Never mind Big Brother; your beer’s isotopes knows where you are.

By Andrew Schneider

That mug of microbrew you hoisted after work today tasted good, didn’t it? Would it have gone down as easy if you knew that it left a chemical marker showing what city you were in when you drank it? So do bottled and tap water as well as soft drinks.

It’s true. Your cellphone isn’t the only thing that can tell others your location. Scientists who can precisely measure hydrogen and oxygen isotopes can also tell where a crime victim spent the past year or whether that milk came from the farm down the road or across the country.

Biologists, geologists and analytical chemists at the University of Utah and a Salt Lake City laboratory called IsoForensics, Inc. are using this technology to help test food quality and solve cold cases for detectives around the country.

At the heart of the process is the water that is used in all beverages, from booze to baby formula. The body removes hydrogen and oxygen atoms from water and beverages that contain it and leaves a natural chemical imprint or fingerprint, explained Lesley Chesson and her colleagues in the current issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. “What we found is that human hair records the isotopic composition of the water that you drink,” she explained.

Chesson, an analytical chemist and the lead author of the study, explains it this way: The isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in water vary in ways that can be predicted accurately, and they reveal the latitude, elevation and proximity to coastline.

Lesley Chesson

“A distinct chemical fingerprint in your hair could be used to track your travels,” Chesson says.

There are implications for this beyond tracking human whereabouts. It’s also a way to find fraudulent food.

The Utah team is collecting honeycomb from beekeepers across the country in hopes of tracking where honey originates. If this works, federal criminal investigators from Customs, the Food and Drug Administration and the Border Patrol will finally have a way to stop the smuggling of mislabeled, often unsafe Chinese honey.

It might also be a way to determine if that pricey bottle of wine is really worth it.

Three scientists from the University of Utah and IsoForensics – Jason West, James Ehleringer, and Thure Cerling have used the technique of measuring hydrogen and oxygen stable isotopes to detect and confirm the origin of wine.  They found that the water in the wine does indeed provide a record of where the water came from—meaning the wines were clearly distinguishable by growing region.

The criminal-case uses for this technology is right out of CSI. The first case it was used on was that of a woman whose body was found in 2000 in an old bathhouse on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. It had been converted into a concert hall called Saltair.

Seven years after the woman was found, a few strands of her hair yielded a staggering number of details.

“We were able to get a snapshot of the victim’s life back through time…week by week, determine what she drank and thus her location during the period,” Chesson says.

For example, they found that the victim had made periodic moves in the two years leading up to her death, back and forth between two regions in Idaho and Utah every six or eight months.

Chesson began collecting water and hair samples from across the United States in 2007. Next she collected samples of beverages found in almost every community – Dasani brand bottled water, Coca-Cola Classic soda, and Budweiser beer.

The Utah team collected a database of the chemical characteristics of drinking water in 450 U.S. communities.

Chesson and her colleagues found that the soda, bottled and tap water offer a consistent and accurate database. (They found that Budweiser might not be a good way to track someone—the brewer, Anheuser-Busch Inc., operates 12 breweries in the U.S. A consumer could be tipping a Bud that traveled hundreds of miles to their local market.)

The team also collected milk and cow drinking-water samples from eight locations in six states and Puerility Rico then bought milk from supermarkets in 30 cities within 18 states. Yes, they can track the origin of that milk mustache.

Chesson and the other scientists from IsoForensics have put out the word to beekeepers across the U.S. to send in samples of well-identified honeycomb. so the group can refine a method to accurate identify where the honey originated. I’ve was writing about honey laundering before my former newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, closed 14 months ago and since I began covering public health for AOL News.

Believe me the bogus honey continues to flow though U.S. and onto store shelves. Honest honey importers and packers, and there are many, are trapped between shady importers who actually bounce Chinese honey from country-to-country, or just falsify the shipping papers, and the inability to actually have the golden nectar tested for country-of-origin by any laboratory outside of Germany.

If the analytical wizards in Salt Lake City can develop and confirm the accuracy of this technique, federal criminal investigators from Customs, the Food and Drug Administration and the Border Patrol will have a long-sought-after tool in U.S. efforts to halt the smuggling of mislabeled and adulterated Chinese honey.

In May, I reported that Texas A&M University palynologist and an anthropology professor Vaughn Bryant said he is doing melissopalynology – the study of pollen in honey that allows identification of its country of origin. From what Chesson told me it sounds like IsoForensics approach could wind up being more accessible and perhaps less costly than the German process.

Once you get beyond the gee-whiz factor, the Utah team’s tracking technology has  big-time implications for making sure any number of food products are safe, and accurately labeled.

Here is a link to a longer version of what I wrote today for AOL News .

(Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett contributed to this report.)

The ratio of isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen differ by geographic region.

Fast-food fantasies: Someday we’ll find some good news about junk food. Or die trying.

The wonderful thing about us, the overweight, inactive, sodium and high fructose corn syrup-slurping Americans, is that we put so much energy into figuring out which forbidden food is really, truly the worst.

Yet another case in point: Atlantic’s current article, “McDonald’s vs. Chipotle: Does the Big Mac Win?” by James McWilliams. As the headline indicates, it’s a two-meal comparison of the fat grams, fiber, calories and all those other mysterious measurements we now track.

Bottom line: The Mickey D’s Big Mac edges out the burrito from Chipotle slightly. (And no, McD’s doesn’t own Chipotle anymore.)

We know that just about everything we like to eat is wildly unhealthy. Why do we continue to revisit the bad news by comparing it to…different bad news? (If you’re presently going on a lot of blind dates, you have already asked yourself a version of this question.) (more…)

See that orca? No fish sticks for him.

We all know someone who is very picky about what they eat.

