From the Vault: Food Storage Mad Science, Part 1

In this classic 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. (originally published 7/22/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Today is Saturday,
so we have a vault episode for you. This is
going to be food Storage Mad Science, Part one. It
originally published seven twenty two, twenty twenty five. This is
one that Joe did with the hosts of the Savor
podcast while I was away on vacation. But it is

(00:27):
a fun chat. They're going to get into a big
discussion about fascinating and bizarre transformations that food can undergo
while stored in the right or wrong conditions. So I
think we can all discover some new things about our
food storage techniques. Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Hello One, 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,

(01:17):
but it's great to have you back. How a y'all doing.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
Thank you for having us. It is great to be back,
and what a topic you have bought for us today.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I was just thinking the other day about the last
time we were on talking about ambergris and how weird
that one was.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
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 (01:41):
Why not?

Speaker 4 (01:42):
Why was one weird things?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Floating whale refuse and turn it into something delicious makes
perfect sense.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
So would y'all like to talk about Savor and your
other projects?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah? Where else can people find your work on the internet?

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well, yeah, 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 Stuff Mom

(02:21):
Never Told You, which is a feminist, intersectional kind of
kind of gig.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Nice, Yeah, book topics.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
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. Talig
Atlanta's Food Stories with a couple of really excellent co panelists,
and the event is free. There's a free reception afterwards

(02:53):
at Monday Night Brewing. Come have some.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Snacks and listen to us. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, I'm terrified and excited com hang out.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
That's generally how we operate.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
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

(03:27):
and have to start over.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
Yeah, thank you JY, Thank you JJ.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
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 Mind. And actually, if everything works out,
y'all are going to join me for two episodes of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind? Can I get you on
the on the record committing to that?

Speaker 4 (03:52):
Now, oh wow, you sure kind of boxing those in
a corner.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
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
inspired by a specific disturbing food memory I have that

(04:21):
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? Please?

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah, yeah, get out the flashlight. Let's make it spooky.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Okay woo. So, once upon a time, I remember this
happened when Rachel and I were on a little vacation.
We were staying at a cabin in the mountains, so
good setting. Actually this is where the slashers happened.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah yeah, and cabin in the woods.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Love it. 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 CAUs
is 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

(05:08):
made a batch of my baked pasta. I usually do
a baked penna. I think this time it was fusily
because I remember the little corkscrew shapes when when the
final horror was revealed by 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 4 (05:30):
I'm not generally a baked pasta person. I am a
pasta persona, 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

(05:50):
and crema mushroom soup. I know there's ways you can
kind of like gussie it up fous. 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 yeah, that kind of
simple savory dish. I have really fond memories of.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
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 more.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
No going to a second location with no na. Yeah,
I generally do a I do regular pasta more than
baked pasta. But when it's a baked pasta, I do
like a pinne and a tomato sauce with sausage, roasted
mushrooms and spinach, and then I bake that in a
casserole with pecorino romano and low moisture mozre mozzarella melted

(06:37):
on top. It's a jam. It's pretty good. It's sort
of inspired by I worked as a as a server
in an Italian restaurant 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 fusilli, not the pinne. Anyway,
that's not really material, but I just wanted to talk
baked pasta shop for a second. Yeah. So, yeah, So

(07:00):
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 my

(07:21):
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

(07:42):
appearance I associate with food that has been nibbled 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 when I peeled the foil away
on the pasta itself, there were these little dots and
puddles of residus do where. What it looked like was

(08:02):
that the aluminum foil had melted and left these blue
gray green polka dots all over our food. No, definitely
not appetizing.

Speaker 5 (08:13):
No.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
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.
That definitely is not what happened, Certainly.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Not in a fridge. I would be that you would
have greater problems.

Speaker 4 (08:35):
You've got a Ghostbuster esque issue happening.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, Like I'm sorry goser got into this penny.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, even in the oven, if the castrole had been
that hot, it would would have been obvious for a
number of reasons. I think it'd probably be on fire. Yeah,
I haven't done the ignition point of possitia, 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 kinw
looked like it had been nibbled on in a way,

(09:04):
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

(09:25):
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 foil has apparently dissolved and turned into an aquamarine

(09:49):
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 my baked penny. Okay, so I've got some
illustrations that I just found on Google Images for y'all
to look at. Here in the outline, what do y'all

(10:10):
think you want to dig into that?

Speaker 2 (10:12):
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.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
Thank you. Well, I'm notoriously I will eat around things.
It's not great, but I would do it.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Oh yes, stray cat mentality. Yeah, just like, oh the
food is there, not going to waste the food.

