Hollywood Child Stars: Fame and Struggle to Success

Growing up is difficult enough without having to do it on TV in front of millions of people. Some child actors can build a career on their fledgling fame while  others struggle to reproduce that early success.

America Ferrara, "Ugly Betty"

Before donning the poncho of adorable Betty Suarez, Emmy-winning actress America Ferrera had an impressive film and TV resume. In 2002 she appeared on CBS’ “Touched by an Angel,” as well as the HBO film “Real Women have Curves.” Ferrera continued to collect film credits with “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and “Lords of Dogtown,” before winning the lead role in “Ugly Betty.”

The show ended in 2010, but “Ugly Betty” star America Ferrera continued to win fans with her roles in “How to Train Your Dragon” and CBS’s “The Good Wife.” She will also co-star with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena in the 2012 film “End of Watch,” in US theaters Sept. 21.

Robert Iler, "The Sopranos"

Who knew shock rocker Marilyn Manson had a connection to the Emmy-award winning cable series “The Sopranos”? In 1995, before being cast as A.J. Soprano, Robert Iler appeared in a music video for Manson’s single from his debut album. For six seasons, Iler would grow up in front of the audience as the often-troubled son of mobster Tony Soprano.

Since "The Sopranos" ended in 2007, Iler has appeared in a few films like “Tadpole” in 2002 and “Daredevil” in 2003, as well as an episode of “Law and Order." Iler has also had a few run-ins with the law. In 2001, the actor was charged with larceny and received three years probation. He was also present when police raided an underground New York City poker club in 2005.

Sawyer, Madylin and Sullivan Sweeten, "Everybody Loves Raymond"

The kids from “Everybody Loves Raymond” cemented their entertainment careers after filming the pilot episode in 1996. Madylin Sweeten played Ray Romano’s daughter, Ally Barone, alongside her real-life twin brothers Sullivan and Sawyer, who played Michael and Geoffrey Barone.

Today the Sweetens are still touting the “Everybody Loves Raymond” legacy since the Emmy-winning series ended in 2005. They are pictured at the TV Land Awards in 2010.

Cole and Dylan Sprouse

Who would’ve guessed in 1999 that the twins who played the mischievous kid in the Adam Sandler comedy “Big Daddy” would become such a success on their own? A year after the film’s release, Cole Sprouse won the role of Ross’ son, Ben Geller, on the hit sitcom “Friends.”

Although Cole did not share the “Friends” role with his brother Dylan Sprouse, as was the case in previous credits, they did earn their very own TV show. “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody” first premiered on the Disney Channel in 2005 and continued with the spinoff “The Suite Life on Deck." The Sprouse twins currently attend New York University.

Michael Angarano, "Will & Grace"

Michael Angarano first appeared on television sets across America as the biological son of Jack McFarland on NBC’s “Will and Grace.” The young actor appeared in 11 episodes as Elliot from 2001 to 2006 and from then on took to the big screen for more roles.

Aside from being the guy Kristen Stewart dumped for Robert Pattinson in 2008, Angarano has led a colorful film career starring in “Seabiscuit,” "Sky High," “The Lords of Dogtown,” and “Red State.” Angarano is currently working on a few productions including the drama “Empire State,” which is to be released in 2013.

Jonathan Taylor Thomas, "Home Improvement"

We all remember his signature initials — "JTT". From jumping out of TV and into movies, to gracing the covers of Tiger Beat and J14, the original tween heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas was a surefire household name. For seven years he played Randy Taylor, the middle child on ABC’s “Home Improvement,” and voiced the young incarnation of Simba in Disney’s “The Lion King.”

Since his stint on “Home Improvement,” Jonathan Taylor Thomas continued a modest television career with small roles in “Smallville,” “8 Simple Rules,” and “Veronica Mars.” Thomas enrolled at Harvard University and in 2010 graduated from Columbia University.

Erik Per Sullivan, "Malcolm in the Middle"

You might have caught “Malcolm in the Middle” star Erik Per Sullivan in a few movies including “The Cider House Rules” and “Joe Dirt” before he was cast as baby brother Dewey on the hit Fox sitcom.

