Unnatural news about cancer cures

It was only a matter of time. Apparently news feeds popping up on Facebook have been referencing lots of "natural cures" the sort of thing regular reported at web sites like Natural News.  So now a correspondent writes to ask if there is any truth to the report than eating whole lemons is a cure for or can prevent cancer.  Nothing scares people as much as cancer, and too many of us have seen people grasp for any and all purported cures either because they don't trust real medicine or they feel they have nothing to lose.  So here's one of the Natural News articles about the lemon-cancer connection.  Wow, do you see that they've got all those sciency citations, so this information must be the real stuff and these people right on top of things.  And sadly that is not the case.  Here's an article about this that's says pretty much what TPP is going to say.  Over the years TPP has had his students investigate a number of these "natural cures" claims because they frequently involve plants and it's always the same story.  The actual science is either grossly misinterpreted, mostly greatly exaggerated, or just totally misleading about what the actual study was or did or found.   TPP is puzzled about the people behind these natural news articles.  Are they simply not smart enough to understand what they are doing, or are they deliberately misleading people for fun and profit?  If indeed science had discovered something as amazingly simple as eating lemons whole can cure or prevent cancer, don't you really think someone reputable would be saying so?  Oh, they aren't doing this because there's some huge conspiracy to keep people from knowing such things.  Yea, right.  A good skeptical attitude helps you steer clean of such bogus claims, that and the actual ability to read a scientific article. When something is too good to be true, mostly likely it isn't. Too bad because mojitos are a real good drink. And gin and tonic helps prevent malaria, oh, wait, there is an element of truth to that one!  The image above must have lemons in it somewhere and the image is in the public domain compliments of the USDA Agricultural Research Service.

Citrus, scurvy, and coincidence

TPP is covering citrus fruit today in his botany class, and as any fool knows, they are important sources of vitamin C.  But very few of today's students have any awareness of what an adequate supply of vitamin C prevents so rare has the condition become.  In the days of sailing ships, voyages were long and food was poor especially so if the crew ended up stranded somewhere waiting out a winter.  Sailors developed the symptoms of scurvy, but no one knew what caused it or what cured it leading to lots of speculation, nostrums, and cures.  Kids today don't know what scurvy is except for some derogatory term preceding "rats" in pirate movies.  Some things seem like coincidence, but actually you probably would not notice some things unless you were especially prepared to notice them and then it seems like an unlikely coincidence.  So it was that TPP took a quick glance at the Arts and Letters Daily collective, something he does maybe once a month to look for what people in the humanities are saying about science.  Much to his surprise the first article was on scurvy (a coincidence?) and what an nicely informative article it was too!  So here you go folks, read the article and then after finding out about scurvy, run for another glass of OJ.  Why take a chance!

Real Tangerines

A short while ago a blog was posted about bogus clementines and reached the conclusion that something other than a clementine was being sold under that name, probably tangelos. A new batch of these round fruits has reached our local markets, but so did basic old-fashioned tangerines, and since many moons have passed since last having tangerines, it seemed like a good idea to extend the comparison. The tangerines were slightly larger than real clementines, with both the distal and proximal ends somewhat flattened, but slightly convex and not as flat or even slightly convex as in the clementines. While the rind is easier to remove from the tangerines than form other citrus, it was still tighter, firmly adhering, than that of the clementines. Seeds were common, 1 or 2, rarely 3, in at least half the sections, where as clementines are virtually seedless. The taste was, well, tangeriny, as expected, but they are tarter than clementines. This in no way changes my mind about the earlier analysis. Tangerines are not clementines, or vice versa, but the store labelling can leave this unclear, as the new untried batch were being called "clementine tangerines", and in another case tangerines were subtitled "mandarins", which is correct. The stores seem quite oblivious to any differences, so it's buyer beware.

Real Life Fruit Quiz

Mrs. Phactor purchased a box of clementines the other day, but they didn't look quite right. First off they were quite round with a protruding nob on the stem end. Second the rind could be peeled away but it was quite tight. Third the network of veins around the sections wasn't evident and the sections did separate, they did not do so readily. Fourth the flesh, composed of juicy hairs, was yellow-orange, and tasted quite tart and more of orange than tangerine. Fifth most of the fruit's segments had seeds. Clementines are a hybrid and one parent is the mardarin orange/tangerine, but their fruit is flattened top to bottom with an easily removed orange rind, they have reticulate veins around the sections that are easy to remove, the sections separate easily, the flesh is orange with a sweet tangerine taste, and, as the label says, they're seedless, or nearly so. All of this leads the Phactor to think a smallish variety of tangelo, also a hybrid with a mardarin orange parent, were mislabelled (?) clementines and are giving them a bad name as they are not nearly as good. This citrus, whatever it is, has arrived only lately in several of our local midwestern markets. Have you any other opinions or ideas?
The decision was made to return them and the impertinent clerk, who had no idea who he was dealing with, wanted to know how anyone would know they weren't clementines? There are times one dusts off the PhD and pulls rank.

Book Report - Citrus

When you teach a subject like economic botany your bookshelf fills up with a remarkable variety of books, and having delved through so many, those that prove to be useful, informative, and a good read bob to the evaluative surface like cork, which is bark tissue of the cork oak (such asides are a recurring problem with accessing the economic botany data bases), and so these few get recommended to others who might share such an interest. Citrus, A History by Pierre Laszlo is a new book published in 2007, and this tells you more about my life than the book, as just now it gets its turn to be read, but what a shame it was to have waited so long because this is a very entertaining and well written book certain to teach you a great deal about these well known, and some not so well known (Shaddocks any one?), iconic fruits. You will learn everything from the occupational hazards bartenders face from making too many mojitos to the myriad references to citrus in poetry. And since my review comes so late, the price has dropped to your benefit, but even still perhaps a certain editor at the Chicago University Press will smile upon this unsolicited endorsement as my vast horde of readers clicks on the link above, a convenience for which the Phactor receives no compensation whatsoever, and think kindly upon a fellow who is even more tardy as an author than a reviewer.