Food Science Articles and Links

[Alex]

21 hours ago, Smithy said:

My procedure, in my current living situation with a French press, is to pour enough water into the press to wet all the grounds, give it all a stir to make sure the grounds are wetted (sound familiar?) then pour the rest of the water over the spoon so it's rinsed.

 

Moi aussi.

[chromedome]

I'm putting this here, instead of in the Cocktails thread, because of his approach, but it would fit just as well over there.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/is-there-a-grand-unified-theory-of-cocktails-maybe/

[chromedome]

From the "the bit they hope you don't notice" files, food science edition: 

[chromedome]

I've been reading about this for a while, but it's deeply unsettling to hear that these ticks have been found as far north as Maine now. NB is just across the St. Croix river from Maine, so doubtless they'll show up here over the next few years as the climate changes further. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/29/lone-star-ticks-increase-climate-crisis

 

I have to say, though the article as a whole makes for grim reading, the scientist describing this tick as "a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor" all but earned my computer a coffee shower. 

[chromedome]

I'm putting this here in Food Science because, although we don't eat bees, we certainly depend on them for much of what we *do* eat. 

 

It's about an advance in supporting bee colonies through supplemental feeding. 

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250822073807.htm

[liuzhou]

26 minutes ago, chromedome said:

although we don't eat bees

 

You might not eat bees. I've eaten them both here in China and also in Vietnam. 

 

 

[chromedome]

33 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

You might not eat bees. I've eaten them both here in China and also in Vietnam. 

 

 

LOL Okay, then... "Although most of us on this forum do not eat bees..." 

 

FWIW I've deliberately eaten ants, fried locusts (grasshoppers? don't remember for sure which it was) and mealworms. The latter was at a kid-centric event at our local Museum of Natural History, when to my surprise my kids wouldn't step up and try 'em. I told my daughter "that's where the 'meal' part comes from!" (To be clear, I know that's not true, I'm just prone to Dad jokes). 

Which reminds me, I'd intended to post this here a few weeks ago and then forgot. Because direct evidence is scant and incomplete, scientists have turned to interesting side routes in an effort to decipher the diets of our remote human and hominin ancestors, through things like analysis of plaque on teeth and isotopes in bones and other remains. 

One mystery that cropped up in that pioneering work is a bizarrely inflated level of specific nitrogen isotopes correlated with meat-eating. There's a traditional image of "cavemen" being primarily carnivorous, though current research is now tending to debunk that (in your face, "Paleo" diet influencers!). So this finding with the nitrogen isotopes runs counter to much of the contemporary scholarship, at least on the surface. But there's been a big question mark about it, because the levels of those isotopes were high enough to make the whole thing questionable.

 

This new work provides a highly plausible (if disgusting to the Western eye) explanation. 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/07/fermented-meat-with-a-side-of-maggots-a-new-look-at-the-neanderthal-diet/

[Ddanno]

1 hour ago, chromedome said:

One mystery that cropped up in that pioneering work is a bizarrely inflated level of specific nitrogen isotopes correlated with meat-eating. There's a traditional image of "cavemen" being primarily carnivorous, though current research is now tending to debunk that (in your face, "Paleo" diet influencers!). 

 

 

That's always perplexed me. I'm no historian, but without organised agriculture you're getting calories anywhere you can, and hunting uses up rather a lot of those. So the liklihood is forage first, hunt later/when you can to my mind.

 

And yeah, paleo influencers can 🤫