By Anne Louise Bannon
yourfamilyviewer.com
Okay, last week the idea was to review Food Detectives (Tuesdays, 9 p.m., Food Network). Only it wasn’t on the DVR as I had thought, so it got put off a week.
And…. It’s decidedly okay. The show, a partnership with Science Magazine, tries to find out the truth behind such popular ideas as ginger soothing motion sickness and how to cut onions without crying.
Hosted by Ted Allen, former Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, it’s mostly amusing and the science is mostly there. One of my chilihead friends complained that they didn’t get the real reason why capsaicin – the part of chilies that make them feel so hot – makes your tongue feel so hot. On the other hand, they got it right that you want to chill onions before cutting them to prevent the tears, but didn’t mention why it’s supposedly not such a good idea flavor-wise to store onions in the fridge.
On the ginger preventing motion sickness segment, Allen and his poor food techs tested it out with and without ginger, offering two of the four-person team a placebo. Right idea, lousy execution. The segment would have worked a lot better with an explanation of statistical sampling and double blind testing. Aside from the fact that four people is hardly a statistically reliable sample, the fact that one of the people receiving the placebo experienced no motion sickness at all, while the other who received the placebo was still sick does not mean that the placebo didn’t work and that ginger will help prevent motion sickness.
That kind of skip in logic may make it interesting for your kids, though. You can always ask if you agree with the conclusions that Allen draws at the end of each segment. And if they don’t, why don’t they. You may even decide to stage your own experiments, although I don’t recommend the motion sickness one.
But beyond that, there’s not really much on this week except the Olympics, which is fun for the whole family to watch. Really.
Small, but important, correction: this show is produced in collaboration with POPULAR SCIENCE magazine, not SCIENCE magazine.