Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Joe McCormick. My regular co host, Robert Lamb
Speaker 2: is out today, so instead I am being joined by
Speaker 2: a couple of guest hosts, my friends and colleagues, Annie
Speaker 2: Reese and Lauren Vogel Bomb. Hey, Annie and Lauren, Welcome
Speaker 2: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's not your first time,
Speaker 2: but it's great to have you back. How are y'all doing?
Speaker 3: Thank you for having us. It is great to be back.
Speaker 3: And what a topic you have brought for us today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking the other day about
Speaker 1: the last time we were on talking about ambergris and
Speaker 1: how weird that one was.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, yeah, delicious squidbeaks, because the weird thing
Speaker 2: was that we figured out that you can eat ambergris
Speaker 2: and many people have.
Speaker 1: Why not? Why was one weird thingsing whale refuse and
Speaker 1: turn it into something delicious makes perfect sense?
Speaker 2: So would y'all like to talk about Savor and your
Speaker 2: other projects? Yeah? Where else can people find your work
Speaker 2: on the internet?
Speaker 1: Well? Yeah, A Saver is a podcast about food history
Speaker 1: and science and culture, and you can find it on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: And I also do a short form science and history
Speaker 1: show called brain Stuff. Annie does another stuff podcast called
Speaker 1: Stuff Mom Never Told You, which is a feminist, intersectional
Speaker 1: kind of kind of gig. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nice, Yeah, book topics.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. We're also about to be on a panel
Speaker 1: at PRX in Atlanta that is the Podcast Creator Summit.
Speaker 1: It's happening July thirtieth through August first, And yeah, we're
Speaker 1: on a panel on the thirtieth called Feeding the Culture
Speaker 1: taligantlant As Food Stories with a couple of really excellent
Speaker 1: co panelists and the event is free. There's a free
Speaker 1: reception afterwards at Monday Night brewing. Come have some snacks
Speaker 1: and listen to a great time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm terrified and excited com hang out.
Speaker 3: That's generally how we operate.
Speaker 2: But yeah, are you in the same boat as us that? Like,
Speaker 2: I'm somebody who talks for a living, but I'm kind
Speaker 2: of scared of doing live events because I'm not good
Speaker 2: at talking extemporaneously without preparation, and also, like I stumble
Speaker 2: over my words a lot, And that's why we rely
Speaker 2: on our wonderful producer JJ to edit out the parts
Speaker 2: where I say a sentence in a completely mangled way
Speaker 2: and have to start over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, yes, thank you JJ.
Speaker 2: Well, as with the last time you were on the show.
Speaker 2: Because y'all do such great work with food science and
Speaker 2: food history on SAVER, I thought it would be a
Speaker 2: good idea to talk about something food related on Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your And actually, if everything works out, y'all
Speaker 2: are going to join me for two episodes of Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind? Can I can I get you
Speaker 2: on the on the record committing to that now? Oh wow?
Speaker 3: You sure kind of boxing those in.
Speaker 2: A corner, but so yeah, Tuesday and Thursday of this week,
Speaker 2: we're going to do a part one and a part two, uh,
Speaker 2: discussing the strange and spooky things that can happen to
Speaker 2: leftovers and other foods during storage. I'm thinking of calling
Speaker 2: this series food storage mad Science. And this idea was
Speaker 2: inspired by a specific disturbing food memory I have that
Speaker 2: still haunts me. Unfortunately I can't remember some of the
Speaker 2: key details about it. But can I tell you a
Speaker 2: campfire story about food and see if y'all have ever
Speaker 2: had similar experiences?
Speaker 1: Please?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, get out the flashlight. Let's make it spooky.
Speaker 2: Okay woo. So once upon a time, I remember this
Speaker 2: happened when Rachel and I were we're on a little vacation.
Speaker 2: We were staying at a cabin in the mountains. So good.
Speaker 2: Actually this is where the slashers happened. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Adam in the woods love it.
Speaker 2: But the other thing, the other horror here I don't
Speaker 2: know if y'all can relate, is I'm the cook, the
Speaker 2: main cook in our house, but I was not cooking
Speaker 2: with my normal home equipment, and that always causes frustrations
Speaker 2: for me. I like to be able to use my
Speaker 2: own pans and utensils and stuff. But so you know,
Speaker 2: I was using somebody else's equipment, and I made a
Speaker 2: batch of my baked pasta. I usually do a baked penna.
Speaker 2: I think this time it was fusili because I remember
Speaker 2: the little corkscrew shapes when when the final horror was revealed.
Speaker 2: But the way before I go on, do y'all do
Speaker 2: have like a go to baked pasta dishneath it? Are
Speaker 2: y'all baked pasta people or not?
Speaker 3: I'm not generally a baked pasta person. I am a
Speaker 3: pasta person. Yeah, but I do have a nostalgia for
Speaker 3: a post Thanksgiving baked pasta. My mom used to make
Speaker 3: turkey tetrazini, yes, which she would just use shredded turkey,
Speaker 3: angel hair pasta and cuma mushroom soup. I know there's
Speaker 3: ways you can kind of like gussie it up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's felicious. We have done an episode on it over
Speaker 3: on Savor, and it's one of those things that people
Speaker 3: disagree about how to make it, which is pretty much
Speaker 3: everything but that kind of simple savory dish. I have
Speaker 3: really fond memories of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm too lazy to make a baked pasta like
Speaker 1: pasta all day, but I'm not going to put it
Speaker 1: in the oven, Like that's an extra step that's way
Speaker 1: too much.
Speaker 2: No going to a second location. No, No, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: generally do a I do regular pasta more than baked pasta.
Speaker 2: But when it's a baked pasta, I do like a
Speaker 2: pinna and a tomato sauce with sausage, roasted mushrooms and spinach,
Speaker 2: and then I bake that in a casserole with pecorina
Speaker 2: romano and low moisture mozzarella. Mozzarella melted on top. It's
Speaker 2: a jam. It's pretty good. It's sort of inspired by
Speaker 2: I worked as a as a server in an Italian
Speaker 2: stant when I was in college, and they had a
Speaker 2: dish kind of like this, but like without spinach in it.
Speaker 2: So I've modified it over the years, but that's what
Speaker 2: I was doing, except this time I'm pretty sure it
Speaker 2: was the fusille, not the pinny. Anyway, that's not really material.
Speaker 2: But just wanted to talk baked pasta shop for a second. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I made this batch of baked pasta, and the
Speaker 2: story starts very normally. I baked it, we ate it
Speaker 2: the first night, and after it cooled off, I covered
Speaker 2: it up with aluminum foil and I put the leftovers
Speaker 2: in the fridge. And then a day or two later,
Speaker 2: I don't remember exactly when it was, I pulled the
Speaker 2: leftovers out so we could eat some more, and to
Speaker 2: my horror and disgust, I found the aluminum foil pitted
Speaker 2: with tiny holes in places where the little pasta corkscrews
Speaker 2: had been in contact with the foil. Now the holes
Speaker 2: were alarming enough, because it almost looked like it had
Speaker 2: that appearance I associate with food that has been nibbled
Speaker 2: by like cockroaches or maybe mice, like a little kind
Speaker 2: of nibbled on eaten by a pest. Look. But then
Speaker 2: it got even worse because I when I peeled the
Speaker 2: foil away on the pasta itself, there were these little
Speaker 2: dots and puddles of residue where what it looked like
Speaker 2: was that the aluminum foil had melted and left these blue,
Speaker 2: gray green polka dots all over our food. Definitely not appetizing. No,
Speaker 2: at the time, I had no idea what had happened,
Speaker 2: even though it looked like a form of melting that
Speaker 2: was obviously not possible. The melting point of aluminum foil
Speaker 2: is it's very high. It's something like six hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty degrees celsius or more than twelve hundred degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 2: That definitely is not what happened.
Speaker 1: Certainly not in a fridge. I would be that you
Speaker 1: would have greater problems.
Speaker 3: You got a Ghostbuster esque issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I'm sorry, goser got into this penny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even the oven. If the castle had been that hot,
Speaker 2: it would have been obvious for a number of reasons.
