« 1789 welcomes new chef, new clientele | Main | Veal Cheeks with Mashed Purple Potatoes, Roasted Carrots, Reduction Sauce »
July 5, 2006
View Comments | Post CommentSuper Macro Food Porn
No, it isn't just a great band name. Some Australian scientists will be making super macro food porn--extremely close-up images of food--in order to investigate its atomic structure, and the makeup of proteins. Their aim is eventually to be able to modify foods at the atomic level to be more healthy, and possibly to solve problems like diabetes.
They're not talking about seeing a single grain of salt here, they're talking about seeing a few molecules of sodium chloride. It is unfortunate that the process they're using, neutron scattering, is not likely to produce any mouth-watering imagery--nor anything even resembling our conception of food--but one can hope that it will eventually be used to produce even more mouth-watering foods.
So next time you bitch about the tiny portions at some restaurant, break out your trusty neutron scatterer, which can image foodstuffs 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. I promise that the portions will look huge.
Posted by Barzelay at July 5, 2006 6:05 PM | Comments (0) | Science, Technology
