7 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2023
    1. Water immobilization is a cool thing! The simplest way to accomplish it is by freezing. But can you think of how water might be immobilized (so to speak) at temperatures above freezing, say at 50°F (10°C)? Think Jell-O and a new process that mimics caviar and you have two methods that nearly stop water in its tracks.

      I learned that science and cooking is always connected. Even if we don't think about it in every day life like when water evaporates or freezes it is chemistry. But what I found most interesting that I learned is how water immobilization works, or to put it more simply the science behind Jell-O. When you add gelatin to water it traps the water molecules in place which creates the sort of liquid and solid hybrid we find with Jell-O.

  2. Sep 2023
  3. Mar 2022
    1. Indigenous science has long been rejected without consideration,overlooked, or exploited without recognition by powerful Westerninterests. Bio-piracy sees Indigenous Knowledge of plants stolen andpatented for use in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industrieswith little or no recognition or recompense. Indigenous starknowledge has been ignored, even when that knowledge clearlyexisted long before the ‘discoveries’ of Western science.

      Indigenous knowledge has been broadly ignored, rejected, and even exploited without any recognition by Western colonizers. Examples of appropriation include knowledge of plants patented for use in food, medicine, and cosmetics.

  4. Dec 2021
  5. Oct 2021
    1. A simplified freezing point depression (FPD) equation was derived for calculating water activity (aw) of food systems. The aw values as calculated by FPD data agreed with literature data for a variety of foods to within ± 0.01 aw units. The FPD equation was found particularly useful for calculating aw values of frozen foods at temperatures between 273.1.5–233.15 °K (0 to −40°C).

      ± 0.01 aw? That's crazy accurate. Temperature is extremely easy to measure at home, which makes this a perfect technique for home food preservation. In particular, it can be used with sugar-free, salt-free, and other obscure recipes for which water activity is hard to estimate.

      Additionally, this accuracy could be run in reverse. Knowing the water activity of ice-cream can tell you the freezing point. Moreover, a mini fridge could keep select food items chilled below 0°C for better preservation. In particular, I plan to dissolve erythritol into unsweetened plant milks and lower my fridge temp accordingly.

  6. Sep 2021
    1. The US writer Christie Aschwanden demonstrated how easily nutritional epidemiology can go awry in a piece on the website FiveThirtyEight in 2016. She ran a survey of the site’s readers, asking them questions about their diets and a range of personal attributes, such as whether they were smokers or if they believed the movie Crash deserved to win a best-picture Oscar. One association she turned up was that people who are atheists tend to trim the fat from their meat.

      Nice example of correlation-is-not-causation on foods.

  7. Mar 2021