Striped Cows and a Teflon Diet: The Shnobel Laureates Named
The Shnobel Prize began in 1991 as a playful nod to unconventional discoveries, and this year marks the ceremony’s 35th edition. Ten teams were celebrated for research that first makes you laugh, then invites you to think. One headline-grabbing idea drew real controversy: feeding people powdered Teflon to curb appetite. The claim was radical enough that it proposed Teflon could make up as much as a quarter of a product’s mass, creating a lasting sense of fullness before it would pass through the body. The researchers even baked and tasted test chocolates with the teflon additive, but the U.S. FDA did not evaluate the scheme. The laureates received their awards from real Nobel laureates at Boston University on September 18.
In This Article:
The Teflon Experiment: How to Make Food Feel Satiated Without Calories
Two scientists, Rotem Naftalovich and his brother Daniel, were inspired by calorie-free beverages and proposed adding powdered Teflon to foods to induce a sense of fullness. They estimated that teflon could account for up to 25% of a product’s mass. They even created test chocolates containing teflon and ate them themselves, testing the idea before any broader approval or scrutiny. The U.S. FDA did not endorse or evaluate the plan.
A Year of Playful Science: The 10 Shnobel Laureates of This Year
This year’s ceremony spotlighted ten projects across disciplines. The Peace Prize went to a German-Dutch-British team for proving that a small amount of vodka can improve foreign-language performance, giving a drinker confidence without muddling speech. The Aviation Prize went to researchers who fed alcohol to winged animals; intoxicated birds slowed down and their echolocation became unreliable, roughly mirroring a drunk person’s speech. The Pediatrics Prize went to Americans who studied how a mother’s diet influences the taste of breast milk: babies suckled longer when the mother ate garlic. The Physics Prize went to Italians who explained how clumps form in the cheesy pasta dish cacio e pepe, refining the recipe as part of the research.
More Quirky Wins: Reptiles, Shoes, and Self-Belief
The prize for the animal kingdom went to researchers who showed that the common agama lizard loves Four Cheese pizza and would choose it over other treats. Indian engineers earned the Engineering Prize for creating a shoe-deodorizing solution by adding a ultraviolet lamp to a standard shoe rack. Psychologists who study the Shnobel line demonstrated that simply telling people their intelligence is above average can make them believe it and brag about it. In biology, Dr. Tomoki Kodzima of Japan’s National Institute of Agricultural Sciences painted cows white to resemble zebras and found that striped-looking cows suffer fewer fly bites.
A Posthumous Literary Prize and a Quiet Reflection
The literary prize was awarded posthumously to William Binu of the University of Iowa, for a 35-year series documenting the growth of nails on fingers and toes. His son Bennett accepted the prize on his father’s behalf, noting that the family always supported his work. If satire can spark reflection, the Shnobel ceremony does just that: humor that nudges us to question what we take for granted—and to see science as a human, sometimes ridiculous, pursuit. Follow for more stories and insights from the curious edges of science.
