Huh?

Oh, so there's a fifth assignment for the Food and Nutrition paper? And, it's due on the 19th October, next Friday? It's gonna be a busy week!

When I signed up for this paper I was intrigued by the fact that there is no exam. It's internally assessed (snigger). Also, it was a two semester paper for the same number of points as a single semester so I (oh so naively) assumed I would be able to put in half as many hours per week. Not so. I think I prefer the 'two assignments and an exam' setup. This last assignment is important, but not especially interesting to me. It's to do with food safety - spoilage, preparation, micro-biological contamination, water activity etc etc... etc... There is one interesting question which involves comparing foods that make a nutrition claim "LOW CALORIE", "HIGH FIBRE" against a similar food that doesn't wear it's heart on it's sleeve. So far this has lead me to compare a 'LOW FAT' hot chocolate mix with four others that don't claim it. For a start it was all a bit confusing because the 'skinny' hot choc only gave values per 13 gram serve and then values for the drink made up with water per 100ml. Once I converted all the hot chocs to 100g of powder values, guess what? The product that was proclaiming itself as the star performer is not only the highest in calories but also the highest in fat. I wasn't expecting that. Once I finish up the analysis, I will link to it from this blog so that you can all see what I'm on about. The other surprise has been with examining fortified foods. I found, for example, that a fruit yogurt fortified with calcium delivered 40% of daily calcium needs but that my regular organic yogurt unfortified still had 33% anyway! Other fortified foods do show major variance, especially when it comes to fortified breads and pastas that have been jacked up with iron, fibre, thiamin or folate.

I have to consider whether or not to take a summer paper, and if so, can I really handle another festive season where my main memories involve human bioscience? This time it would be human bioscience abnormal function (last years was normal function). I may be intrigued enough to go for it.

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Well, I have to rush off because the Jase is currently going through a rush of enthusiasm for Salsa practice and has been waving the Salsa timing cd at me and looking pained.... However, for the babyfied ones that read my blog, I must update you that yesterday I met my 3 months old nephew and he is way cute and super-huggable. I tried not to, you know, monopolise him, but he seemed to like me, grabbed my hair and all that, said brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, in that cute way that little babies blow bubbles. Aw...