Speaker 4 (10:39):
I don't recommend it. It's not a great way to go.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
And you know the mold like it's got the little
tindrills that go inside right invisible.

Speaker 4 (10:47):
Yeah, okay, I can get very creative.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Food daredevil over here. Okay, but so first question, have
y'all ever had this experience? Does this happened to you?

Speaker 2 (11:01):
I've never seen this before.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
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 2 (11:15):
This kind of melting situation, right yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
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,

(11:40):
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 lazy into a battery.

Speaker 4 (12:04):
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 3 (12:10):
Oh sleeper like a storm or like a like a
cell of like spies. And yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
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 3 (12:28):
Really what happens when you look at the red queen?

Speaker 4 (12:32):
Oh lord, I've never tried.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
Getting out my solitaire deck.

Speaker 4 (12:38):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
Okay, So we're going to be talking about galvanic corrosion,
and I apologize in advance. Uh, 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. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Any 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 3 (13:02):
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. So galvanic corrosion is also known as by
metallic corrosion by metallic as in two metals, and it

(13:25):
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 and Alessandro Volta, respectively. These were
two different Italian guys who both separately discovered principles in

(13:45):
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, and then they are also
both in contact with an electrolyte solution. So an electrolyte

(14:11):
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 into positively charged sodium ions and
negatively charged chloride ions, and then these ions can carry

(14:33):
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 saltwater can function as
an electrolyte solution. The galvanic cell is the basic idea
that makes a battery work. The simple version of this

(14:54):
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 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

(15:16):
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 away from the
anode material and the cathode undergoes reduction. This is where
electrons flow through the outside circuit into the cathode, and

(15:38):
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 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

(16:00):
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 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

(16:23):
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 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

(16:45):
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 a fire. This degradation
of the anode, when it happens unintentionally between between two
metals in contact with an electrolyte, that is what we
call galvanic corrosion. There are a lot of common examples

(17:09):
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, So you could
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

(17:30):
and boats. I know salt does not evaporate with water
when water evaporates, but it can be carried through the
air in these little droplets as sea spray. 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

(17:55):
the less noble of the two metals over time. There
are other examples too. I think I'm one't able to
find really good specific examples of this, but I think
galvanic corrosion can sometimes happen to jewelry if there are

(18:16):
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 or sweat, and then maybe if
it has I don't know, gold and nickel or you know,
two different kinds of metals on it, something can start

(18:36):
corroding the less noble of the two metals in the jewelry.
And then there are also like really interesting historical anecdotes
where there were like consequential cases of galvanic corrosion. Any
didn't you dig up one of these?

Speaker 4 (18:50):
I did, and I was very very shocked by it
because I have specifically looking for food examples.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Yeah, but I.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
Uncovered something I did not know, so yes, on 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.
I learned so much about how to restore the Statue

(19:16):
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
something to do with the interaction of the copper sheets

(19:37):
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
had a layer of insulation between the iron and which

(20:00):
apparently accidentally was left behind during construction. Like they sure
should have taken the insulation off, but they didn't. But
this discovery kick started 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,

(20:21):
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

(20:42):
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 shellac broke down, eliminating this
layer of insulation and I apologies I always struggled to
pronounced slac. The two metals reacted and the iron started

(21:04):
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 tough one. It
was a pretty extensive restoration. Oh that's what I'll say.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
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 that.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Does, like her skin to sort of peel off.

Speaker 4 (21:35):
Yeah, 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. Some people were worried
about the arm, specifically holding up the torch, but and
they did try a lot of interesting experiments to fix
that and make the torch a little fancier, like it

(21:56):
might actually glow at night. But from what I understand,
it was more of a it doesn't look very good issue.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Okay, But in the case of like the ships and stuff,
this actually was a serious structural issue based on galvanic corrosion, right.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
It 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,

(22:34):
like faster, all of that. But uh, ones, Yeah, if
your hule is falling apart, that's not great. Yeah, I
also are coming out.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, I don't want my nails to be pacede in
my ship. That's not a good place for that.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
So in a lot of these unintended cases of galvanic corrosion,
we're dealing with like natural environmental salt water or 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

(23:13):
in 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, Yeah,

(23:36):
that's tasty. A frog's leg has moisture and ions like
salts that can conduct electricity internally. 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

(23:57):
play portal too, of course, exactly. Yeah, so glad ass yeah,
which by the end of this episode, I'm definitely thinking
of like a Portal three with Gladoss as a lasagna,
which I think that's got legs.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
It does.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
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. Uh,
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

(24:35):
the 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

(24:57):
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

(25:21):
it is. 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 is this never happened to me at home? At home?