Since the show’s end in 2006, Per Sullivan has gone on to star in a few films, as well as attend USC. And did you know he is Swedish-born and fluent in the language?

Nicholle Tom

Before Emmy-nominee Fran Drescher became her “Nanny,” Nicholle Tom was already living the good life on the set of “Beverly Hill, 90210” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” She also starred in the family film “Beethoven,” along with its sequel, before playing Maggie Sheffield on “The Nanny.”

Nicholle Tom has maintained a steady television career appearing in a number of network series and movies. More recent appearances include ABC’s “Castle,” CBS’s “The Mentalist,” and “Without a Trace.”

Brian Bonsall, "Family Ties"

Native Californian Brian Bonsall walked onto set at 5-years-old after earning the role of little Andy Keaton on the NBC sitcom “Family Ties” in 1986. By 1994 Bonsall was starring in feature films including Disney’s “Blank Check” and landed a recurring role on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Bonsall retired from acting in 1995 shortly after his rapid rise to the big screen. He moved to Boulder, Colorado and became a musician, performing with local punk bands and eventually taking his act back to Los Angeles. Bonsall also has a history of run-ins with the law and has been convicted of driving under the influence and assault.

Michael Fishman, "Roseanne"

Michael Fishman warmed our hearts as D.J. Conner, the youngest of the “Roseanne” family. The show ran on the ABC network for nine seasons and, during that period, Fishman also made guest appearances on “Seinfeld” and “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

After “Roseanne” ended in 1997, Michael Fishman joined his TV mom for her variety talk show. He also earned a role in Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi epic “Artificial Intelligence: A.I.” For a period, Fishman left acting to work behind the scenes and received an "Outstanding Set Design / Art Direction" Sports Emmy nomination in 2008 for his work on "Sport Science." Most recently, he was spotted at Barr’s Comedy Central “Roast” in August. Fishman, 30, is now married and has two children.

-Source: Yahoo.com

Amazing World Tiny Miniatures

This list is a salute to the world of the tiny, both man-made and those that nature has seen fit to create.

The World’s Smallest Snake

The Barbados Thread Snake was recently discovered in 2008. Recognized as the world’s smallest snake, the tiny reptile will only reach a maximum size of 10 cm long. (about 4 inches.), and are reported to be “as thin as spaghetti”. Due to it’s extreme tininess, females only lay one egg, which hatches out at half the size of the adult. A larger clutch of eggs would produce such small offspring that it would be near impossible for the snakelings to find sustenance.

Through the eye of a needle

The pinnacle of handmade miniatures would have to be sculptures that are smaller than the eye of a needle. The hands down master of the art currently is Willard Wigan MBE. An artist who started his career at only 5 years old when he decided to start building homes for ants, he has continued to impress the world with his micro creations, the artist is often referred to as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. Wigan works primarily through the night, as even traffic noise from outside can destroy a piece he is working on. Using micro tools on a microscopic work field, he must control not only his pulse rate, but his breathing, as he has inhaled a few of his masterpieces, due to a poorly timed inhale.

Rice

Long considered a symbol of wealth and prosperity throughout the Asian world, rice has always held a position of high esteem and respect, not to mention being a daily staple food source around the world. It’s only natural that respect for this most humble of grains would evolve into it’s own field of art. Rice writing originated in ancient Turkey and India, and one of the oldest known examples of this art is housed to this day in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. To have a grain of rice with your name written on it is still thought to be quite a lucky charm, so many companies have made a small fortune by providing such services. Most of these tiny art pieces are suspended in small glass vials filled with mineral oil, to help magnify the writing on the minuscule grain.

Checkmate!

Guinness World Record for the smallest handmade chess set was awarded in 2006, and goes to M. Manikandan of Srivilliputtur, Tamil Nadu, India. His incredible creation has a chess board only 24 mm square. As for the playing pieces themselves, the largest piece is 10 mm high and the smallest is half that at 5 mm. A further search for mini chess sets revealed a beautiful solid gold set for sale on E-bay that also measured 24 x 24 mm. The owner has used slightly over 6 grams of 22 carat gold for which he is seeking 100,000 rupees. Though that may sound like a king’s ransom, converted into US dollars, the amount comes down to a less staggering $2,175, or 1560 Euros.

