Slate eBook Club Editions
July 2002

Sacred Cacaos Eliza Truitt
Kicking Butts J.J. Sutherland
The Big Shave Seth Stevenson
Wipe Out June Thomas
No Sweat Eliza Truitt
Brush to Judgment Seth Stevenson
Clean Freak Kelly Alexander
Fake Flesh Dahlia Lithwick
Abs-Surdity Eric Umansky



Sacred Cacaos
Do people like cheap American chocolate better than expensive imports?
By Eliza Truitt
Posted Tuesday, February 13, 2001, at 12:00 AM PT

If there's one thing I've learned from writing this article, it's that packaging is everything. Leave a dish of chocolates with pretty foil wrappers and crinkly paper sleeves on your desk, and everyone walking down the hall stops in for a snack. But set out 16 kinds of plain chocolate chopped into bits on paper plates, and it's chore to eat. Or at least, some of it is a chore to eat.

Everyone "knows" that European chocolate is good and American chocolate—Hershey's, to be exact—is bad. But can average Americans really tell the difference, or is this just another example of our natural inferiority complex? Will your sweetie be right to dump you if you buy her or him cheap chocolate for Valentine's Day? To find out, I talked to some experts and set up a blind taste test, and I give you my results below.

The traditional categories of chocolate (milk, semisweet, and bittersweet) are confusing because many makers use similar terms for very different things. Try comparing Lindt's "bittersweet" chocolate (a mild, barely bitter taste) with Scharffen Berger's (extremely bitter) and you'll see what I mean. And to confuse matters even further, some makers simply label their chocolate "dark." So I lumped semisweet and bittersweet into one category and used three broad categories: milk, dark, and semisweet (includes some bittersweet). I focused exclusively on chocolate you eat, ignoring the stuff you cook with.

I conducted the taste test in two shifts with a total of 10 participants. I cut the chocolate up into small pieces on numbered paper plates and asked participants to rate the chocolate on a 10-point scale, with 1 as the worst (think Advent calendar chocolate) and 10 as their ideal chocolate. I provided water, bread, and crackers as palate cleansers, and asked them to take their time in writing scores and notes on taste. Nobody knew which chocolates they were tasting. What was most interesting was the fact that consuming a whole bar's worth of chocolate—when you have to—is tough, and getting through all the samples was tedious. I know, because I was one of the tasters. (Click here to find out more about the demographics of the tasters.)


Milk

In the kind of sweet reversal of expectation a shopping columnist always hopes for, tasters consistently rated the cheaper milk chocolates as tasting better than the expensive ones. Even better, the cheapest chocolate received the highest taste score:

Even though milk chocolate is America's chocolate of choice, the tasters were unimpressed, giving it the lowest scores of all three types, with the average coming in at 3.9. And boy, did they hate the Blanxart chocolate. Here's a sampling of their venom for it:

"Hello? Flavor? Where are you?"

"Yucky. Kind of an ashy taste."

"Tastes like cigarette ash … bad after-taste."

"Headache-inducing … American mass-produced" (more evidence of our chocolate inferiority complex, especially considering the chocolate was from Spain).

Also near the bottom of the list was a "varietal" chocolate. Like wine or coffee, this means the cacao beans used to make the chocolate come from a single location and are not a blend of various beans from all over, the way most other types are made. According to Dana Taylor Davenport, the owner of Seattle's upscale Dilettane Chocolates, there is a "big move toward single varietal chocolate" in the world of high-fashion chocolates. Though he says this is really something "only the real connoisseur finds interesting," a local chocolate shop was selling them, so I sneaked them into the mix: Fran's Caoba Natural. As you can see in the chart, Fran's did not fare well, with many tasters perplexed and one asking, "Was that really chocolate?"


Dark

Dark chocolate did not provide such a tidy inversion, though the most expensive chocolates once again received the lowest taste scores. The group did better than milk chocolates, averaging a 5.48 rating.

Again reactions to the least favorite were strong: The Chocolove was called "caca," "nasty," "murky like river water," and "felt as if I was chewing on a dirty napkin."


Semisweet

The semisweets ended up as the favorites of the group, with an average score of 5.66. And again, the favorite was the least expensive.

Comments on the favorites: The Valrhona, from France, was "Smooth—lovely taste, bright and buttery—yum. Rich—now, this makes me happy," "smooth and flavorful," and so on. The American Dilettante was described in similar terms: "smooth as silk," "buttery," and "mild for a dark … tastes like a good hot chocolate."

And it's interesting that the taster mentioned hot chocolate, because it is one of the links to chocolate's past. Originally a cold drink made by the Maya and Aztecs using beans from the cacao plant, chocolate was brought to Europe by Spanish conquistadors. (Click here to find out how the name changed from cacao to "chocolate.") At the time it was the subject of much controversy: Some thought it was a tonic, others thought it dangerous to your health, and pretty much everyone thought it was an aphrodisiac. Eventually chocolate became a part of everyday life. Coffee and chocolate shops sprang up all over the continent, and many were hotbeds of political activism in the 17^th century. As processing technology and tastes evolved over time, solid chocolate became the norm, which is where we stand today, though for 90 percent of its history it was a beverage.

The bad-for-you aspect of chocolate has long been part of its allure. Many women report craving chocolate as part of the host of symptoms associated with PMS, but a study revealed that this is an America-only phenomenon. Spanish women craved sweets also, but not necessarily chocolate. The authors of the study concluded that it was the indulgence more than the substance that women wanted. But other studies found different results: that chocolate contains chemicals that do make you feel good, specifically theobromine and caffeine. And now there are studies claiming that chocolate is actually good for you because cacao contains antioxidants that when eaten regularly increase good cholesterol levels.

I'm inclined to agree with the scientists who see social conditioning at work. As one tester wrote at the end of the tasting, "none of these tasted as good as I think chocolate should taste. Maybe it's context. I know that things taste better coming from a Godiva box." And there's the rub: packaging and expectation matter, and the more expensive the chocolate, the better the packaging and the higher the expectations. But I say to hell with the chocolate snobbery: With the wrapper off, the cheap stuff is just as good.


sidebar

Eight out of the 10 tasters were Microsofties and the two others were Amazonians, neatly reinforcing Seattle stereotypes. They varied in their degree of chocolate fanaticism: One said she eats chocolate twice a day, another said he eats it maybe once every two months. One was born and raised in Europe, the rest were from the States. Ages ranged from 25 to 36.


sidebar

According to The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie and Michael Coe, there is a sniggeringly funny reason why we don't call chocolate "cacao," the way its discoverers, the Maya and Aztecs, did: "It is hard to believe that the Spaniards were not thoroughly uncomfortable with a noun beginning with caca [described elsewhere by the book's authors as 'a vulgar or nursery word for feces' in 'most Romance languages'] to describe a thick, dark-brown drink which they had begun to appreciate. They desperately needed some other word, and we would not be at all surprised if it was the learned friars who came up with chocolatl and chocolate."



Kicking Butts
Our Marlboro man tests the top stop-smoking products. 
By J.J. Sutherland
Posted Wednesday, August 9, 2000, at 12:00 AM PT

I have smoked a pack a day for about 15 years. I began with Camel straights, moved to Camel Filters, switched to Marlboro reds, and then to Camel Lights, which I've smoked regularly for the past 10 years or so.

This is not a good thing. Smoking kills you. No, honestly, it does. For years I treated this as a joke. Someone would mention the deleterious effects of smoking and I would pretend to be shocked and begin to cite evidence from the now defunct Tobacco Institute, which argued that there was no proof that cigarettes were harmful. For years I labored under the impression that this was clever.

But a few months back I decided that not only should I quit smoking, but that I should get someone else to pay for it. Slate kindly agreed and I went shopping for the best way to quit, starting with the oldest cure, hypnotism, and working my way through nicotine substitutes before consuming the new, high-performance tobacco-busting pharmaceuticals.


Hypnotism
Hypnotists charge between $110 and $350 a session to help smokers stop. After interviewing a few, I settled on a nice-sounding lady who works out of her apartment and claims success rates of 60 percent to 70 percent after two or three $110 sessions.

We began with the general questions. How much did I know about hypnotism? Was I frightened of being hypnotized? Then, to test my susceptibility to hypnosis, she had me raise my arms to shoulder level and then bend my elbows at 90 degrees with my palms facing each other. She told me to imagine a current or a thread connecting my hands together. During this hand-jive she spoke in a soothing and encouraging tone of voice.

Think about your hands coming together, she said. Don't actually move them—just think about it, feel the connection between your palms pulling your hands together. Was I supposed to be using The Force? Then my hands began to slowly move together through no volition of my own except that I was thinking about it. My hypnotist praised me and said I was highly susceptible to hypnosis. I suspected as much, given that I am easily swayed by suggestion. I can't help it. I'm a victim.

Relax, she said, using that soothing voice. Relax, starting from your toes and work through to all of your muscles. Then she began to talk to my right hand. That's right, she talked to the hand, quizzing it through a lengthy series of yes/no questions. This went on for a while, until my interrogated hand indicated that part of me wanted to quit smoking, but part of me didn't.

