The champion of uncelebrated foods including fat, offal, and bones, Jennifer McLagan turns her attention to a fascinating, underappreciated, and trending topic: bitterness. What do coffee, IPA beer, dark chocolate, and radicchio all have in common? They’re bitter. While some culinary cultures, such as in Italy and parts of Asia, have an inherent appreciation for bitter flavors (think Campari and Chinese bitter melon), little attention has been given to bitterness in North America: we’re much more likely to reach for salty or sweet. However, with a surge in the popularity of craft beers; dark chocolate; coffee; greens like arugula, dandelion, radicchio, and frisée; high-quality olive oil; and cocktails made with Campari and absinthe—all foods and drinks with elements of bitterness—bitter is finally getting its due. In this deep and fascinating exploration of bitter through science, culture, history, and 100 deliciously idiosyncratic recipes—like Cardoon Beef Tagine, White Asparagus with Blood Orange Sauce, and Campari Granita—award-winning author Jennifer McLagan makes a case for this misunderstood flavor and explains how adding a touch of bitter to a dish creates an exciting taste dimension that will bring your cooking to life.

The increasing demand for healthy foods has resulted in the food industry developing functional foods with health-promoting and/or disease preventing properties. However, many of these products bring new challenges. While drugs are taken for their efficacy, functional foods need to have tastes that are acceptable to consumers. Bitterness associated with the functional foods is one of the major challenges encountered by food industry today and will remain so in years to come. This important book offers a thorough understanding of bitterness, the food ingredients that cause it and its accurate measurement. The authors provide a thorough review of bitterness that includes an understanding of the genetics of bitterness perception and the molecular basis for individual differences in bitterness perception. This is followed by a detailed review of the chemical structure of bitter compounds in foods where bitterness may be considered to be a positive or negative attribute. To better understand bitterness in foods, separation and analytical techniques used to identify and characterize bitter compounds are also covered. Food processing can itself generate compounds that are bitter, such as the Maillard reaction and lipid oxidation related products. Since bitterness is considered a negative attribute in many foods, the methods being used to remove and/mask it are also thoroughly discussed.

The Twelfth Marshal Guarnaccia Investigation When an elderly woman drops by the Florentine carabinieri to complain that someone broke in to her apartment while she was out, Marshal Guarnaccia listens patiently, offers advice, and vows to pay her a visit. But before he can keep his promise, Miss Hirsch is found dead, her throat cut. She wasn’t the only person to come to the Marshal for help in recent days. There’s also a young Albanian prostitute, who wants his help to stay out of prison, and a wealthy foreign robbery victim whose case the captain is quick to prioritize. The Marshal has his hands full, and his best efforts may not be enough to stop a murderer

Reducing the intake of sodium is an important public health goal for Americans. Since the 1970s, an array of public health interventions and national dietary guidelines has sought to reduce sodium intake. However, the U.S. population still consumes more sodium than is recommended, placing individuals at risk for diseases related to elevated blood pressure. Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake in the United States evaluates and makes recommendations about strategies that could be implemented to reduce dietary sodium intake to levels recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The book reviews past and ongoing efforts to reduce the sodium content of the food supply and to motivate consumers to change behavior. Based on past lessons learned, the book makes recommendations for future initiatives. It is an excellent resource for federal and state public health officials, the processed food and food service industries, health care professionals, consumer advocacy groups, and academic researchers.

Don’t just eat your greens—eat your reds, yellows, and blues with this guide to the colorful world of nutrition and optimal health. Forget about bland, colorless diet foods. Vibrant health begins when we embrace the full spectrum of naturally occurring nutrients. In TheRainbow Diet, nutritionist and health expert Deanna Minich, PhD, explains how foods of different colors correspond to different dietary needs. You’ll learn how to create a balanced meal featuring colorful foods that boost your mental clarity, emotional wellbeing, spiritual fulfillment, and more. Providing information on foods and supplements, Minich also includes delicious recipes, as well as activities to help you heal and flourish. The Rainbow Diet combines ancient healing and eating practices with modern nutritional science to create an integrated view of body, psychology, eating, and living. With this holistic approach, Minich gives readers an easy-to-follow guide to attaining physical, mental, and spiritual health through colorful whole foods and natural supplements.