Speaker 2: I think it'd probably be on fire. I haven't done
Speaker 2: the ignition point of posita, I don't know, but there
Speaker 2: would be no more moisture left in it, obviously, so
Speaker 2: there's no way the foil was melting. It kind of
Speaker 2: looked like it had been nibbled on in a way,
Speaker 2: but that didn't make any sense because it was stored
Speaker 2: inside the refrigerator. So I think at the time, I
Speaker 2: just assumed this was some sort of weird chemical reaction,
Speaker 2: but we were in a hurry. I didn't have time
Speaker 2: to look into it or figure out if it was
Speaker 2: safe to eat, so I just discarded it moved on,
Speaker 2: and so I was curious what was happening here. And
Speaker 2: that's the first thing I want to talk about in
Speaker 2: our series of weird food storage reactions, because I looked
Speaker 2: into this and I discovered that my experience here was
Speaker 2: not unique. You can find posts on the Internet of
Speaker 2: people reacting with curiosity and horror to the fact that
Speaker 2: aluminum oil has apparently dissolved and turned into an aquamarine
Speaker 2: gun metal stain on their food and the food. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: in the vast majority of these cases, especially where you
Speaker 2: can find pictures on the internet, is lasagna quite similar
Speaker 2: to my baked penny. Okay, so I've got some illustrations
Speaker 2: that I just found on Google Images for you all
Speaker 2: to look at here in the outline. What do y'all
Speaker 2: think you want to dig into that?
Speaker 1: No? No, that's gnarly. I don't want no, unless you
Speaker 1: have used a blue cheese. I don't want my lasagna
Speaker 1: to be that color. And I'm not Actually I would
Speaker 1: totally eat a blue cheese lasagna. I was about to no, no,
Speaker 1: that sounds great, but so no, the answer is no,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm notoriously. I will eat around things. It's not great,
Speaker 3: but I.
Speaker 4: Would do it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, stray cat mentality. Yeah, just like, oh the
Speaker 1: food is there? Not going to waste the food. I
Speaker 1: don't recommend it. It's not a great way to go.
Speaker 2: And you know the mold like it's got the little
Speaker 2: t that go inside right invisible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I can get very creative.
Speaker 2: Food daredevil over here. Okay, But so first question, have
Speaker 2: y'all ever had this experience? Does this happen to you?
Speaker 1: I've never seen this before.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't think I've ever I've had aluminum foil
Speaker 3: get stuck to a dish like little bits of it
Speaker 3: and just kind of ate around it. But I don't
Speaker 3: think I've ever had this happen before.
Speaker 1: This kind of melting situation, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, well then I'll just have to use my
Speaker 2: experience as the reference point here. But rest assured, it's
Speaker 2: not just me. This does happen to people all the time.
Speaker 2: Often it freaks them out and they don't understand what
Speaker 2: it is, much like me in this scenario. And the
Speaker 2: question is what is causing this, what's actually happening. In
Speaker 2: most cases, there seems to be a pretty clear answer,
Speaker 2: and that answer is something called galvanic corrosion. In the
Speaker 2: context of food, this has a cute name. It's often
Speaker 2: called the lasagna cell. So in crude terms, this is
Speaker 2: when the wrong combination of storage choices or cooking vessel
Speaker 2: choices turns a tray of lasagna into a battery.
Speaker 3: I feel like lasagna cell. You called it cute, but
Speaker 3: I'd be nervous. This is a lasagna that's out to
Speaker 3: get me.
Speaker 2: Oh, sleeper cell like a storm or like a like
Speaker 2: a cell of like spies.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, yeah, we are concerned by the way
Speaker 1: that Annie is herself a sleeper cell. Oh, there's a
Speaker 1: few words that she pronounces in British English.
Speaker 2: Really, what happens when you look at the red queen?
Speaker 3: Oh lord, I've never tried.
Speaker 2: Getting on my solitaire deck. Uh. Okay, So we're gonna
Speaker 2: be talking about galvanic corrosion, and I apologize in advance.
Speaker 2: You know, electrochemistry is not my strong suit. But I
Speaker 2: really did my homework here, so I worked hard to
Speaker 2: make sure I'm getting all this right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anytime people start talking about electrons, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: so you mean a wizard. A wizard is doing something cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but right now I think, yeah, I think we've got this.
Speaker 2: I had the same experience. I was like, okay, I
Speaker 2: really want to understand what happened to my food. I
Speaker 2: start looking into it. I find a good answer, but
Speaker 2: then I'm like, oh no, I'm gonna have to remember
Speaker 2: again what all this stuff is and how batteries work.
Speaker 2: But it's okay. I think I got a lock on
Speaker 2: it now.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Galvanic corrosion is also known as by metallic corrosion by
Speaker 2: metallic as in two metals, and it happens when you've
Speaker 2: got two different metals arranged in what's called a galvanic cell,
Speaker 2: also known as a voltaic cell. These two things are
Speaker 2: basically the same thing, but they're named after Luigi Galvani
Speaker 2: and Alessandro Volta, respectively. These were two different Italian guys
Speaker 2: who both set discovered principles in the late eighteenth century
Speaker 2: that led to the development of the electric battery. So
Speaker 2: a galvanic cell is a structure where you've got these
Speaker 2: two different metals, for example, copper and zinc, and they're
Speaker 2: electrically connected to each other, so imagine connected by a wire.
Speaker 2: And then they are also both in contact with an
Speaker 2: electrolyte solution. So an electrolyte is a substance that can
Speaker 2: conduct electricity when dissolved in a fluid. For example, table
Speaker 2: salt sodium chloride is an electrolyte. When you dissolve table
Speaker 2: salt in a glass of water, the sodium chloride separates
Speaker 2: into positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chloride ions,
Speaker 2: and then these ions can carry an electrical charge through
Speaker 2: the water. If the salt water is placed between two
Speaker 2: different electrical potentials for example, two differently charged pieces of metal,
Speaker 2: so salt water can function as an electrolyte. Solution, the
Speaker 2: galvanic cell is the basic idea that makes a battery work.
Speaker 2: The simple version of this explanation is that inside a battery,
Speaker 2: you're going to have two substances. One is called a cathode,
Speaker 2: one's called an anode, and these will be electrically connected
Speaker 2: to each other, so like wired together, and then also
Speaker 2: both in contact with a shared electrolyte solution. Often in
Speaker 2: a battery it's going to be a gel. In modern batteries,
Speaker 2: the cathode and the anode undergo a chemical reaction called
Speaker 2: a redox reaction, and that's short for reduction oxidation. The
Speaker 2: anode goes through what's called oxidation, that's where electrons flow
Speaker 2: away from the anode material, and the cathode undergoes reduction.
Speaker 2: This is where electrons flow through the outside circuit into
Speaker 2: the cathode, and then you also have ions, which are
Speaker 2: a little charged atoms or molecules, flowing through the electrolyte
Speaker 2: solution to complete the circuit. This of course creates electrical
Speaker 2: flow electrical current, which is useful in powering whatever you've
Speaker 2: got included in the circuit. This is how batteries provide
Speaker 2: electricity to things, usually by putting a number of these
Speaker 2: cells in series to create more voltage. And so here's
Speaker 2: where we get to the corrosion part. As this redox
Speaker 2: reaction goes on over time, the material of the anode
Speaker 2: actually physically degrades and loses mass because electrons are flowing
Speaker 2: away from the anode. Leftover positively charged ions dissolve out
Speaker 2: of the mass of the anode and into the electrolyte solution.
Speaker 2: And when this happens, in a lot of cases, you
Speaker 2: can see by looking at it that the anode is
Speaker 2: losing its chemical and physical integrity. It just sort of
Speaker 2: bleeds out into the middle. This is not a perfect analogy,
Speaker 2: but you could look at this physical degradation of the
Speaker 2: substance of the anode as the fuel that is spent
Speaker 2: to power the circuit, kind of like how wood is
Speaker 2: burned in order to power the oxidation reaction that is
Speaker 2: a fire. This degradation of the anode, when it happens
Speaker 2: unintentionally between two metals in contact with an electrolyte, that
Speaker 2: is what we call galvanic corrosion. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of common examples of galvanic corrosion in the world that
Speaker 2: don't have anything to do with food. Galvanic corrosion happens
Speaker 2: to like screws and other fasteners holding metal in place,
Speaker 2: so you can think of like steel screws on an
Speaker 2: aluminum base. Especially. It seems like a lot of the
Speaker 2: examples happen in the vicinity of the sea, on seaside buildings,
Speaker 2: on ships and boats. I know salt does not evaporate
Speaker 2: with water when water evaporates, but it can be like
Speaker 2: carried through the air in these little droplets as sea spray.
