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The joy of pancakes, and why they might kill you

Although hardly new, Japan has been undergoing something of a boom in pancake consumption in recent years. With several trendy new restaurants opening up around the country, there has also been a significant rise in the popularity of homemade pancakes as well. Yes, with its warm and fluffy texture and mildly sweet flavor it’s certainly hard to turn down a hotcake, isn’t it?

While everyone is having a good time with their pancakes, some researchers and medical professionals would like to remind us all that pancakes and similar flour based foods have the potential to not only make us very ill, but in some cases may lead to death.

But before you go cursing out these wet blankets of science for ruining yet another beloved food with their health warnings, there’s actually an incredibly easy way to not die from eating flapjacks as well.

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Genetically altered rice could solve Japan’s pollen allergy problem

Good news for all those who live in Japan and suffer from pollen allergies! Scientists have genetically modified rice in an attempt to desensitize the body to that nasty Japanese cedar pollen that causes all of the sneezing, mask-wearing and eye-watering every spring. Just think, eating some of this special rice everyday could relieve you from all of your hay fever woes!

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Japanese Scientists Engineer Pollenless Cedar Trees, May Be Too Late to Alleviate Japan’s Growing Hay Fever Problem

Every year, pollen counts in Japan are getting worse. In fact, pollen levels in Tokyo were literally off the charts just a few weeks ago. As a result, for four months out of the year, an estimated 15 to 30 percent of the Japanese population suffers from hay fever.

The tragedy of this situation is that Japan’s pollen problems are caused by its own government which encouraged people to plant cedar trees to meet the growing demand for timber in the 1940s and to replace forests that were destroyed during WWII. Hay fever was actually relatively rare in Japan until the 1960s when the millions of cedar trees began to mature and produce pollen.

As cedar pollen levels continue to climb, Japanese scientists may have found a solution to the problem: pollenless cedar trees.

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