(25:44):
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 2 (25:59):
A lot of less expensive cookware is going to be
made of a reactive material like steel or or aluminum.
But I think you got steel in this case.

Speaker 4 (26:11):
Steel.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
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 slight differences in the aluminium there. I'm not sure
about that, but I do think it's possible.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Generally speaking, aluminium pans are made not with totally pure aluminum,
so yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Anyway, So just think of the example of a steel
pan with baked pasta in it covered in aluminum foil.
When you do this, the steel functions as the cathode
and the aluminum is the anode, meaning the aluminum is
the metal that's going to break down in degrade. You
are powering electron flow through this pasta battery and in

(26:54):
the process dissolving your aluminum into the wet lasagna below
create 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
aluminium ion or aluminium salt species. I think you get
a lot of aluminium hydroxide, probably which is from combining

(27:17):
aluminium 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

(27:40):
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

(28:00):
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.

(28:21):
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.

(28:42):
But it also happens in like barbecue scenarios, right.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
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 3 (29:04):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:06):
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 right. The aluminum traps all of

(29:29):
that 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 3 (29:50):
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.

(30:10):
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

(30:31):
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 Amazing Ribs dot com, which,
to be fair, the site looks pretty solid.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
I use them as a reference all the time on flair.
They do great work.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
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, the wrong kind of juices or you know,
a salty or acidic marinade, or maybe I think there
could also be issues with just like aluminum foil touching
the grill grates. If there's you know, the wrong configuration,

(31:12):
you can sometimes get like pitting or corrosion of the
aluminum foil around the meat.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
Yes, and if you want more details, they've got them.
They are very serious about barbecue.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
A lot of people are oh, yeah, yes, yes, we
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 anxious some cautions involved.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
Yeah, oh yes, people take barbecue tradition seriously.

Speaker 4 (31:49):
They do.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
We just wanted to be respectful and as correct as possible. Yeah,
we did our best, our best.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
I'm sure we all did great.

Speaker 5 (31:59):
I hope so well.

Speaker 4 (32:10):
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

(32:32):
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 3 (32:41):
By the way, this is interesting. I looked 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 al extric current in the mouth.
And I came across a really good and I thought,

(33:03):
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

(33:26):
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 also famous
for exploring novel dimensions of taste and pleasure with his

(33:50):
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 gustation,
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

(34:13):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
I believe, yeah, yeah, no, that is a dude who
is currently tasting current. I love it.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
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 lad, 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

(34:55):
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

(35:15):
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 (35:28):
But another food dared devil ice exactly.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
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 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

(35:55):
electrolyte in the galvanic circuit.

Speaker 4 (35:57):
I believe that this is at a modern restaurant somewhere
they're doing something like.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
This, Yeah, what are 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 4 (36:13):
I don't know, like a lot of foams.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
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 3 (36:27):
I actually haven't seen that. I've had it on my
list for a while.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
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 this 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

(36:52):
like we were cackling.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
So like beautiful food photography or food cinematography, but also gross.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
I wouldn't say gross.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Oh okay, well I just thought my brain went there
because of horror but yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:05):
It's mostly it's a satire about where they're making fun
of the cutting edge.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
This is what I have to do, okay to keep
astronomy kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, like yes, this
is the breadless bread course. Today. We're today, we're serving
you the idea of bread.

Speaker 4 (37:22):
Here's a taco with your greatest secret printed on it. Yeah,
things like that.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah, okay, but we got to come back to the
pasta eating the aluminum foil, my tray of pasta with
this like lotus pod triptophobia trigger pattern of holes in
the aluminum. Poking around on the internet, there is another
possibility to explain what happened beyond galvanic corrosion. Some sources

(37:49):
out there talking about the corrosion of aluminum foil by
food also point to the possibility that acidic foods can
dissolve aluminium 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 from

(38:13):
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 4 (38:34):
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

(38:56):
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 2 (39:11):
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 3 (39:21):
Is it one of those things that's a question of dose.

Speaker 4 (39:24):
Yes, Basically what I read was like, yeah, it's poisonous,
but so is alcohol, Like yeah, like small dosage. Don't
take my word for that. Now. That was a very
brief research, but I have long believed that they were.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
Yes, but anyway.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
Yes. Another thing that most relates to what we're talking
about today 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 lead leakage that could result in lead poisoning

(40:03):
and even death. Because of this, rich Europeans would keep
the tomato as a decoration poison 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

(40:25):
the world for many centuries.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
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.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
I paid so much money for this poisonous thing to
not look at it.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah, well 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 2 (40:56):
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 4 (41:05):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
Perfect, rich people.

