Posts Tagged food
The perfect condiment from the Red Planet: Martian ketchup!
Astrobiologists at Florida Tech’s Aldrin Space Institute recently teamed up with Kraft Heinz to make ketchup from tomatoes grown in Mars-like conditions. Never mind Pillsbury’s Space Food Sticks or Tang—my favorite foods growing up in awe of astronauts: Bring on the Martian ketchup!
The Florida Tech News Bureau provides these fascinating facts and figures on this unearthly food-science development:
- A team of more than a dozen students, scientists, and technicians worked in a greenhouse, known as the Red House, to grow the Martian tomatoes
- Powerful LED lighting on 7,800 pounds of soil from the Mohave Desert provided Martian conditions for the 450 experimental tomato plants grown over a period of two years
- A bottle of “Marz” ketchup survived a 23-mile-altitude balloon-flight that reduced its temperature to minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit.
Here’s another amazing statistic cited widely on the internet: The average American eats 71 pounds of ketchup per year, which Google data supports—it being the condiment of choice in nearly half of USA’s states.*
For more details on the HEINZ Ketchup Marz Edition and a picture of a Martian-like tomato see this November 9 report by the Space Coast Daily.
“Working with the tomato masters at Heinz has allowed us to see what the possibilities are for long term food production beyond Earth.”
Andrew Palmer, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Aldrin Space Institute
*(BestLife, 4/28/21, This Is the Most Popular Condiment in Your State, According to Data)
Marshmallows and s’mores—an underappreciated wonder of food science
My family gathered around a campfire recently to enjoy s’mores—a tasty sandwich made with graham crackers, milk chocolate bars and marshmallows.
The trickiest part of putting together these calorific concoctions is the roasting. I prefer sticking my marshmallows in just the right place where they turn golden brown. Others just go for the burn and blow out the flames quickly enough to keep the ashes from overwhelming the gooey sweetness. Either way, most s’more fans take their marshmallows for granted, never realizing their precise chemistry.
I became enlightened when Chemical and Engineering News in their 4/28 issue* explained how the three ingredients in marshmallows—sugar, corn syrup, and gelatin—“come together in a complex chemical dance to make your taste buds sing.”
The trick is to put these components together in just the right ratios so they can be foamed with air into a stable form. This only works because of the elasticity provided by the gelatin—a triple helix. Furthermore, gelatin is thermo-reversible, so it can melt and reset. Even better, it does so at just the right temperature to melt in your mouth.
Check out this new video showing how to make s’mores completely from scratch—far more delicious than using store-bought ingredients.
Savor s’mores and their association with good times around a campfire. But also, appreciate the unique combination of their ingredients, as well as the science behind them that makes such a sweet sensation of smooth chewiness. Yum!
*Reference: What’s in marshmallows, and how do the ingredients work together to make ooey-gooey treats?.
Buttered toast lands butter up for once
I cannot recall this happening before today, but when I dropped half a bagel, it landed on the dry side. This allowed me to apply the 5-second rule and swoop it up for breakfast. That led me to this research from Manchester MET University reported by London’s Daily Mail that this (a fortuitous landing) occurs less than 20 percent of the time. These boffins of butter found that the height from which the bread is dropped makes all the difference.
“If you want to ensure your toast lands butter side up then you should invest in a higher table approximately 8ft high that allows the toast to rotate a full 360 degrees. Failing that – try not to drop the toast.”
– Chris Smith, Professor of Food Science and Technology
More good news from the UK food-science front came in March of this year when germ expert Professor Anthony Hilton of Aston University approved the 5-second rule. However, I am not going along with the photo of toast being jelly-side down in this report by The Independent. Eating that would be really gross.
One-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) food experiments not very nourishing
Knowing of my interest in experiment design,my son-in-law (a newly minted PhD chemist) showed me his book on Cooking for Geeks. It offers a lot of fun detail on chemistry for a fellow like him. As a chemical engineer by profession, I like that too. Furthermore, I am all for the author’s enthusiasm for experimentation. However, his methodology, quoted below, lacks any sophistication or statistical power.
