Foods high in sugar are unhealthy, but these additives are too delicious for many of us to give up or reduce in a way. What if we could somehow enjoy their taste without actually eating them? A student team has now designed a spoon with a structure that stimulates taste buds (味蕾) to produce a sense of sweetness without adding calories or chemicals. The project follows previous work involving flavor-enhancing cutlery (餐具) like chopsticks that increase sweetness with a mild electric current.

The five undergraduate and graduate research students wanted to create a new spoon called Sugarware for people with such disorders as diabetes, with which sugar is largely off their menu.

The-new spoon would have several bumps (凸起) on its underside to press against the tongue. The bumps can be covered with a permanent layer of molecules (分子) called ligands. These ligands bond with taste-cell receptor proteins that typically react to sugar molecules or artificial sweeteners. The bond can activate nerve signals, causing the brain to register a sense of sweetness. A diner could thus stimulate sweetness receptors without actual intake of sugar or artificial sweeteners.

This idea is similar to the previous work in that they all use cutlery to enhance taste without a user having to actually consume any sugar. “But the mechanism for stimulating the taste buds is completely different,” Shiyu Xu, one of the student researchers, says, “It uses bumps and taste-bud-stimulating molecules rather than electricity.”

The idea is “very creative”, says Paola Almeida, who is the global director of corporate innovation at candy maker Mars. But the product’s commercial success would require a significant behavioral shift among consumers: instead of adding the usual sugar or artificial sweeteners, now we’re saying, “Use this cutlery,” Almeida says, “It remains to be seen whether flavor-enhancing cutlery will catch on”.

Health food is a general term applied to all kinds of food that is considered more healthy than the types of food sold in supermarkets. For example, whole grains, dried beans, and corn oil are health food. A narrower classification of health food is natural food. This term is used to distinguish between types of the same food. Raw honey is a natural sweetener, while refined sugar is not. Fresh fruit is a natural food, but canned fruit, with sugars and other additives (添加剂), is not. The most exact term of all and the narrowest classification within health food is organic food, used to describe food that has been grown on a particular kind of farm. Fruits and vegetables that are grown in gardens, that are treated only with organic fertilizers, that are not sprayed with poisonous insecticides (杀虫剂), and that are not refined after harvest, are organic food. Meat, fish, dairy and poultry products from animals that are fed only on organically-grown feed and that are not injected with hormones are organic food.

In choosing the type of food you eat, then, you have basically two choices: inorganic, processed food, or organic, unprocessed food. A wise decision should include study of the reason why processed food contains chemicals, some of which are proved to be poisonous and that vitamin content is greatly reduced in processed food.

Bread is typically used by health food supporters as an example of a processed food. First, the seeds from which the grain is grown are treated with a chemical which is extremely harmful. Later, the grain is sprayed with a number of very deadly insecticides. After the grain has been made into flour, it is made white with another chemical which is also poisonous. Next, a dough conditioner is added along with a softener. The conditioner and softener are poisons, and in fact, the softener has sickened and killed experimental animals. A very poisonous anti-fungal compound is added to keep the bread from getting moldy.

Other food from the supermarket would show a similar pattern of processing and preserving. You see, we buy our food on the basis of smell, color, and texture, instead of vitamin content, and manufacturers give us what we want, even if it is poisonous. The alternative? Eat health foods, preferably the organic variety.

Recently, according to drug company Novo Nordisk, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved(批准)Wegovy for children who are 12 and over. This weight loss drug has been shown to-encourage weight loss in-people struggling with obesity(肥胖), and this approval smooths the way for teenagers tousle the drug as part of a weight loss way as well.

Teenagers that have a BMI(体重指数)in the top 5％ of their age group will become eligible for a once-a-week use of the drug to go along with a meal plan for reduced calorie intake as well as an exercise plan.

In June 2021, the drug was approved by the FDA for people aged 18 and up with obesity to use, Now, it will be available for teenagers from age 12 and up.

The teen obesity in the US continues to rise, affecting teens and their family. Now, more than ever, we need new choices to support teens. This FDA approval offers an additional tool to deal with this serious and long-lasting disease.

However, many experts have made it clear that while the drug can be a helpful additional tool, it should not be looked at as a cure-all medicine and neither should a weight loss drug.

Tom Sanders, Professor Emeritus of Nutrition and Dietetics at King’s College London shared, “While drugs like this may prove useful in the short term for achieving rapid weight loss in serious obesity, they are not a cure-all medicine for preventing or treating less serious degrees of obesity; public health measures that encourage behavioral changes such as regular physical activity and balanced diets are still needed. It is rather like the situation we are in with the vaccine(疫苗)-we still need to stick with public health measures and should not depend too heavily on medicines. ”