Speaker 4 (41:07):
Got up to some stuff and still too and still too.
That being said, the poorer classes didn't have this tomato
lead 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 at the time and they

(41:28):
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 2 (41:45):
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 going to go eat some tomatoes.
Come watch me, and a bunch of people showed up, hoping,
I guess, to see something grizzly occur. But he he
just ate a bunch of tomatoes and eventually the crowd dispersed.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
Wasn't that in the US. That one was in the US?

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Oh, I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
I'd love to know what they imagined might happen.

Speaker 4 (42:15):
Oh they were for him to die, you know, they
were to be fair.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
This was before Netflix, Like, people had to make their
own fun.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
So the food deer devil. If food deer devils are devil.

Speaker 4 (42:29):
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 2 (42:38):
Folks competitive eating. Hey, yeah, here we are.

Speaker 4 (42:41):
Yeah, this is also more of a fun tidbit, but
I just wanted 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 place. It's called lycopersicon, which is

(43:02):
Greek for wolf peach, So if you've ever wondered if
there was an etymological connection between the lycopene and tomatoes
and lycanthropy, there is.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Oh, nice, lycopene is that the is that like the
red compound and the tomato peel.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
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

(43:40):
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

(44:04):
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.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (44:15):
Interesting, it's a lot of classification, mayhem, to be honest.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
With you, I mean, in the nineteenth century European society
was not wanting for causes of lead poisoning.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
That's also true. It could have been many things.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
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 4 (44:44):
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.

(45:06):
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

(45:27):
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
or plates and being concerned that I was ingesting something
I shouldn't be ingesting.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
Yeah, Yeah, doesn't feel good.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Yeah, and that is a real thing. 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.

(46:09):
Two 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 cookware,
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

(46:32):
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 acidic
like 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.

Speaker 4 (46:53):
Yeah, 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, and
if you're worried about it or curious, there is plenty
of information out there. And if you want to learn

(47:15):
more about the tomatoes frankly wild history, you can check
out Savers Tomato Reducs 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 3 (47:29):
Okay, So Savor Tomato Reducs in the search bar. I'll
get people done.

Speaker 4 (47:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Yeah, it's a good entry point to Saver folks.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
Oh, it's a fun one. Were Wolves is only the
tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
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

(48:12):
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,

(48:33):
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 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

(48:56):
food on demand. So yesterday I did an experiment. I
started staging an aluminum sour kraut melt movie experiment. So
I put out two dishes of sauer kraut on my stovetop.
Sauer Kraut is I think a good electrolyte, is both
salty and acidic, and one of these I put in

(49:18):
a 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 soauer Kraut. And what happened here, well,

(49:41):
I gave it some time, and by God, the results
are beautiful. Within just a few hours at room temperature,
there was already a noticeable difference. Any 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. In so I've got the steel pan

(50:01):
on 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

(50:22):
about 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 sauerkraut below where you can see the dissolved

(50:42):
aluminium ions on the top of the cabbage as these
gray green blue, kind of shiny, dusty looking metallic spots.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Yeah, forbidden glitter. It's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
Aladdinsane in my soaer kraft. Yeah. So there was no
visible degradation or residue at all on the aluminum covering
the sour krowd 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 only

(51:19):
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 4 (51:37):
I love that you did an experiment, and this feels
like a cold case. We're trying to get to the
bottom of Yeah, you have really really turned up some
convincing evidence right here.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
Anny, I want you to be honest. This is your
sour kraut. Now do you eat around this or do
you do you throw it out? You eat around it,
or do you just eat the metal goop?

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (52:00):
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 2 (52:21):
I also have a stray cat mentality about food, but Annie,
Annie takes it to levels.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Yeah, I also 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 4 (52:39):
Oh, Thanksgiving is a stressful time for me, even in
terms of leftovers.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
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 I don't
want to be taken as giving food safety advice. So

(53:05):
the last thing in the world is I want somebody
to eat something that they're iffy about because I said
it's okay.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
Oh yeah, yeah. So none of us here are medical professionals.

Speaker 4 (53:14):
Nope.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Essentially, don't listen to anything that we say.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
Okay, I'll tell you what I've read. Okay. 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

(53:39):
the old brand name of this antacid that maylox starts with,
like ma al. 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. Sorry,

(54:02):
what I never knew that.

Speaker 5 (54:03):
That's great.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
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 aluminum ions and
aluminum salts that I don't know. It seem like maybe

(54:27):
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 quantities 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

(54:49):
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 melt movie pool?