While under hypnosis, I felt conscious and in control. I could have stood up and walked out of the room at any time, but I chose not to. Was I hypnotized or just pretending to be hypnotized? At what point does pretending something is happening inside your mind cross over into something actually happening inside your mind?

At session's end I lit a cigarette as I walked down the steps.

Session 2 started the same as Session 1: We free-associated about smoking, relaxed my muscles, and chitchatted with my hand. Then she told me to imagine a room where I felt extremely safe and comfortable, decorating it however I wished. I went with a London men's club leather chair thing with a fireplace, a few bookcases, and a buffet. I've never been to a London men's club, but I imagine I would feel safe in one. She then instigated a conversation among the different levels of my psyche about why I smoked, why I wanted to quit, and why I didn't.

Deeper hypnosis followed, and she made me a cassette with a daily meditation on it. I was to concentrate on feeling clean, on breathing fresh air. The next afternoon the cravings sent me out of control and I bought a pack. I listened to the tape that night while smoking a cigarette.


Nicotine Gum
Still determined to quit, I abandoned the twilight land of hypnotism for Western science, which has brought us such miracles as the toaster oven, the remote control, and now, nicotine gum (Nicorette two-week starter kit, $49.99 at Drugstore.com).

Nicorette's warning label says, "DO NOT CHEW LIKE ORDINARY GUM." Good advice. This ain't gum, boys and girls, this is a nicotine-replacement system coming in 2 milligram and 4 milligram dosages. You're supposed to start with the 4 milligram size if you smoke more than 24 cigarettes a day, stay on that for a few weeks, then step down to the lesser dosage, then stop altogether. You chomp on Nicorette until you get a peppery feeling in your mouth, after which you park the gum in your cheek, chewing only occasionally.

If you chew Nicorette like ordinary gum, you risk nicotine poisoning, or at least nausea. But when you crave a cigarette, the threat of nicotine poisoning seems as remote as lung cancer. The main drawback of Nicorette is the burning sensation crawling down your throat. It's like swallowing the juice from chewing tobacco. You can minimize the burn, however, if you chew the gum a little bit at a time.

Get the mint flavor. Don't even experiment with the unflavored variety, which tastes like a cross between petroleum jelly and cayenne pepper. If the nicotine doesn't make you sick, the flavor certainly will.

On the first day of my Nicorette regimen, I had a piece of gum in my mouth almost all the time. It worked, too. When I wanted a cigarette, I had a piece of gum. When cravings rose, I chewed more heartily, releasing more nicotine. I still wanted a cigarette, but I didn't need one. I was amazed at how good breathing felt. On the second day my smoker's cough went away. On the third day I regained my sense of smell.

The world was filled with odors. The train station smelled of urine and oil, the cafeteria became a confused blend of smells—from overcooked cauliflower to lasagna—that made my mouth water.

My first slip came that Saturday, the fourth day, when I joined some friends for a few drinks before dinner. I had a puff. After dinner we went to a bar, and I had a couple of cigarettes. The gum didn't seem to be able to control the cravings once I had a few drinks in me.

I held out for a few more days. But the following Tuesday was too stressful. Nothing that out of the ordinary, but I began to snap at people and realized (or rationalized) that unless I had a cigarette I would end up inflicting bodily harm on my boss. As much as the latter was attractive I decided smoking was better than an assault charge.


The Patch

The NicoDerm CQ patch system, another nicotine-replacement system, promises to whittle down even the heaviest smoker's cigarette habit in 10 weeks. You start with the "Step 1" dosage of 21 milligram for six weeks. Then on to "Step 2" (14 milligrams for two weeks) and "Step 3" (7 milligrams for two weeks) before quitting altogether. (Two weeks of the "Step 1" dosage costs $45.99 at Drugstore.com.)

NicoDerm CQ comes in metallic sealed packages with warnings about washing your hands after you open it up. I imagined myself as the Typhoid Mary of nicotine addiction, spreading it through a handshake.

You must place the patch on a clean, relatively hairless place on your body and wear it 16 hours a day (24 hours a day if you wake up frantic for a cigarette). I opted for the inside of my upper arm, figuring it was easy to reach, yet unobservable. It was a pain, literally. While my cravings were diminished, the skin upon which patch rested began to hurt. It ached constantly throughout the day, so I moved it to my side. Wherever I placed the patch, it left the skin bright red.

The patch also engendered odd dreams. Sexual dreams. Now, I don't mind the occasional reminder that all the equipment is in working order, mind you, but it seemed a little excessive.

After a day of being patched on my torso, I moved the devise to the outside of my upper thigh. While the ache wasn't as intense, the redness remained. After two days of this, health reasons dictated that I begin smoking again.


Bupropion

Bupropion (sold under the trade names names of Zyban and Wellbutrin) is the first pill approved by the FDA for treating nicotine addiction. You take the drug for a week or so, let it build up in your system, quit smoking, then stay on the drug for a few months to kill the cravings. A doctor's prescription is required. Zyban costs $79.73 for 60 150 milligram tabs at Drugstore.com and must be taken twice a day.

I've always been a big fan of uppers, and bupropion gave me a groovy little boost through the day. And there's no crash afterward. A wonderful drug.

However, I can report visual side effects. After two days I found myself lying in bed and staring out the window at the brick building across the street. I spent a half-hour studying the patterns of shadow and light. When I looked at my girlfriend next to me, I had the urge to grab a sketchbook and get the shadow of her thigh down on paper. Such an urge is so rare that I don't own a sketchbook. The effect faded over a day or two.

The cravings? What cravings? Bupropion is so subtle that I cut my smoking by half before my quit date. When I did stop altogether I still had the desire for a cigarette, but nowhere near the desire I had while quitting with the other methods.

But once again a drink did me in. Four days after stopping I had a few drinks, and then a few more, and then a pack of cigarettes. The obvious lesson? I have a drinking problem that makes me smoke. Let's see, there's AA, the Betty Ford Clinic, and didn't I read something about shock therapy recently?



The Big Shave
What's the best way to mow your face?
By Seth Stevenson
Posted Thursday, February 17, 2000, at 12:30 AM PT

No chore pains me more than shaving. Best-case scenario: clean shave. And then I do it again tomorrow. Worst-case scenario: severed artery. And then I hope I can do it again tomorrow, God willing. Middling- and most-common-case scenario: redness; irritation; blade-evading straggle whiskers; nicks; outright cuts; full-on gashes; and ... I still have to do it again tomorrow.

In hopes of easing this horrific burden, I sought out the perfect, or, barring that, least awful shaving method. I enlisted friends and colleagues in the search. I shaved a lot. Herewith, my findings. Products are ranked, within each category, from first to worst: shaving right to raving shite.


Electrics

1. Panasonic ES727 Wet/Dry Double Blade ($77.95)
2. Grundig Pro Avantgarde ($244.95)
3. Remington M-2820 MicroScreen Intercept ($89.95)
4. Braun Flex Integral 6515 ($97.95)
5. Norelco 5615X Advantage Wet/Dry ($109.95)

All electric razors warn that, if you've been shaving with a blade, it takes 21-30 days for you to "adjust." Remington says it's to "find the optimum shaving method for your particular beard type." (This time period closely corresponds with the warranty length, but let's assume good intentions for now.) I simply didn't have a month to spend with each razor. Only a few days. Question my methodology if you must, but ask yourself: Can you afford a month of razor burn as down payment on a shaving Shangri-La that may never transpire? Here are the results you'll get if, like me, you don't have time to wait: Bad, bad results.

I purchased the top four brands and the overpriced Grundig from ElectricShaver.com, which offers the largest selection of e-razors and the lowest prices on the Web. The Panasonic is the best of a poor lot. Letting you use shaving cream and shave in the shower, it offers by far the closest shave of the group. In easy regions—cheeks, upper lip—it excels, rivaling a decent blade shave. But like all electrics, it just can't get those tricky sub-jaw zones. Under the chin? Forget it. Neck cowlicks? No sir-ree. And if you've gone two days without shaving, it's useless.

The Grundig Pro Avantgarde (what, am I Eric Dolphy?) works OK. But at these prices, it ought to clean the sink when it's done. The Grundig also jets forth a mist of powdered whiskers as it shaves: One tester mentioned "clear cutting." You're paying for looks with this one. Its elegant, Teutonic hauteur will impress snooty friends.

The Remington is worse than the Grundig—it's about as good as a good disposable. The Braun? Much, much worse: One tester says it turned his face into "No. 10 emery cloth."

The Norelco Advantage Wet/Dry should never, ever be purchased, utilized, given as a gift, received as a gift, or loaned. 1) It cut me. This is the cardinal no-no of electrics. The whole point is they don't cut you. That's why politicians use them. Shame, Norelco. 2) This model squirts out moisturizing Nivea goo. Not only does the goo not improve your shaving, it also bonds with shaved whiskers to form a nasty, whisker-goo compound that you don't want anywhere near you.

(Note: The Braun and Remington were stolen from my office before I could try them, so I relied entirely on a deputy tester. Tellingly, the razor thief left the Norelco behind, even though it sat next to the other two on my desk. He may be a crook, but he's no masochist. Here's to you, thief!)


