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Stories filed under: "salt"

DailyDirt: Really Expensive (Or Just Time-Consuming) Foods

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Maybe you’ve heard that the word ‘salary’ comes from Roman soldiers being paid in salt. That’s seems like a fuzzy bit of history, and no one actually knows with certainty how early Roman soldiers were paid, but at some point, they were paid with coinage — or perhaps with some other kind of allowance to purchase salt. Luckily, most people don’t get paid in spices anymore, but there are a few food items that are expensive enough that they could be used as currency. (And if you want to really get off the grid, you might want to know about how much it’ll cost to really make everything yourself from scratch.)

• Saffron, by weight, is probably the most expensive spice you’ll ever consume. It takes about 85,000-150,000 flowers (just the dried stigmas) to produce 1 kilogram of the spice. About 80-90% (or more?) of the world’s supply is grown in Iran, and the industry and enthusiasts may start DNA fingerprinting to crack down on fake or diluted saffron. [url]
• If you want to spend a lot of money on a sandwich, you could order one with foie gras or truffles… or you could make one from scratch yourself. It’ll only take you 6 months and about $1,500 to grow all the vegetables — including the wheat to make bread — and to raise and slaughter your own chicken. (Or spend a lot more and order lab-grown meat if you don’t like killing animals.) [url]
• So you could grow your own saffron, if you really wanted to. When you get good at it, you can probably pick about a thousand flowers an hour, but it’ll still take a few more hours to separate out the stigmas and dry them. Not quite a Chia Pet hobby. [url]
• If you want to try something exotic, cook a peacock recipe from 1612. Impress your 17th century spice baron friends, and remember that people used to risk their lives for a few valuable spices. [url]

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Filed Under: diy, dna fingerprinting, foie gras, food, peacock, recipe, saffron, salt, spice baron, spices

DailyDirt: Separating Salt From Seawater…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There’s plenty of water on our planet, but unfortunately for us, not all of that water is drinkable or easily obtained. A whole ocean of water is even locked away underground trapped in minerals that we hopefully won’t need to tap into for fresh water. However, drought conditions could get worse, so we might have to explore more exotic ways of getting potable water. Here are just a few desalination technologies that might become useful soon.

• A technique using “shock electrodialysis” could desalinate water and also eliminate particulates and bacteria from seawater. It’s not certain if this method could be made economical, though, and it’s a long way off from being scaled up. [url]
• Engineers at Lockheed Martin have found yet another use for graphene — as a filter for separating dissolved salts in water. It’s tricky to produce large quantities of graphene sheets with nanometer-sized holes, but look out for Perforene — it could revolutionize desalination. [url]
• Another desalination technique using microfluidic channels and an electrochemical process could turn seawater into drinking water. This process doesn’t use a lot of energy, but creating a vast number of microfluidic channels in parallel could be a bit of a challenge. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: desalination, drinking, drought, graphene, microfluidic channels, perforene, potable, salt, seawater, shock electrodialysis, water
Companies: lockheed martin

DailyDirt: Salt, Sugar, Fat… Yum?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Certain things are almost guaranteed to taste good to us — salt, sugar and fat are just a few examples of ingredients that most people enjoy and (sometimes) can’t stop themselves from eating. Eating anything in excess can be bad for you (see the “truckload of vegetables” debating technique), but people seem to especially focus on salt, sugar and fat. Here are just a few links that provide some data points on the health effects of these three tasty food items.

• For decades, we’ve been told that our salt intake was probably too high, but a recent study — spanning 50 years and over 45 countries — concludes that dietary salt intake is normal at around 2,600 mg to 4,800 mg per day (versus the US recommendations of no more than 2,300 mg per day for a healthy person). This conclusion suggests that our salt intake is regulated by physiology and biological need, not by how much salt is in our food. [url]
• Various kinds of processed sugars seem to be an increasing part of the modern diet, and sugar intake correlates with obesity rates across many countries. Should we try to restrict sugar intake with taxes or allow more artificial sweeteners on the market? Or..? [url]
• It’s a myth that eating fat will make you fat — eating an excess of calories from any source (eg. carbohydrate, protein, alcohol) makes you fat. In fact, the percentage of calories from fat from our diets has actually gone down in the US over the last 30 years, but obesity rates are clearly much higher. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: calories, diet, dietary recommendations, fat, food, health, hfcs, moderation, myth, obesity, salt, sugar

DailyDirt: Engineering The Perfect Taste

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We know it’s not good for us, but why are we so addicted to processed foods? Part of it is related to convenience, but perhaps the real reason is because processed foods taste good — that is, if you like a lot of sugar, salt, and fat. As much as we would like to not think about it, a lot of science (and money for research, development, and marketing) goes into designing the perfect-tasting junk food that will have people coming back for more. Here are a few examples of how science is being used to trick our taste buds.

• The science behind the creation and marketing of junk food can be useful for food companies, but it can also be contributing to the rising rates of obesity in the U.S. Apparently, the key to designing the perfect junk food is to find the “bliss point” by optimizing levels of ingredients like sugar, salt, and fat. Also, in addition to taste, the crunch and mouth feel of junk food is just as important. For example, the perfect potato chip is one that breaks with about four pounds of pressure per square inch. [url]
• PepsiCo has reportedly developed a low-sodium potato chip that tastes just as salty as the original. The secret ingredient is “Crystal Salt” which is powdery like confectioner’s sugar, allowing it to dissolve more efficiently on the tongue, so people taste more salt even though there’s actually less of it on the chip. [url]
• The airline food industry should take some tips from the junk food industry and find a way to make airline food taste better. It turns out that people’s taste buds don’t work so well in-flight due to a combination of low cabin humidity and changes in air pressure. Astronauts in zero gravity seem to suffer from similar diminished tasting ability as well. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: airline food, bliss point, fat, food, salt, sugar, taste
Companies: pepsi