Speaker 2 (55:03):
And I will put in here that when if you're
cooking with an aluminium 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

(55:23):
can frequently happen with very inexpensive cookwaar unfortunately, and so
that that's more the long term concern about using that
kind of cookwaar, not the aluminum itself.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
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 once again, like
I don't know, I mean, do you do you really
have to eat that? Like I would avoid it.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Annie is like, no, I'm morally obligated.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
I'm struggling. I'm struggling to get on board with this,
but you're correct, I think that's go. Well.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
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 lasagna cell, what are some ways around it.
First of all, you could avoid the combination of different
metals surrounding your food, so you can bake in like glass,

(56:24):
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 sure that the foil is not touching

(56:45):
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 2 (56:58):
But if you need power, and you don't have any
potatoes about, but you do have a lasagna.

Speaker 4 (57:05):
This is a good kid light small light bulba.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
A good They did the math question, how many lasagna
batteries would you need to power a city?

Speaker 4 (57:19):
Listeners pools right in exactly.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
Yeah, this is where we need. We need your your
nerd power contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com.

Speaker 4 (57:28):
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

(57:49):
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 3 (57:58):
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

(58:18):
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

(58:39):
is causing this reaction? What's going on here? Obviously people
might see that in wonder is that kind of thing
safe to eat? I think personally I just ate it
and it was fine. But so yeah, fill me in
any what's the deal?

Speaker 4 (58:53):
Okay, I'm going to 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 2 (59:03):
Yeah, I love some bacteria and yeast poop. That's It's
what makes the world go round.

Speaker 4 (59:08):
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 alline and the enzyme alinase, and further
compounded by either acidic ingredients lacto fermentation are even exposure

(59:33):
to heat. Before slicing or cutting, these chemicals remain separated,
but once they're sliced, they combine to form allisin. This
reaction forms pyrolls, 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

(59:54):
blue hue, and it's very distinct, by the way, if
you've never seen it. If the 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,

(01:00:15):
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

(01:00:37):
speed up the whole process. Some speculate that using copper utensils,
copper rich foods, or even copper and plain old tapwater
can contribute to this phenomenon, as well as other metals
or minerals like iron or aluminum. Just cooking garlic alongside
things like onion, which also contain sulfur, or something acidic
like lemon juice can turn your garlic blue. This is

(01:01:00):
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.

(01:01:22):
It's not a mold. 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 are green pickled garlic, called lava garlic,
is a popular accompaniment to things like dumplings, especially during

(01:01:45):
the cold 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 3 (01:02:05):
And so the goal is intentionally to create blue or
green garlic. That's like what you're going.

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
Oh okay situation.

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
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

(01:02:54):
tips out there. I've never realized this was apparently a
big problem, but yes, it's safety eat So all 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. So lots

(01:03:18):
of lots of garlics out there, lots of colors garlic
can take on.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
I love it, right, I think I've had purple garlic.
That's just like an inherent color in the bulb, right.

Speaker 4 (01:03:29):
It just that way reaction. Yeah, it's more assertive, is
what I read researching this.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
So, but no reason to be scared of the garlic
that turns blue or green during storage you're cooking, unless
it's moldy.

Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
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 3 (01:03:57):
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 to y'all today. Do you want to
do another episode with me? Can we do another one?

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
More weird food science, food storage, mad science, reactions, transformations, explosions.

Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
Chris, Yes, yeah, I think we're in Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
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 2 (01:04:40):
Yeah, you can find our podcast saver anywhere you get
your podcasts.

Speaker 4 (01:04:45):
We are also.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
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 It
is free, open to the public, located at the Plywood,
So come on out if you're interested. They've got a

(01:05:06):
bunch of other really fascinating sounding like if you are
into audio creation. The whole thirty 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 3 (01:05:21):
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 1 (01:05:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
Anything else?

Speaker 4 (01:05:33):
Before we close out, go listen to our Tomato episode. Okay,
do it?

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
That's your homework. That's your homework, listeners, Yeah, savor tomato, reducs. 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, Stuff to Blow Your

(01:05:59):
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 only real criterion is they got

(01:06:21):
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, I'm not

(01:06:42):
attached to that world, but you can definitely find us
on like Instagram, and Weird House Cinema has a profile
on letterboxed dot com. That's a social kind of film
website that has reviews and film lists and stuff like that.
I think we're just called Weird House on letterbox. Huge thanks,
of course to Annie Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum for joining

(01:07:04):
me today, and huge thanks as always to our excellent
audio producer, JJ Pouzway. If you would like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
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 your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.