When Fresh Is NOT the Best

By Kelley Herring

If you're adding herbs and spices to your meals, you're doing yourself a big favor. Recent research shows that many herbs and spices pack more age-defying, disease-fighting nutrients than the foods we use them on. And today, I have a tip that will help you power up the flavor and boost the antioxidants in your meals nearly tenfold.

Use dried herbs!

The Oxygen Radical Absorbency Capacity (ORAC) score ranks foods on their ability to neutralize free radicals. As you probably know, blueberries are extremely rich in antioxidants, ranking 6,552 on the ORAC scale. But that doesn't come close to the antioxidants found in common herbs like basil and oregano.

Let's see how these herbs stack up:

ORAC Score of Oregano

• 13,970 (fresh)
• 200,129 (dried)

ORAC Score of Basil

• 4,805 (fresh)
• 67,553 (dried)

While conventional wisdom says "fresh is always best," here we see that dried is sometimes better.

Buy organic dried herbs and store them in opaque containers, away from light and heat. And replace your herbs every six months to get the most flavor and free-radical fighters out of your shaker.

The Language Perfectionist: "I Now Pronounce You..."

By Don Hauptman

As a copywriter, I collaborated from time to time with a friend, a marketing consultant, and we worked as a team. On one occasion, we drove to another city to spend a day with a client - let's call him Dave.

After the meeting, as we walked back to the car, I asked my colleague, "Did you notice the word that Dave mispronounced repeatedly?" My friend didn't hesitate. "Lambaste," he said. Dave had pronounced the second syllable, as many people mistakenly do, with a short A, to rhyme with "fast," instead of correctly, with a long A, to rhyme with "taste."

The incident slightly tarnished our opinion of this client. And if you don't pronounce words properly, your own image and reputation could similarly suffer.

Charles Harrington Elster may be America's leading expert on pronunciation. At my request, Charlie agreed to share "Elster's Top 10 Pronunciation Pet Peeves" with you. He wants to make it clear, though, that the following aren't necessarily listed in order of offensiveness!

1. One of the most frequent mispronunciations, even by presidents and TV personalities and others who should know better, is nuclear as NOO-kyuh-lur. Correct: NOO-klee-ur.

2. The word loath (meaning reluctant) is pronounced differently from loathe (hate). Loath rhymes with oath, while loathe rhymes with clothe.

3. Don't stress the second syllable in affluent, affluence, and influence. The correct stress is on the first syllable: AF-loo-int, AF-loo-ints, IN-floo-ints.

4. It's wrong to stress the "or" syllable in mayoral, pastoral, pectoral, and electoral. The correct pronunciations are MAY-ur-ul, PAS-tur-ul, PEK-tur-ul, and eh-LEK-tur-ul.

5. The words foliage and verbiage are pronounced not with two syllables but three. Correct: FOH-lee-ij, VUR-bee-ij.

6. A mispronunciation that's particularly irritating to Charlie is coupon as KYOO-pahn. Correct: KOO-pahn.

7. In the words succinct, flaccid, and accessory, pronounce the "cc" as X or KS, not as S. Correct: suhk-SINGKT, FLAK-sid, ak-SES-uh-ree.

8. The second-syllable stress in preferable and formidable is not only wrong but pretentious. The stress should be on the first syllable. Correct: PREF-ur-uh-bul, FOR-mih-duh-bul.

9. In negotiate, controversial, and species, pronounce the "ti," "si," and "ci," as SH, not S. Correct: nih-GOH-shee-ayt, kahn-truh-VER-shul, SPEE-sheez.

10. The word forte, meaning a skill or strong point, is commonly mispronounced as for-TAY. Correctly pronounced, it rhymes with port or short. But FOR-tay, with first-syllable stress, is now also acceptable.

Charles Harrington Elster is the author of the quintessential guide The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations. The current second edition paperback contains 200 new entries.

[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant.]

It's Good to Know: Beating the Weather

Delayed flights waste time for the flyer, and time and money for the airline. Happily for both, a new computerized tool could get many weather-delayed flights off the ground.

A prototype used in New York last year cut delays by 2,300 hours and saved $7.5 million in operating costs. It's called RAPT, the Route Availability Planning Tool, and was created by researchers at the Michigan Institute of Technology. Relying on satellite and radar systems, RAPT will help air traffic controllers make more-informed decisions as to whether or not a particular flight is advisable in bad weather.

Word to the Wise: Appellation

"Appellation" (ap-uh-LAY-shun) - from the Latin for "to name" - is a name, title, or designation.

Example (as used by Anita Shreve in Fortune's Rocks): "For as long as Olympia can remember, her mother has been referred to, within her hearing and without, as an invalid - an appellation that does not seem to distress her mother and indeed appears to be one she herself cultivates."

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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2472, 09-27-08], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.