Technology Trends

If you travel through Sweden this summer, don’t forget to try the first genetically modified (GM) beer in the world. According to CNN.com in this short article, the Kenth beer contains “corn that has been genetically modified to protect it against pests.” Sometimes, corn is named maize in Europe, and the brewer chose to use this unusual Bt maize to ’spice up’ his beer. Of course, his goal is to produce a great new beer, but he also wants to introduce new technologies that will be good for the environment without compromising the consumers’ health — I guess he based his assumptions on a ‘reasonable’ number of bottles on a very warm day… Anyway, GM food products have been approved by the European Union since April 2004 — if they’re properly labeled. So you might find this beer outside Sweden anytime soon. Read more…

First, here is a picture of this delightful new beer (Credit: Oesterlenbryggarna brewery in Osterlen, Sweden).

Now, here are some excerpts from the CNN article.

Master brewer Kenth Persson is aware that the use of GM ingredients is not to everyone’s taste and admits the brewery is taking a risk.

“But I think it’s very interesting to be doing a new thing and that is what brewers like me want to do,” he said. “We cannot do things in the same way as the big breweries like Carlsberg. We try to do things differently.”

You’ll find more details on BioteknikCentrum.com by reading this page, “The ordinary beer that’s out of the ordinary.”

The fact that one of the ingredients of this beer comes from a GM crop (maize) does not mean, however, that the beer has any characteristics that would not be found in a beer made with conventional maize. The grain looks exactly the same, it tastes exactly the same, and Bt maize is at least as safe and healthy as conventional maize.

Rather, the difference is in the small yellow maize kernals sown in a field in the Oderbruch region of Germany, beside the River Oder.

This is somewhat ironic as Germany is — with France — one of the European countries most strongly opposed to GM foods.

But now, let’s look at why this GM maize can be better for us.

This genetically modified Bt maize has been imbued with a new characteristic, enabling the crop to defend itself against the dreaded European corn borer moth. This vicious pest has had many maize growers tearing their hair in despair over the years.

In conventional maize growing, insecticide sprays are used to fight off the corn borer. Thanks to the Bt gene — which can be described as a self-defence gene — farmers no longer need to rely so heavily on insecticides. This of course benefits the environment.

Halting the spread of the corn borer moth also reduces the risk of fungal attacks. Fungi can produce poisonous substances (mycotoxins) at levels that create major problems for producers of both human foods and animal feeds. In conclusion, the Bt maize actually enables safer food products.

I don’t know if the above statement is true, but if you try this beer, drop me a note to tell me if it tastes good.

Finally, you also can read another version of the document mentioned above, but with more pictures: “The story of Sweden’s first GM-labelled food product” (PDF format, 7 pages, 162 KB).

Sources: Tom Hayes and Liz George, CNN.com, July 15, 2005; and various web sites

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Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that puts computer-generated objects on the top of the real world. And now, AR is going to be used in poultry processing plants to improve communication between computers and workers. Researchers at Georgia Tech have designed two AR systems that project graphical instructions from an automated inspection system onto birds on a processing line, telling workers which chicken are ‘defective products’ and have to be discarded. For example, some workers will wear see-through head-mounted displays (HMD), which will allow them to see graphical instructions about a bird and what to do with it. ‘Right now, this inspection is done visually by human screeners, who communicate instructions to trimmers using gestures.’ AR technology should increase the throughput of poultry plants if their owners want to pay about $3,600 per device. Read more…

Here is the introduction of this Georgia Institute of Technology Research News article.

Technology that transfers computer-generated information onto the physical world is being tested for use in poultry plants to improve communication between computers and workers.

Using augmented reality (AR) technology, researchers have designed two systems that project graphical instructions from an automated inspection system onto birds on a processing line. These symbols tell workers how to trim or whether to discard defective products.

Below is a photo of these augmented reality systems (Credit: Gary Meek, for Georgia Tech, on this page). And here is a link to a larger version (1.09 MB).

