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The Molecular Secrets of Cream Cheese
Roland Piquepaille writes "The June issue of Wired Magazine carries a story about one of the two university labs in the U.S. dedicated to cream cheese research. This one is -- where else? -- in Madison, Wisconsin, where researchers are exploring the molecular mysteries of cream cheese. You may not know, but this cheese is tricky to produce because the acid-secreting bacteria used to coagulate the milk need to be killed at the right time. The researchers are now writing a guidebook about the secrets of cream cheese, a book which will be available to anyone, in a process similar to the open source movement for software. For more information, please read the entertaining article of Wired magazine, 'Schmear Campaign' or this summary to discover little-known facts about cream cheese."
Strangely, there are not many academical papers about cream cheese.
Yeah. Truly bizarre.
Perhaps they will investigate the phenomena whereby cream cheese is the exact opposite of expresso. I once tried an expresso, about ten years ago, at Barnes & Noble. Immediately, I set out on a mission to locate some cream cheese. Tragically, I went cream-cheese-less...but I really could have eaten a whole package of it, and it would have made my mouth feel much better.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Our lifespans are longer than they have ever been in the first world, thanks largely to modern science-based medicine. For most of those "thousands of years" you talk about, people had lifespans of around thirty years. So I think you should show some respect for science, there is no reason to think science can't improve on food, indeed there's every reason to believe it can. And there's definitely no reason to thing that the status quo of the last few millenia is so good that it shouldn't be changed.
Oh no... it's the future.
We have Open Source Cream Cheese now? Oh sweet lord of mercy! All we need is Open Source Bagel and Open Source Toaster. Oh wait, we already have NetBSD.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Obviously they either need to cut funding for this project, or balance it by adding funding for a project to investigate the molecular secrets of lox.
We cannot have a cream cheese/lox molecular secrets gap at taxpayer expense.
KFG
Not even close. The use of synthetic pesticides disqualifies an item from being organic. Some of the pesticides that they were spraying on your food 20 years ago are now banned because they were found to be unsafe.
They'll probably end up banning some of the current genetic modifications if and when they find problems with it, but that doesn't mean that 20th century agriculture was especially safe. (And prior to the 20th century, there were major health risks in the food supply from natural causes like bacterial contamination. There has never been a safe food utopia.)
Yeah, because, you know, no one ever discovered anything truly revolutionary to the scientific world while working on "mundane" things.
What sets us apart from the apes is our drive to seek knowledge purely for the sake of knowing it. What sets the US apart from many other nations is our willingness to fund science in all its forms, whether or not a given research projects produces something whose value can be measured in dollars and cents.
Surely the government would not fund such a caper.
As a former resident of Wisconsin, cheese is big business. Huge, in fact. Government grants for cheese and other dairy research are nothing new to the University of Wisconsin. Sure, it might appear like a drain on money, but by doing the research in a public setting it benefits all dairy producers whereas private research only benefits the company or co-op sponsoring it. To justify it all you have to do is imagine the tax benefits of even a few percentage points of additional dairy production.
Besides, I back all agricultural research. Food will become the next major world commodity (aside from fuel). It's easy to make potable water, but trying to compensate year after year of lackluster arable ground is foolish. The United States is one, if not the, top contender for arable land and our rank will only increase as the floodplains of the Asian countries are flooded with ocean water with rising sea levels. Seven billion people have to eat somehow.
and the other one is in -- let me guess -- Philadelphia?
I am so glad that tax dollars extorted from me are being spent on such important projects. Thanks Uncle Sam!
Yeah, WTF? When has learning anything about organic chemistry prove useful?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I'm think I'm in love.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
I am from Glenview, Illinois, where Kraft has their HQ. They have a nice R&D plant right in the middle of town, and one time, when I was growing up (I was maybe 11 or 12), my friends and I took a little hike through the wooded area behind it. There was a large storm drain coming out of the plant that led into the North Branch of the Chicago River. What startled my friends and me was the presence of a few guys in biohazard suits scribbing the walls of it off with a high-pressure hose of some kind. Whatever the secret ingredient is for their cream cheese, I hope it doesn't produce whatever they were scrubbing down!
today is spelling optional day.
On the subject of cheese, the distinctions between things like soured, curdled milk, sour cream, cream cheese, mascarpone, and full-fledged cheese are myriad and arcane. I wrote a quick blurb for a friend, explaining what cheese exactly is. I have attached it below, for your perusal. IAACE (I am a cheese expert)...
The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?
Really you couldn't be more wrong. They may not have called themselves scientists, but farmers have been selecting crop products basesd on traits for millenia. Do you know what we call corn now looked like before domestication? It's thought to have been derived from teosinte. We've been engineering foods for thousdands and thousands of years. You find one kernel on the plant, grow a few, look for the ones with 2 kernels, and so on. Hell, breadfruit which is found throughout polynesia and micronesia used to reproduce sexually. The current plants are now pretty much all derived from parts of a few original plants and they now rarely, if ever, produce any seeds. To imply that genetic engineering is new is pure and utter garbage. We're simply doing it in a more directed manner now with better tools. Will there be unseen health effects? Sure! In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there are recalls on crops down the line. Is what we're doing now any less natural, I don't think so.