Mayonnaise is a water-oil based emulsion stabilized by protein. It is the protein that usually gives people allergic reactions and can lead to anaphalactic shock. Researchers from Tokyo University have now replaced the egg protein with a vegetable protein that might become popular to consumers.  Consumers were asked to compare this new low-fat mayo with the traditional egg based version. When it came down to taste, no discernible differences were noted.

The vegetable components make up about 50% of the new mayonnaise with the main ingredients being xanthan gum, guar gum and citrus fibre. Other formulations included rice bran oil and soy protein concentrate. Various other plant extracts are also being used as stabilizers which help extend shelf life.

Replacing the egg protein with vegetable protein is desirable because of the cost differences. Mayonnaise has seen cost increases for two straight years and that is directly related to the egg market. Chicken feed is a far greater expense than the fertilizer needed for crops so that expense is passed on to the consumer.

Since consumers seem to like the taste of the vegetable mayonnaise, the health benefits is an added benefit. Consumers should feel compelled to buy knowing that they can now enjoy a healthy mayonnaise without compromising taste.

In addition to vegetables, rice bran oil mayonnaise also seems to have a high shelf life. It also ranks high in terms of cooking stability and fatty acid composition, which is linked with lowering cholesterol.

Traditional Ingredients in Mayonnaise

The coconuts are washed from the beach into the sea, picked up by the mollusk, who then carries the shells across the ocean floor. The octopus then combines them back together for a nice little shelter. This strategy allows for a nice makeshift portable home. Bear Grylls from the Discovery Channel would be impressed.

Using foreign objects is not unusual for many animals, but most do not go to the lengths that the octopus does. Like some sort of circus act in the ocean or an episode from Spongebob Squarepants, this octopus uses the coconuts as stilts. The stilts allow it to make a quick getaway when predators are around. After seeing this “stilted” octopus up close, researchers made careful observations noting that they have never laughed so hard in their lives.

Photograph courtesy Roger Steene

By the Way, Do You Want to Buy This?

Of course it is not that easy just to throw in the word “buy”. Actually, I guess it really is if you want your letter to sound like a used car salesman wrote it. Consumers don’t want to buy anything because buying involves them giving away their cash. Instead of the word buy, use the word invest. Now the reader is getting something from the deal. There are real benefits associated with the product you are selling and the consumer can see that in their minds.

Copywriting Cents

Follow the just-say-no principle when writing a sales letter. As an English professor told me long ago, “Don’t use a ten cent word when a five cent word will do.” Get of your own way and instead of saying “Others have declined competitors’ offers”, say , “Others have said no to competitors’ offers.”

I Don’t Want to Learn Anything!

Another word never to use in your copy-learn. Inserting learn is asking the customer to perform some sort of work, which can be a dirty four-letter word. You are already asking them to buy your product, or should I say, invest, in your product. In addition to the purchase, they now have to learn? No sale! Replace learn with discover.

Your crap is stuff and other people’s stuff is crap

I cleaned up George Carlin’s quote a bit but you get the idea. Don’t use the word “stuff” because in copywriting, the word “stuff” is crap. Use “insider secrets” instead.

I’m seeing double

When I worked an inside sales job, my colleague would say, “Basically, the bottom line is….” Every time he uttered that phrase, I created sentences that completed his thought. “Basically, the bottom line is that, generally, in fact, for the most part.” Don’t do this. The same policy holds true for sales letters.

Instead of a full and complete report, just use either full or complete.

Summary

There are many other tricks that you can use for your sales letters. Remember you are selling a product or service or yourself. Thus, make your writing sound natural, flowing, and genuine. If your writing offers none of these features, you run the risk of losing potential customers.

Now, marketing on-line is essential for a business. In fact, I’m not sure who actually uses a yellow page book anymore. I certainly don’t.

Given all that has changed, there are still some rules you should follow lest you be thrown to the wolves and labeled a spammer.

