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A street snack that has baffled botanists
151–160 of 204 posts
Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists
#152Isn't it a bit... terrifying to buy and eat food, when nobody wants to tell you what that food actually is??
Do you feel that way when you walk into a Subway? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/22/subway-sandw...
Not to mention the use of plasticizers in their bread (the same kind used in car tires.) And most importantly, factory farmed meat, contributing both to climate change and immense sentient suffering.
Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the article it’s not actually the root, that’s just a story the vendors tell, it’s the stem.
I think it could be the trunk of the agave. I just looked at pictures of agaves and some have short palm like trunks that the leaves come off of at the top instead of being right on the ground like you usually see with the aloe and agave type succulents. The trunk looks about the same size as the photos of the food object. The agave sisalana wiki article shows it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisal
Yes, all of that was in the article that you apparently didn't read:
> In 2010, after a long anatomical study, they performed DNA barcoding on a slice of the snack and found it to match that of agave’s by 89 percent. There are several species of agave, but the lab test narrowed it down to Agave Sisalana, a plant sometimes used to make a tequila-like drink. They did a field visit soon after and plucked out a Sisalana only to find mesh-like, shallow roots. Next, they chopped off its leaves and there it was: the fat, white, watery trunk familiar to millions of Indians from food carts. They ate a slice from it, and it was tasteless and crunchy just like Ram Kand.
Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
For both of those, you can put them through some chromatography/spectrography/etc. and figure out essentially what's in them — what ingredients, in what ratios. What you won't find out is the particular process required to get those ingredients "formatted" the right way to taste like the result. (E.g. Coke apparently does some fancy, hard-to-replicate-at-home kind of micronized emulsification to the flavoring oils th…
When I was in college in the 70's we went to a Miller brewery where they told us about some blue liquid they poured into Miller High Life that allowed them to ship the beer in clear bottles instead of brown. It came in tanker cars full; they claimed the FDA didn't know what it was (don't think I believed them).
Likely was just a kind of food coloring. Simply by changing the tint of the beverage, one can prevent absorption of a band of light.
Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author isn’t looking to setup a roadside snack business. Throwing money at a “problem” is not a real solution. I think the people in the article have made a good-faith attempt to research and find out more about the snack.
If paying enough to incentivize vendors to share the secret works, and why wouldn’t it, how is that not a ”real” solution?
I’m not sure where you’re coming from in this discussion. Nobody is saying bribery won’t work in such situations.
But you do understand that the author is a journalist (1), and really just aiming to research for an article that presents some intriguing material, right? Not a roadside snacks competitor, with a large budget to spend on getting these sellers to exfiltrate supply chain intel.
(1) https://www.atlasobscura.com/users/mediabarkha?view=articles
Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists
#156Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
De-AMP-ed link (mine was redirecting to the favicon): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/22/subway-sandw... I wonder whether it's canned, and whether sterilizing it can make the DNA unreadable (broken down).
Wonder no more. The answer is that the NYT is likely overstating the power of the testing they did. https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/foodservice-retail/subway...
Subway is perfectly willing to admit that most of their cold cuts are turkey-based, so it seems extra unlikely that they'd go to the trouble of creating an ersatz tuna and then hiding that fact. Especially considering how cheap tuna is, comparatively. The way you cheap out on tuna salad is adding more mayo and thickeners and other fillers, not by inventing some kind of psuedofish.
Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists
#158Isn't it a bit... terrifying to buy and eat food, when nobody wants to tell you what that food actually is??
My logic is: If others eat it, it’s fine. It also helps to eat it with someone who’s somewhat familiar with it.
My first time in Thailand I ate a disgusting salty soup with a spoon. It turns out you’re supposed to dip vegetables in it. What I did was the equivalent of eating ketchup with a spoon, except it was many times more flavorful.
Now I love it: น้ำพริกกะปิ
Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you feel that way when you walk into a Subway? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/22/subway-sandw...
Not to mention the use of plasticizers in their bread (the same kind used in car tires.) And most importantly, factory farmed meat, contributing both to climate change and immense sentient suffering.
No, the wellness scammer who started the rumors about "yoga mat chemicals" successfully managed to pressure Subway to remove azodicarbonamide from their bread. I'm sure they replaced it with some other equally harmless dough conditioner.
Re: A street snack that has baffled botanists
#160> "We are professors, busy between teaching and administrative work, so we rely on existing literature to come to conclusions" Is this really what academia is like?
Read it in context
They’re talking about a guy who wrote an encyclopedia, obviously he’s going to rely on sources and not personally go and visit every plant
An encyclopedia is a summary