LeRoy Pennysaver & News

LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - JUNE 14, 2020 John F. Rider Real Estate RiderRealestate.com Not the biggest, just the best! PROUDLY SERVING LEROY & SURROUNDING COMMUNITIES SINCE 1962 John F. Rider, Licensed Real Estate Brokerage 8130 E. Main St. Rd. Le Roy John F. Rider 585-409-9558 • Steve F. Rider 585-490-4564 JoAnn Snyder 585-813-4771 • Greg Rogers 585-314-3786 by Lynne Belluscio My phone lit up with messages last week. “Are you watching ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire?” “Nope.” “Well if we were on the show, we would have won a million dollars! They asked which food, if tested with an EEG Machine has brain waves. We all know the answer. “ I probably had twentymessages from friends far and wide. The choices were Spam, Lime Jell-O, marshmallows and something else that no one could remember. So, I pulled it up on YouTube and the choices were Wint- O-Green Lifesavers, Spam, Lime Jell-O and Jet Puffed Marshmallows. Anderson Cooper had made it to the final round and had already won $500,000 and this was the final question. He wasn’t sure of the answer so he called in a phone lifeline and they called Kelly Ripa. He had 30 seconds on the phone with her, and it took him the whole 30 seconds to read the question and she didn’t have a chance to answer. It came back to him. And he decided not to go for the million dollars and stop with $500,000. That was a good choice, because he didn’t choose Jell-O. So, I had a call from Mallory Dieffenbach from the Batavia Daily and she wanted to know the story of Jell-O and brainwaves. The article will appear in the Daily News. But here is the story of Jell-O and brain waves: Yes,indeed,whentestedwith an electroencephalographic machine, Jell-O will show wave frequencies the same as the human brain. It doesn’t have to be lime Jell-O. Any flavor of Jell-O will do. I first read about this in an article that was written by Dr. Romano, who was the head of the psychology department at the University of Rochester. He happened to be Helen Woodward’s (the youngest daughter of Orator Woodward – Jell-O owner) private physician. He wrote a tongue in cheek article that wondered if indeed Jell-O had brain waves, could it go to college and get a law degree. And of course, could you declare Jell-O legally dead. It turns out, that is the reason why Jell-O was tested for brainwaves in the first place. In 1969, Dr. Adrienne Upton was lecturing a class in Britain and said that even a bowl of Jell-O will give a brain wave test that mimicked the human brain. He proceeded to hook a bowl of Jell-O up to an EEG machine and sure enough, it had brain waves. Later, in 1974, at McMaster University Medical Center near Hamilton, Ontario, he repeated the experiment to a class. And once again, the Jell-O had human brain waves. When we were getting ready to open the Jell-O exhibit at the Strong Museum in Rochester in 1993, I thought it might be great to have the experiment repeated for a little publicity. So, I called Dr. Bruce Baker to see if he could arrange for an EEG machine to test a bowl of Jell-O. Sure enough, the test was scheduled for St. Jerome’s Hospital in Batavia, with the newspaper reporters ready. The day before the test, I received a phone call from a very excited lady: “It’s happening! It really does have brain waves!! “Who is this?” I asked. It was the technician at St. Jerome’s. They decided to try it early just to make sure it was going to work. And it did. The Jell-O test results were placed next to the test results of a human brain, and then framed for the Strong Museum exhibit. After the exhibit was dismantled, the brain wave tests were given to the Jell-O Museum, and they are prominently displayed in the Jell-O Gallery. So, the question remains, why does Jell-O have brain waves? It is because Jell-O has the same density as a human brain, and it absorbs electrical signals given off by equipment in the hospital room.And as Dr. Upton states, the human brain absorbs those impulses just like the Jell-O. Given the results, it proves that the flat line brain waves that hospitals required to determine if someone was dead, cannot be achieved, because “even Jell-O has brain waves under these conditions.” When asked, why he chose lime Jell-O, Dr. Upton said that it was more photogenic. A few times, at the Jell-O Gallery, we have had folks from Canada who worked at McMaster University, and they are always gratified to see that we still have the story of Jell-O brain waves and Dr. Adriane Upton. P.S. We are working slowly and carefully to reopen the Jell-O Gallery under the recent and ever changing guidelines. Obviously, we can’t say exactly when, but we are hoping in early July. Million Dollar Question Technicians Gail Lathan, Gari Whalen and Jean Burling at St Jerome’s Hospital testing lime Jell-O on an EEG machine for brain waves.