At the 35th First Annual Ig Nobel ceremony – held at Boston University, US, and streamed online worldwide – 10 awards were given to various disciplines from engineering to medicine. In a year where science once again proved it can be both brilliant and bizarre, the Ig Nobel prize for chemistry was awarded to Rotem Naftolovich, Daniel Naftolovich and Frank Greenway for their proposal for a ‘Teflon diet’.
The trio suggested adding polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), better known as Teflon, a non-stick polymer coating added to frying pans, directly into food. Why? To use Teflon as a calorie-free filler to bulk up meals. PTFE is inert, tasteless, heat-resistant and unaffected by stomach acid, meaning it would ‘slip’ through the digestive system without being absorbed.
The idea earned the team a place among the year’s most entertaining, yet thought-provoking, scientific research. Naftolovich, speaking at the ceremony, acknowledged the ‘wonky’ nature of the idea, which was never meant to be taken too seriously, but said that it did, however, spark a conversation about the limits of dietary innovation and the role of chemistry in nutrition.
Could chemistry one day engineer a safe, calorie-free filler? Or is the Teflon diet destined to remain a humorous footnote in the annals of scientific exploration? Either way, the award reminds us that science isn’t just about solving problems, it’s also about challenging norms, asking strange questions and, sometimes, making us laugh at ourselves.
Other prizes this year included the engineering prize for tackling the problem of smelly shoes and the physics prize for exploring the tricky dynamic of pasta alla cacio e pepe. The simple classic dish, consisting of just pasta, pepper and pecorino cheese, but prone to clumping and coagulating rather than emulsifying into a smooth, creamy sauce.
The ceremony once again shows that research can be entertaining and thought-provoking. From chemistry in the kitchen to using engineering in shoe racks, the Ig Nobels continue to honour science that makes people laugh, then think.
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