Welcome to our second discussion thread about Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us by George Zaidan. We’ve got a few weeks of this so there’s still time to grab a copy from Indiebound.
This will be a particular exciting read as Zaidan reached out on Twitter and will be fielding questions from this book club about the book! This is a super cool thing, and we’ll run his answers in the October 10 edition of this. To ask George a question, either put the question in the comments or email them to bookclub@numlock.news and I’ll pick a few good ones.
Here’s some questions to kick us off:
This section was all about certainty, how we came to know that cigarettes are bad, and how we came to suspect that electronic cigarettes might be bad, and how we’re less certain about what the whole deal with the sun is. Do you leave this section more or less assured about how researchers convey certainty?
What do you think about electronic cigarettes?
Did you know that Australia was, in fact, also an incredibly successful double-blind skin cancer study? If you are Australian, how did you feel about this information?
Have any questions for George? Reply to this email or drop it in the comments.
The e-cigarette part was particularly fascinating, especially with the rapid legislating happening in the area. The conversation ends up being how bad are ecigs vs nothing, while there’s ecigs vs cigarettes vs nothing vs everything else!
A question for George: how do you think scientists and journalists should communicate advancements and changing in the nutritional science space, where there’s such uncertainty? For instance, my mom worked as a registered dietitian in the 1990s, and while she doesn’t work in that space anymore, the ideal diet in her mind is still low-fat/non-fat everything, which is an opinion I know has shifted a lot in the last 20 years. How do you communicate sweeping changes across professionals and the populace?
A couple of questions for George. 1. Liked your listing and discussion on diets. What would the Zaidan Diet be if you were launching your own? 2. What made you decide to take detours from what you were discussing and then come back to it later? (Which by the way I liked you doing. Also liked your use of footnotes).
Just because they're better for you doesn't mean they're not bad for you. It's crazy to think that cigarettes will most likely actually kill more people this century than they did in the last. Also how crazy was it that lady sunbathing in France went into a coma?! Is it bad I couldn't get the song Girlfriend in a Coma out of my head after reading this section? I'm still holding on to hope that the Smiths will reunite in my lifetime.
Just returning to the Book Club after a hiatus starting with The Radium Girls. But am so glad to be back in with this excellent, excellent book. It should be considered by high schools everywhere as a chem/bio/ecology textbook. The molecular drawings are great, and the familiar approach to talking about bonding and numbers of atoms/molecules will draw students in.
Bravo, George! I had kind of gotten the idea that vaping was becoming just a fad until reading the section in this book and visiting my local drugstore to see that if indeed I was right. I was shocked to see b-zillions of product (that's a b with 12 zeroes) and still as many candy-flavored packs as before. Now I have to do a little research on my own of SPF products. I would love to hear George explain the chemistry of the Corona virus.
The e-cigarette part was particularly fascinating, especially with the rapid legislating happening in the area. The conversation ends up being how bad are ecigs vs nothing, while there’s ecigs vs cigarettes vs nothing vs everything else!
A question for George: how do you think scientists and journalists should communicate advancements and changing in the nutritional science space, where there’s such uncertainty? For instance, my mom worked as a registered dietitian in the 1990s, and while she doesn’t work in that space anymore, the ideal diet in her mind is still low-fat/non-fat everything, which is an opinion I know has shifted a lot in the last 20 years. How do you communicate sweeping changes across professionals and the populace?
Great book! Does George have any thoughts about the blog retractionwatch? I’ve found it a really useful resource.
I really loved learning about how exactly SPF gets determined which is frankly not the process I was anticipating!
A couple of questions for George. 1. Liked your listing and discussion on diets. What would the Zaidan Diet be if you were launching your own? 2. What made you decide to take detours from what you were discussing and then come back to it later? (Which by the way I liked you doing. Also liked your use of footnotes).
Just because they're better for you doesn't mean they're not bad for you. It's crazy to think that cigarettes will most likely actually kill more people this century than they did in the last. Also how crazy was it that lady sunbathing in France went into a coma?! Is it bad I couldn't get the song Girlfriend in a Coma out of my head after reading this section? I'm still holding on to hope that the Smiths will reunite in my lifetime.
Just returning to the Book Club after a hiatus starting with The Radium Girls. But am so glad to be back in with this excellent, excellent book. It should be considered by high schools everywhere as a chem/bio/ecology textbook. The molecular drawings are great, and the familiar approach to talking about bonding and numbers of atoms/molecules will draw students in.
Bravo, George! I had kind of gotten the idea that vaping was becoming just a fad until reading the section in this book and visiting my local drugstore to see that if indeed I was right. I was shocked to see b-zillions of product (that's a b with 12 zeroes) and still as many candy-flavored packs as before. Now I have to do a little research on my own of SPF products. I would love to hear George explain the chemistry of the Corona virus.