Sweet Yet Sour

Having an organic chemistry professor for a father means that you always, without a doubt, participate in science fair every year.

My dad always helped me think of things to do for science fair and I had access to chemicals that made science fair more fun.

In 8th grade my dad and I decided that I would test to see if I could extend the life of fruit flies by combating free radicals.  Free radicals are molecules that have unpaired electrons that are thought to have a role in cell damage.  Research was just coming out about the affect that free radicals had on aging and cancer in the human body.  Certain foods and vitamins, like broccoli and Vitamin E had been touted as diminishing the number of free radicals in the body.

For the project I had four groups of fruit flies: 1. The control group being fed the usual fruit fly food; 2. A group being fed a mixture of Vitamin E and the usual fruit fly food; 3. A group being fed pureed broccoli and fruit fly food; and 4. A group being fed a mixture of BHT and fruit fly food.

BHT is the cruel joke my dad and I played on the fruit flies; BHT stands for Butylated Hydroxytoluene. BHT is used as a food preservative (check your next package of Cheetos), as well as in embalming fluid, and is actually controversial; it’s been banned in certain countries and in baby foods.  My dad of course had the ability to order this nasty stuff for me so I could feed it to the flies.

So for several months I watched the fruit flies in their test tubes for when they would lay eggs.  When they laid eggs I would put the parent fruit flies in a new test tube with a new batch of food.  This ensured that I knew exactly how long the fruit flies were living and if the experimental foods were actually extending their lives.  Most fruit flies live only for a few weeks so I could tell pretty quickly how the experiment was going.

Unfortunately for those of you who hate broccoli, it appears that your mother is right and that you need to eat your broccoli – it’s powerful stuff.

The fruit flies that lived on Vitamin E and BHT lived shorter lives than the controls.   Although this was expected for the BHT just because it’s a nasty chemical, it was a little surprising for the Vitamin E.  I suspect that it may have been the high concentration of Vitamin E that did in the fruit flies, since Vitamin E has been shown to combat free radicals in the body.

The flies that ate broccoli, on the other hand, lived for three months – long after science fair was over.  They may have even lived longer, but after the competition was done I had a hard time convincing my mom that she wanted to have test tubes of fruit flies in her house.

In the end I thought it best to end their lives peacefully, so I put a cotton ball in their test tube doused with nail polish remover and they went off to the big fruit fly sleep.

So if you want to live longer and combat cancer let me know and I’ll send you my recipe for a cheese sauce that goes really well with steamed broccoli.   I think it’s important to diminish free radicals, but who says you can’t do it with a little cheese on top?