Are you being a smart shopper, the natural claim.

In our quest to educate the common shopper about the marketing mumbo jumbo that mean nothing, here is the second of the series on “Are you being a smart shopper?”

Marketing claim: All Natural!

After a lifetime of eating, no words mean less to me than "all natural." Bottled water claims to be 100% NATURAL* CALORIE-FREE. Why did anyone speculate that I'd think differently? Was there a conspiracy going around that their product was bottled android sweat? Outside of a hydrogen fuel cell, where does one even find unnatural water?

On that same bottle of what I assume was non-voodoo water, I searched for the asterisk referred to by "100% NATURAL*" and it led to the explanation, "*100% Natural Ingredients." Oh, ingredients. I thought water is an ingredient. What ingredients would water need, apart from Hydrogen and Oxygen of course? Then why do I need to be told that both Hydrogen and Oxygen are naturally occurring substances? Wait, is there an unnatural version of the two!?

Marketers, you know, we have kinda evolved from this.

Common sense should tell us that “natural” is anything that occurs naturally (DUH). If food scientist could prove that cat urine can add a zing to a certain flavor without serious health impacts, it can be totally labeled “natural”.

Here’s the funny part, the FDA doesn't even define the word "natural," so it's used by a variety of food manufacturers in an effort to imply their products are somehow better for us. We've seen it on everything from potato chips to cereal boxes. The USDA, on the other hand, allows meat and poultry to be labeled "natural" if they don't include artificial colors or ingredients, and are not more than "minimally processed." But the rest of the food supply's definition of natural is up for grabs.

There have been instances when yeast has been treated with MSG and called “all natural” because the company just chose not to mention the MSG bit. In fact a few rather well known companies have had to call it quits with the marketing jargon. It is easy to identify when the companies are faking it. Corn syrup, and partially hydrogenated soybean oil are the regular suspects that feature on “all natural” ingredient list.

Of all the products meaninglessly described as "all natural," I think I have the most problem with fruit juice. What loathsome lack of ethics would allow someone to make synthetic fruit juice? And how in the world would it be easier than making it the regular way? Do you hold a jar under the farmer while he jogs? Do you extract from a dumpster outside a Chinese restaurant? Any factory worker trying to squeeze will tell you: artificial fruit juice is more trouble than it's worth.

The consumers are also to be blamed. If we want fruit juice, and we insist on it being “all natural”, what stops us from making it at home? We look for convenience (a little too much in fact) and then we crib that companies take us for granted. If you want it your way, then make it your way. If enough number of consumers wake up to it companies are bound to notice it.

Are you being a smart shopper?

I sometimes feel that marketers are no longer being serious. For some reason they assume that consumers are morons and are very satisfied with their “duh” marketing initiatives.

I sense a requirement for an explanation here: Duh Marketing is when a product makes a claim so obvious that it's inconceivable why you thought otherwise. Like an energy bar that "Helps Satisfy Appetite!" or a fruit juice that "Contains 100% Daily Value of Vitamin C per serving!" Did you know that 100% DV of Vitamin C is so little that it's the bare minimum to avoid scurvy? If you accidentally drop a grapefruit in a corn syrup plant you'll contaminate everything with 100% DV of Vitamin C per serving.

Am I screaming loud enough? Will they believe me?

In the interest to save ourselves from spontaneous combustion out of shame, I have decided to deconstruct the claims plastered all over your shopping experience. Here’s the first of the series.

Marketing claim: Real

A lot of food claims to be real, but it's never really made clear what the alternative to that is. Or, for that matter, what is “unreal” food? For example, if you read the ingredients on a jar of mayonnaise and a jar of REAL mayonnaise, you'll see they're exactly the same. If there's any difference at all it's usually that "fake" mayonnaise contains modified corn starch and xanthan gum - two thickening additives with the nutritional value of sawdust.

"Real" has very little meaning in food. You can say a cat food has REAL chicken flavor because your cat doesn't know how to call you a liar. But sometimes "real" on a food implies actual legal classification.

