Dietary habits of patients undergoing methadone therapy

OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to record the dietary habits of patients undergoing methadone therapy.

BACKGROUND: Numerous studies report that patients undergoing methadone treatment present with high levels of oral disease, especially dental caries. A number of factors have been described to account for this: sugared methadone preparations, prolonged oral retention, associated xerostomia and poor diet.

METHODS: A cross-sectional descriptive study using survey methodology was conducted of patients attending a non-resident drug rehabilitation clinic. A self-completion questionnaire and diet diary were developed and distributed to 66 patients over an 8 week period.

RESULTS: Of the 66 questionnaires distributed, 52 were successfully completed giving a response rate of 79%. 6 patients declined to complete the questionnaire. The surveyed patient pool consisted of 32 females (62%) and 20 males (38%) with a mean age of 32 years. All the participants were taking a prescribed daily dose of methadone when questioned. 68% of respondents consumed convience foods or sugary snacks every day. Of those patients who drank tea or coffee daily, 84% added sugar and 54% added 3 teaspoons or more. The majority of patients (71%) consumed at least one glass of a fizzy soft drink daily. In addition, the majority of respondents indicated that they snacked regularly between meals and 24% stated that they often woke up during the night for a snack. Patients recorded their last intake of food ranging from 5pm to 3am.

CONCLUSIONS: The patients surveyed had poor dietary habits. Respondents consumed a large amount of convience foods and sugars during mealtimes and through regular snacking. Dietary counselling should be considered as part of treatment for patients undergoing methadone therapy.

Swift and Conversational Culture

Swift often noted his aversion to coffee-house conversation and to tavern talk, to gossip and company, and to being buried in Dublin in the years of his Deanship. Yet the popular myth of a morose, unsociable Swift belies both his engagement with various literary and political clubs in his early career and his participation in collaborative and experimental poetic games in his Dublin circles. This essay considers Swift’s involvement with three clubs in London (the Saturday Club, the Brothers’ Club, and the Scriblerians) and his writings on a number of fictional clubs (the Athenian Society, the Calves-Head Club, and a putative Society for the correction of the English language). While Swift wrote very little of his experience of actual clubs, the latter three, in addition to the Scriblerian Club as an imagined, rather than actual clubs, resulted in a number of defining poems and works in his career. When Swift settled in Dublin, poetry written and exchanged in a number of sociable circles characterised much of his published verse and gave glimpses of the circles and informal clubs which he formed among friends there. Although these poems are often dismissed as ‘trifles’, the essay argues that the poems are crucial for our understandings of ‘conversational culture’ or sociability in Swift’s Dublin.

Rethinking Rice Preparation for Highly Efficient Removal of Inorganic Arsenic Using Percolating Cooking Water

A novel way of cooking rice to maximize the removal of the carcinogen inorganic arsenic (Asi) is presented here. In conventional rice cooking water and grain are in continuous contact, and it is known that the larger the water:rice cooking ratio, the more Asi removed by cooking, suggesting that the Asi in the grain is mobile in water. Experiments were designed where rice is cooked in a continual stream of percolating near boiling water, either low in Asi, or Asi free. This has the advantage of not only exposing grain to large volumes of cooking water, but also physically removes any Asi leached from the grain into the water receiving vessel. The relationship between cooking water volume and Asi removal in conventional rice cooking was demonstrated for the rice types under study. At a water-to-rice cooking ratio of 12:1, 57±5% of Asi could be removed, average of 6 wholegrain and 6 polished rice samples. Two types of percolating technology were tested, one where the cooking water was recycled through condensing boiling water steam and passing the freshly distilled hot water through the grain in a laboratory setting, and one where tap water was used to cook the rice held in an off-the-shelf coffee percolator in a domestic setting. Both approaches proved highly effective in removing Asi from the cooking rice, with up to 85% of Asi removed from individual rice types. For the recycled water experiment 59±8% and 69±10% of Asi was removed, on average, compared to uncooked rice for polished (n=27) and wholegrain (n=13) rice, respectively. For coffee percolation there was no difference between wholegrain and polished rice, and the effectiveness of Asi removal was 49±7% across 6 wholegrain and 6 polished rice samples. The manuscript explores the potential applications and further optimization of this percolating cooking water, high Asi removal, discovery.

MESAS

MESAS is an urban intervention that promotes the relationship with everyday sound through indispensable pieces of furniture for the domestic, the professional and the playful in our lives – the table. Different uses and contexts determine the many variations in form; from dinning, to coffee tables, kitchen, garden, meeting, bar, side or game tables. The MESAS project, by artists Pedro Rebelo and Ricardo Jacinto was conceived for Rua Direita in Viseu and consists of a sequence of tables suspended throughout the street, which reveal experiences and memories through sound. The materiality, context and utility of each table articulate sonorities that include the manipulation of objects on their tops or the conversations happening around them, as well their impact on the soundscapes of the places in which they are situated. The project makes audible these particular experiences through a set of sound installations associated with places such as the jewellery, the school, or the tailor’s.