Food Storage Mad Science, Part 1

In this two-part series of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Joe is joined by guests Anney Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum of the Savor podcast to talk about a collection of fascinating and bizarre transformations that food can undergo when stored in the right (or wrong) conditions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Joe McCormick. My regular co host, Robert Lamb
is out today, so instead I am being joined by
a couple of guest hosts, my friends and colleagues, Annie
Reese and Lauren Vogel Bomb. Hey, Annie and Lauren, Welcome
to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's not your first time,

(00:33):
but it's great to have you back. How are y'all doing?

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Thank you for having us. It is great to be back.
And what a topic you have brought for us today.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking the other day about
the last time we were on talking about ambergris and
how weird that one was.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, delicious squidbeaks, because the weird thing
was that we figured out that you can eat ambergris
and many people have.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Why not? Why was one weird thingsing whale refuse and
turn it into something delicious makes perfect sense?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
So would y'all like to talk about Savor and your
other projects? Yeah? Where else can people find your work
on the internet?

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Well? Yeah, A Saver is a podcast about food history
and science and culture, and you can find it on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And I also do a short form science and history
show called brain Stuff. Annie does another stuff podcast called

(01:36):
Stuff Mom Never Told You, which is a feminist, intersectional
kind of kind of gig. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Nice, Yeah, book topics.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah. Yeah. We're also about to be on a panel
at PRX in Atlanta that is the Podcast Creator Summit.
It's happening July thirtieth through August first, And yeah, we're
on a panel on the thirtieth called Feeding the Culture
taligantlant As Food Stories with a couple of really excellent
co panelists and the event is free. There's a free

(02:08):
reception afterwards at Monday Night brewing. Come have some snacks
and listen to a great time.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, I'm terrified and excited com hang out.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
That's generally how we operate.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
But yeah, are you in the same boat as us that? Like,
I'm somebody who talks for a living, but I'm kind
of scared of doing live events because I'm not good
at talking extemporaneously without preparation, and also, like I stumble
over my words a lot, And that's why we rely
on our wonderful producer JJ to edit out the parts
where I say a sentence in a completely mangled way

(02:42):
and have to start over.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, thank you, yes, thank you JJ.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, as with the last time you were on the show.
Because y'all do such great work with food science and
food history on SAVER, I thought it would be a
good idea to talk about something food related on Stuff
to Blow Your And actually, if everything works out, y'all
are going to join me for two episodes of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind? Can I can I get you
on the on the record committing to that now? Oh wow?

Speaker 3 (03:09):
You sure kind of boxing those in.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
A corner, but so yeah, Tuesday and Thursday of this week,
we're going to do a part one and a part two, uh,
discussing the strange and spooky things that can happen to
leftovers and other foods during storage. I'm thinking of calling
this series food storage mad Science. And this idea was

(03:31):
inspired by a specific disturbing food memory I have that
still haunts me. Unfortunately I can't remember some of the
key details about it. But can I tell you a
campfire story about food and see if y'all have ever
had similar experiences?

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Please?

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, get out the flashlight. Let's make it spooky.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Okay woo. So once upon a time, I remember this
happened when Rachel and I were we're on a little vacation.
We were staying at a cabin in the mountains. So good.
Actually this is where the slashers happened. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, and Adam in the woods love it.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
But the other thing, the other horror here I don't
know if y'all can relate, is I'm the cook, the
main cook in our house, but I was not cooking
with my normal home equipment, and that always causes frustrations
for me. I like to be able to use my
own pans and utensils and stuff. But so you know,
I was using somebody else's equipment, and I made a

(04:25):
batch of my baked pasta. I usually do a baked penna.
I think this time it was fusili because I remember
the little corkscrew shapes when when the final horror was revealed.
But the way before I go on, do y'all do
have like a go to baked pasta dishneath it? Are
y'all baked pasta people or not?

Speaker 3 (04:45):
I'm not generally a baked pasta person. I am a
pasta person. Yeah, but I do have a nostalgia for
a post Thanksgiving baked pasta. My mom used to make
turkey tetrazini, yes, which she would just use shredded turkey,
angel hair pasta and cuma mushroom soup. I know there's

(05:07):
ways you can kind of like gussie it up. Yeah,
that's felicious. We have done an episode on it over
on Savor, and it's one of those things that people
disagree about how to make it, which is pretty much
everything but that kind of simple savory dish. I have
really fond memories of.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, I'm too lazy to make a baked pasta like
pasta all day, but I'm not going to put it
in the oven, Like that's an extra step that's way
too much.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
No going to a second location. No, No, Yeah, I
generally do a I do regular pasta more than baked pasta.
But when it's a baked pasta, I do like a
pinna and a tomato sauce with sausage, roasted mushrooms and spinach,
and then I bake that in a casserole with pecorina
romano and low moisture mozzarella. Mozzarella melted on top. It's

(05:54):
a jam. It's pretty good. It's sort of inspired by
I worked as a as a server in an Italian
stant when I was in college, and they had a
dish kind of like this, but like without spinach in it.
So I've modified it over the years, but that's what
I was doing, except this time I'm pretty sure it
was the fusille, not the pinny. Anyway, that's not really material.
But just wanted to talk baked pasta shop for a second. Yeah, Yeah,

(06:15):
So I made this batch of baked pasta, and the
story starts very normally. I baked it, we ate it
the first night, and after it cooled off, I covered
it up with aluminum foil and I put the leftovers
in the fridge. And then a day or two later,
I don't remember exactly when it was, I pulled the
leftovers out so we could eat some more, and to

(06:37):
my horror and disgust, I found the aluminum foil pitted
with tiny holes in places where the little pasta corkscrews
had been in contact with the foil. Now the holes
were alarming enough, because it almost looked like it had
that appearance I associate with food that has been nibbled

(06:59):
by like cockroaches or maybe mice, like a little kind
of nibbled on eaten by a pest. Look. But then
it got even worse because I when I peeled the
foil away on the pasta itself, there were these little
dots and puddles of residue where what it looked like
was that the aluminum foil had melted and left these blue,

(07:23):
gray green polka dots all over our food. Definitely not appetizing. No,
at the time, I had no idea what had happened,
even though it looked like a form of melting that
was obviously not possible. The melting point of aluminum foil
is it's very high. It's something like six hundred and
sixty degrees celsius or more than twelve hundred degrees fahrenheit.