That’s the pits

What to do with those pesky pits that we find in our everyday foods. For centuries those pits from peaches, plums, cherries and olives have been thrown away with the garbage. But for quite of few folks with the ache to create, and with an extremely steady hand, those very pits are the “core” of their calling. The inspiration for this list, Mott’s Miniature’s had quite a “large” collection of pit carvings that can be viewed at their website. The American artist Bob Shamey has been featured by Ripley’s Believe It or Not not just once, but twice, for his carvings. At the National Palace Museum in Taiwan there is an olive pit carving of a tiny boat, with working shutters and facial expressions on all eight passengers.

Matchsticks

One of the many “humble” art mediums, matchsticks have been used to create a cavalcade of various structures and masterpieces. Commonly referred to as folkart, matchstick miniatures have also been classed as another form of “prisonart”, although the creators of such hardly need to have served time behind bars. The amount of art developed in this medium is immense, with artists each having their own vision of what they would like to produce, whether it be stick carvings, match head sculptures, or homages to the engineering feats of mankind from every culture and civilization, created from minute lumber, one stick at a time.

Mini-bees

Called Quasihesma, these minutely small bees come from Cape York in Queensland. Known as the smallest species of bee, these little guys are only 2mm long. That’s approximately the size of the head of a pin. They come from the family Colletidae, and are often referred to collectively as plasterer bees, due to the method of smoothing the walls of their nest cells with secretions applied with their mouthparts; these secretions dry into a cellophane-like lining. Another distinction of this group of bees is that they are solitary bees. Although they have been known to build nest in groups, they do not manufacture hives.

Insect powered aircraft

There are ancients stone tablets from the city of Ur that observe the natural flying power of the common housefly. The ancient Egyptians mused about how the housefly’s powers may provide insight to the Pharaoh’s journey into the Afterlife. Even the great Nikola Tesla had a curiosity about insect power, as excerpted here.

“His sixteen-bug-power motor was, likewise, not an unqualified success. This was a light contrivance made of splinters forming a windmill, with a spindle and pulley attached to live June bugs. When the glued insects beat their wings, as they did desperately, the bug-power engine prepared to take off. This line of research was forever abandoned however when a young friend dropped by who fancied the taste of June bugs. Noticing a jarful standing near, he began cramming them into his mouth. The youthful inventor threw up.” Adopted from “Tesla: Man out of time”, by Margaret Cheney, 1981.

Dr. Richard Brewer is given credit with manufacturing the first prototype fly powered airplane in 1949, constructed of balsa wood and the cellophane from a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Reportedly Dr. Brewers prototype plane was delivered to the Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space Museum during the 1960′s. Insect powered aircraft have become quite a well followed hobby with many websites devoted to blueprints and instructions to construct miniature planes that utilize houseflies or flying beetles as their motors.

Smallest Bible

In 2007 nanotechnology was pushed to another extreme when Technion inscribed the entire Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible onto a space less than half the size of a grain of sugar. The team etched the 300,000 words of the Bible onto a tiny silicone surface less than .5 mm square by blasting the silicone with gallium ions.

The previous smallest, known, copy of the Bible measured 2.8 x 3.4 x 1 centimeters (1.1 x 1.3 x 0.4 inches), weighing 11.75 grams (0.4 ounces) and containing 1,514 pages, according to Guinness World Records spokeswoman Amarilis Espinoza. The tiny text, obtained by an Indian professor in November, 2001, is believed to have originated in Australia.

Nano-motors

Nanotechnology, nanorobotics, nanomachines. An ever expanding field of science and technology expected to revolutionize the world as we know it. The simplest, (though hardly simple), of nano machines are being constructed for biological study to better understand the mechanics of the cell, and all it’s natural capabilities. The hope is that humans may be able to replicate some of these functions, towards the better health of mankind in the future. Science envisions great strides in the fields of molecular biology, medicine, chemistry, physics, and nanocomputers through the development of these microscopic motors. Many of these machines are as small as 1/2 the width of a human hair and others are so small several hundred would fit in the space of the period at the end of this sentence.

