Tuesday, September 19, 2023

100 random food processing facts with video links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ArVvrhhnyI

A hundred random food processing facts in this video. 

Banana - 2:20 careful decontamination of boots and truck tires to avoid spreading the devastating TR4 fungus of this monoculture.

Ben & Jerry's - 6:35 founder Ben had a poor sense of smell, so texture was important to him, and large chunks were his hallmark. They only sell in pints, to make sure leftovers don't go bad in the freezer.

Gorgonzola - 9:40 the 40-pound wheels decrease to 26 pounds during curing, as whey is released over 2 to 3 months

Caviar - 10:56 it takes 8 to 20 years to grow to maturity - longest for Beluga.

Sardines - 14:38 steaming them outside the can makes for a better product. Nuri brand does almost all of the steps laboriously by hand. 15:50 quality control is assessed by sound of tapping the cans

Kombucha - 18:12 a "scoby" (a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) digests the sugars into alcohol and CO2. 18:54 when first brewed, kombucha has almost as much alcohol as beer, at 3% vs 4.2% 

Kombucha requires ethanol removal to be sold as a soft drink;19:24 an expensive million-dollar machine sprays the liquid at low temperature to evaporate the (more volatile) alcohol

Cranberries - 23:14 are frozen to break down cells and release the juice, concentrated, then rehydrated 24:43 about 4400 cranberries go into making a jar of juice 25:54 Ocean spray make 250 different products

Salt from brine in the desert - 28:00 a rake to turn over the salt crystals to encourage crystallization costs $22, which is so expensive for the farmers they repair them and use them daily for several years. 28:56 Farmers suffer fatal skin infections and 29:17 blindness from the sun's rejection of the white salt.

31:11 The middleman washes, grinds and iodizes it - and sells it for 60 x what he bought it for.

Tofu - 36:53 soybeans soak for 10 hours, get cooked to 100 Celsius. 37:40 Okara is the leftover used to feed cattle.

Coffee - 39:53 every bean picked by hand. 40:14 the washed beans have their protective "parchment" removed 40:34 emerge from the wet mill at 46% humidity dried down to 9-11%.  41:12 Dry milling: beans hulled, polished, classified, optically sorted

Vanilla - 41:54 blooms for just one day a year, has to be hand pollinated; takes 9 months for the pod to grow. 43:51 Farmers in Madagascar lose 10% of their harvest to theft 45:25 they carry 40 pounds bags on their shoulders for miles 47:44 it's a 3 month's process of sorting, washing, cooking for a minute (to release vanillin), sun-drying for 15-30 days under tight security, (and covered with tarps if it rains) and massaged and then packaged. A farmers' cooperative has brought a larger share of the profits to the farmers.

Oranges - 53:40 90% of Florida's citrus trees are infected with a bacterium that chokes its vascular system and starves the tree, reducing its brix or sugar content. 55:15 Plastic mesh covers protect from the psyllid (citrus leaf miner) insect that carries the bacteria.

Oysters 1:02:15 this producer grows a billion larvae a year. 1:03:47 outside grow best from 60- to 80-degree F water. 1:04:30 have to be harvested, processed, and packaged within 2 hours to meet FDA guidelines

Limes - 1:08:41 demand for limes doubled from 2010 to 2020, spurred by the NAFTA free trade agreement

Olives - 1:16:17 EVVO extracts the oil by malaxation (kneading) and centrifugation (https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/64271 )  which is more expensive than the more efficient solvent extraction (https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/oil-and-oilseed-processing-ii.html)

Quinoa - 1:18:51 harvested by hand and threshed by hand 1:20:50 washed to remove a bitter "saponin"

Brazil nuts - 1:22:12 trees can live to 500 years. 1:24:24 launching a farmers' cooperative increased their profit 30-fold

Cheesecakes - 1:27:56 baked atop a rotating water bath pan

Ketchup - 1:30:10 Heinz makes 650 million bottles a year. 1:32:27 viscosity tested - can't move faster than 0.028 mph or it's too thin 1:34:49 company started by Heinz when he was only 25 years old, selling his mother's horseradish

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