Common Food Additives 


Unfortunately this is a very busy weekend for me school wise so I doubt I will have time to make my recipe for the week. So I thought I would write a quick entry about something cool from another book I got last Christmas, Cooking for Geeks. Its a great read for anyone interested in science and cooking. It has lots of graphs and charts as well as some science humour, that I very much appreciated. This is sounding way too much like a sales pitch for the book, so I better get to the point. One of the most interesting parts of the book deals with common food additives and what they are used for. I have selected a couple to talk about, it sure makes reading the ingredient list on foods a lot more interesting if you know what all those crazy sounding chemicals actually are for.

Carrageenan
Seaweed in your chocolate milk? Well kind of, carrageen is a polysaccharide that is derived from seaweed. The seaweed is dried in the sun and then ground into a powder. This powder shows up in many common foods, especially dairy products, where it improves creaminess. It can also be used to create gels like those found inside Gushers and it is even used in some beer to remove proteins that cause the beer to go cloudy. Carrageenan is not a new kid on the culinary block, as far back as the 15th century it was being used to thicken dairy products. Following World War II the manufacturing process was industrialized and its been an extremely popular additive ever since.


Maltodextrin 
A starch that dissolves in water but not in fat, why is this important? Maltodextrin is mainly used to create powders from fatty foods, when the powder is in your mouth it dissolves back to its original form. A quick check of the Doritos bag shows maltodextrin as the third ingredient. It is used to turn cheese into a powder that will stick to the chip. This is one example of many, imagine powdered butter, peanut butter or olive oil, the possibilities are endless.


Lecithin
Commonly from soy beans (sometimes listed as soy lecithin on packing), lecithin can be used as an emulsifier or lubricant. An emulsifier helps to combine two ingredients that don't normally mix, like oil and vinegar in salad dressing. It is a common additive to salad dressings and mayonnaise. In home made dressings, like caesar, and mayonnaise the lecithin comes from eggs, another good source but not as useful for mass production. Lecithin is also used to help stabilize those foams they have severe in fancy gourmet restaurants. Finally, lecithin is also a main ingredient in non-stick sprays as it is very slippery stuff.


Transglutaminase
This one is really cool but some of its applications make be cringe. Transglutaminase is basically meat glue, it bonds certain proteins, allowing pieces of meat to be effectively "glued" together. This is how such delights as McNuggets and deli ham are created, a kind of Frankenstein's monster of meats all glued together into a hunk. Granted McNuggets and deli ham are quite delicious it just a little scary where they come from. There are some more appetizing applications like bacon wrapped scallops where transglutaminase is used to keep the bacon from falling off. It also can be used to thicken dairy products by binding some their proteins.

According to Cooking for Geeks these additives are all available online, I would really like to try some of them but I think that will have to wait for another blog.