Your starter for 10: The latest magical ingredient to cut the risk of heart disease is --- what? That food coloring that turns Peking Duck its glowing chestnut red.

Didn't get the answer? Back to the bottom of the quiz.

It's even more promising than statins. Before you start shrieking E numbers, this is not one of those. The Chinese red coloring is made from rice fermented with the red yeast Monascus purpureus. The Chinese have used it as a preservative, a coloring and seasoning, and a herbal medicine for thousands of years.

American researchers from Thomas Jefferson University in Pennsylvania tracked heart attack survivors at over 60 Chinese hospitals and fed them pills containing Xuezhikang (XZK) red yeast extract. "My hope," researcher Dr David Capuzzi said, "is that XZK becomes an important therapeutic agent to treat cardiovascular disorders and in the prevention of disease whether someone has had a heart attack or not." But they've no idea how it works. And you definitely shouldn't self medicate.

The problem with this kind of study is that while it provides immense amounts of interest to scientists, the rest of us are liable to fall upon the results as a panacea for our ills. We should look instead at the bigger picture of how we eat and how we exercise to stave off heart disease. This news is very jolly. But it isn't an excuse for eating tons of Peking Duck.