Disposables

1. Gillette Good News (10 for $4.49)
2. Bic Women's Disposable (10 for $2.23)
3. Bic Disposable (10 for $2.09)

The good news is the Good News is double-bladed, with a moisturizing strip, and it'll do in a shaving emergency. The bad news is the Good News will slice the bejesus out of you if you give it half a chance. With very slow, very careful guidance, however, it can produce a pretty good shave.

The Bic disposable can't. This single-bladed, yellow demon offers no moisturizing strip and no mercy. Avoid at all costs. You'll bleed a river.

The advantage of the Bic women's disposable (for my purposes) is not that it comes in pastels, but rather that its double-bladed head is quite small—the smallest of all I tried—and so can sneak into face crannies that even the best cartridge shavers are too bulky to reach. If you tend toward divots and nooks, maybe give this one a try. Otherwise, the Good News works better.

A note on costs: Disposables seem to last about four shaves. That breaks down to about 5 cents per shave. Cartridges cost around $1 each, but last about 10 shaves—10 cents per shave. So, over a year, shaving 5 times a week, costs come to:

Disposables—$13
Cartridges—$26, plus one-time purchase of handle for around $6

With disposables, that means almost 20 years of shaving before you've equaled the cost of the Grundig.


Cartridges

1. Gillette Mach 3 ($6.99)
2. Gillette Sensor Excel ($5.99)
3. Schick Protector ($5.99)
4. Schick Diamond ($6.99)

By now, rhapsodies over the Mach 3 design have become old hat. But indulge me a little. The three blades, each shaving progressively closer to the skin. The open casing, allowing water to wash through from either side. The pivot at the heel of the cartridge, instead of in its center—the shaving motion is like painting now, instead of planing. The Mach 3's lone drawback: a huge cartridge head, meaning it can't fit in tight corners.

In face-to-face tests (shaving one side of my mug with a Mach 3, other side with competitors), the Mach 3 dispatched first the Sensor Excel (a less evolved, double-bladed, center pivot, but still a pretty damn good razor), then the Schick Diamond (a nightmare that sliced me), and then the Schick Protector (a Sensor wannabe that's not as good as the Sensor, but better than the Diamond). The Mach 3 shaved closest, it never once cut or nicked, it was fast, it was efficient ... forgive me, I'm getting a little choked up here. Let's just say I was impressed.

On the other hand, there's Schick. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with being second best. The world can accommodate alpha products (McDonald's, Coke) and beta products (Burger King, Pepsi), with room for the odd Wendy's or Royal Crown, too. The problem is, Schick just makes stinky, stinky razors. Imagine: It's a year after the Mach 3 debuts, changing the whole landscape. You're ready to launch your big response. And the best you can do is the Diamond? Its sole claim to distinction is the "diamond coating" on the blades, yet I found the blades less effective than even those on the Sensor! Oh, Schick. That's just sad.

So no surprises here. The Mach 3 truly is the best a man can get, as most men already know, judging by market share and my informal surveys of friends and acquaintances. It crushes the ineffective electrics. It outperforms nick-prone disposables. And it outclasses its cartridge brethren. Yet one last challenger remains, yearning to claim Gillette's crown ...


Barber Shave

I went for a straight-razor shave at Salon Fodera in the basement of the St. Regis Hotel, Fifth Avenue, midtown Manhattan. Here, stylist Gianni Fodera ushered me into the world of having your face shaved for you. Gianni's card says he was "Silver Medallist Team & Individual Marcel Lamy World Championship, Seoul, Korea 1998" and "Winner of the Gary Bray International Award 1997." I've never heard of these awards, but I'm hoping they are somehow hair-related; otherwise it would be odd for him to list them on his card. Apparently, they justify charging $40, plus tip, for a shave.

Gianni sat me in his chair and aimed a steam machine at my face. After a wait, he worked in some heated shaving foam. Then applied a hot, steamy towel, right over the foam. The towel came off and more hot foam went on. At this point, eyes closed, steam-sweat dripping down nape, it could have been the Everglades in muggy season. The shave began.

Gianni stretched my cheeks to glide the blade across them. His award-winning fingers tugged the bulb of my nose upward to get at whiskers on my upper lip. More stretching, more tugging, more gliding. It was delightful in a being-serviced kind of way. I wish it led to a fantastic shave. It didn't. Gianni missed a few spots. He was timid with the blade. He even lightly nicked me, though no blood.

All in all, I could have done a better job of it myself, using the Mach 3—at a fraction of the price. Final challenger: Vanquished. Gianni, we hardly knew ye.



Wipe Out
Spills, sneezes, and other stuff that needs cleaning up. We test and rate the best in towels and tissues.
By June Thomas
Posted Thursday, April 1, 1999, at 12:30 AM PT

Let other journalists travel the world in search of scoops. My story is in the kitchen and the living room—and in the toilet. In researching this piece, I turned my apartment into a paper torture facility as I compared the wiping power of 10 brands of paper towels, six lines of facial tissues, and 11 types of toilet paper. Not all my experiments were successful, and as I mop up the spills I can only hope that my landlady doesn't read Slate.

Thanks to late-stage capitalism, the supermarket shelves sag with scores of brands in the three main paper categories. This is not as daunting as it sounds, because the market is now dominated by four companies: giant Procter & Gamble (Bounty, Charmin, and Puffs), and three other products of merger mania Kimberly-Clark (Scott, Kleenex, and Viva), Georgia-Pacific (Coronet, Sparkle, Angel Soft, and MD), and Fort James (Brawny, Quilted Northern, and Green Forest). In picking the 37 contestants for this survey I strove to find representatives of the three price points—premium, middle-of-the-road, and generic—and to give recycled and novelty products an equal opportunity to impress.

All paper—facial tissues, writing paper, newsprint—is created equal. What makes "sanitary wiping paper" (to use the wonderful cadences of marketing-speak) stretchy and absorbent is a process called "creping": A metal blade removes the paper as it dries from the steel cylinder on which it was formed, lowering the paper's density. The premium wiping papers are also embossed, which creates pockets to hold more "moisture." (Kimberly-Clark's Web site boasts that "On the East Coast only, Kleenex Cottonelle has been given a unique, patented, gentle texture that is designed to give consumers a clean, fresh feeling." Apparently, we hardy westerners don't deserve such luxury.)

Paper towels contain more fibrous pulp. This increases their strength, and the manufacturers usually give them more pronounced embossing for greater soaking power. Whereas little girls and babies appear on toilet paper wrappers, paper towel packages depict beefy, brawny guys, indicating their toughness. In this category the contestants were:

Premium
Bounty Rinse & Reuse
Versatile Viva
Kleenex Viva Job Squad

Middle-of-the-Road
Scott Towels
Brawny Pick-a-Size Big Roll
Kleenex Viva

Recycled
Seventh Generation
Second Nature Plus
Envision Preference
Natural Value

To see if the towels really could provide the implied strength and security, I tested the ability of a single sheet to hold the moisture produced when a damp tea bag was left on it for two minutes. Unfortunately for me and my security deposit, none of my towels succeeded. I didn't have any of the blue liquid ad agencies use in commercials to indicate absorbency, so I gauged the soaking power of individual sheets with tap water. Absorbency varied little as I poured a quarter-cup of water onto towel after towel. Not a single one could hold all the fluid, but even the cheapest towel stayed solid as it was wrung out and used to wipe up the excess from the counter.

These tests convinced me that while paper towels can't perform miracles, even the lowliest example of the species can soak up liquid and dry your hands. If you're faced with a big, messy job, it might be worth spending the extra money for a premium product such as Bounty Rinse & Reuse or Kleenex Viva Job Squad but, under normal circumstances, a budget recycled product such as the ones on offer from Natural Value or Second Nature offer good value and provide the desired durability.

I drew the line at catching a cold for this story and instead subjected six brands of facial tissues to a "spray test." The contestants were:

Premium
Purely Cotton
Kleenex ColdCare With Aloe and Vitamin D
Puffs

Middle-of-the-Road
Heritage Hearth (my local store brand)

Recycled
Seventh Generation 2-Ply Facial Tissue
Envision Preference Ultra

Using a squirt bottle, I simulated a big, soggy sneeze to test their absorbency. To my amazement, all the subjects survived the soaking. While absorbency did not vary, the softness factor is significant—the downright decadence of the Kleenex ColdCare range makes everything else seem almost abrasive. (And ply—the number of layers of paper in the product—isn't everything, the Envision Preference Ultra is a three-ply "premium" product, but it still feels like a scouring pad after touching a virgin fiber tissue.) Thicker tissues also keep germs off your hands, which is nothing to sneeze at.

You'll come to no harm if you use tissues as lavatory paper, but your plumbing might—while the strengthening cellulose fibers they contain are biodegradable, facial tissues don't break down as quickly as toilet tissue, so flushing is not recommended. If you're cold-free, you almost certainly don't need the mattressy softness of an ultra brand (and you can't clean your spectacles with the aloed hankies).