For example, on a box of cookies, the words "real chocolate" appears. A quick check of the real chocolate ingredients, and I see that it's made of five things, no one knows what two of them are, and chocolate isn't first.

From the FDA's perspective, "real chocolate" means a candy with actual cocoa butter in it, the thing that gives it its creamy texture and a melting temperature of human mouth. This doesn't quite add up either, since biting into the chocolate chip gave me dental expenses and it had the texture of an ancient brick. 

And with that we can launch our dental care division

Another example with “real” claims will be instant soups and noodles with the promise of real chicken, vegetables so on and so forth. I do not deny the fact that the chicken or vegetable they add to the soups were real to begin with.

But then they went through the process of industrial food drying to prevent them from rotting in the packet you take home. Again there is nothing wrong with food drying as a process per say. But most of the industrial food drying uses additives and preservatives, the most dubious being sulfur.

Sulfur is used to preserve the color of some dried foods, like apricots. Fumes from burning sulfur or gaseous sulfur dioxide penetrate the surfaces of foods before they are dried. This adds more chemicals to our already jeopardized lives. And does the term sulfur poisoning ring a bell?

Hate to break the news but, yes, everyone out there is hell bent on conning us. They are probably bored of making better products and have settled for glossy claims. You know after writing this I do see why marketers take us for a ride. Why do you want to look for anything “real” in what you eat directly from a plastic pack anyway? I mean how plastic! If you want “real” then cook it yourself, use the freshest of the ingredients. And if you really want “real” then use organic!

4 bizarre food additives that you consume everyday

Deciphering food labels is tricky business. They're filled with lots of multisyllabic words that border on being impossible to pronounce, chemicals that sound like they could kill you just by touching them, and much, much worse. Read on, unless you've eaten recently ...

#4
Shellac

Most everyone is familiar with shellac as a wood-finishing product. It's often used to give furniture, guitars and even AK-47's that special shine. But did you know it is also commonly used as a food additive? Yep, that's why those lozenges you gorge on are so shiny.

But what exactly is shellac?

Shellac is derived from the excretions of the Kerria lacca insect.

The Kerria lacca uses the sticky excretion as a means to stick to the trees on which it lives. Candy makers use it to make those treats you love so much shiny and beautiful.

Before some health nut out there pipes up to tell us they don't eat candy, we'd like to point out that, during the cleaning process, apples lose their natural shine. Care to guess how it's restored?

#3
Bone Char

Some things are not as they seem. That sugar you put on your cereal in the morning isn't really white. Or at least it doesn't start out that way.

When it starts its sweet, delicious life, sugar is brown--a color deemed to be "undesirable" by the sugar industry. Don't be such racialists, sugar industry! To make the product white, sugar derived from sugar cane goes through a ... different process.

Most sugar whitening processes use bone char to filter impurities from the sugar. Bone char is delightfully produced using the bones of cows that have died from "natural causes," like when cows forget to wear a helmet when riding their motorcycles.

The bones are bleached in the sun and sold to marketers who then sell them to the sugar industry after they've been used by the gelatin industry. What the gelatin industry does with the bones, we don't want to know.

We don't know by what alchemy this method purifies the sugar, we're certainly no scientists. But when you tell us that your purification method involves the ground-up bones of a sacrificed animal, well, we're just going to assume Satan is involved.

#2
Carmine

Carmine can also be identified on food labels as Crimson Lake, Cochineal, Natural Red 4, C.I. 75470 or E120. We mention that because we're guessing you'll want to check for it in the future after reading this.

Carmine is made, literally, from ground-up cochineal insects, which is just a more harrowing way of saying mashed red beetles. Because you're dying to know more, the insects are killed by exposure to heat or immersion in hot water and then dried. Because the abdomen region that houses the fertilized eggs contains the most carmine, it is separated from the rest of the body, ground into a powder and cooked at high temperatures to extract the maximum amount of color.