(07:44):
That definitely is not what happened.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Certainly not in a fridge. I would be that you
would have greater problems.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
You got a Ghostbuster esque issue.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, like I'm sorry, goser got into this penny.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah, even the oven. If the castle had been that hot,
it would have been obvious for a number of reasons.
I think it'd probably be on fire. I haven't done
the ignition point of posita, I don't know, but there
would be no more moisture left in it, obviously, so
there's no way the foil was melting. It kind of
looked like it had been nibbled on in a way,

(08:19):
but that didn't make any sense because it was stored
inside the refrigerator. So I think at the time, I
just assumed this was some sort of weird chemical reaction,
but we were in a hurry. I didn't have time
to look into it or figure out if it was
safe to eat, so I just discarded it moved on,
and so I was curious what was happening here. And

(08:40):
that's the first thing I want to talk about in
our series of weird food storage reactions, because I looked
into this and I discovered that my experience here was
not unique. You can find posts on the Internet of
people reacting with curiosity and horror to the fact that
aluminum oil has apparently dissolved and turned into an aquamarine

(09:05):
gun metal stain on their food and the food. Interestingly enough,
in the vast majority of these cases, especially where you
can find pictures on the internet, is lasagna quite similar
to my baked penny. Okay, so I've got some illustrations
that I just found on Google Images for you all
to look at here in the outline. What do y'all

(09:26):
think you want to dig into that?

Speaker 1 (09:27):
No? No, that's gnarly. I don't want no, unless you
have used a blue cheese. I don't want my lasagna
to be that color. And I'm not Actually I would
totally eat a blue cheese lasagna. I was about to no, no,
that sounds great, but so no, the answer is no,
thank you.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Well, I'm notoriously. I will eat around things. It's not great,
but I.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
Would do it.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Oh yeah, stray cat mentality. Yeah, just like, oh the
food is there? Not going to waste the food. I
don't recommend it. It's not a great way to go.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
And you know the mold like it's got the little
t that go inside right invisible.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, okay, I can get very creative.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Food daredevil over here. Okay, But so first question, have
y'all ever had this experience? Does this happen to you?

Speaker 1 (10:17):
I've never seen this before.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Okay, I don't think I've ever I've had aluminum foil
get stuck to a dish like little bits of it
and just kind of ate around it. But I don't
think I've ever had this happen before.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
This kind of melting situation, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, Okay, well then I'll just have to use my
experience as the reference point here. But rest assured, it's
not just me. This does happen to people all the time.
Often it freaks them out and they don't understand what
it is, much like me in this scenario. And the
question is what is causing this, what's actually happening. In
most cases, there seems to be a pretty clear answer,

(10:56):
and that answer is something called galvanic corrosion. In the
context of food, this has a cute name. It's often
called the lasagna cell. So in crude terms, this is
when the wrong combination of storage choices or cooking vessel
choices turns a tray of lasagna into a battery.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
I feel like lasagna cell. You called it cute, but
I'd be nervous. This is a lasagna that's out to
get me.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Oh, sleeper cell like a storm or like a like
a cell of like spies.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
And yeah, yeah, yeah, we are concerned by the way
that Annie is herself a sleeper cell. Oh, there's a
few words that she pronounces in British English.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Really, what happens when you look at the red queen?

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Oh lord, I've never tried.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Getting on my solitaire deck. Uh. Okay, So we're gonna
be talking about galvanic corrosion, and I apologize in advance.
You know, electrochemistry is not my strong suit. But I
really did my homework here, so I worked hard to
make sure I'm getting all this right.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah. Anytime people start talking about electrons, I'm like, oh,
so you mean a wizard. A wizard is doing something cool. Yeah,
but right now I think, yeah, I think we've got this.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
I had the same experience. I was like, okay, I
really want to understand what happened to my food. I
start looking into it. I find a good answer, but
then I'm like, oh no, I'm gonna have to remember
again what all this stuff is and how batteries work.
But it's okay. I think I got a lock on
it now.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
So.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Galvanic corrosion is also known as by metallic corrosion by
metallic as in two metals, and it happens when you've
got two different metals arranged in what's called a galvanic cell,
also known as a voltaic cell. These two things are
basically the same thing, but they're named after Luigi Galvani

(12:54):
and Alessandro Volta, respectively. These were two different Italian guys
who both set discovered principles in the late eighteenth century
that led to the development of the electric battery. So
a galvanic cell is a structure where you've got these
two different metals, for example, copper and zinc, and they're
electrically connected to each other, so imagine connected by a wire.

(13:19):
And then they are also both in contact with an
electrolyte solution. So an electrolyte is a substance that can
conduct electricity when dissolved in a fluid. For example, table
salt sodium chloride is an electrolyte. When you dissolve table
salt in a glass of water, the sodium chloride separates

(13:40):
into positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chloride ions,
and then these ions can carry an electrical charge through
the water. If the salt water is placed between two
different electrical potentials for example, two differently charged pieces of metal,
so salt water can function as an electrolyte. Solution, the

(14:03):
galvanic cell is the basic idea that makes a battery work.
The simple version of this explanation is that inside a battery,
you're going to have two substances. One is called a cathode,
one's called an anode, and these will be electrically connected
to each other, so like wired together, and then also

(14:23):
both in contact with a shared electrolyte solution. Often in
a battery it's going to be a gel. In modern batteries,
the cathode and the anode undergo a chemical reaction called
a redox reaction, and that's short for reduction oxidation. The
anode goes through what's called oxidation, that's where electrons flow

(14:44):
away from the anode material, and the cathode undergoes reduction.
This is where electrons flow through the outside circuit into
the cathode, and then you also have ions, which are
a little charged atoms or molecules, flowing through the electrolyte
solution to complete the circuit. This of course creates electrical

(15:04):
flow electrical current, which is useful in powering whatever you've
got included in the circuit. This is how batteries provide
electricity to things, usually by putting a number of these
cells in series to create more voltage. And so here's
where we get to the corrosion part. As this redox
reaction goes on over time, the material of the anode

(15:26):
actually physically degrades and loses mass because electrons are flowing
away from the anode. Leftover positively charged ions dissolve out
of the mass of the anode and into the electrolyte solution.
And when this happens, in a lot of cases, you
can see by looking at it that the anode is

(15:48):
losing its chemical and physical integrity. It just sort of
bleeds out into the middle. This is not a perfect analogy,
but you could look at this physical degradation of the
substance of the anode as the fuel that is spent
to power the circuit, kind of like how wood is
burned in order to power the oxidation reaction that is

(16:10):
a fire. This degradation of the anode, when it happens
unintentionally between two metals in contact with an electrolyte, that
is what we call galvanic corrosion. There are a lot
of common examples of galvanic corrosion in the world that
don't have anything to do with food. Galvanic corrosion happens
to like screws and other fasteners holding metal in place,

(16:34):
so you can think of like steel screws on an
aluminum base. Especially. It seems like a lot of the
examples happen in the vicinity of the sea, on seaside buildings,
on ships and boats. I know salt does not evaporate
with water when water evaporates, but it can be like
carried through the air in these little droplets as sea spray.

