The Science of Good Food

I bought this book for my Mom, but then I started reading it. It has pretty pictures and interesting recipes. And I've learned some cool trivia:

- Copper pots actually lose little pieces (well, ions) of copper into food - which is beneficial if you're trying to beat egg whites.
- 80% of our food supply comes from 20 kinds of plants.
- It's not an allergy unless the immune system gets involved with antibodies and histamines - else it's just an intolerance.
- Most apple seeds aren't able to grow into trees (they are sterile) because we have bred different types together so much to get the features we want that they are no longer reproductively viable. Also, apple seeds contain cyanide.
- Saran Wrap and Glad Wrap aren't the same thing! Saran (polyvinyl chloride) is airtight but potentially toxic, whereas Glad (polyethylene) is gas permeable but better for our health and the environment.
- When you buy meat it is wrapped in oxygen-permeable plastic, and exposure to oxygen makes meat red. That's what gives ground beef its red color, and that's why I often find a brown section under the sticker - that part wasn't in contact with any oxygen.
- Emulsifiers keep oil and water in solution without separating.
- The human body has ten times as many bacteria cells as human cells, and on average they are ten times smaller.
- Bananas are older than recorded history, and are actually berries!
- Heifers are female cattle that have not calved, cows are those who have calved. Steers are castrated bulls.
- The chemical composition of caffeine is C8H10N4O2, trimethylxanthine. Although tea leaves contain more caffeine than coffee beans, twice as much caffeine ends up in coffee than in tea. And espresso contains less caffeine than regular coffee! It takes caffeine ten to fifteen minutes to start to affect you, and it peaks in about about half an hour. It's is out of the system in about six hours.
- Creaming butter and sugar together is more than just mixing - the sugar cuts little holes in the butter that fill up with air and rise in the oven.
- Cotton candy is 105 years old.
- Only mammals find hot peppers hot. Birds are immune to the hotness.
- The hottest pepper in the world is the bhut jolokia. The habanero is second.
- There are more chickens in the world than there are people!
- Current agricultural techniques of mass-production mean chickens grow in over-crowed facilities that encourage the spread of disease and bacteria. As a result, the majority of the chicken we buy is contaminated with Camopylobacter bacteria (they didn't give any statistics about E coli or Salmonella, but said that chickens are given antibiotics to fight these) - which is why it's so important to fully cook chicken.
- Tempered chocolate oh-so-pleasantly melts at a temperature just a few degrees below our body temperature.
- When you're trying to melt chocolate and all the sudden it turns stiff and grainy, that's because some water got in there and it "seized." You can add more warm water to re-liquefy it, but this will also dilute it.
- European chocolate generally starts with cacao beans that are ground finer than they are for North American and British chocolate, which is why it ends up smoother. In Mexico they tend to add cinnamon, almonds and vanilla, giving it a more grainy texture. So that's why I didn't like Mexican chocolate!
- The mood-enhancing effect of chocolate comes from theobromine, and also possibly from anandamide (a relative of the psychoactive compound in marijuana).
- Bergamot, an essential component of Earl Grey tea, is a citrus flavor - sour orange crossed with lime.
- Coconut milk comes from soaking grated coconut in hot water.
- Instant coffee is made by dehydrating brewed coffee.
- Oreos are the best-selling cookies in the world and were invented in 1912.
- King crabs can get up to three meters across! Could you imagine being chased by such a thing?
- Per capita, Canadians eat the most donuts in the world and have the most donut stores. "Donut" is really only an acceptable spelling in the States, but still it's what I prefer.
- Eggplant is a relative of tobacco, and contains trace amounts of nicotine (.01%).
- Tomatoes aren't the only fruit that are commonly thought of as a vegetable. Cucumbers, squash, eggplant, bell peppers, peas, beans and avocados also fit the botanist's definition of a fruit (the part of the plant that produces, protects and nourishes a seed).
- It takes 8 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef.
- Meat that comes from animals that eat garlic tastes like garlic!
- A hundred years ago in Japan they were growing watermelons inside glass boxes to make them cube shaped. Could you imagine stackable building-block watermelons?
- In some places (Argentina, Israel, parts of Europe, and Chicago) foie gras (duck liver) is banned because it requires force feeding the birds and this has been deemed inhumane.
- If plants stopped producing oxygen, we still have enough of it in our atmosphere that we wouldn't run out for 5000 years.
- Ethylene gas ripens fruit. If you want to speed the ripening of peaches (and other fruit, I imagine), put them in a paper bag with an apple so that the ethylene gas that the apple releases will ripen the peaches faster.
- Worcestershire sauce is a tame version of fish sauce.
- Cold tap water contains fewer minerals than hot tap water because water picks up minerals in the hot water tank. Cold water also contains more oxygen and tastes fresher. Generally in cooking cooler, purer water is preferred.
- Henry Ford, the one who made cars, was also interested in soy products. He helped manufacture the first soy milk, soy ice cream, and soy whipping cream. He also used soybeans in the plastic on his cars.
- It's sometimes said that in the past people heavily spiced their food to mask rancid flavors. But that's not really true because rancid food would make them sick and even kill them, whether they could taste it or not. Heavy amounts of spices and salt would preserve food, though, and help prevent it from spoiling.
- Electric burners are more efficient than gas burners: they get hotter and lose less energy into the surrounding air. Gas burners are just able to change temperature much more quickly.
- Molasses is the dark syrup left over when sugar is made from sugar cane juice. Brown sugar is fully processed white sugar with molasses added back in. Demerara sugar is also a mixture of molasses and sugar crystals, but from several steps earlier in the production line, before the two are separated.
- The most widely consumed beverage worldwide is water; the second is tea (much of which is consumed as iced tea, which was popularized in 1904 at the same World Fair as cotton candy).
- Tomatoes are the second most popular vegetable in North America, after the potato.
- Methyl salicylate, in high doses, is toxic; in low doses (below .04%) it is "wintergreen" flavor.

The book is long - 604 pages - and towards the end I got a little tired of reading it. I think the authors got kinda tired of writing it too. By the time we were at "S" they were saying things like, "It would seem that lower salt intake would lower blood pressure, but unfortunately it's not that simple. Genetics, increasing obesity, exercise levels, and improving dietary factors... seem to have a greater benefit." So... to reduce your blood pressure you should change your genetics or increase your obesity? I learned a lot of cool stuff from the book, but in retrospect I don't remember much the useful stuff I read. Still, I read a review about it that considered it "nearly impossible to read from cover to cover" because of its size, and I am proud to say that I did!