Speaker 2: So stuff that's next to the ocean, or even especially
Speaker 2: sitting in the ocean, but next to it, also it
Speaker 2: gets the sea spray salty moisture getting all over it
Speaker 2: and getting in between bimetallic components, and this will end
Speaker 2: up dissolving the less noble of the two metals over time.
Speaker 2: There are other examples too. I think I'm one able
Speaker 2: to find really good specific examples of this, but I
Speaker 2: think galvanic corrosion can sometimes happen to jewelry if there
Speaker 2: are two different metals and enough sweat or if you
Speaker 2: like wear the jewelry while bathing or swimming, you can
Speaker 2: end up with a kind of electrolyte water in between them.
Speaker 2: You know, salty water, sweat and then maybe if it
Speaker 2: has i don't know, gold and nickel or you know,
Speaker 2: two different kinds of metals on it, something can start
Speaker 2: corroding the less noble of the two metals in the jewelry.
Speaker 2: And then there are also like really interesting historical anecdotes
Speaker 2: where they were like consequential cases of galvanic corrosion. Any
Speaker 2: didn't you dig up one of these?
Speaker 3: I did, and I was very, very shocked by it
Speaker 3: because I was specifically looking for food examples, but I
Speaker 3: uncovered something I did not know, So yes, non food wise,
Speaker 3: there is a really interesting history and a long history
Speaker 3: of scientists and engineers trying to combat galvanic corrosion when
Speaker 3: it comes to naval ships and even the Statue of Liberty.
Speaker 3: I learned so much about how to restore the Statue
Speaker 3: of Liberty, but I'm going to condense it, Okay. Beginning
Speaker 3: in the seventeen hundreds, ships in the British Royal Navy
Speaker 3: started displaying signs of corrosion in the iron nails holding
Speaker 3: the ships together. Alarmed officials launched an investigation, and they
Speaker 3: did all these experiments, and they realized that it had
Speaker 3: something to do with the interaction of the copper sheets
Speaker 3: inserted in the ships below the waterline of the vessel
Speaker 3: and the iron nails, causing the sheets of copper to
Speaker 3: detach from the wooden holes. Investigation revealed that while some
Speaker 3: of the nails remained intact, others had almost completely dissolved
Speaker 3: into this kind of paste. Yeah, the intact nails still
Speaker 3: had a layer of insulation between the iron and copper,
Speaker 3: which apparently accidentally was left behind during construction. Like they
Speaker 3: sure should have taken the insulation off, but they didn't.
Speaker 3: But this discovery kickstarted even further experiments with different materials
Speaker 3: and coatings and how they reacted when exposed to salt water.
Speaker 3: The British Royal Navy arrived at using a copper zinc alloy,
Speaker 3: but then okay, jumping ahead. In the nineteen eighties, maintenance
Speaker 3: workers realized that the Statue of Liberty had been affected
Speaker 3: by galvanic corrosion. The outer copper layers were separating from
Speaker 3: the internal cast iron structure. When the Statue of Liberty
Speaker 3: was originally constructed in eighteen eighty six, there was this
Speaker 3: thin layer of shelleck between iron and copper, and it
Speaker 3: acted as an insulation. Over the years of exposure, to
Speaker 3: the salt watery atmosphere of Liberty Island and rainfall leaking
Speaker 3: down from the torch. The sillac broke down, eliminating this
Speaker 3: layer of insulation, and I apologies I always struggle to
Speaker 3: pronounce silac. The two metals reacted and the iron started
Speaker 3: to rust. To stop this process, the cast iron was
Speaker 3: replaced with stainless steel, which is resistant to corrosion, and
Speaker 3: the sillac was replaced with PTFE or tef one. It
Speaker 3: was a pretty extensive restoration. Oh that's what I'll say.
Speaker 2: I apologize if you don't know the answer here, But
Speaker 2: what was the predicted failure state? Like if they hadn't intervened,
Speaker 2: what would have happened? Does the statue of Liberty like
Speaker 2: collapse or does like one part of it come off
Speaker 2: with the other? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Does like her skin just sort of peel off?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So from what I read, it was not a structural issue,
Speaker 3: like it was not going to be a danger, but
Speaker 3: it just didn't look great. People were worried about the arms,
Speaker 3: specifically holding up the torch, but and they did try
Speaker 3: a lot of interesting experiments to fix that and make
Speaker 3: the torch a little fencier, like it might actually glow
Speaker 3: at night. But from what I understand, it was more
Speaker 3: of a it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Look very good issue, Okay, But in the case of
Speaker 2: like the ships and stuff, this actually was a serious
Speaker 2: structural issue based on galvanic corrosion, right it.
Speaker 3: Was, and that they put those copper sheets in there
Speaker 3: specifically to combat things that was damaging the wood, like
Speaker 3: these wood boring worms, I think, and just wear and tear.
Speaker 3: So it was sort of a new issue. They weren't
Speaker 3: They weren't sure why it was happening. At first. Those
Speaker 3: copper sheets made those ships go so much better, like faster,
Speaker 3: all of that. But ones, yeah, if your whole is
Speaker 3: falling apart, that's not great. Yeahs are coming out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want my nails to be paste in
Speaker 1: my ship. That's not a good place for that.
Speaker 2: So in a lot of these unintended cases of galvanic corrosion,
Speaker 2: we're dealing with like natural environmental salt water salt spray
Speaker 2: as the main electrolyte, but it can be all kinds
Speaker 2: of things. Lots of natural, common wet organic substances have
Speaker 2: just the right physical properties to be the electrolyte in
Speaker 2: a galvanic cell. In fact, going back to Luigi Galvani,
Speaker 2: one of Galvani's revolutionary experiments in the eighteenth century was
Speaker 2: showing that he could make a severed frog's leg twitch
Speaker 2: with electrical stimulation, which was only possible because animal body
Speaker 2: parts like a frog's leg, which is food, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's tasty.
Speaker 2: A frog's leg has moisture and ions like salts that
Speaker 2: can conduct electricity internal. Another example of a natural, wet,
Speaker 2: organic substance that works as a perfectly good electrolyte for
Speaker 2: one of these cells is a potato battery. Y'all made
Speaker 2: these in school? Yeah, oh yeah, and you play Portal two, Yes, exactly, yeah,
Speaker 2: so glad ass yeah, which by the end of this episode,
Speaker 2: I'm definitely thinking of like a Portal three with clad
Speaker 2: oss as a lasagna, which I think that's got legs.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 2: So in a potato battery, you stick a like a
Speaker 2: copper penny and a zinc coated screw into opposite sides
Speaker 2: of a potato, and then you wire them together, and
Speaker 2: the wet ion rich interior of the potato facilitates the
Speaker 2: flow of electrical current, so you can power something like
Speaker 2: a like a little led, you know, wired between the
Speaker 2: two metal pieces, though you might need more than one
Speaker 2: potato and series to power an led because you know,
Speaker 2: potato battery doesn't put out a lot, but you can
Speaker 2: get a little bit of flow. In the case of
Speaker 2: a potato battery, the anode that is sacrificed that degrades
Speaker 2: in this redox reaction is the zinc on the screw.
Speaker 2: It breaks down over time due to galvanic corrosion to
Speaker 2: supply the electrical current to the circuit. So this brings
Speaker 2: us back to the lasagna cell like a frog's leg
Speaker 2: or the inside of a potato. A tray of baked
Speaker 2: pasta like a lasagna, is usually going to be a wet,
Speaker 2: salty mass which will facilitate the flow of electrons if
Speaker 2: it's positioned as the electrolyte in a galvanic cell. And
Speaker 2: it is actually quite easy to turn a baked pasta
Speaker 2: dish into a galvanic cell. All you need to do
Speaker 2: is have two different metals surrounding and touching the lasagna,
Speaker 2: for example, a steel pan covered with a bunch of
Speaker 2: aluminum foil. And this makes a lot of sense. Why
Speaker 2: is this never happened to me? At home? Home? If
Speaker 2: I make a baked pasta. I'm always baking in like
Speaker 2: an you know, glass or earthenware dish. I think this time,
Speaker 2: I don't remember exactly, but I think I may have
Speaker 2: been baking in like a steel or metal tray of
Speaker 2: some kind.
