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Four types of cinnamon, courtesy Flickr user FootosVanRobin

The chatty coffee-shop employee’s comment confused me. I had paused at the condiment station to add a sprinkle of cinnamon* to my cappuccino, and he was wiping down the counter in front of me.

“Ah, yes, for your eyes?” he asked, gesturing at the cinnamon shaker.

“My…eyes?” I fumbled in response. “No, for my coffee…”

He gave me a pitying smile, informed me that “everyone knows” cinnamon is good for ocular health, and went back to cleaning.

As a bit of Googling revealed, he’s not the only one who believes in cinnamon as a health product. It’s sold in many nutritional supplements and homeopathic remedies, marketed with claims that range from boosting metabolism to controlling blood sugar to, yes, enhancing vision.

I don’t see (pardon the pun) hard evidence for most of those claims, but a 2006 German study reported that cinnamon could help stabilize insulin levels for people with Type 2 diabetes, and a study published this year in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition supports the idea that dietary cinnamon compounds “could reduce risk factors associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.”

Today, cinnamon was in the news again as the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) reported that it may help prevent or reduce brain swelling.

When the brain is temporarily deprived of oxygen and food (glucose)—as in the case of a traumatic injury or stroke—brain cells tend to swell, which can cause permanent neurological damage. But in a lab experiment conducted by scientists at the ARS Human Nutrition Research center in Beltsville, Maryland, isolated brain cells that were exposed to a cinnamon polyphenol extract did not swell.

However: “The researchers caution that table cinnamon compounds may accumulate in the body and should not be ingested consistently as more than a spice over long periods of time.”

In other words, I should stick to just sprinkling it on my cappuccinos and apple crisp for now. But, as a scientist I interviewed a while ago about pepper-based fungicides for wine grapes said, nature may hold the answers to many human and plant health problems—right under our noses.

*Like most of the ground cinnamon sold in supermarkets, this was probably cassia, not Ceylon cinnamon, which some people call “true cinnamon.” I just checked with one of the ARS researchers, Richard Anderson, and he says they’ve tested several types of cinnamon, including cassia, and all proved effective.

Anyone who has ever smelled a durian fruit can tell you that it smells mighty strong. Although Wikipedia claims that this southeast Asian fruit’s aroma can evoke “deep appreciation,” an online search turns up a host of less favorable descriptions for durian’s smell: “almost overwhelmingly foul,” “rotting fish,” “a dragon’s breath,” “unwashed socks,” and “carrion in custard,” to offer just a small sampling. (Or, as a recent comment on a 1999 Smithsonian story about durians puts it, “Durian is like red onion that has been left in the cellar for years and then marinated in acetone.” Wow, that’s specific!)

Durian fruits, courtesy Flickr user wenzday01

Apparently the fruit’s sweet, creamy center is a treasure worth pursuing if you can bear the stink and get past the spiky husk. I don’t know; I’ve never had a chance to try it (and I’m guessing that, like breadfruit, fresh durian may be hard to come by in DC). But now I know not to try it while drinking!

According to New Scientist, scientists at Japan’s University of Tsukuba recently discovered that durian makes it much more difficult for the human body to break down alcohol. In a test tube, they combined fresh durian extract with aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), the enzyme that functions as the liver’s main weapon against the toxic byproducts of alcohol metabolism. The durian—probably because of its high sulfur content—nearly knocked out the ALDH enzyme, inhibiting it by up to 70 percent. (Or maybe the enzyme just couldn’t stand the smell, either.)

This could explain the occasional news story about deaths related to durian consumption, although it doesn’t quite support the urban legend that combining durian with liquor will make your stomach explode.

Kudzu invading a front lawn. Courtesy of Flickr user ghwpix

Anyone who’s been to the southeastern United States has seen kudzu, the invasive vine that can swallow an abandoned car faster than Takeru Kobayashi can eat a few dozen Nathan’s hot dogs. Introduced from Japan in 1876 (that’s the vine, not the competitive eater) and promoted in the 1930s as a form of erosion control, the plant spread like a California brush fire in the Southeast’s steamy climate. It now covers about 10 million acres in lush, coiling and sun-blocking greenery and is considered a pest weed.

But it’s not all bad, as Asian herbalists and, now, American researchers, have found. In traditional Chinese medicine, kudzu, called gé gēn, is used to treat a number of conditions, including alcoholism, symptoms of menopause, neck and eye pain, and diabetes. Many of these claims have not been scientifically tested, but kudzu’s usefulness against the last ailment has recently been supported by research on laboratory rats at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The results of studies there, published in the latest Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, were that the isoflavones in kudzu root improved regulation of blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose, all important to controlling diabetes. One isoflavone, puerarin, is found only in kudzu and appeared to have the most positive impact.