One augmented reality system developed at Georgia Tech uses a location-tracked, see-through, head-mounted display (foreground) worn by poultry workers. It directly overlays graphical instructions on a trimmer’s view of the birds. A second solution uses a laser scanner, mounted in a fixed location near the processing line, to project graphical instructions (red square on bird illustration) directly onto each bird that requires some action, such as trimming.

But what has motivated researchers to use such a sophisticated technology in poultry plants?

“It’s easy to see this technology working in a poultry plant,” said Blair Macintyre, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech College of Computing and AR expert. “The question is, ‘What is the best implementation of the technology to satisfy the environmental constraints?’”

Researchers have had to consider that poultry processing plants are typically wet and slippery and have to be thoroughly washed down with high-pressured water streams daily. Also, trimmers need simple, graphical instructions and must have their hands free of any object except a knife for cutting defective bird parts.

This is why they developed two independent AR solutions, without knowing which one could be chosen by the food industry..

“Each solution appears to have advantages and disadvantages,” Macintyre said. One of the greatest benefits that both solutions provide is the potential for advance warning to trimmers of the workload coming down the line, he added. Current practices don’t provide this advantage.

“But our suspicion is that the laser-based system is the more practical in the near term and potentially in the long term,” Macintyre said. “The real disadvantage of the head-mounted system is its cost. Heads-up displays cost about $3,600, but they are getting cheaper. Two years ago, they cost about $7,000 each.”

These AR systems will not be commercially available before several years, and they might mot be even successful — for psychological reasons.

“We think these technologies have the potential to be better than current practices,” Macintyre said. “But, two humans working together over time have learned to use non-verbal cues and have developed a smooth communication system. That will be hard to beat at some level.”

Anyway, these AR solutions will be described during the 2005 Annual International Meeting of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, held on July 17-20 in Tampa, Florida. The research paper, “Augmented Reality Systems Applied to Poultry Grading & Inspection,” will be presented on July 18 at 11:45AM, but is not yet available online.

Finally, for slightly more information, you can visit the Augmented Reality for Poultry Inspection page at the Augmented Environment Lab (AEL).

Sources: Jane Sanders, Georgia Institute of Technology Research News, via EurekAlert!, July 14, 2005; and various web sites

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Many people around the world are eating meat and enjoying it. But meat has a number of adverse effects on human health because of the use of drugs used to raise livestock or on the environment because of pollution from farm animal wastes. Now, scientists from the University of Maryland are proposing new techniques to grow edible meat in their labs on an industrial scale. “The idea of culturing meat is to create an edible product that tastes like cuts of beef, poultry, pork, lamb or fish and has the nutrients and texture of meat.” The researchers say that demand for meat is doubling every ten years in countries like India or China and say that with their techniques, “a single cell could theoretically produce the world’s annual meat supply.” Ready to learn more?

As an appetizer, here is the introduction of the University of Maryland news release.

Experiments for NASA space missions have shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab. But the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, may not be just a science fiction fantasy.

Now, let’s go for the entree. Below is an illustration of the process leading to a perfectly healthy hamburger… (Credit: University of Maryland)

Here are the steps: 1. Scaffold-based cultured meat production: 1. Myoblasts in petri dish; 2. Porous collagen microspheres; 3. Myoblasts form myotubes on collagen microspheres; 4. Bioreactor; 5. Microwave; 6. Hamburger.

One of the techniques used to produce edible animal meat made of skeletal muscle tissue is scaffold-based and appropriate for producing processed meats, such as hamburger or sausage.

In scaffold-based techniques, embryonic myoblasts or adult skeletal muscle satellite cells are proliferated, attached to a scaffold or carrier, such as a collagen meshwork or microcarrier beads, and then perfused with a culture medium in a stationary or rotating bioreactor. By introducing a variety of environmental cues, these cells fuse into myotubes, which can then differentiate into myofibers. The resulting myofibers may then be harvested, cooked, and consumed as meat [as seen on the above image.]

After these technical explanations, let’s return to the University of Maryland news release.