Make a recipe twice, changing just one thing (cookies: melt the butter or not?), and see what changes (if anything). If you’re not sure which way to do something, try both and see what happens. You’re guaranteed to learn something—possibly something the recipe writer didn’t even understand.
– Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks
Potter is not alone in remaining mired in OFAT and sample sizes of one (n1). This is also the methodology of the prestigious Cooks Illustrated as seen by this experiment on roasting ribs. Chris Kimball who launched this magazine, and, until recently, hosted “Americas Test Kitchen” on PBS, contacted me soon after Forbes recommended Stat-Ease software for multivariable testing (MVT) in March of 1996 (“The New Mantra: MVT”. I gave him a briefing on multifactor (as I prefer to deem it) design of experiments. However, Chris told me that his cooks were artists, not scientists, and they would not take to anything other than n1 OFAT. That works only when you make gross changes, such as roasting at 250 versus 450 degrees F. Even then, I’d like to see at least 4 of each level done in a randomized plan, and, better yet, a multifactor experiment.
The one nice thing about these poorly executed food experiments is that you can re-do them yourself. I might take on the question of roasting ribs, for example. Yum!
Beware–eating like a king is not healthy
With T
hanksgiving coming up I am looking forward to a feast beyond all others throughout the year. Therefore, I did not want to know that eating like a king has been demonstrated to be unhealthy. I learned of this while reading The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom by Stephen M. Stigler, one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of statistics. In his chapter on the pillar of Design, he relates (p. 150) a story from the Old Testament of how Daniel eschewed a rich diet of meat and wine offered by King Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel proposed what may be the earliest clinical trial—he and his three companions eating only pulse* and water for 10 days. Meanwhile several followers of the King enjoyed his fare for the same period. In the end Daniel and his friends fared better, at least on the basis of health.
The lesson here is to polish off the bounty of Thanksgiving before 10 days are up, in other words, do not lay off those lovely leftovers! Then eat like Daniel for a few weeks in preparation for the year-end holiday feasts. That will keep you healthy by my interpretation of Daniel’s pioneering study on diet. ; )
*Dried beans and peas (yuk!) as seen here.
For count of calories it is nary the area of the Oreo but the thickness
In a new twist on sandwich cookies, the manufacturer of Oreo brand cookies, Chicago-area based Mondelez International, now offers a thin version with a 12.5% reduction in calories per serving. (From what I gather off the internet a “serving” seems to vary from 2 to 4 cookies, depending on the thickness, I suppose. For example, I would not advise eating four Mega Stuf Oreos in one sitting.)
The Detroit Free Press gives the 7.5 mm thick Oreo Thins two thumbs up in this July 6 review. Unfortunately the reduction in filling from the 12.5 mm thick regular cookie closes out as a practical matter the option for splitting them apart, which normally about half of Oreo cookie-eaters do, according to Mondelez.
These thin confections are likened by the Oreo maker to crepes, perhaps to be eaten only at fancy teas in the mid-afternoon by proper ladies and gentlemen. To me that is a deal breaker. I plan to eschew the Thins in favor of the Mega Stuf, which according to this “implusive” blogger who will eat “anything edible no matter how strange” contains 52.5% more filling than Double Stuf.
Come to think of it, the food scientists at Mondelez really out to come up with an Oreo that is comprised only of the crème filling—saving us the trouble of having to twist them apart.
Believe it or not–sweet statistics prove that you can lose weight by eating chocolate
A very happy lady munching on a huge candy bar caught my eye in The Times of India on Friday, May 25. Not the lady—the chocolate.
After tasting a variety of delectable darks from a chocolatier in Belgium many years ago, I became hooked. However, I never imagined this addiction would provide a side benefit of weight loss. It turns out that a clinical trial set up by journalist John Bohannon and two colleagues came up with this finding and showed it to be statistically significant. This made headlines worldwide.
Unfortunately, at least so far as I’m concerned, the whole study was a hoax based on deliberate application of junk science done to expose phony claims made by the diet industry.