(16:55):
So stuff that's next to the ocean, or even especially
sitting in the ocean, but next to it, also it
gets the sea spray salty moisture getting all over it
and getting in between bimetallic components, and this will end
up dissolving the less noble of the two metals over time.

(17:22):
There are other examples too. I think I'm one able
to find really good specific examples of this, but I
think galvanic corrosion can sometimes happen to jewelry if there
are two different metals and enough sweat or if you
like wear the jewelry while bathing or swimming, you can
end up with a kind of electrolyte water in between them.
You know, salty water, sweat and then maybe if it

(17:45):
has i don't know, gold and nickel or you know,
two different kinds of metals on it, something can start
corroding the less noble of the two metals in the jewelry.
And then there are also like really interesting historical anecdotes
where they were like consequential cases of galvanic corrosion. Any
didn't you dig up one of these?

Speaker 3 (18:05):
I did, and I was very, very shocked by it
because I was specifically looking for food examples, but I
uncovered something I did not know, So yes, non food wise,
there is a really interesting history and a long history
of scientists and engineers trying to combat galvanic corrosion when
it comes to naval ships and even the Statue of Liberty.

(18:28):
I learned so much about how to restore the Statue
of Liberty, but I'm going to condense it, Okay. Beginning
in the seventeen hundreds, ships in the British Royal Navy
started displaying signs of corrosion in the iron nails holding
the ships together. Alarmed officials launched an investigation, and they
did all these experiments, and they realized that it had

(18:50):
something to do with the interaction of the copper sheets
inserted in the ships below the waterline of the vessel
and the iron nails, causing the sheets of copper to
detach from the wooden holes. Investigation revealed that while some
of the nails remained intact, others had almost completely dissolved
into this kind of paste. Yeah, the intact nails still

(19:13):
had a layer of insulation between the iron and copper,
which apparently accidentally was left behind during construction. Like they
sure should have taken the insulation off, but they didn't.
But this discovery kickstarted even further experiments with different materials
and coatings and how they reacted when exposed to salt water.
The British Royal Navy arrived at using a copper zinc alloy,

(19:36):
but then okay, jumping ahead. In the nineteen eighties, maintenance
workers realized that the Statue of Liberty had been affected
by galvanic corrosion. The outer copper layers were separating from
the internal cast iron structure. When the Statue of Liberty
was originally constructed in eighteen eighty six, there was this

(19:57):
thin layer of shelleck between iron and copper, and it
acted as an insulation. Over the years of exposure, to
the salt watery atmosphere of Liberty Island and rainfall leaking
down from the torch. The sillac broke down, eliminating this
layer of insulation, and I apologies I always struggle to
pronounce silac. The two metals reacted and the iron started

(20:20):
to rust. To stop this process, the cast iron was
replaced with stainless steel, which is resistant to corrosion, and
the sillac was replaced with PTFE or tef one. It
was a pretty extensive restoration. Oh that's what I'll say.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
I apologize if you don't know the answer here, But
what was the predicted failure state? Like if they hadn't intervened,
what would have happened? Does the statue of Liberty like
collapse or does like one part of it come off
with the other? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Does like her skin just sort of peel off?

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (20:51):
So from what I read, it was not a structural issue,
like it was not going to be a danger, but
it just didn't look great. People were worried about the arms,
specifically holding up the torch, but and they did try
a lot of interesting experiments to fix that and make
the torch a little fencier, like it might actually glow

(21:12):
at night. But from what I understand, it was more
of a it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Look very good issue, Okay, But in the case of
like the ships and stuff, this actually was a serious
structural issue based on galvanic corrosion, right it.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Was, and that they put those copper sheets in there
specifically to combat things that was damaging the wood, like
these wood boring worms, I think, and just wear and tear.
So it was sort of a new issue. They weren't
They weren't sure why it was happening. At first. Those
copper sheets made those ships go so much better, like faster,

(21:50):
all of that. But ones, yeah, if your whole is
falling apart, that's not great. Yeahs are coming out.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, I don't want my nails to be paste in
my ship. That's not a good place for that.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
So in a lot of these unintended cases of galvanic corrosion,
we're dealing with like natural environmental salt water salt spray
as the main electrolyte, but it can be all kinds
of things. Lots of natural, common wet organic substances have
just the right physical properties to be the electrolyte in

(22:29):
a galvanic cell. In fact, going back to Luigi Galvani,
one of Galvani's revolutionary experiments in the eighteenth century was
showing that he could make a severed frog's leg twitch
with electrical stimulation, which was only possible because animal body
parts like a frog's leg, which is food, you know.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Oh yeah, that's tasty.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
A frog's leg has moisture and ions like salts that
can conduct electricity internal. Another example of a natural, wet,
organic substance that works as a perfectly good electrolyte for
one of these cells is a potato battery. Y'all made
these in school? Yeah, oh yeah, and you play Portal two, Yes, exactly, yeah,

(23:16):
so glad ass yeah, which by the end of this episode,
I'm definitely thinking of like a Portal three with clad
oss as a lasagna, which I think that's got legs.

Speaker 4 (23:27):
It does.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
So in a potato battery, you stick a like a
copper penny and a zinc coated screw into opposite sides
of a potato, and then you wire them together, and
the wet ion rich interior of the potato facilitates the
flow of electrical current, so you can power something like
a like a little led, you know, wired between the

(23:51):
two metal pieces, though you might need more than one
potato and series to power an led because you know,
potato battery doesn't put out a lot, but you can
get a little bit of flow. In the case of
a potato battery, the anode that is sacrificed that degrades
in this redox reaction is the zinc on the screw.
It breaks down over time due to galvanic corrosion to

(24:13):
supply the electrical current to the circuit. So this brings
us back to the lasagna cell like a frog's leg
or the inside of a potato. A tray of baked
pasta like a lasagna, is usually going to be a wet,
salty mass which will facilitate the flow of electrons if
it's positioned as the electrolyte in a galvanic cell. And

(24:37):
it is actually quite easy to turn a baked pasta
dish into a galvanic cell. All you need to do
is have two different metals surrounding and touching the lasagna,
for example, a steel pan covered with a bunch of
aluminum foil. And this makes a lot of sense. Why