Scientists know that a single muscle cell from a cow or chicken can be isolated and divided into thousands of new muscle cells. Experiments with fish tissue have created small amounts of in vitro meat in NASA experiments researching potential food products for long-term space travel, where storage is a problem.

“But that was a single experiment and was geared toward a special situation - space travel,” says Matheny. “We need a different approach for large scale production.”

Matheny’s team developed ideas for two techniques that have potential for large scale meat production. One is to grow the cells in large flat sheets on thin membranes. The sheets of meat would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked on top of one another to increase thickness.

The other method would be to grow the muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The mature cells could then be harvested and turned into a processed meat, like nuggets or hamburgers.

The first research paper about future industrial production of cultured meat was published as a commentary by Tissue Engineering in its June 29, 2005 issue under the name “Commentary: In Vitro-Cultured Meat Production.” Here is a link to this paper (PDF format, 4 pages, 50 KB).

But this commentary was based on a longer paper, also named “In vitro cultured meat production,” and written in 2004. Here is a link to this full paper (PDF format, 27 pages, 290 KB). The illustration above and its legend come from this paper.

Now, Matheny has now decided to join New Harvest, “a nonprofit research organization working to develop new meat substitutes, including cultured meat — meat produced in vitro, in a cell culture, rather than from an animal.”

So when will we eat ‘cultured’ meat? I guess that many organizations around the world will carefully look at this kind of solution before approving or refusing it.

I’ m not sure to feel comfortable with this idea of ‘cultured’ meat. Please tell me if you’re ready for a synthetic steak.

Sources: University of Maryland news release, July 6, 2005; and various web sites

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Nanoscientists and food industry specialists are meeting right now at Nano4Food 2005, a conference held in Wageningen, The Netherlands, on June 20-21. They will discuss how nanotechnology can help food processing companies to improve the safety and quality of their products by using nanosensors and diagnostic machines. But, in this article, FoodProductionDaily.com writes that there is another subject on the agenda. New kinds of foods, embedded with nanoparticles, could one day deliver their contents in our bodies, such as medicines or nutrients. So far, food companies are only investigating, and no product has been released yet. But technology is almost ready for these companies to sell you interactive drinks you can play with, changing colors or textures. Read more…

Let’s start with a financial forecast from an analyst — who certainly never ate nanofood. And don’t forget to read this again in 2010!

The nanofood market is expected to rise from $2.6bn today to $7bn next year and to $20.4bn in 2010 according to a study by consultant Helmut Kaiser.

Please notice that ‘nanofood market’ doesn’t mean edible food. And this brings us back to how nanotechnology can be used for food safety.

On the processing line nanotechnology can be used to create tiny sensors and diagnostic machines that can help ensure food does not leave the factory with contaminants. Such nanodevices can also help processors detect harmful microbes and determine the shelf life for their foods. Such fine scale detection could help food processors make strategic decisions, such as the best transportation method for their products and storage methods, said Frans Kampers [, the program manager of bio-nanotechnology at Wageningen University.]

“The use of nanotechnology to ensure the quality of a food product has obvious benefits for consumers,” he said. However, such robotic nanosensors and detectors are still being developed in food processing and research laboratories. Kampers forecasts that the first such machines will appear on the food production line within four years.

On the other hand, incorporating nanoparticles in our food is an entirely different story.

Researchers generally refer to nanofoods as being embedded with either “soft particles”, those using common biological materials or with “hard particles”, made up of non-organic substances.

“Soft particles” might be harmless to us, because our bodies can recognize them. But what about these “hard particles”?

Here the work is more speculative as the body is not used to ingesting and processing such substances, even if they are so tiny. As they are so tiny, nanoparticles exhibit different chemical behaviour than would normally be found in larger masses of material. Quantum mechanics, the behaviour of particles and surfaces at the microscopic level, comes into play.

“We do not really know exactly how these nanoparticles go through different routes in the body and where they end up,” said Kampers. “We need more research about the effects on food and on the body.”

