (Melissa Manchester)
22 – Babe (Styx) Yes…again. Honestly…the lyric is “Babe, I’m leaving; I must be on my way,” so LEAVE ALREADY!
27 – Don’t Worry Baby (The Beach Boys)/Be My Baby (The Ronettes) This is a mash-up I’d like to hear the cast of Glee do. It really works.

DECEMBER
1 – Castles in the Air (Don McLean) This was pre-American Pie, and if anybody reading these words also has his vinyl album, Tapestry, I think I may wet myself in shock and amazement.
3 – Dreidel (Don McLean, again) I tried to ignore this, so as not to repeat artists so quickly, but I had to tell the truth. And I know why McLean is insisting to have residence in my cranium: I listened to a couple of his albums while putting up the Christmas tree November 29th. Now, why are his songs still inflicting themselves upon me? Is it because they are so hauntingly beautiful and unique, or is it because my brain is just that feeble so as to accept any imprint whatsoever? (Don’t answer that.)
8 – Tonight’s the Night (Rod Stewart)
20 – Night and Day (Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66)
27 – Sweet Georgia Brown/Cantina Theme (from Star Wars) Unusual mash-up, I know, but try it…you’ll see that my subconscious is fairly genious.
28 – We Need a Little Christmas (The blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of the Christmas episode of Glee that I watched last night.)
29 – Angels from the Realms of Glory (“Come and worship. Come and worship. Worship Christ the newborn king!”)

JANUARY
3 – For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
5 – Evensong (Dave Burkum, who is the lead pastor at my church [http://www.valleycc.org] and wrote this song, which is used for our Sunday EVENing service…get it?)
9 – At the Hop (Danny and the Juniors)
11 – Vehicle (Ides of March) And, yes, you are correct…this is not the first time this little number has appeared on this list.
13 – The Air that I Breathe (The Hollies) Of course, this being January in Minnesnowta, the air that I breathe tends to make my lungs freeze…the whole situation’s brought me to my knees.
14 – Bound to Come Some Trouble (Rich Mullins)
18 – Tired of Waiting (The Kinks)
20 – Jessie’s Girl (Rick Springfield)
24 – Smoke of a Distant Fire (Sanford-Townsend Band) Yes, I had to look up the name of this one-hit-wonder ensemble.
26 – How Majestic Is Your Name (Michael W. Smith)
31 – Everlasting God (“You are the everlasting God…the everlasting God…You do not faint, You won’t grow weary…”) My subconscious probably felt the need to remind me of this True Truth because it knew I was going to wake up to YET ANOTHER SNOW STORM!