But the carmine terror doesn't end there. Food manufacturers are well aware that word has gotten out about exactly what carmine is and that people are less than impressed about it. So a number of crafty manufacturers have resorted to labeling it not as carmine, but instead as "natural color," thereby guaranteeing you'll never really know for sure if your cherry ice cream contains the USDA recommended amount of creepy crawlers.

Nice. Hey, speaking of that ...

#1
Natural Flavor

When it comes to food, most of us get nervous when people are intentionally vague. So when you see that a label has included "natural flavor," you should be equally alarmed. If you're thinking the "natural flavor" in your orange candy must obviously come from oranges, think again.

The problem is natural flavor can, literally, be anything that isn't man made. One potentially disturbing example of natural flavor gone bad comes from, where else, McDonald's. Back in 1990, amid constant public outcry about the amount of cholesterol in their French fries, McDonald's started using pure vegetable oil in their fryers.

Wait, what were they using before? Why, beef lard. When they stopped using it, and McDonald's realized fried potatoes don't taste as good without some molten beef added, it was "natural flavor" to the rescue.

When vegetarian groups demanded to know what the mystery flavor was, company reps would only say it was "animal derived."

Hey, nothing unnatural about that!

5 awfully expensive foods that were once cheap

So your first anniversary is just around the corner and your friends are bugging you for a treat. Going through the recommended options you suddenly realise that fine dinning restaurants con you off your hard earned money for no rhyme or reason. But you can cheer yourself up with the knowledge that many foods that we now consider to be classy and/or expensive were common man's least favourite option for supper. Your future does look better.


#5
Lobster

It's no surprise that lobster didn't have much of a reputation. It is, literally, a sea insect. The lobster belongs to the same animal group as both the spider and the common bug, which should be your first clue. They were initially thought of as giant hassles that got in the way when fishermen were fishing for, you know, fish.

Then how did it get so fancy?

Somebody went and invented the railroad. Soon, rich people, who were painfully unaware of what was cool, were tricked into buying the sea insects. But after tasting them, they realised that they must have discovered the long-lost gatekeeper for butter.

Come to mama

#4
Oysters

The oyster is the cousin of snail, nature's glue stick. Oyster also hang out with, and look like, rocks: further proof that giving in to peer pressure is an important survival technique.

Furthermore, in the olden days, eating one required a hell lot of effort. If you succeeded in prying them off of rock without just giving up, you still had to open it. So you can see why the abundance of oysters in the 19th century led to their being mostly eaten by the working poor in the U.S. and the U.K. (also they are not very nutritious).

Then how did it get so fancy?

The industrial age brought a population boom and many, many oysters were eaten and killed, driving up price and demand, and therefore catching the interest of rich people.

To fix this problem, foreign oysters were brought in to replenish the population. Unfortunately, 19th century medical science was still in its Flinstone's car stage, and nobody thought to point out that the local and foreign oysters might carry diseases that the other might not be immune to, leading to tons of oysters becoming rocks for real.

Thus, oysters were made permanently scarce and pricey proving that rich people will spend money on anything, if doing so means that you can't have it.


#3
Foie Gras

Foie gras goes back to ancient Egyptian times, when man discovered that a 10% larger liver of a really, really fattened goose was a lovely primeval combination of tasty and gross.

The dish almost died out in the Middle Ages, when most people were chiefly concerned with trying to stay away from the burning piles of plague victims. Geese were probably able to stop having nightmares about waking up in bathtubs full of ice.

Then how did it get so fancy?

The Renaissance brought back interest in things other than just conquering people, which meant that royals were getting back to the business of conquering their arteries. People travelled to the Jewish ghettos in Rome to buy lobes of foie gras; these lobes found their way in to the kitchens of the royals, who were getting frustrated waiting for the deep fried bacon to be invented.

Then, word got around that foie gras was awesome, the French started putting it in everything and charging $10 an ounce.


#2
Polenta

Polenta is basically gruel. But Polenta is gruel made from corn. Much like gruel, working class families in Italy and Latin America largely depended on this corn mash, which can take an upwards of  three hours to cook from scratch, has to be stirred constantly and tastes like something you'd feed to cattle.

