Word: mackerel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...good way to catch a reader's attention is to start off with a bang. This book does so. Chapter 1, first sentence: "The most perilous work in America is the harvest by hand of sugarcane in South Florida." Holy mackerel, stop the presses! A lot of coal miners will certainly be relieved to learn this, not to mention scads of military test pilots. And just how perilous is this work, which is principally performed by laborers brought in from the Caribbean? An answer is tucked in at the end of a paragraph 245 pages later...
...saplings, his huge 48-in. chest heaves with power. He also has the beginnings of a paunch. Explains Foreman: "The secret to my winning is my eating." By which he means that he has been reborn at the dinner table too. The Big Macs have been replaced by broiled mackerel. For breakfast, the slugger still puts away a dozen eggs, but first he excises the yolks...
Some kinds of algae contain toxic chemicals that are deadly to marine life. When carcasses of more than a dozen whales washed up on Cape Cod last fall, their deaths were attributed to paralytic shellfish poisoning that probably passed up the food chain through tainted mackerel consumed by the whales. Carpets of algae can turn square miles of water red, brown or yellow. Some scientists speculate that the account in Exodus 7: 20 of the Nile's indefinitely turning red may refer to a red tide...
...foot fence, planted 30 apple trees and turned over the whole establishment to its first master and sole teacher, Nathaniel Eaton. A poor choice. Though Eaton was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he had a vile temper, and his frugal wife apparently served the twelve students mackerel "with all their guts in them" and hasty pudding spiced with goat droppings. When Eaton finally attacked an assistant with a walnut club "big enough to have killed a horse," he was hauled into court, fined and fired. Harvard was shut down for a year...
Researchers are only beginning to fathom the complex biochemical reasons for this effect. Fish, specifically such cold-water species as cod, salmon, sardines and mackerel, contain certain polyunsaturated oils that are found in no other foods and have profound effects on body chemistry. A diet rich in these fats reduces the tendency of blood to clot, much the way that aspirin does; it also helps lower the level of cholesterol in the blood. Both effects could help explain the low rate of heart disease in Eskimos...