Seashells in the sand

Not to be confused with microscopic plankton and diatoms, these are indeed fully formed seashells on a minuscule scale. A great many gem and mineral societies world-wide have divisions devoted to the study and worship of these tiny homes that can be found in sand samples from around the world. And remember that impossibly tiny as these shells are, the original inhabitants were even smaller, as they had to fit within. There is no evidence, so far, of any species of hermit crab that may have used these microshells as a borrowed home.

World Most Amazing Streets

This list looks at some of the most unusual and interesting roads and still exist today. Most are modern.

Steepest Street
New Zealand
Steepest street in the world

Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand boasts the steepest street. New Zealand has many cities built on or around mountainous and hilly areas, and Dunedin is no exception. This street (and many others in New Zealand) were designed by British town planners who had never been to the country. They simply overlaid a grid pattern on the map and had no idea that they had made impossible or ridiculous design choices. The slope on Baldwin street has a 35% grade. The road is so steep that at the top it is made of concrete because the usual road surfacing material used in New Zealand (asphalt) would slide down the street in hot weather.

Savoy Court
England
Only street in Britain where you must drive on the right

As most of our readers will know, the British drive on the left (unlike Europe and the United States). But there is one exception to this rule: Savoy Court is the only street in Britain where cars must legally drive on the right. Apparently this dates back to the old Hackney Cabs – by driving on the right, the driver was able to open the backdoor without leaving the cab, allowing the passengers to alight on the sidewalk. This is allowed by a special act of parliament.

The Magic Roundabout
England
World’s worst roundabout

Anyone who has been on the Internet for a while will recognize the Magic Roundabout – it has appeared in virtually every “funny picture” list you can find. The roundabout is a real roundabout in Swindon, England. It was built in 1972 and it includes 5 other smaller roundabouts. To make matters worse, you must travel anti-clockwise (the reverse of the normal situation on British roundabouts) when you enter the smaller central roundabout. The Swindon Junction has been voted the worst junction in Great Britain.

Lombard Street
United States
World’s crookedest street

Lombard Street in San Francisco is famous for its bizarre hair-pin turns. There are eight of the turns (called switchbacks) and the street is known as the “crookedest street in the world”. The turns were added because the street would have been too steep for most vehicles (though it would still be less steep than the street in item 1). The twisting section of Lombard Street is now one way – in order to make it safer and there is a parking ban in place.

9 de Julio Avenue
Argentina
World’s widest street

9 de Julio Avenue (meaning 9th of July Avenue – in honor of Argentina’s independence day) is the widest street in the world. It has six lanes in each direction and it spans an entire city block. There is a single building that sits on the Avenue (the former Ministry of Communications building) but there are many famous landmarks along the side – such as the old French Embassy, a statue of Don Quixote, and the famous obelisk (visible in the picture above) and Plaza de la República.

Road To Giza
Egypt
World’s oldest paved road

The Road to Giza is the world’s oldest known paved road. The road is over 4,600 years old and is six and a half feet wide. It covered a distance of seven and a half miles – connecting the quarries to the Southwest of Cairo, to the quay on Lake Moeris which connected to the Nile. The road was used to transport the enormous blocks of basalt to Giza where they were used for building (especially for paving).

Parliament Street
England
World’s narrowest street

Parliament Street is in Exeter, England. It is the narrowest street in the world, measuring less than 0.64m (25″) at its narrowest point. It was originally called Small Street (for reasons that are obvious) but was renamed when parliament passed an act of law that expanded the representation of the people in the house of commons. The street dates from the 1300s and it is 50 meters long.

Pan-American Highway
The Americas World’s longest road

The Pan-American Highway is the longest motoring road in the world. It has replaced Yonge Street (in Toronto Canada) as the longest road since changes were made to the configuration of Highway 11 and Yonge Street in the 1990s. The Pan-American highway links the mainland nations of the Americas and is an amazing 48,000 kilometers (29,800 miles) long. The highway passes through 15 nations, including the USA, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and El Salvador.