The human tongue has somewhere up to eight thousand taste buds to inform us when something is sweet, salty, sour, or bitter—or as we usually think of it—delicious or revolting. Tastes differ from one region to the next, and no two people’s seem to be the same. But why is it that some people think maple syrup is too sweet, while others can’t get enough? What makes certain people love Roquefort cheese and others think it smells like feet? Why do some people think cilantro tastes like soap? John Prescott tackles this conundrum in Taste Matters, an absorbing exploration of why we eat and seek out the foods that we do. Prescott surveys the many factors that affect taste, including genetic inheritance, maternal diet, cultural traditions, and physiological influences. He also delves into what happens when we eat for pleasure instead of nutrition, paying particularly attention to affluent Western societies, where, he argues, people increasingly view food selection as a sensory or intellectual pleasure rather than a means of survival. As obesity and high blood pressure are on the rise along with a number of other health issues, changes in the modern diet are very much to blame, and Prescott seeks to answer the question of why and how our tastes often lead us to eat foods that are not the best for our health. Compelling and accessible, this timely book paves the way for a healthier and more sustainable understanding of taste.

The follow-up to Murder in Chianti finds ex-NYPD detective Nico Doyle recruited by Italian authorities to investigate the murder of a prominent wine critic. One year after moving to his late wife’s Tuscan hometown of Gravigna, ex-NYPD detective Nico Doyle has fully settled into Italian country life, helping to serve and test recipes at his in-laws’ restaurant. But the town is shaken by the arrival of wine critic Michele Mantelli in his flashy Jaguar. Mantelli holds his influential culinary magazine and blog over Gravigna’s vintners and restaurateurs. Some of Gravigna's residents are impressed by his reputation, while others are enraged—especially Nico's landlord, whose vineyards Mantelli seems intent of ruining. Needless to say, Mantelli’s lavish, larger-than-life, and often vindictive personality has made him many enemies, and when he is poisoned, the local maresciallo, Perillo, has a headache of a high-profile murder on his hands—and once again turns to Nico for help.

In his first book, author Jason Smith explores the depravity and desperation required to maintain an opiate addiction so fierce, he finds himself jumping continents to avoid jail time and learns the hard way that some demons cannot be outrun. While teaching in Europe, he meets a prostitute who secures drugs for him at the dangerous price of helping out the Russian mafia; in China, he gets his Percocet and Xanax fix but terrifies a crowd of children and parents at his job in the process; and in Mexico, Smith thought a Tijuana jail cell would be the perfect place to kick his Fentanyl habit, but soon realizes that the power of addiction is stronger than his desire to escape it. The Bitter Taste of Dying paints a portrait of the modern day drug addict with clarity and refreshing honesty. With a gritty mixture of self-deprecation and light-hearted confessional, Smith's memoir deftly describes the journey into the harrowing depths of addiction and demonstrates the experience of finally being released from it. "Jason is a great writer who's clearly done the life-destroying research that I can relate to. This is the voice of a new generation of drug addicts." - Jerry Stahl, NY Times bestselling author of Permanent Midnight and Happy Mutant Baby Pills

This book presents all important aspects of modern alkaloid chemistry, making it the only work of its kind to offer up-to-date and comprehensive coverage. While the first part concentrates on the structure and biology of bioactive alkaloids, the second one analyzes new trends in alkaloid isolation and structure elucidation, as well as in alkaloid synthesis and biosynthesis. A must for biochemists, organic, natural products, and medicinal chemists, as well as pharmacologists, pharmaceutists, and those working in the pharmaceutical industry.