Then how did it get so fancy?

Celebrity chefs! Fairly recently, polenta went from being the dish that every rags-to-riches person thought they'd never had to eat again, to the dish that is costing them $25 in a restaurant run by the only person left on earth not shy of wearing Crocs, Mario Batali.

His fine dining restaurant even did an all-polenta meal. But make no mistake, fine dining polenta is mostly still plain old peasant polenta that is spruced up for the rich and famous. The Food Network's Rocco DiSpirito even has a special recipe for polenta in which the only special ingredient is that Rocco DiSpirito is telling you about it.


#1
Sushi

Fishtravaganza

 

 

 

 

The idea behind sushi is that you've got fish, plus stuff wrapped around it to preserve the fish. The fermentation of the rice keeps the fish from giving you varied types of illness. So originally sushi followed the formula of fish = "yum"; rice = "silica packet".

Back then the boozy, fermented rice was discarded, presumably because they were already very busy with all the opium. Then a 17th century Japanese doctor, Matsumoto Yoshiichi, hit upon the idea of adding vineger to the rice to make it an edible part of the dish.

Like most Japanese things, sushi eventually became pocket-sized. Sushi's portability, cheapness, as well as the allure of eating both a food and its wrapper at the same time turned sushi into the hot dog of the Japanese Edo period. The popular sushi street stalls were the original fast food joints.

Then how did it get so fancy?

Post WWII, sushi arrived in the U.S. with the word "exotic" attached to it.

Now there are sushi restaurants that charge up to $400 a meal (before booze) with a straight face. Masaharu Morimoto, writes in his cookbooks about the short, specific time limits he has for eating pieces of sushi.

This seems reasonable until you remember, this is like a century from now reading a celebrity chef talking about how he can only eat his chicken McNuggets exactly 236 seconds after they have left the fryer.

Are you going organic for the right reasons?

It is great to see that a large number of people are now opting for organic. But what we also see is a trend in the way organic consumers are perceived by the non-organic consumers (we will now refer to them as non-believers, just for the kicks). Non-believers are probably running out of excuses and so they turn to the age old “grapes are sour” syndrome. And here is what they tell themselves whenever they see a happy believer.

They classify you in to the:

The Do-Gooder

For them the Do-Gooder, buying organic food is like being a tiny, lame super hero with a wallet. They jeer at the idea that your buying organic lends support to the humane treatment of animals, conservation of healthy soil, and sustaining a healthy environment. They are also in denial of the fact that buying "conventional food" means participating in the problems associated with it, like pesticides running into rivers and lakes, or the creation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains from animals consuming daily antibiotic-infused feed. They do not want to accept that you are right and dismiss you as someone with a “holier than thou” attitude.

The Blessed Rich

They not only associate the consumption of organic with only the rich and famous but are irrevocably convinced that organic is expensive because some companies want to con us out of our monies, just because they have nothing else to do. They honestly believe that occasionally spending a few grand or more on expensive restaurants, expensive clothes & accessories and/or expensive holidays is so much cheaper that going organic. And you are just showing off your wealth. Oh and did I also mention that they believe all organic consumers own a Ferrari or two.

The Health Junkie

According to the non-believers if you do yoga, have treadmills at home, run the marathon (they are generally irritated with marathons because it obstructed them on their way to KFC), then naturally you eat organic! They can’t understand why you like reading health tips or trivia on how even trace elements of chemicals can harm you. They will give you typical excuses like, “I am very happy the way I am”, “It’s hereditary, not my fault” or ‘I’ll look really out of place in the family photo”. They smoke because they think they will give cigarettes cancer. Actually to sum it up, your inner peace makes them feel fat.

The Afraid. The Very Afraid.

Chemicals are generally scary. But the non-believers imagine you picturing a barrel of fertilizer with a "do not ingest" warning, and laugh at your lack of guts to challenge the might of chemicals. But most non-believers don’t want to admit that they are aware of its long term effects. Of course they know that we as a species were never designed to ingest chemicals that do not occur naturally. Their voice booms through the room when they tell their children about their herculean capacity of digestion and smirk at the thought of your chest hair committing suicide at the sight of their gastronomic strength.