What if I tell you that federal, state and university investigators spent four summers proving that killer whales, or orcas — those black and white models for cuddly toys — may be the most fastidious diners around.

One of the Pacific Northwest’s prime attractions for tourists and locals, Orcinus orca can run more than 30-feet long and weigh in at 16,000 pounds. Marine scientists say they eat the equivalent of 4 to 6 percent of their own weight each day.

Photo Seattletours

It’s not how much these creatures eat, but rather what they eat that got the fish scientists from the U.S. and Canada all atwitter.

Like every other pescavore between British Columbia and Washington state, the orca love salmon. I’m not talking about the low end of the salmon food chain, like chum or humpies, or even sockeye or coho. Our black and white beauties go only for the best: the costly chinook or king salmon. Scientists say that they will bypass all the cheaper types.

I’m positive that study published in last month’s Endangered Species Research journal was solid work. Just look at the title: “Species and stock identification of prey consumed by endangered southern resident killer whales in their summer range.”  (Click here for report.)

But Lynda V. Mapes, the Seattle Times reporter and author with a gift for capturing the natural essence of the Northwest, wrote about the scientists’ work in a far more palatable style.

With great delicacy, Mapes explained how the fish hunters followed the orcas in small boats and how they gathered killer-whale poop and regurgitation.

“DNA testing revealed that the orcas select chinook salmon nearly exclusively for food, despite far more abundant numbers of pink and sockeye in the area at the same time,” Mapes wrote.

She quotes the study’s lead author, Brad Hanson, biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service: “They would literally knock pink salmon out of the way to take a Chinook.”

We have so many orcas along the coasts of British Columbia and Washington State, in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, that we assign letters to the family or pods of whales. The learned pooper-scoopers followed the J, K and L pods between 2004 and 2008.

Mapes explained that scientists believe that chinook is prime cuisine because it delivers more calories for the effort. Chinook are the largest salmon with the most oily flesh.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the study was the finding that different whale families in different parts of the world’s oceans have vastly different dietary habits: some whale pods outside the Northwest, for example, dine exclusively on seals and sea lions, eschewing fish.

It’s only fitting, then, that here in the Puget Sound area – -where most diners and cooks would never consider farm-raised salmon and run screaming from the Atlantic version of the fish — the resident orcas dine like, and on, kings.

Salmon Nation provides a quick rundown of all the species here:

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In other whale news:

Meanwhile, the port watchers from the U.S. Customs service  and other federal cops have cranked up surveillance to watch for whale meat being imported from the Far East.

This comes amid rumbles that a restaurant in Southern California, busted last year for selling whale meat from Japan, may not be alone in trading in this coveted, but illegal treat.

The Japanese openly skirt the international whaling moratorium which was passed on 1986 by claiming their whaling ships are actually research vessels and the slaughter of 1,000-plus whales each year is done in the name of science. They don’t discuss the fact that DNA-testing has proven that the same whale meat shows up in high-end eateries.

And a final whale tidbit:

The Sea Shepherd spends much of its time afloat trying to thwart the Japanese whale hunters. Last week, the ship’s captain Peter Bethune was indicted on five charges by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office for allegedly disrupting the hunt and other anti-whaling activists.

–Andrew Schneider

Truth in food labeling: Coming to a box near you?

If you’ve ever peered at the nutrition-information label on your bottle of organic cranberry juice, or, for that matter, the one on the side of the Pop-Tarts box, you’ve felt the pain. You know the one: that drilling ache right between the eyes as your brain tries to decode the calories, fat, fiber, sugar and other ingredients in the product.

If the Center for Science in the Public Interest has its way, and the group’s cogent report,  “Food Labeling Chaos: The Case for Reform,” gets the attention they want, such headaches might ease.

In the 16 years since it became law, food labeling, like warnings on tobacco products, household cleaners and prescription drugs, has been an evolving practice. The public now regards such labeling as commonplace; the debate has become about the clarity and accuracy.

So, what needs fixing? Among the points made by the CSPI report are these recommendations:

–Nutrition info on food packaging should be simplified and made more user-friendly. (That vague calories-per-serving measure should be “Amount Per ½ Cup Serving” for example.)

–Practices that allow manufacturers to obfuscate nutrition measurements for multi-item packages or single-ingredient products (including meat and poultry) should be eliminated.

–Loose regulation of terms such as “all natural” or inaccurate claims of health benefits should be policed.

CSPI sent the report to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, noting in a cover letter that recent efforts by the agency to regulate labeling are commendable…but not far-reaching enough. The letter points out that a system requiring (and enforcing) accurate, accessible food-labeling products fits nicely with the Obama administration’s campaign to reduce diet-related disease for children and adults.

Test-tube tortes

What happens when food science and cutting-edge technology are blended and applied to fine cuisine?

Answer: An edible menu, faux caviar, oxygenated foie gras and culinary foams infused with lemon, lime, or amaretto.

Photo WSU

That’s what Toni Tarver writes in the current issue of Food Technology magazine as she explains that this form of molecular cooking deconstructs foods and food ingredients, reforms them, and serves them in novel ways.

This application of science does more than make food safer; “it transforms ordinary food into flavorful, unique, and visually interesting cuisine,” she writes.

Food scientists are putting their heads together with chefs around the world and the best guess from market-watchers is that this sci-fi cooking will eventually move from high-end eateries and the Food Network’s Iron Chefs battles, right into the kitchens of quality restaurants.

This application of molecular gastronomy surfaced in 1988 as the work of French and Hungarian physicists.

Tarver, senior writer/editor of this magazine for food scientists, explains that this food preparation emphasizes slow food prepared with meticulous attention to detail and presentation, providing unique stimuli for all five senses.

Here’s a link to her explanation of this very complex science: Get a peek at a memorable-meal-to-come.

–Andrew Schneider