Speaker 1: A lot of less expensive cookware is going to be
Speaker 1: made of a reactive material like steel or or aluminium.
Speaker 1: But I think I think you got steel in this case.
Speaker 2: Possibly it could be. I'm not one hundred percent on this,
Speaker 2: but I think it could still be possible to have
Speaker 2: this with aluminum foil and an aluminum pan if there's like,
Speaker 2: you know, slight differences in the aluminum there. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure about that, but I do think it's possible.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, aluminium pans are made not with totally pure aluminum,
Speaker 1: so yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: Anyway, So just think of the example of a steel
Speaker 2: pan with baked pasta and it covered in aluminum foil.
Speaker 2: When you do this, the steel functions as the cathode
Speaker 2: and the aluminum is the an, meaning the aluminium is
Speaker 2: the metal that's going to break down into grade. You
Speaker 2: are powering electron flow through this pasta battery and in
Speaker 2: the process dissolving your aluminium into the wet lasagna below,
Speaker 2: creating a disgusting mass, a kind of melt movie slime
Speaker 2: of aluminium ions piling up on the food. And these ions,
Speaker 2: I think that there could be all different kinds of
Speaker 2: aluminum ion or aluminium salt species. I think you get
Speaker 2: a lot of aluminium hydroxide, probably which is from combining
Speaker 2: aluminum combining with water. I think this is probably the
Speaker 2: bulk of the slime. You might also get like aluminium
Speaker 2: chloride chloride from combining with salt in an acidic tomato sauce.
Speaker 2: So I think it is very likely that this is
Speaker 2: what happened to my baked pasta. I made a nasty
Speaker 2: melt movie food battery in my fridge. But I do
Speaker 2: want to add an important caveat, especially because in this
Speaker 2: series of episodes we're talking about mostly about food storage,
Speaker 2: like the storage of cold leftovers. For this to work,
Speaker 2: it didn't need to happen in my fridge or in
Speaker 2: cold storage. It just happened there because that is where
Speaker 2: I covered the pasta with aluminum foil. In fact, I
Speaker 2: am almost certain this would have happened even faster if
Speaker 2: I had covered the steel pan with foil and had
Speaker 2: the foil touching the pasta while it was baking in
Speaker 2: the oven. Because general adage in chemistry, most things happen
Speaker 2: faster when it's hot. This is also true of galvanic corrosion.
Speaker 2: Though hot or cold, the cell still exists and it
Speaker 2: will eventually eat the aluminum either way. Sounds so menacing,
Speaker 2: But Annie, you turned up something interesting, which was that
Speaker 2: there are examples of this happening, like specifically in hot conditions.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think a lot of the lasagna examples
Speaker 2: people talk about are while it's baking in hot conditions,
Speaker 2: but it also happens in like barbecues scenarios.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, And this is a fun opportunity to use
Speaker 3: very intense terminology when it comes to barbecue. But another
Speaker 3: food instance where galvanic corrosion of food can occur is
Speaker 3: in barbecue when pitmasters use a technique called the Texas crutch.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: This technique entails wrapping the meat in question, usually beef
Speaker 3: brisket or pork shoulder, in aluminum foil about halfway through
Speaker 3: the cook time to prevent what is called the stall
Speaker 3: are when the cooking of the meat is halted by
Speaker 3: the evaporation released as it cooks, which cools the meat
Speaker 3: and stalls the cook time, which in this case is
Speaker 3: not something you want. The aluminum traps all of that
Speaker 3: moisture and ideally the drippings to be reabsorbed later while
Speaker 3: also keeping the temperature. Even if a steel pan is used,
Speaker 3: and especially if the marinade contains any tomatoes or vinegar,
Speaker 3: this process could lead to holes in the aluminum foil
Speaker 3: and a loss of those precious, precious barbecue juices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm familiar with using a crutch like method myself.
Speaker 2: One tip that I've picked up I don't remember where
Speaker 2: I first encountered this is wrapping it in butcher paper
Speaker 2: instead of foil, and so that helps trap some of
Speaker 2: the heat and moisture. But yeah, it just seems to
Speaker 2: come out nicer than when you wrap it in foil.
Speaker 2: I don't know. The exterior seems a little nicer for
Speaker 2: some reason. I'm not sure exactly why that is. I've
Speaker 2: never noticed galvanic corrosion happening to aluminum foil in a
Speaker 2: barbecue scenario, but I absolutely understand that it could, and
Speaker 2: they were mentioning this in funny shout out. I found
Speaker 2: it amusing that, like the most comprehensive article I have
Speaker 2: found about galvanic corrosion in food preparation is not like
Speaker 2: in a food science journal or something, but it's on
Speaker 2: this barbecue head website called Amazingribs dot com, which, to
Speaker 2: be fair, the site looks pretty solid.
Speaker 1: I use them as a reference all the time on Clair.
Speaker 1: They do great work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, thumbs up from what I can tell. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, so they say that like if there's the
Speaker 2: wrong kind of contact or what you're talking about, like
Speaker 2: a steel pan and the wrong kind of juices or
Speaker 2: you know, a salty or acidic marinad or maybe I
Speaker 2: think there could also be issues with just like aluminum
Speaker 2: foil touching the grill grates. If there's you know, the
Speaker 2: wrong configuration, you can sometimes get like pitting or corrosion
Speaker 2: of the aluminum foil around the meat.
Speaker 3: Yes, and if you want more details, they've got them.
Speaker 3: They are very serious about barbecue.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are oh yeah, yes, yes, we
Speaker 1: just did an episode about Memphis style barbecue. It's our
Speaker 1: first like foray into talking about regional barbecue without having
Speaker 1: gone to the place and interviewed humans involved with it,
Speaker 1: and we were.
Speaker 2: Anxious some cautions involved yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, people take.
Speaker 2: Barbecue traditions seriously.
Speaker 3: They do.
Speaker 1: We just wanted to be respectful and as correct as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did our best. We did our best.
Speaker 2: I'm sure we all did great.
Speaker 1: I hope so.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Something else I wanted to bring up here. I've never
Speaker 3: heard of this, but there is something called oral galvanism.
Speaker 3: I am not a dentist, but briefly, this refers to
Speaker 3: a situation where the human mouth produces electric currents due
Speaker 3: to a variety of chemical factors and interactions between the
Speaker 3: dental materials used for things like crowns, fillings, or braces
Speaker 3: and how they interact with saliva and certain types of food.
Speaker 3: And this can lead to the accelerated breakdown of these
Speaker 3: dental materials, and dentists are still looking into this.
Speaker 2: By the way, this is interesting. I look into it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you can essentially do the lasagna cell type thing,
Speaker 2: but in your mouth, with your wet mouth, the saliva,
Speaker 2: the flesh, the tongue and all that, instead of the
Speaker 2: baked pasta or the potato and potato battery. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can create a flow of electric current in the mouth.
Speaker 2: And I came across a really good and I thought
Speaker 2: kind of funny anecdote from history about oral galvanism. This
Speaker 2: doesn't have to do with corrosion. This is just about
Speaker 2: the flow of electricity in the mouth, and the core
Speaker 2: takeaway is that it is not hard at all to
Speaker 2: create a simple battery cell inside your mouth with saliva
Speaker 2: as the electrolyte. There was this eighteenth century Swiss mathematics
Speaker 2: professor and philosopher named Johann Georg Sulzer who in his
Speaker 2: philosophy work he was really interested in the concepts of
Speaker 2: pleasure and esthetics, like the questions what makes something beautiful?
Speaker 2: And why is beauty pleasurable? But Sulzer was all so
Speaker 2: famous for exploring novel dimensions of taste and pleasure with
Speaker 2: his own body as the test subject. We might call
Speaker 2: him like a heat of not And the main example
Speaker 2: I've got here is that he was one of the
Speaker 2: first people to describe what electrical current tastes like electro gustationian,
Speaker 2: though he didn't realize that's what it was. He didn't understand.
Speaker 2: This was before Galvani and volta. He didn't understand what
Speaker 2: electrical current was. But he did describe this experience in
Speaker 2: a paper published in seventeen fifty two in his right. Now,
Speaker 2: I've got a picture of him for you to look
Speaker 2: at here. Just look at that little smirk on his face,
Speaker 2: like he's experiencing pleasure and pain indivisible, I believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that is a dude who is currently
Speaker 1: tasting current. I love it.