(24:58):
is this never happened to me? At home? Home? If
I make a baked pasta. I'm always baking in like
an you know, glass or earthenware dish. I think this time,
I don't remember exactly, but I think I may have
been baking in like a steel or metal tray of
some kind.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
A lot of less expensive cookware is going to be
made of a reactive material like steel or or aluminium.
But I think I think you got steel in this case.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Possibly it could be. I'm not one hundred percent on this,
but I think it could still be possible to have
this with aluminum foil and an aluminum pan if there's like,
you know, slight differences in the aluminum there. I'm not
sure about that, but I do think it's possible.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Generally speaking, aluminium pans are made not with totally pure aluminum,
so yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Anyway, So just think of the example of a steel
pan with baked pasta and it covered in aluminum foil.
When you do this, the steel functions as the cathode
and the aluminum is the an, meaning the aluminium is
the metal that's going to break down into grade. You
are powering electron flow through this pasta battery and in

(26:09):
the process dissolving your aluminium into the wet lasagna below,
creating a disgusting mass, a kind of melt movie slime
of aluminium ions piling up on the food. And these ions,
I think that there could be all different kinds of
aluminum ion or aluminium salt species. I think you get
a lot of aluminium hydroxide, probably which is from combining

(26:33):
aluminum combining with water. I think this is probably the
bulk of the slime. You might also get like aluminium
chloride chloride from combining with salt in an acidic tomato sauce.
So I think it is very likely that this is
what happened to my baked pasta. I made a nasty
melt movie food battery in my fridge. But I do

(26:55):
want to add an important caveat, especially because in this
series of episodes we're talking about mostly about food storage,
like the storage of cold leftovers. For this to work,
it didn't need to happen in my fridge or in
cold storage. It just happened there because that is where
I covered the pasta with aluminum foil. In fact, I

(27:16):
am almost certain this would have happened even faster if
I had covered the steel pan with foil and had
the foil touching the pasta while it was baking in
the oven. Because general adage in chemistry, most things happen
faster when it's hot. This is also true of galvanic corrosion.

(27:36):
Though hot or cold, the cell still exists and it
will eventually eat the aluminum either way. Sounds so menacing,
But Annie, you turned up something interesting, which was that
there are examples of this happening, like specifically in hot conditions.
I mean, I think a lot of the lasagna examples
people talk about are while it's baking in hot conditions,

(27:58):
but it also happens in like barbecues scenarios.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Right, Yes, And this is a fun opportunity to use
very intense terminology when it comes to barbecue. But another
food instance where galvanic corrosion of food can occur is
in barbecue when pitmasters use a technique called the Texas crutch.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
This technique entails wrapping the meat in question, usually beef
brisket or pork shoulder, in aluminum foil about halfway through
the cook time to prevent what is called the stall
are when the cooking of the meat is halted by
the evaporation released as it cooks, which cools the meat
and stalls the cook time, which in this case is
not something you want. The aluminum traps all of that

(28:45):
moisture and ideally the drippings to be reabsorbed later while
also keeping the temperature. Even if a steel pan is used,
and especially if the marinade contains any tomatoes or vinegar,
this process could lead to holes in the aluminum foil
and a loss of those precious, precious barbecue juices.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, so I'm familiar with using a crutch like method myself.
One tip that I've picked up I don't remember where
I first encountered this is wrapping it in butcher paper
instead of foil, and so that helps trap some of
the heat and moisture. But yeah, it just seems to
come out nicer than when you wrap it in foil.

(29:25):
I don't know. The exterior seems a little nicer for
some reason. I'm not sure exactly why that is. I've
never noticed galvanic corrosion happening to aluminum foil in a
barbecue scenario, but I absolutely understand that it could, and
they were mentioning this in funny shout out. I found
it amusing that, like the most comprehensive article I have

(29:46):
found about galvanic corrosion in food preparation is not like
in a food science journal or something, but it's on
this barbecue head website called Amazingribs dot com, which, to
be fair, the site looks pretty solid.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
I use them as a reference all the time on Clair.
They do great work.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, yeah, thumbs up from what I can tell. Yeah,
but yeah, so they say that like if there's the
wrong kind of contact or what you're talking about, like
a steel pan and the wrong kind of juices or
you know, a salty or acidic marinad or maybe I
think there could also be issues with just like aluminum
foil touching the grill grates. If there's you know, the

(30:26):
wrong configuration, you can sometimes get like pitting or corrosion
of the aluminum foil around the meat.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yes, and if you want more details, they've got them.
They are very serious about barbecue.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
A lot of people are oh yeah, yes, yes, we
just did an episode about Memphis style barbecue. It's our
first like foray into talking about regional barbecue without having
gone to the place and interviewed humans involved with it,
and we were.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Anxious some cautions involved yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Oh, yes, people take.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Barbecue traditions seriously.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
They do.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
We just wanted to be respectful and as correct as possible. Yeah,
we did our best. We did our best.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
I'm sure we all did great.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
I hope so.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Well.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
Something else I wanted to bring up here. I've never
heard of this, but there is something called oral galvanism.
I am not a dentist, but briefly, this refers to
a situation where the human mouth produces electric currents due
to a variety of chemical factors and interactions between the
dental materials used for things like crowns, fillings, or braces

(31:48):
and how they interact with saliva and certain types of food.
And this can lead to the accelerated breakdown of these
dental materials, and dentists are still looking into this.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
By the way, this is interesting. I look into it. Yeah,
so you can essentially do the lasagna cell type thing,
but in your mouth, with your wet mouth, the saliva,
the flesh, the tongue and all that, instead of the
baked pasta or the potato and potato battery. Yeah, you
can create a flow of electric current in the mouth.