Ebenezer Place
Scotland
World’s Shortest street

Ebenezer Place is the shortest street in the world, measuring just 2.06 meters (6.8 ft). There is just one house on the street, number 1 Ebenezer Place which was built in 1883. The building is a hotel (Mackays) and the owner was instructed to paint a street name on its shortest side. It was officially declared a street in 1887.

World Amazing Food Festivals

If you can think of other exciting bizarre food festivals, fortunately this one combines both passions.

Annual Yuma Lettuce Days
Yuma, Arizona, USA

Yuma is known as ‘The Winter Lettuce Capital of the World’. Sounds silly, yes, but considering Yuma produces $1.5 billion of Arizona’s agriculture revenue and provides 90% of North America’s winter vegetables, it’s appropriate to respect the lettuce. Among the highlights of this Veggie Fair are the Lettuce sculptures, Cabbage Bowling, Homegrown Cooking Contest and the ‘World’s Largest Salad’.

Olney Pancake Race
Olney, England, UK

At 11:55 am on Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake Day, aka Fat Tuesday), the local ladies assemble dressed in traditional housewife attire (including skirt, apron and scarf) and run 415 yards through the streets of Olney carrying a frying pan. The pancakes are tossed at the start of the race and the winner is must toss her pancake again at the finish. The race has been an Olney tradition since 1445 and in 1950, the competition expanded to include a friendly flapjack rivalry with the housewives and young women of Liberal, Kansas in the US. The ladies of Liberal won this past year’s race with a new record of 57.5 seconds.

Carnival at Vilanova i La Geltrú
Candy Throwing Fight
Vilanova i La Geltrú, Spain

Originally a protest of the Franco regime’s Carnivale prohibition, this annual festival is by far the sweetest food fight in the world! Celebrations begin on Fat Tuesday with the Meringue Wars, where bakeries open their stores and pass out free pie ammunition to children. The adults dress in the colors of their respective Carnival Society and attend parties and masquerades before joining the children in the streets in what becomes a sweet tooth free-for-all! Over 200,000 lbs of food has been donated to the food fight, ranging from pies to candy to cereal. It’s a dentist’s nightmare! The festival officially ends with the ceremonial burial of a sardine to mark the beginning of Lent and fasting.

Ivrea Orange Festival
Ivrea, Italy

La Tomantina has already been mentioned in a previous list but by no means is that the only fruit-throwing festival! The Ivrea Orange Festival originated from the 12th century when during parades and city celebrations, girls would throw oranges from their balconies to gain the attention of the boy they fancied. The boys began to reciprocate (no mention if the secret admiration was reciprocated but the oranges certainly were!) and this evolved into a messy rivalry between the balcony girls and the street boys. It wasn’t until WWII when the intricate citrus battle rules were finally laid out. It is free for anyone to participate by joining one of the nine teams on foot or become a member of the carriage crew.

Waikiki Spam Jam
Waikiki, Hawaii, USA

As an area with a scarce meat supply during WWII, this archipelago embraced the blue-canned pink meat and has now become Spam’s most loyal market. During this street festival, hula dancers perform while judges crown a Mr. and Miss Spam and Hawaii’s top chefs create new recipes celebrating the gelatinous meat product. Pedestrians get to sample everything from Spam Burgers to Spam Musubi (kind of like sushi but with spam instead of fish). This festival also serves a philanthropic purpose that benefits the Hawaii Food Bank, the largest non-profit in Hawaii that feeds the needy.

Gilroy Garlic Festival
Gilroy, California, USA

Gilroy is the unofficial Garlic Capital of the World and proudly shows off in this festival that attracts over 100,000 visitors annually that as a whole consume an estimated two and a half tons of garlic at the event. The official Gilroy Garlic Festival website claims to have used 72 tons of garlic in the twenty-nine years this festival has existed. Cooking demonstrations and lectures discuss traditional uses and health benefits but the innovative can always express their love for this pungent food in the Great Garlic Cook-off, which has had entries like garlic ice cream, garlic soft drinks and last year’s winner “Walnut-Garlic Tart with Garlic-Infused Cream and Chili Syrup”. Anyone need a Tic Tac?