Speaker 2: But in this writing, Solzer describes this experiment where he
Speaker 2: takes two metals. One is a piece of silver, the
Speaker 2: other metal. I've seen it widely reported that the other
Speaker 2: metal was lead, but then other sources said, no, it's
Speaker 2: not lead. There's silver and another metal. Unclear what the
Speaker 2: second one is. And while these two metal plates were
Speaker 2: touching one another at one end, he took the other
Speaker 2: ends and pressed them on opposite sides of his tongue,
Speaker 2: and in between them he tasted something weird, a flavor
Speaker 2: he described as similar to that of iron vitriol, which
Speaker 2: is what they used to call iron two sulfate. Why
Speaker 2: did he already know what iron vitriol tasted like? I'm
Speaker 2: not sure. I think this guy was probably tasting a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah, cool, Yeah, nothing wrong with that. Well,
Speaker 2: I mean there might be some dangers involved.
Speaker 4: But another food dared devil ice exactly, yes, but he
Speaker 4: noticed that he did not get any of that metallic
Speaker 4: flavor when he touched either of the two metals to
Speaker 4: his tongue independently, only when they were both on the.
Speaker 2: Tongue at the same time and touching each other at
Speaker 2: the other end. So the flavor that he tasted was
Speaker 2: the flavor of his tongue functioning as the electrolyte in
Speaker 2: the galvanic circuit.
Speaker 3: I believe that this is at a modern restaurant somewhere
Speaker 3: they're doing something like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are the You'll probably know a lot better
Speaker 2: than I do, Like, what are the weirdest, most cutting
Speaker 2: edge restaurants out of there? What are they doing that's
Speaker 2: like barely considered food these days?
Speaker 3: I don't know, like a lot of foams.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I'm not actually up on it right now,
Speaker 1: but I do recommend the movie The Menu to anyone
Speaker 1: who likes horror films and has not seen it yet.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great.
Speaker 2: I actually haven't seen that. I've had it on my
Speaker 2: list for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're into watching cooking shows and like in
Speaker 1: like cooking documentaries, specifically Chef's Table, they got they got
Speaker 1: like the director of photography for chef's table to come
Speaker 1: help them on shoot, and it shows it's what it is,
Speaker 1: wonderful satire. I saw it in a movie theater with
Speaker 1: the whole row of restaurant industry kids and like we
Speaker 1: were cackling.
Speaker 2: So like beautiful food photography or food cinematography, but also gross.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say gross.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well I just thought my brain went there
Speaker 2: because of horror.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's mostly.
Speaker 3: It's a satire about where they're making fun of the
Speaker 3: cutting edge.
Speaker 1: This is what I had to do, okay to keep
Speaker 1: astronomy kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, like yes, this
Speaker 1: is the breadless bread course today. Today we're serving you
Speaker 1: the idea of bread.
Speaker 3: Here's a taco with your greatest secret printed on it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay, but we got to come back to the
Speaker 2: pasta eating the aluminum foil, my tray of pasta with
Speaker 2: this like lotus pod trip to phobia trigger pattern of
Speaker 2: holes in the aluminum. Poking around on the internet, there
Speaker 2: is another possibility to explain what happened beyond galvanic corrosion.
Speaker 2: Some sources out there talking about the corrosion of aluminum
Speaker 2: foil by food also point to the possibility that acidic
Speaker 2: foods can dissolve aluminum by a different mechanism than galvanic corrosion,
Speaker 2: and from what I can tell, this is also true.
Speaker 2: Acidic foods like tomatoes can indeed dissolve bits of aluminum
Speaker 2: from cooking and storage vessels and from aluminum foil. And
Speaker 2: in fact, this is not a new observation or concern.
Speaker 2: Fears about tomatoes and other acidic foods, specifically tomatoes dissolving
Speaker 2: metal containers, both founded and unfounded fears go back for centuries.
Speaker 2: Right they do?
Speaker 3: They do? And so when you've suggested this topic, Joe,
Speaker 3: it was really interesting to me because through the research
Speaker 3: that Lauren and I have done on savor, I knew
Speaker 3: that historically there is a precedent for this, or at
Speaker 3: least something similar. When tomatoes arrived in Europe from the
Speaker 3: Americas in the fifteen hundreds, many believed them to be
Speaker 3: poisonous at first, especially wealthy Europeans. There were a lot
Speaker 3: of reasons why the leaves and stems are lightly poisonous.
Speaker 3: I learned this research just to have my research.
Speaker 1: I read recently that you can eat tomato leaves and
Speaker 1: this blew my mind, and I'm not sure I need
Speaker 1: to look further into it that this has been like
Speaker 1: on my list to look into for a couple months now.
Speaker 2: Is it one of those things that's a question of dose.
Speaker 3: Yes. Basically what I read was like, yeah, it's poisonous,
Speaker 3: but so is alcohol, Like yeah, okay, like small dosage.
Speaker 3: Don't take my word for that. Now. That was a
Speaker 3: very brief research, but I have all believed that they were.
Speaker 1: Yes, But anyway, Yes.
Speaker 3: Another thing that most relates to what we're talking about
Speaker 3: to for why people thought tomatoes might be poisonous is
Speaker 3: that in the seventeen hundreds, these well off Europeans often
Speaker 3: ate off of these pewter plates that were high in
Speaker 3: lead content. The high acid levels from the tomato sometimes
Speaker 3: would cause lead leakage that could result in lead poisoning
Speaker 3: and even death. Because of this, rich Europeans would keep
Speaker 3: the tomato as a decoration, poisoned close to them but
Speaker 3: not eaten. But yeah, they would not eat them, even
Speaker 3: going so far as to call them the poison apple.
Speaker 3: This attitude and belief was also exported to European colonies
Speaker 3: and colonists with the help of some prominent botanist around
Speaker 3: the world for many centuries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a thing at parties, like these rich
Speaker 1: humans would just have a table decoration of this thing
Speaker 1: that they thought was poisonous. Yeah, they were like, what
Speaker 1: a fun party, guys, look at this poisonous thing. I
Speaker 1: paid so.
Speaker 3: Much money for this poisonous thing to not look at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I only know the slightest, like headline version of this.
Speaker 2: But have you all ever talked about is it true
Speaker 2: that rich people in England used to rent pineapples that
Speaker 2: they could display at parties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they would carry them around like as a point
Speaker 1: of interest, but it was too expensive to buy the pineapples,
Speaker 1: they would rent the pineapple.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Perfect.
Speaker 3: Rich people got up to some stuff, and I still
Speaker 3: do and still too. That being said, the poorer classes
Speaker 3: didn't have this tomato wead problem because they didn't have
Speaker 3: the fancy lead filled plates, so they were able to
Speaker 3: eat tomatoes without issue, particularly in Italy, if they could
Speaker 3: get them anyway, because they weren't widely grown in Europe
Speaker 3: at the time and they were often very expensive, and
Speaker 3: not every European country had this hang up. To be clear,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure most of France was like, no, this
Speaker 3: is cool. But by the eighteen hundreds, in part thanks
Speaker 3: to the invention of pizza, the belief that tomatoes were
Speaker 3: poisonous largely fell away.
Speaker 1: There was also one event where this dude like publicly
Speaker 1: was like, look, y'all, tomatoes are not poisonous and sat
Speaker 1: on the steps of a church, I believe, and just
Speaker 1: ate was like, I'm gonna go eat some tomatoes. Come
Speaker 1: watch me. And a bunch of people showed up, hoping,
Speaker 1: I guess, to see something grizzly occur. But he just
Speaker 1: he just ate a bunch of tomatoes and eventually the
Speaker 1: crowd dispersed.
Speaker 3: Wasn't that in the US? That one was in the US?
Speaker 1: Oh I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I love I'd love to know what they imagined might happen.
Speaker 1: Oh for him to die?
Speaker 3: You know, they were to be fair.
Speaker 1: This was before Netflix, Like, people had to make their
Speaker 1: own fun.
Speaker 2: So the food deer devil. If food deer devils are devil.
