Food for thought at anti-Nobels

New York – A nutritional analysis of cannibalism and treating kidney stones on roller-coasters were research projects honoured by tongue-in-cheek awards at Harvard University this week, designed to make you laugh first, and think later.

The Ig Nobel Prizes, or so-called “anti-Nobels,” are organised by the satirical scientific journal Annals of Improbable Research and honour the same 10 categories as the real Nobels, the most prestigious awards in the world.

This year, the Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine went to two American researchers for a study on the effects of using roller-coaster rides to hasten the passage of kidney stones.

The nutrition prize went to researchers in Britain, Tanzania and Zimbabwe for calculating that the calorie intake from a human cannibalism diet was significantly lower than from “most other traditional meat diets”. –