So now you know what they are thinking. I am rather convinced that no one really chooses to go organic because they belong to a certain stereotype. They choose it because they want to. It tastes better, it makes you more active and it allows you to indulge when your heart calls for it. So don’t bother what the world thinks and just enjoy what nature has to offer.

6 Ingredients in Everyday Cosmetics (that you don’t want to know about)

From time immemorial, mankind (mostly womankind) has not refrained from applying anything on their face to enhance their skin deep beauty and appeal. But have you ever stopped to think what’s in that perfume or that moisturizer or that shaving cream? Aren't you just a little bit curious? Besides, how bad can it be?  

#6

Lanolin aka grease from animal fur 

Lanolin: it sounds soft and comforting, like the kind of fluffy material you'd use to protect a grazed knee. But lanolin is, in reality, the kind of substance you'd normally like to keep several miles away from your mouth if possible. 

Why? Think back to the last time you went a few days without washing your hair, and try to remember the grease that built up. That sticky substance is sebum, which is made from the delightful recipe of wax and the remains of dead fat-producing cells. 

Now, imagine a sheep in all its woolen finery going through a similar experience, except rather than having a few bath-free days, we're probably heading towards a bath-free year, and its oil-soaked coat hasn't been cut in that entire time.  

This is lanolin, the greasy stuff secreted by wool-bearing mammals to help shed water from their coats, squeezed from their harvested wool and bucketed for many uses, including shoe polish, barnacle repellents and rust-proof coatings. Oh, and also you smear it on your face. In fact, if you've ever used lipstick, lanolin is the stuff that makes it greasy and sticky. Is it bad for you? We're not saying that. We're just saying it's gross. 

You Might Have it in Your...

Shaving cream, lotions, skin creams, shampoo, make-up removers, a bucket-load of lipsticks. 

#5

Squalene aka shark liver oil 

If you're a girl and, like most of our readers, have been alive for more than two years, there's a good chance you've had shark liver juice on multiple parts of your body. There are some important benefits of squalene that hold a huge appeal to the cosmetics industry: It's easily absorbed into the skin without leaving a greasy residue; it combines well with other oils; and it is recognized as improving the appearance of skin. For this reason, it is the ideal ingredient for use in all sorts of products from lip balm to sunscreen. The most common use appears to be in facial moisturizer. 

(Writer ponders) It kind of puts Jaws in a new light, when you realize the sunbathers on the beach were smearing the guts of the shark's buddies all over their skin. 

You Might Have it in Your...

Moisturizers, sunscreen, eye make-up, lipstick and bath oils

#4

Ambergris aka whale vomit

Let's say you're a whale. And like every other whale in the ocean, you fancy eating some squid every now and again. So you do, even though you know full well that the tasty squid has a sharp beak that's going to cut your insides up. But it's OK, because your belly produces something called ambergris, a waxy oil that protects your insides from sharp beaks and whatnot.

Now let's imagine that your ambergris has been building up for a while now, and it's time to get rid of it. Now here's the fun part: Somewhere a human is going to pick up your oily stomach excrement and shout for joy, because guess what? That thing is worth as much as $20 per gram. People throughout history have used it as food flavoring, an aphrodisiac and incense, but these days you have it lurking in your bottles of perfume. 

You Might Have it in Your...

You know it by now, Fancy perfume. 

#3

Diatomaceous Earth aka dead algae 

Diatomaceous earth (which we shall hereby call it DE because it's a lot easier to type) is the fossilized remains of single-celled algae called diatoms. And what's so disgusting about that? Well, these are the same little blighters responsible for making your fish tank slimy. Over time, nature forced them together so tightly they formed a sedimentary rock known as diatomite. The dead algae rock is recognized primarily for its abrasive nature. 