Americans are sheet scared of running out of toilet tissue—the average family stash of eight rolls doesn't even take Y2K hoarding into account. Scanning the supermarket shelves, there's a vast price difference between the budget brands and the premium products, but are the latter worth the extra? The contestants were:

Premium
Ultra Soft Quilted Northern
Kleenex Cottonelle Ultrasoft

Middle-of-the-Road
Heritage Hearth Ultra Soft
Kleenex Cottonelle
Charmin
MD Twin Quilted

Recycled
Seventh Generation
Natural Value

Novelty Papers
Purely Cotton
Cottonelle Moist Wipes
Blue Label

I didn't conduct any fiendish experiments on loo paper—I figured that the product's purpose is specific enough that a trial "in the field" would tell me all I needed to know. All contestants went through the rotation in my bathroom. For novelty value, I also tried Cottonelle Moist Wipes, which offer "a fresher clean than with bathroom tissue alone." The packaging promised that that I'd "feel cleaner, more refreshed, and confident," but somehow using the adult equivalent of baby wipes failed to enhance my self-esteem. In the interests of internationalism, I imported a package of "smooth" Blue Label toilet paper—the medicated, waxy retro-wipe so beloved of government offices—from Britain. It's a harsh wipe and seems completely unsuited for contact with one's soft bits, but drape a sheet of it over a comb and it makes a wonderful kazoolike musical instrument.

The latest marketing angle in toilet tissue is the double or triple roll. There doesn't appear to be any agreement on what constitutes a standard roll—so-called double rolls measure anywhere from 187 square feet to 280 square feet, and the Charmin triple roll is a giant 462 square feet (though we're assured it "fits almost all standard dispensers"). The implied economies don't pan out—in my local supermarket the perfectly adequate single-roll store brand (Heritage Hearth) was considerably cheaper per square foot than any of the double or triple rolls (only half the price of the most expensive premium brand I tried, Kleenex Cottonelle Ultrasoft Double Roll), and it doesn't take up as much room in my Y2K storeroom.

Recycled toilet tissues have improved since the sandpaperlike sheets of the early '80s, but they just can't compete on the softness front. The recycled ingredients include rough stuff like cardboard boxes as well as office paper. Still, the case for recycling is persuasive. The packaging for Seventh Generation toilet paper claims that "[i]f every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 500 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save: 297,000 trees; 1.2 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to 1,400 full garbage trucks; 122 million gallons of water, a year's supply for 3,500 families of four." Since most Americans get through 48 to 55 rolls of TP per year, that's a lot of trees, trash, and water.

The mainstream brands base their sales pitches on descriptors such as "gentle," "plush," and "cottony softness," but although names such as Cottonelle trade on the image of cotton, the products are wood-based, whereas one relative newcomer to the market is actually made from the fluffy plant. Purely Cotton bathroom and facial tissues are made from "cotton linter"—what's left over when fibers and cottonseed oil have been harvested. As a byproduct, cotton linter is considered 100 percent recycled/recovered and, although it is bleached to make it snowy white, the process doesn't produce dioxins as with wood pulp bleaching.

After my experiments, I'll probably stick with Purely Cotton, which costs no more than the premium brands, is environmentally sound, acceptably soft, and appropriately absorbent. Even the cheapest toilet paper gets the job done, so if you want to impress guests or if you don't want to keep paper hankies in the bathroom, buy the expensive stuff, but I'll bet your delicate bits won't notice the difference.



No Sweat
Putting deodorants and antiperspirants to the test.
By Eliza Truitt
Posted Thursday, December 28, 2000, at 6:00 PM PT

An asinine advertisement for Secret antiperspirant recently made this entirely obvious assertion: "25 percent of women naturally perspire more than others." You don't have to take a class in statistics to realize that antiperspirants make big money for cosmetics companies primarily because they play on people's fears of being nasty and stinky (and if you've ever sat next to someone on the subway who smelled like he needed a shower or three, that fear isn't totally crazy). People do smell, and most don't want to. But which antiperspirants and deodorants, if any, really work? And how do they work, anyway?

Sweat itself is actually odorless—it's the bacteria eating it that make the stink. Assuming you don't have a problem like fish-odor syndrome or hyperhidrosis, your deodorant and antiperspirant needs will probably be met by one of the many products sold at your local drugstore. Deodorants work by making your armpit unfavorable to sweat-eating bacteria by turning your skin acidic (that's what stick deodorants do) or salty (that's what natural crystal or "rock" deodorants do); some also use antibacterial agents. Antiperspirants, on the other hand, plug your pores with aluminum salts, reducing the amount of sweat that exits your body, thus providing less nourishment for the fragrant beasties. If, however, you don't find a product strong enough, your doctor can prescribe an antiperspirant such as DrySol or Odaban, or you can undergo a new type of surgery that disconnects certain nerves from your spinal column. And now, according to The New Yorker, high-society ladies and fashion models are getting Botox injections under their arms for temporary paralysis of their sweat glands. (Click here to read about health scares surrounding antiperspirants—which are mostly, but not entirely, nutty.)

But suppose you don't want to go under the knife—which brand is the best? Does Kiss My Face Natural Deodorant leave you smelling like a ripe hippie? Is Secret's new "Platinum Protection" any different from its traditional solid? As a person whose natural body odor falls on the smell spectrum somewhere between three-alarm chili and a damp sock, I felt uniquely qualified to act as a guinea pig for field testing, providing ample odors to be prevented or masked. But because most deodorants and antiperspirants do a decent job of keeping you scent-free and dry during a typical day spent sitting in front of a computer, I needed to find a way to thin the herd. So I fashioned a gauntlet of sweaty and stinky situations to separate the weak from the strong, and I took notes on style along the way.

As any scent aficionado knows, the human armpit has a rich palette of odors it can produce, depending on the situation. Workout sweat is different from stress sweat. (In fact, the average person sweats more when stressed out—700 milligrams per hour—than when in a 100-degree room—600 milligrams per hour.) And then there's the scent generated by simply not bathing for a few days on end. In order to methodically test each brand, I put each to the following tests: Old Stink, Stress, and Workout.

The criteria I used in picking which antiperspirants to test—and there are plenty out there—were two-fold: 1) They had to be gender neutral or designed for women—women really do have a different underarm pH from men; and 2) the brand had to have two varieties to chose from, one "clear" or "sheer" and the other standard. (I wanted to see if the clear brands were actually as good as the old waxy sticks.) I also tested two deodorants, both as a control group and out of curiosity. For each test I relied on a single application of deodorant or antiperspirant on freshly showered, dry skin. (I didn't test any sprays, on the assumption they're as effective as other forms of antiperspirant.) In order to accommodate women with and without armpit hair, I kept one shaved (left) and one furry (right). In all cases I wore cotton T-shirts, long or short sleeved. All smell ratings (see below) were verified by an independent third party who prefers to remain nameless. (I would like to give my most heartfelt thanks to this assistant. He is truly a good sport.) In the case of disputes, scores were averaged. Now, on to the sniff trials!

The Smell Ratings:
1. Only Perfume/No BO
2. Detectable BO
3. Clear and Present BO
4. Very Strong BO
5. Noticeable-Across-a-Room BO

Old Stink Test: For this I didn't bathe for three consecutive days, on the second day of which I completed a 40-minute rowing workout. This three-day death march was not just tough on me and my carpool mates (sorry, guys!), it was tough on the products. Some immediately crumbled: Kiss My Face Active Enzyme Natural Stick Deodorant With Baking Soda and Clay failed the fastest. By the second day it was already up to Level 2 and by the third day at was at an eye-watering Level 4. Surprisingly, the clear or gel antiperspirants generally did better than their stick counterparts, especially in the thatched armpit. So not only do they not smear white shmutz on your shirt, they're more effective.

The winner was Secret Platinum Protection. On the third day it barely registered as a low Level 2. A note on this product: I got some of it on my fingers and had real difficulty washing it off. I tried hand soap and dish detergent, but the water kept beading up on my hand. In the end I wiped it off as best I could and then just waited for it to wear off. This impermeability is probably the key to its effectiveness: During the second-day workout my armpits remained absolutely dry while my face, back, and arms sweated up a storm. After 40 minutes both underarms were completely dry, which was a bit eerie, considering I applied it over 24 hours ago. No other product came close to this.

Stress Test: For this I played a violent video game ("Unreal") for 30 minutes. Instead of putting the whole stable of products through the test, I picked the top three finishers from the Old Stink Test: Lady Mitchum Clear Gel, Secret Platinum Protection, and the surprise natural option, Crystal Stick Deodorant, which far exceeded my expectations. (Though if they ever want to adopt a mainstream audience, I suggest toning down the soft-core package photo.) This test produced a smaller range of results: The Mitchum and Secret both prevented all stress sweat from being released, and there was no detectable scent other than the (gaggingly intense) perfumes in both. The Crystal Stick, which is odorless, couldn't match that and did give way to a low but detectable stress-sweat scent after my 30 minutes of defending myself from vicious and merciless robots.

Workout Test: For this I applied the product and then immediately rowed at a constant rate and energy output on a machine for 20 minutes. Afterward I pressed a paper towel in my underarm and inspected the resulting moisture in the towel as an indication of actual liquid output. Having seen the uncanny power of Secret's Platinum Protection earlier, I pretty much knew how this one was going to shake out. The Crystal (which makes no claims toward stopping sweat) was the dampest; Mitchum was second; and the Secret came out on top, with a creepily bone-dry towel.

