Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:00:00 PST Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101123/11532111992/dailydirt-are-you-sure-youre-eating-what-you-think-youre-eating.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101123/11532111992/dailydirt-are-you-sure-youre-eating-what-you-think-youre-eating.shtml E. Coli in beef and packaged salads, Salmonella in canteloupe, Listeria in packaged sliced apples, etc. Worries about bacterial contamination in food is pretty common, but it seems like we should also be worrying about whether the food we're eating is really what we think it is. Recently, there was the scandal in the UK over beef products that contained horsemeat. But thanks to modern day technology, scientists are now able to test food products and determine whether they are indeed what they claim to be. Here are just a few examples.

• After that whole horsemeat scandal, Burger King has announced that it will be testing its burger patties for non-beef DNA, including horse, pork, and lamb. So far, it has been testing specifically for horse DNA and hasn't found any in its beef, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's free of other kinds of animals... [url]
• The US FDA has officially adopted DNA barcoding to detect seafood mislabeling. Think you're eating "white tuna" sushi? Maybe you're actually eating "escolar" which has been banned in Japan since 1977 because the Japanese government is concerned about its "toxicity". [url]
• A laser "isotope ratio-meter," which was originally designed to study carbon isotope levels on Mars, is now being used to test the purity of honey. This kind of laser analysis can even match the honey to the flowers of a specific geographic region. Honey is expensive, so it's often adulterated with cheaper ingredients, like sugar, malt sweeteners, corn or rice syrup, to name just a few honey substitutes. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101123/11532111992 Fri, 11 May 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100521/1050369526/dailydirt-sketchy-meats-sale.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100521/1050369526/dailydirt-sketchy-meats-sale.shtml The Jungle (the novel about the meat packing industry), but a lot has changed in the field of meat since the early 1900s. However, transparency about how animals are treated before they're served onto dinner plates could perhaps use a little more work. Here are just a few recent stories that are starting to gross out some meat-eating Americans.

• Gerald Zimstein coined the term "pink slime" and the substance has been in the news because of its "yuck" factor. But pink slime isn't particularly unhealthy -- or at least it hasn't been proven so (yet?). [url]
• Tuna scrape is almost like hamburger meat, and its use in sushi could become another kind of pink slime issue. So be careful with those spicy tuna rolls... [url]
• The use of antibiotics in food production might be getting out of hand, but fortunately, we can reduce antibiotics in the meat industry by using vaccines and other techniques. The concern is that we're slowly creating a world of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. [url]
• The enzyme transglutaminase is also known as "meat glue" -- and creating frankenstein steaks from cheap cuts of meat. While transglutaminase is generally safe and naturally occurring, the danger of using it comes from gluing together pieces of meat that may have bacteria contamination -- and when the glued-together meat is merely seared on the outside, the rare inside isn't properly cooked (and not sterile like the inner part of a single piece of meat). [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100521/1050369526 Fri, 4 May 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100520/1350449515/dailydirt-to-serve-man-sushi.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100520/1350449515/dailydirt-to-serve-man-sushi.shtml

The SushiBot can serve up to 3,600 portions of nigiri sushi in an hour. Its manufacturer, Suzumo, also has bots for maki rolls, but disappointingly, these robots still need a human operator to handle the raw fish and some of the other ingredients. [url]

Yoshiaki Shiraishi was the inventor of the sushi boat conveyor belt -- an idea he borrowed from seeing beer bottles on a conveyor belt. His kaiten-zushi system helped to spread the global consumption of sushi, and it first appeared in 1958 in Japan. [url]

Sushi-related robots aren't just replacing some human workers; some are carving out completely new jobs for themselves... such as laser-cutting intricate patterns into seaweed. No human would want to do this job by hand in a busy restaurant. [url]

To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100520/1350449515