Chances are if you've ever used an exfoliating body scrub, you've actually spent time rubbing dead fish tank algae all over yourself. Whilst DE is known to be damaging to some creatures, the grains are too small to do any cutting-based damage to humans, and are still rough enough to remove those pesky, dead skin cells that build up over time. 

You Might Have it in Your...

Acne treatments, facial cleanser, exfoliators

#2

Guanine aka Fish Scales

Guanine shows up on product labels as CI 75170, or to give the more beautiful label bestowed on it, natural pearl essence. Hey, that doesn't sound so bad. It comes from pearls, right?

Wrong. Natural pearl essence actually is a by-product of one of the smelliest industries we know. Put all thoughts of oysters out of your mind because natural pearl essence is actually made by processing the scraped-off scales of dead fish and suspending them in alcohol.

While having nothing to do with pearls, this derivative of guanine does have a similar iridescence to oyster jewels, so it is frequently used in the cosmetics industry to add a certain luster to their products.

So, if you've ever used a colored polish to brighten up the bitten stumps called nails found at the end of your fingers, the chances are you've spent time brushing dead fish scales over your hands, because natural pearl essence is a favored ingredient in a ton of nail polishes. 

You Might Have it in Your...

Shampoo, nail polish and other personal products

#1

Cholesterol

Yes, we are talking about that naturally occurring waxy substance responsible for clogging up your arteries. Which is why we're constantly told it's bad for us. No points to you for guessing, you or someone you love has smeared this on your face at some point.

You see, cholesterol is found in another important place: your skin. It is one of the components in the uppermost layer of your skin where it helps to retain moisture while protecting the lower layers from exposure to the elements. Thanks to its skin conditioning and emollient properties, cholesterol is an ideal ingredient for helping the skin retain moisture, which in turn helps to smooth out any wrinkles that have had the audacity to appear.

You Might Have it in Your...

Face creams, moisturizer.

So much for looking your best. It’s not just the beauty industry that is laughing at us, but so is divinity. We often under estimate what we already have. Nature has given us enough. Drink lots of water, sweat it out, eat food the way it is meant to be (without chemicals and pesticides) and balance your diet. These are oft-neglected, sure-shot ways of turning heads at parties or wherever you hang out.  

5 ways Nature is better at taking care of itself (than depending on us)

Nature doesn't take punches like she used to. Nearly every environmental disaster over the past century has been our fault and it's easy to assume that we've recklessly forced the entire planet down a path of destruction. But every once in a while, Mother Nature surprises us with her resiliency, Wolverine-like healing abilities and willingness to step in and clean up our mess when we prove ourselves incompetent.

#5

The Chernobyl fungus that eats radiation

Most of you reading this article have heard of the Chernobyl disaster, reckless experimentation and negligence that led to the worst nuclear plant disaster in history. It irradiated a huge area around the plant and left the neighboring town of Pripyat a nick name – The Ghost Town.

But even in this area, life prevails. Inside the ominous plant, mushrooms are happily feasting on radiation. That's right: There is life inside the reactor of Chernobyl. And it eats radiation. This radiotropic fungus has adapted to turn gamma radiation into food -- it's not the only organism that can absorb radiation, but it is by far the best at it.

The fungus' radiation-eating properties obviously piqued scientists interests since it could help radically reduce radiation levels in contaminated areas. But there's also another reason science wants to take a closer look at the Chernobyl mushroom: The scientists are looking at ways to use the radiation absorbing fungus as food. This could double as a way to combat high-radiation environments while simultaneously growing huge crops of edible mushrooms, which would come really handy in the event of nuclear disasters.

#4

The heavy metal Superworms that feast on poisonous metals

Back in 2008, a group of U.K. scientists were collecting worms they found in landfills because they were curious how they were digesting the garbage, and because being a scientist sometimes means getting dirty. Under the microscope, these worms were far from ordinary. They ate things that would kill ordinary earthworms. They ate metal! The highly poisonous heavy metals found in abandoned mining sites such as lead, zinc, copper and even arsenic.