Conclusion: If you're looking for a product that is going to let you sweat through a shirt everywhere but under your arms, then Secret Platinum is the best of the bunch. But I was impressed by how well the Crystal held up. It is made of mineral salts that prevent bacteria from growing. Low-tech, yes, but you also have no concern that in five years there will be an FDA warning about it. If you already have attachment to a favorite brand, I suggest trying out the clear variety. Not only are they supposed to stain clothing less (companies claim they won't create the yellow underarm stains regular antiperspirants cause), but they work better. As for me, I'm going to keep a variety around. The Crystal Stick for sitting around at home, and the uncanny pore-blocking Secret for my public speaking moments.


sidebar

The first question most people ask about antiperspirant is not which one works the best, it's whether or not the health scares associated with it are legitimate. Does the aluminum in it cause Alzheimer's? Is it true that because you don't sweat them out, evil toxins trapped in your body by antiperspirant will fester and give you breast cancer? Both of these claims are false, regardless of alarmist mass e-mails to the contrary. But there are less dramatic health concerns related to deodorant and antiperspirant. A search of the Medline database turns up loads of articles on contact dermatitis caused by antiperspirants—they are the cosmetic product most commonly associated with skin irritation.



Brush to Judgment
Putting electric and traditional toothbrushes to the test.
By Seth Stevenson
Posted Thursday, February 8, 2001, at 12:00 AM PT

Which toothbrush to buy? I asked a scientist from the American Dental Association and a practicing dentist, and both advised me to buy any brush—as long as it's soft-bristled. A soft brush works great on plaque (which has the consistency of mayonnaise), while the firmer bristles gain you nothing. In fact, they say, you risk "toothbrush abrasion" if you combine hard scrubbing with firmer bristles: You slowly scrub a groove into your gumline and corrode your tooth's insides. Bad news, that.

Beyond this, there's little clinical difference between any two brushes, electric or non. Choosing comes down to comfort, motivation ("the gimmick factor") and, above all, maneuverability. For these you'll have to trust my teeth as testing grounds. On to the research.


Manual

I tried more than 30 manual brushes. The following stood out, for good or for bad. (Whenever possible, tests were performed using Colgate Total toothpaste, winner of the previous "Paste Test.")

Mentadent Surround: The Surround, with its standard head, is completely unexceptional save for its magnificent handle—a two-tone art deco masterpiece of molded plastic. Buy this one as your "show brush" to put in the guest bathroom and never use.

In seriousness, a good grip can be important if it helps you manipulate the brush. The goal in brushing is to cover every tooth surface, so if fancy grips or angled heads do the trick for you, stick with 'em. The Surround grip, while pretty, didn't help me reach more teeth.

Reach Plaque Sweeper and Reach Interdental: I tried the "Full Head" sizes of these brushes, which tainted them for me. I'm not a fan of the "huge head" school of brush design, and both these heads span four or five teeth at once. This trend is understandable in brushes from toothpaste manufacturers (the huge-headed Aquafresh Flex Direct, for instance): Bigger heads mean more room for paste. But Reach is from Johnson & Johnson, which, as best I can tell, makes no toothpastes. Go figure.

The Plaque Sweeper, like many recent brushes, has a single, taller tuft of bristles at the tip of its head to clean "hard-to-reach back teeth." This tuft did not help me reach my back teeth—at least not accurately. Instead, it got in my way, bumping my gums, too bulky for fine cleaning. Ditch these SUVs and get something with better handling.

Crest Extender: "Gentle Extender Fibers extend beyond the rippled bristles," says the packaging. Think of your regular toothbrush, then add a few sparsely placed bristles jabbing up a quarter-inch higher than the rest. Unsettling, yes? These "Gentle Extender Fibers" poke right into your gums. I would have called it the Crest Intruder. Maybe the Crest Violator. Just looking at it's terrifying. This was the worst brush I tried.

Colgate Navigator: The top half of this brush head flexes independently of the bottom half, much like a segmented vehicle. Ask yourself: Do I want to brush with a segmented vehicle? When you flex out the top, it's a completely different angle from the bottom and brushing a separate tooth entirely. Maybe it saves time by brushing two surfaces at once, but this technique affords little control over bristles—you have to guess where they are. Also, I predict the rubber flexpoint will lose elasticity long before the bristles are dead. A poor entry.

Oral-B CrossAction: A fine brush. While it does employ the big end-tuft, in this case the angle was such that it didn't get in my way. And the CrissCross bristles, pointing this way and that, did seem to cover surfaces more thoroughly. Each brush stroke sent bristles scampering willy-nilly all over my enamel. Like other Oral-Bs, the CrossAction has indicators to tell you when to replace it. (The ADA says to change brushes every three to four months, because worn brushes don't clean well and can hurt your gums.)

Faults: The handle on this one is big (too big to fit in a toothbrush holder), and the color scheme looks like an iMac. But these are forgivable sins. Indeed, if not for one flaw, this would be my favorite manual brush. Sadly, all those bristles and tufts pointing every which way made the head knock around in my mouth, creating unacceptable inaccuracy. Thus, the CrossAction loses to ...

Colgate Sensitive: A graceful wand. The "silky soft bristles" glide across gums, and the tiny head lets you maneuver like a champ. My teeth were an ancient fresco to be carefully restored. The handle is ultralight, almost a conductor's baton, but gently swooping, with a rubberized grip for your thumb. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Among manuals, that is. On to …


Automatics

Before talking to dental experts, I figured these fancy electric brushes did a better job. Not so. It's all about the brusher—electrics are no better in clinical tests. If the "gimmick factor" of using an electric motivates you to brush more, mazel tov. If the gum stimulation of electrics feels cleaner and fresher, fantastic, but it does nothing for your oral health. To me, electrics did hold some real advantages: They helped thoroughly brush some hard-to-reach spots; a few of them had timers, which reminded me that I rarely brush for long enough; and there's a regal, being-serviced kind of feel to using them. Of course, you shell out for it: Manuals range from 99 cents to four bucks; electrics do not. Plus, replacement heads cost you, too.

Reach Powerbrush: OK, this one's affordable, at $7.99. But you get what you pay for. One AA battery fits inside this brush, vibrating it 7,000 times a minute. How does it feel? Think of your regular brush, then strap a model airplane motor to the handle. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Unpleasant. This was the second-worst brush I tried.

Waterpik Plus Plaque Control System: This massive console features a cordless, rechargeable toothbrush; a small tub for mixing solutions of water and mouthwash; and an oral irrigator that shoots those solutions into your mouth at high speeds. At $79.99, it doesn't come cheap. Performance? So-so. The brush is fine—the standard-shaped head oscillates back and forth, creating a lot of brush strokes while you hold it in place. But it didn't seem much different from the Powerbrush, save that it damped the vibrations.

As for the oral irrigator—stay away. The instructions say to irrigate with mouth open, over the sink, and let the water run out on its own. Eighty bucks to drool on myself? Seems you could re-create the effect by rinsing with mouthwash, then dribbling it slowly down your chin—all for the price of the mouthwash.

Sonicare Advance Model: The priciest dental care I could find—$89.99. For a while, this looked like a winner. It sells you on science, boasting of sonic waves and fluid dynamics and "31,000 gentle brush strokes per minute." And man do your teeth feel clean when you finish.

But soon, cracks appear in the sonic wall. Most of that clean feeling stems from gum stimulation. And the timer on the Sonicare, while theoretically a nice addition, turns out to be annoying. It automatically shuts the motor off after two minutes, even when you're in midbrush. Finally, the whole contraption is a mite scary. You don't gin up 31,000 strokes per minute without some serious vibrations going on. It's totally damped as long as you brush carefully, but the second you touch the plastic back of the brush to a tooth or gum, look out: clackety-clackety-clackety, 31,000 times a minute. It's frightening and can hurt a little. On occasions when I came to the bathroom late and sleepy, or perhaps just a bit in my cups, I couldn't even look at the Sonicare. Dealing with this gremlin was too much to take, and I reached for a trusty manual.

Braun Oral-B Plaque Remover 3D: This $69.99 entry was the class of the bunch. Its tiny round head lets you brush one tooth at a time. The backs of my two front teeth have never been cleaner than after using this. Also, its timer signals when two minutes are up, but doesn't shut off the motor (actually brushing for two full minutes was a revelation to me—it forced me to clean all my surfaces just to fill up the time). Vibrations are minimal, with no clackety-clackety. And the design seems simple and efficient. A big flaw of electrics is that the handles get dirty quickly, but the Braun was easy to clean. I give you your champion.

Still, even if you go for the Braun, keep a manual around. I found that sometimes an electric toothbrush was just too much noise and activity in the quiet of the evening. A Braun/Colgate Sensitive combo lets you cover all your bases.



Clean Freak
Can the new home dry-cleaning products reproduce that oh-so-fresh-from-the-cleaner's scent?
By Kelly Alexander
Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2001, at 8:30 PM PT

Confession of a dry-cleaning addict: I don't care if my clothes are clean. I just want them to smell nice. I hear this is a side effect of giving up cigarettes—I just quit after 10 years of smoking, and I now spend a lot of time sniffing smoky garments and a lot of money getting them dry-cleaned, even the ones without a "dry-clean only" label. I complained to friends about the skyrocketing costs (last month I was the third-highest spender at my local cleaner's) and learned a lot had changed in fabric care while I was busy smoking. In fact, a new market had been born: home dry-cleaning products.