1. Know your audience and your demographic. To say that your product is for everyone is to cast too wide of a net. Basically, you are saying that your product is for 6 billion plus people. Narrow it down. Who has the cash to buy it? Is it a luxury item? What types of businesses can use it?

2. Involve your customers in the process. Invite comments from your audience and ask what might be missing from your website.

3. #2 leads me to #3. Test what works and what doesn’t but start small so as to minimize a potentially huge mistake.

4. There will be some risks involved.

5. Be consistent in your message. Don’t go from a diabetes medical device product aimed at diabetics to selling sugar by the pound aimed at the same audience. A bit extreme but you get the idea.

6. Have a budget. In these lean times, it is really important to strategically look at where your dollars are spent.

7. Diversify your efforts. If one avenue isn’t working, perhaps it is the venue, perhaps not. The only way to find out is to allocate money elsewhere. Don’t diversify too much making each avenue ineffective.

8. Write a good headline. If your headline doesn’t grab attention, nothing else matters. If you aren’t good at writing headlines, then hire me!

What is your specialty and how did you get started in that particular area?

I specialize in science and medical writing. Although I am adept with many science industries, my passions are food science, chemistry, and health.

What are three things a writer needs to know before choosing to specialize in your area of specialty?

I think you really should know the subject fairly well or be interested in it to study it a bit. Quite frankly, if you don’t really want to know why beans make you toot, then writing about it might make you look silly. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Know or learn the lingo.

Don’t be too specialized as to completely pigeonhole yourself into one market.

Does writing in your specialty require any particular training or could a layman pick it up?

I think that depends on who your audience is. If you are writing for astro-physicists then you may want to take a course in physics.

Are there any potential pitfalls associated with specializing in your area?

There are pitfalls in any area in this economy. Who would have thought there would be pitfalls working for GM? Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.

What is the current market for writing in your specialty? Who is buying and who is selling?

That is in a state of flux right now. Companies, websites, agencies are all cutting back right now. If you can weather the storm, pick up a few new skills, and plant some seeds, you might be okay.

What do you enjoy most about your specialty?

I love to cook and I enjoy chemistry and biology so it makes writing about it that much easier and fulfilling. Sometimes I feel like a teacher when I receive e-mails saying what a great job I’ve done or educated people in some way.

What do you enjoy least about your specialty?

Not everything in chemistry is fascinating. Sometimes it can be deadly boring.

How would you suggest networking within your specialty? (Networking advice can include associations to join, web forums to browse, advice on meeting people and potential clients in a writer’s local area, etc.)

You need a balance. On-line networking is fine but sometimes you have to pound the pavement and just get out there. Join professional organizations, go to the gym, get outside, and bring your business cards wherever you go. You want get that much business talking to your cats all day. Perhaps some mental health institutions might hire you if that is the case. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

What advice would you give to freelance writers interested in specializing in your area?

Be patient. This is going to take a long time in this market. Plant the seeds but expect that you probably won’t receive any clients for a while. When things start turning around, you want people to remember, “that Tim Fitzpatrick, yeah, he’s that science writer guy.”

Beans, beans, the miracle fruit
The more you eat, the more you toot
The more you toot, the better you feel
So eat your beans with every meal

Beans can indeed be a miracle fruit for anyone on a budget. Rich in fiber, they fill you up fast and are inexpensive. Personally, black bean soup is a favorite of mine. Chili, three-bean salad, even simple beans and rice can go a long away for those looking to save a few bucks.

Many recipes call for beans to be soaked overnight before cooking. The theory is that by soaking the beans, you are essentially leeching out the compounds that…well make you toot. Could you also be washing some important nutrients as well Scientists aimed to find out. A study was published in the Journal of Food Science by a group of scientists from India where beans are an important staple.

Soluble fiber in the beans is the main culprit of flatulence. More specifically, it is the bacteria within our gut that produces the offending odor. The fiber moves through our digestive tract undigested and makes its way down to the large intestine where bacteria go to work. The bacteria, for lack of a better term, eat the fiber, and through their own metabolic processes, produce a gas that eventually makes its way out of our system. Soaking not only reduces the cooking time for the beans but it also washes away some of that soluble fiber which leads to less work for the bacteria and less flatulence for us.

