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'Tear-Free' Onion in the Works
RedWolves2 writes "CNN has an article about how scientists in Japan may have discovered a way to make onions easy on the eyes without taking away from the taste. My grandfather always used to tell me to eat onions because it would put hair on my chest (oh how he was right). I wonder if this new 'tear-free' onion would work in the same way?"
Until we can buy these tearless onions, one tip (I've been told, I've never tried it) is that you can put a piece of bread in your mouth while you cut them. Or you could just gouge your eyes out of your sockets.
As far as getting rid of the hair on your chest caused by onions:
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Um..I'll keep the hair on my chest.
My wife seems to love it.
Ok, so what's wrong with this world where people want to tear up their onions. And even if they do, SO WHAT! I say, let people tear 'em, rip 'em, shred 'em, even stomp on 'em if they want to. I mean, really!
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I try to go with natural stuff when I can. But I know that we buy this kind of modern food all the time, without even knowing it.
Something to think about.
Duke
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You can also burn a candle. That keeps your eyes from tearing as well. I am not sure why, but it works. For a book on making your own candles, click here - (link to Amazon, no affliate, nothing but net)
The Onion always make me laugh, not cry.
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This seems to me is a whole lot of effort and resources allocated on something quiet irrelavent.
There are already several well-known tricks that solve the onion slicing problem quiet well. Is it really neccessary to temper with onion's genetic makeup, and risk eating something that may have unforeseen effects?
Genetically alter a produce to increase production and solve femine, I can understand, but just to make tear-free onions?
PS:personally I go with a sharp knife for dicing onions. Works like a charm for me as long as I don't rub my eye while slicing them.
Dairy farmers have been giving hormones to dairy cows to produce more milk, and beef farmers have been giving to shorten the time to market for poultry. What we see as a result, are more and more children reaching puberty at younger ages and appearing older than they are...yes there is some creedence to the old joke "Your Honor, she looked eighteen!" Will a tearless onion mean we will eventually loose the ability to tear ourselves? I doubt it, but what ever change they make in the onion will eventually make a change in us.
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"Ice the onions" technique
I will have to try the mentioned "Bread in mouth" method.
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I think these people have too much time on their hands, because this seems to be a waste of time. Just refer to this and the problem will be solved.
After you peel it, but before you cut it, you can rinse it off with water and that helps out quite a bit.
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My grandfather always used to tell me to eat onions because it would put hair on my chest (oh how he was right).
Fortunately, RedWolves2's bio clarifies that he is, in fact, a man.
May we never see th
Tear free onions are nice, but fart free beans would be the greatest invention since sliced bread! People would line up to buy those.
How ya like dat?
Tear-free onion?
How about a heartless artichoke?
if they don't make me laugh until i cry, why would i read it? and what if i can't tear out the pages i want?
When fresh, most onions are already tear-free. Its only if you leave them sitting around for 3-4 days that they start to slowly decompose and produce the chemicals that cause tearing.
Perhaps a better solution would be to improve the terrible quality of packaging, distribution and inventory management of most retailers of onions so that consumers can get them fresh. This would obviously benefit almost all other produce as well.
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Okay, you're going to laugh, but this worked really well for my housemate and me.
(1) Buy a pair of clear swimming goggles.
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One word of warning: With your eyes protected, you'll notice what the onion does to your sinuses whole hell of a lot more. (I bet you didn't even notice that onions did anything to your sinuses!)
On the other hand, this is plenty more bearable than what it does to your eyes, so....
- undoware.ca
This works because the reason onions cause people to tear up is because of the sulphur content of the onion. The candle will burn up some of the sulphur, thus reducing the reaction. This doesn't always work, but it certainly helps.
There's already a low-sulphur type of onion (I forget the name - but it's a number that tells farmers when to plant it (the date)) - but it's hard to find (in fact, I've never actually SEEN it at a grocery store).
Most of the foods eat have been genetically manipulated the old fashioned way - Selective breeding.
Plants have been changed to have bigger yeilds that ripen at the same time. In some cases (such as corn) the differences between the domesticated version and the wild cousin is drastic. Plants also have been manipulated to remove genes that cause bitterness.
Animals have been changed to be larger, slower, dumber and to carry more meat on their frame.