But let's back up for a moment: What exactly is dry cleaning? Technically, it's not even dry. It's just a process that wets clothes with something other than water—something that isn't likely to shrink fabric or the threads that hold a garment together and that doesn't destroy fussy hems, delicate materials like cashmere and silk, or the linings that give shape to jackets and dresses. That something is perchloroethylene, a chemical solvent. The Environmental Protection Agency says it's safe to wear, but I wouldn't drink it.

Deemed moderately toxic, perchloroethylene is in the same category as chemicals like nail polish remover, bleach, and gasoline. Sounds harsh, but keep in mind that these are usual suspects in households and would only be harmful if you used them to do something for which they were not intended—like replacing rum in a tropical cocktail. The International Fabricare Institute, an organization for professional dry cleaners in existence since 1833, agrees with the EPA that you shouldn't be overly fearful of perchloroethylene, comparing it to saccharin—another "safe" compound that gives lab rats cancer; I do drink the latter but will pass on the former.

Safety fears aside, it's pretty great stuff for spiffing up your clothes—though maybe not as essential as some fabric care tags would have you believe. Because the Federal Trade Commission requires only one care instruction per label, even if more than one applies, it's hard to figure whether you're supposed to dry-clean something or not. According to Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, "a label that says 'dry-clean' tells you neither that you can nor that you cannot also wash the article without harming it."

But my goal wasn't to see what I could hand-wash. My goal was to learn whether the home cleaning products could match a professional dry cleaner's ability to get smells out of clothing. I tried three methods: Febreze, a spray that promises to eliminate pesky odors from fabrics; Dryel, a home dry-cleaning kit (both products are made by Procter & Gamble); and my professional dry cleaner, Eddy's.

Assembling the Troops
I rounded up three long-sleeved, button-down shirts, typically the kind I send to the cleaners even though they could be washed and ironed at home. Soiling them with cigarette smoke was out of the question for my newly purified sense of smell, but I had something equally foul at my disposal: my husband's sweat. Since the objective was to get the shirts as stanky as possible, after he wore them I put them in a plastic bag with a pound of jumbo-shrimp shells wrapped in wax paper. I left the bag on my balcony overnight in 82-degree heat to marinate. The next day, the shirts would have put a longshoreman to shame.


Method: Professional Dry Cleaner

Shirt: Worn for 16 hours, including on subway platforms in 93-degree heat, to a smoky pub where greasy burgers and four pints of beer were consumed, and, finally, to Madison Square Garden for a Radiohead concert. (And, of course, they got the shrimp-shell treatment.)

Cost: $4.50 per shirt (this is dry cleaning, remember, which is more expensive than wash-and-press jobs).

How it works: The shirt is dropped into a rotating cylinder within a small tank. A chemical solvent is pumped into both tank and cylinder, then is circulated. The solvent does its business on the shirt, lifting stanks and stains. Said solvent is drained and any excess wrung from the shirt. The cylinder stops. Warm air is then circulated through the cylinder to vaporize any solvent left on shirt. Neat-o.

The experiment: I dropped the shirt off. I picked the shirt up. (I'm lying; my husband dropped the shirt off, and I got it delivered home.)

Time: 24 hours.

Result: A solid Grade A. It just smelled clean. Not floral, not summer rain, not sporty. I loved it.


Method: Febreze

Background: Launched in 1998, Febreze was a pioneer in the burgeoning fabric care field. But I was confused about the difference between it and, say, Chanel No. 5 because both products are administered exactly the same way. According to product literature, Febreze is more than perfume: Its "molecules penetrate into the fabric, cleaning away odor-causing molecules as it dries." Ingredients are "water, alcohol, odor eliminator derived from corn, fragrance." That "odor eliminator derived from corn" part is the ticket; the chemicals involved in dry cleaning are all ethylene or vegetable-based.

Shirt: Worn for about 15 hours, enduring dinner at a Mexican restaurant where countless garlicky dishes were consumed; shrimp à la balcony for dessert.

Cost: $4.99 for a standard size (500 milliliters), regular strength bottle. Estimated cost per shirt: approximately 50 cents.

How it works: Point and shoot a spray bottle filled with a chemical solution onto fabric. Directions say to spray evenly until fabric becomes slightly damp.

The experiment: It took exactly 100 squirts to wet the entire shirt. Damp is an understatement; the shirt was too soaked to wear.

Time: The shirt took 73 minutes to dry.

Result: My pal Omar, an Ecuadorian architect and certifiable neat freak, raved madly about Febreze's good smell. He's right. The scent is generic but pleasant; rather like a bar of Ivory soap. In terms of effectiveness, the shirt smelled about 90 percent better. Keep in mind that I sprayed it 100 times. When I really dug my nose into the armpits, though, they still smelled a tad ripe. That said, I was impressed with Febreze's effectiveness. I would have worn the shirt again; my husband, though, could not separate the image of his shirt surrounded by hideously fishy and warm shrimp shells and opted not to.

Advantage: Repeated use costs nothing after the initial investment. If the armpits of my shirt were not up to my satisfaction, I could have sprayed on more until they improved.

Verdict: B-plus. I'll use it again. If you are so lazy like me that you send your clothes to the dry cleaner just to make them smell good, this is the stuff of dreams. It's easy to use, cost-effective, and smells really good.


Method: Dryel

Background: Dryel is a much more complicated than Febreze. It comes in a nifty waxed paper bucket topped with an iMac-turquoise plastic top, and inside is a whole bunch of stuff, including a specially wrapped booklet that explains it all—many marketing dollars were spent on packaging alone.

Shirt: Worn in a sports bar wherein tens of gallons of beer were consumed by my husband and his swilling band of colleagues. Plus a night camping out with the shrimp shells.

Cost: $10.99 for the kit, which includes a plastic bag that holds the shirt while it's in the dryer, plus four sheets of "dryer-activated cloth." With this equipment, the maximum number of items that can be cleaned is 16. Estimated cost per shirt: approximately 69 cents.

How it works: You've used spot remover, right? You pour some liquid cleaning fluid onto a cloth, and you rub the spot with it. That's how Dryel works—only the cloth comes preloaded with cleaning fluid, and it's dry instead of wet, and it's activated by the heat of your dryer. And instead of standing there rubbing a shrimp-shell-reeking Brooks Brothers shirt like an idiot, the dryer tumbles the cloth around the shirt until it's clean, at least in theory.

The experiment: I used the solution on the "strong underarm odors," then I threw the shirt in the bag and tossed it into the dryer.

Time: 20 minutes to get proper change for dryer; 10 minutes to dab and rub stain remover; four minutes to set up bag and nestle cloth inside; 30 minutes in dryer on high setting.

Result: The shirt smelled better, but in a surprisingly less consistent way than the Febreze job. The odor was strongly perfumish in a lily-of-the-valley sort of way. Sadly, the armpits were not what they should have been. "Cat piss," my husband declared upon sniffing. And this was after they'd been treated with stain remover.

Advantage: Spinning the garment in the dryer is a nice touch—it fluffs the clothing, which simulates the actual effect of dry cleaning.

Verdict: C. For merely lifting bad smells, Dryel was a disappointment. But I would use it again for other projects. For instance, my down comforter—it would take a lot of Febreze to spray the whole thing down, and dry cleaning would cost $40.

Despite my tendency toward excess, I'm not going to be severing my relationship with Eddy's anytime soon. Unlike Febreze, which I found to be a delightful breath of fresh air, so to speak, dry cleaning actually deep cleans clothes while making them smell better. Bonus! Unlike Dryel, it doesn't make my stuff overtly perfumey or require additional skills such as a sniper's marksmanship with stain remover, the foresight not to lose little baggies containing cloths that have been drenched in special chemicals, or even the investment of a significant amount of time. And time is money. But old-fashioned dry cleaning wins because to me smell trumps both.



Fake Flesh
A guide to your supermarket's imitation meats.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Monday, December 17, 2001, at 1:38 PM PT

As we wade forth into the holiday season, our hearts turn to sprawling family dinners, and that means our hearts turn to meat. More precisely, our hearts turn to great foaming pools of saturated fats, and for most Americans this presents a monster health problem. Enter the burgeoning fake meat industry, which is more than willing to load your table down with mock chickens, fake bacons, and bogus beef. For anyone trying to cut back on his consumption of the real thing for health, moral, or religious reasons, this season is as good a time as any to explore the vegetarian (and often dairy-free, lactose-free, non-genetically modified) alternatives.

The trick is, as I quickly learned, not to explore all of them at once. While some fake meat products are in fact pretty tasty, attempting to eat 13 of them at one sitting is an activity best undertaken with a fake stomach. Inspired by a groundbreaking "Shopping" column by James Fallows titled "Booze You Can Use," I chose to serve up a whole cornucopia of fake meat products to friends at one sitting. As one would at a wine tasting, we served up three "flights" of food groups—the brownish "pig" products, the beige "beef" products, and the beiger "poultry" products—and asked five friends, foodies all, to participate. Most of the foods came from local health food and specialty shops, although a few of the more exotic items were purchased online. (This site appears to be the mother lode for fake meat ordering purposes.)