And the best part? They use only the worst poisons in these metals for sustenance and they defecate a cleaner, virtually poison free version of the metal. The purifying effect of the worms is such that the soil they produce can actually sustain plant life; single-handedly bringing entire areas back to life.

Also, this is not just one mutant variety of worms -- it looks like there are three separate species that have attained this poison-eating ability, so it is not at all impossible that the all of wormkind has had enough of our uselessness and decided to roll up their sleeves to fix everything themselves.

#3

Bacteria that eats poison and makes electricity

Quick, what's the first thing that comes in your mind when we say "bacteria"? If there's even one amongst you who answered that question with "electricity," then chances are you're either lying or are Charles Milliken of the Medical University of South Carolina.

Charles and his colleague, Harold May, are microbiologists with a rather interesting feather in their matching scientist caps: They have found a form of bacteria that is able to generate electricity. The bacteria in question is a member of a genus known as Desulfitobacterium, and although bacteria has proven before its ability to produce small amounts of electricity, this genus of bacteria apparently has never really applied itself. We have no idea why it has decided to make electricity now.

Presumably it just saw an opportunity to be helpful and give us something in return since we keep giving it all those delicious bleaches, pesticides and chemicals to absorb; the Desulfitobacterium makes its electricity as a by-product of making toxic waste harmless.

We're not talking about barely measurable sparks here -- the research has only begun, but already the two scientists have studied batches that are capable of continuously generating electricity at levels that could be used to operate small electronic devices. .

#2

The Gulf of Mexico microbe that eats oil slicks

For those of you who don't remember much of 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was one of the hottest topics and biggest disasters of the year. For three agonizing months, the oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, while the world watched in horror and the BP management seemingly spent their time figuring their physical and mental pain threshold.

The spill ruined the Gulf of Mexico up thoroughly and the sheer insane amount of oil (205.8 million gallons!) that leaked into the ocean made the Exxon Valdez disaster seem like the oil stain in somebody's driveway. Then, two weeks after the plugging of the BP spill, we started getting reports that said that half of the oil was ... gone.

Now, science has long been aware of oil-eating bacteria. Specialized germs have evolved to get their nutrition from underwater oil leaks that happen all the time due to sea bottom earthquakes. Some scientists had even stepped forward with the theory that the BP spill may cause a feeding frenzy among them (the bacteria, not the scientists). But what came as a complete surprise to everyone involved was the speed at which they slurped up the oil. Some of the disappeared oil ended up on the seafloor, sure, but, with time, the bacteria will likely eat that, too.

The spill still messed up the coastline, possibly forever, but it's nice to see nature stepping in like a mad parent to help us clean up the horrific mess we made.

#1

The E. Coli bacterium that poops biofuel

Have you ever eaten cheap takeout or fast food, only to spend the rest of the night sobbing between explosive bouts of diarrhea and puking? Chances are, you made acquaintances with Escherichia coli, or E.coli bacteria.

Some types of E.coli are potentially lethal, although it usually settles for giving you the pains and keeping the giggles for itself. But E.coli gets a bad reputation. The good kind of E.coli actually is a big part of the ecosystem of your gut, happily living in your intestines and helping to keep that whole system working. So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that it might help save the world.

E.coli itself is a living organism, and as such it has to eat too. It can metabolize a number of energy sources, but it has a real craving for only one -- namely, glucose. And why not? Who doesn't love sugar? Now, scientists have been interested in glucose for a long time, particularly in its ability to convert to biofuel. And, as it turns out, one of the stranger but potentially easy ways of achieving this conversion is through the digestion of bacteria.

Currently, E.coli bacteria are being bioengineered to eat their preferred junk food just like before -- but, in a delicious twist of fate, now it's their turn to crap. And what they give out is totally renewable biofuel.

So we now know that Mother Nature is totally capable of asking us to take a hike. We have seen her fury and her care. In fact we are the only species that is hell bent on inviting disaster and disrupt the “Circle of life”. She provides us for what we need, but we fail her every time we ask her to provide for our greed.