Chemical Concerns

Acrylamide has beenin the news this week, with the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) warning that eating overcooked potatoes, crisps, or burnt toast could increase your risk of developing cancer. Does this mean you should be consigning your toaster to the trash and avoiding roast potatoes with ...

mehr

Struktur, Additive und Verunreinigungen

Man könnte Ihnen verzeihen, wenn Sie denken, dass es nicht viel Interessantes über die Chemie des Wodkas gibt. Ist es nicht im Grunde genommen nur eine Mischung aus zwei Verbindungen, Ethanol und Wasser? Obwohl dies so ziemlich der Fall ist, gibt es mehr zu Wodka, als Sie vielleicht erwarten. ...

mehr

The pH scale is something we’re all familiar with; most people will remember it from school chemistry lessons. It’s the scale used to rank how strong an acid (or alkali) a solution is. The colours associated with each number correspond to the colour that universal indicator turns in solutions of ...

mehr

Fluorescence, Indicator, and Health Effects

If you’ve ever madea curry, you’ve likely usedturmeric – you may even have some in your kitchen right now. It’s probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about doing chemistry, but there are actually some pretty neat chemistry tricks you can do with it! In this post, we ...

mehr

The Chemistry of Avocados

Anyone who’s ever purchased an avocado willtestify that, after taking several days to reach the point of perfect ripeness, they remain at that point for an incredibly short amount of time before morphing into a brown, sludgy mess. As if to confound this problem, if you do catch them at the ...

mehr

The Chemistry of Tomatoes

You may have previously come across the advice that tomatoes shouldn’t be refrigerated, but should be stored at room temperature, in order to maximise their flavour.To understand the reasoning behind this, we need to take a look at the chemical compounds that give tomatoes their flavour, and the ...

mehr

The Chemistry of Tea

After looking at the chemistry of coffee in the previous post, it seemed only fair to also consider the chemistry of tea, just so all the tea drinkers out there don’t feel left out. Much like coffee, tea contains a hugely wide variety of chemical compounds, but some of the most important in terms ...

mehr

Food, Cosmetics & Explosives

Look on the ingredients label of many different cosmetic or personal care products, and glycerol (often also called glycerin or glycerine) is commonly present. It’s also found in a variety of food products, as well as in some pharmaceutical products, so what’s the reason for its ...

mehr

An Undeserved Reputation?

Monosodium glutamate, or MSG for short, has long been the villain of the food supplement world. In the UK, Chinese takeaways proudly display ‘No MSG’ signs beside their counters, and many websites will purport to tell you ‘the truth about MSG’. Numerous studies have been carried out examining the ...

mehr

The Chemistry of Beetroot

The latest of the food science graphics looks at the chemistry of beetroot. An unusual effect of beetroot is that it can cause ‘beeturia’, or a red colouration to the urine, after ingestion. This is a condition that only affects an estimated 10-14% of the population, so what are the chemical ...

mehr