It turns out to be very easy to generate false positive results that favor a dietary supplement. Simply measure a large number of things on a small group of people. Something surely will emerge that out of this context tests significantly significant. What this will be, whether a reduction in blood pressure, or loss in weight, etc., is completely random.
Read the whole amazing story here.
My thinking is while Bohannan’s study did not prove that eating chocolate leads to weight loss, the subjects did in fact shed pounds faster than the controls. That is good enough for me. Any other studies showing just the opposite results have become irrelevant now—I will pay no attention to them.
Now, having returned from my travel to India, I am going back to dip into my horde of dark chocolate.
Glass-shattering interaction of factors
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on December 29, 2012
Last week (12/21) the Today Show broadcasted an alarming demonstration of Pyrex glass exploding after being subjected to certain combinations of conditions. See NBC News’ detailing here . As reported in this American Ceramic Society Bulletin , some scientists believe that changes to the material (replacing borosilicate with soda lime silicate) weakened the glass. However, makers of Pyrex disagree vehemently with these conclusions—see their side of the story here.
It turns out that hot Pyrex pans set directly on a wet or cool surface, such as a granite counter-top, undergo a sudden temperature change that produces some risk of it shattering. That strikes close to home for me, having re-done our kitchen (as is the style nowadays) with granite. Fortunately, being accustomed to plastic (Formica) countertops, I always put down cloth potholders before setting down the hot Pyrex pan. The take-home message is being careful not to subject Pyrex to rapid increases or decreases in temperature. See this site for safety instructions.
PS. On a lighter note (literally: too much sun) regarding heat and silica (main constituent of sand) see this New York Times news making it official that the hottest temperature ever recorded is 134 degrees F in Death Valley. They are pyre Rex.
Pigging out in Italy – a 30-meter pork roast
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on November 21, 2010
We are gathering quantities of food for a Thanksgiving feast at the Anderson home this Thursday. As my stomach rumbles* in anticipation, my thoughts turn to another great feast that I saw prepared last summer in Bergamo, Italy.** There they prepared pork (or porchetta, as they say), rather than the turkey we prefer in the New World. What made this Bergamo barbecue so singular was the way the cooked their pigs – sewn together into a 30 meter roast! See the results in this video I took (produced by my daughter Emily).
A meter or two of this porchetta would be the perfect warm up for our Thanksgiving banquet. I wonder what these Italians would do to dress up a turkey. They sure know how to create a spectacle!
*In medical terms known as “borborygmi” – a normal symptom of hunger.
**See this report
Brain-bending thoughts on a coffee experiment
Posted by mark in design of experiments, Uncategorized, Wellness on October 24, 2010
The Stat-Ease training center here at our world headquarters in Minneapolis features a wonderful single-cup brewing system that you can see demoed here. When we are not holding a workshop, I sometimes sneak in to steal a cup late in the day. By then I am reaching my limit, so I brew a “half-calf” at the half-cup setting. Being a chemical engineer, I calculate that, in this case, half of half makes a whole, that is, coffee with the normal concentration of caffeine. Does that make sense?
Making a tasty and effective cup of coffee is a huge deal for knowledge workers who need to keep their heads in gear from start to finish of every single day. One of our workshop students, a PhD, has been picking my brain about testing coffee blends on her staff of scientists. She proposes to do a mixture design such as I did on varying types of beers (see Mixture Design Brews Up New Beer Cocktail—Black & Blue Moon).
Obviously overall liking on a sensory basis should be first and foremost for such an experiment on coffee – a 5 to 9-point scale works well for this.* However, the tricky part is assessing the impact of coffee for accelerating information processing and general problem-solving, which I hypothesize depends on level of caffeine. I wonder if an online “brain training” service, such as this one developed by neuroscientists at Stanford and UCSF, might provide a valid measure.
The down side of doing a proper test on whether coffee improves cognitive skills will be the necessity of reverting to the base line, that is, every morning getting up and trying to function without the first cup.
“A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.”
— Alfréd Rényi
*Turn your volume down (to not hear the advert) and see this primer on sensory evaluation by S-Cool– a UK educational site for teenagers.