J. Michael Wyss, lead author on the study, was quoted on the UAB Web site as saying that puerarin “seems to regulate glucose by steering it to places where it is beneficial, such as muscles, and away from fat cells and blood vessels.”

The next step, Wyss continued, will be to understand more about how the isoflavone works, and conduct human trials to determine how it would be most beneficial. Interestingly, the South has the highest diabetes rates in the country, meaning help may have been growing right under the noses (and up the utility poles) of the people who could use it most.

Earlier studies have looked at other potential benefits of a kudzu supplement, like controlling binge drinking. In 2005, Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital found that subjects who took the herb for a week before participating in a drinking experiment consumed about half as much beer as subjects who took a placebo, and drank it more slowly.

Unfortunately for those who do over-imbibe, no one has proven—although some have tried—that kudzu can cure a hangover.

A cooking stove called the Chulha just won an INDEX award for “design to improve life.” Why? Because according to the World Health Organization, about half of all households worldwide—and 90 percent of rural households—get their cooking and heating fuel from “biomass” sources like coal, wood, charcoal, or dung:

“When these fuels are used in poorly ventilated conditions and burned in open fires or inefficient stoves, conditions common in households throughout the developing world, [biomass fuels] may result in indoor air pollution levels well above those in even the dirtiest of cities.”

The results are higher rates of respiratory illness and mortality, especially in children—the WHO reports that in 2000, two million children younger than 5 died of acute respiratory infections. Studies also suggest a link between indoor air pollution and several non-respiratory health problems, including stillborn births and miscarriages, low birth weight, heart disease, and even cataracts.

Chulha stove by Philips Design, courtesy INDEX

The Chulha stove and projects like it can’t solve these problems entirely, but they offer an inexpensive way to reduce such indoor pollution from cooking—coupled in this case with the potential for economic development. Philips Design, the Chulha’s creator, is offering free intellectual property rights to local entrepreneurs who want to build and sell the stove in places like rural India, where it was tested.

And toxic fumes aren’t the only significant challenge faced by cooks in the developing world. In our 2007 “Young Innovators” special issue, the magazine profiled Christina Galitsky, who helped design an energy-efficient, portable cookstove for women in Darfur. By using less wood as fuel, the stove reduced the amount of time and distance involved in gathering firewood—and thus reduced the women’s risk of being attacked and raped by militiamen roaming the countryside. And by being portable, the stove made it easier for the women to pack up and flee when such militias were approaching their villages and settlements.

All of this makes me stop and think…I’ve been whining lately about not having a “real” oven in my new apartment, but I do have a range top, fueled by gas which I can summon with a simple twist of a dial. I also have a microwave/convection oven, a toaster, a digital food steamer, and a backyard barbecue grill, as well as a bevy of gadgets and appliances to help prepare the food for cooking. There are various vents, fans and alarms to keep the air in our home clean and safe. It’s no Top Chef kitchen, but it’s certainly luxurious compared to stoking a toxic fire in a tiny, unventilated room, or having to risk one’s life to gather cooking fuel, isn’t it?

Cotton fields, image courtesy of Flickr user Brian Hathcock

Food, clothing and shelter are considered the three most basic human needs. Cotton has done a pretty good job of fulfilling the clothing part for millennia; scientists have found bits of cotton cloth in caves in Mexico that proved to be at least 7,000 years old. But now cotton could be making a move into another part of the triad, as food. And we’re not talking about cotton candy.

Cottonseed is rich in protein, making it promising as a nutritious food source, especially for malnourished people in developing countries. The problem has been that it is inedible to humans and most animals other than cows because it also contains a toxic chemical called gossypol that protects the plant from insects and disease. Previous attempts to engineer a digestible seeds were unsuccessful because they produced cotton plants that were also low in gossypol, leaving the plants vulnerable to infestation.

But plant biotechnologists at Texas A & M University’s Texas AgriLife Research, led by Keerti Rathore, have developed a cotton that has low levels of gossypol in the seed but retains enough of the toxin in the rest of the plant to protect it from pests. Field trials to verify the results of earlier lab and greenhouse studies have shown good results.

Rathore and his team used a process called RNA interference, discovered by Nobel laureates Andrew Fire and Craig Mello, which “silences” specific genes.

Aside from providing the world with a new protein source—the seeds are about 22 percent protein—making another part of the cotton crop commercially viable would be good for the cotton industry. And the seed is fairly tasty, according to Rathore, who told Time magazine it tastes like chickpeas.

As a genetically modified organism (GMO), though, the seed faces several obstacles to becoming widely available, including public resistance to GMOs, especially overseas. AgriLife would also have to negotiate with patent holders of some of the basic technologies used to develop the seed and get approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration before the cotton could go to market.