(32:17):
And I came across a really good and I thought
kind of funny anecdote from history about oral galvanism. This
doesn't have to do with corrosion. This is just about
the flow of electricity in the mouth, and the core
takeaway is that it is not hard at all to
create a simple battery cell inside your mouth with saliva
as the electrolyte. There was this eighteenth century Swiss mathematics

(32:41):
professor and philosopher named Johann Georg Sulzer who in his
philosophy work he was really interested in the concepts of
pleasure and esthetics, like the questions what makes something beautiful?
And why is beauty pleasurable? But Sulzer was all so
famous for exploring novel dimensions of taste and pleasure with

(33:05):
his own body as the test subject. We might call
him like a heat of not And the main example
I've got here is that he was one of the
first people to describe what electrical current tastes like electro gustationian,
though he didn't realize that's what it was. He didn't understand.
This was before Galvani and volta. He didn't understand what

(33:28):
electrical current was. But he did describe this experience in
a paper published in seventeen fifty two in his right. Now,
I've got a picture of him for you to look
at here. Just look at that little smirk on his face,
like he's experiencing pleasure and pain indivisible, I believe.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah, yeah, no, that is a dude who is currently
tasting current. I love it.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
But in this writing, Solzer describes this experiment where he
takes two metals. One is a piece of silver, the
other metal. I've seen it widely reported that the other
metal was lead, but then other sources said, no, it's
not lead. There's silver and another metal. Unclear what the
second one is. And while these two metal plates were

(34:10):
touching one another at one end, he took the other
ends and pressed them on opposite sides of his tongue,
and in between them he tasted something weird, a flavor
he described as similar to that of iron vitriol, which
is what they used to call iron two sulfate. Why

(34:31):
did he already know what iron vitriol tasted like? I'm
not sure. I think this guy was probably tasting a
lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah, cool, Yeah, nothing wrong with that. Well,
I mean there might be some dangers involved.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
But another food dared devil ice exactly, yes, but he
noticed that he did not get any of that metallic
flavor when he touched either of the two metals to
his tongue independently, only when they were both on the.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Tongue at the same time and touching each other at
the other end. So the flavor that he tasted was
the flavor of his tongue functioning as the electrolyte in
the galvanic circuit.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
I believe that this is at a modern restaurant somewhere
they're doing something like this.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, what are the You'll probably know a lot better
than I do, Like, what are the weirdest, most cutting
edge restaurants out of there? What are they doing that's
like barely considered food these days?

Speaker 3 (35:29):
I don't know, like a lot of foams.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Okay, Yeah, I'm not actually up on it right now,
but I do recommend the movie The Menu to anyone
who likes horror films and has not seen it yet.
It's pretty great.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
I actually haven't seen that. I've had it on my
list for a while.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, if you're into watching cooking shows and like in
like cooking documentaries, specifically Chef's Table, they got they got
like the director of photography for chef's table to come
help them on shoot, and it shows it's what it is,
wonderful satire. I saw it in a movie theater with
the whole row of restaurant industry kids and like we

(36:08):
were cackling.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
So like beautiful food photography or food cinematography, but also gross.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
I wouldn't say gross.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Oh okay, well I just thought my brain went there
because of horror.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
But yeah, it's mostly.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
It's a satire about where they're making fun of the
cutting edge.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
This is what I had to do, okay to keep
astronomy kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, like yes, this
is the breadless bread course today. Today we're serving you
the idea of bread.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Here's a taco with your greatest secret printed on it. Yeah,
things like that.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah okay, but we got to come back to the
pasta eating the aluminum foil, my tray of pasta with
this like lotus pod trip to phobia trigger pattern of
holes in the aluminum. Poking around on the internet, there
is another possibility to explain what happened beyond galvanic corrosion.

(37:03):
Some sources out there talking about the corrosion of aluminum
foil by food also point to the possibility that acidic
foods can dissolve aluminum by a different mechanism than galvanic corrosion,
and from what I can tell, this is also true.
Acidic foods like tomatoes can indeed dissolve bits of aluminum

(37:28):
from cooking and storage vessels and from aluminum foil. And
in fact, this is not a new observation or concern.
Fears about tomatoes and other acidic foods, specifically tomatoes dissolving
metal containers, both founded and unfounded fears go back for centuries.
Right they do?

Speaker 3 (37:50):
They do? And so when you've suggested this topic, Joe,
it was really interesting to me because through the research
that Lauren and I have done on savor, I knew
that historically there is a precedent for this, or at
least something similar. When tomatoes arrived in Europe from the
Americas in the fifteen hundreds, many believed them to be

(38:12):
poisonous at first, especially wealthy Europeans. There were a lot
of reasons why the leaves and stems are lightly poisonous.
I learned this research just to have my research.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
I read recently that you can eat tomato leaves and
this blew my mind, and I'm not sure I need
to look further into it that this has been like
on my list to look into for a couple months now.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Is it one of those things that's a question of dose.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yes. Basically what I read was like, yeah, it's poisonous,
but so is alcohol, Like yeah, okay, like small dosage.
Don't take my word for that. Now. That was a
very brief research, but I have all believed that they were.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yes, But anyway, Yes.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
Another thing that most relates to what we're talking about
to for why people thought tomatoes might be poisonous is
that in the seventeen hundreds, these well off Europeans often
ate off of these pewter plates that were high in
lead content. The high acid levels from the tomato sometimes
would cause lead leakage that could result in lead poisoning

(39:18):
and even death. Because of this, rich Europeans would keep
the tomato as a decoration, poisoned close to them but
not eaten. But yeah, they would not eat them, even
going so far as to call them the poison apple.
This attitude and belief was also exported to European colonies
and colonists with the help of some prominent botanist around

(39:40):
the world for many centuries.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Yeah, this was a thing at parties, like these rich
humans would just have a table decoration of this thing
that they thought was poisonous. Yeah, they were like, what
a fun party, guys, look at this poisonous thing. I
paid so.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Much money for this poisonous thing to not look at it.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah, I only know the slightest, like headline version of this.
But have you all ever talked about is it true
that rich people in England used to rent pineapples that
they could display at parties.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
Yeah, they would carry them around like as a point
of interest, but it was too expensive to buy the pineapples,
they would rent the pineapple.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Perfect.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Rich people got up to some stuff, and I still
do and still too. That being said, the poorer classes
didn't have this tomato wead problem because they didn't have
the fancy lead filled plates, so they were able to
eat tomatoes without issue, particularly in Italy, if they could
get them anyway, because they weren't widely grown in Europe

(40:42):
at the time and they were often very expensive, and
not every European country had this hang up. To be clear,
I'm pretty sure most of France was like, no, this
is cool. But by the eighteen hundreds, in part thanks
to the invention of pizza, the belief that tomatoes were
poisonous largely fell away.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
There was also one event where this dude like publicly
was like, look, y'all, tomatoes are not poisonous and sat
on the steps of a church, I believe, and just
ate was like, I'm gonna go eat some tomatoes. Come
watch me. And a bunch of people showed up, hoping,
I guess, to see something grizzly occur. But he just
he just ate a bunch of tomatoes and eventually the
crowd dispersed.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
Wasn't that in the US? That one was in the US?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Oh I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
I love I'd love to know what they imagined might happen.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
Oh for him to die?

