Conversation Piece, August 26, 2018

Enjoy our Sunday series, Conversation Piece, a NUVO–curated digest of things on the Internet we think you’ll want to talk about.

Candy craft comeback. Beauty is pain—at least when it comes to the centuries-old Japanese confectionery art known as amezaiku. The candy-making technique involves using your bare hands to impale a scorching hot ball of molten syrup onto a stick, and then molding it into the form of, say, a panda, crane, or rhinoceros beetle. The result is beautiful, and considered among children to be as much a toy as candy. And though the practise nearly died out, it is now being revived by a small, but dedicated, group of artisans in Tokyo. The New York Times has the full story, here.

Summer loving. We know winter is considered “cuffing season”, as single people tend to “cuff up” with a snuggle buddy to wait out the long, dark months. In theory, then, that would make summer the anti-cuffing season—right? Well, sort of. There is no doubt that those hot summer nights have an affect on how and why we date, but the answer isn’t quite so straightforward. For the CBC, D. Mark takes a look at how the changing seasons affect Canadian dating habits. Read more, here.

Village cook goes viral. In the age of YouTube, the ability to stand out as a vlogger seems more daunting than ever. However, amateur filmmaker Arumugam Gopinath has managed to garner nearly two million subscribers from his home of Tamil Nadu, India, by creating no-frills cooking videos starring his father, Jaymukh. In one video, the wiry 62-year-old dumps a hundred raw chicken legs covered in turmeric and red chili powder into a wok. Once the cooking is done, he spreads the food out on a banana leaf and scoops it into his mouth with his hands. The videos are amateur—minimal editing, shaky camerawork—but that may be precisely the reason they’ve been successful. In a market saturated with HD cameras, fancy ring lights, and larger-than-life personalities, these simple cooking vids are a breath of fresh air. Read more, here.

The skinny on low-fat. After playing second fiddle to its low-fat counterparts for decades, full-fat dairy is now experiencing a redemption. A study published this July in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that there is no link between higher fat dairy intake and mortality. In fact, as Mari Uyehara writes for Healthyish, higher whole-fat dairy can lower your risk of obesity and diabetes. In other words, you may want to rethink your low-fat cappucinno order, and start reaching for the cream instead. Read more, here.

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