"artificial" news and stories

Diners who frequent higher end restaurants may have no problem accepting a chef's use of unusual or artificial flavoring agents when they are used to bring out unusual sensations in the food, like the menthol crystals used by Wylie Dufresne in some dishes at wd-50. The same cannot be said when artificial flavorings are used instead of readily available ingredients.

Leading French chefs Joel Robuchon and Alain Passard have denounced the growing trend among French cooks for using non-natural ingredients in their cooking, like saffron perfume, truffle essence or powdered wine sauce. The objective, unlike the use of similar things in the conceptual molecular gastronomy model, is to be able to achieve cheap, quick results. French cooks who use them use the "ingredients" secretly, for fear of being accused of cheating by others in their profession. A supplier stands by the products, saying "An increased range [of flavors] should logically be tolerated and accepted by everyone in the end," while Passard said "I don't know what to call the people who use these chemicals, but they are not cooks."

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While browsing the list of Coldstone's latest summer flavors, all of which are targeted at kids, I had so wonder why it is that kids like blue ice cream because one of the new flavors is "Beary Beary Blue," described as cotton candy ice cream with gummi bears . Blue ice cream is not a new phenomenon, not by a long shot, but it's just a bit of a mystery why kids like the stuff. The real question is whether kids actually want blue ice cream, creating a demand for it, or if they eat it because it is what is marketed to them.

I tend to believe it is the latter and that kids, who are perfectly satisfied with regular ice creams at home, go crazy over wacky flavors and colors because it is labeled as a "kids" ice cream. As far as I can tell, this is the reason that I ate some of that stuff as a kid. I was drawn in by the promise of gummi bears and bits of bubble gum and, though I hated the way that they turned rock hard and inedible in the ice cream, I often ordered them anyway.

I'd rather see kids' ice creams that come in less electric colors and with additions that kids want to eat, not just with ones that they want to order. I suspect that there are a few kids who would disagree with me over the blue ice cream part, but even they might change their minds when they get down to those rock hard gummi bears.

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The popular "un-cola," 7-Up, is now one hundred percent natural. Cadbury Schweppes put the beverage through a slight reformulation to remove an artificial preservative in the drink. A spokesperson for the company said that they expect sales to increase once the ad campaign publicizing the change kicks off next month, as consumers are more interested than ever in healthy products. The TV spots will show cans of 7-Up as fruits and vegetables, being picked from trees or dug from the ground, but the company will not claim that the drink has any specific health benefits.

[Image USA Today]

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In China, eggs are sold by weight and their sale is often unregulated, particularly at local markets and in areas where the customers by large quantities at a time. Unscrupulous vendors have been known to pass off fake eggs to their unsuspecting buyers.

There are three types of faked eggs. The first are empty or cracked shells that are filled with soil. Since the eggs are sold by weight, a few soil-filled eggs in a crate will make it heavier and go unnoticed until it is too late. The second type of fake egg is the red-yolk egg. Because the redder yolks are considered to be more valuable and of higher quality, some egg-sellers feed their chickens very high quantities of food dyes, which causes them to produce red yolks without an increase in the quality of the egg or in the lifestyle of the chicken.

The most disturbing - though some might say disgusting - faked egg is the man-made egg. 

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Scientists around the world are working to develop a reliable process that will grow meat in a lab from a few cells. So far, they have successfully grown meat tissue that, while it smells like meat, neither looks nor tastes very much like the real thing. The process has only been done on a small scale and the results resemble jelly. Flesh colored jelly. To get an idea of what this product currently looks like, take a look at PBS's virtual taste test, which compares the properties of lab meat to animal meat.

Scientists hope to see this jelly develop into something that looks and tastes like the cuts of meat that can be achieved from butchering a cow - without having to kill the cow and with the added benefit of being able to grow the meat at home in an incubator. Achieving this goal would nearly eliminate the need for animals in meat production and reduce the total energy and expense required to feed, raise, slaughter and transport those animals.

Meat from a non-sentient source presents an interesting problem for vegetarians, as many become vegetarians for ethical reasons alone, objecting to the practice of raising animals for slaughter. Because the initial culture cells can be taken without harming the donor animal, no animals would be harmed in this type of meat production. In-home meat growth might also limit access to truly natural meat, which may raise concerns of those who are against artificial and otherwise modified food products.

There is a short video segment available on the PBS website about cultured meat and a poll which reveals that 45% of respondents would eat the artificially grown meat. I can't honestly count myself among them.

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