Speaker 3 (41:34):
You know, they were to be fair.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
This was before Netflix, Like, people had to make their
own fun.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
So the food deer devil. If food deer devils are devil.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
I mean recently someone in New York ate like a
ton of cheese puffs and a crowd showed up. So
I think these kind of food events attract a certain
crowd of.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Folks competitive eating. Hey, yeah, here we are.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
This is also more of a fun tidbit, but I
just want to throw it in here because it is fun.
There was a belief at the time that certain members
of the night shade family, like tomatoes, could be used
to summon wear wolves. In the sixteen hundred, some botanists
argued that the tomatoes should be reclassified in a new
grouping of plants called lycopersicon, which is Greek for wolf peach. So,

(42:19):
if you've ever wondered if there was an etymological connection
between the lycopene and tomatoes and lycanthropy, there is.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Oh nice lycopene is that the is that like the
red compound and the tomato peel.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
I believe, so I know it got a big health
boost like two decades ago because people were saying it
was very healthy and could possibly combat cancer. So lycopine
got a real health boost, and I knew it was
in tomatoes. Yeah, well, okay, recently, very recently actually, as

(42:55):
of twenty twenty three, some scientists have cast doubt on
this lead poisoning caused by tomatoes theory, reasoning that the
amount of lead leached from the plates by the tomatoes
acidity would have to be quite substantial to ever make
anyone sick. Instead, they suggest it was more likely that
people assumed it was poisonous due to its scientific classification

(43:20):
and its resemblance to other deadly night shades, because at
the time tomatoes were small and they often looked like berries,
similar in appearance to the poisonous belladonna. Oh, interesting, it's
a lot of classification. Mayhem, to be honest with.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
You, I mean, in the nineteenth century, European society was
not wanting for causes of lead poisoning.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
That's also true. It could have been many things.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
In a lot of industrial manufacturing and even just sort
of like craft shop scenarios, people were exposed to lead
through their work or through products that they consumed. So yeah,
there were a lot of ways to get it back
in the day.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
The interesting thing is there are a lot of accounts
of people vomiting profusely after consuming tomatoes, but a lot
of it felt more like people saying that was happening
unless than it was actually happening. But you can, if
you like me love a good horrifying historical quote about
tomatoes and how they could kill you, you can find them.

(44:22):
But it sounded like it was mostly people being like
trying to scare you. I could be wrong. I wasn't there.
But I also this got me thinking because I wonder
if there were instances of the tomatoes acid eating away
at the integrity of plates or other food vessels and

(44:43):
or causing visible corrosion, and maybe that contributing to the
fear of tomatoes, because I remember having vague fears when
I would notice visible corrosion on some of my cookware
plates and being concerned that I was ingesting something I
shouldn't be in.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Jes yeah, yeah, doesn't feel good.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Yeah, and that is a real thing. Like, like, the
issue is that some materials are reactive to acids and
bases both can erode metal surfaces, especially over time and
especially when heat is involved, as Joe said earlier, and
this can cause anything from like a little weird tint
to your food to maybe a metallic taste to your food,

(45:24):
to actually bad levels of various metals getting into and
perhaps hanging out in your body. So you know, like
very basically, if you can afford to avoid aluminum cook wear,
do that. Cast iron is reactive, but not really a
worry like like like iron particles are basically fine in
your body if you can afford to ruin copper pants

(45:48):
with tomato sauce. I don't think you're worried about any
potential health effects that you might be seeing, but yeah, like, like, generally,
if you're going to be cooking anything ascitic, like wine
or tomatoes, or if you're just boiling lemon juice or
sodium bicarbonate, look for non reactive cookwaar like stainless steel
or enameled pieces glassware for the oven. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yes, and my goodness, there are a lot of tips
out there about what types of pants to use with
what ingredients, and there are even whole articles dedicated to
acidic items like tomatoes. People do love to fight about it,
I'll say, even though there's solid science. But if you're
worried about it or curious, there is plenty of information
out there. And if you want to learn more about

(46:31):
the tomatoes frankly wild history, you can check out Savers
Tomato Reducts episode it is. I had to cut some
stuff out of this recap because I was like, this
is not actually related, but it's so interesting.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Okay, So savor tomato reducts in the search bar. I'll
get people done.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, it's a good entry point to saver folks.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Oh, it's a fun one. Were Wolves is only the
tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Okay, So I guess we want to come back to
the question of what happened to the pasta in my
case and in these other cases on the internet, where
you know lasagna is melting people's aluminum oil not melting
but dissolving, making these ugly piles of ions. So acidic
tomato sauce like you would often find in a lasagna

(47:28):
or a baked penna, can sometimes dissolve aluminum, but from
everything I've read, this acid metal reaction is typically much
slower and results in a lot less aluminum being dissolved
than you would have in the case of galvanic corrosion. However,

(47:48):
the fact that acidic tomato sauce is present may actually
help speed up the aluminum eating reaction in a galvanic
lasagna cell. However, even though this is it's all pretty
well established chemistry that you can figure out just by reading,
I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to
see if I could create a galvanic corrosion reaction in

(48:11):
food on demand. So yesterday I did an experiment. I
started staging an aluminum souer kraut melt movie experiment. So
I put out two dishes of sauer kraut on my stovetop.
Sauerkraut is I think a good electrolyte, is both salty
and acidic. And one of these I put in a

(48:34):
steel pan. The other one I put in a ceramic dish.
I covered both of them with aluminum foil, making sure
to press down the aluminum foil to the sides of
the container so to connect them, have them in contact
on the outside, and then also to press down the
foil in the middle so that it was firmly touching
the sauer kraut. And what happened here, well, I gave

(48:56):
it some time, and by God, the results are beautiful.
Within just a few hours at room temperature, there was
already a noticeable difference. Ay and Lauren, I have some
pictures in the outline for you to look at here.
This was this first picture. I don't know how much
you can see in that, but I've got another close
up down below. So I've got the steel pan on

(49:17):
top here and the ceramic pan below, or the ceramic
dish below. The ceramic shows no signs of change from
the outside, but the steel pan already after just a
few hours, has some creepy dark holes and pitting that
you can see in the close up. And then after
this in the outline, I've got some more photos from
this morning when it had had i guess probably about

(49:38):
eighteen hours to go at room temperature. And here you
really start seeing the horror. The holes are bigger, they
look gnarlier. I mean, they're still not like gigantic, but
they look creepy. They look like something that you shouldn't
be eating. And then I've also got a shot of
the sauer Kraut below where you can see the dissolved
aluminium ions on the top the cabbage as these gray

(50:02):
green blue, kind of shiny, dusty looking metallic spots.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah, forbidden glitter. It's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Aladd insane in my sour krawt. Yeah, so there was
no visible degradation or residue at all on the aluminum
covering the sour crowd in the ceramic dish. So in
both cases we had the same variable of the electrolyte.
In both cases the foil was pressed up against something
salty and acidic. Sour krowd again is both, but it

(50:34):
only dissolved and eight holes in the aluminum in the
presence of the steel pan. So I think this is
further evidence that what happened to my pasta was galvanic corrosion,
not just acidic corrosion, though the acidic nature of the
tomato sauce may possibly have helped speed it up.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
I love that you did an experiment, and this feels
like a cold case we're trying to get to the
bottom of. Yeah, have really really turned up some convincing
evidence right here.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Annie, I want you to be honest. This is your
sour kraut. Now, do you eat around this or do
you do you? Do you throw it out? You eat
around it? Or do you just eat the metal goop?