Roadkill Cook-off of the Autumn Harvest Festival
Marlington, West Virginia, USA

Nobody panic! None of the entries in this harvest festival competition have any tire marks as they aren’t actually unfortunate outcomes of “Why did the chicken cross the road?” jokes. This competition utilizes wild game such as raccoon, possum, deer…basically any of Bambi’s friends that could be potential roadkill. Does that make it better? No? oh well… notables among the past wild game entries are “Spicy Venison, Buffalo & Sausage Stew”, “Pulled BamBiTo under Saboogo”, and Biscuits & Squirrel Gravy.

World Pea shooting Championship
Witcham, Cambridgeshire, UK

This is loosely termed a festival since the food isn’t celebrated; rather, it’s like a block party that grew out of a simple target competition. In 1971, local headmaster Mr. Tyson held the first pea shooting competition as a way to fundraise for the upkeep of the village hall. The entrance fee is only £1.00 for adults and £0.50 for children, but be warned! The competitors take this extreme sport seriously and you’ll need hi-tech gear (like the laser-guided pea shooter) to stand a chance on the field with these seasoned pea shooting veterans.

Annual Testicle Festival
Clinton, Montana, USA

There are several imitators but this is the original ballfest. Usually known by its classier name, the Rocky Mountain Oyster Festival, this whole event is dedicated to serving deep-fried bull testicles. You can have your choice plain deep-fried, beer battered, marinated, as well as some newly concocted delectables. For the indecisive, $5 can provide a sampler plate of testicles. Those on a low-testicle diet can have fun as well! One of the highlights of the festival is Bullshit Bingo, with a grand prize of $100 for the lucky person who can correctly predict where a cow will do its doodie. The motto of this dignified event? “I had a ball at the Testicle Festival.”

Noche de Rábanos Night of the Radishes
Oaxaca, Mexico

This is a food festival where eating is discouraged! This festival originated in the 16th century when Spanish monks brought this edible root to the new colonies. To gain attention in the food markets, sellers would carve some radishes into eye-catching sculptures. This tradition continued throughout the centuries and became an official festival in 1987. Radishes as big as two feet long and weighing upwards of ten pounds are carved into intricate religious or cultural scenes. The artisans can compete in three different categories for cash prizes.

Most Unusual Ingredients Used in Cooking

This list explores ten of the most unusual ingredients used in cooking today – this is not a historic list – this is about food now. Enjoy!

Poop

A common ingredient found in poop is called skatole. The word comes from the ancient Greek root “skat” which means “dung” – this is the same root from which we get “scatology” – the study of feces. It is derived from mammals (it is produced in their digestive tract) and it smells (not surprisingly) like poop. This delightful ingredient is used in cigarettes, many perfumes and – most importantly for the purposes of this list, strawberry ice cream. Like the beaver ass above, someone discovered that strawberry flavor is greatly enhanced with the addition of a little dung. Frankly, I will stick to pepper.

Human Hair

L-cysteine is an amino acid that is commonly used in baked goods because it adds elasticity and helps soften dough. It is also commonly used in hair perm solutions. You can find it in bagels, doughnuts, bread, cookies, and frankly, a hell of a lot of yummy things. The cheapest way to produce it (and therefore the most common source at present) is by a special chemical process using human hair – most of which is sourced (and prepared) in China. Because of this, it has led to some debate over whether eating products containing l-cysteine is a type of cannibalism. In China it was also used in the production of soy source: “When asking [the soy manufacturer] how the amino acid syrup (or powder) was generated, [he] replied that the powder was generated from human hair. Because the human hair was gathered from salon [sic], barbershop [sic] and hospitals around the country, it was unhygienic and mixed with condom [sic], used hospital cottons, used menstrual cycle pad [sic], used syringe [sic], etc.”

