Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: where smart happens him Marshall Brain with today's question, what
Speaker 1: is kara gen in? If you've read the ingredient labels
Speaker 1: on the things we eat each day, you can find
Speaker 1: some pretty weird sounding stuff. That's because processed foods have
Speaker 1: some amazing things that they have to do. For example,
Speaker 1: a cookie might get made in Texas, trucked across the
Speaker 1: country in the middle of the summer, sit in a
Speaker 1: warehouse for a couple of weeks before it's sold, and
Speaker 1: then ride home in the trunk of your car, and
Speaker 1: when you open the package, you expect that cookie to
Speaker 1: look perfect. That's not an easy thing to do. It
Speaker 1: turns out things like liquids and cheese can be even
Speaker 1: more problematic because their natural inclination is to separate foam, melt, precipitate,
Speaker 1: and so on, especially after they bound down the road
Speaker 1: for a thousand miles. That's why many foods contain chemicals
Speaker 1: known as gums. Two gums that are pretty familiar are
Speaker 1: gelatin and corn starch. If you look at processed food
Speaker 1: you see all sorts of other gums, like karagene in
Speaker 1: xanthem gums, cellulos gum, locust, bean gum, agar, and so on.
Speaker 1: Food scientists the people who make process foods, use these
Speaker 1: substances for four main reasons. First, they thicken things. Ice cream,
Speaker 1: marshmallow fluff, pancake syrup and so on all benefit from thickening. Second,
Speaker 1: they emulsify things. They help liquids to stay mixed together
Speaker 1: without separating. Third, they change the texture of things. Generally,
Speaker 1: a gum will make something thicker or chewier. Fourth, they
Speaker 1: stabilize crystals. A gum might help prevent sugar or ice
Speaker 1: from crystallizing. These are all handicapabilities when making food products
Speaker 1: that have to look good for several months after or
Speaker 1: trucking them across the country. The reason why a normal
Speaker 1: cook usually doesn't need to use things like kara gene
Speaker 1: in or xanthem gum is because the food and normal
Speaker 1: cook makes gets eaten very quickly and it's not mistreated.
Speaker 1: A cook can use less expensive things like gelatin, flour
Speaker 1: or eggs because the time span between cooking and consumption
Speaker 1: is so short. Karagin In, by the way, is a
Speaker 1: seaweed product. This particular type of seaweed is common in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Ocean near Britain, Continental Europe, and North America.
Speaker 1: You boil the seaweed to extract the karagin in. In
Speaker 1: that sense, karagina is completely natural. It's not much different
Speaker 1: from tomato paste and its creation. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics because it how stuff works.
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