Speaker 1 (51:15):
No?

Speaker 3 (51:15):
I eat around it. Okay, I eat around it, but
if it tastes terrible, I'll try to keep going, but
I might reach a point where I'll stop. Lauren knows,
I you actually picked a great topic for me because
I do not waste food. Leftovers and how to store
them is like my lifeblood.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
I also have a stray cat mentality about food, but Annie,
Annie takes it to levels.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Yeah, I also hate hate to throw out food. I
have like anxiety sometimes when I have like too many
leftovers in the fridge at the same time, Like, okay,
I want to make sure we get to all these
before they go bad.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
Oh, Thanksgiving is a stressful time for me, even in
terms of leftovers.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
But okay, so I guess here we're obliquely addressing the
actual question of food safety. Food that has had a
bunch of aluminium ions dissolved into it, is it safe
to eat. I want to preface this by saying I
am not a food safety expert, and I don't want
to be taken as giving food safety advice. So the

(52:21):
last thing in the world is I want somebody to
eat something that they're iffy about because I said it's okay.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Oh yeah, yeah. So none of us here are medical professionals.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
Nope.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Essentially, don't listen to anything that we say.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Well, okay, I'll tell you what I've read.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
So, aluminium hydroxide is generally considered safe to consume in
small quantities, at least by like the FDA. Aluminium hydroxide
is present in other common foods and drugs. For example,
it's present in your stomach whenever you take antacids like maylocks.
There's the old brand name of this antacid that maylox

(52:59):
starts with, like mal. I think the MA is for
magnesium and the al is for aluminum because it had
magnesium and aluminum in it and that was supposed to
help counteract you know, the hydrochloric acid in your stomach
and settle the stomach. So you know, there are other cases.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Sorry what I never knew that. That's great?

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Yeah, So like, yeah, aluminium hydroxide. Again, I'm not an expert,
but it generally seems like authorities say that it's nothing
much to worry about it. I mean, anything could be
poisonous in huge quantities, but in small quantities it's not
a major concern. However, there are other aluminium ions and
aluminum salts that I don't know. It seem like maybe

(53:43):
not a good idea to consume, like aluminum chloride. I
could not find anything saying this is generally considered food
safe in any significant quantities, and it seems to me
like that compound might be present in these ion slime
pools in quantity is greater than you would want to consume.
So again hard for me to say. I'm not an expert,
I would personally just still err on the side of

(54:05):
not eating that stuff out of an abundance of caution,
especially since it's gross anyway, unless you're in a kind
of life raft survival situation, why would you need to
eat the metallic Milt movie pool.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
And I will put in here that when if you're
cooking with an aluminum pan and you get a little
bit of that leeching effect over time, over years of use,
that the danger there isn't the aluminum so much as
other metals impurities that could be in the pan, as

(54:39):
can frequently happen with very inexpensive cookwaar unfortunately, And so
that's more the long term concern about using that kind
of cookwaar, not the aluminum itself.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
So as far as the food safety authorities go, I
think the corrosion of aluminium into food is not considered
like a huge cause for concern. But again, like I
don't know, I mean, do you do you really have
to eat that? Like I would avoid it?

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Annie is like, no, I'm morally obligated.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
I'm struggling. I'm struggling to get on board with this,
but you're correct. I think that's the.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Way to go well, I'm not trying to tell other
people what to do. I'm just speaking for myself. However,
what I think where I can give advice, I think
is if you want to avoid having this problem in
the first place and not create a lasagnia sell what
are some ways around it. First of all, you could
avoid the combination of different metals surrounding your food, so

(55:38):
you can bake in like glass, ceramic or stoneware dishes.
If you do have to use a metal baking dish,
if you're baking in a steel pan or whatever, you
could not cover it in aluminum foil. Or if you
must use a metal baking pan or metal storage container
and cover it in foil, you just need to make

(55:59):
sure that the oil is not touching the food. So
if you do those things that they can pretty well
avoid turning your food into a simple battery cell, and
you can avoid having the robot melt on your cheese.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
But if you need power, and you don't have any
potatoes about, but you do have a lasagna.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
This is a good light small light bulb, a good
They did.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
The math question how many lasagna batteries would you need
to power a city?

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Listeners pools right in exactly.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
Yeah, this is where we need, we need your your
nerd power contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Yes, yes, well I actually have to thank you for
helping me solve a food mystery, Joe, because I had
not heard of the phenomena of blue garlic or green garlic.
Oh yeah, but I once in my food daredevil self
ate something that was lined with blue, and all of

(57:04):
my it shouldn't have been lined with blue, and all
of my friends constantly make fun of me about it,
And now I think I know why it happened, and
I feel incredibly vindicated.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Oh boy, this is great. So yeah, this was the
other I sort of like gave this to you as
something to look into because I've had the experience before
of food storage, of storing foods in the fridge. I
think specifically, I'm thinking of when I made like a
vacuum packed chicken breast that I put like lemon and

(57:34):
some herbs and some garlic in there with it, and
after some time I noticed the garlic was bright blue,
and that's odd, but it connected in my mind to
what I'd seen before some home pickling experiments that had
some blue or green garlic, and I was wondering what

(57:54):
is causing this reaction? What's going on here? Obviously people
might see that in wonder is that kind of thing? Say?

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Eat?

Speaker 2 (58:01):
I think personally, I just ate it and it was fine.
So yeah, fill me in any what's the deal?

