The Food Show 26th November 2006

Fuzzy Logic Producer’s Report for 26th November 2006

The Food Themed show had some tasty science. While veering decidedly towards the cheesy, there was a smorgasbord of food facts and, just to prove it IS possible, we never mentioned chocolate.

News
Waste olive oil put to good use
New strains of wheat provide better nutrition
Edible cotton (seed)

Features:

Cheese in a can! Actually, Dean went about deconstructing the cheese in a can and found that there’s a whole bunch of things other than cheese in those cans. For more information on what the numbers indicating food additives really mean try starting here http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/foodmatters/foodadditives.cfm .

Genes, tolerance and tastebuds. Jeevan delves into the link between your dinner and your DNA: why some people can handle chilli, cow’s milk and alcohol (occasionally at the same time!) while other’s can not. More information in the book “Some Like It Hot” by Gary Paul Nabhan.

Interview with Bruce Chapman from Jones the Grocer in Manuka about cheese making throughout history and throughout the World. Incidentally the Spanish cheese washed in a local red wine that Bruce mentioned in the interview was fantastic. Want to know more? Try http://jonesthegrocer.com/

How to make cheese: The quick and simple way to coagulate milk with vinegar. It doesn’t exactly happen in front of your eyes but it does happen. This was a (first ever?) Fuzzy call out to listeners to actually perform an experiment with instruction over the air. When tried at home I found small lumps of “cheese” did actually drop out of the milk – after some stirring, for some time. A much better bet would be to use rennet as they do in regular milk production. Don’t know what rennet is? Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet .

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