So will we soon eat nanofoods? A long article from the Observer, U.K., about the cutting edge of food technology, published in May 2004, already mentioned that “food technologists are dreaming up ever new ways of feeding us — and the future is any colour you want.” Here is a selected quote.

Manuel Marquez-Sanchez [, a scientist at Kraft Foods,] has big hopes for nanotechnology. By manipulating ingredients at the nano level, and storing them in ‘nanocapsules’, he believes that Kraft will be able to devise such treats as an interactive, customisable drink. ‘The idea is that everyone buys the same drink, but you’ll be able to decide its colour, flavour, concentration and texture,’ he explains enthusiastically. ‘Once you have a technology to design nanocapsules, based on food-grade materials, you can offer products that put the consumer in control.’ Although the industry, one presumes, will wish to retain control of everything from labelling requirements and costs to the degree of prior safety testing.

So what do you think? Are you really ready for nanofood or not?

Sources: Ahmed ElAmin, FoodProductionDaily.com, June 17, 2005; and various web sites

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If you’re lucky enough to be a crew member of one of the next European Space Agency (ESA) long-term missions, you will have the choice between eleven new delicious recipes, such as ‘martian bread and green tomato jam’ or ‘potato and tomato mille-feuilles’ when it’s time for dinner. In ‘Ready for dinner on Mars?,’ ESA says that these recipes will use fresh ingredients grown in greenhouses built on Mars colonies or other planets. The future astronauts — should I write ‘farmonauts’? — will grow potatoes, onions, rice, soya or lettuce. And it’s interesting to note that the new menus were elaborated with the help of Alain Ducasse, the French chef who has almost as many stars in the ‘Guide Michelin’ as there are planets in our Solar system. Read more…

Below is a picture showing a ‘potato and tomato mille-feuilles,’ a recipe prepared for ESA (Credit: ADF – Alain Ducasse Formation — site in French). Here is a link to a larger version (283 KB).

The thin slices of potato, tomatoes and onion are cooked one by one, for a homogeneous colour and a melting and crispy sensation in the mouth. The basic ingredients are potatoes and tomatoes, both thought to be easy to to grow in space, on Mars or other planets.

So, what kind of vegetables will the ‘farmonauts’ be able to grow?

The menus were all based on nine main ingredients that ESA envisions could be grown in greenhouses of future colonies on Mars or other planets. These nine ingredients must comprise at least 40% of the final diet, while the remaining (up to) 60% could be additional vegetables, herbs, oil, butter, salt, pepper, sugar and other seasoning brought from Earth.

The nine basic ingredients that Christophe Lasseur, [ESA's biological life-support coordinator,] plans to grow on other planets are: rice, onions, tomatoes, soya, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, wheat and spirulina — all common ingredients except the last. Spirulina is a blue-green algae, a very rich source of nutrition with lots of protein (65% by weight), calcium, carbohydrates, lipids and various vitamins that cover essential nutritional needs for energy in extreme environments.

Besides the fact that astronauts will have better food than today, this will have additional benefits.

Today all the food for astronauts in space is brought from Earth, but this will not be possible for longer missions. Although still on the drawing board, ESA has already started research to see what could be grown on other planets — and what a self-supporting eco-system might look like on Mars.

“In addition to being healthy and sufficiently nutritious for survival, good food could potentially provide psychological support for the crew, away from Earth for years,” emphasises Lasseur.

It is extremely difficult today to be selected as an astronaut. But tomorrow, when a candidate needs to show additional qualifications in farming and in cooking, it will become almost impossible…

Anyway, for other stories about space food, you also can read two previous posts, “Eating in Space” or “Astronauts To Eat Italian-Style.”