Speaker 3: I mean recently someone in New York ate like a
Speaker 3: ton of cheese puffs and a crowd showed up. So
Speaker 3: I think these kind of food events attract a certain
Speaker 3: crowd of.
Speaker 1: Folks competitive eating. Hey, yeah, here we are.
Speaker 3: This is also more of a fun tidbit, but I
Speaker 3: just want to throw it in here because it is fun.
Speaker 3: There was a belief at the time that certain members
Speaker 3: of the night shade family, like tomatoes, could be used
Speaker 3: to summon wear wolves. In the sixteen hundred, some botanists
Speaker 3: argued that the tomatoes should be reclassified in a new
Speaker 3: grouping of plants called lycopersicon, which is Greek for wolf peach. So,
Speaker 3: if you've ever wondered if there was an etymological connection
Speaker 3: between the lycopene and tomatoes and lycanthropy, there is.
Speaker 2: Oh nice lycopene is that the is that like the
Speaker 2: red compound and the tomato peel.
Speaker 3: I believe, so I know it got a big health
Speaker 3: boost like two decades ago because people were saying it
Speaker 3: was very healthy and could possibly combat cancer. So lycopine
Speaker 3: got a real health boost, and I knew it was
Speaker 3: in tomatoes. Yeah, well, okay, recently, very recently actually, as
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty three, some scientists have cast doubt on
Speaker 3: this lead poisoning caused by tomatoes theory, reasoning that the
Speaker 3: amount of lead leached from the plates by the tomatoes
Speaker 3: acidity would have to be quite substantial to ever make
Speaker 3: anyone sick. Instead, they suggest it was more likely that
Speaker 3: people assumed it was poisonous due to its scientific classification
Speaker 3: and its resemblance to other deadly night shades, because at
Speaker 3: the time tomatoes were small and they often looked like berries,
Speaker 3: similar in appearance to the poisonous belladonna. Oh, interesting, it's
Speaker 3: a lot of classification. Mayhem, to be honest with.
Speaker 2: You, I mean, in the nineteenth century, European society was
Speaker 2: not wanting for causes of lead poisoning.
Speaker 3: That's also true. It could have been many things.
Speaker 2: In a lot of industrial manufacturing and even just sort
Speaker 2: of like craft shop scenarios, people were exposed to lead
Speaker 2: through their work or through products that they consumed. So yeah,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of ways to get it back
Speaker 2: in the day.
Speaker 3: The interesting thing is there are a lot of accounts
Speaker 3: of people vomiting profusely after consuming tomatoes, but a lot
Speaker 3: of it felt more like people saying that was happening
Speaker 3: unless than it was actually happening. But you can, if
Speaker 3: you like me love a good horrifying historical quote about
Speaker 3: tomatoes and how they could kill you, you can find them.
Speaker 3: But it sounded like it was mostly people being like
Speaker 3: trying to scare you. I could be wrong. I wasn't there.
Speaker 3: But I also this got me thinking because I wonder
Speaker 3: if there were instances of the tomatoes acid eating away
Speaker 3: at the integrity of plates or other food vessels and
Speaker 3: or causing visible corrosion, and maybe that contributing to the
Speaker 3: fear of tomatoes, because I remember having vague fears when
Speaker 3: I would notice visible corrosion on some of my cookware
Speaker 3: plates and being concerned that I was ingesting something I
Speaker 3: shouldn't be in.
Speaker 2: Jes yeah, yeah, doesn't feel good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is a real thing. Like, like, the
Speaker 1: issue is that some materials are reactive to acids and
Speaker 1: bases both can erode metal surfaces, especially over time and
Speaker 1: especially when heat is involved, as Joe said earlier, and
Speaker 1: this can cause anything from like a little weird tint
Speaker 1: to your food to maybe a metallic taste to your food,
Speaker 1: to actually bad levels of various metals getting into and
Speaker 1: perhaps hanging out in your body. So you know, like
Speaker 1: very basically, if you can afford to avoid aluminum cook wear,
Speaker 1: do that. Cast iron is reactive, but not really a
Speaker 1: worry like like like iron particles are basically fine in
Speaker 1: your body if you can afford to ruin copper pants
Speaker 1: with tomato sauce. I don't think you're worried about any
Speaker 1: potential health effects that you might be seeing, but yeah, like, like, generally,
Speaker 1: if you're going to be cooking anything ascitic, like wine
Speaker 1: or tomatoes, or if you're just boiling lemon juice or
Speaker 1: sodium bicarbonate, look for non reactive cookwaar like stainless steel
Speaker 1: or enameled pieces glassware for the oven. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, and my goodness, there are a lot of tips
Speaker 3: out there about what types of pants to use with
Speaker 3: what ingredients, and there are even whole articles dedicated to
Speaker 3: acidic items like tomatoes. People do love to fight about it,
Speaker 3: I'll say, even though there's solid science. But if you're
Speaker 3: worried about it or curious, there is plenty of information
Speaker 3: out there. And if you want to learn more about
Speaker 3: the tomatoes frankly wild history, you can check out Savers
Speaker 3: Tomato Reducts episode it is. I had to cut some
Speaker 3: stuff out of this recap because I was like, this
Speaker 3: is not actually related, but it's so interesting.
Speaker 2: Okay, So savor tomato reducts in the search bar. I'll
Speaker 2: get people done.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good entry point to saver folks.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a fun one. Were Wolves is only the
Speaker 3: tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I guess we want to come back to
Speaker 2: the question of what happened to the pasta in my
Speaker 2: case and in these other cases on the internet, where
Speaker 2: you know lasagna is melting people's aluminum oil not melting
Speaker 2: but dissolving, making these ugly piles of ions. So acidic
Speaker 2: tomato sauce like you would often find in a lasagna
Speaker 2: or a baked penna, can sometimes dissolve aluminum, but from
Speaker 2: everything I've read, this acid metal reaction is typically much
Speaker 2: slower and results in a lot less aluminum being dissolved
Speaker 2: than you would have in the case of galvanic corrosion. However,
Speaker 2: the fact that acidic tomato sauce is present may actually
Speaker 2: help speed up the aluminum eating reaction in a galvanic
Speaker 2: lasagna cell. However, even though this is it's all pretty
Speaker 2: well established chemistry that you can figure out just by reading,
Speaker 2: I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to
Speaker 2: see if I could create a galvanic corrosion reaction in
Speaker 2: food on demand. So yesterday I did an experiment. I
Speaker 2: started staging an aluminum souer kraut melt movie experiment. So
Speaker 2: I put out two dishes of sauer kraut on my stovetop.
Speaker 2: Sauerkraut is I think a good electrolyte, is both salty
Speaker 2: and acidic. And one of these I put in a
Speaker 2: steel pan. The other one I put in a ceramic dish.
Speaker 2: I covered both of them with aluminum foil, making sure
Speaker 2: to press down the aluminum foil to the sides of
Speaker 2: the container so to connect them, have them in contact
Speaker 2: on the outside, and then also to press down the
Speaker 2: foil in the middle so that it was firmly touching
Speaker 2: the sauer kraut. And what happened here, well, I gave
Speaker 2: it some time, and by God, the results are beautiful.
Speaker 2: Within just a few hours at room temperature, there was
Speaker 2: already a noticeable difference. Ay and Lauren, I have some
Speaker 2: pictures in the outline for you to look at here.
Speaker 2: This was this first picture. I don't know how much
Speaker 2: you can see in that, but I've got another close
Speaker 2: up down below. So I've got the steel pan on
Speaker 2: top here and the ceramic pan below, or the ceramic
Speaker 2: dish below. The ceramic shows no signs of change from
Speaker 2: the outside, but the steel pan already after just a
Speaker 2: few hours, has some creepy dark holes and pitting that
Speaker 2: you can see in the close up. And then after
Speaker 2: this in the outline, I've got some more photos from
Speaker 2: this morning when it had had i guess probably about
Speaker 2: eighteen hours to go at room temperature. And here you
Speaker 2: really start seeing the horror. The holes are bigger, they
Speaker 2: look gnarlier. I mean, they're still not like gigantic, but
Speaker 2: they look creepy. They look like something that you shouldn't
Speaker 2: be eating. And then I've also got a shot of
Speaker 2: the sauer Kraut below where you can see the dissolved
Speaker 2: aluminium ions on the top the cabbage as these gray
Speaker 2: green blue, kind of shiny, dusty looking metallic spots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, forbidden glitter. It's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Aladd insane in my sour krawt. Yeah, so there was
Speaker 2: no visible degradation or residue at all on the aluminum
Speaker 2: covering the sour crowd in the ceramic dish. So in
Speaker 2: both cases we had the same variable of the electrolyte.