The researchers took five legumes (white kidney bean, red kidney bean, lentil, chickpea, and white gram). These beans are very common throughout the world. They were soaked in:

Water
2% NaCl (salt) solution
Acetic acid (vinegar)
Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)

What they found were reductions in phytic acid and tannins.

Phytic acid is known as a chelator, which can bond with minerals such as calcium, zinc, magnesium, and iron in our bodies. Once this bonding occurs, these minerals are useless to us in that our bodies can’t absorb them in this form. When combined, they form insoluble salts or phytates and end up being excreted.This is a real problem in developing countries whose populations may suffer from mineral deficiencies if too much phytic acid is ingested. For people in more developed countries, phytic acid can have some therapeutic benefits. Since we can get enough minerals from different foods, the phytic acid can act as a phytonutrient anti-oxidant which may prevent colon cancer.

Tannins are defensive compounds found in plants. They are present as a defense
mechanism because they mess with the surface proteins on bacteria and fungi,which attack it. The chemical process is similar to putting a square peg into a round hole. The tannins rearrange the proteins on the attacking bacteria so it can’t bind to the receptors on the plant. These tannins also deter herbivores by producing a bitter taste in the mouth and interfering with digestion. They act in a similar fashion as phytic acid by combining with minerals rendering them useless to our bodies. Due to this, phytic acid and tannins get the name anti-nutrients.

The results found by scientists were that the maximum reduction of these anti-nutrients occurred when the beans were soaked in sodium bicarbonate followed by cooking. Although soaking did slightly reduce the amount of protein, minerals, and sugars in the beans, it looks like a good option to keep those anti-nutrients at bay. As an added plus, it won’t make you toot as much.

Anyway, back to the story at hand. It is too nice a day to cook it in the oven and quite frankly, I didn’t want to clean up the mess and so to the grill I went. Whoever invented the art of the barbecue should get some sort of award.

The way I cooked the turkey was low and slow. With a big enough grill, you can use the indirect heat method. It is a pretty simple concept in that one burner is turned on and the other side remains off. Heat will travel from the working burner to the other side of the grill to cook the turkey indirectly. This should keep help with any hot spots that may exist on your grill. If you have a grill with three burners, even better. Turn on the outer two burners and leave the middle one off. Place the turkey in the center and the heat will come at it from both sides but not directly underneath. By not cooking over a flame, flareups are prevented when the fat drippings start to drop from the bird. Turkey and chicken can become dry pretty quickly, so some people place a pot of water on the grill to prevent moisture loss.

Chicken and turkey obviously contain protein which are found in muscles that contain an elastic substance called collagen. Collagen is a protein that attaches muscles to bones. It takes a lot of heat energy to melt that collagen away. When cooked too long, the proteins that had previously unravelled (due to heat) now coagulate and reform but into a smaller, tightly bound bundle resulting in dry meat. Since I was cooking a turkey breast, which has minimal fat, I had to be careful. Turkey meat contains about 60% water and the longer the cooking process, the more moisture is lost. Most of that water remains bound up within the proteins themselves so my goal was to minimize moisture loss.

You may want to rub a little oil on the grill (while it is cool) first to prevent sticking. Use a high temperature oil such as vegetable or canola oil as olive oil has a low smoking point. You can also rub some oil on the bird itself. The first step is to heat up your grill on high for 10-15 minutes. After it is about 500 ºF, place the turkey on the grill. Use a meat thermometer to gauge the inside temperature of the turkey. If you have an old fashioned thermometer, place it in the meat before cooking.

The FDA recommends that turkey breast be cooked 165 ºF while the National Turkey Federation recommends 170 ºF. During the last ten minutes of cooking, you can add your favorite sauce to it (barbecue, teriyaki, etc.). Many of these sauces have sugars which can burn and char your meat if left on too long so try not to add them too early.