Sources: ESA, June 13, 2005; and various sites

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If you are in Glasgow next week, be sure to visit the Garage, one of its largest clubs, and order a beer from the new assistant bartender. The Barhand vending machine will give you a bottle of beer with its electronic robotic hand. In “Young Scot set for share in millions from robot barman,” the Sunday Herald reports that Michael Bowes, a 23-year old entrepreneur, is installing the first robotic bartender, built by Japanese company Fuji. Bowes has exclusive rights to sell the robot and expects to generate sales of about $200 million within five years. Of course, some people are concerned that the Barhand could deliver beers to people already drunk, but Bowes insists that by reducing queues, people will only buy one drink at a time instead of picking several ones from a real bartender. Read more…

Here are the essential facts about the launch of the Barhand.

Orders have already been taken from bars and clubs across England and elsewhere in Europe. But the first unit will be installed in one of Glasgow’s largest clubs, The Garage.

It is being shipped over from Asia for a launch party on Wednesday. The product will then be launched in London at industry trade show bar.05 at Earls Court the following week.

The Barhand, a concept three and a half years in the making, is expected to generate sales of £100 million to £200m within the next five years. Michael Bowes, managing director of Bowes Enterprises, said he has also been approached by a large non-alcoholic drinks company about vending products that don’t fit into traditional units.

Here is a link to the current schedule for the Garage. And I’m sorry to tell you that the Zak Wylde’s Black Label Society gig has been cancelled on June 1, 2005.

Anyway, the Barhand has really been designed with U.K. pub rules.

The Barhand has been specially designed for licensed premises, with a timeclock that shuts the machine off after the “last orders” bell. The electronic arm inside the vending machine is meant to prevent bottles from crashing to the bottom of the dispensing slot and being damaged.

Of course, some people are worried by the fact that the Barhand could sell a beer to someone already drunk.

Patrick Browne, spokesman for the Scottish Beer and Pub Association, said Bowes Enterprises would have to address a number of crucial issues. He said: “One of the offences in licensing laws is allowing people to sell alcohol to someone who is drunk. How do you stop someone who is drunk from going and using the vending machine again?”

For more information, you should read the April 2005 issue of enterprisinglasgow (PDF format, 16 pages, 2.35 MB). The image above comes from “A Helping Barhand” on page 2 (Credit: enterprisinglasgow).

In this column, Bowes replies to the critics mentioned above and says that the Barhand will help people to reduce their drink consumption.

“What the vending machine enables people to do is purchase drinks in an easy and controlled manner but it also has other advantages in that it can help to prevent binge drinking by decreasing a person’s rate of consumption.”

“In developing my product I conducted research amongst drinkers and one of the questions I asked was — would you purchase multiple drinks if the bar was busy? A staggering 75% of the 500 people canvassed said yes. In essence people are buying multiple rounds of drinks, not because they want them, but because they want to avoid queuing.

As I haven’t found a single picture of the Barhand on the Web, I have no idea if it looks like a traditional vending machine or if it has a futuristic robotic design. So, if you go to the Garage on June 1st, please take some pictures and send them to me.

And of course, don’t drink too much…

Sources: Julia Fields, Sunday Herald, UK, May 29, 2005; and various websites

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I don’t know how many of you are willing to pay $1,000 for a bottle of wine, but I’m sure you would like to know if this 50-year old bottle of Bordeaux is still good before purchasing it. Now, you don’t need to open the bottle to discover it. You can get some high-tech help from a wine scanner using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), the same technology used in hospital MRI scans. In “Ultimate wine snob,” the Record, from New Jersey, tells us that you can purchase such a scanner for $50,000. Or you can visit the Crystal Springs Country Club, also in New Jersey, where the first NMR wine scanner has been installed, and ask nicely the owner to scan your bottle. If he accepts, you’ll know if the wine has turned into vinegar and if the seal or the cork of the bottle have been altered. But it will not tell you if the wine is really good and deserves its high price. Read more…

Here is a description of this wine scanner, which only can handle one bottle.

The scanner, built last summer and installed in the fall, looks like a shining chrome water heater with a series of pipes and tubes protruding from the top that connect to computer and electronic gear, as well as tanks of liquid nitrogen and liquid helium.

