Ig Nobel prizes awarded to teams behind Teflon diet and 'zebra' cows

For decades scientists, doctors and public health officials have battled to solve the obesity crisis. Now researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for a radical new approach: cutting people's calorie intake by feeding them Teflon.

- Ian Sample Science editor

The left-field proposal was inspired by zero-calorie drinks and envisaged food manufacturers blending powdered polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) into their products in the hope it would sate people's hunger before quietly sliding out.

The team is one of 10 to be recognised at this year's Ig Nobel awards, which celebrate research that first makes people laugh and then makes them think. They are not to be confused with the rather more prestigious - and lucrative - Nobel prizes that will be doled out in Scandinavia next month.

The latest crop of winners were handed their awards by bona fide Nobel laureates, and showered with paper planes, at a ceremony at Boston University yesterday.

Researchers honoured on the night discovered that alcohol, in small doses at least, boosted people's foreign language skills; that cows disguised as zebras suffered fewer insect bites; and that people became more narcissistic after being told they were more intelligent than most, even when they weren't. Another prize went to a fastidious doctor who measured the growth of his nails for 35 years.