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Do We Love Mum’s Cooking Because She Made Us as Well as Dinner?
In our popular culture we have a complicated relationship with mutants. For every Teenage Mutant Turtle and Wolverine, there is a Magneto, a Jason Vorhees or a Thing. The hillbillies from Deliverance probably qualify as mutants but I’m not sure whether Godzilla is a good guy or a bad guy? Are zombies mutants? Regardless, it… Continue reading
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Tomatoes and Fake News
Humans love a good story. We also love a simple story. We like our good guys to be good, our bad guys to be bad, we like a message that reinforces our beliefs and we definitely like some closure, everything wrapped up with a nice little bow. But, our love of a well-formed narrative, and… Continue reading
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Darwin, Lamarck and the Murder Scientist
One day, years ago, when I was a cocksure university undergraduate, I was chatting to some Jehovah’s Witnesses who had come to the door of the share house I lived in. We discussed a few things but at one point the guy I was talking to said that when it came to evolution he didn’t… Continue reading
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Quick Bite: You say tomato, I say potato
On the face of it a tomato and a potato are two very different things. One a fruit, soft and bursting with juice and flavour. The other a tuber that grows underground, hard but packed with starch ready to become a delicious source of nutrients after some judicious cooking. Despite this some new research shows… Continue reading
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Oxygen, electrons and Scottish chefs: How understanding redox reactions could save you from a bollocking
Many years ago I was working in a restaurant in Scotland and in an effort to save myself some time I prepped a stack of apples we were using as a garnish hours before we needed them. Thinking I’d done something clever I was radiating smugness until a coworker pointed out that the apples would… Continue reading
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Bananas, uniformity and catastrophe
I’ve been reliably informed by influencers, billionaires, failed comedians, politicians, Twitter pundits and assorted spite-filled meat-puppets looking to build an audience that diversity is a bad thing. Now I’m not one to disagree with the new intelligentsia but as a scientist, a member of the old intelligentsia, I can’t help but feel, deep down inside,… Continue reading
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Everything you think you know about nutrition is probably wrong
Are you confused about what we should be eating? Bewildered by contradictory dietary advice? Overwhelmed by dietary fads and loud-mouthed influencers? Well you are not alone. Over the past five decades endless cycles of contradictory nutrition advice and dietary fads have left most people in a state of utter confusion about what constitutes a healthy… Continue reading
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The science behind umami: Understanding the way we perceive taste
I still remember when I read that we had a new flavour. It was the early 2000s, maybe the late 1990s, but umami was finally being talked about in the West. It seemed strange. How could we not notice an entire taste? It was like discovering we’d always had an extra arm without noticing. The… Continue reading
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The Science of Beer Fermentation: Biochemistry, Malting & Brewing Chemistry
Discover the science of beer fermentation. Learn how yeast converts sugar into ethanol, the biochemistry of ATP and malting, and how brewing turns starch into beer. Continue reading
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Understanding Emulsions II: Mayonnaise and The Science of Emulsification
Discover the food science behind mayonnaise emulsions. Learn how egg yolk LDLs act as emulsifiers, the role of oil-in-water ratios, and immersion blender tips. Continue reading
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