Inside, a series of coils are super-cooled, a strong magnetic field is created, and the apparatus sends radio frequencies through the glass that can pick up the levels of acetic acid, or vinegar, and acid aldehyde, another compound that can make wine taste foul. A program tweaked to read the spectroscopy analysis runs on a desktop computer hooked up to the device.

This wine scanner is based on wine research done at the Augustine Research Group of chemists at the University of California at Davis.

The Record tells us more about this scanner works.

“It’s basically an MRI for a wine bottle,” says Matt Augustine, the UC-Davis professor who came up with the idea and now acts as operations manager for the [Wine Scanner, Inc.] Morristown start-up.

Scans show distinct peaks for certain elements and compounds in the wine and can detect acetic acid at less than one-tenth the amount that would spoil wine, Augustine says.

Eugene Mulvihill, the New Jersey developer who licensed the technology from UC-Davis and built the first scanner in his Crystal Springs Country Club to check his multimillion-dollar wine cellar, thinks that other people might be interested in this $50,000 wine scanner.

Mulvihill believes auction houses or people with large private collections might want to use his scanner. “You’re not talking an $8 bottle of wine; you’re talking a $1,000 bottle of wine, and you want it to be perfect,” said Mulvihill, who has demonstrated the machine’s findings at tastings in Manhattan.

It’s not yet clear whether a potential market exists for the wine scanner. Mulvihill’s hopeful but says he’s not in a rush.

If you’re interested by the research work behind this wine scanner, a paper has been published by the Journal of Magnetic Resonance (Volume 161, Issue 1, Pages 91-98, March 2003) under the name “Using NMR to study full intact wine bottles.”

Here is a link to the abstract.

A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) probe and spectrometer capable of investigating full intact wine bottles is described and used to study a series of Cabernet Sauvignons with high resolution ¹H NMR spectroscopy. Selected examples of full bottle ¹³C NMR spectra are also provided. The application of this full bottle NMR method to the measurement of acetic acid content, the detection of complex sugars, phenols, and trace elements in wine is discussed.

And in the full paper (PDF format, 8 pages, 407 KB), you’ll find a diagram of the experimental setup used to obtain the NMR spectrum of full intact wine bottles.

Finally, if you happen to visit the Crystal Springs Country Club and its Restaurant Latour, you’ll be able to know if one of its 50 vintages of Chateau Latour is still good before pocketing $2,000 or more. Enjoy your dinner!

Sources: Martha McKay, The Record, Hackensack, New Jersey, May 12, 2005; and various websites

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According to the Telegraph, this chilli is so hot, you’d have to drink 250,000 gallons of water just to put out the fire. It’s called the “16 Million Reserve” and is 8,000 times stronger than Tabasco sauce. In fact, it’s not really a sauce, it’s a food additive made of pure capsaicin. Its creator, Blair Lazar, from Extreme Food, describes his experience when he tried it: “It was like having your tongue hit with a hammer. Man, it hurt. My tongue swelled up and it hurt like hell for days.” Another “chilli head” — as are named the lovers of these extra hot sauces — put a single grain into a pan of tomato soup and reported his wife’s words after she tried the soup: “She threatened divorce once she could speak again.” If you’re interested, there will be only 999 bottles for sale, with prices ranging between $159 and $199. Read more…

The article of the Telegraph is very entertaining, so I’ll let you read it. Here are some short excerpts of the history of the product, named “16 Million Reserve”because it’s made of pure capsaicin, which scores at 16 million units on the Scoville scale developed in 1912. (For more details about this scale, read this page at Wikipedia.)

It takes several tons of fresh peppers to produce 1lb of capsaicin for the 16 Million Reserve, and the work takes months. First, moisture is removed from the fresh peppers until a thick tar-like substance remains.

The means by which all further impurities are eliminated, leaving pure capsaicin powder, is a trade secret, but the work takes place in a laboratory where Mr Lazar and his team wear sealed suits with masks to avoid inhaling the dust.

Five years ago Mr Lazar created “2am Reserve” in honour of the hour at which he once closed his bar. It was hotter than any other chilli product on the market, measuring up to 900,000 Scoville units.

