Chickens have amazing eyesight, able to see ranges of color we humans can’t. Now, researchers from Princeton University and Washington University in St. Louis have discovered that the cells in a chicken’s retina have an unusual arrangement, and is the first known biological occurrence of a new state of matter known as “disordered hyperuniformity”.

Over large distances, they display order, but over small distances, disorder. For example, take crystals of sand. Each bit of sand is different, but when you look at a large volume of sand, it appears to be similar. At the same time, disordered hyperuniformity substances are similar to liquids in that they have the same properties in all directions.
According to the researchers:

In many creatures’ eyes, visual cells are evenly distributed in an obvious pattern such as the familiar hexagonal compact eyes of insects. In many creatures, the different types of cones are laid out so that they are not near cones of the same type. At first glance, however, the chicken eye appears to have a scattershot of cones distributed in no particular order.

Joseph Corbo, an associate professor of pathology and immunology, and genetics at Washington University in St. Louis, approached Salvatore Torquato, a chemistry professor at Princeton, whose group studies the geometry and dynamics of densely packed objects. Professor Torquato came to the conclusion that:

“Because the cones [in a chicken’s retina] are of different sizes it’s not easy for the system to go into a crystal or ordered state,” Torquato said. “The system is frustrated from finding what might be the optimal solution, which would be the typical ordered arrangement. While the pattern must be disordered, it must also be as uniform as possible. Thus, disordered hyperuniformity is an excellent solution.”

For a more detailed explanation, read In the eye of a chicken, a new state of matter comes into view at News at Princeton.

Subway has responded to a petition started by Food Babe’s Vani Hari to remove azodicarbonamide, a dough conditioner, from Subway breads. Subway isn’t the only company to use this additive. You’ll find it in McDonalds bread, Wonder Bread, in the bread products of many many other companies, yoga mats, shoe rubber and synthetic leather. The additive is banned in Europe and other places. Europe even bans using it in plastics which come into contact with food. The FDA considers use of azodicarbonamide as safe to use in human food. Does the FDA consider people living in the USA to be more resilient to substances considered toxic in other countries?

But maybe this notion of eating anything the FDA considers as safe isn’t the way to think of eating food. Instead of asking, “Is this safe?”, we should be asking, “Is this good? Will it make us better? Will it be something that nourishes us?” Food isn’t something we eat to improve the profit margins of corporations. Food is something we eat to give us joy, energy, and nourish us. Food is a gift we give ourselves. It should all be good, fantastic, delicious, not merely safe.

I’m baffled by all the ingredients companies put in their bread products. Below is a list of the ingredients you’ll find in Subway’s Nine-Grain Bread, a MacDonalds Big-Mac Bun, and the bread I often bake at home. Wouldn’t it be much easier to make bread out of as few ingredients as possible? And why is there any need to use preservatives in the bread of fast food companies? In the case of Subway bread, it’s eaten within minutes, hours at the most of baking. Why add Calcium Propionate and/or Sodium Propionate at all?