The problem is that the words 'Genetically Modified' scares a lot of people (like the words 'Nuclear' and 'Radiation'). But there is a whole world of difference between transferring genes from two unrelated organisms and removing or enhancing the genes of a single organism.
I don't see anything wrong with enhancing already existing genes, or removing genes that provide undesirable traits in our food. What you find in the supermarket is different from what you'll find in the wild. Going back to the selective-breeding analogy, nobody has a problem with seedless grapes. There's not much of a difference between finding a random seedless mutation and making a seedless mutation.
Switching genes between organisms are another story. I don't have a problem with adding vitamins to plants that normally lack them. (Adding vitamin A to rice could reduce a lot of blindness, for example). Other cases need a closer look though.Then again, if you want to worry, probably massively dosing our livestock with antibiotics will hurt us more in the long run.
Just my 2 zorkmids,
Dasunt
But why "descent" an onion? It seems to me that this would remove some of the character from the onion, even if they did have a way to do it without removing the flavor.
Perhaps instead they could work on garlic that doesn't give you breath bad enough to slay dragons with.
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Yeah, my old man says the same thing about coffee. If you think about it, it's just a phrase that falls under the category of things that will "make a man out of you".
Holding a saltine in my mouth seems to curb watery eyes. I look stupid but it works. How? Not really sure.
"Tear free onions are nice, but fart free beans would be the greatest invention since sliced bread! People would line up to buy those."
A number of decades ago, there was an attempt to do exactly that, using traditional breeding methods to reduce the content of gas-producing raffinose and other oligosaccharides. The attempt was successful only up to a point -- apparently, a minimum amount of sugars were required by the seed, since when the concentration dropped too low, they stopped germinating. You could still propagate the plants by cloning, but this was impractical use in agriculture for a commodity crop like beans.
I've been thinking that with modern genetic engineering techniques it may be possible -- perhaps include an enzyme (like the galactosidase in Beano) that would break down the sugar, either before maturation, or during soaking before cooking. Another approach might be to replace the sugar-producing pathways to use another carbohydrate digestible by humans. The first would probably be easiest from an engineering standpoint (one single gene with proper regulation might do it), while the second might be much harder -- the longest functional pathway introduction I've heard of is the three-step one in golden rice, and that took years of work.
But, but it's already there! I mean, I can't tear myself free of The Onion!
More than mere navel gazing.
Even better:
Someone once told me that the chemicals which cause tearing are most concentrated in the root of the onion.
So, I cut that part off under running water. I also cut the top off with water, and do most of the peeling with the faucet on.
The job goes quicker, the scraps find their way into the garbage disposal more quickly, and my hands don't smell like onion for the rest of the day.
Since I started doing this, I've not have any problems cutting onions, unless they're particularly potent (and then, it's always worth the pain).
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i cut a lot of onions (?) every week and after a while you get used to it. the problem is that when you cut the part of the onion with the roots sticking out the onion releases a chemical that (i'm told) is converted to sulfuric acid in your eye. it's not a lot of acid but enough to burn. but somehow i have become immune to the stuff.
anyway, the best way to prevent crying when cutting onions is to refridgerate them before cutting -- i guess this keeps the nasty chemicals from being so volitile when you cut them.
if that doesn't work wear swim goggles.
fear is the mind killer
"My grandfather always used to tell me to eat onions because it would put hair on my chest (oh how he was right). I wonder if this new 'tear-free' onion would work in the same way?"
These tear free onions make your body hair fall off and your voice to go higher; upon which you must take up the name of your favorite drag queen.
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You cry when cutting onions because you cut through the cellular walls of the onion, releasing pyruvic acid and sulfur compounds (like allyl sulfide) which combines with enzymes in your eyes to form a mild form of sulfuric acid.
Cutting with a serrated knife or dull knife cuts through more cells, which releases more of the compounds, and causes more tears.
All of the silly things listed here (putting juice on your forehead, bread in the mouth, etc.) won't stop this from happening. Only swimming goggles, using a sharp knife, and fresh onions will reduce the tears.
(Note this doesn't happen with sweet onions, which contain very little pyruvic acid.)
I know of vadalia onions...which are really sweet and taste great. I think they might not release as much acid like you were saying. One thing that isn't mentioned in this thread is cutting and onion under water. I know it may be a bit messy, but it works.
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