Nutrition

Fall 2023

Refining what goes in the process

Potato chips. Cookies. Candy. A burger, fries, and soda from your favorite fast-food restaurant. Most people know these are processed foods. But even apples, the classic healthy snack that keeps doctors away, are processed.

“‘Fresh’ apples are actually picked several months to a year before they show up in the supermarket,” says Soo-Yeun Lee, director of the School of Food Science at Washington State University. “They’re washed, coated with an edible wax, and stored in a very specific condition before they’re distributed. That’s all processing. Without it, apples would shrivel up or rot within a few weeks.”

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Fall 2018

Being best

A 9-year-old slave girl fanned her young mistress to keep the flies off her while she learned her lessons. Because she picked up enough education to be able to read and write a little, she ended up teaching other slaves and ex-slaves.

Her daughter became a schoolteacher, married to a Presbyterian minister in segregated Columbus, Ohio. The couple passed on the family mantras to their children: “You must get an education to get ahead” and “you must be a credit to our race.”

Their children, the second generation born free, took the advice to heart, attending college and becoming teachers and professionals. One of them, … » More …

Winter 2017

A mother’s microbial gift

Old assumptions about human breast milk are giving way to new thinking about microbes in milk and their role in children’s health and our immune systems.

It happened again, most recently at a conference in Prague. After she gave her talk, a scientist came up to Shelley McGuire, a pioneer exploring the microbial communities found in human breast milk, and told her, You don’t know how to take a sample. Your samples must have been contaminated. Human milk is sterile.

McGuire, a professor of human nutrition at Washington State University, knows differently: She’s seen the microbes with her own eyes. But she understands … » More …