Speaker 3 (58:08):
Okay, I'm gonna give a very brief rundown of this.
It's fascinating, And Lauren please jump in when we get
to the fermentation part, because Lauren is our fermentation expert.
Over all.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Yeah, I love some bacteria and yeast poop. That's what
makes the world go round.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Yes, yes, okay. So another discoloration that might give some
people pause is when garlic fermented garlic turns blue or green.
This is caused by a chemical reaction between a sulfur
containing amino acid aline and the enzyme alinase, and further
compounded by either acidic ingredients lacto fermentation are even exposure

(58:48):
to heat. Before slicing or cutting, these chemicals remain separated,
but once they're sliced they combine to form allison. This
reaction forms pyals, in turn, which are these rings of
carbon nitrogen. When these pyrols chain together, they form polypyrols.
Polypyrol molecules that imbue the garlic with a green are

(59:10):
blue hue, and it's very distinct, by the way, if
you've never seen it. If three of these molecules connect,
you get blue, while four will give you more of
a green color. The flavor pretty much remains the same
from what I read, though perhaps more assertive. I can't
really remember and when I ate, what I suspect was this.

(59:30):
I don't remember thinking it was strong of garlic, but
that's what I read. There really are a lot of
factors that go into this whole thing, the age and
size of the garlic, the cooking temperature, the acidity. The
older garlic is, the more time it has to build
up the chemicals needed for this reaction, and the acid
helps break down the cellular walls of the garlic and

(59:53):
speed up the whole process. Some speculate that using copper
utensils copper rich foods are even copper and plain old
water can contribute to this phenomenon, as well as other
metals or minerals like iron or aluminium. Just cooking garlic
alongside things like onion, which also contain sulfur, or something
acidic like lemon juice can turn your garlic blue. This

(01:00:16):
is so interesting to me, but yes, what about blue
or green pickled garlic. Well, during the process of lacto fermentation,
bacteria produce lactic acid. When exposed to that lactic acid,
over time, the acid interacts with the chemicals in garlic,
forms those polypyrols, and the garlic turns green or blue.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
It's not a mold.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
It is a normal chemical reaction that happens sometimes whether
or not the brine is highly acidic yep, perfectly safe
to eat. In some cultures and preparations, this blue or
green garlic is the desired results. For example, in northern China,
blue or green pickled garlic, called Laba garlic is a
popular accompaniment to things like dumplings, especially during the cold

(01:01:01):
season and for the Lava Festival, which takes place on
the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. To make
this whole, peeled garlic cloves are aged in a sealed
container with vinegar, typically rice vinegar. From what I've read,
this results in a more like sweet and sour, pungent
garlic flavor.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
And so the goal is intentionally to create blue or
green garlic that's like what you're going.

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
For yes, And actually when you and Robert came on
our Lunar New Year episode as a crossover, we talked
about how a lot of those foods are puns and
the history behind them. And this has a long history
and a pun behind it that I won't get into,
but it's kind of like counting up your money in
the green sort of being your money. Oh okay situation

(01:01:49):
If you are really opposed to your garlic taking on
a blue or green hue, though, there are a couple
of things you can do, like using younger garlic, keeping
your garlic cold until ready to cook, cooking onions and
garlic separately, and waiting for the garlic to cook down
a bit before adding acid. Some suggest blanching the garlic
and using stainless steel products too. There's a lot of

(01:02:09):
tips out there. I've never realized this was apparently a
big problem, but yes, it's safe to eat. So all
of this being said, garlic can mold with the tailtale
like fuzzy blue and black spots, at which time they
should be thrown out. Also, just to note, this is
different from purple garlic, which is an entirely separate variety,

(01:02:33):
so lots of lots of garlics out there, lots of
colors garlic can take on.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
I love it, right, I think I've had purple garlic
that that's just like an inherent color in the right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Yeah, it just grows that way.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Reaction.

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
Yeah, it's more assertive, is what I read researching this.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
So but no reason to be scared of the garlic
that turns blue or green during storage. You're cooking, it's moldy.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
Unless it's moldy, but you will. There's a clear difference
between moldy garlic and what we're talking about with this
blue and green garlic. It is a very bright hue.
It takes on.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
Yeah, in the case of the reaction, not the mold. Yes, yes, well, folks,
I don't want to run you off, but we are
coming up against our time limit here. It's been so
much fun talking de y'all today. Do you want to
do another episode with men? Can we do another one?

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
More weird food science, food storage, mad science, reactions, transformations, explosions.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
Yeah, yeah, I think we're in Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
I can't wait. Well, Annie, Lauren, thank you so much
for joining me today. It has been a blast. And
please remind people again where they can find your work.
I know we talked about it at the top, but
let's hit them with it again. Repetition doesn't hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Yeah, you can find our podcast saver anywhere you get
your podcast. We are also about to be on a
panel here in Atlanta at the PRX Podcast Creator Summit.
They asked us to come talk about food podcasting, so
we were like, sure, that's on July thirtieth. That's a
Wednesday from seven to nine pm. It is free, open

(01:04:18):
to the public, located at the Plywood, So come on
out if you're interested. They've got a bunch of other
really fascinating sounding like if you are into audio creation.
The whole thirtieth to the first is a bunch of
workshops with a bunch of really cool humans just trying
to make podcasting more accessible to everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
So yeah, and also, Lauren, people can find your work
on brain Stuff the podcast and any people can find
your work on stuff Mom never told you correct?

Speaker 4 (01:04:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Anything else? Before we close out, go.

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
Listen to our Tomato episode.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Okay to it. That's your homework. That's your homework, listeners, Yeah,
savor Tomato redocs. Yes, okay, let's see. Hey, if you're
new to the show today. I normally co host this
with a guy named Robert Lamb. He'll be back with me,
I believe next week or maybe later this week, but generally.

(01:05:13):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a science and culture
podcast with core episodes that publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays
of every week. On Fridays, Rob and I usually do
a different kind of episode called Weird House Cinema, where
we just talk about weird movies. They can be good,
they can be bad, they can be old, they can
be new, they can be well known or obscure. The

(01:05:35):
only real criterion is they got to be weird. Let's see.
We also do short form episodes on Wednesdays, and then
on Saturdays and Mondays we run some episodes from the vault,
older episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weird
House Cinema. If you want to find us on social media,
I think we're on some of those things. I don't know,

(01:05:57):
I'm not attached to that world, but you can definitely
find on like Instagram, and Weird House Cinema has a
profile on letterboxed dot com. That's a social kind of
film website that it has reviews and film lists and
stuff like that, I think we're just called weird house
on Letterbox. Huge thanks, of course too, Annie Reese and

(01:06:18):
Lauren Vogelbaum for joining me today, And huge thanks as
always to our excellent audio producer, Jjpozway. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or an together to suggest a topic for
the future, to tell us how many lasagna batteries it's
going to take to power a city, or anything else,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

(01:06:38):
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.