Category: Z
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Zen macrobiotic diets
Developed by George Ohsawa in the early 1960s. Based on the misconception that human diseases were unnecessary and could be prevented by diets consisting of unpolished brown rice. Some of the diets included some kinds of vegetables. Nutritionists claim that strict adherence to the Zen diets will result in severe malnutrition in the form of…
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Zeigarnik effect
The tendency to remember incomplete tasks better than completed ones.
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Zonate
Having zones of different textures or colors, usually on the cap surface.
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Zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT)
In vitro fertilization in which a woman’s ova are surgically removed and mixed with her partner’s sperm; the resulting zygotes are placed in her fallopian tube. An assisted reproductive technology, or infertility treatment, in which fertilized eggs (zygotes) are placed in a fallopian tube, usually using laparoscopy. The initial steps are similar to in vitro…
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Zuppa inglese
Zuppa inglese literally means English soup, but this Italian dish is actually a rich dessert made by soaking a sponge cake in cherry brandy, filling it with custard, covering it with Italian meringue, and then browning it in an oven. The dish was invented in the nineteenth century by Italian ice-cream makers who called it…
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Zucchini
What North Americans call a zucchini, the British call a courgette. Although they derive from different languages, these two words are alike in so far as they are both diminutives of words meaning gourd: the Italian zucco and the French courge. Zucchini, however, is not only a diminutive but also a plural form: accordingly, if…
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Zarf
When you visit an insurance agency you don’t bring a coffee mug with you, and your smiling insurance agents hardly want your lips on one of their pristine mugs, so you are usually served coffee in a paper cup placed in a little plastic holder with a handle. That plastic holder is called a zarf,…
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Zabaglione
English has two names for the foamy dessert made by whisking together egg yolks, Marsala wine, and sugar: zabaglione and sabayon, both deriving from the same source but entering English via different routes. The common source of the words is probably the Latin sabaia, the name of a drink that originated along the eastern coast…
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Zyme systems
Chemical reactions characterized by the presence of an inactive precursor of an enzyme. The enzyme is activated via another enzyme that normally removes an extra piece of peptide chain at a physiologically appropriate time and place.
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Zygote
A fertilized egg form as a result of the union of the male (sperm) and female (egg) sex cells. The fertilized egg. The moment a sperm enters the egg. A fertilised ovum, the first stage of development of an embryo. The medical name for the fertilized egg (ovum) up to the time it is implanted…