Green Options

I can’t tell you how many times I have broken a sweat in a restaurant. I’m not talking about a girly glow. I’m talking about sweat pouring off of my face and dripping onto my plate. The kind of sweat that makes people stop and stare and wonder if perhaps I am some sort of drug addict.

Surely after so many embarrassing meals I would have learned not to order the spiciest thing on the menu by now, but there’s something about a chili pepper that I can’t resist.

That something, it turns out, is capsaicin, a chemical compound produced by chilies to ward off unwanted consumers. The higher the concentration of capsaicin in a chili, the hotter it is.

Toddlers in the UK could be screened for speech problems because many are so addicted to TV and video games that they fail to learn basic communication skills.

According to an article in the Telegraph, “barely a 10th of children in some areas can repeat even one nursery rhyme and, in extreme cases, some do not even know their own name.”