Some people have been feeling pretty smug about drinking a glass of red wine with dinner. It certainly helps to relieve stress and, some studies suggest, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and might extend life spans.

So we were dismayed when epidemiologists at Oxford University recently concluded that women who drink even a moderate amount of alcohol - fewer than three drinks a day - increase their risk of contracting several cancers compared with women who drink no more than two drinks a week.

Tapioca is a flavorless, colorless, odorless starch extracted from the root of the plant species Manihot esculenta. This species, native to South America, is now cultivated worldwide and has many names, including cassava, bitter-cassava, manioc, "mandioca", "aipim", "macaxeira", "manioca", " boba", "yuca" (not to be confused with yucca), "Sabudana" and "kappa". Tapioca is a staple food in some regions and is used worldwide as a thickening agent, principally in foods. Tapioca is gluten free, and nearly protein free. The commercial form of tapioca most familiar to many people is pearl tapioca.

Pearl tapioca is similar to pearl sago, which is used in essentially the same ways. Consequently, tapioca may be called sago, and vice versa. Pearls are made in several sizes, ranging from about 1 mm to 5 mm. In the United States, 2-3 mm pearls are the most common size and are labeled "small". In good quality pearl tapioca, the pearls are very uniform in size, smooth, and few are broken. The pearls must be further prepared before use. either by soaking them overnight in water or boiling them until they are cooked thoroughly and are chewy, though not gummy, then allowed to cool.

New research finds that drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup raise cholesterol levels and triglycerides and make people fat. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, put a group of men and women on diets that included one that got 25 percent of its calories from fructose-sweetened drinks. At the end of the 12-week program, the fructose-drinking subjects had gained more dangerous visceral fat, and had developed more resistance to insulin (an early sign of diabetes) than a control group whose drinks were sweetened with glucose, a less sweet sugar found in carrots and other vegetables.

Dr. Walter Willet of Harvard University tells Time that the study provides "the best evidence yet" not to let kids consume large quantities of sweetened soda, fruit juice, and other beverages. "If children grow up with everything tasting supersweet," he says, "then it's hard for them to appreciate the gentle sweetness of a fresh carrot or an apple."