While perusing Fennema’s Food Chemistry, I came upon some interesting information about food in the 1800s that I thought might serve to illustrate a point. Today’s food consumers are rightly concerned about the safety of food produced by “big business” and are especially concerned about chemicals that food might be adulterated with. However, what the average consumer … Read more
The following are some general myths concerning mushroom poisoning from ingesting unidentified wild gathered mushrooms. Please do not take this as medical advice! What you eat or do not eat is up to you, and caution is the rule when eating any wild gathered plants or fungi. However, there are a number of common claims … Read more
Bt corn (or Bt maize) is a type of corn that has been genetically modified to make a substance called Bt toxin. Bt toxin is a protein made by the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis that kills certain insects, such as caterpillars and beetles, that are pests to plants. A mainstay of GM crop opponents is the widely … Read more
Survival guides will generally give you some berry rules to live by. It goes something like this: Avoid white and yellow berries since about 90% of these are poisonous. About half of red berries are poisonous. Most black or blue berries are edible. Aggregate berries, like raspberry, blackberries, thimbleberries, and salmonberries, are 99% edible. These, … Read more
Most people who like to cook and eat mussels and clams know that they are done cooking when the shells open and you should always throw away unopened mussels. As you may have gathered from the title, I’m going to question this cooking instruction. In fact, I’m going to question the claim that if they … Read more