Speaker 2: In both cases the foil was pressed up against something
Speaker 2: salty and acidic. Sour krowd again is both, but it
Speaker 2: only dissolved and eight holes in the aluminum in the
Speaker 2: presence of the steel pan. So I think this is
Speaker 2: further evidence that what happened to my pasta was galvanic corrosion,
Speaker 2: not just acidic corrosion, though the acidic nature of the
Speaker 2: tomato sauce may possibly have helped speed it up.
Speaker 3: I love that you did an experiment, and this feels
Speaker 3: like a cold case we're trying to get to the
Speaker 3: bottom of. Yeah, have really really turned up some convincing
Speaker 3: evidence right here.
Speaker 2: Annie, I want you to be honest. This is your
Speaker 2: sour kraut. Now, do you eat around this or do
Speaker 2: you do you? Do you throw it out? You eat
Speaker 2: around it? Or do you just eat the metal goop?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I eat around it. Okay, I eat around it, but
Speaker 3: if it tastes terrible, I'll try to keep going, but
Speaker 3: I might reach a point where I'll stop. Lauren knows,
Speaker 3: I you actually picked a great topic for me because
Speaker 3: I do not waste food. Leftovers and how to store
Speaker 3: them is like my lifeblood.
Speaker 1: I also have a stray cat mentality about food, but Annie,
Speaker 1: Annie takes it to levels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also hate hate to throw out food. I
Speaker 2: have like anxiety sometimes when I have like too many
Speaker 2: leftovers in the fridge at the same time, Like, okay,
Speaker 2: I want to make sure we get to all these
Speaker 2: before they go bad.
Speaker 3: Oh, Thanksgiving is a stressful time for me, even in
Speaker 3: terms of leftovers.
Speaker 2: But okay, so I guess here we're obliquely addressing the
Speaker 2: actual question of food safety. Food that has had a
Speaker 2: bunch of aluminium ions dissolved into it, is it safe
Speaker 2: to eat. I want to preface this by saying I
Speaker 2: am not a food safety expert, and I don't want
Speaker 2: to be taken as giving food safety advice. So the
Speaker 2: last thing in the world is I want somebody to
Speaker 2: eat something that they're iffy about because I said it's okay.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. So none of us here are medical professionals.
Speaker 3: Nope.
Speaker 1: Essentially, don't listen to anything that we say.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, I'll tell you what I've read.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So, aluminium hydroxide is generally considered safe to consume in
Speaker 2: small quantities, at least by like the FDA. Aluminium hydroxide
Speaker 2: is present in other common foods and drugs. For example,
Speaker 2: it's present in your stomach whenever you take antacids like maylocks.
Speaker 2: There's the old brand name of this antacid that maylox
Speaker 2: starts with, like mal. I think the MA is for
Speaker 2: magnesium and the al is for aluminum because it had
Speaker 2: magnesium and aluminum in it and that was supposed to
Speaker 2: help counteract you know, the hydrochloric acid in your stomach
Speaker 2: and settle the stomach. So you know, there are other cases.
Speaker 1: Sorry what I never knew that. That's great?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So like, yeah, aluminium hydroxide. Again, I'm not an expert,
Speaker 2: but it generally seems like authorities say that it's nothing
Speaker 2: much to worry about it. I mean, anything could be
Speaker 2: poisonous in huge quantities, but in small quantities it's not
Speaker 2: a major concern. However, there are other aluminium ions and
Speaker 2: aluminum salts that I don't know. It seem like maybe
Speaker 2: not a good idea to consume, like aluminum chloride. I
Speaker 2: could not find anything saying this is generally considered food
Speaker 2: safe in any significant quantities, and it seems to me
Speaker 2: like that compound might be present in these ion slime
Speaker 2: pools in quantity is greater than you would want to consume.
Speaker 2: So again hard for me to say. I'm not an expert,
Speaker 2: I would personally just still err on the side of
Speaker 2: not eating that stuff out of an abundance of caution,
Speaker 2: especially since it's gross anyway, unless you're in a kind
Speaker 2: of life raft survival situation, why would you need to
Speaker 2: eat the metallic Milt movie pool.
Speaker 1: And I will put in here that when if you're
Speaker 1: cooking with an aluminum pan and you get a little
Speaker 1: bit of that leeching effect over time, over years of use,
Speaker 1: that the danger there isn't the aluminum so much as
Speaker 1: other metals impurities that could be in the pan, as
Speaker 1: can frequently happen with very inexpensive cookwaar unfortunately, And so
Speaker 1: that's more the long term concern about using that kind
Speaker 1: of cookwaar, not the aluminum itself.
Speaker 2: So as far as the food safety authorities go, I
Speaker 2: think the corrosion of aluminium into food is not considered
Speaker 2: like a huge cause for concern. But again, like I
Speaker 2: don't know, I mean, do you do you really have
Speaker 2: to eat that? Like I would avoid it?
Speaker 1: Annie is like, no, I'm morally obligated.
Speaker 3: I'm struggling. I'm struggling to get on board with this,
Speaker 3: but you're correct. I think that's the.
Speaker 2: Way to go well, I'm not trying to tell other
Speaker 2: people what to do. I'm just speaking for myself. However,
Speaker 2: what I think where I can give advice, I think
Speaker 2: is if you want to avoid having this problem in
Speaker 2: the first place and not create a lasagnia sell what
Speaker 2: are some ways around it. First of all, you could
Speaker 2: avoid the combination of different metals surrounding your food, so
Speaker 2: you can bake in like glass, ceramic or stoneware dishes.
Speaker 2: If you do have to use a metal baking dish,
Speaker 2: if you're baking in a steel pan or whatever, you
Speaker 2: could not cover it in aluminum foil. Or if you
Speaker 2: must use a metal baking pan or metal storage container
Speaker 2: and cover it in foil, you just need to make
Speaker 2: sure that the oil is not touching the food. So
Speaker 2: if you do those things that they can pretty well
Speaker 2: avoid turning your food into a simple battery cell, and
Speaker 2: you can avoid having the robot melt on your cheese.
Speaker 1: But if you need power, and you don't have any
Speaker 1: potatoes about, but you do have a lasagna.
Speaker 3: This is a good light small light bulb, a good
Speaker 3: They did.
Speaker 2: The math question how many lasagna batteries would you need
Speaker 2: to power a city?
Speaker 3: Listeners pools right in exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where we need, we need your your
Speaker 2: nerd power contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, well I actually have to thank you for
Speaker 3: helping me solve a food mystery, Joe, because I had
Speaker 3: not heard of the phenomena of blue garlic or green garlic.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but I once in my food daredevil self
Speaker 3: ate something that was lined with blue, and all of
Speaker 3: my it shouldn't have been lined with blue, and all
Speaker 3: of my friends constantly make fun of me about it,
Speaker 3: And now I think I know why it happened, and
Speaker 3: I feel incredibly vindicated.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, this is great. So yeah, this was the
Speaker 2: other I sort of like gave this to you as
Speaker 2: something to look into because I've had the experience before
Speaker 2: of food storage, of storing foods in the fridge. I
Speaker 2: think specifically, I'm thinking of when I made like a
Speaker 2: vacuum packed chicken breast that I put like lemon and
Speaker 2: some herbs and some garlic in there with it, and
Speaker 2: after some time I noticed the garlic was bright blue,
Speaker 2: and that's odd, but it connected in my mind to
Speaker 2: what I'd seen before some home pickling experiments that had
Speaker 2: some blue or green garlic, and I was wondering what
Speaker 2: is causing this reaction? What's going on here? Obviously people
Speaker 2: might see that in wonder is that kind of thing? Say?
Speaker 3: Eat?
Speaker 2: I think personally, I just ate it and it was fine.
Speaker 2: So yeah, fill me in any what's the deal?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm gonna give a very brief rundown of this.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating, And Lauren please jump in when we get
Speaker 3: to the fermentation part, because Lauren is our fermentation expert.
