Curious Cook: Herby new year

While dark chocolate is high in polyphenols and antioxidants, its high sugar content makes it a less attractive option on the health front. — CHARISSE KENION/Unsplash

My injured knee is still not fully healed yet, and I have been advised to keep moving on it lightly so that meant doing less research on my desk computer. Which is fine, as there are a lot of interesting things to discover on a tablet on a park bench or from the phone.

And one interesting subject was metabolomics, which is the study of metabolites, or transformed residuals of food which has passed through the human digestive system. Probably you have heard of nitrosamines which are the metabolites of sodium nitrites and other preservatives used to keep processed meats looking fresh and attractively pink.