Your Health Queries

described as an artificial tongue.

“It’s a machine that holds a tongue-like surface,” Soltanahmadi said. “We collected data from real human tongues and analyzed them to have an idea of the texture of our tongue. Then we came up with an average, put that into a model and 3D-printed some molds.”

That’s how the researchers ended up with models that look and act “like [a] tongue,” Soltanahmadi said.

The scientists rubbed dark chocolate on the artificial tongue, then rubbed the tongue against another surface doubling as a palate to analyze what would happen with the chocolate and how the components would dissolve. Human nature too fickle for chocolate testing But why not simply use human testers? I would have happily flown to the UK to volunteer as a chocolate taster for this experiment, and I imagine it wouldn’t have been too difficult to find a few others willing to eat chocolate in the name of science.

“One of our aims with this was actually to reduce the number of human panelists [or testers] needed, and the reason for that lies in the nature of humans,” Soltanahmadi explained. “Me and you, we can try the same chocolate and we’d describe it in different ways. We’re trying to reduce that and create more lab-based measurements.”

In short, humans aren’t suitable to produce reliable, comparable data when it comes to testing the mouth feel of chocolate. There goes my dream job.

Less fat, same melty mouth feel…

I walk 30 minutes daily, but I have a very sedentary job Studies show that even if you exercise 30 minutes a day, seven days a week, sitting for eight hours at your desk will undo all that hard work. So try getting up every half an hour and taking a few steps or jogging in place. That will prevent your metabolism from slowing down and undoing all your hard work.

I sleep 6-7 hours a night. Is that enough? Can I make up for the lack of sleep by napping?

Adults need 7-9 hours of sleep a night. Less than that does not give your brain and body time to recuperate. Also, it may increase craving for junk food. A short nap of 30 minutes may help. More than that will make you feel groggy. You cannot make up for lost sleep with naps.

I need to lose weight fast. Is it better to do cardio workouts or weight lifting?

Fatty

Cocoa

butter makes for good mouth feel But first, let’s take a step back. Chocolate is made up of several components. There are the solid solids, if you will (sugarand cocoa particles), and a solid that turns liquid: Cocoa butter, the aforementioned fat. Cocoa butter is solid at low temperatures, but once it enters our mouth and hits our tongue, it turns into an oily liquid.

All disappointment aside, test runs with the artificial tongue showed that the level of lubrication that makes for chocolate’s pleasant mouth feel can be achieved with a fat content lower than that of most current chocolates.

“We’re not aiming for zero-calorie chocolate,” Soltanahmadi said. “I’m not sure that’s achievable. But we aimed to reduce the cocoa butter, the fatty part. Because in our observation we saw that rather than the amount of the fat, the location

Cardio workouts burn more calories in the same amount of time as weight lifting, especially if you combine it with some high-intensity intervals (increasing the speed of your training with short periods of lower intensity or rest in between). Weights, either free weights or with machines, use fewer calories than cardio, but the effects are more long-lasting. They speed up your metabolism all day.

I was told that people live longer in villages and are less likely to get cancer. Is this true?

This is true and has a lot to do with air pollution. Our cities are highly polluted. Autopsies done on city dwellers show lung lymph nodes clogged with black pollutants. This reduces the function of the immunity-producing cells and macrophages. As a result, not only are respiratory infections (which may even be fatal) more frequent, but the likelihood of cancer is also greater. Regular steam inhalations can help to clear out the lungs, remove pollutants from the trachea and thereby reduce the incidence of respiratory infections. It may make sense to take steam inhalations once or twice a day.