Less than a third of the way through the fake pig course it became evident that one should never serve fake meats to real friends. Never was a salad more cherished or appreciated than our "between flight" side salad was. People actually fought over the last cherry tomatoes in the vain hope of filling up on something not made of twisted, colored gluten. What is wheat gluten, you ask, and did it ever know love? Click here to find out.

Nevertheless, results were collected and collated on highly scientific charts, which measured each product for taste, similarity to the real meat it purported to be, and consistency. And for those of you interested in serving one or two meat substitutes amid a large and varied meal of other, real foods, the results here may prove useful. For the record: The folks who attended my dinner will likely never eat any of these products again.


Flight 1: The "Pigs" in the Poke

Since it made some sort of chronological sense to do so, we opened with the breakfast-type-products: phony bacons and sausages. The first was Morningstar Farms' Breakfast Links, a product that I confess to having already had in my freezer and enjoyed on the occasional Sunday morning with eggs. The panel's comments on the taste of this product ranged widely from "dry" to "dog food" to "mild but satisfying" and "liked the spicy kick." While none of the tasters but one found any similarity between the taste of the fake links and real ones, several noted that the links do visually resemble the real thing. Oddly, fake food engineers seem moved to replicate either taste or appearance, but rarely both.

Better all-around ratings went to Boca Sausages, which both looked and tasted, to one taster, "just like kielbasa!" "I would be fooled," said another, and "perfect for Polish vegans!" Overall, these fared best of all the piglike products. Proving that the same company can both get it and blow it in the mock-pork phylum, the third product, Boca Breakfast Links were consistently ranked lowest among testers, both in taste and appearance. "Dog food," "utter failure," and various unprintable references to fecal materials were offered.

The three fake bacon products were also rated on taste and appearance, starting with Morningstar Farms' Breakfast Strips, which bear a rather distressing resemblance to something Play-Doh might have generated in its Fuzzy Pumper Barber and Beauty Shop, in that they are engineered with a strip of fake white pig fat down the centers. Tasters able to get beyond the appearance all noted that this product did have a salty, smoky taste, although several complained that the taste faded quickly to something like cardboard. One consistent comparison was to potato chips, although one generous taster likened it to turkey bacon. The second baconlike product, Yves' Canadian Veggie Bacon fared poorly in comparison, generating lots of comparisons to "fake bologna," "drain stoppers," and "rubber novelty meat." Interestingly, two tasters found the chewy consistency quite marvelous, while one celebrated its blandness with the words "tastes just like Canada." Lightlife's Smart Bacon was the final entry in the bacons category and was universally ranked even lower than the others, with comments ranging from "run away" to "Stupid Bacon …"

Perhaps the greatest disappointment in the fake pig flight, however, came with the delicious-smelling, gorgeously textured fake ribs. Made by Harvest Direct, the Veggie Ribs come as a bag of white powder that might easily be confused for "veggie talcum" or "veggie cocaine." One mixes the powder with tahini or peanut butter, molds them into riblike statuary, bakes, and then slathers them in a delicious store-bought chemical-laden barbecue sauce. The smell was staggeringly intense, and all the tasters regained their initial enthusiasm for the dinner party as we pulled these ribs out of the oven. Sadly, all the barbecue sauce in the land couldn't make these ribs taste like anything more than veggie talcum, and the panelists agreed that both in taste and texture the ribs were "bland and mushy" and "bread-like, no similarity to ribs," with several comparisons made to rubber-soled sneakers, and someone pointing out the urgent need for a plastic bone inside.

In all, the consensus on the pig flight was that the sausage alternatives beat the bacon alternatives hands down, and that if you're looking for ribs, Kansas City is still a better choice than Berkeley.


 Flight 2: The "Cows" Come Home

Most of us had fairly high expectations for the fake beef flight, if for no other reason than the raging popularity of Boca Burgers, Gardenburgers, and other hamburger alternatives that have gone mainstream in the past few years. (Click here to learn which of these are the best.) Sadly, the "beef" was one of the most disappointing elements of the evening (and also the point at which one guest demanded a bowl into which to spit partially chewed samples, as one might do at a wine tasting). Special dreadful notice goes to Worthington's Savory Slices (unclear which savory meat these were meant to be), which not only came out of a can and smelled truly horrifying but also tasted so bad as to be ranked worst by all six panelists. Comments included, "tastes like eating suede," "something removed in a doctor show," "oh, my God," and "you've got to be kidding." Loma Linda's Tender Rounds (canned fake meatballs) fared better, garnering raves such as "not bad," "doughy meatball," "kinda good," and "please don't make me put this in my mouth ever again."

The two "beef strip" products were served in their own sauces. Lightlife's Savory Seitan did not fare well, with tasters objecting to both the texture ("gristle," "rubbery and wrong") and the taste ("not even close" and "had to spit out"). The big winner in fake beef strips was clearly Lightlife's other product, Steak Style Strips, which was deemed "close to steak," "beefy," "wow I'm converted." Some objections were logged as to its appearance ("looks like eyebrows"), but on the whole this product passed with flying colors.


 Flight 3: The "Fowl"

By this point in the tasting, it was clear that not only stomach linings were fraying, but so were some formerly close friendships. The decision was made to skip three of the seven products in this group, focusing only on the fake turkey products. Worthington's Turkee Slices—imitation lunchmeat—got mixed reviews. Some testers attempted to guess which cat food it was meant to be, while others declared it "yummy and smoky" or "not too bad." No one was impressed by the look or texture of the stuff, however. Comments here ranged from "hairy" to "stringy" to "gnarly." Lightlife's Roast Turkey Slices, which came out of a packet as opposed to a can, received a slightly better reception. Whereas every reviewer agreed that it was "tasteless," everyone also felt that it truly did resemble real turkey slices.

The final product of the evening was the pièce de rèsistance, Turtle Island Foods Inc.'s famous Tofurkey. We purchased the 1-pound version, designed to serve four. We forgot to make the suggested gravy and thus were left to eat what was, in effect, a large, puffy bread filled with stuffing. It had been molded inside some meshy substance, which made it look like it was wearing a sock, engendering several "sock monkey" comments from the testers. In terms of taste, comments ranged from "breadlike" to "bread" to "bland" to "breadlike" again, although everyone commented on how excellent the stuffing was.


Conclusion
One hates to be a reactionary, but sometimes absolute relativism is an evil unto itself. Plunging neck deep into the world of meat alternatives made it clear that the good Lord may have put cows and soybeans on different ends of his great classification system for good reason. Pigs rarely aspire to be asparagus. And wheat should not strive to be meat. With enough sauces, and marinades, and spices, a filament of gluten can pass for a strip of steak. But no one should be forced to eat three full courses of products that are all, as one of the artists among us observed, shaped either in circles or blobs. And no one should have to choke down stringy, tasteless, or chewy morsels just because they are coated in a sauce that might once have coated something at McDonald's. Call me a food fundamentalist, but the land in which meat and tofus collide is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.


sidebar

Gluten, by the way, is a central ingredient in a whole lot of the meat alternatives. Wheat gluten—also called wheat meal or seitan, is wheat protein. Kneading high gluten dough, removing the starch, and then simmering what's left in water produces a chewy, firm, meatlike product. Sort of like pâpier maché but without the newsprint. The other alternative meat products are mainly made of TVP, or textured vegetable protein, made from soy flour or other soy extracts. Chewing heroically on his appetizer—a slab of "Tofurkey Jerky"—my husband observed that much of this soy food is oddly dried out, lacking perhaps in, um, "soysture."



Abs-Surdity
Can the ab-enhancing devices hawked on late-night TV give me a stomach of steel?
By Eric Umansky
Posted Tuesday, May 14, 2002, at 2:00 PM PT

My job requires me to stay up late at night. And in the wee hours of the morning, I occasionally—OK, habitually—procrastinate and flip on the television. Unless I'm watching HBO, I'm inevitably greeted by a bunch of hard-bodies in Lycra outfits cheerfully and effortlessly using some device to give themselves tight tummies.

They always have perfect abs.

As somebody whose belt bears a few now-abandoned notches, I wondered whether these things could help me—especially those now-ubiquitous electric belts, which one commercial extolled as "like 1,000 sit-ups in 3 minutes."

It wasn't so much the promise of potential improvement that caught my eye; it was the assurance that I could do it without breaking a sweat. (Plus, I have a tender back, and nasty things like sit-ups tend to aggravate it.)

Sure, I knew these things were shticky—and that the ads' claims were dubious, perhaps even illegal. But what did I have to lose? These things promised me I wouldn't have to do much work.

Methodology.

My plan was to try three kinds of devices: those ab belts and two other ab tools that have been heavily promoted. I used each for about three weeks, with a week off in-between to return to my original zaftig shape. The tricky part was figuring out a way to rate my progress. To help with that, I drafted the most knowledgeable gym-rat I know: my girlfriend. (Let's call her Anna.) After a Sunday morning brainstorming meeting, we had a plan: the Pinch 'n' Poke.

For the pinching part, I'd use calipers to judge whether I had lost any fat. (I bought a digital version, the AccuMeasure FatTrack, for $41.95.) I also needed a non-back-threatening way to test the strength of my soon-to-be-rippling stomach muscles. For that, Anna, and her poking fingers, would be the arbiter. She'd rate firmness on an increasing scale, from one-pack to six-pack.