He then distilled even stronger chilli extracts, including the scorching “6am Reserve” at 10 million units. Most of the signed and numbered bottles of “16 Million Reserve” will be bought by aficionados known as chilli heads.

But before buying one, read carefully the “Product disclaimer” on the HotSauce.com page mentioned above.

Purchaser of this product hereby acknowledges the intense heat factor of this product and the element of danger if misused. This product is over 100 time hotter than a jalapeno pepper and is a complex blend of fresh peppers and extracts. This product is not a sauce but a food additive and should be used as such only.

And the Telegraph adds the following warning.

Although capsaicin does not actually burn — it fools your brain into thinking that you are in pain by stimulating nerve endings in your mouth — some medical experts believe that it could kill an asthmatic or hospitalise a user who touched his eyes or other sensitive parts of the anatomy.

Well, I guess this is too hot for me. So, for not so hot sauces, you can read a previous entry, “Some Like It Hot, Some Like It Mild,” which contains more explanations about the Scoville scale and a recipe of Habanero Pepper Sauce.

Sources: James Langton, Telegraph.co.uk, May 8, 2005; and various websites

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If you ever came to France, you probably tested (and tasted) some — very good — cheeses that you were unable to buy back at home because of some European or other international regulations. If you have been one of these daring travelers, you surely noticed that some of these cheeses smell strong. The Cranfield University in the UK decided to find what was the world’s whiffiest cheese. They used both human testers and an electronic nose consisting of a sensor array linked to a computer with specialized software. And the French cheese with the strongest smell is the ‘Vieux Boulogne,’ a relatively recent cheese from North of France, similar in taste with Boulette d’Avesnes or Maroilles. You can find this cheese — and smell it — in France or in London, but if you live elsewhere, forget about it. Read more…

Let’s start with a basic introduction about the study.

Dr Stephen White, senior research officer Cranfield University led the study by using an electronic nose as well as a human olfactory panel to sniff out those with the strongest scent.

Fifteen cheeses were selected with the help of cheese experts in France and the UK and put through the smelly stakes. Dr Stephen White said: “The results suggest that electronic nose technology could be a useful tool for cheese characterisation, quality control and authenticity testing in the future. The smelliest cheeses were washed rind cheeses. There was no obvious correlation between the age of the selected cheeses and smelliness, nor type of milk origin, although cows’ milk cheeses did dominate the smell chart.”

Before going further, here are some images of the brave testers.

I don’t want to bother you with the whole list. so here are the top three stinkiest French cheeses.

Tops was Vieux Boulogne followed by Pont l’Evêque — both washed rind cheeses, produced from the milk of cows raised on the lush, coastal pastures of Normandy.

Camembert de Normandie, the most widely imitated cheese in the world, was rated third. It has a natural rind and is best known for its creamy texture and mushroomy aroma.

The only shop selling the Vieux Boulogne in the UK is La Fromagerie in London. Here is what says the owner about this cheese.

Vieux Boulogne is a young, modern cheese with a surprisingly mellow and gentle taste that’s perfect served with some crusty bread and a beer. It’s a great cheese to try, as it doesn’t have the earthy, farmyardy flavours that some people find overpowering.

By the way, it’s not the most expensive cheese in the world. It costs around £11 or €11 per kilogram.

But now, it’s time to look in more details about the tests were held.

The cheeses were blind tested under controlled conditions. They were stored at 4°C overnight, then brought out of the fridge two hours before testing to be brought up to room temperature of 20°C.

The human olfactory group were given two hours (no conferring) to complete the test so that they could ‘rest their noses’. They were asked to rate each cheese on a scale of smelly to least smelly and could smell the cheeses as many times as they wanted to, in any order, during the test period.

The electronic nose comprises a sensor array linked to a computer with sophisticated software. Each of the sensors responds to ‘smell’ chemicals in a slightly different way. This response is interpreted by the machine’s software to provide a unique ‘fingerprint’ aroma signal of the test item.