To give you a simple example of oxidation, take an apple and slice it in half. Leave it on the counter for a few minutes, watch it turn brown, and you have just witnessed the phenomenon of oxidation. By breaking the skin on an apple, you have just exposed the it’s cells to oxygen and have seen first hand the destruction of those cells.

Free radicals are compounds that are highly reactive due to the presence of a lone pair of electrons. Electrons do not enjoy being in pairs because of the instability factor. Much like the economy today, nothing really likes to be unstable. The same goes for the natural world. I harken back to the movie Titanic where a member of the crew shoots a gun in the air and says “maintain order here”. The same goes for electrons in that they want to be stable. Okay, movie tangent over, back to the food thing.

So, at a molecular level, we have electrons wanting to be in pairs when in walks these free radical types whose electrons have no dance partner or pair and are very unstable. What do they do? They walk around the dance floor like an overzealous teenage boy looking to pick up a dance partner. It could be the girl against the wall, the girl on the floor, the chaperone, or your buddies date. Free radicals don’t care, they just wants to become stable so they will grab anybody.

When this free radical steals someone else’s date, they have just created another free radical who is looking for a dance partner and the whole process starts again. The next thing you know the whole dance floor (our cells) becomes saturated with free radicals and chaos ensues. This chaos leads to mutated cells and loss of proper cell functioning.

Transfer that metaphor to your diet and cooking habits. Examples of the stag free radical stealing dates are:

cigarettes
smog
intense exercise
stress
alcohol
charred food
pesticides
UV light

In walks the savior of the dance known as anti-oxidants. They come in and help clear everything up. They protect against the free radicals by bonding with them. Essentially, they share their date (electron) with the free radical. Anti-oxidants are found in foods that contain:

Beta-carotene (carrots, sweet potatoes, cantaloupes, squash, mangoes)

Lutein - green leafy vegetables such as spinach, collard greens, and kale

Lycopene - tomatoes, watermelon, guava, papaya, apricots, pink grapefruits

Vitamin A - sweet potatoes and carrots

Vitamin C - apples, oranges, pineapples, strawberries, blueberries

Vitamin E - wheat germ, some oils (corn, safflower, soybean), green leafy vegetables, whole grains, avocadoes, almonds, olives, nuts, broccoli

If you start to include these anti-oxidants in your diet perhaps you won’t ever get stood up on the dance flood again. At least your dance floor (your cells) will be better protected from those lurking free radicals.

One website described it as a new chocolate finger that is playfully flirtatious. If you go to their actual website, flingchocolate.com, the background is pink and pictured are ladies who look like they are looking for a fling. The kicker is that they are 85 calories per finger…not per bar, per finger! Some other doozy phrases describing the product are that sometimes you need to be a little naughty to taste the sweetness and “lick the wrapper”.

The actual bar itself (I am refraining from calling it a finger) is a meringue base with truffle layered on top and then surrounded by chocolate. There are three flavors available, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and hazelnut.

It is available in California for now but you can also order it online. Again, if you see your wives or girlfriends eating Fling, you could end up flung.

When writing a blog post or an on-line article, content is key and so keep these tips in mind:

Title - Your title should contain your pertinent keyword or at the very least, wording that is in close proximity to it.

First Paragraph - If you are writing about a new brand of red wine that is about to hit the market, introduce that keyword in the first sentence. Using the keyword in the last sentence of this first paragraph is a good idea as well in terms of seo.

Main Body - Ideally, your article or blog post will be 300-500 words long and your keyword placement should have a frequency of about 2-5%. Any more than this is dangerous because it can lower your search engine rankings. Overusage of keywords will penalize you in the eyes of search engines who can flag your website as spam.

Subheadings - Use these to further your seo density. Include your keyword here as well.

Last paragraph - It is very important to style your last paragraph similar to the first one in terms of keyword usage.

This is just the basics of seo writing. The best practices are constantly changing due to the ever dynamic algorithms used by search engines. Stay tuned for more detailed information in future posts.