Archives for May 2019

Cystic Fibrosis and ‘Five Feet Apart’

May 6, 2019 2 Comments

Maisy Millwater and Liz Breslin

Maisy Millwater is 14 years old and lives in Hawea Flat, New Zealand. She and her brother, Stan, have Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Here she talks with Liz Breslin about the newly-released film, Five Feet Apart. The film (adapted from the novel by Racheal Lippencott) follows Stella and Will, two young people with CF. The film’s title refers to the distance CF patients are advised to keep from one another in order to prevent cross-infections.

Liz Breslin: So, Five Feet Apart … did you like it?

Maisy Millwater: If I didn’t have CF I probably would’ve, but it reminded me, kind of. It didn’t give me much hope for my future. She [Claire Wineland, who consulted on the movie] died last year on the second of September, which is the day after [Maisy’s pet dogs] Evie and Obi’s birthday and the day before my friend McKenzie’s birthday.

LB: So if you didn’t have CF you would have liked it, maybe. But you’ve never not had CF, so how do you know?

MM: I had a doctor ask me once, how long have I had CF for. [Huge laughter.] I was like, um, it’s genetic. [Huger laughter.]

LB: What did the doctor say?

MM: I can’t remember but I was just like – [face palm].

Maisy Millwater and Bobo — Maisy Millwater and her horse Bobo

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Food emulsion

May 6, 2019 Leave a Comment

Marcus Loi

vinagrette — Vinagrette: an oil-in-water emulsion.

‘Emulsion’ is one of the many terms that I learned from a food chemistry paper in my undergraduate study. Back then I was not aware that emulsion is the basis of many food products which influence our daily life. Food emulsions are used to deliver nutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. In daily life we don’t often use the word ’emulsion’ but we do often consume emulsifiers, in food like milk, vinaigrettes, mayonnaise, whipped cream, ice cream, butter and margarine. Emulsion technology development is all about enhancing nutritional value, as well as improving taste and flavour in foods and beverages.

My interest in emulsion started when I worked as a product developer on edible oil products. I was astonished by the physics and chemistry on the formation of an emulsion. For examples, the mixing procedure can have almost no impact in some emulsions while in another instance, the emulsion can separate into oil and water within minutes. Emulsifiers, a minor component in the emulsion, can significantly influence the formation of emulsion and its appearance. However, the role and function of emulsifiers are often vague and dependent on the type of emulsifier. Even after spending a few years creating emulsifiers and using them to make emulsions, I still didn’t understand how emulsifiers work. About three years ago, I felt that I needed to take a break from work and do a PhD to obtain a deeper and more fundamental understanding about what happens during the formation of emulsions.

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Public health priorities

May 6, 2019 2 Comments

Barbara Brookes

How can it be that a public body appointed to set priorities for public health in New Zealand became described by a member of the same government that appointed it as “a bunch of cretins”?

The answer, epidemiologist and public health physician Sir David Skegg suggests in his compelling book The Health of the People (BWB Texts, 2019), is that politicians focused on personal health services take a short-term view, and ignore the longer-term factors that impact on the health status of the community. That preference for the short-term may be influenced by particular lobby groups – promoting food and alcohol, for example – industries whose interests would be endangered by regulation in the interests of health.

The Health of the People is motivated by concern that a focus on short-term medical services has left New Zealanders with almost no centralised planning and oversight of the kind that would have prevented what occurred in Havelock North in August 2016. In that disaster, 40 percent of residents became seriously ill because of unsafe drinking water, 45 people were hospitalised and at least three people died. While the issue hit the headlines when it occurred, the public learned little about the subsequent Inquiry, which found that the Ministry of Health failed in its duty of enforcing standards to ensure safe drinking water. The findings of the Inquiry were as invisible to the public as the bugs in the water.

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