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Alan Partridge

Director: Declan Lowney

Genre: Comedy

Running time: 90 minutes

Rated R for language, brief violence and nudity

With Steve Coogan, Colm Meaney, Tim Key

A court in India has sentenced three convicted rapists to death by hanging under a new law that seeks to crack down on attacks on women in the country.

According to Al-Jazeera, "The men are the first to be tried and convicted under a recently revised law that carries the death penalty for those convicted of multiple sexual assaults."

The news agency says:

"The anti-rape law is aimed at repeat sexual offenders and puts in place a host of new provisions and punishments, including criminalizing stalking, voyeurism and acid attacks.

"It stipulates the death penalty for repeat offenders and those whose victims are left in a vegetative state."

Behind all of the mass-produced food that's churned out by fast-food restaurants and cafeterias is a hidden army of workers — professional taste testers, or "sensory panelists." Their job is to evaluate every aspect of a food product — from the texture to the spice combination to the salt levels — before it hits consumers' plates.

Spend the day sampling food and get paid for it — doesn't sound so bad, does it? But as one former professional food tester recently interviewed by The Billfold, the work often is not all that appetizing.

Matthew, a freelance illustrator, spent eight months testing frozen fried foods – from French fries and Chinese food to jalapeno poppers – at a big frozen food company that counts several major fast food chains among its clientele. "I'd come home with huge blisters in my mouth from the salt," he told The Billfold.

Taste experts like Matthew have to go through intense training to be able to talk about food objectively, says Tanya Ditschun, the director of sensory science at Senomyx, a company that develops flavor ingredients.

During training, which can take months, panelists are taught descriptive words and to measure the intensity of each characteristic.

"We were taught a trade-secret flavor intensity scale that we used as a metric to judge all other foods against," Matthew told Billfold reporter Mike Dang. "At the low end is oil, and at the high end is a strong fruit juice."

Matthew's training, Ditschun says, seems pretty typical.

But getting everyone to agree can prove quite challenging. "We'd be eating slices of pizza, and trying to agree exactly how many points to give each element and have hour-long arguments," he said.

Matthew said he spent more than half of his four-to six-hour days testing dozens of products, taking large bites of potato and swishing it around in his mouth while taking note of all the different characteristics before spitting everything out.

And then he'd repeat.

"We'd be doing eight to 15 products a day, so to save time you'd end up swallowing some of it," he said in the interview. "There were countless hours with mushed up potatoes swirling around your mouth."

Related NPR Stories

Food

Why Do Fries Taste So Good? A Brief History

Last year, New York became the first state to require newborn screening for a genetic disorder called Adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD. The disorder rapidly attacks the nervous system. The most common form of ALD mainly affects young boys and can be fatal within a year.

But if ALD is detected in newborns, a bone marrow transplant can help them survive. The legislation is known as "Aidan's Law" for Aidan Jack Seeger, who died from ALD in 2012 at age 7.

"Aidan had curly dirty-blond hair, giant blue eyes," his mother, Elisa Seeger, says on a visit to StoryCorps with her husband, Bobby Seeger Jr. "He always liked to be 'fancy,' as he called it — dress shirts and ties. And he had a really strong personality and he could not be told what to do."

"We'd find him at 7:30 in the morning, watching cartoons with a bowl of M&M's, and he'd be drinking a can of Coca-Cola," Elisa laughs.

Aidan's Law And The Hunter Family

When newborn screening under Aidan's Law began, Nick and Lindsay Hunter's son, Matthew, was among the first to test positive for ALD. When Lindsay first read about Aidan, she said, 'We have to find Aidan's mom and just hug her.'

Aidan's mom, Elisa Seeger, interviewed the Hunters at StoryCorps.