Speaker 3: Over all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love some bacteria and yeast poop. That's what
Speaker 1: makes the world go round.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, okay. So another discoloration that might give some
Speaker 3: people pause is when garlic fermented garlic turns blue or green.
Speaker 3: This is caused by a chemical reaction between a sulfur
Speaker 3: containing amino acid aline and the enzyme alinase, and further
Speaker 3: compounded by either acidic ingredients lacto fermentation are even exposure
Speaker 3: to heat. Before slicing or cutting, these chemicals remain separated,
Speaker 3: but once they're sliced they combine to form allison. This
Speaker 3: reaction forms pyals, in turn, which are these rings of
Speaker 3: carbon nitrogen. When these pyrols chain together, they form polypyrols.
Speaker 3: Polypyrol molecules that imbue the garlic with a green are
Speaker 3: blue hue, and it's very distinct, by the way, if
Speaker 3: you've never seen it. If three of these molecules connect,
Speaker 3: you get blue, while four will give you more of
Speaker 3: a green color. The flavor pretty much remains the same
Speaker 3: from what I read, though perhaps more assertive. I can't
Speaker 3: really remember and when I ate, what I suspect was this.
Speaker 3: I don't remember thinking it was strong of garlic, but
Speaker 3: that's what I read. There really are a lot of
Speaker 3: factors that go into this whole thing, the age and
Speaker 3: size of the garlic, the cooking temperature, the acidity. The
Speaker 3: older garlic is, the more time it has to build
Speaker 3: up the chemicals needed for this reaction, and the acid
Speaker 3: helps break down the cellular walls of the garlic and
Speaker 3: speed up the whole process. Some speculate that using copper
Speaker 3: utensils copper rich foods are even copper and plain old
Speaker 3: water can contribute to this phenomenon, as well as other
Speaker 3: metals or minerals like iron or aluminium. Just cooking garlic
Speaker 3: alongside things like onion, which also contain sulfur, or something
Speaker 3: acidic like lemon juice can turn your garlic blue. This
Speaker 3: is so interesting to me, but yes, what about blue
Speaker 3: or green pickled garlic. Well, during the process of lacto fermentation,
Speaker 3: bacteria produce lactic acid. When exposed to that lactic acid,
Speaker 3: over time, the acid interacts with the chemicals in garlic,
Speaker 3: forms those polypyrols, and the garlic turns green or blue.
Speaker 2: It's not a mold.
Speaker 3: It is a normal chemical reaction that happens sometimes whether
Speaker 3: or not the brine is highly acidic yep, perfectly safe
Speaker 3: to eat. In some cultures and preparations, this blue or
Speaker 3: green garlic is the desired results. For example, in northern China,
Speaker 3: blue or green pickled garlic, called Laba garlic is a
Speaker 3: popular accompaniment to things like dumplings, especially during the cold
Speaker 3: season and for the Lava Festival, which takes place on
Speaker 3: the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. To make
Speaker 3: this whole, peeled garlic cloves are aged in a sealed
Speaker 3: container with vinegar, typically rice vinegar. From what I've read,
Speaker 3: this results in a more like sweet and sour, pungent
Speaker 3: garlic flavor.
Speaker 2: And so the goal is intentionally to create blue or
Speaker 2: green garlic that's like what you're going.
Speaker 3: For yes, And actually when you and Robert came on
Speaker 3: our Lunar New Year episode as a crossover, we talked
Speaker 3: about how a lot of those foods are puns and
Speaker 3: the history behind them. And this has a long history
Speaker 3: and a pun behind it that I won't get into,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of like counting up your money in
Speaker 3: the green sort of being your money. Oh okay situation
Speaker 3: If you are really opposed to your garlic taking on
Speaker 3: a blue or green hue, though, there are a couple
Speaker 3: of things you can do, like using younger garlic, keeping
Speaker 3: your garlic cold until ready to cook, cooking onions and
Speaker 3: garlic separately, and waiting for the garlic to cook down
Speaker 3: a bit before adding acid. Some suggest blanching the garlic
Speaker 3: and using stainless steel products too. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: tips out there. I've never realized this was apparently a
Speaker 3: big problem, but yes, it's safe to eat. So all
Speaker 3: of this being said, garlic can mold with the tailtale
Speaker 3: like fuzzy blue and black spots, at which time they
Speaker 3: should be thrown out. Also, just to note, this is
Speaker 3: different from purple garlic, which is an entirely separate variety,
Speaker 3: so lots of lots of garlics out there, lots of
Speaker 3: colors garlic can take on.
Speaker 2: I love it, right, I think I've had purple garlic
Speaker 2: that that's just like an inherent color in the right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just grows that way.
Speaker 2: Reaction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's more assertive, is what I read researching this.
Speaker 2: So but no reason to be scared of the garlic
Speaker 2: that turns blue or green during storage. You're cooking, it's moldy.
Speaker 3: Unless it's moldy, but you will. There's a clear difference
Speaker 3: between moldy garlic and what we're talking about with this
Speaker 3: blue and green garlic. It is a very bright hue.
Speaker 3: It takes on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the case of the reaction, not the mold. Yes, yes, well, folks,
Speaker 2: I don't want to run you off, but we are
Speaker 2: coming up against our time limit here. It's been so
Speaker 2: much fun talking de y'all today. Do you want to
Speaker 2: do another episode with men? Can we do another one?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: More weird food science, food storage, mad science, reactions, transformations, explosions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think we're in Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can't wait. Well, Annie, Lauren, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining me today. It has been a blast. And
Speaker 2: please remind people again where they can find your work.
Speaker 2: I know we talked about it at the top, but
Speaker 2: let's hit them with it again. Repetition doesn't hurt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can find our podcast saver anywhere you get
Speaker 1: your podcast. We are also about to be on a
Speaker 1: panel here in Atlanta at the PRX Podcast Creator Summit.
Speaker 1: They asked us to come talk about food podcasting, so
Speaker 1: we were like, sure, that's on July thirtieth. That's a
Speaker 1: Wednesday from seven to nine pm. It is free, open
Speaker 1: to the public, located at the Plywood, So come on
Speaker 1: out if you're interested. They've got a bunch of other
Speaker 1: really fascinating sounding like if you are into audio creation.
Speaker 1: The whole thirtieth to the first is a bunch of
Speaker 1: workshops with a bunch of really cool humans just trying
Speaker 1: to make podcasting more accessible to everyone.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and also, Lauren, people can find your work
Speaker 2: on brain Stuff the podcast and any people can find
Speaker 2: your work on stuff Mom never told you correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Anything else? Before we close out, go.
Speaker 3: Listen to our Tomato episode.
Speaker 2: Okay to it. That's your homework. That's your homework, listeners, Yeah,
Speaker 2: savor Tomato redocs. Yes, okay, let's see. Hey, if you're
Speaker 2: new to the show today. I normally co host this
Speaker 2: with a guy named Robert Lamb. He'll be back with me,
Speaker 2: I believe next week or maybe later this week, but generally.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a science and culture
Speaker 2: podcast with core episodes that publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Speaker 2: of every week. On Fridays, Rob and I usually do
Speaker 2: a different kind of episode called Weird House Cinema, where
Speaker 2: we just talk about weird movies. They can be good,
Speaker 2: they can be bad, they can be old, they can
Speaker 2: be new, they can be well known or obscure. The
Speaker 2: only real criterion is they got to be weird. Let's see.
Speaker 2: We also do short form episodes on Wednesdays, and then
Speaker 2: on Saturdays and Mondays we run some episodes from the vault,
Speaker 2: older episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. If you want to find us on social media,
Speaker 2: I think we're on some of those things. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm not attached to that world, but you can definitely
Speaker 2: find on like Instagram, and Weird House Cinema has a
Speaker 2: profile on letterboxed dot com. That's a social kind of
Speaker 2: film website that it has reviews and film lists and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, I think we're just called weird house
Speaker 2: on Letterbox. Huge thanks, of course too, Annie Reese and
Speaker 2: Lauren Vogelbaum for joining me today, And huge thanks as
Speaker 2: always to our excellent audio producer, Jjpozway. If you would
Speaker 2: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 2: this episode or an together to suggest a topic for
Speaker 2: the future, to tell us how many lasagna batteries it's
Speaker 2: going to take to power a city, or anything else,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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