Showing posts with label Salts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Salts. Show all posts

10 December 2012

What Would You Do with Chemical Compound in Food Additives?


Everyone needs food, that is just the fact and let just face it bravely. The problem is this: most of your, probably even favorite, foods come from the industry. This means, many of them have been manufactured with any chemical compound that often acts as additive. From the point of view of the industry, this additive compound is everything that is necessary. They need something to make the food last longer just to get them sold, and chemically manufactured compound which could make the products stay a few days longer, at least longer enough for the customers’ hands to reach or grab them before putting them in their shopping cart, touches the basic problem of their survival and collapse, as an industry.

Little wonder then that most of food industries are more than ready to do as what seem as blatant lies by saying their products carry no such thing as chemical additive compound or that all of their canned products are as natural as nature herself! Yet, despite the obvious lies and persistent campaigns to tell the lies through many advertisements, that is just how the food industry could ever survive.

And of these lies, the food additive compound which has been inserted into the food products, is not without the consumers not knowing anything about it too. Just ask every single adult consumer who happens to be in any store and shop for any food product: all of them would have been aware about the presence of chemical compound, or even compounds really, that they also buyalong with the food products they put in the cart. And thus, yes, the problem seems to round back to you all over again: would you still buy such products or you would care enough to look for much natural or organic products, albeit the rareness such latter products can be found in the market?

Chemical Compound in Food Additives

06 May 2010

The Maillard Reaction


Image via Wikipedia
I just watched Julie & Julia the other night. Such a delightful movie, it surely is! Someone once said cooking is chemistry in action. Well, cooking is chemistry indeed! We have acids and bases (e.g., vinegar and lye), we have phase changes (ice freezing, butter melting—oooh butter! You can never have too much butter!), we have stirring, mixing, whipping, you name it. Cooking IS chemistry. And what is cooking without fire? It’s like bread without butter, Coke without spirit, white cheese without, oh well, white cheese is so good even on its own anyway. But the point is, the application of heat has always been the most basic rudiment of cooking ever since the caveman had discovered fire. Anyway, one recipe from the movie that stuck to me the most was this dish Julie prepared the night Julia’s editor was supposed to come over at their humble place above the pizzeria: beef bourguignon. And I immediately thought: Maillard reaction! Okay, maybe not really immediately but just before I was writing this entry. It’s the complicated reaction responsible for the browning of meat and for the meaty taste of meat, that distinct umami flavor we all crave for when we dig into a big slab of marvelous steak. And you thought the meat turning brown during cooking was the simplest example of things on their way to utter incineration, didn’t you?


Why we just absolutely adore MSG on our dishes is that monosodium glutamate is essentially glutamate, an amino acid naturally present in meat. Add to that all imaginable sugars present in the pan and some nice temperature workup and we got all the things we need for the Maillard reaction to occur. Get ready for some serious killer dish baby! Talk about an explosion of sensory delights! No wonder the Chinese inundate their recipes with MSG!


P.S. I can say I am really inspired by this Julie & Julia movie. Cooking (chemistry!) and blogging. Oh dear. I think I’m gonna have a heart attack. Enjoy your steaks, my fellow readers!