My starting numbers: The calipers told me I had a 28- to 30-millimeter roll of stomach fat. By also taking measurements of my chest and thighs, the caliper judged that I had about a 19 percent body-fat rating. According to the instructions, that put me, barely, in the "good" category.

Meanwhile, I started out with a one-pack strength rating.


Electric Ab Belts

Cost: AbTronic: $89.85; AbSonic: $21.95.
What is it? The beltlike devices first came to the public's attention during the 1970s when rumor spread that they were the secret weapons of Soviet Olympians. Today, there are bags full of these things, though perhaps not for long. In order to see if there were any differences, I bought two belts: the Ferrari of the genre, the AbTronic (a telesalesman at AsSeenOnTV.com called them the "gold standard"); and the Yugo of the bunch, the AbSonic. ("Two for just $20!")

The belts looked suspiciously similar; both had the same chintzy padding and similar cheap-looking switches. In fact, the biggest difference I could see was that the more expensive AbTronic didn't come with instructions.

The warning labels on the two belts were also nearly identical. Both, for example, admonished users to "apply a generous amount of a waterbased gel or lotion." (Underline in both originals.) Presumably, this is meant to keep the electricity flowing between the device and your body. I scrounged through both shipping boxes. No gel. So I tried the AbSonic without any liquid, but only felt a slight uncomfortable buzzing. Finally, I rummaged around my medicine cabinet and pulled out what I figured was the most appropriate lotion: Astroglide.

I got back on the couch, slathered on the Glide, strapped on the AbSonic, and set the mode to "Karate Chop." (Other settings offered: "Fat Blaster," "Crunch Craze," "Iron Man," etc.) Immediately a jolt of electricity shot through my stomach. It hurt—a lot. Remember the buzzing you got when you were a kid and put a 9-volt battery on your tongue? Triple that. It felt like a localized epileptic seizure.

I smacked the "off" button, ripped off the belt, and set it aside. For a month.

Then my editor called to check on my progress.

Hesitantly, I strapped myself back in. I figured getting the maximum potential out of the belts would require dedication on my part. The instructions suggest using the belts daily for a maximum of 30 minutes at a time. So I committed to being gently electrocuted for one full episode of The Simpsons per day.

After I lowered the setting from "high" to "medium," it was easy going. About the only trouble I had is that the belts automatically turn off after about 10 minutes. Wanting to give myself a little cross-training, I'd use this as an opportunity to change the belt's setting.

Besides their vaunted "no-sweat" factor, the ab-belt shillers also shout that the things can "go anywhere!" I chose the subway. I hopped into the most crowded train I could see and began to repeatedly lift my shirt and change my settings. I was, of course, completely ignored. The only problem I had was that when I arrived at my destination, my shirt was sullied with Astroglide.

Did they do any good? No. They were painful, humiliating, and useless.

Pinch 'n' Poke results. The fat caliper reading didn't budge: I still had about a 28-millimeter spare tire. Anna wasn't impressed either. She gave me a one-pack.

What do the experts say? An ab-belt study by the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, concluded that test subjects using the belts "experienced no significant changes in weight, boy-fat percentage, strength or overall experience." The researchers added, "Not only was electric muscle stimulation ineffective, but it was also painful."

Still, these types of devices (though presumably ones of higher quality) have been used successfully for rehabilitation. How is it that they can work for that, but not give me taut abs?

Jim Brown, editor of the Georgia Tech Sports Medicine and Performance Newsletter and a health education Ph.D., explains that electric stimulation can "help you make the kind of tiny improvements that matter when your muscle, because of some injury, is so weak that you'd have to start out with baby steps." But, he says, "If there's nothing wrong with you—other than that you're lazy—in order get a real benefit, you'd have to put so much current through your body that you'd get fried."


Ab Mouse
Cost: $28.95.

What is it? First of all, I admit it, I bought this thing solely based on its name. The Ab Mouse looks like a Big Wheel without the steering part. It's a wing-shaped piece of plastic with little office-chair wheels on the bottom. The idea is that you kneel on the ground (resting your knees on an oversized, well, mouse pad that's included) and put your hands in front of you holding onto the Ab Mouse and roll it back and forth.

As I took the Ab Mouse out of the box, I noticed an impressively thick instruction booklet. Alas, it consists mostly of a 43-page "Suggested Menu Guide." ("Lunch: 1 oz. turkey breast. Fat-free mayonnaise. 2 slices whole-wheat bread. 1 apple.") That night, my girlfriend and I cooked rib-eye steak and horseradish mashed potatoes. Delicious.

Did it do any good? No. Besides suggesting that in order to get rock-hard abs I'd have to give up sausage, the Ab Mouse had another drawback: I couldn't use it on my hardwood floors. The wheels just slid around. I constantly felt like the thing was about to fly out from under me.

In an attempt to give it a fairer shot, I brought the Ab Mouse out into the carpeted hallway of my apartment building. It worked just fine there. But this wasn't a long-term proposition. After about a week of furtively working out in the hallways, I decided that I enjoyed my dignity and took the Ab Mouse out of the running.

Pinch 'n' Poke results. The calipers still read about 30 millimeters. And I still got a one-pack rating.

What do the experts say? "This is what I would call a borderline product," says Conrad Earnest, an exercise physiologist at the Cooper Institute, a health research foundation. "If you do it correctly, you may get some benefit. But if you don't, you won't get any benefit at all."


Abflex II
Cost: $39.95.

What is it? Advertised as giving you "a perfect six-pack in just three minutes a day without straining your back," the Abflex II looks like a cheap plastic crossbow.

The thing requires assembly, but instead of paper instructions it has a video. The narrator, a very enthusiastic and buff woman, had a much easier time of this than I did. Once I'd snapped all the parts into place, I watched as the video woman explained how to do an Abflex workout: You pull down on the attached side handles, which stretch a rubber cord that in turn pushes the base of the Abflex, known as the Six Pack, into your stomach. (Click here to see a picture of it in action.) The "exercise" forces you to tense your stomach muscles to keep the Six Pack from socking you in the gut.

In contrast to the ab belts, the exercises on the Abflex video—as promised—lasted for only three minutes, presumably a benefit of the fact that you actually have to gently exert yourself. I thought that was absurdly short, so I started putting in a few extra minutes, eventually settling on a comfortable time frame: one couple's matchup on the show Blind Date from introductions until the good-night kiss (about eight minutes).

Did it do any good? Sorta. The Abflex isn't the most classy-looking thing, but it did have some key advantages. In order of importance: 1) I could do it on the couch; and 2) it worked—just not on my stomach.

A few weeks after I started using the Abflex, I felt like my abs had become marginally tighter. The fat caliper reading, though, didn't budge. Still, I felt kind of ripped. If it wasn't my stomach, maybe it was my arms. All that pulling on a thick rubber cord could have made them a bit stronger.

Quickly, I brought the potential development to Anna's attention. I flexed, making various Mr. Universe poses. Tentatively, she felt around my biceps, pushing and prodding. Finally, she exclaimed, "Huh. They are a bit better."

Yes!!!

Pinch 'n' Poke results. No changes, except for the arms.

What do the experts say? "I just don't buy it," says Earnest, the exercise physiologist. "It might work in a limited way, but it doesn't sound like you're doing enough work to make a difference."


Conclusion. The ab belts don't work. And the while the other ab-improvement products can help you a bit, they certainly don't deliver you to the six-pack holy land.

"If you really want to have developed abdominal muscles," Earnest explains, "you'll need weight training, stability exercises, and a good eating plan. If you don't lose the fat, all you have is toned muscles under a flabby exterior. Same old song and dance, I'm afraid."

Then he thinks for a moment. "There is one thing that really works," he says. "It's called the Physioball. They're just big rubber balls. While you exercise on them, you also have to keep balance. So, you have to contract your muscles that help you keep stability. Anybody who uses one of those in a training routine will have a greater strength and stability in their abs and back muscles." Mine is already on its way.


sidebar

"Lose 4 Inches in 30 Days Guaranteed!"—Infomercial for the AbTronic electric exercise belt.

Aren't those absurd ab-belt claims illegal? And if so, isn't the government doing anything about it?

Probably. And yes.

Just last week, the Federal Trade Commission, the agency charged with ensuring that ads aren't spouting outright lies, filed suit against various belt-makers for airing "false and deceptive" claims. The FTC isn't saying that the products are useless; it's just arguing that they don't deliver on their absurd promises.

The FDA, meanwhile, says that the belts are "medical devices," and thus must be judged as "safe and effective" by the agency before they can be sold. So far, one belt, the Slendertone Flex, has applied for and received the FDA's stamp of approval. (The makers of the Slendertone don't claim that it'll give you rock-hard abs. They only say that it "strengthens and tones your muscles.") As for the other belts, an FDA spokeswoman says they "are illegal, and under investigation."


sidebar

A note on accuracy: It was hard to get consistent readings from the calipers. For example, short of tattooing an X mark onto my abs, I wasn't sure how to always pinch the same place as my previous reading. If you want an exact reading of your body-fat percentage, it's probably best to have a professional help you out.