Let me finish by something very personal. The favorite cheese of my wife’s mother, Mitzi, who lives in Monona, Wisconsin, is the ‘Boulette d’Avesnes.’ So here are my last words for today: Mitzi, I love you!

Sources: Cranfield University press release, November 26, 2004; and various websites

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It’s Sunday, so you have enough time for cooking. Why not trying a Mexican spicy dinner using some super hot jalapeño or habanero peppers? Too strong for you? No problem. Two years after creating mild jalapeño peppers, Texas pepper breeders have created a mild habanero pepper after 5 years of research. The New York Times reports that this mild habanero is available to growers and you’ll soon find it in grocery stores (free registration, but permanent link). As says Dr. Crosby, the plant geneticist who bred this habanero pepper, “It’s a pretty fruit. It’s got the flavor but it doesn’t kill you.” Read more before enjoying your meal…

Before going further, why this need for a mild habanero pepper?

With worldwide pepper consumption on the rise, according to industry experts, the new variety — a heart-shaped nugget bred in benign golden yellow to distinguish it from the alarming orange original, the common Yucatan habanero — is beginning to reach store shelves, to the delight of processors and the research station, which stands to earn unspecified royalties if the new pepper catches on.

“I love it,” said Josh Ruiz, a local farmer whose pickers this week filled some 200 boxes of the peppers to be sold to grocers for about $35 a box. “It yields good and I’m able to eat it.” As for the Yucatan habanero, he said, “My stomach just can’t take it.”

By comparison, if a regular jalapeño scores between 5,000 and 10,000 units on the Scoville scale of pepper hotness based on the amount of the chemical capsaicin (cap-SAY-sin), and a regular habanero averages around 300,000 to 400,000 units, A&M’s mild version registers a tepid 2,300, or barely one-hundredth of its coolest formidable namesake. A bell pepper, by the way, scores zero.

For more information about the Scoville scale, which was devised in 1912, you can read this page from Wikipedia, which tells us more about habanero peppers in this other page.

Now let’s look at how this mild habanero is grown at the Texas A&M Agricultural Experiment Station (TAM).

The process to produce a more palatable habanero, Dr. Crosby said, began with cross-breeding a regular hot variety with germ plasm from a wild heatless pepper from Bolivia. “We took pollen from the hot to pollinate the heatless to create a hybrid,” he said. The hybrid was then self-pollinated, fertilized with its own pollen, to inbreed desired qualities and then, Dr. Crosby said, “backcrossed to the hot to recover more of its genes for flavor.” That was repeated for eight generations, or four years at two growing seasons a year, to produce the TAM Mild Habanero.

And did you know there was an International Pepper Conference? The 17th conference was held last week in Naples, Florida, on November 14-16. And Dr. Crosby animated a discussion about “Breeding Peppers for Enhanced Beneficial Phytochemical Compounds.”

If you want to know more about his work, you can read “Texas plant breeder develops mild habanero pepper” (PDF format, 2 pages, August 2004).

Finally, I cannot conclude this column before giving you a recipe. What about some Habanero Pepper Sauce from Diana’s Kitchen?

Here is what you’ll need.

• 12 habanero peppers, stems removed, finley chopped
  
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  
• 1/2 cup chopped carrots
  
• 1/2 cup distilled vinegar
  
• 1/4 cup lime juice

And here is your cooking assignment.

Saute the onion and garlic in oil until soft; add the carrots with a small amount of water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until carrots are soft. Place the mixture and raw chiles into a blender and puree until smooth. Don’t cook the peppers, since cooking reduces flavor of the Habaneros. Combine the puree with vinegar and lime juice, then simmer for 5 minutes and seal in sterilized bottles.

But be warned if you’re using hot habanero peppers. This recipe is rated 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 by the author, B. Emert.

And now, bon appétit!

Sources: Ralph Blumenthal, The New York Times, November 21, 2004; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Agriculture
  


• Biotechnology
  


• Food