John,
If you are talking about Rugby Union it is not about who wins, but the game itself. They are always good to watch, you win some, we win some, the best team on the day wins.

On a constructive note, your doctor friend may be correct about the drinks and cancer. If there is any heating in the process get her to check for acrylamides if the temperature is above 100deg C, and if below 100deg C check for something like sterates (I think), but don't quote me on that, as it came up when I was looking at the other stuff, but was outside of my area of interest.

On the ascorbic acid thing there is a simple test she can try to see what is going on, dice an apple and drop half of it into pineapple juice then drain i.e. so each piece is totally coated and leave the other half as is. You will see the uncoated apple rapidly browns whereas the coated stuff stays as is.

Pineapple juice is high in ascorbic acid and nutralizes the sugars on the surface of apple and stops the oxidization process.
I picked this up several years ago from a company in Queensland who were trying to market fresh fast food like diced apple with no preservatives and all natural.

Their chemist came up with the idea and stated that it was ascorbic acid that was doing the trick, they had a show on TV about it about 12 Months later, Landline I think.

Let me know if it helps her in her endeavours.

. >neil, next time there is a game on you can take pleasure in seeing the poor old kiwis getting threashed again. Will that do? ;-)
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>Regards
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>j.R