What's STEM without a little STEAM?

Your kiss…

Now where do I start?

They say it’s probably molecular

A compatibility assay of pheromones and microbes.

They say mouths

Are the ultimate outer erogenous zone

Piled high with nerve endings

An urgent and direct signal to the somatosensory cortex.

I can assure you

That none of that is true

When it is the wrong kiss

Or the wrong kisser.

At best it is a not-unpleasant kindness

At worst a slobbering horror.

Your kiss

Unexpected though it was

And as much as I thought you’d surely fail,

Sent tongues of silver fire licking through veins.

Your kiss softened my entire being

Into a risen dough that desired some heavy hands.

Your kiss made my soul float

Into the inky night sky like feathers.

Mostly I want kisses to stop

But men will go on forever

Getting worse by the second.

Very quickly there is too much invasion

Too much tongue

Too much wetness.

Your kiss just got better

Suddenly deep enough to make my body open

But then lightly giving me a chance to consider

Then soft and firm echoing your touch.

It was never a demand

And always an invitation.

I walked away that night

Finally

Realising why people like kissing so much.

From Garden to Plate: an autumnal meal in three acts

LOOK UP

I can’t tell you what love is.

It is as futile as grasping at smoke.

Its colours change as fast as a winter sunset

And we all see an entirely different pattern in the glowing sky.

All we can do is hope our version matches

Someone, somewhere

Then hope that the sky stops changing.

We want to stop and take a snap-shot;

“There. That is my love”

But even as we say it,

The clouds have shifted again in the light.

‘Love is constant’ says the book,

And it is –like the sky. Always there

But always changing.

The discomfort is eased by language,

By institution.

“This is our love. These are our rules”

We prove It with rings of gold.

We demand the constancy, the familiarity

Of the snapshot.

It is framed, worshipped

Deified and defined.

We no longer look up,

But straight ahead.

We are frightened of what

The moving sky might show.

I looked up.

It was already dark.

The colours long vanished.

But they will return tomorrow,

The painted fire of my mutable love,

As constant as the sky

And ever moving, ever swirling.

A thing doesn’t have to be the same

To be beautiful.

This month's rant on 'wellness', and in particular -the un-wonder of celery juice.

Celery Juice, Spirits and Science

It's a lovely herb, but fellas -let's just take a deep breath and face the fact: THERE IS NO MIRACLE CURE FOR EVERYTHING THAT AILS YOU. I apologise.

Choking on the Sun

20th April, 2019

C. Lockley

Evidence-based Nutrition science is communicated to the public through the Australian Dietary Guidelines, The Dieticians Association of Australia, and qualified Nutritionists. Despite this, the Australian population is getting steadily fatter and sicker (https://bit.ly/2Jwzezq). What if it’s not what we’re communicating, but how?

One-quarter of children and adolescents, and nearly two-thirds of adults in Australia are overweight or obese, and the numbers continue to rise (https://bit.ly/2Jwzezq). Those in regional and remote areas show even greater rates of obesity and diet-related illness (https://bit.ly/2Jwzezq). Improving Australian food habits and increasing public compliance with the Australian Dietary Guidelines would reduce both financial pressure on Government health expenditure, and the risk of diet-related premature disease and death.

IS IT A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING?

With 51% of adults not eating the recommended fruit intake, and 66% not eating enough vegetables (https://bit.ly/2nJ59wc), it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the public is not understanding the science. However recent research (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) from the Australian National University on regional Australian adult consumers has found that understanding is not the problem –engagement and trust are.

People find current food and nutrition communication convoluted, complex and inconsistent, impersonal, and devoid of emotional engagement and pleasure (https://bit.ly/2HyKrxE). The ‘medicalization’ of food consumption and the avoidance of pleasure or ‘hedonism’ in meals holds very little appeal (https://bit.ly/2HANVjb). Food reduced to a measurable set of ‘nutrient’ and ‘health’ parameters that ignores flavour, pleasure, story, environment and embedded memory/tradition makes people anxious…even angry (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) .

Ignoring or down-playing emotional and pleasure narratives in food and health is just bad communication (https://bit.ly/2Yg7ZMz). Even worse, it results in people ‘throwing the baby out with the bath-water’ and ignoring the science completely in favour of a more relatable personal narrative (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) . This in turn makes them ‘sitting ducks’ for pseudo-science, fad diets, and the cleverly woven emotional marketing of unhealthy foods (https://bit.ly/2unXj0K) .

So, if not nutrition science, who and what do consumers value and prioritize when they’re deciding what to eat?

NUTRITION AND GASTRONOMY

The same meal –one that conforms to the Australian Dietary Guidelines and the famed Mediterranean Diet model –consumed under different narratives, has vastly different effects on both the amount of food consumed and the consumer’s emotional state (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) .

The story makes a difference, and not just emotionally. Foods that our mind tags as ‘healthy’ or ‘hedonic’ change our hormonal biochemistry. If we believe our meal to be ‘indulgent’ we reach satiety faster. If we focus on it being ‘healthy’, our hunger hormone –ghrelin –doesn’t fall (https://bit.ly/2qgpqwo) . Language and story alone change not just what we choose to eat (https://bit.ly/2HQPSaB) but how our bodies react to it.

Consumers may be ignoring or outright rejecting Nutrition communication, but they love Gastronomy! Our frustration with ‘nutrition’ is only matched by our obsession with food. We’re tuning out of science and tuning in to celebrity chefs and competitive cooking shows in our millions (https://bit.ly/2qwLsu7) . Where we’ll appreciate but largely ignore the macro and micronutrient analysis of the Mediterranean diet and its health benefits, we’ll gobble up Nigella Lawson sashaying about a comforting kitchen and flirting with both us, and her ingredients. No real wonder –it’s a better watch. It’s a comforting, enticing, sexy story this ‘Gastronomy’. It’s familiar. It speaks to either our actual experience, or even more importantly, the one we wish to have.

Nutrition and Gastronomy as entirely separate disciplines is utterly insane (https://bit.ly/2ukBUWb)... They’re both FOOD.

TELL A BETTER STORY SCIENCE

Research shows that Nutrition communication isn’t working, and yet we trot out the same methods, the same yawningly awful Dietary Guidelines and charts year after year. We scrupulously train our dietary ‘experts’ and widen the gap between those that are allowed to know about food, and those that are forever the ‘laity’. At the same time we wring our hands and wail that the public somehow doesn’t ‘understand’ (https://bit.ly/2Wau7WQ) , and that we must try harder…

 There’s a popular definition of insanity as ‘doing the same thing and expecting a different result’.

The public is perfectly capable of understanding, they just don’t buy the story. It’s high time we started listening to them. Expert voices fluent in ‘science-ese’ preaching about nutrients from ivory towers and artificially separated disciplines may continue to to-and-fro amongst themselves, but if it’s public engagement we’re after, it’s time to do away with “Oh but Nutrition is science, and Gastronomy is….not”, and start telling a better story. Listen carefully to the boredom, the frustration and the anger (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) , and focus on replacing it with our most basic and hard-wired motivator –pleasure. It’s not a dirty word.

First Preview for 'Scrumptious Science' coming to Youtube April 1st 2019, 8pm (EST)
I'd be ever so grateful if you gave it a watch and a thumbs up!

Second Preview too? Oh, alright...if you're going to be demanding...

And because everyone knows me better than that -here's an extra blooper reel for your amusement. It's amazing hard to remember your own script...:-)

So, you know how it all works -like, share, subscribe, COMMENT and please -all suggestions are more than welcome! I'm no expert :-)