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Vanilla I: Botany and Bad Behaviour
Humans have an almost unlimited capacity to endure other people’s suffering if there are large sums of money to be made. If you don’t believe me, we need look no further than our history books for proof. History is littered with examples of people letting themselves down and behaving badly when in pursuit of a… Continue reading
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Quick bite: The secret life of vegetables
As Harold McGee points out in his book, On Food and Cooking, plants are essentially chemical factories. Plants are famously stationary and lacking any motive power must interact with the external world, for the most part, through a dazzling array of chemicals that they synthesise from basic chemical elements. The same plant will simultaneously produce… Continue reading