Beaver Ass

On a previous list we mentioned civet coffee, the very expensive coffee beans that are gathered from the poop of civets, and if it weren’t for the fact that civet anal juice is now replaced by a synthetic chemical (civetone), it would be on this list. However, beaver anal juice (castoreum) is not (yet) able to be synthesized and it is still used in foodstuffs. It is most commonly found as a flavor enhancer in raspberry products – apparently it adds a nice rounded flavor. It is also found in chewing gum and cigarettes. The question is – who the hell discovered that beaver poop juice tasted good with raspberries?

Cigarettes

You read that right… Cigarette smoking has been banned from bars and pubs all around the world, so someone came up with a brilliant idea: if you can’t smoke it – eat it! The trick is to take a fine bottle of spirits (usually vodka but sometimes brandy, etc) and drop a smoke or two in it (or a cigar in the case of brandy). The nicotine – and other chemicals, seep out of the cigarette and infuse flavor and color into the drink. These concoctions are often called “nicotine tea”. I was fortunate (?) enough to try one at a bar recently and I can’t say I enjoyed the drink a great deal.

Bugs

Cochineal and carmine are two red food colorings that are derived from bugs – the cochineal bug to be exact. Cochineal is produced by drying and pulverizing the whole body of the bug, while carmine is a derivative of cochineal powder. The bugs are usually killed by immersing them in boiling water – the amount of time they spent in the water determines the level of redness – whether it be a lighter orange color or a vivid red. 155,000 insects are needed to make two pounds of food dye. Cochineal has been used for hundreds of years and it is also a very popular cloth dye.

Varnish

Okay – to be more exact we are talking about shellac which was very commonly used as a varnish back in the old days (from around 1880 – 1930) before it was replaced with lacquer. Shellac is used in baking and in mass produced candy to give the finished product a nice shine. The most likely source of shellac in most of our reader’s diets will be from Skittles – the colorful coated fruit-flavored candies. Now that we know how much we love to eat shellac, we should probably also point out that it is made from a secretion of the female lac beetle. She excretes the shellac onto branches in order to help her cocoon stick.

Coal Tar

Once upon a time, amaranth was used as a food coloring (red to be specific) but scientific testing found it to be extremely carcinogenic, so someone came up with a replacement: allura red AC (also know by the E number E129). Allura Red AC is made from coal tar (a liquid that is a by-product of turning coal into coal gas or coke). Coal tar is flammable and is frequently used in medicated shampoos designed to kill head lice. It is also used to make tylenol. While allura red AC is not carcinogenic, it can cause vomiting and other side-effects in some people. Despite this, it is FDA approved and very common in candy and soft drinks.

Borax

Borax: fire retardant, insecticide, treatment for horse thrush, ingredient in glass and detergent, and… ingredient. Luckily for the Americans reading, borax is illegal as a food additive there (though it is permitted in imported caviar – the fat cats in government allow themselves a few luxuries), but not so in many other nations. It is often used as a preservative in caviar, and in some Asian countries it is found in noodles, meatballs, and steamed rice. It has an E number of E285. It can have serious toxic effects on humans (particularly effecting the testes).

Viruses

In August, 2006, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the use of bacteriophages in the preparation of food (specifically ready to eat meat products). A bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacteria; the point of applying these viruses to food is that they will kill any bacteria that might cause food poisoning. Every year, 2,500 Americans get sick from listeriosis – consequently, millions of Americans now regularly chow down on viruses added intentionally to stop those few thousand people getting sick. The FDA does not require that food treated with these viruses should carry a label. Frighteningly, they say: “As long as it [is] used in accordance with the regulations, we have concluded it’s safe.” Worthwhile? You be the judge.

Gold

Gold is one of the most popular metals used in jewelry. It is also very useful in electronics. In addition to its more common uses, gold is used as a food additive – usually for decorative purposes in the form of gold leaf (E number E175). It is quite popular as an additive to alcoholic drinks and there is a traditional Polish and German liqueur called Goldwasser (Goldwater) which contains thousands of tiny flakes. Gold is inert to body chemistry so it passes through the body unaltered and has no nutritional value.